Revenge of the Liar New Essays on the Paradox

by Beall, JC

• ISBN13: 9780199233908
• ISBN10: 019923390X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-02-09
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Liar paradox raises foundational questions about logic, language, andtruth (and semantic notions in general). A simple Liar sentence like 'Thissentence is false' appears to be both true and false if it is either true orfalse. For if the sentence is true, then what it says is the case; but what itsays is that it is false, hence it must be false. On the other hand, if thestatement is false, then it is true, since it says (only) that it is false.How, then, should we classify Liar sentences? Are they true or false? Anatural suggestion would be that Liars are neither true nor false; that is, theyfall into a category beyond truth and falsity. This solution might resolve theinitial problem, but it beckons the Liar's revenge. A sentence that says ofitself only that it is false or beyond truth and falsity will, in effect, bringback the initial problem. The Liar's revenge is a witness to the hydra-likenature of Liars: in dealing with one Liar you often bring about another.JC Beall presents fourteen new essays and an extensive introduction, whichexamine the nature of the Liar paradox and its resistance to any attempt tosolve it. Written by some of the world's leading experts in the field, thepapers in this volume will be an important resource for those working in truthstudies, philosophical logic, and philosophy of language, as well as those withan interest in formal semantics and metaphysics.

Table of Contents

Prolegomenon to future revenge

Embracing revenge: on the indefinite extendibility of language

The liar paradox, expressibility, and possible languages

Solving the paradoxes, escaping revenge

Validity, paradox, and the ideal of deductive logic

On the metatheory of Field's `Solving the paradoxes, escaping revenge'

Reducing revenge to discomfort

Understanding the liar

Revenge, Field, and ZF

Field on revenge

Bradwardine's revenge

Curry's revenge: the costs of non-classical solutions to the paradoxes of self-reference

Aletheic vengeance

Burali-Forti's revenge

Revenge and context

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