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Joe Joyce wrote on Sat, Jun 27, 2009 07:21 PM UTC:
Since I so cleverly made the initial posting unreachable by using the
'&', I'll graciously/shame-facedly re-post the original post, a quote
from D C Dennett:

'If we want to know what the answer to a question in, lets say,
multiplication is, we can all sit down and calculate, but we may not all
agree because some people may get it wrong. But we have got a very good way
of determining, now, this is objectively the right answer. But it really
does depend on people converging on the same answer. If they didn’t,
mathematics would be a very different sort of endeavor. But we can achieve
that sort of convergence, that sort of consensus. And we can do that too on
empirical, factual matters, like, what water is; yes, its H2O. That’s a
fact, no question about it. But there are other questions- not just ethical
questions- where agreement has a different sort of status. Is chess a
better game than checkers, or will the game of chess be better if the king
can move two spaces rather than one? Now, there is evidence that can be
amassed on both sides of the issue. And in the end we might find that no
consensus could be achieved, no matter how much people learned about the
variant ways of playing chess. The preferability of one game over the other
would be a matter of opinion and that would be a subjective matter. But
notice that its not subjective in the sort of wild sense. It could be
perfectly objective that chess would not be improved by a rule that said
that the pawns could be moved up to five spaces at a time. Everybody agrees
that that’s a much worse game. It just does not warrant playing.'

Daniel C. Dennett - Nirmukta interview May 2009

Thanks to Uri Bruck for pointing this out. It seems clear that Dr. Dennett
is thinking either of rather small boards when he is considering 'chess',
or of the 4-square spacing between the 2 lines of pawns, when he comments
about 5-square pawns. I will also point out his use of the word 'could'
in 'It could be perfectly objective that...', giving himself wiggle room.

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