This is an old revision of this page, as edited by KoyaanisQatsi (talk | contribs) at 13:21, 9 June 2001 (Larry, perhaps you'd like to address the question someone left here... :-)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 13:21, 9 June 2001 by KoyaanisQatsi (talk | contribs) (Larry, perhaps you'd like to address the question someone left here... :-))(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)France is a democracy, and has no King.
The phrase "the present King of France" comes from an example
by Bertrand Russell, an apparent paradox raising some interesting questions about the law of the excluded middle, denotation, and so on.
Consider the statement "The present King of France is bald." Is this statement true? Is it false? It is meaningless?
It surely can't be true, for there is no present King of France.
But if it is false, then one would suppose that the negation of the statement is true, that is, "The present King of France has hair (is not bald)." But that doesn't seem any more true than the original statement.
Is it meaningless, then? One might suppose so, because it certainly does fail to denote in a sense, but on the other hand it sure seems to mean something that we can quite clearly understand.
If only Misplaced Pages had a professional philosopher as editor in chief, we could get a full explanation of these mysteries.