The barber, a well-shaved man, shaves all and only the people from a town who do not shave by themselves. Who shaves the barber?
A barber - as defined by the assumption - is someone who shaves all and only people who do not shave by themselves.
Furthermore, any individual is a barber, as long as he shaves more than one person. Let's assume for simplicity there to be only one barber.
"All" in the context of the statement is not defined as a number; but we can assume (for the sake of
simplicity) for it to be more than one, i.e. at least two. The definition, furthermore, states also that
there is more than one person (=people) that do not shave alone.
Lets assume all the villagers, including the barber, those who shave alone, and those who don't, to be individuals. Let's also focus only on the individuals who do not shave alone, and the barber, and forget the ones who shave alone.
Let's further include another assumption, i.e. that all individuals can shave.
Assuming we have only one individual acting as a barber all the time in the town (i.e. one single individual who shaves more than one, and all persons from the set that do not shave alone).
In the set of individuals, a barber stands out as an individual who shaves more than one person - in fact the barber shaves "all" the people who do not shave alone - except himself, which he cannot, due to definition (this btw precludes him being part of the set of people who do not shave by themselves). All other individuals can shave without being barbers, as long as everyone shaves only one and the same person - the barber.
All the people who are shaved by the single barber can therefore shave
the barber; as the barber is a single individual; they do not have to be
considered as barbers in the terms of the original definition.
This sets the barber into a "special" barber set - it shaves everyone; but is shaved by everyone else.
Moreover; the barber is not a barber, if he shaves himself.
Is this crazy or what?
Further developments:
- barber is a role that changes from individual to another (in turns; the question is, not who shaves the barber, but who is the barber today? ); i.e. can there be more than one barber in the town, for whom the same restrictions apply?
