From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!gatech!emory!gwinnett!depsych!rc Sun Dec  1 13:06:32 EST 1991
Article 1741 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Is dialectical thought an "informal logic"?
Message-ID: <PXH5BB2w164w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM>
Date: 28 Nov 91 12:59:24 GMT
References: <5725@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Lines: 22

jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
> I think part of the research dynamic here is that there was
> enough progress on sentences that the next interesting steps
> were difficult ones, so that shifting to discourse was in a
> sense easier.  What we can hope is that work on discourse will
> allow (or, I suppose, make unnecessary) further work on
> sentences.  (There's a reciprocal process for you.)

It certainly sounds like a reciprocal process.  Of course it is
cloudy, as all dialectical-like processes are.  Is it that all the
easy work on sentences was done or that as aspects of sentences
became clearer the context in which they were embedded became more
problematical?  But I don't know what the researchers you have in
mind did with sentences, so I don't know what dialectical movement
made it seem to them that discourses were the next frontier.
(That's why I'd have to have my hands on the actual publications.)

--
Richard Carlson        |    rc@depsych.gwinnett.COM
Midtown Medical Center |    {rutgers,ogicse,gatech}!emory!gwinnett!depsych!rc
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