Skip to main content
Log in

The Chrysippus intuition and contextual theories of truth

Philosophical Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Contextual theories of truth are motivated primarily by the resolution they provide to paradoxical reasoning about truth. The principal argument for contextual theories of truth relies on a key intuition about the truth value of the proposition expressed by a particular utterance made during paradoxical reasoning, which Anil Gupta calls “the Chrysippus intuition.” In this paper, I argue that the principal argument for contextual theories of truth is circular, and that the Chrysippus intuition is false. I conclude that the philosophical motivation for contextual theories of truth fails.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Gupta (2001). Gupta observes that the Chrysippus intuition “is shared, as far as I know, by all advocates of contextual theories.” (p. 110) For appeals to the Chrysippus intuition, see Parsons (1974, section V), reprinted in Martin (1984a, pp. 9–45); Burge (1979, pp. 175–176), reprinted in Martin (1984a, pp. 83–117), at p. 90; Barwise and Etchemendy (1987, pp. 101, 137–138); Gaifman (1992, pp. 223–224 and pp. 246–247); and Simmons (1993, section 6.1).

  2. Robert Martin calls this “the revenge problem, namely that the Liar sentence seems to be true after all.” (Martin (1984b, p. 7)) In giving Chrysippus’s name to this intuition, Gupta follows Bocheński, according to whom Chrysippus’s view is that the Liar sentence is meaningless. See Bocheński (1961, p. 133); cited by Simmons (1993, p. 83). Ironically, there is rather strong evidence that Chrysippus would view such vacillations in judgment as occur in paradoxical reasoning as an oscillation in the mind too rapid to be noticed; if so, his view is in fact much closer to Gupta’s revision theory than any contextual theory. See Long and Sedley (1987, section 65G); Long (1974, pp. 170–178), especially pp. 176–177; and Nussbaum (1994, chapter 10, sections II–IV). Thanks to Bob Sharples for providing these references.

  3. Gupta writes that “according to the Chrysippus intuition, Zeno’s statement is to be assessed as pathological and Chrysippus’s statement is to be assessed as true.” (Gupta (2001, pp. 109–110)) Throughout this paper, I take a paradoxical sentence (proposition) to be one which is true iff not true. Roughly following Gupta, I take a pathological sentence (proposition) to be a sentence (proposition) which cannot stably be assigned a truth value. For the purposes of this discussion, the terms are co-extensive. Philosophers other than dialetheists conclude that a paradoxical sentence (proposition) is neither true nor false, i.e., pathological; dialetheists conclude that the sentence (proposition) is both true and false. Since my aim in this paper is to examine an argument offered to support contextual theories of truth, I do not discuss alternative theories.

  4. It may be pointed out that since Chrysippus utters C later than t0, he needs to utter ‘What Zeno said at time t0 is not true’ in order to speak properly, in which case his utterance is not a token of the same type as Z, and the Chrysippus intuition loses its interest. However, the case is easily recuperated by giving Zeno’s utterance a name such as “U,” and supposing that Zeno utters ‘U is not true’ at t0 and that Chrysippus utters ‘U is not true’ at a time later than t0, after reflecting that U is paradoxical and hence not true.

  5. Choice negation is contrasted with exclusion negation. For example, the proposition expressed by ‘Happiness is not triangular’ is true if ‘not’ expresses exclusion negation, since happiness is excluded from the triangular things. However, since happiness is not a geometrical figure, and so is outside the domain of potential bearers of triangularity, (or, alternatively, it is outside the domain of application of the predicate ‘is triangular’) the proposition expressed by ‘Happiness is not triangular’ is neither true nor false if ‘not’ expresses choice negation.

  6. Cf. the publications cited in footnote 1. Keith S. Donnellan and A. P. Ushenko reject the assumption regarding certain paradoxical sentences that they always have the same meaning. Both Donnellan and Ushenko give the Chrysippus intuition as their reason for adopting this view, but neither offers an account of the context sensitivity of the truth predicate. See Donnellan (1957) and Ushenko (1957).

  7. The principles used to assign objects to the extension of the truth predicate also assign level indices to the truth predicate. The level assigned may vary with the principle. Robert Koons develops Burge’s view further in Koons (1992).

  8. Barwise and Etchemendy’s view is more complex than I can fully present here. For a clear exposition of the view, see Gupta (1989).

  9. Gaifman’s formalism assigns truth values to pointers, where sentence tokens comprise a proper subset of pointers. Truth values are assigned according to a set of rules. The rules take into account the truth values of pointers germane to the pointer whose truth value is being assigned; the rules also establish which pointers are germane pointers. Thus, a more accurate characterization of the contextual element to which a token truth predication is sensitive, on Gaifman’s view, is the truth value of germane pointers.

  10. Simmons (1993, pp. 103–104).

  11. It is coherent to adopt a variation of the unarticulated constituent view according to which both the semantic content of the truth predicate and the unarticulated constituent associated with it are context-dependent, although this view requires special considerations to motivate it.

  12. Parsons explicitly discusses the context sensitivity of the verb ‘says’ and quantified expressions such as ‘what Zeno says at t0’. On Parsons’ view, both expressions are context-sensitive. Nevertheless, Parsons is aware that Liar sentences may be formulated with a directly referential expression instead of a quantified expression. Thus, in order to accommodate Parsons’ view, the Chrysippus argument may be reformulated by replacing Z and C with Zeno’s utterance of L1: ‘L1 is not true’ and Chrysippus’s type identical utterance of L2: ‘L1 is not true’.

  13. This conclusion is meant to be neutral with respect to the three varieties of context-sensitivity surveyed above.

  14. It may be protested that TC should be formulated more precisely, for example, as: “A sentence token, S, is true with respect to a context, c, iff the proposition expressed by S with respect to c is the case.” Two points are due in response. First, if TC is to be formulated as precisely as it might, difficult and controversial philosophical questions about facts will need to be answered in order to replace the imprecise phrase ‘the case’. Second, and more importantly, it should be kept in mind that Chrysippus’s reasoning here is pre-theoretic, and adduces a highly plausible principle capturing the correspondence intuition, or something like it; here, that a true sentence token corresponds to, or correlates with, the way that that sentence says the world is. It is fair to suppose that Chrysippus’s reasoning appeals to a slightly different version of TC, but no such principle is plausible if appealing to it blocks his intuitive and familiar reasoning.

  15. Simmons (1993, p. 106). Italics are Simmons’; boldface is mine. I have replaced Simmons’ (L) and (R) with Z and C, respectively; (L) is the liar sentence ‘(L) is not trueL’ and (R) is ‘(L) is trueR’.

  16. Simmons (1993, p. 105). Here I have replaced Simmons’ (L) and (P) with Z and C, respectively. (L) is the liar sentence ‘(L) is not trueL’, and (P) is the type-identical sentence token, ‘(L) is not trueL’, which is uttered when evaluating (L).

  17. Note also that the intuition that C is false (perhaps arrived at after reflecting further on the paradox) must likewise be rejected, since Z and C are to receive the same truth evaluation. Similarly, an intuitive appeal that exactly one of Z or C does not express a proposition must be rejected, since Z and C are to receive the same truth evaluation, but would not if only one of them expresses a proposition. As above, to appeal to the context sensitivity of a truth predication sentence type in order to support these intuitive appeals begs the question.

  18. See Grim (1995) and Juhl (1997).

  19. In fact, in forthcoming work I offer independent arguments for the sensitivity of the truth predicate to the semantic context.

  20. My thanks to Ray Elugardo, Robert Howell, Martin Montminy, Matthew McGrath, and Chris Swoyer for helpful comments, discussion, and suggestions. I would also like to thank helpful audiences at the 2004 meeting of the Society for Exact Philosophy and the 2005 Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, where this paper was presented, and two anonymous referees.

References

  • Barwise, J., & Etchemendy, J. (1987). The liar: An essay on truth and circularity. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bocheński, I. M. (1961). A history of formal logic. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burge, T. (1979). Semantical paradox. Journal of Philosophy, 76, 169–198.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Donnellan, K. S. (1957). A note on the liar paradox. Philosophical Review, 66, 394–397.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gaifman, H. (1992). Pointers to truth. Journal of Philosophy, 89, 223–261.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grim, P. (1995). Review of universality and the liar: an essay on truth and the diagonal argument. Philosophical Review, 104, 467–469.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gupta, A. (1989). Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy, The liar: an essay on truth and circularity. Philosophy of Science, 56, 697–709.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gupta, A. (2001). Truth. In L. Goble (Ed.), The Blackwell guide to philosophical logic (pp. 90–114). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Juhl, C. (1997). A context-sensitive liar. Analysis, 57, 202–204.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koons, R. C. (1992). Paradoxes of belief and strategic rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Long, A. A. (1974). Hellenistic philosophy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Long, A. A., & Sedley, D. N. (1987). The Hellenistic philosophers (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, R. L. (Ed.) (1984a). Recent essays on truth and the liar paradox. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin, R. L. (1984b). Introduction. In R. L. Martin (Ed.), Recent essays on truth and the liar paradox (pp. 1–8). New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nussbaum, M. (1994). The therapy of desire: Theory and practice in Hellenistic ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parsons, C. (1974). The liar paradox. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 3, 381–412.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simmons, K. (1993). Universality and the liar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ushenko, A. P. (1957). An addendum to the note on the liar-paradox. Mind, 66, 98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jay Newhard.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Newhard, J. The Chrysippus intuition and contextual theories of truth. Philos Stud 142, 345–352 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9190-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9190-0

Keywords

Navigation