"...and, by the dog, gentlemen of the jury---for I must tell you the truth..." --Apology, 21e

Monday, November 20, 2006

Lesson for the day:

If there are some things no one will ever actually know, then there are some things that no one could possibly know.

The Proof:

Let P be one of the truths that no one will ever actually know. Then consider the claim 'P is true and no one knows it' which follows from how we characterized P. Call this claim Q. Q is clearly true given what we said P is, yet Q cannot possibly be known. To know Q, you would need both know that P and know that no one knows P. But if you know P, then you are a counterexample to the claim that no one knows P. And, thus, if you know P, then Q is false. So given that Q is true (i.e., P is a claim that no one will ever actually know), it follows that there is a true claim that no one could possibly know. And since there surely are truths no one will ever bother to know (e.g., the number of grains of sand on some beach yesterday at 3 pm), it follows that some things cannot possibly be known.

I still don't know who Bucky is.

2 comments:

Bucky said...

some people cannot possibly be known

J said...

logic makes the world go round.
or at least makes life worth living.