RT list: Is it right to think about RT as a materialising theoretical attempt?

 
Since I started this mess, I will keep being intermediary, at least, until next Moday. After that, either you join the Lingforum or they join the RT list.

http://www.lingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5462&start=195 [ http://www.lingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5462&start=195 ]

I think one of them, Nick, has already joined this List.

Welcome, Nick!

MALFET however, had this in mind: "If Professor Sperber responds again, I'll join the list. He has done a great deal for pragmatics, and I owe him that much."

Another member of the Lingforum crew, Daniel Ross, responded to Hanno Beck. Here is his contribution:

DANIEL ROSS WROTE:

@ Hanno Beck
It's not just en passant. There's also castling that can only occur if there has been no other movement of the king and that rook.
Arguably, this doesn't really go against what MalFet said, though, because it doesn't make it anything other than a formal system (just one that includes a history). If you've ever seen the moves of a chess game represented as text, then you'll see this clearly. There's no real objection here.

MalFet wrote: However, Mr. Beck is incorrect when he states that this rule requires "extra-formality". As I understand it, incorporating "en passant" increases the complexity of the formal system by precisely a factor of nine, which brings the magic number to 243 bits above the original 238. Slightly more complex, certainly, but still composed entirely of intrinsically discrete categories. En passant is indeed a strange relic of chess history, but it in no way alters the inherent computability of chess. Likewise, it in no way challenges the substance of my argument.
That's correct. Assuming we're talking about just the rules of chess (not planting a tree or throwing the board), there's no problem here.

In fact, you could even talk about it being more complex, such as the game before over when there's a draw or checkmate because there are no more moves possible-- that must predict the future. But obviously that's still within something that could be formalized.

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José Luis Guijarro
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Universidad de Cádiz
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Received on Wed Sep 26 08:46:40 2012