Exam IV: Exploring Alan Watts's Philosophical Perspectives: Games, Dualities, and the Illusion of Self
Analysis of Alan Watts' views on perception, duality, and self-identity.
Benjamin Clark
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Exam IV: Exploring Alan Watts's Philosophical Perspectives: Games, Dualities,
and the Illusion of Self
Exam IV
1.) What is the basic difference between a game and a contest? Why is Watts’s adaptation of the
traditional Indian view put in terms of the one instead of the other?
The difference between a game and a contest can be understood on the basis of competition. A game
can simply consist of rules and pre-determined means with which to reach favorable ends. On the other
hand, a contest could include the characteristics of the game and, additionally, it presupposes the
existence of a winner and a loser. A game could also imply a form of cooperative play but a contest is
almost always in the sense of competition where one becomes the victor over another.
The concept used by Watts is that of a game as a myth or a type of large-scale playful exercise which
helps to create an image of the world or a likeness of it. The myth or the concept of a game does not
describe the world in terms of scientific validity. In Watts view, the Vedanta philosophy consists of a
belief in a deity who ‘plays’ with the world while being a part of it so things are not separate from this
deity. The universe only seems to consist of disparate things because it is part of the game that the deity
plays. Watts adapts the Vedantic game concept because he is trying to explain that the world can be
conceived likewise, i.e. with opposites and interconnectedness. He may also like the terminology of a
game rather than a contest because he seeks to emphasize that the world cannot exist in a state of
competition with the self opposed to others as this will simply lead to more massive conflicts or wars
and environmental degradation.
2.) In chapter one (but it is also found in chapter three), what does Watts suggest has become the
“opposite” but equally devastating viewpoint of that which takes God to be the benevolent
overseer of our lives? (In some ways, he hints, this viewpoint is just the inevitable flip-side to the
belief in a benevolent Father who is a discrete and separate power from us.)
a. That God is a malevolent overseer who has deliberately put us in a lifeless and lonely
cosmos.
b. That the wrath of a hot God has died away to give us the cold chill of a blind,
fragmented, lonely world.
c. That the world is more alive than we are.
d. That the universe is an illusion.
and the Illusion of Self
Exam IV
1.) What is the basic difference between a game and a contest? Why is Watts’s adaptation of the
traditional Indian view put in terms of the one instead of the other?
The difference between a game and a contest can be understood on the basis of competition. A game
can simply consist of rules and pre-determined means with which to reach favorable ends. On the other
hand, a contest could include the characteristics of the game and, additionally, it presupposes the
existence of a winner and a loser. A game could also imply a form of cooperative play but a contest is
almost always in the sense of competition where one becomes the victor over another.
The concept used by Watts is that of a game as a myth or a type of large-scale playful exercise which
helps to create an image of the world or a likeness of it. The myth or the concept of a game does not
describe the world in terms of scientific validity. In Watts view, the Vedanta philosophy consists of a
belief in a deity who ‘plays’ with the world while being a part of it so things are not separate from this
deity. The universe only seems to consist of disparate things because it is part of the game that the deity
plays. Watts adapts the Vedantic game concept because he is trying to explain that the world can be
conceived likewise, i.e. with opposites and interconnectedness. He may also like the terminology of a
game rather than a contest because he seeks to emphasize that the world cannot exist in a state of
competition with the self opposed to others as this will simply lead to more massive conflicts or wars
and environmental degradation.
2.) In chapter one (but it is also found in chapter three), what does Watts suggest has become the
“opposite” but equally devastating viewpoint of that which takes God to be the benevolent
overseer of our lives? (In some ways, he hints, this viewpoint is just the inevitable flip-side to the
belief in a benevolent Father who is a discrete and separate power from us.)
a. That God is a malevolent overseer who has deliberately put us in a lifeless and lonely
cosmos.
b. That the wrath of a hot God has died away to give us the cold chill of a blind,
fragmented, lonely world.
c. That the world is more alive than we are.
d. That the universe is an illusion.
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Subject
Philosophy