The Lessons of the Liar

✍ Scribed by Philip Hugly; Charles Sayward

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1979
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 651 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0040-5833
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00126692

✦ Synopsis

What does this argument teach us about English? One view is that it teaches us that English is inconsistent. A second view is that it teaches us that 'true in English' does not belong to English. A third view is that it teaches us that 'true in English', while belonging to English, is ambiguous in English. A fourth view is that the paradox shows that the subject expression of (1) designates something outside the range of applicability of the predicate of (1). Each of these views is false. The lessons of the liar are different.

Tarski reasons as follows about the argument from (or) and (/3) to (~,):

If we analyse this antinomy in the above formulation we reach the conviction that no consistent language can exist for which the usual laws of logic hold and which at the same time satisfies the following conditions: (I)for any sentence that occurs in the language a definite name of this sentence also belongs to the language; (II)every expression formed from ['x is true if and only ifp'] by replacing the symbol 'p' by any sentence of the language and the symbol 'x' by a name of this sentence is to be regarded Theory and Decision 11 (1979) 55-70.