Abstract

BARKER, Stephen. Truth-Making and the Alethic Undecidability of the liar. discus.filos [online]. 2012, vol.13, n.21, pp.13-31. ISSN 0124-6127.

I argue that a new solution to the semantic paradoxes is possible based on truth-making. I show that with an appropriate understanding of what the ultimate truth and falsity makers of sentences are, it can be demonstrated that sentences like the liar are alethically undecidable. That means it cannot be said in principle whether such sentences are true, not true, false, not-false, neither true nor false, both true and false, and so on. I argue that this leads to a solution to the semantic paradoxes that appears to be free of revenge problems, allows us to maintain classical logic and the validity of the T-schema.

Keywords : alethic undecidability; indeterminacy; Liar; revenge; truth; truth-conditions; truth-making; T-schema.

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