"The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits." G.K. Chesterton

Saturday, October 24, 2009

"Masters of Logic" puzzle

Three Masters of Logic wanted to find out who was the wisest amongst them. So they turned to their Grand Master, asking to resolve their dispute. “Easy,” the old sage said. "I will blindfold you and paint either red, or blue dot on each man’s forehead. When I take your blindfolds off, if you see at least one red dot, raise your hand. The one, who guesses the color of the dot on his forehead first, wins." And so it was said, and so it was done. The Grand Master blindfolded the three contestants and painted red dots on every one. When he took their blindfolds off, all three men raised their hands as the rules required, and sat in silence pondering. Finally, one of them said: "I have a red dot on my forehead."
How did he guess?

SOLUTION IN "COMMENTS"

Fatalism Necessarily fails if we have a peek into the content of fate

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT (do so after reading what's below)
The philosopher Richard Taylor in his essay "Fate" introduces the possibility of some character, Osmo to have access to his Fatalistic bibliography. Assuming Fatalism is true (in the sense of a pre-existing body of truth, about past present and future), is it consistent to permit an arbitrary degree of epistemological insight into "facts" aobout one's life? A related question would be whether one can falsify the content of this Fatalistic prophecy about oneself?

I wrote an essay on this topic recently and used some plausibility arguments and also a purely logical one. The purely logical proof of the incompatibility of our insight into the content of Osmo type book and the content actually obtaining is above. In particular the proof demonstrates the limits of what the book can contain if one was allowed a peek.