Quine's Paradox

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.