The Last Answer by Isaac Asimov Part 1

[breakfastisgo]

Nice exploration of the philosophy of infinity, knowledge, existence...

[killermiracle]

I love this story.

[HaleyMary]

Cool story. I found the part of existing eternally, but not being able to remember coming into existence interesting. It makes me wonder what that would be like. I mean, in life people experience that sort of when they become aware of living for the first time whether that be three or four or so, but existing eternally is a whole other thing entirely. I'll have to read some of Asimov's stories. Thanks for sharing this. :)

[EpistemicDuty]

Glad you liked it. I have other stories in mind from other authors that I'm considering reading that are conceptually interesting

[alexandre22cami]

nice job.. tnx isaac

[nastslut22]

"Even if I knew everything I could not know that I know everything"

That makes no sense to me XD

[EpistemicDuty]

Suppose you are in a room, and you are able to identify every object in the room. Now suppose that it is possible that there can be an object in the room with a cloaking device on it, but it just so happens no such object is in the room. Now if you accept the possibility there is such an object, you don't know that there is no such object, therefore although you know every object in the room you don't know that you know every object in the room.

[nastslut22]

Umm, How can you know everything if you don't even know about knowing everything?

If you know "everything" it seems you should also know that you know everything by default.

That's what seems to make most sense to me anyway...

[EpistemicDuty]

I see your point. It depends on how you define "thing". You can define "thing" as an entity, event, relationship or concept, and you can define "thing" as a set of entities, events, relationships or concepts. If you define "thing" in the first sense, then it would make sense to say that you can know everything without knowing that you know everything since you don't know that what you know is the set of all things known.

[EpistemicDuty]

If you define "thing" in the second sense then it would be true by definition to say that if you know everything then you know that you know everything. But what I think the voice was getting at was that even if he knew the set of all things that can possibly be known, he could never know that the set of all things he knows is in fact the set of all things that can possibly be known.

[nastslut22]

It's not possible to know all of the possibilities that are possible??

^_^ I know it is!

[nastslut22]

^_^ Hi EpistemicDuty, I know everything that is possible to know because I know everything. Btw, I'm beyond logic.

Sincerely,

Omniscient Being,

God

[EpistemicDuty]

There is an interesting debate on this topic between Alvin Plantinga (Christian Philosopher) and Patrick Grim that I will be linking in the description box.

[nastslut22]

Hmm interesting. I shall look into this.

[Rayndeon]

What if approach it like this? Let us say there is some *propositionally* omniscient being O. Now, O has knowledge of *all* true propositions. Hence, O has knowledge of P, wherein P consists of all true propositions. Here's the kicker though, the proposition "O knows that P" is *not* a member of P. It's a relation *onto* P; therefore, there is no omniscient being, since it would have it know that it knows.

[Rayndeon]

You might enjoy this discussion here:

iidb(DOT)org/vbb/showthread(DO­T)php?t=32814

[EpistemicDuty]

thanks, I'll check it out