Is Dialetheism an Idealism? The Russellian Fallacy and the Dialetheist?s Dilemma

Abstract

In his famous work on vagueness, Russell named 'fallacy of verbalism' the fallacy that consists in mistaking the properties of words for the properties of things. In this paper, I examine two (clusters of) mainstream paraconsistent logical theories -the non-adjunctive and relevant approaches -, and show that, if they are given a strongly paraconsistent or dialetheic reading, the charge of committing the Russellian Fallacy can be raised against them in a sophisticated way, by appealing to the intuitive reading of their underlying semantics. The meaning of 'intuitive reading' is clarified by exploiting a well-established distinction between pure and applied semantics. If the proposed arguments go through, the dialetheist or strong paraconsistentist faces the following Dilemma: either she must withdraw her claim to have exhibited true contradictions in a metaphysically robust sense -therefore, inconsistent objects and/or states of affairs that make those contradictions true; or she has to give up realism on truth , and embrace some form of anti-realistic (idealistic, or broadly constructivist) metaphysics. Sticking to the second horn of the Dilemma, though, appears to be promising: it could lead to a collapse of the very distinction, commonly held in the literature, between a weak and a strong form of paraconsistency -and this could be a welcome result for a dialetheist.

On the Possibility of Realist Dialetheism

“…But it can be put in terms analogous to NEG:  14 To block Kroon's argument, I use Berto's work on (PE) to identify those sentences that should be necessarily false even for dialetheists. However, my line of thought should not be ascribed to Berto because he suggests, in Berto (2007), that dialetheists must take a non-realist, idealist stance toward true contradictions and regard Kroon's argument as valid, but he may well have independent reasons to sympathize with idealism.…”

Dialectic and Dialetheism

“…More recently, other authors, such as Berto 2007c, D'Agostini 2009a, and Redding 2007, have considered continuities between specific aspects of Hegel's philosophy (the meaning of metaphysics, the concept of truth, the analysis of paradoxes) and dialetheism. In what follows, I will focus on Priest's own account.…”

Paraconsistency and its Philosophical Interpretations

“…Then, when A is a dialetheia, there would have to be entities in virtue of A and ¬A are both true. Berto [7] analyzes this option in detail. And leaving aside the question about the correspondence theory of truth, Priest offers good reasons to accept inconsistent entities in the natural and social world ([22, Ch.…”