X-Message-Number: 4116
From: 
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 13:18:17 -0500
Subject: SCI. CRYONICS The "Liar"

Marvin Minsky, in an excerpt posted here (#4108) mentioned the "paradoxes" of
self reference and seemed to take these seriously. They should not be taken
seriously--they are mere pseudo-problems created by misuse of language.

Admittedly, they ARE still taken seriously, and by a great many people
smarter than I am. Nevertheless, I deflated them as a child, and of course I
was not the first, as I later discovered. Among others, Aristotle dismissed
them for the same reason I did. In extreme brevity, let's look at two:

1. THE BARBER: We have all heard it: In a certain town, the barber shaves
everyone who doesn't shave himself; so who shaves the barber? Paradox? Of
course not--just an inadmissible premise; there cannot be any such town or
any such equivalent. GIGO.

2. "THIS SENTENCE IS FALSE." This is perhaps the purest form of the Liar
"paradox." Supposedly the sentence as a whole can be neither true nor false,
although Aristotelian logic demands that it be one or the other--IF IT IS A
"PROPOSITION." But obviously, the sentence is NOT a proposition; it is not
meaningful, since there is no root referent. It is just a string of words
with the illusion of meaning....I suspect very strongly that the
"incompleteness" theorems have the same meaninglessness. 

Robert Ettinger


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