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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.

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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.

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