- From: Miles Sabin <msabin@interx.com>
- Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 10:59:14 +0100
- To: <www-rdf-logic@w3.org>
Seth Russell wrote,
> How about ?
>
> {{ this a n3:falsehood } a n3:NonSense }
Nice try, but no cigar.
Declaring paradoxical propositions nonsensical or meaningless or
neither true nor false, has a very long history. Unfortunately it
doesn't work, because we can easily construct new variants of the
liar, eg.,
This sentence is false or meaningless
* If it's true it's either false or meaningless.
* If it's false it's true.
* If it's meaningless it's true (in which case it's not meaningless)
More generally, for any proposed resolution which attributes semantic
property P to the liar sentence, we can construct a strengthened liar,
This sentence is false or P
which will be paradoxical.
The only "solution" I'm aware of which doesn't have this problem is
the paraconsistent logic approach ... use a logic weak enough that it
supports local contradictions without being reduced to triviality
(ie. you can't infer an arbitrary Q from P&!P) ... but that has its
own problems.
Cheers,
Miles
Received on Wednesday, 1 May 2002 05:59:52 UTC