The Liar Puzzle

Hanoch Ben-Yami (Central European University)

Tarski, Kripke, and others following them have tried to develop a regimented or formal language that eliminates the Liar Paradox. Such attempts create alternative languages that at best do not con­tain the paradox, but as such they do not solve the problem in natural lan­guage, which we continue to use (so, what is their point?). Unlike this tradition, I claim, following Wittgenstein, that liar phenomena – and the Liar Paradox is merely one of many related phenomena – are not a problem. They are similar to division by zero, which is undefined yet shouldn’t lead us to revise anything in our concept of division. All that needs to be done is to specify the sentences that give rise to these phenomena, something I do by means of the concept of groundless or ungrounded sen­tences, derived mainly from Herzberger and Kripke.