Homework A6

Presumably, a correspondence theorist of truth in the tradition of Roys paper

would retort the statement that there is know proof of X, so there is no truth of it either

by stating that proof is not truth. Under the correspondence theory of truth, truth is

something that exists independently of how one comes to find out that it is a truth. It is

not impossible to think that there would be facts about the world even if no one knew

they were facts. That is because under the correspondence theory of truth, no one has to

know if a fact is true in order for it to be true. All that must obtain is that for something to

be true, it must correctly represent the way the world is. There does not need to be any

sort of test that can be implemented in order to discover that something is true; ability to

discover is not a condition for truth under this account. Therefore, even if there is no

proof about some statement X, statement X should still be either true or false, because

statement X will still state something about the world, and whatever it states will either

correctly represent, or not, the way that the world actually is. Even without proof of X,

there will still exist truth of X.

The Epimendides case as a paradox is an interesting and fairly complex one to

resolve, as simpler solutions to other seeming paradoxes are not applicable to this one.

The story is that there is a Cretan named Epimendides who became embarrassed by his

compatriots, so he once made the statement, surely believing it, that All Cretans lie.

Consider this statement; if Epimendides is being truthful, and his statement is that All

Cretans lie we have to conclude that since he is a Cretan, he is lying. Epimendides

telling the truth entails that he is lying. However, if he is lying, and his statement is that

All Cretans lie and we know him to be a Cretan, and also suppose that it really is
indeed that case that the other Cretans are liars, we conclude that he is telling the truth.

Epimendides lying, and assuming that the other Cretans are indeed liars, entails that

Epimendides is telling the truth. Therefore, totaling all of this together, when

Epimendides is telling the truth, he is lying. When he is lying, he is telling the truth. This

is the paradox, as under either assumption, the opposite of our assumption is logically

entailed.

One of the more interesting solutions to resolving these paradoxes comes from

Kripke. Kripke proposes dealing with the paradoxes by creating a language that contains

its own truth predicate. The truth predicate for this language will have to be interpreted,

though the predicate will only be interpreted partially. In order to give a correct and

robust interpretation, truth and falsity will have to be handled separately. Under this

construction, the interpretation for our truth function will actually be a pair <S1,S2> with

S1 containing all object language propositions that are true, and S2 containing all object

language propositions that are false. So S1 will contain a true proposition such as snow

is white and S2 will contain some false proposition such as snow is red. From this, we

can continue to add true propositions and build up the interpretation, so something like

snow is white is true will also go into S1 as a true proposition, as snow is white

already existed in S1 as a true proposition. This expands the interpretation of the truth

predicate. Therefore, on this account, something is true when it exists in S1, and false

when it exists in S2. It seems as if this construction can go on forever, but it cannot. At

some point the construction will fail to add something to T. The issue here is that some

propositions will not exist in the interpretation, namely some of the paradoxical ones, and

therefore lack value, even though they seem to genuinely express something. The failure
is similar to the failure of Tarskis method, however, Kripkes method seems to avoid

some of the arbitrariness that was inherent to Tarski. Kripkes method still seems to be

the more robust way of handling the paradoxes however, even if some misgivings may

still occur. Perhaps the reason they do not have a value is precisely because they are

paradoxical, and it might not be possible to handle them in an intelligible way. It would

be perhaps short sighted to say they are simply false, and contrary to logic to accept them

as contradictions. Perhaps assigning no value to them is one of the better options

available.