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From: jbaxter@physics.adelaide.edu.au (Jon Baxter)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Minds, Machines and Godel.
Message-ID: <2285@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au>
Date: 23 Jan 91 01:40:07 GMT
Sender: news@ucs.adelaide.edu.au
Reply-To: jbaxter@adelphi.physics.adelaide.edu.au.oz.au (Jon Baxter)
Organization: Department of Physics, University of Adelaide, South Australia
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Imagine for the sake of argument that I am a Turing machine axiomatizable
by "TNT" a la Godel, Escher, Bach. I know (can even *prove*) that TNT is
consistent, so one might say that I am TNT looking back at itself and
proving my own consistency. But that is impossible, so what is going wrong?
The most likely explanation to me is that the "proof" I offer for TNT's
consistency is not a proof in the language of TNT. Or am I missing the
point?
--
Jon.                            "Life's too short for death."