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The Phenomenology of Chess, chess as a metaphysical metaphor

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The Phenomenology of Chess, chess as a metaphysical metaphor

Tobias
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Posted 09/04/03 - 08:27 AM:	#1
Chess and metaphysics, no no, don't run away, at least not just yet (run after you saw the length of forthcoming post ). I know that this choice of subject has a chance of finding a very little audience. People who are interested in metaphysics might not give a iota about chess and people interested in chess might cringe at the sound of metaphysics. But maybe here there is something here for chessl overs as well as metaphysicians I was wondering about this question: Does the game of chess have any philosophical value? There certainly are many books on 'psychology and chess', but not much on philosophy and chess. I found some bits and pieces and some worth wile insights on the connection between chess and life. Especially the Arabs were fond of chess and connected it to the world. One of the most known ones is this poem: "'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, And one by one back in the Closet lays. " - Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Still a purely philosophical investigation of chess is unknown to me. In this post I want to use the chess game as a metaphor for the world and by doing so shed light on and maybe even find some common ground between the metaphysical views of Nietzsche, Hegel and Heidegger. Lets picture the chess game as a model of the world: "The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomenon of the Universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature, The player on the other side is hidden from us." - T.H. Huxley What can we say about this little world: I will start with a chessplayer and amateur philosopher. The Dutch grandmaster H. Donner, 1929- 1984. In one of his earlier articles Donner says about chess ''chess is an age-old culture-monument of the ontological conception of truth. Truth in chess is that true is what is as it is''. In chess everything is uncovered, the rules are clear. If you make a game in which knights go like this, bishop like that, and pawns move so and so, than some moves are simply better than others. The future (what is unknown) in this world is made by the opponent. He makes moves, upon which you make moves, the unit of time in chess is the move, with each move we encounter a new world in which again, true is what 'is as it is'. 1. Heidegger materialism, Understanding and Fear Now lets take Heideggers materialist philosophy and see if chess can be used as a metaphor for his world. For Heidegger dasein is in-the-world. In chess terms, 'dasein' is the player. The player encounters a position and reflects upon it like dasein reflects on his own being. The chess game itself is the 'concern' of the player. The pieces are its equipment. They are 'ready at hand'. The worldhood of the world, yes that is the chessboard. What happens when we encounter (not playing chess) a chess piece? It is merely present at hand and fills us with conspicuousness. a chesspiece 'belongs' on a chessboard. Likewise when playing chess, we often find we cannot make a move. A piece we need is missing. All of a sudden we become disappointed. the other pieces seem of no use at all, ahhrg why is there no knight on D4! We become angry, just as we become angry at the real world when we cannot find something and dismayed we throw all other things aside. When do we 'see' the chessboard in chess? Precisely, at the end of it. When we have some piece stuck in a corner, yes then we see the finitude of the chess-world. The piece wants to move but cannot, it is trapped, that which is not the world surrounds the world. What is that famous 'nothingness' in Heidegger, that decor on which being shines itself out? That is the opponent. The opponent is unknown. We do not know what he will do and because of that we intently look at our position, trying to find out what he 'might' do. He is not just another Dasein, no way, he is the Other! The frightning one. And the END, what about death in chess? The end in chess is the 'mate' (which means 'death' in Persian) It is symbolised by the contradiction. The King has to move but is not allowed to move. So far things seem to check out. Chess can, with modifications here and there of course, take the role of the world. Can we now conclude that also in the world true is that which is as it is? That the world is only more complex as the chess game, but that in itself it can be 'read' like one? 2. Nietzsche Chess as Will, victory Well maybe the world can be read as a chess game, but there is another dimension to 'truth' in chess. In chess 'truth' seems to be simple, like the above suggested. It is not that simple. The chess games have meaning for the players. Chess properly can only be played between meaning giving individuals. Winning and losing means something, but what it means is not in the rules of the game. The rules do not state that winning is preferable to losing, that is what we think. And out of this first attachment of meaning there follows all interpretations of the chess positions. This is the idealistic dimension. In the chess world two 'wills' are opposing each other. What is their aim, their aim is power, absolute power! The power to enforce the contradiction of the 'check mate' on each other. It doesn't matter how this end is achieved. That is why grandmaster Lasker could say ''not the objectively strongest move is the best one, but the one that causes most problems to your opponent''. This is the Nietzschean side of chess. In chess all things are as they are because the players 'willed' it. The positions arise out of Will to Power'. The whole interpretation, the whole essence of the game is that. Without it, there would be no better and worse. Players would just randomly pick a move and there would be no game at all. In chess, the players are themselves beyond Good and Evil, they decide Good and Evil. They keep playing because they know every position has arisen out of what they willed 'Amor Fati' and make the best of it. The players are like 'overmen'. They are playing with their pieces without morals but with an eye for them. A prime example of this 'meaning giving' or interpretative chess is Grandmaster Aaron Nimzowitch who said ''it sounds odd, but for me a pawn has a soul, he has slumbering desires and wishes and I have to understand them and help him on his way'' This sounds odd to people that see chess as mathematics, but to people who play chess as a battle of interpretation it doesn't. The overman will play with humans like men play with chess pieces, Nietzsche might have said. Nietzsche's ideas seem exeptionally well suited for the chess game, but he was describing the world. Chess has stood the test of Nietzschean thinking. Hegel Historicity, contradiction and overcoming We have now two ways of understanding the chess game. Chess as material, a world governed by natural laws and in which the players uncover truth and chess as will, as a game in which interpretation of one will will triumph over the interpretation of the other. Still a third way of understanding is needed for the full picture. We need to know how chess came into being and on what fundament, in what spirit, the battle is fought. We turn now explicitly to the players. In the first Heideggerian interpretation I gave the other player was the cause of fear. In the Nietzschean interpretation the other was one to be subdued, eliminated even. But chess is a game after all, why all that fear and violence? For an answer we need to consider the union of opposites, the seeming paradox which comes to life in chess. Sure, the object in chess is to win the game, but this is only half true. No chess will be played by opponents so unequal in capacity that one will always triumph over the other. Than the game is 'not fun' and one of the players will stop playing. If I play someone who has no chance beating me, I will teach that person chess. The only pleasure than is to see the other getting better. Why do I do that? The conclusion seems inevitable, in order to be able to get beaten by him or her. So 'we play to win is only half true', we play to win only if we also can loose. So chess is a struggle, but a paradoxical on in which opponents are locked in a dialectic relation. There can only be chess if people are prepared to be in a struggle. The Other is only seemingly threatening, in fact he affirms your 'right' to interpret by offering you his counter interpretation. In the game the idea of One and Other are overcome. The dialectic lesson of chess is that the Self / Other distinction is overcome precisely by entering in a struggle with you. A formalized struggle in which both are offered equal chance to interpret the world, is a relation in which people can find each other. (Not all participation in struggle has this character, for instance the essence of crime is that it is a struggle in which the other is not allowed interpretation). One final ingredient must be added that is the spirit or 'meta meaning' of the struggle. We saw the Hegelian dialectic overcoming and Nietschean battle of interpretations, but in what backdrop is this played out? Chess is a game of winning and losing, those interpretations are fixed, but the style of the struggle is not. Also in this style we see a constant overcoming, and an overcoming that seems to follow trends also visible in the 'big' world. In the romantic era chess was seen as art. The matches included spectacular attacks, flows of combinations and dazzling moves. One did not just win, one wanted to win in the most spectacular manner. Because the other complied and tried the same, beauty arose. Chess was played Nietzschean, im Groszen Stil. Untill one didn't want to play like that anymore.... Wilhelm Steinitz went on to analyse chess in a scientific manner. He defeated all romantics and became the first world champion. His scientific ideas soon took hold and chess became decidedly boring. Yes, the winning move did indeed seem to be the 'objective' best one. The world champion Jose Raul Capablanca declared that chess would soon be dead, because it was known how it should be played. Chess was science. He didn't have to wait long to be proven wrong. The modern movement came, spearheaded by aforementioned Nimzowitsch and his interpretive chess. The old scientific ideas were replaced by a line of play that was both scientific, but also had flair. Nimzowitsch is yet read by nearly all grandmasters in the world. In today's world chess is ruled not by romantism, not by scientism, but by sports. Not defeating opponents in a beautiful way is required, not correct, scientific play either. What is required is training, good health, fitness and determination, than just plain winning. Maybe romantism and scientism have been overcome... Can the world be compared to chess? Are there immutable laws of nature which shape the arena in which people going about their business wage a eternal battle against each other? Do they in their battle yet affirm each other and so create something like ethics, a mutual searching and challenging? Is this game silently rocked back and force by a historical 'spirit', like rationality, mysticism, enlightnment and so on? Might material, will and historicity be not only forces that shape the small world of chess, but also our big bad human sized world?
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Posted 09/05/03 - 02:35 PM:	#2
Tobias wrote: Can the world be compared to chess? Are there immutable laws of nature which shape the arena in which people going about their business wage a eternal battle against each other? Do they in their battle yet affirm each other and so create something like ethics, a mutual searching and challenging? Is this game silently rocked back and force by a historical 'spirit', like rationality, mysticism, enlightnment and so on? well well, tobi ... i am inspired! let me cut right to the heart of the matter before we do our dance over the details of your thesis: *does ethics require a discursive (metaphysical) basis? does ethics necessarily presuppose how, what or why* the world is?** it seems to me that ethics only presupposes that the world is ... that the players are ... that the relationship is ... that relating happens ... is 'power' an ontological or ethical concept?
The question isn't "Which explanations do I believe?" but rather "Which explanations do I least disbelieve?" Absence of evidence THAT MUST BE THERE (i.e. implied by any claim, concept, or (its) predicates, that affects changes in/to the world) entails evidence of absence. [What cannot be done?[What cannot be hoped?[What cannot be known?]]]

Spaces
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Posted 09/06/03 - 06:51 AM:	#3
It would seem to me that just about any construct whether it be chess, cards, even tic tac toe would be indicative of the forces you mentioned since they are in the same experiential context of life. That chess may use somewhat more of a degree of complexity is relative since a simple game of pick-up sticks could be said to employ the same degree insofar as managing deftness in physics. For myself, I would regard the game of chess more of what you indicate if the abilities of the pieces were to change when in proximity to other pieces. For example, a rook would be able to move diagonally when a certain configuration eventuates. This would seem more in line with the type of adjustments and adaptations requested by life circumstances. Spaces

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Posted 09/06/03 - 07:17 AM:	#4
Tobias wrote: Chess and metaphysics, no no, don't run away, at least not just yet (run after you saw the length of forthcoming post ). I know that this choice of subject has a chance of finding a very little audience. People who are interested in metaphysics might not give a iota about chess and people interested in chess might cringe at the sound of metaphysics. But maybe here there is something here for chessl overs as well as metaphysicians.... Can the world be compared to chess? Well the world has been compared with a lot of things, e.g., William Shakespeare in"As You Like It" has the gloomy philosopher, Jaques, say, "All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players..." The question is whether the comparison is illuminating or not. Chess, it seems to me is too strictured, and too rule bound (since it is a game) for the comparison to be particularly illuminating (although if you are a determinist-fatalist like Omar you can point to what you see as a similarity in that respect between the world and chess. And, of course, it is always possible to make a comparison between two things in some one or another respect, that might be found illuminating. But the question is whether the comparison between the game of chess as a whole and life as a whole, is illuminating, and for the reason I just gave, I don't think so. It seems to me that the comparison offered by Shakespeare between the world and a play is much more illuminating and interesting. Although it is true that the play has a script, and so the actors in the play are, in that sense, determined to do what they do, the actors and the director can interpret the script and the lines in ways that are not dictated by the script. There may be some of that in chess, it is true, since players may have different styles of playing, but there is far less room for variation in chess than in a play. What I have found to be true is that how a person plays chess is a strong clue to the sort of person he is: aggressive? impulsive? dogged? superficial? and so on.

Tobias
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Posted 09/10/03 - 04:38 AM:	#5
Thanks all for your commentary, must have been painful to read through the post In truth, I intended the post as a kind of outline for an article I want to write, but I see now I must do some things differently. I will reply to your posts with what I hope is an overall reply, but I will highlight give your specific objections. Gassendi: I think I did something wrong in the wording of my post. I do not mean to totalise, the world can and is indeed compared to many things. I think that the theatre play example is also worthy of interest, for instance to analyse complex social behaviour, the masks people wear when speaking, roles they play out in relation to each other and so on. Why I chose chess, for now, is because it illuminates a certain being in the world well ands connects two world views which are often seen as non-complementary to each other. It connects the world of 'rules of nature', of true is what checks out compared to the world. A position in chess can be assessed objectively, hell in many cases a computer can calculate the best move for you. Then again there is the 'power' side of it. Your opponent has to be beaten into submission, your interpretation of the position must be better than his or hers. This opens up a whole new world, a world of antagonistic power relations in which the behaviour of the pieces in effect changes. This was Spaces objection, the pieces don't change their behaviour. I would contend that they do. You need pieces coordinating to perform actions, they block each other, enforce each other, make each other work. The chessplayer Donner said about this new world that opens up the strictly mathematical rules of the game: 'where a geometric eye sees total stillness, the chessplayer sees a constant moving about. For a players eye the pieces always move, they are going there ways and might arrive in two moves, in this constant flux the staticity of geometrics gets lost. The board becomes a place full of hills and ridges and somewhere elses valleys and chasms. The diagonals twist and even the board looses its squareness,. Rook a1- d1 is clearly shorter than rook h1- h4. All of a sudden the diagonal of b2 turns towards G8, where the enemy king was when pawn d4 got taken'' This 'flux' world comes about when the player does not just move about, but matches wills with the other, the more intensely he wants that the more involved in this flux-world the player becomes. In this world the other tries to upset your interpretation, tries to trick you and open up possibilities in this world that you didn't see existing. It is this moving world which essentially comes about in a geometrically determined static world that I find interesting in chess and which other games lack. Spaces had another objection, that this analysis can be applied to every other game. I don't think so. It can be applied to some games, chess, checkers, halma perhaps. I think games are indeed an activity of this world and mirror different conceptions of the world. Games are a medium in which people mirror their views of life and try to live it by playing. By playing a game in which you tried to put some 'rules of life', one can fast forward the tape of life a little by playing. With this in mind, lets contrast chess to bridge (again idea Donner). In bridge everything is covered, contrary to chess in which the outcome of the rules of nature are in principle rationally knowable. In bridge the players need to agree on the truth (for them!) before hand. Truth in bridge is the covenant people amongst each other make. One can say that bridge highlights the formation of discourse, like chess highlights the logic of battle. Take for instance billiards. Billiards is a Leibnizian game. Billiards highlights the worldy relation of cause and effect by mathematical precision. Than we have the games of chance, for instance backgammon. Players here 'learn' to reason with a third party, chaos. It betrays a conception which highlights a fundamental uncertainty about how the world is. Chess is not unique but it can clarify some parameters in the world around us. For instance that a materialist world doesn't necessary conflict with an antagonistic worldview. In this prestructured, but openly interpretable world, what part does ethics play? 180 let me cut right to the heart of the matter before we do our dance over the details of your thesis: does ethics require a discursive (metaphysical) basis? does ethics necessarily presuppose how, what or why the world is? it seems to me that ethics only presupposes that the world is ... that the players are ... that the relationship is ... that relating happens ... is 'power' an ontological or ethical concept? In chess one kills, one kills the other before even questioning the rightness of that action. In a sense one kills even more undiscreminitly than in boxing for instance, because in boxing the body of the other will invoke pity. In chess a thing like pity is impossible and undesirable, it makes a farce of the game. Still, chess has one golden mean, although it is an inverted one. The golden rule of chess ethics would be ''Be prepared and even committed to have what you do to others, done to your self''. A chess player should only play when he is prepared to be beaten. Chess is as far as I know the only sports where people of equal quality compete whith each other. There is a rating system designed to measure quality. In a tournament you will be placed in a category with people of your own strength. It is an ethical sensibility a la Foucault, to keep powerrelations open, preventing domination. (A nice analogy between chess and S/M springs to mind.The next phenomenology might be a phenomenology of sex ) To my mind ethics and metaphysics stand in a similar relationship. Both vie for control in a dialectical relationship. (Or as you would rather have it I think in a relationship of mutual searching rivalry) Power can highlight this: I began by taking power as an ontological concept as the desire that makes interpretation possible. Ethics would than be the collection of insight in the use of power. The use of power is determined by power itself, that would than give the ontological 'why' priority over the ethical 'how'. Still that can not be the last word as the question of 'why' is only posed in an environment already encapsuled in the powerrelation which makes the 'why' questionable. There has to be an other to ask and challenge your interpretation, that already presupposes a tension between self and other which is ethical. The ethical however, the relationship between self and other, only comes abouıt when both ponder the question of 'why'... So power would be split in an ethical and ontological dimension, unreconcilable, but doomed to live together as one.
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Posted 09/11/03 - 04:03 AM:	#6
Tobias wrote: In this prestructured, but openly interpretable world, what part does ethics play? In chess one kills, one kills the other before even questioning the rightness of that action. In a sense one kills even more undiscreminitly than in boxing for instance, because in boxing the body of the other will invoke pity. In chess a thing like pity is impossible and undesirable, it makes a farce of the game. Still, chess has one golden mean, although it is an inverted one. The golden rule of chess ethics would be ''Be prepared and even committed to have what you do to others, done to your self''. A chess player should only play when he is prepared to be beaten. Chess is as far as I know the only sports where people of equal quality compete whith each other. There is a rating system designed to measure quality. In a tournament you will be placed in a category with people of your own strength. It is an ethical sensibility a la Foucault, to keep powerrelations open, preventing domination. (A nice analogy between chess and S/M springs to mind.The next phenomenology might be a phenomenology of sex ) To my mind ethics and metaphysics stand in a similar relationship. Both vie for control in a dialectical relationship. (Or as you would rather have it I think in a relationship of mutual searching rivalry) Power can highlight this: I began by taking power as an ontological concept as the desire that makes interpretation possible. Ethics would than be the collection of insight in the use of power. The use of power is determined by power itself, that would than give the ontological 'why' priority over the ethical 'how'. Still that can not be the last word as the question of 'why' is only posed in an environment already encapsuled in the powerrelation which makes the 'why' questionable. There has to be an other to ask and challenge your interpretation, that already presupposes a tension between self and other which is ethical. The ethical however, the relationship between self and other, only comes abouıt when both ponder the question of 'why'... So power would be split in an ethical and ontological dimension, unreconcilable, but doomed to live together as one. tobias -- playing chess with my brother yesterday i became distracted by an alternative interpretation to your the game-as-model thought-experiment. it's wittgensteinian in inspiration ... the chess game -- board, pieces & rules logic corresponds to the rules themselves, delineating for every game a 'possibility space' (ala 'truth-tables'). playing chess -- players, skill & style ethics corresponds to the mutual use of the rules in order to play the game to a conclusion. there's a shared commitment to accept the outcome of each game. aesthetics corresponds to a style of play & irrepeatable, improvised unfolding of each 'game'. each 'game' potentially offers both a test & lesson. 'metaphysics' seems to try to say that the board, pieces & rules of chess are necessary or a priori or transcendental (ala platonic forms ~ universals), but i don't see the need, tobi, for such an ontological or conceptual commitment.
The question isn't "Which explanations do I believe?" but rather "Which explanations do I least disbelieve?" Absence of evidence THAT MUST BE THERE (i.e. implied by any claim, concept, or (its) predicates, that affects changes in/to the world) entails evidence of absence. [What cannot be done?[What cannot be hoped?[What cannot be known?]]]

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Posted 09/11/03 - 12:00 PM:	#7
I'm curious how you would relate Bobby Fischer's random chess. In random chess the players one at a time place their back rank pieces on any square of their choosing in the back rank. This leaves a little more of a chaotic feeling in the opening in stead of the studied openings. Personally, I see it fitting in with Hegel's theory, as that was the world probably seemed like 1000s of years ago and it is through the process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis that mankind was able to put some order to the chaos.

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Posted 09/23/03 - 07:04 PM:	#8
Having played thousands of games of chess, I can relate to your commentrary but don't really have much to add. In regard to chess, I don't think Capablanca was proven wrong in the sense that chess has been reduced down to somewhat of a 'science'. It has. Mostly due to computer technology. The reality is simple: you have chessmasters designing chess engines, which play themselves in tournaments, and play other chess 'engines' in self-run computer tournaments, over and over again. Based on the results, what happens is that the programmer of the chess engine keeps updating, adding and tweaking the engine to enhance it's performance, it plays the older version, improves, plays the older version, improves and so in this sense you almost have somewhat of an 'evolving' computer chess engine. Add this super-intelligent chess-playing through the best possible process - evolution, to the ability to ruthlessly and perfectly calculate billions of positions a second, and you have what is to a human a very scary chess opponent. This process is still continuing today and up until about a year ago when I stopped playing chess, I would keep up with such things and even play the engines myself. I don't think there is any longer a hope in the world of any human - even the world champion(s) - from overcoming the 'beast' of the moder chess super-computer. In that sense, the game has been reduced to a science. One hell of a complicated, inexplicable science, but in a sense certainly a science. Unfortunately, not the kind of science we can map out for ourselves. I have studied Capablanca's games - he was, in the purest sense, the only invincible chess player to ever live. He played for give or take 9 years against all the other players in the world, on a consistent basis playing the best players in the world and he never lost. Ever. For about 9 years. Personally I think he was the best, and I trust his word on the state of chess. I think he is wrong about it being near death though. (excuse me for my ramble about chess this and chess that)
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Posted 04/29/04 - 09:31 PM:	#9
Wittgenstein talks a lot about chess and its similarity to language games. Indeed, when in the context of a particular language game, every word has a particular use, just like the peices of a chess board. Take the situation of checking out at a grocery store. "How much is that apple?" This sentence has a particular use and can be responded to in several ways. You can think of it like an opening move in chess. One could say 'three dollars' or 'it's free' or 'that is not for sale' or etc. As our language games become more complicated, the number of approptiate responses is less, sometimes there are no more responses, check mate, stale mate, the game is over. Now at the same grocery store situation, suppose someones opens with 'fish swim' or 'cat the me on set the'. this might be likened to moving the queen as the first move in chess. It makes no sense in the game. You can imagine the puzzled look on the cashier's face. Of course you could play a game where the queen moves first, just like it could make sense at some time to say 'fish swim', but it wouldn't be chess, and it wouldn't be buying apples. Is there a game you can play where a sensible opening move is 'cat the me on set the'? Check out Philosophical Investigations. I think you'll like it.
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Posted 04/29/04 - 09:44 PM:	#10
flatliner wrote: Wittgenstein talks a lot about chess and its similarity to language games. Indeed, when in the context of a particular language game, every word has a particular use, just like the peices of a chess board. Take the situation of checking out at a grocery store. "How much is that apple?" This sentence has a particular use and can be responded to in several ways. You can think of it like an opening move in chess. One could say 'three dollars' or 'it's free' or 'that is not for sale' or etc. As our language games become more complicated, the number of approptiate responses is less, sometimes there are no more responses, check mate, stale mate, the game is over. Now at the same grocery store situation, suppose someones opens with 'fish swim' or 'cat the me on set the'. this might be likened to moving the queen as the first move in chess. It makes no sense in the game. You can imagine the puzzled look on the cashier's face. Of course you could play a game where the queen moves first, just like it could make sense at some time to say 'fish swim', but it wouldn't be chess, and it wouldn't be buying apples. Is there a game you can play where a sensible opening move is 'cat the me on set the'? Check out Philosophical Investigations. I think you'll like it. ____________________________________________________ Wittgenstein asked, "Can you play chess without the queen?" My reply. "Yes, but not as well." All systems of conventions have rules; that is what makes them systems of conventions. The chessic (and, in general, the game) metaphor is sometimes appropriate to other systems, and sometimes not so appropriate. The disanalogy begins with the fact that the rules of chess are strict and clear, but the rules of buying and selling in a grocery store, or in politics are not, and the line between the rules in the latter being broken or extended, or changed, is not a clear one. Like all analogies, the one between chess and non-games which are systems of conventions, has similarities, but also differences. We have to pay attention to the differences as well as to the similarities. If you decide not to buy the apple, it is not the same as checkmating the grocer. For instance, you may have both lost, or won: or should we compare it to stalemate, rather than checkmate? Not at all clear in the grocery, for it is really neither, but quite clear over the chessboard.

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