Matti Eklund

Numerous philosophical problems, otherwise quite different in character, are of the following form. Certain claims which seem not only obviously true, but even constitutive of the meanings of the expressions employed, can be shown to lead to absurdity when taken together. All such problems can justly be called paradoxes. The paradoxes I examine are the liar paradox, the sorites paradox, and the personal identity paradox posed by the fission problem. ;I argue that in these cases, the claims that jointly lead to absurdity really are constitutive of the meanings of the expressions employed, in the following ways. First, semantic competence with the expressions involves being disposed to accept these claims. Second, the claims are reference-determining, in that the semantic values of the expressions employed are constrained by the condition that these claims should come out true, or as nearly true as possible. If a claim or principle is constitutive of meaning in both of these ways, I call it meaning-constitutive. When the meaning-constitutive principles for some expressions of a language are inconsistent, I call the language inconsistent. This is a stipulative definition; but it accords well with what other theorists who have talked about languages being inconsistent, for example Alfred Tarski, have had in mind. ;In chapters one and two, I argue that our language is inconsistent. In chapter three, I relate my theses to Frank Jackson's and David Lewis's views on reference-determination. ;Another problem posed by the liar paradox concerns important theses in the philosophy of language. The liar reasoning shows that under certain conditions, a natural language cannot contain a predicate satisfying the T-schema. But many theses in the philosophy of language presuppose that truth satisfies the T-schema. In chapter four I attempt to resolve this conflict

I here critically discuss Hilary Putnam's views on ontology, especially as recently expounded in his Ethics without Ontology. In particular, I discuss Putnam's thesis of conceptual relativity and his criticism of the thesis that objectivity requires objects. Although I think that much of what Putnam says is important, and that there are important elements of truth to it, my points will largely be negative. Along the way I will discuss Putnam's and Wittgenstein's views in the philosophy of mathematics, and I will compare Putnam's metaontological views with those of William James, Michael Dummett, Crispin Wright and Simon Blackburn

The main question of the paper is that ofwhat vagueness consists in. This question must be distinguished from other questions about vagueness discussed in the literature. It is argued that familiar accounts of vagueness for general reasons failto answer the question ofwhat vagueness consists in. A positive view is defended, according to which, roughly, the vagueness of an expression consists in it being part ofsemantic competence to accept a tolerance principle for the expression. Since tolerance principles are inconsistent, this is an inconsistency view on vagueness.

Here is the liar paradox. We have a sentence, (L), which somehow says of itself that it is false. Suppose (L) is true. Then things are as (L) says they are. (For it would appear to be a mere platitude that if a sentence is true, then things are as the sentence says they are.) (L) says that (L) is false. So, (L) is false. Since the supposition that (L) is true leads to contradiction, we can assert that (L) is false. But since this is just what (L) says, (L) is then true. (For it would appear to be a mere platitude that if things are as a given sentence says they are, the sentence is true.) So (L) is true. So (L) is both true and false. Contradiction.