Re: Intuitions, Illusions and Common Sense

Neil W Rickert says...
>
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Daryl McCullough) writes:
>>Neil W Rickert says...
>
>>>When I first came across the liar paradox (as a child), I found it
>>>amusing.  It never seemed puzzling.  It never seemed that there was
>>>anything that had to be solved.
>
>>Well nothing ever *has* to be solved, but by definition, a paradox
>>consists of a sequence of reasoning steps that *appear* to be valid,
>>but which lead to a nonsensical or contradictory conclusion. The
>>puzzle is to figure which step or steps was invalid.
>
>It never appeared to be valid to me.  But then I don't assume natural
>language statements to be logic.

The liar paradox isn't particularly about natural language. It
can be formalized easily enough, the contradiction leading to
the conclusion (Tarski's theorem) that no sufficiently expressive
language can contain its own truth predicate.

>The liar is amusing because it has the apparent form of a natural
>language statement, but what it says is nonsense.  In that sense, the
>liar is like some of Lewis Carrol's nonsense sentences, or Chomsky's
>"colorless green ideas sleep furiously".

No, it's not like that at all.

--
Daryl McCullough
Ithaca, NY