TheBanyanTree: linguistic paradox (of omniscience)

[alf at io.com]

Ha ha ha - I'm too stupid fer the big stuff, but I think I agree with you.
I'd say this guy is just full of himself and likes to play with words - and
since no one can understand a damn thing he's saying - they aren't likely
to refute his position. His resume proves to the world he is an EXPERT!
I think this is his only point. ha ha ha
On the other hand - it may all be true - or false - or real - or not.

I think I'd skip to the last chapter just to see how he ends it.
Then you can go play with your new sewing machine ( which is real) and has
definite meaning to you - and chunck ol Barrow in the insignificant pile
that you can always refer to for "party chatter" should you ever be
desperate for nothing meaningful to say. ha ha ha ha

love,
alice

At   7:44 PM 12/17/3 +0930, JMoney wrote:>I've started reading John D
Barrow's book "Impossibility: the limits of
>science and the science of limits".   Barrow is an astrophysicist, research
>professor of Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge and author of several books,
>none of which I've read.
>
>On page 11 I found this:
>"We began this section by introducing the familiar idea of a god who is
>omniscient: someone who knows everything.  ... one can show that omniscience
>of this sort creates a logical paradox and must, by the standards of human
>reason, therefore be judged impossible or be qualified in some way.  To see
>this consider this test statement:
>
>THIS STATEMENT IS NOT KNOWN TO BE TRUE BY ANYONE.
>
>... Suppose first that this statement is true and [the hypothetical
>Omniscient Being] Big O does not know it.  Then Big O would not be
>omniscient.  So, instead, suppose our statement is false.  This means that
>someone must know the statement to be true; hence it must be true.  So
>regardless of whether we assume at the outset that this statement is true or
>false, we are forced to conclude that it must be true!  And therefore, since
>the statement is true, nobody (including Big O) can know that it is true.
>This shows that there must always be true statements that no being can know
>to be true.  Hence there cannot be an Omniscient Being who knows all truths.
>... All that can be known is all that can be known, not all that is true."
>
>Intuitively, or maybe prejudicially, I feel as though the argument is just
>so much garbage but I don't know enough about philosophy and the fallacies
>of logic to be able to state precisely what's wrong with it and it's driving
>me nuts.  I went looking on the web for the definitive slam-dunk refutation
>but there's nothing there, or at least nothing that I can understand without
>going back to school yet again to learn how to read the arcane symbols that
>philosophers and philosopher/mathematicians use when discussing syllogisms
>or whatever they're called.  That is not an attractive or useful prospect
>from my time-management perspective, especially not when for Christmas I
>have got myself a brand-new sewing maching (with automatic button-hole
>program - hooray!) that I want to learn how to use.  So what I'm going to do
>is have a go at it myself below and invite anyone who knows better to please
>chip in.  Please, please, please.
>
>A page or so later Barrow discusses drawings of objects that cannot exist as
>actual constructions in the real world.  You know the ones - a fork that
>appears to have three tines but when you trace them back there are only two,
>the stairs that look like they're joining two floor levels but when you look
>again there's only one floor.  Barrow calls these visual paradoxes and he
>defines paradox as something that is either true and appears contradictory
>or is contradictory and appears true.  So the visual paradoxes are examples
>of the latter - something that at first sight appears like a representation
>of reality but on closer inspection the trick (and the unreality) becomes
>apparent.
>
>I think that his test statement is a linguistic paradox of the same quality.
>You can write it down, speak it aloud or read it but it means nothing and
>therefore has no correspondence with reality.  Just like the drawings it's a
>trick.
>
>The first time I read, "This statement ...," I thought, "What statement?
>There is no statement."  After a while I realised that, "This statement,"
>refers to itself.  It is qualified ("not known to be true by anyone") but
>otherwise without content. And I think that's where the unreality of
>Barrow's argument lies, for how can something that has no content be be true
>or not true let alone be known as such by anyone?
>
>If Barrow had written,  "Xisplitzlanrgkrch is not known to be true or false
>by anyone," we would see immediately that the sentence means nothing.
>Because he has written, "This statement," instead of, "Xisplitzlanrgkrch,"
>the sentence has the appearance of being a meaningful sentence but, in fact,
>it's meaningless and any attempt to draw conclusions from an argument
>concerning the truth or falsity of a meaningless statement can only result
>in multiplied meaninglessness.
>
>So, am I right or am I wrong?
>
>Janice

	    ~*~
 	~*~alf~*~
~*~@io.com~*~

"I once tried to save a cat whom the dogs had chased up a tree.
Some of us simply prefer our own hell over someone else's good intentions.
I still have the scars to prove it."
                                                                         alice