Response to Heck

Abstract

In Heck (2012), Richard Heck presents variants on the familiar liar paradox, intended to reveal limitations of theories of transparent truth. But all existing theories of transparent truth can respond to Heck's variants in just the same way they respond to the liar. These new variants thus put no new pressure on theories of transparent truth.

More on ‘A Liar Paradox’

“……Any reason not to like a transparent truth theorist's response to Heck's arguments is already a reason not to like their response to the ordinary liar, since these responses match. (Ripley, , p. 222) So, Ripley is claiming, there is nothing new in my discussion that should worry fans of transparent truth‐theories.…”

“…Because of this, transparent responses to the usual formulation of the liar paradox extend without modification to Heck's variants. (Ripley, , p. 220) In the first sentence, Ripley is contrasting “existing transparent truth‐theories” with other collections of truth‐theoretic principles I'd considered in an earlier paper (Heck, , §3.2). Those ones are, as he implies, consistent with the existence of sentences like Λ but inconsistent with the existence of terms like λ .…”

“…Because of this, transparent responses to the usual formulation of the liar paradox extend without modification to Heck's variants. (Ripley, , p. 220)…”

“……Any reason not to like a transparent truth theorist's response to Heck's arguments is already a reason not to like their response to the ordinary liar, since these responses match. (Ripley, , p. 222)…”

“…Having thus explained what I did, and did not, intend to accomplish in my earlier paper, I now turn to two replies to it, one by David Ripley () and one by Julien Murzi ().…”