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Which Alice?

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ALICE IN PUZZLE-LAND<br />

"That's interesting!" said <strong>Alice</strong>.<br />

"Incidentally," added Humpty Dumpty, "if we made the additional<br />

two assumptions that Epimenides is the only Cretan, and that<br />

the statement he made is the only statement he ever made in his life,<br />

then we would have a paradox! It would then be just like the<br />

statement I wrote down in your book which asserts its own<br />

falsehood."<br />

"Come to think of it," added Humpty Dumpty, "I'd like to try<br />

another experiment. May I have your memorandum book again?"<br />

<strong>Alice</strong> handed him the book with a pencil. Humpty Dumpty wrote<br />

something, handed the book back, and said, "Look on page eleven.<br />

Is the statement there true or false?"<br />

<strong>Alice</strong> turned to page 11, and here is what she found:<br />

—11—<br />

THE SENTENCE<br />

ON PAGE 11 Is<br />

TRUE.<br />

<strong>Alice</strong> thought about this for a while.<br />

"I see no way to tell," replied <strong>Alice</strong>. "It seems to me that it could<br />

be either: If it were true, there would be no contradiction; and if it<br />

were false, there also wouldn't be any contradiction."<br />

"This time you're absolutely right!" said Humpty Dumpty. "Now,<br />

that's what I call being chameleonic!"<br />

"What ever did you mean by that?" asked <strong>Alice</strong> in astonishment.<br />

"All I meant is that sometimes you are wrong and sometimes you<br />

are right—-just like a chameleon is sometimes one color and<br />

sometimes another."<br />

This seemed to <strong>Alice</strong> a most odd use of the word chameleonicstill<br />

(as <strong>Alice</strong> recalled) Humpty Dumpty sometimes has his own very<br />

special way of using words!<br />

"Now, I'd like to try something else," said Humpty Dumpty. "Let<br />

me have your notebook again."<br />

Humpty Dumpty took it and on pages 10, 11 he erased the<br />

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