The general thesis of this paper is that metasemantic theories can play a central role in determining the correct solution to the liar paradox. I argue for the thesis by providing a specific example. I show how Lewis’s reference-magnetic metasemantic theory may decide between two of the most influential solutions to the liar paradox: Kripke’s minimal fixed point theory of truth and Gupta and Belnap’s revision theory of truth. In particular, I suggest that Lewis’s metasemantic theory favours Kripke’s solution to (...) the paradox over Gupta and Belnap’s. I then sketch how other standard criteria for assessing solutions to the liar paradox, such as whether a solution faces a so-called revenge paradox, fit into this picture. While the discussion of the specific example is itself important, the underlying lesson is that we have an unused strategy for resolving one of the hardest problems in philosophy. (shrink)

According to Gupta and Belnap, the “extensional behavior” of ‘true’ matches that of a circularly defined predicate. Besides promising to explain semantic paradoxicality, their general theory of circular predicates significantly liberalizes the framework of truth-conditional semantics. The authors’ discussions of the rationale behind that liberalization invoke two distinct senses in which a circular predicate’s semantic behavior is explained by a “revision rule” carrying hypothetical information about its extension. Neither attempted explanation succeeds. Their theory may however be modified to employ a (...) relativized notion of extension. The resulting contextualist semantics for ‘true’ construes circularity as a pragmatic phenomenon. (shrink)

In (2002) I argued that Gupta and Belnap’s Revision Theory of Truth (1993) has counterintuitive consequences. In particular, the pair of sentences: (S1) At least one of S1 and S2 is false. (S2) Both of S1 and S2 are false.1 is pathological on the Revision account. There is one, and only one, assignment of truth values to {(S1), (S2)} that make the corresponding Tarski..