I said earlier, I define an explanation to be a method of obtaining expectations from given known information. It is first and foremost "a method"... What the explainer is providing is information and there is no way to know (a-priori) that it is or is not an explanation or whether the explainer is or is not aware of inconsistencies in his communications. The explainee has no option except to work with the information he is given. His object is to explain that information. If his best explanation of that information is that the source is not trustworthy (the explainer is lying) than certainly that is an explanation.

Let's take it from the God's eye perspective for a moment. God has created two duplicate universes. In universe A, there is never a lie in any explanation given to the explainee. In universe B, the universe is exactly the same except that there is a clever demon that God has put in this universe that deludes an explainer to always lie to his explainee. The explainer doesn't have to be a person, it could be a phenomena, observation, etc.

Question 13: Assuming the universes are duplicate in every way except for the added demon in universe B, does it matter to your model that the explainee can never obtain the truth? That is, the explainee will always be lied to no matter what the expectation happens to be. In other words, the explainee will always be duped by the lie despite their distrust in the explainer.

• Why should that have any bearing on the problem? - doctordick - December 17, 2004 - 23:11 UTC