Talk:Epimenides paradox

The following was removed:

A slight aside ...

God Himself (via Saint Paul) re-iterates the Cretan liar steryotype, apparently without any sense of irony, in the Epistle to Titus, chapter 1, vv12 and 13:

"One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith;"

There is nothing inherently wrong with including Bible verse, however, there needs to be more comentatry included with it. Otherwise the article has an uneeded religious feel to it. --maveric149

I'm not sure it should be included at all. The full quote is like this:

1:10 For there are many rebellious people, idle-talkers, and deceivers, especially those with Jewish connections,

1:11 who must be silenced because they mislead whole families by teaching for dishonest gain what ought not to be taught.

1:12 A certain one of them, in fact, one of their own prophets, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons."

1:13 Such testimony is true. For this reason rebuke them sharply that they may be healthy in the faith

1:14 and not pay attention to Jewish myths and commands of people who reject the truth.

1:15 [...]

The writer is explaining to Titus why he has left him on Crete to "set in order the remaining matters and to appoint elders in every town". Seeing the remark in 1:13 the writer probably didn't get the paradoxical nature of the remark and was simply using a then famous Hellenistic "soundbite" to make his point. So to call it a different version of the paradox would be a bit misleading. -- JanHidders

"Different version" is not correct, I agree. How about: "it is also mentioned in the Bible..."? It's also interesting to note that St. Paul was apparently aware of the fact that the statement is not paradoxical, since he explicitly clarifies "Such testimony is true." --AxelBoldt

First, let me recant. I think the quote *should* be mentioned in the article because it is clearly a related piece of information. I'm not sure if St. Paul (or whoever wrote Titus) was aware that the Epimenides quote is not really paradoxical. He quotes him as saying that "Cretans are always liars". That makes it IMHO a bit less obvious that the remark does not really contradict itself when said by a Cretan, although I certainly wouldn't claim that it unambibuously does contradict itself. However, it doesn't make much sense to me that St. Paul would argue in his letter something like "More than 500 years ago there was a really important Cretan priest who said that all Cretans are always liars. But this is not really a paradox, so it is true." So I would say that the simplest explanation is that he just knew the quote but not the full story behind it. But I hasten to add that I certainly do not consider this "quite certain" or even "very likely". So, summarizing I would say that it is quite certain that the quote is related to Epimenides remark, but it is not clear whether St. Paul understood the reason that made it survive more than 5 centuries.

Unfortunately I don't have much time, or I would try to find out who was the first to refer to Epimenides' remark as a paradox. IIRC that would be Aristotle or Plato, but I'm not sure. --JanHidders

Heh. Did the quote survive for five centuries because the question of whether it was paradoxical was so interesting, or because it was a popular catch-phrase to diss those folks across the water from you, the way Americans in one state often try to diss neighboring states? The reasons for the quotes survival are just speculation, unless you find it in a centralized list of required reading for philosophy. Which would be unlikely, given that they didn't have huge universities then, AFAIK. At any rate, it's clear from context that Paul didn't bring up the quote to discuss that aspect of philosophy with Titus, but to discuss their character. I don't think one can conclude from the text that he did or did not know of its paradoxical properties. Don't know that it matters much one way or the other. --Wesley

---

"I am a liar" is paradoxical if by "liar" we mean someone who always lies, as in this case from the statement we would deduce "I am lying now", the liar's paradox. If "liar" is taken in a wider sense, the statement would be true if uttered by somebody who lies occasionally. And false if the speaker weren't a liar, but in this case he would have uttered at least one false sentence. I would suggest removing the last sentence. - Calypso

No: let's define a liar to be someone who always lies. Suppose person A says "I am a liar". If that is the truth, then that means that A is a liar, and liars never speak the truth, a contradiction. So we conclude A did not speak the truth. That means A's statement "I am a liar" is false, meaning that A is in fact not a liar. A person who is not a liar occasionly speaks the truth, by our definition of liar that we agreed upon above. So A occasionly speaks the truth, but this time lied. That's just fine and dandy; there's no contradiction. So we conclude that A lied this time but does not always lie and is therefore not a liar. --AxelBoldt

I'm afraid I don't follow you. If you assume that A's statement is true

"Suppose person A says "I am a liar". If that is the truth, "

and from there conclude that the statemente is false

"...means A's statement "I am a liar" is false"

then you have a paradox there (p is true implies p is not true), the same as in the case of the liar paradox. -Calypso

The fact (p is true implies p is not true) shows that p cannot be true. But no contradiction arises from assuming that p is false. That's why p is false, but not contradictory. If on the other hand q is the statement "I am lying now", then (q is true implies q not true) and also (q is not true implies q is true), and these two taken together make q paradoxical. --AxelBoldt

I see what you mean, thanks for the explanation! -- Calypso

---

Moved here from the main page:

Addendum 1 : There is an old saying that the slickest way to lie is to tell half the truth and shut up.

Addendum 2 : What if the Cretans are scrupulously honest with themselves, where no one can tell?

Frankly, I don't see the relevance of add.1; as to add.2, that's certainly possible. If they are honest among themselves and occasionally lie to outsiders, then the poet's statement is true or false depending on the definition of "liar" employed. But it wouldn't be paradoxical. AxelBoldt 00:47 Oct 27, 2002 (UTC)