Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Mikko Newsgroups: sci.logic Subject: Re: The key undecidable instance that I know about Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2025 11:48:14 +0200 Organization: - Lines: 32 Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2025 10:48:14 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="bf6f963fb33a9d6da5f21525e9b5d75e"; logging-data="1362634"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+E/QLkUbBkWrZEVu27wweo" User-Agent: Unison/2.2 Cancel-Lock: sha1:+pZCdV4u7iOaK02OZ7cASHbaqm4= On 2025-03-09 17:15:13 +0000, olcott said: > Is the Liar Paradox True or False? > > LP := ~True(LP) In typical languages of formal logic that is not a syntactically valid expression. > ?- LP = not(true(LP)). > LP = not(true(LP)). Apparently you were using a Prolog implementation that does not check whether a cyclic data structure is produced. Another Prolog implementation could say false instead. > ?- unify_with_occurs_check(LP, not(true(LP))). > false. For this quesry the only permitted answer is false. > Its infinitely recursive structure makes it neither true nor false. What is that "its" intended to refer to? According to Prolog rules unify_with_occurs_check(LP, not(true(LP))) is false. Accordint to the implementation you were using LP = not(true(LP)) is true but another implementation might say it is false. If you mean LP itself, that is neither true nor false just lke 42 is neither true nor false. -- Mikko