TY - JOUR
T1 - Is dialetheism an idealism? The Russellian Fallacy and the dialetheist's Dilemma
AU - Berto, Francesco
PY - 2007/12/1
Y1 - 2007/12/1
N2 - 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 paraconsis-tentist 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 para-consistencv - and this could be a welcome result for a dialetheist.
AB - 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 paraconsis-tentist 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 para-consistencv - and this could be a welcome result for a dialetheist.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=61449451911&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/j.1746-8361.2007.01101.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1746-8361.2007.01101.x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:61449451911
SN - 0012-2017
VL - 61
SP - 235
EP - 263
JO - Dialectica
JF - Dialectica
IS - 2
ER -