[Nomic02] a vague attempt at summarising

[Carl Muckenhoupt]

On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Carbol, Roger wrote:

> I'm of the opinion that anything referenced by the rules is
> implicity part of the game state.  Consider Rule 2 and its
> reference to 'English', for example.

Are you suggesting that the English language should be considered to be
part of the state of the game?  I disagree.

I'm going to be a strict constructionist here.  Rule 7 tells us what's in
"the state of the game": rules, players, and anything added to the
definition by a rule.  My understanding is that adding things to this
definition means stating "The state of the game contains...", not simply
mentioning things.

Rules 7 and 8 were passed to provide greater formalization than Rule 5.  
I don't much like the idea of this formalization being weakened by
implicit additions to the state of the game.

> My general nomic style is to introduce small, atomic,
> axiomatic-ish sorts of rules, and let them interact,
> rather than trying to fully define things all in one
> big rule.

Funny you should use the word "axiomatic".  I haven't played enough Nomic
to consider myself to have a style, but I've been thinking of rules in
terms of axiomatic systems too.  To me, this suggests rigorous formality,
with every primitive notion explicitly introduced and its relationship to
other terms defined.  I do, however, concur with your objection to putting
things in "one big rule", and have already made a proposal to split a
prospective rule into more elementary components.