From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu May 30 2002 - 12:04:59 MDT
Louis writes
> Lee:
> > The Godelian sentence G
> > to which I referred is true, but cannot be proved
>
> I am quitting this thread.
Sorry about that. The discussion with you did teach
me one important thing: the phrase "logical fallacy"
is taken by most people to mean something much more
general than my narrow mathematical interpretation.
> I showed you that you cannot assign a truth value to
> your sentence. You AGREED that I was correct.
Oh, I thought that I was saying that from the outset :-)
The Sentence only claims that *if* you could, and that
boolean value happened to be TRUE, then God would exist.
Yes---you can't assign such a truth value. But nonetheless
from within the world of logic itself, the sentence seems
true [gads! The Sentence is getting me again! woe!]
> Yet, in the very next post, you are saying the exact
> same thing.
Well, my original claim was that you can't show---
using logic alone---that there is anything wrong with
the proof that God exists provided by The Sentence:
"if this sentence is true, then God exists". The
proof seems extraordinary, and rather airtight, though
it does employ the very powerful and dangerous technique
of self-reference. I mean, if The Sentence were true,
then God would exist, right? :-)
The most interesting point (for me) has now moved on to
whether or how much logic, almost frighteningly, can
reach out of its metaphysical platonic universe to
affect, control, and constrain our material world.
As Damien put it,
> Lee's point, or so I assumed, was the simple and useful
> reminder that logic alone has no power over ontology
which transforms my milder claim into a far more
interesting one---one that I'm starting to doubt,
at least under the most provocative interpretation.
Lee
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