Unity, Truth and the Liar: The Modern Relevance of Medieval Solutions to the Liar Paradox

ISBN-13: 9789048178889 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 338 str.

Shahid Rahman; Tero Tulenheimo; Emmanuel Genot

Opis

Andinmy haste, I said: Allmenare Liars 1 Psalms 116:11 The Original Lie Philosophical analysis often reveals and seldom solves paradoxes. To quote Stephen Read: A paradox arises when an unacceptable conclusion is supported by a plausible argument from apparently acceptable premises. ...] So three di?erent reactions to the paradoxes are possible: to show that the r- soning is fallacious; or that the premises are not true after all; or that 2 the conclusion can in fact be accepted. There are sometimes elaborate ways to endorse a paradoxical conc- sion. One might be prepared to concede that indeed there are a number of grains that make a heap, but no possibility to know this number. However, some paradoxes are more threatening than others; showing the conclusiontobeacceptableisnotaseriousoption, iftheacceptanceleads to triviality. Among semantic paradoxes, the Liar (in any of its versions) 3 o?ers as its conclusion a bullet no one would be willing to bite. One of the most famous versions of the Liar Paradox was proposed by Epimenides, though its attribution to the Cretan poet and philosopher has only a relatively recent history. It seems indeed that Epimenides was mentioned neither in ancient nor in medieval treatments of the Liar 1 Jewish Publication Society translation. 2 Read 1]."

Spis treści

Preface; The Editors.- Part I: Disputatio.- 1. The Truth Schema and the Liar (Target paper); Stephen Read (Proponent).- 2. Read and Indirect Revenge; Bradley Armour-Garb (Opponent).- 3. Tarski's Hidden Theory of Meaning: Sentences Say Exactly One Thing; Catarina Dutilh Novaes (Opponent).- 4. Doubting Thomas; Laurence Goldstein (Opponent).- 5. Logic Without Truth; Gyula Klima (Opponent).- 6. Scheming and Lying; Eugene Mills (Opponent).- 7. Comments on Stephen Read's 'The Truth-schema and the Liar'; Terence Parsons (Opponent).- 8. Models for Liars in Bradwardine's Theory of Truth; Greg Restall (Opponent).- Acknowledgments.- 9. On a New Account of the Liar; José M. Sagüillo (Opponent).- 10. The Liar Cannot Be Solved; György Serény (Opponent).- 11. Out of the Liar Tangle; B. Hartley Slater (Opponent).- 12. Read about T-scheme; Jan Wolenski (Opponent).- Acknowledgments.- 13. Further Thoughts on Tarski's T-scheme and the Liar; Stephen Read.- References.- Part II: Historical Background: Restrictionism versus the Manifold Theory of Meaning.- 14. Restrictionism: A Medieval Approach Revisited; Claude Panaccio.- Acknowledgments.- 15. William Heytesbury and the Treatment of Insolubilia in Fourteenth-Century England; Fabienne Pironet.

Blurb

The Liar Paradox challenges logicians’ and semanticists’ theories of truth and meaning. Modern accounts of paradoxes in formal semantics offer solutions through the hierarchy of object language and metalanguage. Yet this solution to the Liar presupposes that sentences have unique meaning. This assumption is non-controversial in formal languages, but an account of how “hidden meaning” is made explicit is necessary to any complete analysis of natural language. Since the Liar Paradox presents itself as a sentence uniting contradictory meanings, appreciating how they can be united in a single sentence may provide new insights into this and other paradoxes.

This volume includes a target paper, taking up the challenge to revive, within a modern (formal) framework, a medieval solution to the Liar Paradox which did not assume Uniqueness of Meaning. Stephen Read, author of the target paper, attempts to formally state a theory of truth that dates back to the 14th century logician Thomas Bradwardine; the theory offers a solution to the Liar Paradox in which the Liar sentence turns out to be false. The rest of the volume consists of papers discussing and/or challenging Read’s – and Bradwardine’s -- views one the one hand, and papers addressing the doctrinal and historical background of medieval theories of truth on the other hand. It also includes a critical edition of Heytesbury’s treatise on insolubles, closely related to Bradwardine’s view.

Including formal, philosophical and historical discussions, this volume intends to renew the debate about paradoxes and theory of truth, and to show that the interest of earlier medieval work is not merely historical but, on the contrary, still relevant for modern, formal semantic theory. It is of interest for both professional philosophers and advanced students of philosophy.