This sentence is false [closed]

Solution 1:

Great question. This is an example of the liar paradox and is studied in the scholastic logic of insolubles. What you did was prove using the self-principle of the excluded middle (every proposition is either true or false) that this sentence (this sentence is false) can neither have truth or falsity because truth implies falsity and falsity implies truth. Consequently, since the definition of a proposition is that of a declarative sentence having truth or falsity, this sentence (this sentence is false) can not even be a proposition. So it is called a self-contradictory non-propositional sentence. This is different from p:(no proposition is true). Supposing p to be true, no proposition is true. Therefore, the proposition p can not be true. Therefore, p is false. But if p is false so that (some proposition is true) there is no implication of the truth of p nor any contradiction. Therefore, p is a self-contradictory proposition as distinguished from (this sentence is false).

Solution 2:

I know this is an old question, but in fact such paradoxes are one of the motivations for inventing systems that are not purely classical but allow something called a truth-value gap, namely that although there are no contradictions there could be statements that are neither true nor false, which are said to fall into that gap. One such system is Kleene's 3-valued logic, which is fully compatible with this analysis of various well-known paradoxes. The apparent disadvantage that there are no tautologies in Kleene's 3-valued logic is easily circumvented by overlaying some type theory that allows one to quantify over propositions with classical truth values, which would result in classical logic being embedded into the new system.