On 12 Sep 2013, at 17:47, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Which reasoning is clearly false?
Here's what I'm thinking:
1) The conclusion "I won't be surprised to be hanged Friday if I am
not hanged by Thursday" creates another proposition to be surprised
about. By leaving the condition of 'surprise' open ended, it could
include being surprised that the judge lied, or any number of other
soft contingencies that could render an 'unexpected' outcome. The
condition of expectation isn't an objective phenomenon, it is a
subjective inference. Objectively, there is no surprise as objects
don't anticipate anything.
2) If we want to close in tightly on the quantitative logic of
whether deducibility can be deduced - given five coin flips and a
certainty that one will be heads, each successive tails coin flip
increases the odds that one the remaining flips will be heads. The
fifth coin will either be 100% likely to be heads, or will prove
that the certainty assumed was 100% wrong.
I think the paradox hinges on 1) the false inference of objectivity
in the use of the word surprise and 2) the false assertion of
omniscience by the judge. It's like an Escher drawing. In real life,
surprise cannot be predicted with certainty and the quality of
unexpectedness it is not an objective thing, just as expectation is
not an objective thing.
Or not?
That's not to bad. In fact to get the paradox you need to assume that
the teacher (for the unexpected exam) is rational, but it can't be.
Bruno
Craig
On Thursday, September 12, 2013 5:33:24 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote:
Time for some philosophy then :)
Here's a paradox that's making me lose sleep:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox
Probably many of you already know about it.
What mostly bothers me is the epistemological crisis that this
introduces. I cannot find a problem with the reasoning, but it's
clearly false. So I know that I don't know why this reasoning is
false. Now, how can I know if there are other types of reasoning that
I don't even know that I don't know that they are correct?
Cheers,
Telmo.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
