Hello @Bran,
I’ve been mulling something of a similar nature, but I have something quite a bit more ambitious in mind. In many Tibetan monasteries, debate is held daily in such a way as to require following formal logical rules. It is also held in such a way that discourages ego building and instead fosters mutual understanding and skill in logic with the goal of deepening dhamma exploration and understanding.
Often debate on this forum breaks down into polemic with many ambiguities and misunderstandings as well as logical fallacies. I’d like to explore the idea of creating a debate/dialog system that enforces debate according to logical rules that would provide some safeguards against fallacy and misunderstanding. It might actually help people to communicate in a productive way or so I dream.
Instead of using prolog I thought of using game semantics and in particular dialogical logic to create a web-based game/forum where two players - the Opponent and Proponent of a thesis - argue in a more formal way according to very well established rules: either of classical logic or constructive logic. It is my hypothesis that constructive logic is more suited to dhamma debate, but a system that allows either to be toggled should be possible. LEM is not allowed as a move in constructive logic, but it is in classical.
The way I envision, two players would sign up (and perhaps spectators could view) as the Proponent of a Thesis and an Opponent. NOTE: The dialogical framework is actually very closely akin to a computer checked mathematical proof: ie, four outcomes are possible:
- The Proponent wins the debate, but not because they have proved anything, but because the Opponent did not choose a good “attack” strategy
- The Opponent wins the debate, but not because they have proved the thesis false, but because the Proponent did not choose a good “defense” strategy
- The Proponent wins the debate because it can be shown that no matter what attack strategy the Opponent had tried the Proponent would win: aka PROOF
- The Opponent wins the debate because it can be shown that no matter what defense strategy the Proponent had tried the Opponent would win: aka PROOF of negation of the thesis
This could be accomplished in web forms, but the thesis would have to be broken down and parsed into logical propositions, formulas, terms and predicates.
The first step might be providing some example games with thesis in more or less “plain english” and example attacks/defenses and the rules by which the game evolves etc.
What do you think? Venerable @NgXinZhao or @Soren, perhaps you might be interested as well?
