{"id":9761,"date":"2017-02-06T17:24:11","date_gmt":"2017-02-06T17:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/were-reading-enders-game-and-philosophy-edited\/"},"modified":"2017-02-06T17:24:11","modified_gmt":"2017-02-06T17:24:11","slug":"were-reading-enders-game-and-philosophy-edited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/were-reading-enders-game-and-philosophy-edited\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re reading ENDER\u2019S GAME AND PHILOSOPHY, edited by Kevin S Decker"},"content":{"rendered":"

arcfinity<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Adam Roberts<\/a> is in two minds about Blackwell\u2019s latest pop-culture exegesis.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford in Ender\u2019s Game<\/em> (dir. Gavin Hood, 2013)<\/small><\/p>\n

Ender\u2019s Game and Philosophy<\/em>
Kevin S Decker (ed)
Wiley, Blackwell, \u00a311.15<\/a><\/small><\/strong><\/p>\n

PLATO: Since my master downed his hemlock daiquiri, oh how lonely<\/em> I have been! And how keenly do I feel the lack of an interlocutor.<\/p>\n

ARCRATES: That\u2019s my cue.<\/p>\n

PLATO: You?<\/p>\n

ARCRATES: Permit me to introduce myself. I\u2019m the embodiment of the Arc Blog, an online offshoot of the New Scientist.<\/p>\n

PLATO: To speak of a new<\/em> scientist implies that there might be an old and a new; when surely there can only be one scientist, whose guiding principle – truth – has nothing to do with novelty or age?<\/p>\n

ARCRATES: That\u2019s the spirit! Soon enough we\u2019ll be dialoguing-it to the max. To the max squared<\/em>!<\/p>\n

PLATO: Yet how can this be? My master died twenty five centuries before your \u1f84\u03c1\u03ba\u03b2\u03bb\u03cc\u03b3 was set in virtual motion. Yet here you stand, before me, wrapped in a toga!<\/p>\n

ARCRATES: The nifty thing about the realm of Forms is its occupants have no sell-by date. Except for the Platonic Form of<\/em> the Sell-By Date, but that\u2019s a special case. You\u2019re<\/em> as fresh as a newly tossed salad, my friend. And the toga – yes. Well. I did wonder about the toga. Would it help you adjust to modern life, or would it just freak you out? I thought to myself: toga, or NOT toga? That is the qu\u2014<\/em> you\u2019re looking pained.<\/p>\n

PLATO: Forgive me, my friend. I have been sitting here, awaiting your arrival, with nothing to read but 21st-century philosophy. It has not been an inspiring business.<\/p>\n

ARCRATES: I am sorry about the delay. The Toga Rental place didn\u2019t open until – look, anyway, I\u2019m here now.<\/p>\n

PLATO: The library here is supplied with a complete set of the \u2018Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series\u2019, a whole series of books put forth under the general editorship of William Irwin. The volume I presently hold in my hand is Kevin S Decker edited volume of essays Ender\u2019s Game and Philosophy<\/em>, in which various eminences and writers spin-off philosophical propositions from Orson Scott Card\u2019s 1985 prose romance, Ender\u2019s Game<\/em>. It\u2019s a novel with a considerable following amongst science fiction aficionados – science-aficionados, if you will – with its tale of an isolated young boy at a military college trained to fight virtual reality games against an ant-like alien threat, the \u201cBuggers\u201d, only to discover he has been actually directing the battle-fleet to victory. Now, the book informs us, it is a Major Hollywood Film.<\/p>\n

ARCRATES: And did you like it?<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

arcfinity: Adam Roberts is in two minds about Blackwell\u2019s latest pop-culture exegesis. Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford in Ender\u2019s Game (dir. Gavin Hood, 2013) Ender\u2019s Game and Philosophy Kevin S Decker (ed) Wiley, Blackwell, \u00a311.15 PLATO: Since my master downed his hemlock daiquiri, oh how lonely I have been! And how keenly do I feel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-2xr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}