When talking about logic and the truth value of a statement, one could
hastily think that true/false is a true dichotomy: A statement is either
true or false.

  However, this is a false dichotomy. A statement is either true or not
true (which *is* a true dichotomy), but there are more alternatives to
'true' than 'false'.

  For example, "this statement is false" is neither a true statement nor
a false statement. It's a contradictory one. This is a third option to
the true/false pair.

  (Note that the above realization is not mine, and I'm not taking any
kind of credit for it.)

  I was thinking: Are there any other possibilities in logic than true,
false or self-contradictory?

  I came up with this absolutely marvelous option: "This statement is true."

  The beauty of that statement is that it can be either true or false.
If you consider it to be true, it indeed is (because it's asserting its
own truth). However, if you consider it false, it also indeed is (because
it's making a false statement of its own truth).

  In other words, the statement is *ambiguous*, which would be a fourth
option to the true/false/contradiction triplet.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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