if pinnochio said his nose was about to grow, would it??????

The universe would collapse into a singularity.

Not really. Counterpoint: Imagine that he had just, oh, iunno, killed a man. And just denied it. And right after that, but right before his nose grows because of lying, he says "Oh man...my nose is about to grow..." Thus, his nose would grow, and his statement that his nose was going to grow is true.

If an immovable object is struck by an unstopable force, what occurs?

Nothing. At all. The problem is in the self-contradictory nature of the statement.

However, given that it HAD to be one way or the other, I would suspect it would not from that statement alone.

The object would move and there would be heat created. You never said that this force needed to stay kinetic!

Imagine a person states, "Everything I say is false".
What is the truth-value of this statement? True or false?

"Pegasus exists"
Again, is this true or false?

Assume the statement is true. Then everything that he says is false, and the statement is false. Contradiction.
Assume the statement is false. Then we know that sometimes he says true things, and that he may say false things. (He may not, either.) This statement being false fits within that conclusion, and narrows it to "He says both true and false things." Thus, the statement is false.


Without any givens, I rely on the fact that that comes from Greek mythology. Mythology is false. The statement is false.

But there are plenty of other pegasuses, many of which exist (up to ontological hijinks).

Ah, but since the assumptions were unnamed, I inserted my own, namely that the Pegasus in question was from Greek mythology.

Without any stated assumptions, the existence of any one possible meaning forces the statement to evaluate to true. In other words, the expansion of possibilities uses boolean ORs.

I realize. I was trying to retroactively fix my statement.

His nose would have to grow. If it didn't grow in a couple seconds, his statement would be false and his nose would grow. I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter that his nose growing will then make his statement valid. It all depends on the definition of 'about' to grow. Really, we'd have to ask Pinocchio what he was thinking when he said that. If 'about' lasts twenty minutes, right when the time frame for his statement has ended, the statement becomes void and false. On the other hand, if it did grow in the twenty minute time frame, he must have lied about something else, so it wouldn't really matter anyways.

Good point, I didn't even think about the time-frame issue. Though at least my answer is incorporated and still valid.

His nose would blow up.

what if he said "My nose will grow in the future?"

Define future
Even if it does not grow, it will not affect it.You could still say that it is not future yet, so he has not lied.

I think a better question is "Does Pinocchio's nose grow based on his perception of the truth? Or is it based on the actual truth?"

For instance:

"Tomorrows weather in the panhandle area will be sunny and warm." (If Pinocchio is a weather forecaster and he has legitimate reason to believe that this may be the case and it turns out wrong, will Pinocchio's nose grow if he thinks he's telling the truth but he's actually telling a lie?)

"The person with grandpa's toupee is the dog." (If Pinocchio stole the toupee from grandpa and the unbeknown to him the dog went into his room and ran off with it, will Pinocchio's nose grow if he thinks he's telling a lie but he's actually telling the truth?)

That is one argument . The OP should clearly specify the conditions to the problem.
One more thing, what exactly is the statement that decides whether Pinocchio's nose will grow?
If it is "Pinocchio's nose will grow if he lies", then there should be no problem as his nose can grow even when he tells the truth. Only if the condition is" Pinocchio's nose will grow if and only if he tells a lie" then there might be major issue which will depend on the answer to Omni's question.

This all comes back to the classic proble in which the situation that has been presented is only impossible based on magic that makes it so. Most paradoxes of this sort are circumvented simply by the fact that some null option occurs that ignores the situation. This situation, which includes magic, has only two possible outcomes and a definite decider of whether or not the situation is triggered.

That being said, given only the simplest set of possibilities (I.E. ignoring Omni's very good point), I would say it is all too possible that his nose would pause for a moment, and, seeing that it had not grown, would grow. Then, once it noticed it was growing, it would stop.

Yes, because initially, he would have lied, but, then it will instantaneously shrink

or, supposing that his nose will grow more if he lies about not killing someone, than if he lies about stealing a penny from a rich man, than the scale of lying about his own nose, which doesn't effect anyone else, would cause the nose to grow by such a minuscule amount that we might as well say it didn't grow. It just did both.

Why not just say Pinocchio, his nose, and every thing related to him vanishes, so thus the universe removes all such possibilities, so we all stay sane.

But the question is invalid because Pinocchio does not exist; so, he could not possibly say such a thing.

Exactly, but what would happen if I went to a lie detector and used it on me while saying "The following statement is true. The previous statement was a lie."

Polygraphs are inaccurate. Almost pseudoscience. At their best they're a prop for a skilled detective.