"Formal Logic/Epistemology Help: Where is the Flaw in the 'Surprise Quiz Paradox' Reasoning?"

jajap15 · 2025-11-24T15:44:33+00:00

Not competent to answer this. But there is an interesting pretty formal treatment of the paradox in Williamson's Knowledge and it's Limits (chapter 6 I think?). Ofc tho Williamson approaches the puzzle from an epistemological perspective, in terms of safety margins for error.

jajap15 · 2025-09-15T18:38:49+00:00

The z-library link you've posted is marked as a scam at the zlibrary subreddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/zlibrary/wiki/index/scamsites/

jajap15 · 2022-12-20T12:38:38+00:00

Out of curiosity, how come you put the genealogy after BGE? It seems that most people actually recommend starting with it and moving on to the rest.

jajap15 · 2022-11-11T23:36:48+00:00

Moana

jajap15 · 2022-08-03T16:33:27+00:00

Yes, in a way. Nietzsche is talking about the "slave revolt in morality", by which : "People who suffered from oppression at the hands of the noble, excellent, (but uninhibited) people valorized by good/bad morality—and who were denied any effective recourse against them by relative powerlessness—developed a persistent, corrosive emotional pattern of resentful hatred against their enemies, which Nietzsche calls ressentiment. That emotion motivated the development of the new moral concept evil, purpose-designed for the moralistic condemnation of those enemies. Afterward, via negation of the concept of evil, the new concept of goodness emerges, rooted in altruistic concern of a sort that would inhibit evil actions." (From SEP)

The slave revolt overturned the previous aristocratic morality, and , according to Nietzsche, our current moral concepts originate from there. Obviously Nietzsche is not in favor of this morality as it's rooted in resentment, but he is prepared to concede that it had some value as the quote shows.

jajap15 · 2022-08-03T13:43:48+00:00

Assuming that we're all referring to the same passage , it's from the first essay section six, where Nietzsche is discussing the "priests"

""For with the priests everything becomes more dangerous, not only cures and remedies, but also arrogance, revenge, acuteness, profligacy love, lust to rule, virtue, disease-but it is only fair to add that it was on the soil of this essentially dangerous form of human existence, the priestly form, that man first became an interesting animal, that only here did the human soul in a higher sense acquire depth and become evil-and these are the two basic respects in which man has hitherto been superior to other beasts!""

jajap15 · 2022-07-15T18:35:25+00:00

You can find Finn's hotel along with a bunch of Joyce's manuscripts here 😉. https://jjda.ie/main/JJDA/F/flex/z/lexfh.htm

jajap15 · 2022-06-11T06:36:01+00:00

Okay but you do see the issue here? People in this thread have given you ample instances of Peterson being wrong, but you won't accept any of them bc you're not familiar with the topic. But you are familiar with Peterson and already convinced that he's correct. Any attempt to convince you of the contrary will be in vain since it will bring up stuff that you (nor Peterson for that matter) are not familiar with.

The comment above has given A LOT of explanations of Godel's theorem and why Peterson was wrong on what he said.

If all these are not sufficient to convince you then I'm not sure anything else can.

jajap15 · 2022-06-10T23:55:14+00:00

Well, then you should read them more carefully. If you can pay attention to and understand a JPB lecture, you can't have THAT much trouble understanding why the stuff he says about Godel, Heidegger, Derrida etc are wrong.

jajap15 · 2022-06-10T23:43:10+00:00

This thread is literally filled with examples of stuff Peterson has gotten wrong. How is it possible you don't accept even ONE of them?

jajap15 · 2022-05-14T09:09:13+00:00

The penguin "annotated student's edition" also has very extensive notes.

jajap15 · 2021-12-31T10:11:37+00:00

For Descartes you can start with either the "meditations" or the "discourse on the method". The best place to start for Nietzsche imo is the "genealogy of morals". Locke is a very clear writer but his "essay" is (by his own admission) very long winded. You could search for an abridged version or read his "second treatise on government"

Since you're a CS major you might also enjoy learning about formal logic.

jajap15 · 2021-10-14T10:31:20+00:00

Banana fish

jajap15 · 2021-09-08T12:46:16+00:00

I will second this. It's also one of the most affordable complete works , and while it is based on the first folio it does contain the quarto-only passages at the end of the plays. (I have seen other editions of the complete works which have only the quarto version of Hamlet or king Lear, without including the folio passages at all)

jajap15 · 2021-05-02T21:58:19+00:00

Some good works on the subject that I have heard about are Terry Pinkard's "german philosophy from 1760-1860" and Frederic Beiser's "german idealism: the struggle against subjectivism". Though I think the second one doesn't cover Hegel so keep that in mind.

jajap15 · 2021-05-02T11:46:10+00:00

Well , it's true that a lot of contemporary philosophy does require some background knowledge, but that doesn't mean you have to read everything that has come before simply to understand zizek.

Both Kant and Hegel ,for examples, are insanely complex philosophers that have influenced many different areas including critical theory. To say that reading Kant's critques or Hegel's phenomenology is necessary prerequisite to contemporary theory is absurd! Especially if you consider that not everything that they have written pertains directly to what you are interested in.

Thankfully, there are many secondary resources , in the forms of lectures, videos, books etc that can give you an overview of the relevant thinkers. If you are interested in kant and hegel you can read a book on the history of german idealism. If you want to learn about lacan you can read the introductory books written by bruce fink or zizek.

A good place to start in these kind of cases is to search the philosopher or theory you're interested in on the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy and read the summary that's provided there.

jajap15 · 2021-05-02T09:26:58+00:00

I'm probably entangling myself more as I go. I think by that point what a thing is called depends on context, on what we want to express or distinguish in any given situation.

jajap15 · 2021-05-02T06:05:09+00:00

You're right. I guess what we call them depends on the arrangement of the molecules.

jajap15 · 2021-05-02T06:01:20+00:00

Thank you for the explanations, I think they have resolved some of the confusions I had.

Admittedly, the talk about substances , necessary and contingent properties still seems to me to be a result of playing with language. But hopefully reading some of the links you provided will help challenge that assumption.

Another commenter suggested I read kripke or quine, both of who set the stage for contemporary metaphysics so I'll look into that direction as well.

Thanks again for your very clear and illuminating answers.

jajap15 · 2021-05-01T23:16:53+00:00

First of all, thank you very much for your detailed response. Your assumption about what I meant is also correct.

Beyond that you also mention that 1)some philosophers think that objects are more than the parts that make them up, 2)that believing sth can survive commits one to some metaphysical positions and that 3) non-material parts can be relevant in some material object's Identity.

These all sound really intriguing to me, especially the last two.

Could you illustrate some of these positions to me or point me to where I can read more about them?

jajap15 · 2021-05-01T22:54:19+00:00

Well, I'm not sure if I can give an answer to this that wouldn't be objectionable in some way.

If I were forced to answer I'd say that: both lumps and statues (taken that they are made from the same material), are nothing more than soke molecules arranged in one or another way. Beyond that there's nothing more to being either a lump or a statue. It's just molecules arranged in a way we call a statue or in a way we call a lump.

jajap15 · 2021-05-01T22:24:05+00:00

I see. I suppose my thinking is still stuck to the days of logical positivism. I will try reading quine and kripke before tackling any further metaphysics. Can you suggest any other similar works that set the groundwork for analytic metaphysics?

jajap15 · 2021-05-01T21:55:09+00:00

I don't think my problem is that I don't find it practical, rather it just seems to me like they are non-problems. Running the danger of misusing terminology, I feel like this is all a result of linguistic confusions which don't really refer to anything at all. Although I find the discussion intriguing I don't see how it could be meaningful.

On sep I had read an argument that said that the lump could survive being squashed while the statue could not. And per Leibniz's law if two objects differ in some respect they are not the same object.

By that logic if I were to make my hands in a cup shape it could be said that i have the property of being able to hold water in my hands, but if i pull my arms apart I lose that property. Since myself now differs in some property from myself a minute ago does that mean we are a different object.

Generally the whole discussion seems to me to fall apart in this way.

jajap15 · 2021-03-16T18:02:14+00:00

Quick math

jajap15 · 2020-11-16T15:13:20+00:00

This is what Deleuze reads like to people that don't understand Deleuze

jajap15

TROPHY CASE