4. THE CARD PARADOX
Imagine you’re holding a postcard in your hand, on one side of which is written, “The statement on the other side of this card is true.” We’ll call that Statement A. Turn the card over, and the opposite side reads, “The statement on the other side of this card is false” (Statement B). Trying to assign any truth to either Statement A or B, however, leads to a paradox: if A is true then B must be as well, but for B to be true, A has to be false. Oppositely, if A is false then B must be false too, which must ultimately make A true.
Invented by the British logician Philip Jourdain in the early 1900s, the Card Paradox is a simple variation of what is known as a “liar paradox,” in which assigning truth values to statements that purport to be either true or false produces a contradiction. An even more complicated variation of a liar paradox is the next entry on our list.
Imagine you’re holding a postcard in your hand, on one side of which is written, “The statement on the other side of this card is true.” We’ll call that Statement A. Turn the card over, and the opposite side reads, “The statement on the other side of this card is false” (Statement B). Trying to assign any truth to either Statement A or B, however, leads to a paradox: if A is true then B must be as well, but for B to be true, A has to be false. Oppositely, if A is false then B must be false too, which must ultimately make A true.
Invented by the British logician Philip Jourdain in the early 1900s, the Card Paradox is a simple variation of what is known as a “liar paradox,” in which assigning truth values to statements that purport to be either true or false produces a contradiction. An even more complicated variation of a liar paradox is the next entry on our list.
