Who cares about winning?

Abstract

Why do we so often care about the outcomes of games when nothing is at stake? There is a paradox here, much like the paradox of fiction, which concerns why we care about the fates and threats of merely fictional beings. I argue that the paradox threatens to overturn a great deal of what philosophers have thought about caring, severing its connection to value and undermining its moral weight. I defend a solution to the paradox that draws on Kendall Walton's solution to the paradox of fiction, developing his idea that it be extended to games. The solution takes games to involve make-believe: in particular, players and spectators makebelieve that the outcome of the game matters. I also explore how the phenomenon extends beyond games. And I explore some moral implications: in particular, my view preserves the idea that we have reason not to impede others in their pursuit of what they care about.I do not know whether any aliens are currently observing the Earth. But sometimes I like to imagine that one is. I like to imagine that it is his task to understand human behavior; to figure out what motivates us; to make sense of our actions. His name is Joe. Much of our daily behavior makes sense to Joe. But Joe notices that humans sometimes seem to care immensely about rather odd, unimportant things. Sometimes people seem to care very much about whether an orange sphere goes through a hoop. There is often much disagreement about which hoop the sphere This paper was originally drafted in 2015 but has been revised considerably, both to engage with literature published since (particularly Walton 2015, Stear 2017, and Nguyen 2019(a)), and because numerous people have offered helpful feedback. Those who gave comments on drafts include David Balcarras,