RE: Is the self all that can be known to exist?
November 17, 2016 at 9:02 pm
(This post was last modified: November 17, 2016 at 9:06 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
That something is or is not is a questionable assertion?
A=A is the premise. It makes no sense to say A=A is questionable.
"This statement is not true" is not truth-apt because "not true" adds nothing to the meaning of "this statement". If I say "it is true that I am happy" then it means that the statement "I am happy" is true. If I say "it is not true that I am happy" then it means that the statement "I am happy" is not true. The same cannot be said for "this statement". "This statement" is not a statement and adding "true" or "not true" to it adds nothing. This is why the paradox appears to happen.
The fallacy of equivocation is explicitly about when you use different senses of the same word to mean different things. This is, in other words, seeing the same word from different perspectives. Equivocation is about being equivocal, it's a fallacy of ambiguity. The point is that conflating the fact that an incomplete statement when looked one way is true, and looked another way is false, does not mean that the incomplete statement is "both true and false". If we are to say that it can be both true and false then the only way we can do that is redefining things so that a statement can be considered both true and false at the same time. Or in other words, redefining our axioms so that something can be both true and false at the same time. This is what dialetheism does. But relabelling things so "A" can be "Not A" doesn't change the fact that in reality A=A or something is what it is. The point is that the labelling is irrelevant. Nothing has to be assumed for something to be what it is.
A=A is the premise. It makes no sense to say A=A is questionable.
"This statement is not true" is not truth-apt because "not true" adds nothing to the meaning of "this statement". If I say "it is true that I am happy" then it means that the statement "I am happy" is true. If I say "it is not true that I am happy" then it means that the statement "I am happy" is not true. The same cannot be said for "this statement". "This statement" is not a statement and adding "true" or "not true" to it adds nothing. This is why the paradox appears to happen.
The fallacy of equivocation is explicitly about when you use different senses of the same word to mean different things. This is, in other words, seeing the same word from different perspectives. Equivocation is about being equivocal, it's a fallacy of ambiguity. The point is that conflating the fact that an incomplete statement when looked one way is true, and looked another way is false, does not mean that the incomplete statement is "both true and false". If we are to say that it can be both true and false then the only way we can do that is redefining things so that a statement can be considered both true and false at the same time. Or in other words, redefining our axioms so that something can be both true and false at the same time. This is what dialetheism does. But relabelling things so "A" can be "Not A" doesn't change the fact that in reality A=A or something is what it is. The point is that the labelling is irrelevant. Nothing has to be assumed for something to be what it is.
