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Pro Buridano; Contra Hazenum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Ian Hinckfuss
Ian Hinckfuss*
Affiliation:
University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia, 4067
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Extract

Alan Hazen has claimed that Buridan’s theory of truth does not escape semantic paradox.

In this paper, I claim that Buridan's theory is untouched by Hazen's case.My solution to Hazen's paradox requires the recognition of the exceptionability of what I shall call T-Elimination, namely, the principle (to be clarified later) that from a statement that such and such is true, we may deduce such and such. The exceptions are explained by reference to the role of what I shall call the meta-content of a locution, that is, that information conveyed by any locution that tells us what sort of a locution it is intended to be. The exceptionability of T-Elimination turns out to be shared by other well-accepted principles of deduction alsoand for the same reasons.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , September 1991 , pp. 389 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1991

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References

1 See Hazen, Allen ‘Contra Buridanum,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (1987) 875-80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Buridan’s thoughts on paradox are available in English translation in Hughes, G.E. John Buridan on Self-Reference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1982).Google Scholar

Other recent work relevant to Buridan’s ideas about truth and falsity include: Donnellan, Keith ‘A Note on the Liar Paradox,’ Philosophical Review 66 (1957) 394-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parsons, Charles ‘The Liar Paradox,’ Journal of Philosophical Logic 3 (1974) 381-412CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Burge, Tyler ‘Semantical Paradoxes,’ Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979) 169-98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barwise, Jon and Etchemendy, John The Liar (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1987)Google Scholar; and Gaifman, H. ‘Operational Pointer Semantics: Solution to Self-Referential Puzzles, I,’ in Vardi, Mosche Y. ed., Proceedings of the Second Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning About Knowledge (Asilomar, CA: Morgan Kaufmann 1988) 43-59Google Scholar.

2 I am indebted to Graham Priest, who brought Buridan’s thoughts on truth and Allen Hazen’s article thereon to my attention and whose discussion with me on these matters has been so helpful. I am indebted also to two anonymous referees of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy for their suggestions in improving this essay.

3 John Buridan on Self-Reference, 2, 18

4 This is to be read: From tokens of the form Tx and #xy lying outside the scope of any discharged assumption, deduce a token equiform with y.

5 Richard Hare’s distinction between the neustic and the phrastic of a locution shares a similar underlying idea. See R.M. Hare, The Language of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1952). Charles Hamblin has used symbolism to differentiate between different types of locution in his formalization of dialogue in Hamblin, C.L. Fallacies (London: Methuen 1970), ch. 8Google Scholar. This has been followed by other authors in that field, for example: Mackenzie, J.D. ‘Question-Begging in Non-Cumulative Systems,’ Journal of Philosophical Logic 8 (1979) 117-33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woods, John and Walton, Douglas ‘Arresting Circles in Formal Dialogue,’ Journal of Philosophic Logic 7 (1978) 73-90Google Scholar and Searle, John R. and Vanderveken, Daniel Foundations of Illocutionary Logic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985).Google Scholar

6 See Lewis, David ‘General Semantics,’ Synthese 22 (1970-71) 1-67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Foundations of Illocutionary Logic, 151

8 Philosophy of Logics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1978), 138