Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Semantic paradoxes'

This work is an investigation into the notion of truth. More specifically, this thesis deals with how to account for the main features of truth, with the interaction between truth and fundamental linguistic elements such as connectives and quantifiers, and with the analysis and the solution of truth-theoretic paradoxes. In the introductory Chapter 1, I describe and justify the approach to truth I adopt here, giving some general coordinates to contextualize my work. In Part I, I examine some theories of truth that fall under the chosen approach. In Chapter 2, I discuss a famous theory of truth developed by Saul Kripke. Some difficulties of Kripke's theory led several authors, notably Hartry Field, to emphasize the importance of a well-behaved conditional connective in conjunction with a Kripkean treatment of truth. I articulate this idea in a research agenda, which I call Field's program, giving some conditions for its realizability. In Chapter 3, I analyze the main theory of truth proposed by Field to equip Kripke's theory with a well-behaved conditional, and I give a novel analysis of its shortcomings. Field's theory is remarkably successful but is technically and intuitively very complex, and it is unclear whether Field's conditional is a plausible candidate for a philosophically useful conditional. Moreover, Field's treatment of "determinate truth" and his handling of many kinds of paradoxes is not fully satisfactory. In Part II, I develop some new theories that capture the main aspects of the notion of truth and, at the same time, give a philosophically interesting meaning to connectives and quantifiers - in particular, they yield a strong and conceptually significant conditional. The theory proposed in Chapter 4 extends the inductive methods employed in Kripke's theory, showing how to adapt them to non-monotonic connectives as well. There, I also develop and defend a new, theoretically fruitful notion of gappiness. The theory proposed in Chapter 5 (and discussed further in Chapter 6), instead, employs some graph-theoretic intuitions and tools to provide a new model-theoretic construction. The resulting theory, I argue, provides a nice framework to account for the interaction between truth, connectives, and quantifiers, and it is flexible enough to be applicable to several interpretations of the logical vocabulary. Some new technical results are established with this theory as well, concerning the interplay between every Lukasiewicz semantics and some interpretations of the truth predicate, and concerning the handling of determinate truth. Finally, the theory developed in Chapter 5 provides articulate and telling solutions to truth-theoretical paradoxes.

My thesis aims at contributing to classifying the Liar-like paradoxes (and related Truth-teller-like expressions) by clarifying distinctions and relationships between these expressions and arguments. Such a classification is worthwhile, firstly, because it makes some progress towards reducing a potential infinity of versions into a finite classification; secondly, because it identifies a number of new paradoxes, and thirdly and most significantly, because it corrects the historically misplaced distinction between semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. I emphasize the third result because the distinction made by Peano [1906] and supported by Ramsey [1925] has been used to warrant different responses to the semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. I find two types among the paradoxes of truth, satisfaction and membership, but the division is shifted from where it has historically been drawn. This new distinction is, I believe, more fundamental than the Peano-Ramsey distinction between semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. The distinction I investigate is ultimately exemplified in a difference between the logical principles necessary to prove the Liar and those necessary to prove Grelling’s and Russell’s paradoxes. The difference relates to proofs of the inconsistency of naive truth and satisfaction; in the end, we will have two associated ways of proving each result. ¶ Another principled division is intuitively anticipated. I coin the term 'hypodox' (adj.: 'hypodoxical') for a generalization of Truth-tellers across paradoxes of truth, satisfaction, membership, reference, and where else it may find applicability. I make and investigate a conjecture about paradox and hypodox duality: that each paradox (at least those in the scope of the classification) has a dual hypodox.¶ In my investigation, I focus on paradoxes that might intuitively be thought to be relatives of the Liar paradox, including Grelling’s (which I present as a paradox of satisfaction) and, by analogy with Grelling’s paradox, Russell’s paradox. I extend these into truth-functional and some non-truth-functional variations, beginning with the Epimenides, Curry’s paradox, and similar variations. There are circular and infinite variations, which I relate via lists. In short, I focus on paradoxes of truth, satisfaction and some paradoxes of membership. ¶ Among the new paradoxes, three are notable in advance. The first is a non-truth functional variation on the Epimenides. This helps put the Epimenides on a par with Curry’s as a paradox in its own right and not just a lesser version of the Liar. I find the second paradox by working through truth-functional variants of the paradoxes. This new paradox, call it ‘the ESP’, can be either true or false, but can still be used to prove some other arbitrary statement. The third new paradox is another paradox of satisfaction, distinctly different from Grelling’s paradox. On this basis, I make and investigate the new distinction between two different types of paradox of satisfaction, and map one type back by direct analogy to the Liar, and the other by direct analogy to Russell's paradox.

The Liar Paradox and related semantic antinomies seem to challenge our deepest intuitions about language, truth and logic. Many philosophers believe that to solve them, we must give up either classical logic, or the expressive resources of natural language, or even the “naïve theory of truth” (according to which "P" and “it is true that 'P'” always entail each other). A particularly extreme form of radical surgery is proposed by figures like Graham Priest, who argues for “dialetheism”—the position that some contradictions are actually true—on the basis of the paradoxes. While Priest’s willingness to dispense with the Law of Non-Contradiction may be unpopular in contemporary analytic philosophy, figures as significant as Saul Kripke and Hartry Field have argued that, in light of the paradoxes, we can only save Non-Contradiction at the expense of the Law of the Excluded Middle, abandoning classical logic in favor of a “paracomplete” alternative in which P and ~P can simultaneously fail to hold. I believe that we can do better than that, and I argue for a more conservative approach, which retains not only “monaletheism” (the orthodox position that no sentence, either in natural languages or other language, can have more than one truth-value at a time), but the full inferential resources of classical logic.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2000.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-180).
Numerous philosophical problems, otherwise quite different in character, are of the following form. Certain claims which seem not only obviously true, but even constitutive of the meanings of the expressions employed, can be shown to lead to absurdity when taken together (perhaps in conjunction with contingent facts about the world). All such problems can justly be called paradoxes. The paradoxes I examine are the liar paradox, the sorites paradox, and the personal identity paradox posed by the fission problem. I argue that, in all of the cases examined, the claims that jointly lead to absurdity really are constitutive of the meanings of the expressions employed, in the following ways. First, semantic competence with the expressions involves being disposed to accept these claims. Second, the claims are reference-determining, in that the semantic values of the expressions employed are constrained by the condition that these claims should come out true, or as nearly true as possible. If a claim or principle is constitutive of meaning in both of these ways, I call it meaning-constitutive. When the meaning-constitutive principles for some expressions of a language are inconsistent, I call the language inconsistent. This is a stipulative definition; but it accords well with what other theorists who have talked about languages being inconsistent, for example Alfred Tarski, have had in mind. In chapters one and two, I argue that our language is inconsistent. In chapter three, I relate my theses to Frank Jackson's and David Lewis's views on how reference is determined. Another problem posed by the liar paradox concerns important theses in the philosophy of language. The liar reasoning shows that under certain conditions, a natural language cannot contain a predicate satisfying the T-schema. But many theses in the philosophy of language presuppose that truth satisfies the T-schema. I resolve this conflict in a Tarskian way: by saying that truth then is expressed only in an essentially richer metalanguage. However, I argue that taking this route means having to embrace the existence of absolutely inexpressible properties - and even to embrace the conclusion that some properties of which we appear to have concepts are absolutely inexpressible. All this is dealt with in chapter four. In the fifth chapter I show that my arguments of the previous chapters have (dis)solved the liar paradox. And finally, in the sixth chapter, I discuss the philosophical significance of truth and logic, and argue that these questions are significant only if understood in a new way. In this last chapter I also discuss the implications of the liar paradox for metaphysics; more specifically, its implications for the issue of how metaphysical claims are justified.
by Matti Eklund.
Ph.D.

Submitted by Alison Vanceto (alison-vanceto@hotmail.com) on 2016-10-11T12:53:00Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseJCM.pdf: 4590158 bytes, checksum: 2c97cc5bc376d0c6c91fa9230bea44a2 (MD5)
Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2016-10-11T19:31:38Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseJCM.pdf: 4590158 bytes, checksum: 2c97cc5bc376d0c6c91fa9230bea44a2 (MD5)
Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2016-10-11T19:31:48Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseJCM.pdf: 4590158 bytes, checksum: 2c97cc5bc376d0c6c91fa9230bea44a2 (MD5)
Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-11T19:45:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseJCM.pdf: 4590158 bytes, checksum: 2c97cc5bc376d0c6c91fa9230bea44a2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-20
Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)
In general, the idea of this work is to investigate the paradox, our object, by a linguistic and argumentative way, from the Theory of Semantic blocks (TBS). And specifically, for this, we adopted as main methods, two gestures: the relationship between linguistic elements as analysis condition, on the one hand, and the interdependence of its structure and significance, on the other hand, both in the non- use (language) and the use of language (enunciation). This second method of interdependence, when applied to our object, the paradox, becomes our first central hypothesis, the possibility of semantic paradox: the strange and difficult linguisticargumentative consideration of opposite significances, but in the interdependent state. And in this context we will also develop a second central hypothesis: the argumentative cube, while theoretical actualization of the argumentative square (the basic theoretical framework of our theory). Organizationally, the resourcefulness of this work will be carrying out in several specific strands, distributed throughout the chapters, namely: theory / paradox (divided into "Argumentation in the Language" / paradox, at first, and "Theory of Semantic Blocks "/ paradox, in a second stage); discours / paradox; dictionaries / paradox; "Historic Semantics of Enunciation" / paradox; relationship between languages / paradox and anteriority / paradox. In addition to these relational axes established to better observe our object, the paradox, and defend our hypothesis, the semantic paradox, we elected as central corpora, a group of dictionaries in which we can catch "which is said to be" a paradox and "as they say "a paradox to ponder" which means "a paradox. These dictionaries are divided into main corpus: Dictionnaire Historique de langue francaise, and and secondary corpora : Enciclopédia e Dicionário ilustrado, Kokugo Ziten e Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa, among others.
L'idée de ce travail est d'étudier le paradoxe d’une façon linguistique et argumentatif, à partir de la Théorie des Blocs Sémantiques (TBS). Et précisément pour cela, nous prenderons comme principales méthodologies deux gestes : la relation entre des éléments linguistiques comme condition d'analyse, et l'interdépendance entre la structure et sa significance, à partir tant par le champ du non-usage (langue), comme du champ d’usage de la langue (l'énonciation). Cette seconde méthode d'interdépendance, lorsqu'elle est appliquée à notre objet (le paradoxe) constitue mon premier hypothèse centrale : la possibilité du paradoxe sémantique : la considération linguistique-argumentative de signifiances opposées, mais dans un état d’interdépendance. Et dans ce contexte nous allons développer aussi une deuxième hipothèse centrale: le cube argumentatif, tandis que une atualization théorique du carré argumentatif (le construct théorique base dans notre théorie). Sur le plan organisationnel, l'ingéniosité de ce travail sera effectuer dans plusieurs axes spécifiques, répartis sur plusieurs chapitres: la théorie/paradoxe (premièrement «Argumentation dans la langue»/paradoxe, et deuxièmement «Théorie des blocs sémantiques»/paradoxe); discours/paradoxe; dictionnaires/paradoxe; «Sémantique Historiques de l'Énonciation» / paradoxe; relation entre des langues / paradoxe et antétriorité / paradoxe. En plus de ces axes relationnels mis en place pour mieux observer notre objet (le paradoxe) et de défendre mon hypothèse du paradoxe sémantique, je formerai un corpus à partir d’un groupe de dictionnaires dans lesquels appairassent « ce qui ce dit être » un paradoxe et « comment est-ce qu’» un paradoxe ce dit, afin de reflechir sur ce « que signifie un paradoxe ». Les dictionnaires sont divisés en corpus principal: Dictionnaire Historique de langue francaise, et corpora secondaire: Enciclopédia e Dicionário ilustrado, Kokugo Ziten e Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa, parmi d’autres.
De modo geral, a ideia deste trabalho é investigar o paradoxo, nosso objeto, de modo linguístico e argumentativo, a partir da Teoria dos Blocos Semânticos (TBS). E de modo específico, para isto, adotamos enquanto principais metodologias, dois gestos: a relação entre elementos linguísticos enquanto condição de análises, por um lado, e a interdependência entre a estrutura e suas significâncias, por outro lado, tanto no âmbito do não-uso (língua) quanto do uso da língua (enunciação). Este segundo método da interdependência, quando aplicado ao nosso objeto, o paradoxo, constitui a nossa primeira hipótese central, a possibilidade do paradoxo semântico: a estranha e difícil consideração linguístico-argumentativa de significâncias opostas, mas em estado de interdependência. E neste contexto desenvolveremos também uma segunda hipótese central: o cubo argumentativo, enquanto atualização teórica do quadrado argumentativo (o construto teórico basilar de nossa teoria). Organizacionalmente, a desenvoltura deste trabalho efetivar-se-á em vários eixos específicos, distribuídos ao longo dos capítulos, a saber: teoria/paradoxo (dividido em “Argumentação na Língua”/paradoxo, em um primeiro momento, e “Teoria dos Blocos Semânticos”/paradoxo, em um segundo momento); discurso/paradoxo; dicionários/paradoxo; “Semântica Histórica da Enunciação”/paradoxo; relação entre línguas/paradoxo e anterioridade/paradoxo. Além destes eixos relacionais estabelecidos para melhor observar nosso objeto, o paradoxo, e defender nossa hipótese, o paradoxo semântico, elegemos enquanto corpus central, um grupo de dicionários nos quais possamos flagrar “o que se diz ser” um paradoxo e “como se diz” um paradoxo, para ponderar “o que significa” um paradoxo. Estes dicionários estão divididos em corpus principal: Dictionnaire Historique de langue francaise, e corpus secundário: Enciclopédia e Dicionário ilustrado, Kokugo Ziten e Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa, dentre outros.

According to orthodoxy the study of the Soritical and semantical paradoxes belongs to the domain of the philosophy of language. To solve these paradoxes we need to investigate the nature of words like `heap' and `true.' In this thesis I criticise linguistic explanations of the state of ignorance we find ourselves in when confronted with indeterminate cases and develop a classical non-linguistic theory of indeterminacy in its stead. The view places the study of vagueness and indeterminacy squarely in epistemological terms, situating it within a theory of rational propositional attitudes. The resulting view is applied to a number of problems in the philosophy of vagueness and the semantic paradoxes.

To borrow a colorful phrase from Kant, this dissertation offers a prolegomenon to any future semantic theory. The dissertation investigates Yablo's omega-liar paradox and draws the following consequence. Any semantic theory that accepts the existence of semantic objects must face Yablo's paradox. The dissertation endeavors to position Yablo's omega-liar in a role analogous to that which Russell's paradox has for the foundations of mathematics. Russell's paradox showed that if we wed mathematics to sets, then because of the many different possible restrictions available for blocking the paradox, mathematics fractionates. There would be different mathematics. This is intolerable. It is similarly intolerable to have restrictions on the `objects' of Intentionality. Hence, in the light of Yablo's omega-liar, Intentionality cannot be wed to any theory of semantic objects. We ought, therefore, to think of Yablo's paradox as a natural language paradox, and as such we must accept its implications for the semantics of natural language, namely that those entities which are `meanings' (natural or otherwise) must not be construed as objects. To establish our result, Yablo's paradox is examined in light of the criticisms of Priest (and his followers). Priest maintains that Yablo's original omega-liar is flawed in its employment of a Tarski-style T-schema for its truth-predicate. Priest argues that the paradox is not formulable unless it employs a "satisfaction" predicate in place of its truth-predicate. Priest is mistaken. However, it will be shown that the omega-liar paradox depends essentially on the assumption of semantic objects. No formulation of the paradox is possible without this assumption. Given this, the dissertation looks at three different sorts of theories of propositions, and argues that two fail to specify a complete syntax for the Yablo sentences. Purely intensional propositions, however, are able to complete the syntax and thus generate the paradox. In the end, however, the restrictions normally associated with purely intensional propositions begin to look surprisingly like the hierarchies that Yablo sought to avoid with his paradox. The result is that while Yablo's paradox is syntactically formable within systems with formal hierarchies, it is not semantically so.

Many attempts at solving the liar paradox involve either rejecting some principles in classical logic so as to block the argument that leads to the contradiction or modifying the notion of truth so that the liar sentence can be classified as true in one aspect while false in another. However, the prominent approaches based the above strategies may suffer from the revenge problem. That is, while they solve the pristine liar paradox, the introduction of the solution triggers another one with the same structure. In this dissertation, three prominent approaches to the liar paradox are first introduced and examined. In particular, they are, first, the Tarskian hierarchical approach, whose main idea can be roughly characterized as that a natural language is a hierarchy of a series of languages and the liar sentence is true at one level of the hierarchy and is false at another; second, Saul Kripke's paracomplete approach, whose main idea can be roughly characterized as that the liar sentence is ungrounded and has no classical truth value at all; finally, Gupta and Belnep's revision theory of truth, the main idea of which is that truth is a circular concept and that the truth predicate is circularly defined. With a new semantics and logic for circular concept and definition, one can classify the liar sentence as not categorical. Based on two general patterns that give rise to the revenge paradox by Graham Priest, it is shown that none of the above approaches can escape the revenge paradox, at least, not satisfactorily. After the examination of three prominent approaches, I provide an initial characterization of a kind of approach which I call the silence approach. The main idea of the silence approach is that, perhaps what the liar paradox teaches us is that the semantic status of the liar sentence is eventually not classifiable, in the sense that the accepted or correct semantic theory for natural language simply does not apply to the liar sentence. There are two theoretical possibilities that can evoke the failure of classification. Either there is just no semantic category that fits the liar sentence or the necessary principles for the classification do not apply to the sentence. In either case, the silence approach suggests that although the liar sentence could have a semantic status according to the accepted or correct semantic theory, but given that we cannot classify it, we cannot know it. In this dissertation, I do not provide a detailed and well-developed theory of the silence approach. Instead, after the initial characterization of this approach, I go on to introduce and examine two current theories on the liar paradox which I think satisfy at least part of my characterization of the silence approach. The first theory is the semantic epistemicism by Paul Horwich. The second one is what I call exceptional theory, which is given by Thomas Hofweber. The result of the examination is that, both theories can indeed be interpreted as a silence approach. However, although they can block both the pristine liar paradox and the revenge paradox, they suffer severely from the problem of being ad hoc. The current conclusion of this dissertation about the silence approach thus is that, it is possible to construct a silence approach which can block the pristine liar paradox and the revenge, but it is hard to find a rationale for the solution. That is, it is hard to answer the question as to why the liar sentence is not classifiable. Finally, as an overlook to the future development of the silence approach, I suggest that even if we can solve the problem of ad hocness, there remains a question as to whether the incompleteness of classification is a symptom revealing that the accepted semantic theory is defective, or it is a symptom showing that there is just no possible semantic theory that can eventually do the job. Without answering this question, the silence approach still lacks a plausible theoretical ground

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2010.
Title from screen (viewed on February 26, 2010). Department of Philosophy, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Cornelis de Waal, André De Tienne, Nathan R. Houser. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-114).

Nesta tese, discutem-se, dentre outros, os conceitos de \"auditório universal\", de Perelman (2000); o de \"contrato de comunicação\", de Charaudeau (1992); os conceitos de duplo vínculo e enquadres, propostos por Bateson (1972), e abre-se também espaço para os principais tipos de paradoxos. Nela apresentase ainda a teoria dos semas e de sua combinatória, segundo Langendoen (1971), e, finalmente, analisa-se o sermão pelo Bom sucesso das armas de Portugal contra as de Holanda. O trabalho tem por objetivo evidenciar que o discurso religioso do Padre Antônio Vieira, no Sermão Pelo bom sucesso das armas de Portugal contra as de Holanda, é um discurso paradoxal porque desconstrói a si próprio. Para atingir tal propósito, confrontam-se os argumentos de que Vieira faz uso para dirigir-se a Deus, no referido sermão, com os textos das Sagradas Escrituras; analisa-se a argumentatividade das formas nominais do verbo, com ênfase particular na estrutura do gerúndio, enquanto ato ilocucional, a partir do Sermão da Sexagésima, e descreve-se um tipo de paradoxo pragmático: a roda argumentativa.
In this thesis, among others, the concepts of \"universal auditorium\", from Perelman (2000); \"communication contract\", from Charaudeau (1992); the concepts of double bind and frames, proposed by Bateson (1972) are discussed, and room is opened for the main types of paradox. In this one, the theory of semantic traits and its combinatory, according to Langedoen (1971) is also presented and, finally, the sermon For the good success of Portugal\'s weapons against Holland\'s is analyzed. The work has as a scope to evidence that the religious speech from Father Antônio Vieira, at the sermon For the good success of Portugal\'s weapons against Holland\'s, is a paradoxal speech for it unbuilds itself. To reach such purpose, the arguments Vieira uses to address God are confronted, at the referred sermon, with the Holy Scriptures\' texts; the argumentativity of the nominal forms of the verbs is analyzed, with particular emphasis on the structure of the gerund, as an illocutionary act, starting from Sermon of the Sixtieth, and a kind of pragmatic paradox is created: the argumentative round.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1995.
Title from title page screen, viewed April 19, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Maurice Scharton (chair), Janice Neuleib, Ray Lewis White. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-172) and abstract. Also available in print.

Актуальність цього дослідження зумовлена тим, що гумор – невід’ємна складова спілкування. Разом з цим, міжкультурні комунікації характеризуються непорозуміннями через різницю ментальних та лінгвістичних особливостей. Об’єктом дослідження є національний англійський гумор. Предметом виступає його лінгвокультурна характеристика. Мета дослідження полягає у визначенні способів створення комічного на основі особливостей англійської мови. Гумор англійців характеризується не тільки виключно усмішками або іронічними зауваженнями, які важко піддаються перекладу. Причини нерозуміння англійського гумору наступні: адресат не сприймає ситуацію як таку, що включає внутрішню невідповідність, не усвідомлює абсурдність або дивний стан речей; чітко розуміє внутрішню невідповідність у ситуації, але вважає, що гумор як м'яка форма критики до такої ситуації не відноситься, оскільки предметом осміяння виявляються надцінності даної культури; для англійської лінгвокультури це перш за все індивідуальна незалежність, антифаталізм, високий емоційний самоконтроль.
Актуальность данного исследования обусловлена ​​тем, что юмор - неотъемлемая составляющая общения. Вместе с этим, межкультурные коммуникации характеризуются недоразумениями из-за разницы ментальных и лингвистических особенностей. Объектом исследования является национальный английский юмор. Предметом выступает его лингвокультурные характеристики. Цель исследования заключается в определении способов создания комического на основе особенностей английского языка. Юмор англичан характеризуется не только исключительно улыбками или ироничными замечаниями, которые трудно поддаются переводу.Причины непонимания английского юмора следующие: адресат не воспринимает ситуацию как такую, которая включает внутреннюю несоответствие, не осознает абсурдность или странность положения вещей; четко понимает внутреннее несоответствие ситуации, но считает, что юмор как мягкая форма критики к такой ситуации не относится, поскольку предметом осмеяния оказываются сверхценности данной культуры; для английского лингвокультуры это прежде всего индивидуальная независимость, антифатализм, высокий эмоциональный самоконтроль.
The relevance of this study is due to the fact that humor is an integral part of communication. At the same time, intercultural communications are characterized by misunderstandings due to differences of mental and linguistic features. The subject of the study is national English humor. The object is its linguistic and cultural characteristics. The purpose of the study is to identify ways to create comic based on the features of the English language.The humor of the British is not characterized only by smiles or ironic remarks that are difficult for translation. Reasons for misunderstanding of English humor are as follows : addressee does not perceive the situation as that including internal inconsistency, is not aware of the absurdity or strange state of affairs; clearly understands the internal mismatch in the situation, but believes that humor as a mild form of criticism of such a situation does not apply because the subjects of ridicule are overestimates of given culture; for English linguistics individual independence. anti-fatalism, high emotional self-control are above everything,

This dissertation is about the nature of perspectival thoughts and the context-sensitivity of the language used to express them. It focuses on two kinds of perspectival thoughts: ‘subjective' evaluative thoughts about matters of personal taste, such as 'Beetroot is delicious' or 'Skydiving is fun', and first-personal or de se thoughts about oneself, such as 'I am hungry' or 'I have been fooled.' The dissertation defends of a novel form of relativism about truth - the idea that the truth of some (but not all) perspectival thought and talk is relative to the perspective of an evaluating subject or group. In Part I, I argue that the realm of ‘subjective' evaluative thought and talk whose truth is perspective-relative includes attributions of knowledge of the form 'S knows that p.' Following a brief introduction (chapter 1), chapter 2 presents a new, error-theoretic objection against relativism about knowledge attributions. The case for relativism regarding knowledge attributions rests on the claim that relativism is the only view that explains all of the empirical data from speakers' use of the word "know" without recourse to an error theory. In chapter 2, I show that the relativist can only account for sceptical paradoxes and ordinary epistemic closure puzzles if she attributes a problematic form of semantic blindness to speakers. However, in 3 I show that all major competitor theories - forms of invariantism and contextualism - are subject to equally serious error-theoretic objections. This raises the following fundamental question for empirical theorising about the meaning of natural language expressions: If error attributions are ubiquitous, by which criteria do we evaluate and compare the force of error-theoretic objections and the plausibility of error attributions? I provide a number of criteria and argue that they give us reason to think that relativism's error attributions are more plausible than those of its competitors. In Part II, I develop a novel unified account of the content and communication of perspectival thoughts. Many relativists regarding ‘subjective' thoughts and Lewisians about de se thoughts endorse a view of belief as self-location. In chapter 4, I argue that the self-location view of belief is in conflict with the received picture of linguistic communication, which understands communication as the transmission of information from speaker's head to hearer's head. I argue that understanding mental content and speech act content in terms of sequenced worlds allows a reconciliation of these views. On the view I advocate, content is modelled as a set of sequenced worlds - possible worlds ‘centred' on a group of individuals inhabiting the world at some time. Intuitively, a sequenced world is a way a group of people may be. I develop a Stalnakerian model of communication based on sequenced worlds content, and I provide a suitable semantics for personal pronouns and predicates of personal taste. In chapter 5, I show that one of the advantages of this model is its compatibility with both nonindexical contextualism and truth relativism about taste. I argue in chapters 5 and 6 that the empirical data from eavesdropping, retraction, and disagreement cases supports a relativist completion of the model, and I show in detail how to account for these phenomena on the sequenced worlds view.

My thesis aims at contributing to classifying the Liar-like paradoxes (and related Truth-teller-like expressions) by clarifying distinctions and relationships between these expressions and arguments. Such a classification is worthwhile, firstly, because it makes some progress towards reducing a potential infinity of versions into a finite classification; secondly, because it identifies a number of new paradoxes, and thirdly and most significantly, because it corrects the historically misplaced distinction between semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. I emphasize the third result because the distinction made by Peano [1906] and supported by Ramsey [1925] has been used to warrant different responses to the semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. I find two types among the paradoxes of truth, satisfaction and membership, but the division is shifted from where it has historically been drawn. This new distinction is, I believe, more fundamental than the Peano-Ramsey distinction between semantic and set-theoretic paradoxes. The distinction I investigate is ultimately exemplified in a difference between the logical principles necessary to prove the Liar and those necessary to prove Grelling’s and Russell’s paradoxes. The difference relates to proofs of the inconsistency of naive truth and satisfaction; in the end, we will have two associated ways of proving each result. ¶ ...

This thesis develops a new approach to the formal de nition of a truth predicate that allows a consistent, semantically closed defiition within classical logic. The approach is built on an analysis of structural properties of languages that make Liar Sentences and the paradoxical argument possible. By focusing on these conditions, standard formal dfinitions of semantics are shown to impose systematic limitations on the definition of formal truth predicates. The alternative approach to the formal definition of truth is developed by analysing our intuitive procedure for evaluating the truth value of sentences like "P is true". It is observed that the standard procedure breaks down in the case of the Liar Paradox as a side effect of the patterns of naming or reference necessary to the definition of Truth as a predicate. This means there are two ways in which a sentence like "P is true" can be not true, which requires that the T-Schema be modified for such sentences. By modifying the T-Schema, and taking seriously the effects of the patterns of naming/ reference on truth values, the new approach to the definition of truth is developed. Formal truth definitions within classical logic are constructed that provide an explicit and adequate truth definition for their own language, every sentence within the languages has a truth value, and there is no Strengthened Liar Paradox. This approach to solving the Liar Paradox can be easily applied to a very wide range of languages, including natural languages.

This study investigates six theoretical approaches offered as solutions to the paradox of the heap (sorites paradox), a logic puzzle dating back to the ancient Greek philosopher Eubulides. Those considered are: Incoherence Theory, Epistemic Theory, Supervaluation Theory, Many-Valued Logic, Fuzzy Logic, and Non-Classical Semantics. After critically examining all of these, it is concluded that none of the attempts to explain the sorites are fully adequate, and the paradox remains unresolved.
Philosophy
M.A. (Philosophy)

Ce mémoire se veut une synthèse critique de la littérature portant sur la logique déontique. Le premier objectif est d'y présenter un aperçu historique de son origine et de son évolution. Cet objectif sera principalement atteint par le biais du chapitre 2 portant sur les paradoxes, lequel nous permettra non seulement de voir en réaction à quoi les principales approches se sont développées, mais nous donnera aussi une vue d'ensemble quant aux différents courants que l'on retrouve en logique déontique. En second lieu, cet ouvrage vise à fournir une synthèse de la littérature portant sur l'analyse formelle du discours normatif. Les chapitres 3, 4 et 5 offrent une synthèse des principaux courants qui cherchent à répondre à cet objectif, ce que l'on peut regrouper sous trois banières, à savoir les logiques monadiques, les logiques dyadiques et les logiques temporelles. Finalement, nous proposons une lecture critique de cette littérature. Cette critique, qui repose notamment sur la prémisse à savoir que la logique déontique se doit non pas de rendre compte de l'utilisation du discours normatif mais plutôt de sa structure, vise à montrer que les systèmes actuels ne parviennent pas à rendre compte adéquatement de certaines caractéristiques fondamentales au discours juridique.
In this essay we aim to provide a critical analysis of the literature regarding deontic logic. First of all, we wish to give a historical account of deontic logic's evolution, which will be done mainly by chapter 2. This chapter concerns the paradoxes of deontic logic and gives an overview of the usual systems and their origin. Our second objective is to provide a synthesis of the literature regarding the formal analysis of the normative discourse. The chapters 3, 4 and 5 give an account of the three principal ways which deal with deontic operators, that is the monadic deontic logic, the dyadic deontic logic and the temporal deontic logic. Finally, we propose a critical analysis of that literature and we show that these systems do not represent adequately some of the normative discourse's fundamental characteristics. We will accomplish this by providing an analysis of the legal discourse and show that the concept of obligation has some properties and behaves in a way that cannot be represented by the actual systems.
Cet ouvrage a été rédigé en LaTeX, ce qui permet d'atteindre directement certaines sections, notes ou références bibliographiques par le biais des hyperliens.

Text in Afrikaans
In hierdie verhandeling word skoolname as onderafdeling van die Onomastiek behandel. Die gee van skoolname is 'n amptelike aangeleentheid en daarom is die beleid onderliggend aan die handeling onder die loep geneem. Beleid bepaal die ortografiese aard van skoolname en die manifestasie daarvan is sosiolinguisties van belang. Skoolname, wat onder eiename ressorteer, is hoofsaaklik oor 'n semantiese en sosiolinguistiese boeg gegooi, daarom word terme soos verwysing, konvensie en agtergrondbeskrywing aan die hand van veral die teoriee van Devitt, Strawson en Kripke beskryf. Van Langendonck le veral klem op die pragmatiese aard van die eienaam en daarom vorm sy teorie, die hetekenisparadoks van die eienaam, 'n belangrike uitgangspunt by die konsepsuele en pragmatiese aard van skoolname. Die gee van name is In suiwer menslike handeling wat selde ooit ongemotiveer geskied. Die ontstaansmotiewe wat skoolnaamgewing ten grondslag le, word bespreek aan die hand van die verskillende kategoriee. Botsende sosiale faktore soos veral teweeggebring deur kulturele diversiteit beinvloed naamgewing en daarom verander name. Die faktore onderliggend aan naamsverandering word uitgelig en bespreek. Die moontlikheid om ten spyte van 'n multikulturele en multilinguistiese samelewing tog 'n nasionale identiteit te vertoon, word ten slotte ondersoek en bespreek.
In this dissertation, names of schools as a subdivision of Onomastics are dealt with. School names are researched mainly under the cloak of Semantics and Socio-linguistics. Therefore, terms like reference, convention and a backing of descriptions are referred to according to the theories of Devitt, Strawson and Kripke. Van Langendonck specifically emphasises the pragmatic nature of proper nouns in his theory the paradox of the meaning of proper nouns which is an important point of departure in the conceptual and pragmatic nature of the names of schools. The underlying motives in respect of school naming are categorized and discussed according to the motives of origin. Conflicting social factors play an important role in the naming of schools and therefore names also change. These changes are accentuated and discussed. The possibility for a country to reflect a national identity in spite of a multicultural and multilingual society, is explored and discussed.
Afrikaans & Theory of Literature
M.A. (Afrikaans)