"I am lying." True or False

“I am lying”. Now this is a really tricky question. However, it is not that hard to solve; although the answer is a bit hard to understand because it is just repeating almost the same thing just that it is worded differently so as to give it a different meaning.

Alright, enough of the long-winded sentence. This is my explanation of the answer, put as simple as I can put it. If someone said, “I am lying.” it would not be correct because if you are lying, you are not telling the truth. A liar would not tell the truth. Therefore, ‘I am lying’ is the truth and by saying that it means that you are lying, which makes this a whole lot more confusing.

Let me try to explain this again if you did not get the first explanation. If you say, “I am lying.” it is not exactly correct. When you say, “I am lying.” you can’t be lying because if you were lying, you wouldn’t say that you were lying because if you are a liar, you would not be telling the truth. Understand?

To the second half of the explanation. If you said, “I am lying.” it would also not be correct because if you were telling the truth, you would not say that you were lying and by saying that you are lying, it would mean that you are no longer telling the truth and that you are now lying instead of telling the truth because liars don’t tell the truth and you just said that you were lying which means that you are not telling the truth which means that you are lying.

Wow. That’s really complicated. I hardly even understand what I am writing. Give me one more chance to explain, this time with help from the internet. If the phrase ‘I am lying’ is indeed true, it would be false because I said that I had told a lie when I did not. However if I had said that I was lying when it was false, I would be telling the truth when I said that I was lying because I did lie about lying.

So do you understand now? If you still do not, which I find very hard to believe after so many attempts to explain the answer to this age-old philosophical question, here is the ‘brilliant’ yet short answer t: If the statement ‘I am lying’ is true, it is false. When the statement ‘I am lying’ is false, it is true.

Now you would most likely be able to understand this explanation. If you still can’t, too bad, because I am not trying to explain any more.

Reference (an enormously long one just like the sentences in this post) note – it is one sentence, not a few:
http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=gCRrVOawWZUC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=i+am+lying+true+or+false&source=bl&ots=nEFY5uLcw9&sig=8dzif7XuQsFY942BKn_hwpDJQ5o&hl=en&ei=2Q4ySsLsIqCQ6AOerdnLBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA116,M1