Liar Paradox

Liar Paradox(plato.stanford.edu)

3 points by sctgrhm 4 years ago | 2 comments

ryan-duve 4 years ago |

> The first sentence in this essay is a lie. There is something odd about saying so, as has been known since ancient times. To see why, remember that all lies are untrue.

I always have trouble with paradoxes because I find some probably-unrelated issue to get fixated on and then can't proceed with the author. For example, are all lies untrue? What if my wife didn't feel like joining a party, but I lie to the host and say it's because she got into a car accident. However, unbeknownst to me, she actually did get into a car accident that would have prevented her attendance even if she wanted to. The lie is true, but it's still a lie, right?

I think issues like this are resolvable, but require iteration with the person setting up the paradox. Since I can't get that from books/articles I tend to only make progress on these topics during discussions.

sctgrhm 4 years ago | |

You scenario is conceptually close to the Liar cycles explained in paragraph 1.3 of the article. But what makes the crux of the paradox is the referential « pointing » between each statement which is a feature lacking in your example.