Taken by surprise: the paradox of the surprise test revisited
This paper analyses the surprise exam paradox. It gives four formulations, each of which remedies what may be taken to be a defect in a prior formulation. In the final version, the information provided by the teacher turns out to be genuinely paradoxical (consistent and inconsistent). The informal analyses are supported by translation into a theory in a language with provability and fixed point operators. A semantics for the language is provided, and the theory is proved sound with respect to it. As an analysis of the paradox the approach is rather dubious. For it supposes knows to mean is provable from the information provided. But this assumes that the information is known to be true, which, arguably, is exactly what the paradox shows to be false. The paper can, however, be seen as supporting this conclusion. For if the information is known to be correct then the supposition is a reasonable one in the context, and, as the paper then shows, a most plausible interpretation of the situation ends up in a knot.
- How to expect a surprising exam
- Question closure to solve the surprise test
- An axiomatic version of Fitch's paradox
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 4041858 (Why is no real title available?)
- The Surprise Examination or Unexpected Hanging Paradox
- A solution to the surprise exam paradox in constructive mathematics
- Once more on the unexpected examination
- Formalizing the unexpected hanging paradox: a classical surprise
- If you don't know that you know, you could be surprised
- No surprises
- The surprise exam in full modal fixed-point logic
- The surprise examination in dynamic epistemic logic
- Information dependent games: can common sense be common knowledge?
This page was built for publication: Taken by surprise: the paradox of the surprise test revisited
Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q1820144)
