Berry's paradox

The Berry paradox is a self-referential paradox arising from an expression like "the smallest positive integer not definable in fewer than twelve words" (note that this defining phrase has eleven words). Bertrand Russell, the first to discuss the paradox in print, attributed it to G. G. Berry (1867–1928), a junior librarian at Oxford's Bodleian library.

Consider the expression:

Since there are only twenty-six letters in English alphabet, there are finitely many phrases of under sixty letters, and hence finitely many positive integers that are defined by phrases of under sixty letters. Since there are infinitely many positive integers, this means that there are positive integers that cannot be defined by phrases of under sixty letters. If there are positive integers that satisfy a given property, then there is a smallest positive integer that satisfies that property; therefore, there is a smallest positive integer satisfying the property "not definable in under sixty letters". This is the integer to which the above expression refers. The above expression is only fifty-seven letters long, therefore it is definable in under sixty letters, and is not the smallest positive integer not definable in under sixty letters, and is not defined by this expression. This is a paradox: there must be an integer defined by this expression, but since the expression is self-contradictory (any integer it defines is definable in under sixty letters), there cannot be any integer defined by it.

Perhaps another helpful analogy to Berry's Paradox would be the phrase, "indescribable feeling". If the feeling is indeed indescribable, then no description of the feeling would be true. But if the word "indescribable" communicates something about the feeling, then it may be considered a description: this is self-contradictory.

The Berry paradox as formulated above arises because of systematic ambiguity in the word "definable". In other formulations of the Berry paradox, such as one that instead reads: "...not nameable in less..." the term "nameable" is also one that has this systematic ambiguity. Terms of this kind give rise to vicious circle fallacies. Other terms with this type of ambiguity are: satisfiable, true, false, function, property, class, relation, cardinal, and ordinal. To resolve one of these paradoxes means to pinpoint exactly where our use of language went wrong and to provide restrictions on the use of language which may avoid them.

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