Newsgroups: rec.games.chess.analysis Path: info!dregis From: dregis@exeter.ac.uk (D.Regis) Subject: [The Post-Modern variation] Message-ID: Organization: University of Exeter, UK. References: <1997Jan26.135939.8938@hobbit> Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 15:39:07 GMT In article <1997Jan26.135939.8938@hobbit> hathawa2@marshall.edu (Mark S. Hathaway) writes: > >"Meaning" is, to some extent or other, a fiction. In the end only the >move exists and it will stand on it's own merits regardless of any >meaning. Ah, the post-modern variation (Derrida-Foucault, Paris 1983). It is refuted by the materialist attack (Hume-Engels, London 1881). "A move", a real move, always has meaning, it is the idea of "the move" which does not exist. Really, only the starting position has no meaning. Once a move is made, we see it made by a human hand, driven by conscious thought, motivated by conscious intentions, and thus saturated with meaning. Actual moves made by players can always be enquired after, although these enquiries may be met by refusal, or misleading responses. The "move" of which you speak, free from these brute realities of play, the platonic ideal, never exists in its pure form, we only ever see concrete instantiations of it embedded in a context of play, where each player tries to substantiate (or otherwise interact with) the meaning of the move by their subsequent choices. P.S. The enquiry of the original poster might best be referred to the book "How to play the Sicilian Defence", by David Levy and another chap, which discusses the ideas behind the various central formations. Helpful, I thought. P.P.S. Stay tuned for the dialectical variation (Hegel-Marx, Frankfurt 1886), where the thesis, the argument that motivates the move by one player, prompts the antithesis, the reply, and the continual evolution and interplay of replies (which are also moves in their own right) results in the thesis that we call the game. This quantitative progression of moves is eventually transformed into a qualitative difference, the result. It is thus, not ideals like "moves", but the dialectical interplay of ideas which is the motor of the chess game, and results in the perfect State, namely, winning and going to the bar afterwards. -- May your pieces harmonise with your Pawn structure and your sacrifices be sound in all variations D _ / "()/~ Dave Regis &8^D* Exeter Chess Coaching Page etc.: || \_/| = DrDave on BICS http://www.ex.ac.uk/~dregis/DR/chess.html ~\ / "...what else exists in the world but chess?" _|||__SHEU ~/sheu.html -- NABOKOV "Contribute!" -- Doug Attig From info!dregis Tue Feb 4 17:03:44 GMT 1997 Article: 16295 of rec.games.chess.misc