Philosophy Now Forum

Steve Brewer’s players discuss a strategy for selfish ethical behaviour.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/137/Morality_Games

First problem with the article is it mixed up Morality with politics and religion.

There are loads of arguments and views that Morality is independent of theism and religion.

One example among the many;

• Ultimately, we see and foresee no pithily characterizable relationship between religion and morality.
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345965/

Morality is driven by an inherent Faculty of Morality within the brain of all humans, where it is reasonable active in some and quite dormant in the majority of people.

What’s more, unlike the self-sacrifice demanded by God, morality based on game theory requires individuals to make choices in their own best interest.

The article discussed morality as represented by utilitarianism which is disputed by many as an inefficient Moral System.

Brewer calls freedom to opt—to compete rather than to collaborate—an individual right. He indicates that there is no common good other than a collective of individual rights.

Once a rightful individual chooses to compete against another, he has placed himself in opposition to, or at least ignorance of, the other individual’s pursuit of his best interests.

Thus the dilemma: the individual right to the pursuit of one’s own best interests is void as an individual right.

However, there must always be an interplay, a balance, between the common good and individual rights,

Brewer calls morality an instance of game theory as ruling body. I call foul.

There must be a special collective doomed to burn in hell for denying the human need for competition: and the love for struggle in one form or another:

Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch wrote: "Chess is a form of intellectual productiveness, therein lies, its peculiar charm. Intellectual productiveness is one of the greatest joys -if not the greatest one- of human existence. It is not everyone who can write a play, or build a bridge, or even make a good joke. But in chess everyone can, everyone must, be intellectually productive and so can share in this select delight. I have always a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would pity for the man who has no knowledge of love. Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy."

After a game players come together to analyse the game. It is a communal effort. But during the game they experience the delights of the greatest joys and misery a game can offer. Kill the desire in the hope of perpetuating some PC equality nonsense destroys something delightfully human.