The Liar

An Essay on Truth and Circularity

By: John Etchemendy, Jon Barwise

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Paperback | 6 April 1989

At a Glance

Paperback
208 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.5 x 14.1 x 1.3

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Bringing together powerful new tools from set theory and the philosophy of language, this book proposes a solution to one of the few unresolved paradoxes from antiquity, the Paradox of the Liar. Treating truth as a property of propositions, not sentences, the authors model two distinct conceptions of propositions: one based on the standard notion used by Bertrand Russell, among others, and the other based on J.L. Austin's work on truth. Comparing these two accounts, the authors show that while the Russellian conception of the relation between sentences, propositions, and truth is crucially flawed in limiting cases, the Austinian perspective has fruitful applications to the analysis of semantic paradox. In the course of their study of a language admitting circular reference and containing its own truth predicate, Barwise and Etchemendy also develop a wide range of model-theoretic techniques--based on a new set-theoretic tool, Peter Aczel's theory of hypersets--that open up new
avenues in logical and formal semantics.

Industry Reviews

'a book well worth reading for anyone with an interest in puzzles such as The Liar Paradox.' The Guardian 'Some interesting work of the Stanford based logicians John Barwise and John Etchemendy has thrown considerable light on to this vexing problem. And one of the most interesting aspects of the whole affair is that their work depends upon developments in computer science.' The Guardian.

'In their book, the two logicians put forward a theory of language that includes explicitly some of the "contextual parameters" so far left out of logic, but now shown to be crucial to understanding paradoxes.' The Times 'This is a splendid book. Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy have striking new ideas and material. These they have thought through deftly and masterfully ... a book to seize the philosophical imagination.' W.D. Hart, University College, London. Mind

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