cata comments on Unsolved Problems in Philosophy Part 1: The Liar's Paradox - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Kevin 30 November 2010 08:56AM

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Comment author: Perplexed 30 November 2010 08:42:09PM 0 points [-]

The issue here is with language and the meaning of the world "false"

The issue where? Are you saying that this thread is about language, rather than truth? Or that my example, as written, is about language rather than (as intended) about truth?

not with the concept of truth independent of language.

I'm a bit surprised that anyone could conceive of a concept of truth independent of language. I've always considered truth as an attribute of sentences - linguistic objects. Perhaps I am missing your point.

As for your example, yes, I would say that it does point out something interesting, though already known, about the concept of color. That valid classification systems based on this criterion may disagree. This is also true of truth and logic. Some people say that the Liar statement is neither true nor false. Some people say that it is both true and false. Both can be correct, depending on what else they claim.

Comment author: cata 30 November 2010 11:05:00PM 0 points [-]

I would say that it does point out something interesting...That valid classification systems based on this criterion may disagree.

Can you clarify more exactly what you mean by "valid?" Because my initial reaction is that of course, you can come up with many classification systems for any set of things. It's not yet clear to me what interesting thing we can take away about how people are using the classifications of "true" and "false", other than the fact that they don't work very well for classifying certain unusual statements.

Comment author: Perplexed 01 December 2010 12:28:47AM 0 points [-]

It seems to me that we have seen people in this thread advocate two value logics, three value logics, and four value logics. You can have workable systems of logic with and without the law of the excluded middle, and with and without a law of contradiction. There are intuitionistic logics, relevance logics, classically consistent and paraconsistent logics. To say nothing of linear logic, modal logics, and ludics.

Follow the links to the SEP articles on dialethi and paraconsistency. And then follow the citations from there to learn that logic is pretty big and flexible field.