TheBanyanTree: linguistic paradox (of omniscience)

[Peter Macinnis]

From: <alf at io.com>
To: <thebanyantree-remsset.com at lists.remsset.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.

I heard John Barrow three years ago when he came out here to do some
rather amazing work on the fine structure constant with people at the
University of New South Wales -- he has just been out here again, but
I missed him. He is, in fact, remarkably unassuming for a world leader
in cosmology, black holes, and stuff like that. (I don't walk the
walk, but I know how to talk to those who talk the talk, and he is
VERY well thought-of.)

The correct answer to his conundrum, as I see it is that, looking from
the obverse side in an open universe after the pubs are shut, it is
not untrue in the epistemological sense, de jure and mutatis mutandis
(if not ipso facto and casus belli) -- or my middle name isn't
Epimenides (who was not an epistemologist). This comes from an
unusually unreliable source, and I trust you will all apply the rule
of the double negative to that, and not get tied up in nots.

There is no such thing as an omniscient being.  Trust me, I know
everything.  Alice, your shoelace is untied.  Janice, get the washing
in, there is rain coming.  More news of members' most intimate secrets
and chores left undone in an hour.

Happy to have been of service.

peter