On Sat, 27 May 2017, CuddleBeam wrote:
> >Moreover, the Principle of Explosion is the quintessence of what Rule 217's
> >second paragraph is meant to forbid.
>
> This, yes?
>
> Definitions and prescriptions in the rules are only to be
> applied using direct, forward reasoning; in particular, an
> absurdity that can be concluded from the assumption that a
> statement about rule-defined concepts is false does not
> constitute proof that it is true. Definitions in lower-powered
> Rules do not overrule common-sense interpretations or common
> definitions of terms in higher-powered rules.
>
> So, "absurdity" is not meant in a formal way (non sequitur) but rather how
> the consequences of the application of laws of logic feels like?
>
> I do honestly believe I need a better definition of the nature of CFJs too
> though.
My personal thoughts, not everyone may agree:
CFJs are like house rules. When the rules of a board game are unclear, there's
some general discussion about what's plausible, and eventually there's a
decision
"well, let's interpret it this way." It's good to be consistent (follow the
house rule once you've made it) because that's only fair in a game - so that's
precedent. But sometimes later on a contradiction comes up ("well if we made
decision A, now later on it means we can't do B, so A must have been wrong").
Then you can decide to play like !A instead. You might sometimes take back a
few moves as a result, back to a reasonable limit (for us, that's back to
ratification).
If a situation comes up only once in a while, you might eventually forget the
old house rule, and the next time it comes up you make a different house rule.
That's fine. Precedent fades. And if the rules themselves are changing,
sometimes you say - oh hey, that old house rule doesn't make sense, there's
an actual rule now.
In the middle of all this, if someone said "oh hey: new house rule - there are
no house rules!" everyone would say, well that's silly, and dismiss the idea.
Also: these are not too hard to spot in the CFJ archives, there's several.
I think it would be a REALLY INTERESTING THESIS for someone to do a
comparative study of some of the attempts over time.
