🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1185@kepler1.rentec.com> 
andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes:

>In article <1992Aug18.131259.14667@wisipc.weizmann.ac.il>
> jhsegal@wiscon.weizmann.ac.il (Livy) writes:

L
>>Remember:The man he is asking could be a liar or a honest man.HE (the
>>parchutist) doesn't know it.

AM:
>Usually, you encourage the parachutist to ask "What name would a liar give to
>the other city?". However, I am not convinced that this "works". It makes some
>assumptions about lying which are not clear. For example, it assumes (which is
>reasonable) that the honest people have noticed the "liars" and have come to
>some understanding of what is involved. However, what lying means to the liars
>is difficult to say, especially since they can't agree on it. Since the truthful
>citizens know this as well, they give you an answer which a liar would give you,
>but this is no use unless the liar's answer is well defined.
>
>Right?

I think that your worries could be summarized in an observation that the
above approach will not work in any first-order extensional (i.e. purely
truth-functional) language, regardless of any additional assumptions about
the knowledge of the liars and the truth-tellers concerning each other's
behavior.  At least so it would seem at first blush, unless we can
eliminate the strong conditional by replacing it with some sort of
dispositional idiom.  Would anyone care to try?

>Later,
>Andrew Mullhaupt

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."

P.S. The Phallogocentric Cabal has concluded its activities for this
summer.  The next meeting will occur during the week of September 18th,
with Tal Kubo speaking on infinite combinatorics.  T-shirts, syllabi, and
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