"Рэймонд Смаллиан. Две философские сценки (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

far more like the seeing of an apple than the apple itself.
MORTAL: If I can't see you, how do I know you exist?
GOD: Good question! How in fact do you know I exist?
MORTAL: Well, I am talking to you, am I not?
GOD: How do you know you are talking to me? Suppose you told
psychiatrist, "Yesterday I talked to God." What do you think he would say?
MORTAL: That might depend on the psychiatrist. Since most of them are
atheistic, I guess most would tell me I had simply been talking to myself.
GOD: And they would be right!
MORTAL: What? You mean you don't exist?
GOD: You have the strangest faculty of drawing false conclusions! Just
because you are talking to yourself, it follows that I don't exist?
MORTAL: Well, if I think I am talking to you, but I am really talking
to myself, in what sense do you exist?
GOD: Your question is based on two fallacies plus a confusion. The
question of whether or not you are now talking to me and the question of
whether or not I exist are totally separate. Even if you were not now
talking to me (which obviously you are), it still would not mean that I
don't exist.
MORTAL: Well, all right, of course! So instead of saying "if I am
talking to myself, then you don't exist," I should rather have said, "if I
am talking to myself, then I obviously am not talking to you."
GOD: A very different statement indeed, but still false.
MORTAL: Oh, come now, if I am only talking to myself, then how can I be
talking to you?
GOD: Your use of the word "only" is quite misleading! I can suggest
several logical possibilities under which your talking to yourself does not
imply that you are not talking to me.
MORTAL: Suggest just one!
GOD: Well, obviously one such possibility is that you and I are
identical.
MORTAL: Such a blasphemous thought--at least had I uttered it!
GOD: According to some religions, yes. According to others, it is the
plain, simple, immediately perceived truth.
MORTAL: So the only way out of my dilemma is to believe that you and I
are identical?
GOD: Not at all! This is only one way out. There are several others.
For example, it may be that you are part of me, in which case you may be
talking to that part of me which is you. Or I may be part of you, in which
case you may be talking to that part of you which is me. Or again, you and I
might partially overlap, in which case you may be talking to the
intersection and hence talking both to you and to me. The only way your
talking to yourself might seem to imply that you are not talking to me is if
you and I were totally disjoint--and even then, you could conceivably be
talking to both of us.
MORTAL: So you claim you do exist.
GOD: Not at all. Again you draw false conclusions! The question of my
existence has not even come up. All I have said is that from the fact that
you are talking to yourself one cannot possibly infer my nonexistence, let
alone the weaker fact that you are not talking to me.