Chrysippus himself was not above propounding such sophisms as the
following--
Whoever divulges the mysteries to the uninitiated commits impiety
The hierophant divulged the mysteries to the uninitiated
The hierophant commits impiety
Anything that you say passes through your mouth
You say a wagon
A wagon passes through your mouth
He is said to have written eleven books on the No-one fallacy. But
what seems to have exercised most of his ingenuity was the famous
Liar, the invention of which is ascribed to Eubulides. This fallacy
in its simplest form is as follows. If you say truly that you are
telling a lie, are you lying or telling the truth? Chrysippus set
this down as inexplicable. Nevertheless he was far from declining to
discuss it. For we find in the list of his works a treatise in five
books on the Inexplicables an Introduction to the Liar and Liars for
Introduction, six books on the Liar itself, a work directed against
those who thought that such propositions were both false and true,
another against those who professed to solve the Liar by a process of
division, three books on the solution of the Liar, and finally a
polemic against those who asserted that the Liar had its premises
false.
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