Laurence Goldstein

(1947 - 2014)

The general aim of this project is to fundamentally re-think the design of teaching materials in view of what is now known about cognitive deficits and about what Howard Gardner has termed ‘multiple intelligences’. The applicant has implemented this strategy in two distinct areas, the first involving the writing of an English language programme for Chinese speakers, the second involving the construction of specialized equipment for teaching elementary logic to blind students. The next phase (for which funding is sought) is to test the effectiveness of the logic device, because in theory – the one to be tested – materials the design of which is informed by the above rationale will provide a richer learning experience for non-impaired users.

A syntactically correct number-specification may fail to specify any number due to underspecification. For similar reasons, although each sentence in the Yablo sequence is syntactically perfect, none yields a statement with any truth-value. As is true of all members of the Liar family, the sentences in the Yablo sequence are so constructed that the specification of their truth-conditions is vacuous; the Yablo sentences fail to yield statements. The ‘revenge’ problem is easily defused. The solution to the semantical paradoxes offered here revives the mediaeval cassatio approach, one that largely disappeared due to its incomprehending rejection by influential contemporary writers such as William Shyreswood and Thomas Bradwardine. The diagnosis readily extends to the set-theoretic paradoxes