In diesem Aufsatz wird ein neues Paradoxon vorgestellt, der Super-Lügner. Er ist stärker als alle bekannten Lügner-Sätze, nicht mehr eindeutig selbstreferentiell und läßt sich darüber hinaus in eindeutig in die Tarski-Hierarchie einordnen. Eine unendlich große Familie von Super-Lügnern auf Metaebenen ist konstruierbar. Schließlich widersetzt sich der Super-Lügner der Auflösung durch die neue vielversprechende Reflexionslogik LR von U. Blau.

John MacFarlane has made relativism popular again. Focusing just on his original discussion, I argue that the data he uses to motivate the position do not, in fact, motivatie it at all. Many of the points made here have since been made, independently, by Hermann Cappelen and John Hawthorne, in their book Relativism and Monadic Truth.

Zeno's paradoxes of motion and the semantic paradoxes of the Liar have long been thought to have metaphorical affinities. There are, in fact, isomorphisms between variations of Zeno's paradoxes and variations of the Liar paradox in infinite-valued logic. Representing these paradoxes in dynamical systems theory reveals fractal images and provides other geometric ways of visualizing and conceptualizing the paradoxes.

Some in the recent literature have claimed that a connection exists between the Liar paradox and _semantic relativism_: the view that the truth values of certain occurrences of sentences depend on the contexts at which they are assessed. Sagi (Erkenntnis 82(4):913–928, 2017) argues that contextualist accounts of the Liar paradox are committed to relativism, and Rudnicki and Łukowski (Synthese 1–20, 2019) propose a new account that they classify as relativist. I argue that a full understanding of how relativism is conceived (...) within theories of natural language shows that neither of the purported connections can be maintained. There is no reason why a solution to the Liar paradox needs to accept relativism. (shrink)

The Liar sentence L, which reads ‘L is not true’, can be used to produce an apparently valid argument proving that L is not true and that L is true. There has been increasing recognition of the appeal of contextualist solutions to the Liar paradox. Contextualist accounts hold that some step in the reasoning induces a context shift that causes the apparently contradictory claims to occur at different contexts. Attempts at identifying the most promising contextualist account often rely on timing (...) arguments, which seek to isolate a step at which the context cannot be claimed to have shifted or must have shifted. The literature contains a number of timing arguments that draw incompatible conclusions about the location of the context shift. I argue that no existing timing arguments succeed. An alternative strategy for assessing contextualist accounts evaluates the plausibility of their explanations of why the context shifts. However, even this strategy yields no clear verdict about which contextualist account is the most promising. I conclude that there are some grounds for optimism and for pessimism about the potential to adequately motivate contextualism. (shrink)

In his papers ‘Semantic Paradox ’ and ‘The Liar Paradox: Tangles and Chains,’ Tyler Burge provides a hierarchical solution to the Liar paradox. And in his paper ‘Epistemic Paradox ’ Burge extends his hierarchy approach to the epistemic paradox of belief instability, which I shall explain shortly. Although Burge's views on the Liar paradox have been widely criticized, his views on the paradox of belief instability have not received notable attention. In this paper I shall argue that Burge's proposal is (...) inadequate as a solution to the paradox of belief instability. For this purpose, I shall criticize Burge's claim that a circular evaluation of a thought is impossible, which is crucial for his proposal. The question of whether or not a circular evaluation of belief is possible is of its own philosophical interest as well. (shrink)

I argue for two claims: that the ordinary English truth predicate is a gradable adjective and that truth is a property that comes in degrees. The first is a semantic claim, motivated by the linguistic evidence and the similarity of the truth predicate’s behavior to other gradable terms. The second is a claim in natural language metaphysics, motivated by interpreting the best semantic analysis of gradable terms as applied to the truth predicate. In addition to providing arguments for these two (...) claims, I draw out consequences for debates about deflationism and truth-based analyses of notions such as assertion and logical consequence. (shrink)

The rich body of physical theories defines the foundation of our understanding of the world. Its mathematical formulation is based on classical Aristotelian logic. In the philosophy of science the ambiguities, paradoxes, and the possibility of subjective interpretations of facts have challenged binary logic, leading, among other developments, to Gotthard Günther’s theory of polycontexturality. Günther’s theory explains how observers with subjective perception can become aware of their own subjectivity and provides means to describe contradicting or even paradox observations in a (...) logically sound formalism. Here we summarize the formalism behind Günther’s theory and apply it to two well-known examples from physics where different observers operate in distinct and only locally valid logical systems. Using polycontextural logic we show how the emerging awareness of these limitations of logical systems entails the design of mathematical transformations, which then become an integral part of the theory. In our view, this approach offers a novel perspective on the structure of physical theories and, at the same time, emphasizes the relevance of the theory of polycontexturality in modern sciences. (shrink)

Plausible principles on truth seem to yield contradictory conclusions about paradoxical sentences such as the Strengthened Liar. Those who take the contextualist approach, such as Parsons and Burge, attempt to justify the seemingly contradictory conclusions by arguing that the natural reasoning that leads to them involves some kind of contextual shift that makes them compatible. This paper argues that one cannot take this approach to give a proper treatment of infinite descending chains of semantic attributions. It also examines a related (...) approach taken by Gaifman and argues that it has the same problem. (shrink)