TheBanyanTree: RE: linguistic paradox (of omniscience) resolved

gp8q18 gp8q18 gp8q18 at hotmail.com
Thu Dec 18 09:08:38 PST 2003


whoa!  what am i missing here?

someone posted earlier,
"Either this whole sentence is
   false or the Earth is flat.    ........
   This sentence is either true or false.  If it is false then, by its own
   statement, the Earth must be flat.  ....    "

how does that follow (i.e., if it's false, then by its own statement  the 
earth must be flat - -  i'm challenging the "by its own statement" part) ?

the entire sentence
"either this whole sentence is false, or the earth is flat"
is a disjunctive proposition.

construct a truth table for a disjunctive proposition:  the ENTIRE 
PROPOSITION is false ONLY if *-both-* components are also false.

That, in turn, means the the component
  "this whole sentence is false"   is  false
AS WELL AS the component
   "the earth is flat"   is false.

If  "the earth is flat"  is FALSE, then i respectfully submit that we
have NOT proven by its own statement that the earth is flat !!

(what you have done, tho, is to reduce the proposition to that of a 
classical antinomy  - - where something is TRUE only if it's FALSE ,
i.e., if  the  "this whole sentence is false"  component is FALSE, then it 
must follow that  "this whole sentence is TRUE", which contravenes the very 
FIRST condition, that the entire sentence is false )


respectfully submitted,

rollingthunder6
graduate, college of conflict management,
University of South-East Asia

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