James,
You may be saying something, but the problems are not that sophisticate. There where "default hypothesis", sure, like the hypothesis that the Knights and Knaves understand English ..., knows how to use a phone, and are able to survive more than a nanosecond ... There might be sense in your remarks about consistency, but the puzzles are supposed to introduce slowly the not so easy notion of consistency. Also logic does not necessitate decidability. Let go slowly.
Bruno
At 06:26 22/07/04 -0700, James N Rose wrote:
Bruno,
Nice story and game depiction; it does help - somewhat - to explain a more expansive generalization of 'decidability' ..the bedrock on which 'logic' (at least for the traditional understanding of that term) relies.
Global consistency 'permits' decidability 'which permits' logic.
But there are prefaces to -those- relations. And direct indication thereby that consistency is 'necessary' but not alone 'sufficient' to arise 'decision', and then 'logic'.
Case: have your student place the call. but the native answers in cantonese ; or, doesn't know the significance of the device called 'phone' and thinks it just an interesting noise-maker.
A 'consistency' of co-presence would exist in such a universe, but not a 'requisite interaction' rule.
Yet a 'logic of co-existence' -would- exist _strong enough and pervasive enough_ to accomodate co-presence -with- 'involvement and no involvement' simultaneously.
So .. first there must be a:
"global consistency 'which permits' decidability AND non-decidability"
before you can generate the option sub-path ..
Global consistency 'permits' decidability 'which permits' logic.
Jamie Rose Ceptual Institute
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
