Linguistique de l’écrit

Revue internationale en libre accès

Revue | Volume | Article

235122

Epistemicism and the liar

Jamin Asay

pp. 679-699

Résumé

One well known approach to the soritical paradoxes is epistemicism, the view that propositions involving vague notions have definite truth values, though it is impossible in principle to know what they are. Recently, Paul Horwich has extended this approach to the liar paradox, arguing that the liar proposition has a truth value, though it is impossible to know which one it is. The main virtue of the epistemicist approach is that it need not reject classical logic, and in particular the unrestricted acceptance of the principle of bivalence and law of excluded middle. Regardless of its success in solving the soritical paradoxes, the epistemicist approach faces a number of independent objections when it is applied to the liar paradox. I argue that the approach does not offer a satisfying, stable response to the paradoxes—not in general, and not for a minimalist about truth like Horwich.

Détails de la publication

Publié dans:

Jespersen Bjørn, Duží Marie (2015) Hyperintensionality. Synthese 192 (3).

Pages: 679-699

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-014-0596-x

Citation complète:

Asay Jamin, 2015, Epistemicism and the liar. Synthese 192 (3), Hyperintensionality, 679-699. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0596-x.