Wednesday, September 29, 2004

   Here's a little Philosophy lesson.....

I'm just gonna keep posting if I stay up.... Ohhh, that'll be fun! OK, well, I went to religious ed tonight, and we got into conversation about honesty and lieing. Well, it was a coinicidence that I had read something on that in my philosophy book (I'm starting to obsess about philosophy.... 0.o) Anyway, the situation was this: There are two brothers. One always tells the truth and the other always lies. The truth-teller also believes that everything he knows in is true, and the liar believes everything he knows is false. So here was the first question. Is there a question that they both will answer correctly to? Yes. If you asked them both, "Two plus two equals four, correct?" this is how they would answer. The truth sayer, believing everything he knows is the truth, will be honest and say yes. The liar, believing everything he knows is false, will think no, it's not, but he's a liar, so he'll have to say 'yes' as well. Get it? The second question is this: Is there a way to determine which one is which? If so, in how many questions? Yes, and it'll only take one question. Here goes. Let's say you walk up to the liar and ask him, "are you the truth teller?", like the last question, he'll think yes, since everything is false to him. But, also like the last question, he'll have to lie. So he'll say no. That took me about an hour to really figure out, and it wasn't as clearlt explain as I spelled it out for you. Good luck.

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