Abstract

The ancient semantic paradoxes were thought to undermine the rationalist metaphysics of Plato, and their modern relatives have been used by Russell and others to administer some severe logical and epistemological shocks. These are not just tricks or puzzles, but are intimately connected with some of the liveliest and most basic philosophical disputes about logical form, universals, reference and predication. Dr Cargile offers here an original and sustained treatment of this range of issues, and in fact presents an unfashionable defence of a platonistic ontology. He argues that the paradoxes arise not from mistakes in classical assumptions about truth or from an ontology that includes propositions and properties, but from mistakes in describing what propositions and properties are conveyed by particular linguistic expressions. The book should interest, and may well surprise, philosophers and others concerned with semantics and the foundations of logic.