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.
Author(s): Shahid Rahman, Tero Tulenheimo, Emmanuel Genot (eds.)
Series: Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, 8
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 351
Contents......Page 22
Preface......Page 6
Acknowledgments......Page 20
Contributing Authors......Page 24
Part I: Disputatio......Page 26
1. The Truth Schema and the Liar......Page 27
2. Read and Indirect Revenge......Page 42
3. Tarski's Hidden Theory of Meaning: Sentences Say Exactly One Thing......Page 64
4. Doubting Thomas: From Bradwardine Back to Anon......Page 87
5. Logic Without Truth......Page 108
6. Scheming and Lying......Page 134
7. Comments on Stephen Read's "The Truth-schema and the Liar"......Page 150
8. Models for Liars in Bradwardin's Theory of Truth......Page 156
9. On a New Account of the Liar......Page 169
10. The Liar Cannot be Solved......Page 178
11. Out of the Liar Tangle......Page 206
12. Read About T-Scheme......Page 217
13. Further Thoughts on Tarski's T-Scheme and the Liar......Page 222
Part II: Historical Background: Restrictionism versus the Manifold Theory of Meaning......Page 243
14. Restrictionism: A Medieval Approach Revisited......Page 244
15. William Heytesbury and the Treatment of Insolubilia in Fourteenth-Century England Followed by a Critical Edition of Three Anonymous Treatises De insolubilibus Inspired by Heytesbury......Page 269
J......Page 348
Y......Page 349
P......Page 350
V......Page 351
