X-Message-Number: 4151
From: Eli Brandt <>
Subject: Re: Godel
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 02:34:01 -0700 (PDT)

> From: 
> Eli Brandt (#4139) had some good comments, but did not seem to address the
> portion of my remarks that, following Smullyan, DID use logic language (or
> something that looked like it) and still came out gibberish.

I no longer have a copy of the message, but my recollection is that
the use of logical notation was applied to an English-language
understanding of the statement, rather than working directly from
Godel's proof.

You concern about the meaninglessness of statements like "this
sentence is false" is quite justified, IMHO.  This Godel statement is
quite different.  It does not explicitly refer to itself.  It could in
principle be disproved by finding a counterexample (a pair of numbers
with certain properties I won't explain).  I strongly suggest that you
read the proof, in its original form, before calling it meaningless,
because I think your criticisms relate to artifacts of its translation
into English.  Perhaps we could discuss this in more detail in e-mail.

-- 
   Eli   


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