Playing Essence of Human Thinking: Philosophical and Cultural Aspects

The article is devoted to the gaming essence of human thinking. Gaming activity is the essential quality of a person along with labour, educational, cognitive, communicative activities. It is realised in all listed activities of the personality. After analysing the classification of types of human games, we propose to allocate the fourth type of games – the game of the mind. It is present in modern texts: jokes, advertisements, media, and artistic texts. The ambiguity of the text provokes mental activity. The latter, carrying out the game with meanings, is able to generate ambiguity of discourse. Thinking, as a game, is manifested in solving the tasks of intelligence, in assessing of general competencies and testing creative abilities.