The Aletheic Paradoxes and Semantic Relativism

Kevin Sharp (The Ohio State University) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (12 July 2012) about the aletheic paradoxes and semantic relativism. Abstract: I propose a solution to the aletheic paradoxes (e.g., the liar, Curry, and Yablo) on which truth predicates are assessment-sensitive. Truth is not an antecedently plausible topic for a semantic relativist treatment; nevertheless, the aletheic paradoxes give us good reason to think that truth is an inconsistent concept, and there are good reasons to think that semantic relativism is appropriate for inconsistent concepts. Thus, I show that a promising version of the best approach to the paradoxes is an application of semantic relativism to truth itself — arguing from results about the paradoxes and general considerations about language use to aletheic assessment-sensitivity. The first part of the talk focuses on replacing our inconsistent concept of truth, and the second on assessment-sensitivity with respect to truth predicates. The first contains an overview of my preferred approach to the paradoxes, which entails that truth is an inconsistent concept and should be replaced (for certain purposes) by a team of consistent concepts that can do its work without causing troubling paradoxes. The second part considers which treatment is most appropriate for our inconsistent concept of truth. In it, I propose an assessment-sensitivity view of truth, discuss some prominent objections to semantic relativism, and review some issues that arise for approaches to the aletheic paradoxes.