thread: 2011-06-28 : Designing Philosophical Arguments
On 2011-06-30, Ry wrote:
Sure, but it's not a helpful insight.
When we roleplay, we use our words, which a lot of the time means we're using the executive functions of our brains to make decisions for our characters. Put another way, our characters don't do anything that isn't intentional. In essence our characters don't have the rich set of less-than-conscious drivers that we do. If my character runs away when I want him to stick around, I feel like the GM or the game screwed me. My character doesn't act like they made that decision - doesn't do the work we all do to justify it. The character says "that was a failed save, that was DONE to me", whereas we would say "I ran. I was being smart."
Our characters can tell the difference between actions that were imposed on them by their less-than-perfect brains and actions that they used executive functions to choose. We can't make those distinctions.
So my insight about roleplaying is "Roleplaying games are limited in their presentation of the self because all interactions are channeled through the intentional, speaking, thinking self, i.e. the parts of our brains that play the game."
