Liar's Paradox

“I am lying”. This is a relatively common trick question. What is the answer to this question then? I’m sure several of you already know what the answer is but it is a little hard to explain. In this post, I will try to explain as clearly as possible. The answer is a bit hard to understand because it is just repeating almost the same thing just that it is worded differently so as to give it a different meaning.

Wow I think that sentence was rather long. Anyway, this is my explanation of the answer, put as simple as I can put it. If someone said, “I am lying.” it would not be correct because if you are lying, you are not telling the truth. A liar would not tell the truth. Therefore, ‘I am lying’ is the truth and by saying that it means that you are lying, which makes this a whole lot more confusing.

Let me try to explain this again if you did not get the first attempt at an explanation. If you say, “I am lying.” it is not exactly correct in terms of reasoning. When you say, “I am lying”, you can’t be lying because if you really were lying, you wouldn’t say that you were lying because if you are a liar, you would not be telling the truth. Understand?

If you did not get the first explanation, fear not, as I will be giving it another shot. If you said, “I am lying”, it would also not be right because if you were telling the truth, you would not say that you were lying and by saying that you are lying, it would mean that you are no longer telling the truth and that you are now lying instead of telling the truth because liars don’t tell the truth and you just said that you were lying which means that you are not telling the truth which means that you are lying.

Wow. That’s really complicated. More complicated then the first explanation I think. I hardly even understand what I am writing. Give me one more chance to explain, this time with help from the internet. If the phrase ‘I am lying’ is indeed true, it would be false because I said that I had told a lie when I did not. However, if I had said that I was lying when it was indeed false, I would be telling the truth when I said that I was lying because I did lie about lying.

So after all that, do you understand now? If you still do not, which I find very hard to believe after so many attempts to explain the answer to this age-old philosophical question, here is the ‘brilliant’ yet short answer t: If the statement ‘I am lying’ is true, it is false. When the statement ‘I am lying’ is false, it is true. So basically it will always be wrong no matter how you put it. That’s why it’s called a liar’s paradox. It doesn’t matter how you try to phrase it, your answer will never be correct in terms of reasoning. I think you have also learnt what a paradox is if you did not previously know what it was.

By now, you would most likely be able to understand the statement ‘I am lying.’. However, if you still can’t understand, too bad then, because I am not going to try to explain any more (sorry!).

Reference (an enormously long one just like some of the sentences in this post) note – it is one sentence, not a few:

http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=gCRrVOawWZUC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=i+am+lying+true+or+false&source=bl&ots=nEFY5uLcw9&sig=8dzif7XuQsFY942BKn_hwpDJQ5o&hl=en&ei=2Q4ySsLsIqCQ6AOerdnLBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA116,M1