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Agreement to agree: Difference between revisions
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This paradox curls back reflexively on itself, for if you agree to it, you must ''have'' agreed, but if you have ''not'' agreed it, you ''can’t'' have. | This paradox curls back reflexively on itself, for if you agree to it, you must ''have'' agreed, but if you have ''not'' agreed it, you ''can’t'' have. | ||
This sort of thing made Kurt | This sort of thing made Kurt Gödel very famous, but unpopular with Bertrand Russel and David Hilbert. It is an example of the necessary incompleteness of law as a logical system. | ||
An organising principle of the law is that, within identifiable limits prescribed by public law (such as crimes), a citizen is free to agree anything. But the set of things one is free to agree does not include agreement itself. for if you agree it, you must already be consigned to it, so ''you are no longer free to agree it''. And if you remain free to agree it, then ''you have not agreed it''. | An organising principle of the law is that, within identifiable limits prescribed by public law (such as crimes), a citizen is free to agree anything. But the set of things one is free to agree does not include agreement itself. for if you agree it, you must already be consigned to it, so ''you are no longer free to agree it''. And if you remain free to agree it, then ''you have not agreed it''. | ||