I don’t mean to throw away all the wonderful complexity and intricacy of the argument, but it seems like they had it just about right when they added “is meaningless”.
The trick is just not to write “Everything on Board 33 is meaningless” on that same board. Honestly, that board is just a bad choice for this task.
Which is to say, we can see, from our vantage point outside the sentence, that the sentence is meaningless (in the sense of “can’t tell us anything”). That seems like it ought to be enough. Why try to inject our vantage point into this whirlpool of contradiction when we can just notice, remaining outside the whirlpool, that the question is meaningless, and move on anyway?
Because I could write “This sentence is not true.” So if it’s meaningless, it’s not true, so it’s true, which would make it false, which would make it true, etc.
Since that doesn’t help at all, you appear to be just advocating giving up.
Well, sort of. You might say I’m advocating acknowledging that it’s a paradox and considering that the end of it. Remember, I’m using the term meaningless (perhaps I should have said “useless”) to mean that it tells us nothing. Not in the sense that it makes no claims, but in the sense that it contains no information. It’s not clear to me that this kick starts the paradoxical loop like you’re implying.
I don’t mean to throw away all the wonderful complexity and intricacy of the argument, but it seems like they had it just about right when they added “is meaningless”.
The trick is just not to write “Everything on Board 33 is meaningless” on that same board. Honestly, that board is just a bad choice for this task.
Which is to say, we can see, from our vantage point outside the sentence, that the sentence is meaningless (in the sense of “can’t tell us anything”). That seems like it ought to be enough. Why try to inject our vantage point into this whirlpool of contradiction when we can just notice, remaining outside the whirlpool, that the question is meaningless, and move on anyway?
Because I could write “This sentence is not true.” So if it’s meaningless, it’s not true, so it’s true, which would make it false, which would make it true, etc.
Since that doesn’t help at all, you appear to be just advocating giving up.
Well, sort of. You might say I’m advocating acknowledging that it’s a paradox and considering that the end of it. Remember, I’m using the term meaningless (perhaps I should have said “useless”) to mean that it tells us nothing. Not in the sense that it makes no claims, but in the sense that it contains no information. It’s not clear to me that this kick starts the paradoxical loop like you’re implying.