RE: Hypothetical Question for Christians (involving aliens)
June 5, 2018 at 7:49 am
(This post was last modified: June 5, 2018 at 8:13 am by Angrboda.)
(June 3, 2018 at 6:41 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: ...As a matter of record, the label and the idea of the liar's paradox has been used to refer to everything from the original statement of the liar's paradox in ancient Greece to any statement or set of statements that is self-referential in such a way that two equally valid interpretations can lead to opposite conclusions about the statement or statements' truth content. This can be seen from the variety of its representation in the philosophical literature ranging in discussions from the classical paradox which you cite to discussions of such things as the the strengthened liar's paradox, the deflationary theory of truth, and particular examples such as the discussion of it in Graham Priest's work on dialetheism....
An example from the literature:
Quote:Ever since Pilate asked, "What is truth?" (John XVIII, 38), the subsequent search for a correct answer has been inhibited by another problem, which, as is well known, also arises in a New Testament context. If, as the author of the Epistle to Titus supposes (TitusI, 12), a Cretan prophet, "even a prophet of their own," asserted that "the Cretans are always liars," and if "this testimony is true" of all other Cretan utterances, then it seems that the Cretan prophet's words are true if and only if they are false. And any treatment of the concept of truth must somehow circumvent this paradox.
The Cretan example illustrates one way of achieving self-reference. Let P(x) and Q(x) be predicates of sentences. Then in some cases empirical evidence establishes that the sentence '( x ) (P(x) => Q(x))' [or '(3.) (P(x) ˄ Q(x))', or the like] itself satisfies the predicate P(x) ; sometimes the empirical evidence shows that it is the only object satisfying P(x). In this latter case, the sentence in question "says of itself" that it satisfies Q(x). If Q(x) is the predicate 'is false', the
Liar paradox results. As an example, let P(x) abbreviate the predicate 'has tokens printed in copies of the Journal of Philosophy, November 6, 1975, p. 691, line 5'. Then the sentence:
( x ) (P(x) => Q(x))
leads to paradox if Q(x) is interpreted as falsehood.
Outline of a Theory of Truth, Saul Kripke
I guess Drich knows better than one of the most important philosophers of the past 200 years.
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