Quine's paradox is a paradox concerning truth values, attributed to Willard Van Orman Quine. It is related to the liar paradox as a problem, and it purports to show that a sentence can be paradoxical even if it is not self-referring and does not use demonstratives or indexicals (i.e. it does not explicitly refer to itself). The paradox can be expressed as follows:
- "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.
If the paradox is not clear, consider each part of the above description of the paradox incrementally:
- it = yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation
- its quotation = "yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation"
- it preceded by its quotation = "yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.
With these tools, we may now reconsider the description of the paradox. It can be seen to assert the following:
- The statement "'yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation' yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" is false.
In other words, the sentence implies that it is false, which is paradoxical—for if it is false, what it states is in fact true.
Read more about Quine's Paradox: Motivation, Application
Famous quotes containing the words quine and/or paradox:
“‘Ouch’ is not independent of social training. One has only to prick a foreigner to appreciate that it is an English word.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The conclusion suggested by these arguments might be called the paradox of theorizing. It asserts that if the terms and the general principles of a scientific theory serve their purpose, i. e., if they establish the definite connections among observable phenomena, then they can be dispensed with since any chain of laws and interpretive statements establishing such a connection should then be replaceable by a law which directly links observational antecedents to observational consequents.”
—C.G. (Carl Gustav)