8.11.2007

Painted Mule


Eye makeup? on a mule? Yeah, I dunno either.

Upon further reflection, where do you get Mule Paint? A hobby shop for mule enthusiasts? A side note: I just googled 'painted mule' and discovered there IS a community of mule enthusiasts. Who knew? They even have an ads section, called the "Cl-ASS-ified". I'm more of a sheep person myself.

Most of the results for "painted mule" discussed a philosophy and logic problem that goes like this:
Suppose Fred is at the zoo and claims to know that the animal in front of him is a zebra. Of course he knows that being a zebra entails not being a painted mule. We ask, then, if he knows that the animal is not a painted mule. He replies, no, because he has done nothing to rule out the painted-mule hypothesis. But, we remind him, that the animal is not a painted mule is trivially entailed by its being a zebra. Of course, he says. Well, then, if he does know that the animal is a zebra how could he fail to know that it is not a painted mule, when the entailment is vividly present to his attention?? Surely he could not help performing the inference.
but this is, of course, describing a mule painted like a zebra, and not one with eye makeup on.

1 comment:

Mark said...

Why would someone put any makeup on a mule?

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