Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!umich!caen.engin.umich.edu!zarnuk
From: zarnuk@caen.engin.umich.edu (Paul Steven Mccarthy)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Chess, Reductionism.
Keywords: emergence, chess, reductionism
Message-ID: <492e6ff2.1a4d7@cicada.engin.umich.edu>
Date: 14 Mar 90 04:13:00 GMT
Expires: 1 Jul 90 04:00 GMT
References: <491fffd5.1a4d7@cicada.engin.umich.edu> <2080@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Followup-To: philosophy somewhere...
Organization: caen (U Mich)
Lines: 25

(Chris Malcolm) writes:
>In chess it is not possible to checkmate a king with _only_ two knights.
>If you regard this as a property of reality how is it a consequence of
>the laws of physics? 

I am a Reductionist.  These kinds of reductions are terribly tedious, but
the basic format is:

     The given property is a consequence of the rules of the game.
     The rules of the game are the consequence of human perceptions
         of pleasure.
     Human perceptions of pleasure are the consequence of human 
         nuero-chemistry
     Human nuero-chemistry is the consequence of the laws of chemistry.
     The laws of chemistry are the consequence of the laws of physics.

This is obviously greatly abbreviated, and I have completly omitted
the historical aspects of the game and of human culture, but time
is included in the laws of physics.  The basic idea is that everything
was in the right place at the big bang for everything to turn out
as it has so far.  It wasn't guaranteed to turn out this way, but there
was a non-zero, non-negative probability that it would, and it did.
(Probablistic Determinism).

---Paul...