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On Meaningfulness and Truth

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Abstract

We show how to construct certain “L M, T -type” interpreted languages, with each such language containing meaningfulness and truth predicates which apply to itself. These languages are comparable in expressive power to the L T -type, truth-theoretic languages first considered by Kripke, yet each of our L M, T -type languages possesses the additional advantage that, within it, the meaninglessness of any given meaningless expression can itself be meaningfully expressed. One therefore has, for example, the object level truth (and meaningfulness) of the claim that the strengthened Liar is meaningless.

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McDonald, B.E. On Meaningfulness and Truth. Journal of Philosophical Logic 29, 433–482 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026528019554

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