The Pinocchio Paradox Debunked

[JakeNubbin]

I think I figured it out.

"And now my nose will grow." If the titular character says this, will his nose actually grow or not? If it doesn't grow then he's lying but if it does grow then he's telling the truth and thus it wont grow. This paradox goes on infinitely. Or does it?

The fact that this is a head-scratcher is exactly the point I'm going to be making. It doesn't matter if we know what will happen. The real question is, does Pinocchio know what will happen?

Dictionary reference gives this definition:
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood. Synonyms: prevarication, falsification. Antonyms: truth.
2. something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture: His flashy car was a lie that deceived no one.
3. an inaccurate or false statement; a falsehood.

There's a theme here, intentional. If this is such a head-scratcher, then I'm going to assume Pinocchio himself has no idea what will happen. If he doesn't, when he says this, he will have no idea what will happen himself. Thus, he's technically asking a question. His nose, technically, wont grow.

But now here comes the fun part. Now, if Pinocchio thinks about this, he will assume that whenever he says this his nose wont grow due to him not knowing the outcome. Now, he does know the outcome. It wont grow.

If he says the phrase again, expecting it to do nothing, he's lying, and it will grow. If he thinks about this, knowing what he's done, he knows now that whenever he says this phrase, it only matters if he's trying to give misinformation. If he is, then it will grow. If he isn't, then it wont.

Since this is fairy-tail magic made in order to prove a point or to teach a morality, it doesn't care if this creates a paradox, it only cares if Pinocchio is lying or not. Now, whenever he says this, his nose will not grow.

Thoughts?

 

[Queen Michael]

Your human-logic makes my head hurt very much.

 

[Keoul]

I think it's simpler just to think of it this way.
-Lie is told.
-Lie is checked via magic, is it a lie?
-Lie is confirmed to be a lie.
-Nose grows.

That's just how I think of things and it makes this much easier for my brain to handle. I'm just gunna assume his nose would grow.

 

[FPLOON]

In other words... It's all just a mind game after all, from a magical standpoint...

Next, someone will say that the chicken DID come before the egg, because there had to have been a chicken that ended up evolving into an animal that lays eggs to make more chickens of it's evolved kind...

But overall, I like when paradoxes get debunked like that... Now, is the cat in the box REALLY dead? Or is the box just sound-proof?

 

[Lhianon]

-snip-

Next, someone will say that the chicken DID come before the egg, because there had to have been a chicken that ended up evolving into an animal that lays eggs to make more chickens of it's evolved kind...

-snip-

the chicken-egg thing is a misunderstanding, not a paradox since birds are only just a special kind of dinosaurs and dinsaurs laid eggs before they evolved into birds, so the egg came first. furthermore, the egg is older than dinosaurs since reptiles laid eggs before they evolved into dinos.

yes, i know you are just joking, i just don't like it when such easy questions get thrown around like they are some kind of unfathomable mystery

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

You couldn't have missed the point more if you tried to kick a baby and you destroyed Australia instead.

It's not about Pinocchio. He is merely used as an example of the liar paradox. I'll let you figure out why it's called the "liar paradox".

 

[4RM3D]

The statement below is true.
The statement above is false.

'Nuff said... wait, what were we talking about?

 

[Mr.Mattress]

-snip-

Next, someone will say that the chicken DID come before the egg, because there had to have been a chicken that ended up evolving into an animal that lays eggs to make more chickens of it's evolved kind...

-snip-

the chicken-egg thing is a misunderstanding, not a paradox since birds are only just a special kind of dinosaurs and dinsaurs laid eggs before they evolved into birds, so the egg came first. furthermore, the egg is older than dinosaurs since reptiles laid eggs before they evolved into dinos.

And your forgetting that Amphibians came before Reptiles, and Fish came before Amphibians, and Crustaceans came before Fish, although before that where hives of single-celled creatures which probably reproduced asexually like Jellyfish...

OT: The problem is he's saying "My Nose Will Grow"; if it doesn't grow, he's lying, thus his nose will grow, but since it grows, he's telling the truth, and it won't, repeat and repeat ad infinity. Now, I believe that if it where in a question form, it wouldn't count as a paradox, but since he's saying a definitive statement, it is a paradox.

Maybe if you explain your logic a little more other then "Magic doesn't create paradoxes, thus his nose will not grow" (Which is the gist of what I got from reading it), I could perchance see your point. To me, however, you have not debunked the Pinocchio Paradox.

 

[Hosker]

Yeah, the paradox doesn't really work because there is a difference between 'truth and lies' and 'correct and incorrect'.

 

[DEAD34345]

As people have mentioned above me, the point isn't really the magic part about what happens to the nose, and nothing has been debunked here anyway. Another way to rephrase the paradox is to say "This is a lie.", can you tell whether that statement is true or not? If it is the truth, then it must be a lie, and if it is a lie then it must be the truth. The whole Pinnochio and his nose thing is just irrelevant window dressing to the actual paradox part.

Also, I don't agree with what you say would happen to Pinnochio in your version of the paradox anyway.

If he doesn't, when he says this, he will have no idea what will happen himself. Thus, he's technically asking a question.

This idea is just completely random and wrong. A question is not a statement you don't know the truth of. That's just not what a question is. "Is the time 10:30?" is a question. "The time is 10:30." is not a question, it is a statement that can be true or false, even if I don't actually know what the time is when I say it.

 

[Lhianon]

-snip-

Next, someone will say that the chicken DID come before the egg, because there had to have been a chicken that ended up evolving into an animal that lays eggs to make more chickens of it's evolved kind...

-snip-

the chicken-egg thing is a misunderstanding, not a paradox since birds are only just a special kind of dinosaurs and dinsaurs laid eggs before they evolved into birds, so the egg came first. furthermore, the egg is older than dinosaurs since reptiles laid eggs before they evolved into dinos.

And your forgetting that Amphibians came before Reptiles, and Fish came before Amphibians, and Crustaceans came before Fish, although before that where hives of single-celled creatures which probably reproduced asexually like Jellyfish...

-snip-

i did not forget it, i just didn't remember that the english language is at times somewhat imprecise.
see, in my native tongue, german, an egg ("ei" in german) is only an egg if it has a hard shell that is mostly made from calcium while the eggs of amphibians and fishes are called "laich" wich translates to "spawn" in english; which, as far as i know, is not the term used in casual parlance.
you are right from a factual point, and technically, you didn't even disagree with me since you just provided further points to strengthen the idea that eggs are much older than birds.
i am sorry if this post sounds somewhat arrogant, i just didn't found a way to phrase this more diplomatic :-(

 

[Olas]

No version of the Pinocchio paradox I've heard has ever taken into account Pinocchio's own beliefs before saying it, which admittedly could be seen as a flaw in the set up for the paradox. Lying typically requires one to be aware that what they're saying is untrue, which means that lying and telling the truth are not the only two options available, Pinocchio could say something that he thinks is true and simply be wrong.

If we assume that Pinocchio doesn't believe his nose will grow when saying "My nose will grow"[footnote]How he arrives at this belief is irrelevant, there's no logical basis for believing anything in particular[/footnote] then the paradox remains just as valid. But if we assume that he does believe his nose will grow, there's a possibility for a logically consistent outcome.

Let's say hypothetically that if Pinocchio says something that he believes is true, but is untrue, that instead of growing his nose will do something else like turn purple. Then if he said "my nose will grow" believing it to be a true statement, his nose would (or at least could) turn purple thus showing that he was wrong. It all fits together.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

No version of the Pinocchio paradox I've heard has ever taken into account Pinocchio's own beliefs before saying it

That's because the starting point is that Pinocchio knows what happens when he lies. That's where the argument comes from. Saying that Pinocchio doesn't know about his nose situation defeats the whole purpose of this exercise. It stops being a neat way of describing liar's paradox and becomes something entirely useless with Pinocchio in it. Pinocchio's knowledge or belief or whatever you want to call it, is an axiom. You are not supposed to question it.

 

[DefunctTheory]

-snip-

Next, someone will say that the chicken DID come before the egg, because there had to have been a chicken that ended up evolving into an animal that lays eggs to make more chickens of it's evolved kind...

-snip-

the chicken-egg thing is a misunderstanding, not a paradox since birds are only just a special kind of dinosaurs and dinsaurs laid eggs before they evolved into birds, so the egg came first. furthermore, the egg is older than dinosaurs since reptiles laid eggs before they evolved into dinos.

yes, i know you are just joking, i just don't like it when such easy questions get thrown around like they are some kind of unfathomable mystery

That's not the point of the argument at all. The argument pre-dates our understanding of dinosaurs in the first place.

It's just an illustration of an argument that came before evolution (Which answers the question once and for all) - If an egg (Reproduction) requires a predecessor, and that predecessor cannot spring fully formed from nothing, then animals must have existed since forever in some form or another.

If that doesn't make any sense to you, it's because it's a product of the time when science was basically just a bunch of dudes sitting around, thinking up weird stuff without an evidence, and looking upon the act of collecting evidence as a waste of time. Philosophy, pretty much.

As for the original paradox... it's a silly one with no real answer. It's a fairy tale, so any answer could be right. My head canon is that Pinocchio turns into a real boy, and then his pants catch on fire when he tries this trick.

 

[Keoul]

I think it's simpler just to think of it this way.
-Lie is told.
-Lie is checked via magic, is it a lie?
-Lie is confirmed to be a lie.
-Nose grows.

In this case however, magic can't see into the future so it can't check whether what Pinocchio says is a lie or not since he's predicting the future.

It's magic, magic doesn't need an explanation
But if you insist, there could be a set time frame to check, pinocchio said "And now my nose will grow", meaning that his nose would grow immediately, but it wouldn't grow at all and the magic would realize this so it was a lie and therefore his nose would grow.

If he said something like "In 5 seconds my nose will grow" then his nose might grow 5 seconds later. So basically if its the nose question, if after the set time he said his nose would grow his nose did not grow then it will grow. This is so that if he said, "My nose will grow in 5 seconds" and immediately said "I am a real boy!" his nose would only grow once since he made his first statement truth.

 

[JakeNubbin]

Okay, I'm not sure what got into me when I wrote this, but I'm glad it stirred up conversation!

 

[Relish in Chaos]

I think, since it's a paradox, nothing will happen - or, alternatively, Pinocchio's nose will just be continuously growing and shortening. It's neither a lie nor a truth (or both a lie and a truth), because Pinocchio can't be sure whether or not what he's saying is actually correct or incorrect.

 

[Olas]

No version of the Pinocchio paradox I've heard has ever taken into account Pinocchio's own beliefs before saying it

That's because the starting point is that Pinocchio knows what happens when he lies. That's where the argument comes from. Saying that Pinocchio doesn't know about his nose situation defeats the whole purpose of this exercise. It stops being a neat way of describing liar's paradox and becomes something entirely useless with Pinocchio in it. Pinocchio's knowledge or belief or whatever you want to call it, is an axiom. You are not supposed to question it.

I'm not saying Pinocchio doesn't know what happens when he lies; of course he does. I'm questioning whether Pinocchio believes what he's saying is a lie or not, which would affect whether he believes his nose will grow, which in turn affects whether his statement is a lie, the truth, or just untrue.

The axiom doesn't seem to acknowledge the fact that Pinocchio is capable of reasoned thought himself, and that he might contemplate what will happen to his nose just as we do. And since the actual definition of lying is saying something untrue knowingly, it would actually matter what he thinks will happen.