If I say "I'm lying" am I lying or telling the truth?

[Armstead]

This is a philosophical/linguistic condrum I occasionally speculated about in my youth, and it recently came to mind again. Kind of useless, I realize, but so is most philosophical musing.

If I say "I'm lying" can you believe that I'm lying? Or does the fact that I'm admitting I'm lying negate the fact that I'm lying because, in fact I am telling the truth about lying. And thus, I'm really lying because I'm telling the truth.

[Terwilliger]

1. which is negated by your telling the truth about lying

its all very gray

[BBradley]

2. Without any further information, the statement is meaningless

[seventhson]

3. Nothing I say is true

I think this is called like godel's law or something.

I am reading a book which discusses it at length called something like the "Physics of Immortality"

It makes my head hurt. But I fall asleep quick.


All Duers are liars. I'm a Duer.

And I am lying to you.

On edit: Godel's law. It is a paradox.

http://www.rialian.com/rnboyd/observe.htm

excerpt from link


The Nature of Being: Direct Observation vs. Intellectual Interpretations of Reality
: "I still find it hard to believe that it is impossible to prove i am real. I can only believe I am Real."

You can observe directly the fact that you exist without any form of reliance on any form of analysis. Or have you forgotten how to use your physical senses? Godel's Law shows that no self-referential logical system can prove its own existence, so your attempts to logically prove that you exist are predisposed to failure, according to Godel's Law.

Operationally, one should do well to recall Godel's Law and apply it to the operations of the human analytical system. Godel's Law also states, to put it in simple terms, that there is no logical system which can include all information regarding all things, while at the same time, there is no logical system which can be developed which is not paradoxial.

For example, evaluate the following expression:

"This sentence is true. The preceding sentence is false."

So, is the first sentence true or false?

It is a paradox.

The empirical approach

[Armstead]

5. A whole book about this?

Yikes. I had enough trouble just stretching it to a post.

[shugah]

4. yes

n/t

[ochazuke]

6. Everything I say is a Lie.

Ah, boring old linguistic philosophy. Useful for making computers blow up on Star Trek episodes.

Statements like my subject line are meta-statements; they are statements about all other statements. So, the statement itself is not self-referential. If you want to get silly and say "This statement is false", then you are just blathering masterbatory nonsense.

[seventhson]

7. test

nt

[girl gone mad]

8. A riddle..

You are on a path and you are lost. You must choose one way of two paths at a Y split in the road. You encounter 2 people at the Y split. One always tells the truth, and one always tells a lie. You are allowed to ask 1 of them only 1 question to choose the correct path based on thir answer.

What do you ask?