Yablo's paradox and referring to infinite objects


Autoria(s): Bueno, O.; Colyvan, M.
Contribuinte(s)

M. Goldsmith

Data(s)

01/01/2003

Resumo

The blame for the semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes is often placed on self-reference and circularity. Some years ago, Yablo [1985; 1993] challenged this diagnosis, by producing a paradox that's liar-like but does not seem to involve circularity. But is Yablo's paradox really non-circular? In a recent paper, Beall [2001] has suggested that there are no means available to refer to Yablo's paradox without invoking descriptions, and since Priest [1997] has shown that any such description is circular, Beall concludes that Yablo's paradox itself is circular. In this paper, we argue that Beall's conclusion is unwarranted, given that (1) descriptions are not the only way to refer to Yablo's paradox, and (ii) we have no reason to believe that because the description involves self-reference, the denotation of the description is also circular. As a result, for all that's been said so far, we have no reason to believe that Yablo's paradox is circular.

Identificador

http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:64961

Idioma(s)

eng

Publicador

Taylor & Francis

Palavras-Chave #Philosophy #Liar Paradox #C1 #780199 Other #440106 Logic
Tipo

Journal Article