Abstract
I provide a method of measuring the inconsistency of a set of sentences – from 1-consistency, corresponding to complete consistency, to 0-consistency, corresponding to the explicit presence of a contradiction. Using this notion to analyze the lottery paradox, one can see that the set of sentences capturing the paradox has a high degree of consistency (assuming, of course, a sufficiently large lottery). The measure of consistency, however, is not limited to paradoxes. I also provide results for general sets of sentences.
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Knight, K. Measuring Inconsistency. Journal of Philosophical Logic 31, 77–98 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015015709557
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015015709557