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The Rationale Behind Revision-Rule Semantics

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Abstract

According to Gupta and Belnap, the “extensional behavior” of ‘true’ matches that of a circularly defined predicate. Besides promising to explain semantic paradoxicality, their general theory of circular predicates significantly liberalizes the framework of truth-conditional semantics. The authors’ discussions of the rationale behind that liberalization invoke two distinct senses in which a circular predicate’s semantic behavior is explained by a “revision rule” carrying hypothetical information about its extension. Neither attempted explanation succeeds. Their theory may however be modified to employ a relativized notion of extension. The resulting contextualist semantics for ‘true’ construes circularity as a pragmatic phenomenon.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 1001 Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA

    Lionel Shapiro

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Shapiro, L. The Rationale Behind Revision-Rule Semantics. Philos Stud 129, 477–515 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-004-2497-1

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