On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 6:15 AM Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 17 Dec 2018, at 08:50, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> What I am curious to know is how how many of these statements you agree >> with: >> >> "2+2 = 4" was true: >> 1. Before I was born >> 2. Before humans formalized axioms and found a proof of it >> 3. Before there were humans >> 4. Before there was any conscious life in this universe >> 5. As soon as there were 4 physical things to count >> 6. Before the big bang / before there were 4 physical things >> > > "2+2=4" is a tautology, true because of the meanings of the terms > involved. So its truth is not independent of the formulation of the > question and the definition of the terms involved. > > > What about ExEyEz (x^3 + y^3 +z^3 = 33) ? > What about it? Not all syntactically correct formulae are either true or false; some are undecidable. Unless and until you find some x,y,z that satisfy this relationship, the statement is neither true nor false. Unperformed experiments have no results! Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
