In the paradox or crocodile dilemma, a crocodile has grabbed a child and the mother, desperate, begs him to give him back. The crocodile gives her a chance and says, “I will only give you your son back if you can guess exactly what I’ll do“. The mother then replies: “You will eat my son“.
At this point, the crocodile states that he cannot give her son back to her, because if she laughed at him it would mean that the mother was telling a lie, since she will not eat the child. On the contrary, the mother replies that she must give it back to her, because if she didn’t, she would eat the child and therefore the woman would have told the truth, and if she had told the truth, the pact says that she would have received the child back.
In short, here is the paradox: if the crocodile keeps the baby and eats it, the mother will have told the truth and therefore the crocodile should give her the baby back even before eating it; if instead the crocodile returns the child for the reasoning just made, the mother will not have told the truth and therefore the crocodile will be able to eat the child. In both cases, a logically paradoxical situation arises. It’s as if the mother had told the truth and the false at the same time in both situations. This paradox, in fact, is an elaborate variation of the liar paradox.
So is there a possible solution? Which of the two contenders will have the baby? As much as philosophers and scientists have tried to find a key to this dilemma, the solution remains unknown. In fact, we are faced with a paradox!
In fact since mother’s point of viewit makes no difference whether what he says is true or false:
- if she told the truth, the child must be returned to her and only after she has obtained it will her sentence turn into a false one;
- if instead the child is not returned to her, then she told the truth and therefore predicted the crocodile’s action, therefore the child must be returned to her equally.
From the crocodile point of viewequally it is not important whether the mother said the truth or the false:
- if the mother told the truth, then it is true that he will eat the child;
- if the mother instead told a lie, due to the agreement they made she will not return the child, and therefore he will eat it.
The point is that, as the dilemma is formulated, both conclusions are correctly deduced from the formulation of the paradox, and this makes it impossible to have a solution since we have two valid solutions but in total contradiction to each other. In fact, whatever the crocodile does, he will not keep his word.
A possible solution could be for the mother to respond not “You are going to eat my son”, but rather “You are going to eat my son”. In this case, the dilemma would not arise because the mother is right, but it must be said that it is not a truthful solution because the mother is not talking about an action in the crocodile’s future, but rather about its current intentions, so on balance she has not guessed what the crocodile will do.
