If the liar says, "All ten-foot tall men have brown hair," we cannot conclude that there must exist a ten-foot tall man.
1. The liar stating something must mean that the phrase is not true. They cannot state anything that is not false.
2. "All X are Y" is the phrase.
Now, if we assume there is no X the phrases "All X are Y" and "Not all X are Y" are both true and false.
All X are Y - True. Yes, there is no X that is not Y.
All X are Y - False. Yes, there is no X that is Y.
Not all X are Y - True. Yes, there are no X, so none is not Y.
Not all X are Y - False. Yes, there are no X, so none is Y.
All these statements are (according to the article) vacuous if there is no X. A liar then cannot make them, as they are not false.
So from here you can deduce that either the phrase "All X are Y" stated by a liar indicates the existence of X or that I'm a liar :)
We only would know that either X doesn't exists or, if it exists, not all X are Y.
Basically it disentangled two unrelated concepts, that English language unduly mixes. Concept of every item having some quality and concepts of at least one item existing.
we're using a made up definition of liar, who can only say things that are false. it's not part of the question for the liar to be able to tell a statement they arent certain is false
But it doesn't work the other way around: "Every Frenchman I've ever met has become a good friend, but then again, I've never met a Frenchman". This isn't funny, because the second clause makes the first clause into a lie, as truth is normally understood. This is not a place where we colloquially accept an empty set.
So the puzzle posed translates the English sentence into logic badly. It isn't the conclusion which is counterintuitive, it is the logical analysis which is flawed.
~∀x (~IsAHatOfMine(x) ∨ Green(x))
∃x ~(~IsAHatOfMine(x) ∨ Green(x))https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Morgan's_laws#Extension_to_...
That being said, I would argue that, "All my hats are green." has different meaning than "I may or may not own a hat. Any hat that I own is green".
The use of 'all' and the plural of 'hat' implies that the author has multiple hats.
The statement translates to:
That's just equivalent to by the definition of implication (it's only false if the antecedent is true, and the conclusion false).The negation of that is (by repeated application of De Morgan's):
Thus, the liar has at least one hat, that, furthermore, is not green, so A) [EDIT: but not D - I misread it].In ordinary English, the meaning of the original phrase, thus the answer to the puzzle, is different.