Synthesis of the Main Discussions

Abstract

This book is made of papers written after and inspired by the discussions held during the Mons conference on “Language and Recursion.” Therefore, these papers do not exactly correspond to the content of the presentations. This conference was an unusual one: the organizers had decided that the most precious thing was not the simple communication of new results but the exchange of ideas during discussions. It was thus decided, after the presentation of new results by a panel, to maximize the general discussion time. The aim was that during each of these discussion sessions, the participants would continue the same discussion about all already presented results. In order to achieve this aim, all participants were asked to attend all the sessions, and not only the session where they were supposed to speak. Astonishingly enough, in these times of fast and short communication, most participants accepted to “play the game” until the end of the conference and thus to “lose time,” exchanging profound ideas.

The exchanges were very rich: some were devoted to a deep analysis of the results presented and others to the elaboration of new ideas about the relations between language and recursion, as mentioned in the preface of this book. It appeared relevant to present here a synthesis of these discussion sessions. It must be clear that difficult choices had to be made and that, for the sake of clarity, exchanges referring to different sections of this book had to be regrouped, to be “merged” and placed in the same section or subsection of this chapter. Inside each subsection, we respected the chronological order of the exchanges to show how the ideas evolved and converged, or not! It should also be understood that all interventions had to be summarized. This synthesis is also biased because it presents the discussions through the filter of one single participant, the author of this chapter. He claims responsibility for all the bad choices and all the mistakes he might have committed when writing this part of the book. He simply hopes that all readers will get here a glimpse of the constructive atmosphere we had during our debates.

In this chapter, the name of the person who is speaking is in bold.