Bruno Marchal wrote:
Let us suppose the native is knave. Then what he said was false. But he said "if I am a knight then >Santa Claus exists". That proposition can only be false in the case he is a knight and Santa Claus >does not exists.
This only works if you assume his "if-then" statement was shorthand for the "logical conditional", ->, in formal logic (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_conditional )...if you interpret it some other way, like that it was shorthand for a modal logic idea like "in every possible world where it is true that I am a knight, it is true that Santa Claus exists", I don't think it can only be false if he is a knight. For example, there might be a possible world where he is a knight and Santa Claus does *not* exist, in which case the statement "in every possible world where it is true that I am a knight, it is true that Santa Claus exists" is false.
I think this is why the problem is confusing--for me, possible-world statements more accurately capture the meaning of "if-then" statements in ordinary language than the logical conditional.
Jesse
