How do I solve this paradox?

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I have a paradox that I can't seem to find the solution to.
(edit: Perhaps I should mention it is Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem's reference to the Liar-paradox)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6de ... s_theorems

I googled it many times, trying to get rid of the problem, but I couldn't find any solutions:

---
The following sentence is false:
The above sentence is true!
---

Or simplified:

"This sentence is false!"
-

How do I logically make sense of this paradox, without creating other paradoxes? How do I figure out which of the two sentences are the correct one, and which one isn't?

If there is no solution to it, is the paradox itself wrong? Does the universe itself contain any such paradox or anything similar?

If there are indeed truely such paradoxes, what do we do to explain the universe? Must we not have a fully explainable universe?

Last edited by thinkinginpictures on 21 Nov 2017, 3:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.

There's no way to solve it.....both might not be true! Or both might be true!

Does the universe/building blocks of matter or anything in nature do these kinds of wierd stuff? I know quantum mechanics is said to be doing it, but then we have Bohmian mechanics to solve it.

Anyways, why is the universe making a fool out of me whenever I try to understand it?

It is like entering a system then being told I can't get any more information from it!
Like a database I have fully access to, but without ability to extract all the data!

Why?

One very simple reason:

We've only explored an infinitesimal amount of the Universe. We, as people, have only gone approximately 250,000 miles out of trillions and trillions of miles. Probes have gathered info from about 5 billion miles out of trillions and trillions of miles.

There will always arise something which contradicts another something----maybe because of "local conditions."

In order to really find out, we have to get out there!

Local conditions? Are you refering to the problems arising when talking about locality vs. non-locality?

Because even if I choose to find non-local variables, ie. universal wave functions, the universe may still play tricks on me!

Besides, what is "out there" is also "in here". Don't we just need to build some bigger particle accelerators... or find some better mathematicians to figure out what to do?

But another question I also have is this:

Do we really want to know?
What happens if we could explain the entire universe? Would we eventually get bored?

I’m not worried about boredom

We have as much chance of explaining the universe as we do of explaining God.

I started a thread some years ago here in the PPR forum asking the question: "Is this statement true, or false?: 'This statement is false.'".

Got a few pages of responses.
In fact I even did it as a poll. You could vote for true, or for false. Forget what the results were. Long time ago.

Some statements simply cannot be classified as being true or false.
Nothing earth shaking about that. That's just the way it is. The fault is not with the universe, but with the structure of the human mind. The human mind has to conceive of things as being in opposition (wet to dry, black to white, good to evil, true and false). And it may hurt our brains when we cant shoehorn some things into those dichotomies.

Similar things exist in even basic math. You can multiply a number by zero (the answer with every number is the same: zero). But you can't divide any number by zero (even zero itself). The answer to dividing any integer by zero is always "undefined". And that's just the way it is. The universe just keeps on going despite the fact that we cant divide numbers by zero.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 21 Nov 2017, 2:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The sentence in itself can refer to itself but also to that which is not itself. The sentence itself is thus both true and false. It therefore refers to the measurement problem. If the sentence refers to not itself then it is true the sentence refers to itself then it is false.

As an existentialist I would argue that the universe in itself is indifferent to the meanings of true or false. Thus, the meaning I create of false or true are a construct.
“This sentence is false!” Is true or false in and of itelf (i.e. intrinsically).
Putnam and Kripke would deconstruct the sentence along the meaning of the meaning and their grammatical function within the sentence. I will not do that here since I believe that meaning is irrelevant in this context. I dislike getting bogged down in the meaning of the meaning of meaning.

Do holes exist? Yes and no. In this context “undefined” is an acceptable answer in basic math as are answers yes or no when it comes to the existence of holes. The term hole is a descriptor in the absence of a term for the noumena* that are holes. I would argue the same is true in basic math for the term “undefined” but as I said I’m an existentialist.

*a posited object or event as it appears in itself independent of perception by the senses

I would need to go out in a spaceship, and explore black holes----before I can make conclusions about the nature of black holes.

As of now, knowledge of black holes fit into the "possibility/probability" category.

I'm not a quantum physicist.....but notions are changing all the time---and for good reason. We just don't KNOW, absolutely.

Philosophers argue about the existence of holes. Theoretical physicists try to prove their existence mathematically. Two very different things.
BTW My bad idea of a social escort service has actually been put into practice and is available in my city. It’s called rent-a-friend. I still agree it is a terrible idea.

Sorry, I was unaware this question has already been posted here. However, I can assure you I did not copy/paste from any other thread. I read about Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. The paradox I presented was the Liar-paradox.

You say that the world can't be made from simple true/false-system, but I say it must, because of Zeno's Achilles and the tortoise-paradox (if you have to walk from A to B, you have to walk halfway first, and first you must walk halfway of halfway and so on). You never reach you destination if the universe is not binary. And the fact that we do move at all, the fact that you can walk from A to B, is a evidence that the universe is binary, true or false. Therefore there must exist some very small indivisible universal units (atomos) for time, space and energy. Therefore the universe is either true or false. It can't be both at the same time. And it can't be neither.

Everything grey-scale and nuanced is in-fact nothing more than black and white or true or false statements viewed from a distance. Whenever we zoom in on a subject, it becomes either black or white or true or false.

This applies to the universe. Politics is human. Humans are nature. Nature is the universe. Therefore simple true and false statements applies to politics as well.

I think the solution to this paradox is to say the paradox itself is wrong, in the sense that we humans can't conceive (as you alrady said). The fact that we can construct a sentence like "this sentence is false" is not evidence the universe is playing tricks on us, rather our brains fool us into believing we made a paradox.

In the universe there exists no paradoxes. None at all. If there were, it would not exist and that itself is not a paradox. Either you have a universe, ours that is, with all the past and future as has happened and will happen, or we don't have a universe at all. Maybe there isn't such a thing as a multiverse either. And maybe we can't even say "either a universe or no universe" but simply:

"There is a universe. And that's it!"

So in reality there exists no randomness either. There is no true or false statements. There are only true statements. Everything else is non-real, and thus not part of the universe.

"Zero" (0) is an invention of the human brain. There exist no such a thing as a zero.

Also this solves the problem with singularities, as no such thing as a singularity exist. A Black Hole is not a singularity. It is just energy packed very densely. So was it at the time of the Big Bang: Everything was dense, but the universe did not come into existence from nowhere. It already existed. Time began the moment the building blocks of matter/energy fell apart, which it did immediatly after the universe was ordered. And nothing ordered it, for time itself did not exist in the ordered state.

Problem solved?

That's what I think.

It's the same solution as "Zeno's paradox".

The answer: it's a mental construct, not a physical one. So, there is no paradox.

The answer to “Zeno’s paradox” may be the same to the existential answer I gave but it denies the paradox, which is not the same as acknowledging the existence of the paradox and synthesis. Materialism explains by subtraction, denial, and invalidation, which may work in a physical universe but the universe is not merely physical. The Big Bang doesn’t explain “Zeno paradox”. Most of Western philosophy is too linear and too material to allow for paradox and always end up denying noumena when it’s immaterialism. Actually most analytic philosophy blithely kowtows to theoretical physics.

http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/aerts/publica ... onLiar.pdf

or this
Sourcehttp://cogprints.org/1210/

Materialism says the sentence is true or false in a state of superposition before the measurement in both cases the sentence exists in either state which isn't a paradox. A quantum mechanical explanation is still denying that a paradox can even exist in a material universe. Brian Greene might actually start telling us that depending on which universe you're in the sentence is true or false. (I know. I know. Sorry.)