Download or read book Truth Without Paradox written by David Johnson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Truth Without Paradox, David Johnson purports to solve several of the traditional problems of metaphysics, pertaining to truth, logic, similitude, morality, and God. In the first chapter, he argues (in three independent ways) against the general acceptability of the schema 'if p then it is true that p', claiming thereby to resolve the paradoxes of the liar and of the sorites. In the second chapter, he clarifies what was (and what was not) settled by Quine about "truth by convention." In the third chapter, he attempts to shed light on the obscure notion of "sameness," or "uniformity," especially in its application to inductive extrapolation and to the grue paradox. In the fourth chapter, he purports to solve the "Is/Ought" problem of moral philosophy. The fifth and final chapter, which will be of interest to philosophers of religion, contains what the author calls an historical proof of the existence of God, based on (among other things) a resolution of the lottery paradox.
Download or read book Truth and Paradox written by Tim Maudlin and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2004-05-13 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consider the sentence 'This sentence is not true'. Certain notorious paradoxes like this have bedevilled philosophical theories of truth. Tim Maudlin presents an original account of logic and semantics which deals with these paradoxes, and allows him to set out a new theory of truth-values and the norms governing claims about truth.
Download or read book Saving Truth From Paradox written by Hartry Field and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-03-06 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saving Truth from Paradox is an ambitious investigation into paradoxes of truth and related issues, with occasional forays into notions such as vagueness, the nature of validity, and the Gödel incompleteness theorems. Hartry Field presents a new approach to the paradoxes and provides a systematic and detailed account of the main competing approaches. Part One examines Tarski's, Kripke’s, and Lukasiewicz’s theories of truth, and discusses validity and soundness, and vagueness. Part Two considers a wide range of attempts to resolve the paradoxes within classical logic. In Part Three Field turns to non-classical theories of truth that that restrict excluded middle. He shows that there are theories of this sort in which the conditionals obey many of the classical laws, and that all the semantic paradoxes (not just the simplest ones) can be handled consistently with the naive theory of truth. In Part Four, these theories are extended to the property-theoretic paradoxes and to various other paradoxes, and some issues about the understanding of the notion of validity are addressed. Extended paradoxes, involving the notion of determinate truth, are treated very thoroughly, and a number of different arguments that the theories lead to "revenge problems" are addressed. Finally, Part Five deals with dialetheic approaches to the paradoxes: approaches which, instead of restricting excluded middle, accept certain contradictions but alter classical logic so as to keep them confined to a relatively remote part of the language. Advocates of dialetheic theories have argued them to be better than theories that restrict excluded middle, for instance over issues related to the incompleteness theorems and in avoiding revenge problems. Field argues that dialetheists’ claims on behalf of their theories are quite unfounded, and indeed that on some of these issues all current versions of dialetheism do substantially worse than the best theories that restrict excluded middle.
Download or read book The Grace and Truth Paradox written by Randy Alcorn and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2009-06-24 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christians trying to model their lives after Jesus may find that He gets buried under lists, rules, and formulas. Now bestselling author Randy Alcorn offers a simple two-point checklist for Christlikeness based on John 1:14. The test consists of balancing grace and truth, equally and unapologetically. Grace without truth deceives people, and ceases to be grace. Truth without grace crushes people, and ceases to be truth. Alcorn shows the reader how to show the world Jesus -- offering grace instead of the world's apathy and tolerance, offering truth instead of the world's relativism and deception. Grace or Truth…or Both? Truth without grace breeds self-righteousness and crushing legalism. Grace without truth breeds deception and moral compromise. Is it possible to embrace both in balance? Jesus did. Randy Alcorn offers a simple yet profound two-point checklist of Christlikeness. “In the end,” says Alcorn, “we don’t need grace or truth. We need grace and truth. And for people to see Jesus in us, they must see both.”
Download or read book Truth Vagueness and Paradox written by Vann McGee and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Awarded the 1988 Johnsonian Prize in Philosophy. Published with the aid of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Download or read book The Paradox of Being written by Poul Andersen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of truth has never been more urgent than today, when the distortion of facts and the imposition of pseudo-realities in the service of the powerful have become the order of the day. In The Paradox of Being Poul Andersen addresses the concept of truth in Chinese Daoist philosophy and ritual. His approach is unapologetically universalist, and the book may be read as a call for a new way of studying Chinese culture, one that does not shy away from approaching “the other” in terms of an engagement with “our own” philosophical heritage. The basic Chinese word for truth is zhen, which means both true and real, and it bypasses the separation of the two ideas insisted on in much of the Western philosophical tradition. Through wide-ranging research into Daoist ritual, both in history and as it survives in the present day, Andersen shows that the concept of true reality that informs this tradition posits being as a paradox anchored in the inexistent Way (Dao). The preferred way of life suggested by this insight consists in seeking to be an exception to ordinary norms and rules of behavior which nonetheless engages what is common to us all.
Download or read book True Paradox written by David Skeel and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2014-08-28 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreword Review's Annual INDIEFAB Book of the Year Finalist How do we explain human consciousness? Where do we get our sense of beauty? Why do we recoil at suffering? Why do we have moral codes that none of us can meet? Why do we yearn for justice, yet seem incapable of establishing it? Any philosophy or worldview must make sense of the world as we actually experience it. We need to explain how we can discern qualities such as beauty and evil and account for our practices of morality and law. The complexity of the contemporary world is sometimes seen as an embarrassment for Christianity. But law professor David Skeel makes a fresh case for the plausibility and explanatory power of Christianity. The Christian faith offers plausible explanations for the central puzzles of our existence, such as our capacity for idea-making, our experience of beauty and suffering, and our inability to create a just social order. When compared with materialism or other sets of beliefs, Christianity provides a more comprehensive framework for understanding human life as we actually live it. We need not deny the complexities of life as we experience it. But the paradoxes of our existence can lead us to the possibility that the existence of God could make sense of it all.
Download or read book Revenge of the Liar written by JC Beall and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-12-13 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Liar paradox raises foundational questions about logic, language, and truth (and semantic notions in general). A simple Liar sentence like 'This sentence is false' appears to be both true and false if it is either true or false. For if the sentence is true, then what it says is the case; but what it says is that it is false, hence it must be false. On the other hand, if the statement is false, then it is true, since it says (only) that it is false. How, then, should we classify Liar sentences? Are they true or false? A natural suggestion would be that Liars are neither true nor false; that is, they fall into a category beyond truth and falsity. This solution might resolve the initial problem, but it beckons the Liar's revenge. A sentence that says of itself only that it is false or beyond truth and falsity will, in effect, bring back the initial problem. The Liar's revenge is a witness to the hydra-like nature of Liars: in dealing with one Liar you often bring about another. JC Beall presents fourteen new essays and an extensive introduction, which examine the nature of the Liar paradox and its resistance to any attempt to solve it. Written by some of the world's leading experts in the field, the papers in this volume will be an important resource for those working in truth studies, philosophical logic, and philosophy of language, as well as those with an interest in formal semantics and metaphysics.
Download or read book Unity Truth and the Liar written by Shahid Rahman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-09-27 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andinmy haste, I said: “Allmenare Liars” 1 —Psalms 116:11 The Original Lie Philosophical analysis often reveals and seldom solves paradoxes. To quote Stephen Read: A paradox arises when an unacceptable conclusion is supported by a plausible argument from apparently acceptable premises. [...] So three di?erent reactions to the paradoxes are possible: to show that the r- soning is fallacious; or that the premises are not true after all; or that 2 the conclusion can in fact be accepted. There are sometimes elaborate ways to endorse a paradoxical conc- sion. One might be prepared to concede that indeed there are a number of grains that make a heap, but no possibility to know this number. However, some paradoxes are more threatening than others; showing the conclusiontobeacceptableisnotaseriousoption,iftheacceptanceleads to triviality. Among semantic paradoxes, the Liar (in any of its versions) 3 o?ers as its conclusion a bullet no one would be willing to bite. One of the most famous versions of the Liar Paradox was proposed by Epimenides, though its attribution to the Cretan poet and philosopher has only a relatively recent history. It seems indeed that Epimenides was mentioned neither in ancient nor in medieval treatments of the Liar 1 Jewish Publication Society translation. 2 Read [1].
Download or read book THE UNITY OF TRUTH written by Allen A. Sweet and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2024-01-03 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the seven billion people who live on the earth look to either science or religion as the ultimate source of authority in their lives. But why must there be a conflict between the two? Why can’t science and religion support each other? The Unity of Truth shows why and how it makes perfect sense for science and religion to be mutually supportive. Beginning with the accepted truths of modern science and the beliefs of traditional Christianity, authors Allen A. Sweet, C. Frances Sweet, and Fritz Jaensch use their diverse expertise to deliver a deeper level of understanding of the ways in which science and religion can coexist. Relying on a thorough knowledge of physics, theology, and mathematics, this study addresses the paradox of how God communicates with our material world without violating any of the laws of science. Individual chapters discuss some of the most popular quandaries associated with combining science and religion. In addition, it considers the beginning and end of our universe, the evolution of life, and the meaning of human emotions from the scientific and theological perspectives, thus pushing understanding to a higher plateau of wisdom. Rational and devoid of rhetoric, The Unity of Truth seeks to help resolve the ongoing battle between religion and science, delivering a thoughtful narrative designed to open minds and hearts.
Download or read book Replacing Truth written by Kevin Scharp and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kevin Scharp proposes an original account of the nature and logic of truth, on which truth is an inconsistent concept that should be replaced for certain theoretical purposes. He argues that truth is best understood as an inconsistent concept; develops an axiomatic theory of truth; and offers a new kind of possible-worlds semantics for this theory.
Download or read book The Yablo Paradox written by Roy T Cook and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-05-29 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roy T Cook examines the Yablo paradox—a paradoxical, infinite sequence of sentences, each of which entails the falsity of all others later than it in the sequence—with special attention paid to the idea that this paradox provides us with a semantic paradox that involves no circularity. The three main chapters of the book focus, respectively, on three questions that can be (and have been) asked about the Yablo construction. First we have the Characterization Problem, which asks what patterns of sentential reference (circular or not) generate semantic paradoxes. Addressing this problem requires an interesting and fruitful detour through the theory of directed graphs, allowing us to draw interesting connections between philosophical problems and purely mathematical ones. Next is the Circularity Question, which addresses whether or not the Yablo paradox is genuinely non-circular. Answering this question is complicated: although the original formulation of the Yablo paradox is circular, it turns out that it is not circular in any sense that can bear the blame for the paradox. Further, formulations of the paradox using infinitary conjunction provide genuinely non-circular constructions. Finally, Cook turns his attention to the Generalizability Question: can the Yabloesque pattern be used to generate genuinely non-circular variants of other paradoxes, such as epistemic and set-theoretic paradoxes? Cook argues that although there are general constructions-unwindings—that transform circular constructions into Yablo-like sequences, it turns out that these sorts of constructions are not 'well-behaved' when transferred from semantic puzzles to puzzles of other sorts. He concludes with a short discussion of the connections between the Yablo paradox and the Curry paradox.
Download or read book Deflationism and Paradox written by JC Beall and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-11-10 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deflationist accounts of truth are widely held in contemporary philosophy: they seek to show that truth is a dispensable concept with no metaphysical depth. However, logical paradoxes present problems for deflationists, which their work has struggled to overcome. In this volume of fourteen original essays, a distinguished team of contributors explore the extent to which, if at all, deflationism can accommodate paradox. The volume will be of interest to philosophers of logic, philosophers of language, and anyone working on truth.
Download or read book Formal Theories of Truth written by Jc Beall and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Truth is one of the oldest and most central topics in philosophy. Formal theories explore the connections between truth and logic, and they address truth-theoretic paradoxes such as the Liar. Three leading philosopher-logicians now present a concise overview of the main issues and ideas in formal theories of truth. Beall, Glanzberg, and Ripley explain key logical techniques on which such formal theories rely, providing the formal and logical background needed to develop formal theories of truth. They examine the most important truth-theoretic paradoxes, including the Liar paradoxes. They explore approaches that keep principles of truth simple while relying on nonclassical logic; approaches that preserve classical logic but do so by complicating the principles of truth; and approaches based on substructural logics that change the shape of the target consequence relation itself. Finally, inconsistency and revision theories are reviewed, and contrasted with the approaches previously discussed. For any reader who has a basic grounding in logic, this book offers an ideal guide to formal theories of truth.
Download or read book The Revision Theory of Truth written by Anil Gupta and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this rigorous investigation into the logic of truth Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap explain how the concept of truth works in both ordinary and pathological contexts. The latter include, for instance, contexts that generate Liar Paradox. Their central claim is that truth is a circular concept. In support of this claim they provide a widely applicable theory (the "revision theory") of circular concepts. Under the revision theory, when truth is seen as circular both its ordinary features and its pathological features fall into a simple understandable pattern. The Revision Theory of Truth is unique in placing truth in the context of a general theory of definitions. This theory makes sense of arbitrary systems of mutually interdependent concepts, of which circular concepts, such as truth, are but a special case.
Download or read book Truth Probability and Paradox written by John Leslie Mackie and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1973 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classic work by one of the most brilliant figures in post-war analytic philosophy.
Download or read book Philosophy and the Human Paradox written by Alan Montefiore and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-09 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book collects essays by Alan Montefiore on the role philosophy plays in the formation of the self, and how philosophical questions regarding the nature of reason, truth, and identity inform ethics and politics. It offers a comprehensive overview of Montefiore’s influential, non-dogmatic philosophical voice. Throughout his 70-year career, Montefiore sought to bridge the analytic/continental divide and develop a new way of thinking about philosophy. He defines philosophy as the search for a higher-order understanding of whatever the situation or activity in which one may be involved or engaged, an understanding which may be achieved and expressed by and in a variety of different forms of philosophical persuasion, and which may serve to shed new light on particular problems. The book’s essays, half of which are previously unpublished, are divided into two thematic sections. The first focuses on the nature of philosophy, while the second addresses the relationship between philosophy and moral and political responsibilities. Philosophy and the Human Paradox will be of interest to philosophers and students who work on ethics, Kantian and post-Kantian continental philosophy, and political philosophy.
