Le Paradoxe du "Sorite" d'Eubulide de Mégare. by E. W.

Beth
Review by: J. F. Thomson
The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Dec., 1956), p. 381
Published by: Association for Symbolic Logic
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 REVIEWS 381

K. R. POPPER. Self-reference and meaning in ordinary language. Mind, n. s.

vol. 63 (1954), pp. 162-169.
ELLIS EVANS. On some semantic illusions. Ibid., pp. 203-218.
AVRUM STROLL. Is everyday language inconsistent? Ibid., pp. 219-225.
Popper, in an imaginary dialogue, wishes to deny that paradoxes like the Liar
can be resolved simply by holding that no meaningful statement refers to itself. For
some do; he makes Theaetetus say truly that he is speaking so softly that Socrates
cannot hear what he is saying. Also there are cases of a warning referring to a question
which is about the warning, and semantical paradoxes can be constructed with such
"indirect" self-reference. But he does not distinguish between sentences which are
about their own syntactical features (or acoustical features of one of their own tokens)
and sentences about their own semantical properties. His unnamed opponents would
presumably invoke such a distinction. Inrany case it seems that an adequate discussion
of this topic would distinguish different kinds of self-reference.
Popper's discussion of "What I am now saying is meaningful" (S) seems inconclu-
sive. Theaetetus claims to prove the truth and hence the significance of this by reductio.
I. e., suppose it false, then its contradictory is true, but then both true and meaning-
less, which is absurd. But he does not consider the reply that if S expresses nothing
there is nothing relevant to suppose false. Another argument is that S can be arithme-
tised (as a formula which says of itself that it is well-formed); it then becomes a theorem
of arithmetic. This analogy shows at most that S is grammatically correct, which is
not in dispute.
Evans discusses Russell's dictum (1941, p. 39) that "a function is not a well-defined
function unless all its values are well-defined." But he does not explain his use of
such critical terms as 'define,' 'property of significance,' 'denote,' and 'convey,' and
as a result his treatment is almost impossible to follow.
Stroll considers the claim that since the semantical paradoxes show everyday
language to be inconsistent, logical analyses should be carried out exclusively with
respect to formalised systems. He says in effect that the paradoxes show only that a
user of a natural language might possibly contradict himself, not that he must or
inevitably will. Further, common-sense considerations make it unlikely that any one
would contradict himself in the relevant way. He concludes that it is not necessary
to reject natural languages for purposes of logical analysis. J. F. THOMSON
E. W. BETH. Le paradoxe du "sorite" d'Eubulide de Migare. La vie, la pensce,
Actes du Congris des Sociotcs de Philosophie de Langue Franfaise (Grenoble,
12-16 septembre 1954), Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1954, pp. 237-241.
Beth sees a connection between the paradox attributed to Eubulides (if you pluck
one hair from a good head of it you don't make the owner bald, it should therefore
be impossible to make him bald by continuing the process) and co-inconsistency.
He suggests that the paradox may be a popular version of a more serious argument,
brought by Eubulides against Aristotle's doctrine of the potential infinite, which is
now lost. According to his reconstruction the lost argument was a reductio ad absurdum
with the conclusion that a "potentially infinite" set may be a proper subset of a finite one.
The connection with co-inconsistency did not seem to the reviewer to be more than
tenuous. J. F. THOMSON
ARTHUR PAP. Propositions, sentences, and the semantic definition of truth. Theoria
(Lund), vol. 20 (1954), pp. 23-35.
Let sentences got from 'x is true =- p' by replacing 'x' by the name of a sentence
S and 'p' by S be called T-sentences. Pap says that Tarski requires that his definition
of truth have all T-sentences as consequences, and brings three objections against
this procedure:

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