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From: ma188saa@sdcc3.ucsd.EDU (Steve Bloch)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Uncertainty in life
Message-ID: <3977@sdcc3.ucsd.EDU>
Date: Sun, 24-May-87 21:11:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcc3.3977
Posted: Sun May 24 21:11:03 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 25-May-87 04:43:43 EDT
References: <6762@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: ma188saa@sdcc3.ucsd.edu.UUCP (Steve Bloch)
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 27
Keywords: Heisenberg certain

In article <6762@mimsy.UUCP> pjn@brillig.UUCP (P. J. Narayanan) writes:
> [Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, sorta]
>
>This suggests that you cannot know anything, repeat *ANYTHING*, for certain
>in this world. It seems to me that this inference is too strong a one
>philosophically, but really unavoidable from the equation. It also makes one 
>think sbout the various notions men have about knowing things for certain
>and the practice of taking oath and testifying in a court of law etc.

It suggests to me that you cannot know anything BY OBSERVATION for
certain.  Things that you make up and derive (i.e. most of
mathematics) can be known with the same degree of confidence that
you have in your own logical consistency.   Heisenberg alone doesn't
destroy human knowledge; it's the one-two punch of Heisenberg and
Goedel.

I just thought of something: a consistent logician cannot believe
in its own consistency IF IT HAS READ GOEDEL.  But a person with a
mental block against Goedel's proof is perfectly capable of
consistently believing in its own consistency.  Anyone for banning
all publication of Goedel's proof, or anything inspired by it, so
that humans can be consistent again?
Sorry; I'm falling into Russell-and-Whitehead, who avoided
self-referential statements by making them inadmissible in the same
way that I'm making Goedel inadmissible.  I suspect any procedure
capable of RECOGNIZING Goedelese reasoning would necessarily believe
it, and therefore not consistently believe in its own consistency.