Who shot JFK?

[ciphergoth]

For the purposes of this post, I don't really care who shot JFK; it's just a convenient mystery with which I can ask a question about truth.

Alice believes that Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. She believes that Lee Harvey Oswald was in the Texas Book Depository, aimed a loaded rifle and shot JFK, at which point his head visibly exploded as seen in the Zapruder video.

Bert disagrees; he doesn't know for sure who shot JFK, but the one thing he's sure of is that Lee Harvey Oswald was not pointing a loaded rifle out of the window of the Texas Book Depository at the President at the fateful moment.

What do I believe? As I say, I neither know nor care, but there's one thing I know for sure: one of Alice or Bert is wrong. In sufficiently weird conditions both of them might be wrong, but one of them is wrong for sure. We may never know which of them is wrong, but at least one of them is definitely wrong.

Does anyone disagree with this?

Comments

[keirf.livejournal.com]

Yes, I disagree.

[djm4]

Wow! Between reading this and replying, a 'not' has appeared at the crucial point in the third paragraph. If the post's going to keep playing tricks like that then I've no idea whether or not I disagree with it. ;-)

[palmer1984.livejournal.com]

Lee Harvey Oswald was not pointing a loaded rifle out of the window of the Texas Book Depository at the President at the fateful moment.

Was there another way he could have shot JFK, for example, from a balcony?Alice does not say that he had to be pointing a rifle out the window.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

At least one of them is definitely wrong in at least one aspect of their accounts. Whether Alice or Bert think that aspect is important or salient isn't stated and can't be derived from the information given.

So, for instance, Chris believes that Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK, but that Lee Harvey Oswald was not in the Texas Book Depository but was standing on the grassy knoll, and fired a shotgun at the President, not a rifle. If Chris is right, Alice is wrong about Oswald's location, but not about who shot JFK, and Bert is right about Oswald's location but not to be uncertain about the shooter's identity.

(And I don't think you need particularly weird conditions for both Alice and Bert to be both wrong in at least some aspects - Oswald in the Depository but someone else firing the killing shot(s) is the basis of many (?most) conspiracy theories on the subject and isn't prima facie a weird condition.)

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

Assuming that what Alice believes is the direct opposite of what Bob belives and there's no wriggle room in your wording (like Oswald used a bit of string to pull the trigger, or was on the roof, or, or) then it's hard to see how anyone could disagree.

With things that really happen in the real human scale world it is impossible for both A and NotA to be true. Is that what you mean?

[djm4]

Depends how metaphysical we're being, and how one thinks quantum physics behaves on a macroscopic scale. But in normal conversation, no, I don't disagree about that.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Difficult for me to say for certain, because I'm not sure about the details of what either Bert or Alice believe. For example, does either of them believe JFK was or could have been shot by more than one person, whether or not the shots were fateful or were intended to be? Does "that fateful moment" refer to any bullet hitting JFK or to a/the fatal bullet? Does Bert believe that LHO was *ever* in the book depository holding a rifle?

And so on.

This example gives the impression of being an analogy for something else. If so, perhaps I personally might find it easier to deal directly with the source material.

[karen2205]

Does anyone disagree with this?

Yes. They could both be some degree of right.

If Alice *believes* all that she says, rather than *knows* because she's witnessed it first hand, then she's 'right' in the sense of her beliefs probably being reasonable until proven otherwise.

If Bert is *sure* of one thing, he might be right about that thing while being wrong/not having knowledge about any of the rest of it.

And that's just the semantics - people's subjective experiences of an event can lead to them recounting an experience accurately but wholly differently from one another without any of them being 'wrong'. Both could be partially right - a head might have exploded, but how would a non-trained person know where the bullet (if it was a bullet) had come from to cause the explosion? Someone might have been standing pointing a loaded rifle from the Texas Book Depository, but how would someone standing at street level identify such a person accurately?

[battlekitty.livejournal.com]

I agree, however your sufficiently weird condition could be that Lee Harvey Oswald was in the book depository pointing a loaded gun out of the window but did not fire. (I suspect that is something that could be proven, though...)

In the meantime, my mind is just transfixed with the two male models on the grassy knoll... Zoolander has a lot to answer for...

[werenerd.livejournal.com]

>> Does anyone disagree with this?

Yes. We could argue that point, and it would be just about as interesting as a discussion about the existance of God (although, I'm not sure which of us is cast in the role of the believer).

There is no truth, outside of our perception of the truth.

(or, if you prefer, without the presence of an omnipotent observer, the existence of a truth outside of our perception is irrelevant)

Both Alice and Bert’s positions are correct until such a time that one of them changes their opinion. Or until God comes down and adjudicates the question.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

I'm probably about 85% certain that I agree, although that probability would change, although I'm not sure in which direction, if I understood quantum physics better (for which read at all, really)

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

The question all this discussion has missed is: Where is Bob, and what has Bert done to him?

[bathtubgin.livejournal.com]

My tenpenneth, for what it's worth. From reading the comments above, I get the feeling that most people are coming at this from a different angle to me, but you've taken me right back to the epistemology questions that I studied in A103.


In brief: Yes. At least one of them is wrong, but that does not necessarily mean that at least one of them is right.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

It depends on whether each of those clauses in their belief is independent of the others. If Alice states (LHO_location + rifle_aimed_by_him + JFK_went_bang), and the three points are deemed by her to be parts of one whole position, as soon as Bert (Bob's day off?) states (LHO_location_elsewhere) *or* states (rifle_aimed_elsewhere), one of their positions doesn't stack up.

How this translates from formal logic into the muzzy-headed ways people deal with the real world and the vague English language is a whole nother question - is the angle of the rifle sticking point, or the motive, or the exact position of LHO?

So I agree that one of them is definitely wrong in some respect, but how far that gets us with (for example) solving the murder, is a different question.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Having a pomo moment, Paul?

[naath.livejournal.com]

I think in the limited case of a fact that could in principle be externally verified (the location of LHO at the crucial moment, what make/model of gun(s) was/were fired from where, at what time, by who - are all things not generally given to quantum fluctuations or existential confusion) had we carefully recorded the scene (we do not actually have these facts of course, and besides it was JFK who shot JFK as any Red Dwarf fan should know) - in this limited case I think we can say that one, or both, of Bert and Alice are incorrect in at least one point. Of course it may turn out that they are both correct on what they each consider to be the important point (it was LHO, but from someplace else - as others have said).

[jhg.livejournal.com]

No, you are quite correct.

However, for absolute clarity and precision, I would reword the paragraphs so the mutually exclusive and exhaustive premises do the work for which they are intended.

[adjectivegail]

Geunine question: in our normal routine and usually mundane daily lives, here and now, does it matter?

[henry_the_cow]

To be a smart alec: it depends on whether you are using classical logic or constructivist logic, i.e. on whether you believe the law of the excluded middle. This is the axiom that says "P or Not(P)" is true. It really is an axiom; it can't be deduced from the other axioms of first-order predicate logic.

But for practical purposes, yes, I believe one of them must be mistaken about the facts (although not necessarily their conclusions, nor about their reasons for believing as they do given the evidence available to them).