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Article 6111 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: santas@inf.ethz.ch (Philip Santas)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.folklore.college,comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.meta,sci.philosophy.tech,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.logic
Subject: Re: why question
Message-ID: <1992Jun5.184210.26650@neptune.inf.ethz.ch>
Date: 5 Jun 92 18:42:10 GMT
References: <1992Jun3.194126.2521@cheshire.oxy.edu> <1992Jun5.073942.5184@fulcrum.oz.au>
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In article <1992Jun5.073942.5184@fulcrum.oz.au> geoff@fulcrum.oz.au (Geoff Halprin) writes:
>In <1992Jun3.194126.2521@cheshire.oxy.edu> panero@cheshire.oxy.edu (Jan Panero) writes:
>
>>A professor gives a philosophy final exam on which the only question is "Why?"
>>all the students in the class except one spend the full three hour period
>>furiously trying to answer such a broad question.  The one other student in the class left within 5 minutes.  His answer was simply "Why not?".  He is the only
>>student in the class to receive an "A".
>
>I remember a similar story from a few years back, where the question on the
>paper was "Answer this question."
>The guy who got top marks just answered "Question this answer."

The diagnosis for such recursive cases is "Pathological self reference",
and proves the well known theorem: a stupid answer is the only possible for
a stupid question (the reverse is not always true).

Philip Santas

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