A Novel Solution to Grelling's Heterological Paradox
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2009 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | My approach is based on the examination of the key tacit and uninvestigated premise of the paradox, namely that 'H' means heterological. I claim that 'means' ('denotes', etc.) is essentially a language-related predicate; the concept "heterological" is then defined analogously, i.e. as "heterological in language L". The notion of language L is crucial here; I suggest to explicate language as a mapping from expression to meanings (explicated as Pavel Tichý's constructions). The Principle of Specification leads to three kinds of Vicious Circle Principle. These principles justify the resulting "full-blooded" hierarchy of languages, i.e. such hierarchy is not ad hoc. As a result, no heterological paradox arises: 'heterological (in L)' is a "partial" predicate that leads to no truth-value when it is applied to itself. There are two versions of "total" heterologicality predicate; however, none of them produces a paradox - there is no revenge problem for the present solution. |
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