{"id":1401,"date":"2011-03-30T22:00:48","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T20:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=1401"},"modified":"2011-03-30T10:03:53","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T08:03:53","slug":"revenge-of-the-liar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=1401","title":{"rendered":"Revenge of the liar"},"content":{"rendered":"
Revenge of the liar:<\/strong> New essays on the paradox. Ed. by JC Beall<\/strong>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. 296. ISBN 9780199233908<\/a>. $49.95.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Caroline Gagn\u00e9<\/strong><\/a>, Universit\u00e9 Laval<\/em><\/p>\n

Are sentences spoken by a liar true or false? One suggestion would be to consider them to be a part of a category beyond truth and falsity; however, this beckons the revenge of the liar: dealing with a liar creates another one. The liar paradox also raises questions about logic, language, truth, and semantics. In this volume, fourteen experts focus on the nature of liar paradox from a logical perspective.<\/p>\n

In Ch. 1, JC Beall presents the background of the liar and his revenge, focusing on the truth, the liar and the revenge phenomenon, and the revengers\u2019 revenge. In Ch. 2, Roy T. Cook<\/strong> asserts that the concept of language is indefinitely extendable because of the revenge phenomenon. In this perspective, the semantic values of language should be indefinitely extendable as well.<\/p>\n

In Ch. 3, Matti Eklund<\/strong> studies general theses that are related to the liar phenomenon, focusing primarily on inexpressibility and weak universality. In Ch. 4, Hartry Field<\/strong> presents his theory of truth, which concerns received wisdoms about revenge. Thomas Hofweber<\/strong>, in Ch. 5, advances the idea that strict reading and generic reading are both valid senses of an inference rule \u2018just if truth-preserving\u2019 (15). This distinction may resolve the revenge phenomenon by viewing the rules as generically valid.<\/p>\n

In Ch. 6, Hannes Leitgeb<\/strong> discusses Field\u2019s theory (presented in Ch. 4) and proposes two metatheories\u2014one classical and one nonclassical\u2014to explore Field\u2019s theory of truth. Leitgeb\u2019s theory shares Field\u2019s logic. In Ch. 7, Tim Maudlin<\/strong> maintains that normative principles of assertion can be learned from the revenge phenomenon. He argues for three semantic categories: truth, falsity, and ungroundedness.<\/p>\n

In Ch. 8, Douglas Patterson<\/strong> proposes an inconsistency view of the semantic paradoxes in English. For Patterson, understanding a language is a relation to a false theory. Graham Priest<\/strong> (Ch. 9) focuses on a characterization of the liar\u2019s revenge, a discussion of Field\u2019s theory, and the background of Zermelo-Frankel set theory, which meets a revenge-like situation.<\/p>\n

Agustin Rayo<\/strong> and P. D. Welch<\/strong> (Ch. 10) advance that Field\u2019s theory of truth is not really revenge-free. In Ch. 11, Stephen Read<\/strong> discusses Thomas Bradwardine\u2019s (a physicist and theologian in the 1300s) theory of truth. Greg Restall<\/strong> (Ch. 12) examines the costs of using nonclassical solutions to solve the paradoxes of self-reference.<\/p>\n

In Ch. 13, Kevin Scharp<\/strong> argues that the liar\u2019s revenge shows that truth is an inconsistent concept. In Ch. 14, Stewart Shapiro<\/strong> maintains that the Burali-Forti\u2019s paradox has its own revenge issues and discusses the ways to deal with them. In Ch. 15, Keith Simmons<\/strong> demonstrates the difference between direct revenge and second-order revenge and presents his theory that may resolve second-order revenge.<\/p>\n

This book will be useful to anyone working in truth studies, philosophical logic, and philosophy of language, or for those interested in formal semantics and metaphysics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Revenge of the liar: New essays on the paradox. Ed. by JC Beall. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. 296. ISBN 9780199233908. $49.95. Reviewed by Caroline Gagn\u00e9, Universit\u00e9 Laval Are sentences spoken by a liar true or false? One suggestion would be to consider them to be a part of a category beyond truth and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1401"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1407,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401\/revisions\/1407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}