Are you sure McGillicuddy doesn't know it is raining? I don't think that is clear. — Wheatley
As G.E. Moore put it, “Why is it absurd for me to say something true about myself?” — Wheatley
I think there's a slight of hand here: First it asks you why the sentence is absurd, then it asks you why something that you do is absurd.Thus your friend McGillicuddy, who knows your situation, can say truly of you, “It’s raining, but MacIntosh doesn’t believe it is.” But if you, MacIntosh, were to say exactly the same thing to McGillicuddy—“It’s raining, but I don’t believe it is”—your friend would rightly think you’d lost your mind. Why, then, is the second sentence absurd? As G.E. Moore put it, “Why is it absurd for me to say something true about myself?” — Wheatley
That's where science comes in. Scientists don't have much patients for philosophical wordplay, they rather have you do an experiment. — Wheatley
It's true that MacIntosh doesn't believe it's raining, but that's because they don't know it's raining. So there's no reason for MacIntosh to make such a silly statement. — Marchesk
“It’s raining, but I don’t believe it is”—your friend would rightly think you’d lost your mind. Why, then, is the second sentence absurd? As G.E. Moore put it, “Why is it absurd for me to say something true about myself?” — Wheatley
But if you, MacIntosh, were to say exactly the same thing to McGillicuddy—“It’s raining, but I don’t believe it is”—your friend would rightly think you’d lost your mind. — Wheatley
Read carefully.Nowhere in the anecdote does it say MacIntosh knows that it's raining. — ZzzoneiroCosm
makes clear that Macintosh doesn’t know. — Wheatley
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