Phanerothyme Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 Think carefully now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kittykat Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 Tut.. it drives me mad all this philosophy stuff. One of the questions at a test i took to get into mensa was: a man had found out he had loast a lot of money and decided to commit suicide, he was walking to the bridge to do it but he didnt go through with it. why? it made me very angry that question - how am I supposed to know? Surely there isnt a right or wrong answer - but there had to be! Thinking too hard can be very troublesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Ruscoe Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 True - the statement is false! If it wasn't true that the statement is false, then it would be false that the statement is false - in which case, it would be true... (so it must be true... no?) Comprendez? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RPG Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 This statement is false. it has to be false, because otherwise it'd be a question Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Ruscoe Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 Originally posted by "RPG" This statement is false. it has to be false, because otherwise it'd be a question So, you answer is true, surely? "True: This statement is false." i) It can't be a question because it's no question mark. ii) It wouldn't have to be a question anyway - it could just be a lie! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RPG Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 but to be a statement it has to be false my brainsssss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Ruscoe Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 The question is: "This statment is false. True or false?" ... and not ... "This statment is false. Is the statement true or false?" So your answer is "True: the statment is false" ... init? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 It a paradox, it neither true nor false. Where do I vote? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Ruscoe Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 I'm with John on this one now... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanerothyme Posted June 4, 2003 Author Share Posted June 4, 2003 if you think stuff like this is interesting, and goes beyond mere word play, then have a look at Gödel - Escher - Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter.(From Amazon. It turns out that self reference is more than just a source of wordplay, and actually reflects an underlying, yet very difficult to describe, property of the universe. For the record, the statement cannot be evaluated using formal logic. This is a problem with formal logic, and that stretches to mathematics too. The statement flip flops between true and false in your head if you try to use logic to evaluate it. A cheat: Linguistically it could be true or false if 'false' was the identifying name of a statement. If the statement we called "false" contained the words "this statement is false" then the statement, "this statement is false" would be true. Equally, if the statement we called "TestStatement_A" contained the words "this statement is TestStatement_A" then the statement, "this statement is TestStatement_A" would be true. Kurt Gödel, of the book's title, was a mathematician who proved, mathematically, that maths is fundamentally flawed however useful it may be. Did you know that there are eleven words in this sentence? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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