Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 13.07.1981, Blaðsíða 239

Promises and Games
229
In chess it is very difficult to cheat, unless one is playing a complete
beginner, for cheating generally consists in surreptitiously breaking one
or other of the constitutive rules of the game, and these are very clearly
and precisely laid down in the case of chess, and it is difficult to hide
the move one is making. But, there are games where special conventions
about what counts as cheating are necessary for the game essentially
involves certain forms of bluffing. Thus, we are told in Hoyle’s Rules of
Games under the heading Ethics and Etiquette: “Each group of Poker
players is likely to set its own standards of ethical behaviour, and a
stranger in the game is well advised to learn what these standards are,
so he will not be thought unsporting. Old fashioned Poker players feel
that so long as a player does not actually cheat, he should not be banned
by any code of ethics. Most players feel there is a limit beyond which
one should not venture in misrepresenting his hand.”6
Let us notice that, in general, there is no rule of any particular game
that states ‘The game is to be played fairly’. This ethical injunction is
presupposed in all normal instances of the playing of all competitive
games. The rules as to what constitutes fair play may vary in the con-
text of different groups of players. When children are making up their
°wn games the most heated arguments often arise over what is to be
counted as fair. (At the moment I was writing this there was one such
argument going on in my house.)
I want first of all to indicate agreement with one of the ways in which
the analogy between games and the so called “practice of promises”
has been used. A man watching a game of chess will not understand
what it is for the White Bishop to threaten the Black Queen unless he
knows at least some of the constitutive rules of chess. Without know-
ledge of such rules he will not understand the point of Black’s next
wove. Neither will he understand why White for example substitutes a
Queen for a Pawn when it reaches the 8th row. Similarly, one must
know certain conventions to understand why Jones does not only com-
Plain about being misled by Smith, but charges him with having broken
a promise, when Smith does not do something he said he would do.
Nothing counts as a promise without the conventions and nothing
counts as the Bishop threatening the Queen, or Black check-mating
^hite’s King, except in terms of the constitutive rules of chess. But,
ahhough there is some point to the analogy here, the main contention
6 Hoyle’s Rules of Games, p. 96.