Rules and Strategies Revisited: A Comment on Robinson (1986)

Abstract

This paper represents the author's attempt to question the notions of rule and strategy as discussed in a recent paper by Douglas Robinson (1986). The author claims that the three-tiered language structure (rules, tactics and strategy) proposed by Robinson is not sufficiently precise due to its overdosed eclecticism. Robinson found analogies between the structures of chess and language, hoping to gain support for his theses. The author rejects the chess-language analogy by proving that language does not have suitable counterparts in the game of chess. In the author's opinion, strategy in language must always be presented as a sub-model, and as such, differs from strategy in chess, which can be an algorithmically-represented part of a game-theoretical model. According to the author, language is, above all, a natural kind and a contingent object, whereas chess is a derived notion, an 'artifactual' term easily accessible for investigation.

Keywords: rule, strategy, chess and language, natural kind, alghorithm