Research Student

I earned my MA Philosophy from Concordia University (in my native Canada) before going on to conduct several years of unconsummated PhD research at the University of Glasgow (United Kingdom). In the interim between tenures at Glasgow, I won a two-year research studentship to study at the University of Tokyo (Japan). Over the last decade I’ve taught Philosophy, English, Social Science, and General Education courses at various universities, most recently at King Saud University (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) and the American University in the Emirates (United Arab Emirates). A former Associate Lecturer here at the Open University’s Department of Philosophy, I have since reenrolled as a PhD Candidate under the supervision of Jon Pike and Alex Barber. The tentative title of my dissertation is “Bernard Suits and the Utopian Politics of Gaming”.

Current research

I’ve authored a monograph and had several articles published in academic journals on diverse topics in moral and political philosophy (as well as less frequent excursions into epistemology and metaphilosophy). Many of my articles can be freely accessed online here:
http://aue.academia.edu/ChristopherYorke

In my current research, I’m analyzing Bernard Suits’ utopia of gaming and addressing the following cluster of philosophical questions which are generated by it:

• Is Suits’ definition of ‘game’ persuasive?
• If so, is Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘family resemblance’ vitiated?
• What conceptual relationships exist between ‘boredom’, ‘happiness’, ‘difficulty’, and ‘achievement’, and how do these interact in Suits’ schema?
• Does an existence of all play and no work make ‘play’ a vacuous concept?
• Would utopians play competitive games?
• Is it possible to play a game without knowing it?
• Does post-instrumentality imply transhumanism?
• Is utopia impossible, or inevitable, or neither?
• Is sloth a utopian virtue?
• Is happiness indefinitely sustainable?
• Would a technological singularity threaten Suits’ techno-Cockaygne?
• Would superabundance lead to the degeneration of humankind?
• Is a ‘view from utopia’ intelligible?
• Are inter-generational games intelligible?
• Do games which are entered into involuntarily still count as games?
• Can a human life take place entirely within a game without violating Suits’ definition?
• What normative recommendations are derivable from Suits’ utopian vision?
• Can we use games in the present as a technology for attaining utopia?

Contact Details

If you think you have the answer to one or more of the questions posed above, and want to win eternal fame and glory in the form of a footnote, or have a theoretical bone to pick with my previous works, please don’t hesitate to contact me:

christopher_yorke@hotmail.com