Now, consider someone asserting
“I know that I’m mad as a hatter”. Call
it the Mad Hatter sentence, and denote it with MH.
Is MH true or false?
Suppose MH is true. So it’s
true that the person uttering it knows that they’re mad as a hatter. But by
knowing that they are mad as a hatter they’re aware of the illness they purport
to be suffering from, i.e. being mad as a hatter and so by definition fail to
satisfy the conditions for being mad as a hatter. Hence MH is false, it seems.
But if they are not mad as a
hatter, and assert a knowledge of being such, the person
asserting MH is oblivious of that ignorance (them in fact not being mad as a hatter), a delusion of sorts, and hence
qualifies them for being mad as a hatter, thus rendering MH true - but we know where that leads.
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