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From: mark@uf-csg.UUCP (mark fishman [fac])
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.religion
Subject: Re: Logical paradoxes in the notion of omnipotence?
Message-ID: <209@uf-csg.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Oct-84 22:41:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: uf-csg.209
Posted: Wed Oct 10 22:41:44 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Oct-84 04:05:25 EDT
References: <213@laidbak.UUCP> <1804@ucbvax.ARPA>, <192@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Organization: Univ of Fla, Computer and Information Science
Lines: 26

<>
     Seems curious that no one on the SIG's ever been exposed to the most
primitive rudiments of mathematical 
logical -- which is to day, specifically, type theory.  It's an altogether
trivial, primitive and not very esoteric observation that the question, "Can an
all-powerful being create a rock HE/SHE/IT can't lift" is semantically
ill-formed in the worst sense, and demonstrates only the cognitive deficiencies
of the poser.  Look:  The modal form "able to" can apply only to sentences that
don't include negations of itself.  Russell recognized this umpteen years ago
in the Principia.  You'd think that somebody else might have heard of this only
seminal result in the history of twentieth-sentury logic.  But then again,
maybe not in a user population capable of taking seriously questions of
magicness and fanciful superstition, in the first place.
     I really believe that anybody is entitled to nurture any exotic delusions
he or she likes, provided they don't lead to his or her acting to crush and
maim other people (religion too often conduces to this), but why pretend
rationality is upward compatible with the silly, atmospheric fuzziness?

....innocuously yours..

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