A Novel Solution to Grelling's Heterological Paradox

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Authors

RACLAVSKÝ Jiří

Year of publication 2009
Type Conference abstract
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Description My approach is based on the examination of the key tacit and uninvestigated premise of the paradox, namely that 'H' means heterological. I claim that 'means' ('denotes', etc.) is essentially a language-related predicate; the concept "heterological" is then defined analogously, i.e. as "heterological in language L". The notion of language L is crucial here; I suggest to explicate language as a mapping from expression to meanings (explicated as Pavel Tichý's constructions). The Principle of Specification leads to three kinds of Vicious Circle Principle. These principles justify the resulting "full-blooded" hierarchy of languages, i.e. such hierarchy is not ad hoc. As a result, no heterological paradox arises: 'heterological (in L)' is a "partial" predicate that leads to no truth-value when it is applied to itself. There are two versions of "total" heterologicality predicate; however, none of them produces a paradox - there is no revenge problem for the present solution.
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