Imagine a scenario: one day, in a lapse from your usual sacred and undefiled
life, you happen to tell two lies. You know this is wrong and quickly start
to feel guilty. So that night, you walk down to your parish church, step
into the confessional and boldly say: ‘Bless me Father for I have sinned, I
have told three lies’. Think about the consequence of your words. You had
only told two lies, not three, therefore when you said you had told three
lies you were indeed lying - your third lie. So your confession was true…but
if it was true then surely you cannot be lying, hence meaning that you have
only told two lies. So it would appear that if you were lying it is true,
and when its true you are lying: a vicious cycle, yes, but a paradox? The
simple solution to this would be to have simply confessed to two lies,
however that is the answer to a different question… Brainteasers and philosophical chewing gum can be found everywhere: in song
titles, on the internet, in books or simply when the guy standing next to
you in a pub has got so wound up thinking about a paradox that he selfishly
puts you through similar misery in the unlikely hope that you can end his
suffering with a simple solution that reveals all. The purpose of such
philosophical statements is to provoke thought into abstract matters such as
the limitations of life and language: not necessarily to ignite a search for
a definitive solution; which is lucky because I do not know answers to any
of them! Ever since the early and astounding cognitive development of the
Greek philosophers, illogical and unexplainable matters of fact, similar to
the opening anecdote, have fascinated humans. And the reason that we seem to
enjoy putting ourselves through the mental agony of a paradox? – they are
more addictive than crack cocaine that’s covered in chocolate! They go round
in your head, as you irrationally try to solve them by thinking it through
the same way every time – each time just ending up back where you started
and a little more confused – although like a ‘Rubix-Cube’ you cannot stop,
because the solution is just round the corner. The truth of the matter is
that if you analyse anything too much you can very easily confuse yourself
into a swelling mass of self-destructive brainpower. The correct and
allegedly only way to solve such problems is to ‘think outside the box’.
This clichéd Americanism can be defined as ‘original thinking’ (which is
ironic considering it has now become so overused) and demands of people that
they ruminate beyond the boundaries of normal and possibly rational
thinking, to develop a fresh and effective idea. This phrase was coined in
America’s business sector by motivational speakers, but the actual notion
stretches back much further down the timeline, once again to the pioneers of
thought and Fathers of Philosophy – the Greeks. The poet Homer is seen to
‘think outside the Greek box’ when in his classical masterpiece ‘The Iliad’
he develops a hero, Achilles, that contrasts the warrior culture of Greek
civilization, by thinking bigger than a warrior and recognising that
lessening the suffering of others is more important than honor. Another
Greek philosopher, Epimenides, was found to test the barriers and
limitations of language when in the 6th century BCE he said: "All Cretans
are liars." Now this statement, because it was uttered by a Cretan, is true
if and only if it is false. However philosophers claim that this statement
is not paradoxical but merely contingent, because all it takes is for one
Cretan to tell the truth and it can be interpreted simply as a false
statement, which is expected from a liar. Although it does ensure that
Epimenides cannot be a truth-teller, because truth-tellers can only make
true statements. ‘All Cretans are liars’ implies ‘Epimenides is a liar’, so
if ‘All Cretans are liars’ is true then so is ‘Epimenides is a liar’, which
is a contradiction, hence Epimenides cannot be a truth-teller. Really the
only way that ‘All Cretans are liars’ is truly paradoxical is if there is
only one Cretan and the statement becomes self-contradictory, essentially
simplifying to ‘I am a liar.’ Now here the complexity not only evolves
around the simple contradiction that something is what it is not, but lies
largely in the definition of a liar: is it someone who never tells the truth
or is it someone that is known to have spoken falsely at some point? Hence
in this form, the statement provokes thought into the question ‘what is the
defining factor – what something is or what something is not?’ This paradox
is actually better known as ‘This statement is false’ or the ‘Liar Paradox’
and is one of the most famous philosophical paradoxes, because due to
limitations of contemporary thought it has no solution. There are very few
possible solutions that have not yet been proven false, and these are still
being vociferously debated by the supreme thinkers of the world. The general
direction of these proposed solutions focuses on the “formal construction of
a consistent theory of truth for a semantically closed language”. ? Like
many, when it comes to such intense paradoxes as these I am left floundering
in a deep sea of confusion, just like the man who said:
“ I have always wondered where this ‘All Cretans are liars’ thing came from.
I thought it was ‘All Lawyers are Cretins’
The only possible solution I contrived is that ‘this’ of ‘This Statement is
False’ could be a pronoun for a previously referred statement?
A much more tangible brainteaser can be seen in the lyrics of the popular
song by Carly Simon ‘You’re so vain - I bet you thought this song was about
you’. And although the media seemed preoccupied by whom the song referred
to, if you actually consider the meaning it can become pleasantly complex.
The subject here is ‘you’ therefore the song is indeed about the ‘vain’
mystery man Mr. X. However, the fact that his presumption is correct means
that he is not necessarily vain but just right – the song is about him! But
does this then substantiate the writer’s point that Mr. X thinks it is about
him and is therefore vain? Is the writer not ironically vain in presuming
that she means that much to him?
I honestly do not know suitable answers to those questions however trite and
simple they may appear and due to Carly Simon’s consistent silence when
asked about it, she probably does not really know either. However, to ease
your conscience…
- you did indeed tell three lies, but your confession remains true. When you
said ‘I have told three lies’ this is incorrect and therefore after it has
been said the statement becomes true, because it is your third lie. But just
because the statement is now true does not mean you have only told two lies,
because reality cannot be altered in hindsight so when you said it, it was
false therefore in the past you lied a total of three times…

Sources:
- ‘Thinking outside of the box spreads light’ by Roger Martin
- ‘The New Testament’
- Internet sources e.g. ‘Paradoxes.com’
‘Brainteasers.co.uk’
‘yahoo.com’
- Peer discussions