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Homework Statement
Richard is either a knight or a knave. Knights always tell the truth, and only the truth; knaves always tell falsehoods, and only falsehoods. Someone asks, "Are you a knight?" He replies, "If I am a knight, then I'll eat my hat."
a) Must Richard eat his hat?
b) Set this up as a problem in propositional logic. Introduce the following propositions: p = "Richard is a knight" and q = "Richard will eat his hat." Translate what we are given into propositional logic i.e. re-write the premises in terms of these propositions.
c) Prove that your answer from part (a) follows from the premises you wrote in (b)
The Attempt at a Solution
I didn't have an off-the-cuff answer, so I skipped to part (b). We have
p: Richard is a knight
q: Richard will eat his hat
r: Richard's response is true
If Richard is a knight, then his response is true. So we have:
[tex] p \Rightarrow r [/tex]
and if he is a knave, his reponse is false
[tex] \neg p \Rightarrow \neg r [/tex]
But Richard's response amounts to "If p, then q", or [itex] r = (p \Rightarrow q) [/itex]
So we have:
[tex] p \Rightarrow (p \Rightarrow q) [/tex]
From this we can conclude that if Richard is a knight, he is telling the truth when he says that if he is a knight, he will eat his hat. Therefore, since is IS in fact a knight, he WILL eat his hat. What if Richard is a knave?
[tex] \neg p \Rightarrow \neg (p \Rightarrow q) [/tex]
We can show that
[tex] \neg (p \Rightarrow q) = p \wedge \neg q [/tex]
So it seems that if Richard is a knave, his statement is false. Which means that the negation of his statement is true. The negation of his statement is:
Richard is a knight and Richard will not eat his hat
This doesn't really make sense to me. It seems paradoxical since Richard is a knave in this case. Furthermore, the recursive nature of p --> (p --> q) is bothering me. Have I approached this problem in the right way?