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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4151