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Palmström: The Lambda Calculus for Absolute Dummies (like myself)

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Laß die Moleküle rasen, was sie auch zusammenknobeln! Laß das Tüfteln, laß das Hobeln, heilig halte die Ekstasen If this post was too elaborate for your (for instance, because you are a computer scientist), or you want to progress, here's a very condensed summary, and an extension into Lisp: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=46449#p1827434 you state that boolean-OR is : λ ab.a (λ xy.x) a it should actually be: λ ab.a (λ xy.x) b Thank you! (Corrected now.) I'm still confused as why if 0 = (lambda sz.z) then 1 would be (lambda sz.s(z)) ? Try to perform the resolution of the successor function applied to 0! Could you clarify why it was okay to throw b away in the second step of calculating the successor of zero? Perhaps it's the use of shorthand, but I can't map that example back to the cut'n'paste rules you described. The b is part of the inner expression (λ sz.z) bc, which is shorthand for (λ s.λ z.z) bc. We resolve the first lambda by replacing all occurrences of s in λ z.

Palmström: The Lambda Calculus for Absolute Dummies (like myself) Monday, May 7, 2012 The Lambda Calculus for Absolute Dummies (like myself) If there is one highly underrated concept in philosophy today, it is computation . Why is it so important? Because computationalism is the new mechanism. For millennia, philosophers have struggled when they wanted to express or doubt that the universe can be explained in a mechanical way, because it is so difficult to explain what a machine is, and what it is not. The term computation does just this: it defines exactly what machines can do, and what not.

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