Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vsgnj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T12:15:20.161Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Falsity and untruth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2024

Peter van Inwagen*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, the University of Notre Dame (Emeritus), Notre Dame, IN, USA Department of Philosophy, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Abstract

Jc Beall's Divine Contradiction is a fascinating defence of the idea that contradictions are true of the tri-personal God. This project requires a logic that avoids the consequence that every proposition follows from a contradiction. Beall presents such a logic. This ‘gap/glut’ logic is the topic of this article. A gap/glut logic presupposes that falsity is not simply the absence of truth – for a proposition that is true may also be false. This article is essentially an examination of the idea that falsity is not simply untruth. The author rejects this position but does not claim to have an argument against it. In lieu of an argument, he presents three ‘considerations’. First, it is possible to give an intuitive semantics for the language of sentential logic that yields ‘classical’ sentential logic (including ‘p, ¬ pq’) and which makes no mention of truth-values. Second, it is possible to imagine a race who manage their affairs very well without having the concept ‘falsity’. Third, it is possible to construct a semantics that yields a logic identical with the dialetheist logic and which makes no mention of truth-values – and which, far from being plausible, seems pointless.

Type
Book Symposium
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beall, JC (2021) The Contradictory Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beall, JC (2022) Review of Zach Weber, Paradoxes and Inconsistent Mathematics. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Available at https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/paradoxes-and-inconsistent-mathematics/Google Scholar
Beall, JC (2023) Divine Contradiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Priest, G (2019) Objects that are not objects. In Szatkowski, M (ed.), Quo Vadis, Metaphysics? Essays in Honor of Peter van Inwagen. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 217229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Inwagen, P (2014) Modes of being and quantification. Disputatio: An International Journal of Philosophy 6, 123. (To be included in the author's The Abstract and the Concrete: Further Essays in Ontology, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Inwagen, P (2023) Being: A Study in Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar