X-Message-Number: 10257
Subject: the barber paradox redux
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 11:38:00 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <>

> From: 
> 
> By the way, Quine said that the Barber statement proves the barber cannot
> exist.

You really have lost it.

THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE BARBER PARADOX. THIS IS NOT A
"DISCOVERY"!

The whole reason that Russell came up with the Barber Paradox was to
demonstrate that the assumed "universal set" could not exist. The
reason this made the foundations of mathematics tremble is because the 
entire program to derive all of math from set theory was because all
the theory up to that point assumed a universal set (and many other
sets that prove to be non-constructable) were consistant with set
theory. Russell showed they weren't. No one had ever bothered to check 
if they existed before, and so Russell's obvious-in-hindsight stroke
of genius shook everyone up.

That you so totally missed the point of the entire exercise leads me
to believe that you've totally missed the point of Godel's string as well.

Perry

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