Julien Murzi: Instability and Revenge

Lecture by Julien Murzi (Salzburg), organized by Grolog

Contraction-free approaches to semantic paradox recommend a restriction of the structural rule of contraction (SContr), that if Γ, φ, φ ⊢ ψ, then Γ, φ ⊢ ψ. They make for a unified solution to the semantic paradoxes: one that extends to the recently much-discussed paradoxes of naïve validity (Shapiro, 2011; Beall and Murzi, 2013; Murzi, 2014; Field, 2014).

Contraction-free approaches face a twofold challenge. They must make sense of the failure of SContr and justify restrictions of SContr to particular sentences. In this paper, I focus on Elia Zardini’s recent suggestion that paradoxical sentences are unstable and that, for this reason, they do not satisfy SContr (Zardini, 2011, 2013a). I show that instability cannot be put to its intended use, that of semantically characterising paradoxical sentences and of justifying restrictions of SContr, on pain of inconsistency. The result generalises: no property of sentences giving rise to paradox when contracted on can do the job.

Julien Murzi

Julien Murzi is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the Philosophy Department (KGW) at the University of Salzburg, and an external member of the Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy. He specializes in philosophy of language and philosophy of logic, with serious interests in metaphysics, epistemology and semantics. He has numerous publications in journals such as Analysis, Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Philosophical Studies, among others.

When & where?

Thursday 10 September 2015, 3.15-17
Faculty of Philosophy Groningen, room Gamma