Analetheism: a Pyrrhic victory
Abstract
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.Oxford, UK and Malden, USAANALAnalysis0003-26382005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.April 200565216773Articles Analetheism: a Pyrrhic victory Bradley Armour-Garb 1. Introduction In a recent article Jc Beall and David Ripley (2004), bending a term of Terry Parsonsâs (1990), describe a position concerning the paradoxes of self-reference that they call âanaletheismâ, and claim that it would appear to be just as good as the dialetheic account advocated by Priest (1987) â hereafter IC. They say: As far as we can see, the analetheist achieves whatever expressive virtues that the dialetheist achieves; and she also partakes of the same sort of expressive vices as the dialetheist. What could tip the scales in favour of one position over the other? We do not know. (33) The present note provides an answer. IC provides what is, in effect, a three-valued logic in which the middle value is interpreted as both true and false. And since it is at least true, it is designated. Analetheism adopts exactly the same logic, but interprets the middle value as neither true nor false. What distinguishes analetheism from more simple-minded truth-value gap theories is precisely that it takes the middle value to be designated. In particular, things with the