A case situation arising in a normal interaction among people is the baseline for discussing properties of the theory of viewpoints. In particular we consider how to ensure agreement on the meaning of certain utterances by agents who have different perspectives on the situation, while maintaning other knowledge as private. We argue that communication should be modeled as adding facts to the common knowledge of agents. We introduce the principle of ''referent sharing'' in communications and argue that common knowledge resulting (...) from communication should only use constants whose referent is manifest to the parties involved. (shrink)

I first discuss Chihara's claim that the presence of Liar-paradoxical sentences presents no problem for our understanding of natural languages, and argue that this cannot be held as easily as he suggests. I then consider the theories advanced by Martin, van Fraassen, Kripke and Burge which attempt to meet some of the problems involved. I argue that the claim in the first two theories that Liar sentences are ill-formed cannot be maintained, and that Burge's theory is methodologically unsound and seriously (...) incomplete. Kripke's theory, though it gives implausible truth-values to some sentences, is more satisfactory. Finally, I discuss Gupta's revision theory, and provide my own alternative which has the following advantages. First, it facilitates our understanding of Kripke's and Gupta's theories, and of their relationship. Second, it provides a third theory in which we can understand how the presence of the Liar does not radically infect a language. (shrink)

Approaches to truth and the Liar paradox seem invariably to face a dilemma: either appeal to some sort of hierarchy, or declare apparently perfectly coherent concepts incoherent. But since both options lead to severe expressive restrictions, neither seems satisfactory. The aim of this paper is a new approach, which avoids the dilemma and the resulting expressive restrictions. Previous approaches tend to appeal to some new sort of semantic value for the truth predicate to take. I argue that such approaches inevitably (...) lead to the dilemma in question. In contrast, the present proposal sticks with classical semantic values, but allows the compositional rules associated with these to admit of exceptions. I show how such an approach can be developed systematically. (shrink)

This thesis comprises three main chapters—each comprising one relatively standalone paper. The unifying theme is fragmentalism about truth, which is the view that the predicate “true” either expresses distinct concepts or expresses distinct properties. -/- In Chapter 1, I provide a formal development of alethic pluralism. Pluralism is the view that there are distinct truth properties associated with distinct domains of subject matter, where a truth property satisfies certain truth-characterizing principles. On behalf of pluralists, I propose an account of logic (...) and semantics that shows how they can answer central conceptual and logical challenges for their view. -/- In Chapter 2, I motivate and develop a modal account of propositions on the basis of an iterative conception of propositions, where the modality is logico-mathematical. The modal account of propositions takes the conception to motivate an inherently potential hierarchy of propositions. I show that the account helps provide satisfying solutions to the intensional paradoxes of Russell-Myhill, Kaplan, and Prior. -/- In Chapter 3, I propose that “true” is polysemous. I suggest that “true” is initially polysemous between correspondence truth and disquotational truth, and further polysemous between the meanings corresponding to the subconcepts of the concept truth generated by the indefinite extensibility of that concept. I show that the proposal provides satisfying solutions to the semantic paradoxes. (shrink)

I justify a non-logician speaking of the liar antinomy by Peano view that semantic antinomies are linguistic issues. The remarks I formulate below follow Alfred Gawroński’s idea, namely, that the liar antinomy is an apparent antinomy.