Vol. 32 No. 1 (2012)
Symposium

About two Objections to Cook’s Proposal

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  • Federico Matías Pailos
Federico Matías Pailos
Universidad de Buenos Aires / CONICET
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.2012.107

Published 2012-05-01

Keywords

  • Yablo,
  • Paradox,
  • Truth,
  • Liar
  • Yablo,
  • Paradoja,
  • Verdad,
  • Mentiroso
Creative Commons License

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Abstract

The main thesis of this work is as follows: there are versions of Yablo’s paradox that, if Cook is right about the non-circular character of his version of it, are truly paradoxical and genuinely non-circular, and Cook’s version of Yablo’s paradox is one of them. Here I will not evaluate the"circular" or"non-circular" side to Cook’s proposal. In fact, I think that he is right about it, and that his version of Yablo’s list is non-circular. But is it paradoxical? In order to be so, the principles that lead to (i) the derivation of a contradiction, or (ii) the impossibility to give a stable assignment of truth values to the relevant set of sentences, must be acceptable. I will explore two ways to argue that they are not. I will conclude that these attempts lead to a very narrow conception of a theory of truth, or to deny that a paradigmatic case of paradox, such as the"Old-Fashioned Liar," is truly paradoxical

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References

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