Yablo's paradox
Encyclopedia
Yablo's paradox is of type similar to the liar paradox
Liar paradox
In philosophy and logic, the liar paradox or liar's paradox , is the statement "this sentence is false"...

 published by Stephen Yablo
Stephen Yablo
Stephen Yablo is a philosopher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He specializes in the philosophy of logic, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of language....

 in 1993.

The paradox arises from considering the following infinite set of sentences:
  • (S1): for all k > 1, Sk is false
  • (S2): for all k > 2, Sk is false
  • (S3): for all k > 3, Sk is false
  • ...
  • ...


The set is paradoxical, because it is unsatisfiable (contradictory), but this unsatisfiability defies immediate intuition.

Moreover, none of the sentences refers to itself, but only to the subsequent sentences; this leads Yablo to claim that his paradox does not rely on self-reference.
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