Dialetheism is the view that some statements can be both true and false simultaneously. More precisely, it is the belief that there can be a true statement whose negation is also true. Such statements are called "true contradictions", or dialetheia.

Dialetheism is not a system of formal logic; instead, it is a thesis about truth, that influences the construction of a formal logic logic, often based on pre-existing systems. Introducing dialetheism has various consequences, depending on the theory into which it is introduced. For example, in traditional systems of logic (e.g., classical logic and intuitionistic logic), every statement becomes true if a contradiction is true; this means that such systems become trivial when dialetheism is included as an axiom. Other logical systems do not explode in this manner when contradictions are introduced; such contradiction-tolerant systems are known as paraconsistent logics.

Graham Priest, of the University of Melbourne and the CUNY Graduate Center, is dialetheism's most prominent contemporary champion. He defines Dialetheism as the view that there are true contradictions.^[1] JC Beall of the University of Connecticut is another contemporary advocate. His position differs from Priest's in advocating constructive (methodological) deflationism regarding the truth predicate.^[2]

Motivations[link]

Dialetheism resolves certain paradoxes[link]

The Liar's paradox and Russell's paradox deal with self-contradictory statements in classical logic and naïve set theory, respectively. Contradictions are problematic in these theories because they cause the theories to explode—if a contradiction is true, then every proposition is true. The classical way to solve this problem is to ban contradictory statements, to revise the axioms of the logic so that self-contradictory statements do not appear. Dialetheists, on the other hand, respond to this problem by accepting the contradictions as true. Dialetheism allows for the unrestricted [axiom of comprehension] in set theory, claiming that any resulting contradiction is a theorem ^[3].

Dialetheism may accurately model human reasoning[link]

Ambiguous situations may cause humans to affirm both a proposition and its negation. For example, if John stands in the doorway to a room, it may seem reasonable both to affirm that John is in the room and to affirm that John is not in the room. Critics argue that this merely reflects an ambiguity in our language rather than a dialetheic quality in our thoughts; if we replace the given statement with one that is less ambiguous (such as "John is halfway in the room" or "John is in the doorway"), the contradiction disappears.

Dialetheism appears in other philosophical doctrines[link]

The Jain philosophical doctrine of anekantavada — non-one-sidedness — states that^{[citation needed]} all statements are true in some sense and false in another. Some interpret this as saying that dialetheia not only exist but are ubiquitous. Technically, however, a logical contradiction is a proposition that is true and false in the same sense; a proposition which is true in one sense and false in another does not constitute a logical contradiction. (For example, although in one sense a man cannot both be a "father" and "celibate", there is no contradiction for a man to be a spiritual father and also celibate; the sense of the word father is different here.)

The Buddhist logic system named Catuṣkoṭi similarly implies that a statement and its negation may possibly co-exist.

Graham Priest argues in Beyond the Limits of Thought that dialetheia arise at the borders of expressibility, in a number of philosophical contexts other than formal semantics.

Formal consequences[link]

In some logics, we can show that taking a contradiction Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): p \wedge \neg p

as a premise (that is, taking as a premise the truth of both Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): p
and Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \neg p

), we can prove any statement Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): q . Indeed, since Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): p

is true, the statement Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): p \vee q
is true (by generalization). Taking Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): p \vee q
together with Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \neg p
is a disjunctive syllogism from which we can conclude Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): q

. (This is often called the principle of explosion, since the truth of a contradiction makes the number of theorems in a system "explode".)

Any system in which any formula is provable is trivial and uninformative; this is the motivation for solving the semantic paradoxes. Dialethesists solve this problem by rejecting the principle of explosion, and, along with it, at least one of the more basic principles that lead to it, e.g. disjunctive syllogism or transitivity of entailment, or disjunction introduction.

Advantages[link]

The proponents of dialetheism mainly advocate its ability to avoid problems faced by other more orthodox resolutions as a consequence of their appeals to hierarchies. Graham Priest once wrote "the whole point of the dialetheic solution to the semantic paradoxes is to get rid of the distinction between object language and meta-language".^[1]

There are also dialetheic solutions to the sorites paradox.

Criticisms[link]

One important criticism of dialetheism is that it fails to capture something crucial about negation and, consequently, disagreement. Imagine John's utterance of P. Sally's typical way of disagreeing with John is a consequent utterance of ¬P. Yet, if we accept dialetheism, Sally's so uttering does not prevent her from also accepting P; after all, P may be a dialetheia and therefore it and its negation are both true. The absoluteness of disagreement is lost. The dialetheist can respond by saying that disagreement can be displayed by uttering "¬P and, furthermore, P is not a dialetheia". Again, though, the dialetheist's own theory is his Achilles' heel: the most obvious codification of "P is not a dialetheia" is ¬(P & ¬P). But what if this itself is a dialetheia as well? One dialetheist response is to offer a distinction between assertion and rejection. This distinction might be hashed out in terms of the traditional distinction between logical qualities, or as a distinction between two illocutionary speech acts: assertion and rejection. Another criticism is that Dialetheism cannot describe logical consequences because of its inability to describe hierarchies.^[1]

Works cited[link]

• Frege, Gottlob. "Negation." Logical Investigations. Trans. P. Geach and R. H Stoothoff. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977. 31–53.
• Parsons, Terence. "Assertion, Denial, and the Liar Paradox." Journal of Philosophical Logic 13 (1984): 137–152.
• Parsons, Terence. "True Contradictions." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (1990): 335–354.
• Priest, Graham. In Contradiction. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff (1987). (Second Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.)
• Priest, Graham. "What Is So Bad About Contradictions?" Journal of Philosophy 95 (1998): 410–426.

See also[link]

Logic portal

• Problem of future contingents
• Jorge Luis Borges' The Garden of Forking Paths
• Many-worlds interpretation
• Leibniz's compossibility
• Liar paradox
• Gödel's incompleteness theorems
• Doublethink

References[link]

External links[link]

• Graham Priest. Dialetheism. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2004.
• JC Beall UCONN Homepage
• (Blog & ~Blog)
• Kabay on dialetheism and trivialism (includes both published and unpublished works)

Timothy Williamson (born Uppsala, 6 August 1955) is a British philosopher whose main research interests are in philosophical logic, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics.

He is currently the Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of New College, Oxford. He was previously Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh (1995–2000); Fellow and Lecturer in Philosophy at University College, Oxford (1988–1994); and Lecturer in Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin (1980–1988). He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 2004 to 2005.

He is a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA),^[1] the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters,^[2] Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) and a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Education[link]

Timothy Williamson's education began at Leighton Park School and continued at Henley Grammar School. He then went to Oxford University. He graduated in 1976 with a B.A. (first class honours) in Mathematics and Philosophy, and in 1981 with a doctorate in philosophy (D.Phil.) for a thesis examining "The Concept of Approximation to the Truth".

Contribution to philosophy[link]

Williamson has contributed to analytic philosophy of language, logic, metaphysics and epistemology.

On vagueness, he holds a position known as epistemicism, which states that every seemingly vague predicate (like "bald", or "thin") actually has a sharp cutoff, which is impossible for us to know. That is, there is some number of hairs such that anyone with that number is bald, and anyone with even one more hair is not. In actuality, this condition will be spelled out only partly in terms of numbers of hairs, but whatever measures are relevant will have some precise cutoff. This solution to the difficult sorites paradox was considered an astonishing and unacceptable consequence, but has become a relatively mainstream view since his defense of it.^[3] Williamson is fond of using the statement, "no one knows whether I am thin" to illustrate his view.^[4]

In epistemology, he suggests that the concept of knowledge is unanalyzable. This goes against the common trend in philosophical literature up to that point, which was to argue that knowledge could be analysed into constituent concepts. (Typically this would be justified true belief plus an extra factor.) He agrees that knowledge entails justification, truth and belief, but that it is conceptually primitive. He accounts for the importance of belief by discussing its connections with knowledge, but avoids the disjunctivist position of saying that belief can be analyzed as the disjunction of knowledge with some distinct, non-factive mental state.

Publications[link]

• Identity and Discrimination, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.
• Vagueness, London: Routledge, 1994.
• Knowledge and Its Limits, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• The Philosophy of Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.

Williamson has also published more than 120 articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.

External links[link]

• Timothy Williamson's homepage at University of Oxford's Department of Philosophy.
• The Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies video interview with Timothy Williamson October 4, 2010.
• Roundtable on aims and methods of philosophy with Timothy Williamson as the main presenter October 6, 2010

References[link]

Graham Priest

Born	1948
Era	Contemporary philosophy,
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Logic
Notable ideas	Dialetheism

Graham Priest^[1] (born 1948, London) is Boyce Gibson Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as a regular visitor at St. Andrews University. Priest is a fellow in residence at Ormond College. He was educated at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics. His thesis advisor was John Lane Bell.

Work[link]

He is known for his defense of dialetheism, his in-depth analyses of the logical paradoxes,^[2] and his many writings related to paraconsistent and other non-classical logics.

Priest, a long-time resident of Australia, is the author of numerous books, and has published articles in nearly every major philosophical and logical journal. He was a frequent collaborator with the late Richard Sylvan, a fellow proponent of dialetheism and paraconsistent logic.

Priest has also published on metaphilosophy.

In addition to his work in philosophy and logic, Priest practices Karate-do. He is 3rd Dan, International Karate-do Shobukai; 4th Dan, Shi’to Ryu, and an Australian National Kumite Referee and Kata Judge.

Selected works[link]

Books[link]

• On Paraconsistency (with R. Routley). Research Report #l3, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University l983. Reprinted as the introductory chapters of Paraconsistent Logic, G.Priest, R. Routley and J. Norman (eds.), Philosophia Verlag, 1989. Translated into Romanian as chapters in I. Lucica (ed.), Ex Falso Quodlibet: studii de logica paraconsistenta (in Romanian), Editura Technica, 2004.
• In Contradiction: A Study of the Transconsistent, Martinus Nijhoff, 1987. Second edition Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-19-926330-2
• Beyond the Limits of Thought, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Second edition, Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-19-924421-9
• Logic: a Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-289320-3 Translated into Portuguese as Lógica para Começar, Temas & Debates, 2002. Translated into Spanish as Una Brevísima Introducción a la Lógica, Oceano, 2006. Translated into Czech, as Logika – průvodce pro každého, Dokořán, 2007. Translated into Farsi(Persian) By Bahram Asadian, 2007. Translated into Japanese, Iwanami Shoten, 2008.
• Introduction to Non-Classical Logic, Cambridge University, 2001. Second edition: Introduction to Non-Classical Logic: From If to Is, Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-521-67026-5 [1] German translation of Part 1 of Introduction to Non-Classical Logic: From If to Is: Einführung in die nicht-klassische logic, Mentis 2008.
• Towards Non-Being: the Semantics and Metaphysics of Intentionality, Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-926254-3
• Doubt Truth to be a Liar, Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-19-926328-0
• Logic: A Brief Insight, Sterling 2010. ISBN 1-4027-6896-6

Articles[link]

• 'Gruesome Simplicity', Philosophy of Science 1976, 43, 432-7.
• 'Modality as a Metaconcept', Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 1976, XVII, 401-414. http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.ndjfl/1093887632
• 'The Formalization of Ockham's Theory of Supposition' (with S. Read), Mind 1977, LXXXVI, 109-113.
• 'A Refoundation of Modal Logic', Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 1977, XVIII, 340-354. http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.ndjfl/1093888007
• 'Logic of Paradox', Journal of Philosophical Logic 1979, 8, 219-241. Translated into French as ‘La Logique du Paradoxe’, Philosophie 94 (2007), 72-94.
• 'Indefinite Descriptions', Logique et Analyse 1979, 22, 5-21.
• 'A Note on the Sorites Paradox', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1979, 57, 74-75.
• 'Two Dogmas of Quineanism', Philosophical Quarterly 1979, 29, 289-301.
• 'Sense, Entailment and Modus Ponens', Journal of Philosophical Logic 1980, 9, 415-35.
• 'Merely Confused Supposition' (with S. Read), Franciscan Studies 1980, 40, XVIII, 265-297.
• 'Ockham's Rejection of Ampliation' (with S. Read), Mind 1981, 90, 274-9.
• 'The Argument from Design', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1981, 59, 422-43.
• 'The Logical Paradoxes and the Law of Excluded Middle', Philosophical Quarterly 1983, 33, 160-65.
• 'To be and not to be: Dialectical Tense Logic', Studia Logica 198l, 41, 157-176; translated into Bulgarian and reprinted in Filosofska Missal XL(8), 1984, 63-76.
• 'Lessons from Pseudo-Scotus' (with R. Routley), Philosophical Studies 1982, 42, 189-99.
• 'The Truth Teller Paradox' (with C. Mortensen), Logique et Analyse 1981, 95-6, 381-8.
• 'An Anti-Realist Account of Mathematical Truth', Synthese 1983, 57, 49-65. Reprinted as ch. 8 of D. Jacquette (ed.) Philosophy of Mathematics, Blackwell, 2002.
• 'Logic of Paradox Revisited', Journal of Philosophical Logic, 1984, 12, 153-179.
• 'Semantic Closure', Studia Logica l984, 43, 117-29.
• 'Introduction to Paraconsistent Logic' (with R. Routley), Studia Logica l983, 44, 3-16.
• 'Hypercontradictions', Logique et Analyse 1984, 107, 237-43.
• 'Hume's Final Argument', History of Philosophy Quarterly 1985, 2, 349-352.
• 'Contradictions in Motion', American Philosophical Quarterly 1985, 22, 339-46.
• 'Contradiction, Belief and Rationality', Proc. Aristotelian Society 1985/6, LXXXVI, 99-116.
• 'Tense and Truth Conditions', Analysis 1986, 46, 162-6.
• 'The Logic of Nuclear Armaments', Critical Philosophy 1986, 3, 107-113.
• 'Unstable Solutions to the Liar Paradox' in Self Reference: Reflections and Reflexivity, S.J. Bartlett and P. Suber (eds.), Nijhoff, 1987.
• 'Tense, Tense and TENSE', Analysis 47, 1987, 177-9.
• 'Reasoning about Truth', Technical Report TR-ARP-2/88, Automated Reasoning Project, Australian National University, 1988.
• 'Consistency by Default', Technical Report TR-ARP-3/88, Automated Reasoning Project, Australian National University, 1988.
• 'When Inconsistency is Inescapable', South African Journal of Philosophy, 7, 1988, 83-89.
• 'Primary Qualities are Secondary Qualities Too', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1989, 40 , 29-37.
• 'Contradiction, Assertion, and "Frege's Point"' (with R. Sylvan), Analysis, 49, 1989, 23-6.
• 'Reasoning About Truth', Artificial Intelligence, 39, 1989, 231-44.
• 'Denyer's $ not Backed by Sterling Arguments', Mind, 98, (1989), 265-8.
• 'Classical Logic Aufgehogen' in Paraconsistent Logic, G. Priest, R. Routley and J. Norman (eds.), Philosophia Verlag, 1989.
• 'Reductio ad Absurdum et Modus Tollendo Ponens' in Paraconsistent Logic, G. Priest, R. Routley and J. Norman (eds.), Philosophia Verlag, 1989. Reprinted in Rumanian in I. Lucica (ed.), Ex Falso Quodlibet: studii de logica paraconsistenta (in Romanian), Editura Technica, 2004.
• 'Relevance, Truth and Meaning' (with J. Crosthwaite) in Directions of Relevant Logic, R. Sylvan and J. Norman (eds.), Nijhoff, 1989.
• 'Gegen Wessel', Philosophische Logik 1989, 2, 109-20.
• 'Dialectic and Dialetheic', Science and Society 1990, 53, 388-415.
• 'Boolean Negation, and All That', Journal of Philosophical Logic 1990, 19, 201-15.
• 'Paraconsistent Dialogues' (with J.McKenzie), Logique et Analyse, 131-2 (1990), 339-57.
• 'Was Marx a Dialetheist?', Science and Society, 1991, 54, 468-75.
• 'Minimally Inconsistent LP', Studia Logica, 1991, 50, 321-331.
• 'Intensional Paradoxes', Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 32 (1991), 193-211. http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.ndjfl/1093635745
• 'The Limits of Thought - and Beyond', Mind 100 (1991), 361-70.
• Sorites and Identity', Logique et Analyse, 135-6 (1991), 293-6.
• 'Simplified Semantics for Basic Relevant Logics' (with R.Sylvan), Journal of Philosophical Logic, 1992, 21, 217-32.
• 'On Time', Philosophia, 50 (1992), 9-18.
• 'What is a Non-Normal World?', Logique et Analyse 35 (1992), 291-302.
• Another Disguise of the same Fundamental Problems: Barwise and Etchemendy on the Liar', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 71 (1993), 60-9.
• 'Yu and Your Mind', Synthese, 95 (1993), 459-60.
• 'Can Contradictions be True?, II', Proc. Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 67 (1993), 35-54.
• 'Derrida and Self-Reference', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 72 (1994), 103-11.
• 'The Structure of the Paradoxes of Self-Reference', Mind 103 (1994), 25-34.
• 'Is Arithmetic Consistent?', Mind, 103 (1994), 337-49.
• 'What Could the Least Inconsistent Number be?', Logique et Analyse, 37 (1994), 3-12.
• 'Goedel's Theorem and Creativity', in Creativity, ed. T Dartnall, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994. Reprinted with a different introduction as 'Goedel's Theorem and the Mind... Again', in Philosophy of Mind: the place of philosophy in the study of mind, eds. M.Michaelis and J. O'Leary-Horthorne, Kluwer, 1994.
• 'Etchemendy and Logical Consequence', Canadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (1995), 283-92.
• 'Gaps and Gluts: Reply to Parsons', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 25 (1995), 57-66.
• 'Multiple Denotation, Ambiguity and the Strange Case of the Missing Amoeba', Logique et Analyse, 38 (1995), 361-73.
• 'Some Priorities of Berkeley', Logic and Reality: Essays on the Legacy of Arthur Prior, ed. B.J.Copeland, Oxford University Press, 1996.
• 'Everett's Trilogy', Mind, 105 (1996), 631-47.
• 'On Inconsistent Arithmetics: Reply to Denyer', Mind, 105 (1996), 649-59.
• 'The Definition of Sexual Harassment' (with J.Crosthwaite), Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (1996), 66-82. Reprinted in G. Lee Bowie and Meredith Michaels (eds.), 13 Questions in Ethics and Social Philosophy, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 2nd ed., 1997.
• 'Paraconsistent Logic', Encyclopaedia of Mathematics; Supplement, ed. M. Hazenwinkle, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997, 400-1.
• 'Logic, Nonstandard', pp. 307–10, Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Supplement, ed. D.Borshert, MacMillan, 1996.
• Paraconsistent Logic' (with K.Tanaka), Stanford Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, created 1996. [2]
• On a Paradox of Hilbert and Bernays', Journal of Philosophical Logic 26 (1997), 45-56.
• 'The Linguistic Construction of Reality', Exordium 6 (1997), 1-7.
• 'Sylvan's Box', Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 38 (1997), 573-82. http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.ndjfl/1039540770
• 'Inconsistent Models of Arithmetic; I Finite Models', Journal of Philosophical Logic, 26 (1997), 223-35.
• Sexual Perversion', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (1997), 360-72. Translated into Croatian, ch. 9 of I. Primoratz (ed.), Suvremena filozofija seksualnosti, Zagreb: KruZak, 2003.
• 'Yablo's Paradox', Analysis 57 (1997), 236-42.
• 'Language, its Possibility, and Ineffability', pp. 790–794 of P. Wiengartner, G.Schurz and G.Dorn (eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International Wittgenstein Symposium, The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 1997.
• 'What's so Bad about Contradictions?', Journal of Philosophy 95 (1998), pp. 410–26
• On an Error in Grove's Proof' (with K.Tanaka), Logique et Analyse 158 (1997), 215-7.
• 'Paraconsistent Logic', Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.7, 208-11, ed. E.Craig, Routledge, 1998.
• 'Fuzzy Identity and Local Validity', Monist 81 (1998), 331-42.
• 'Number', Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol.7, 47-54, ed. E.Craig, Routledge, 1998.
• 'To be and Not to Be - That is the Answer. On Aristotle on the Law of Non-Contradiction', Philosophiegeschichte und Logische Analyse 1 (1998), 91-130.
• 'The Trivial Object and the Non-Triviality of a Semantically Closed Theory with Descriptions', Journal of Applied and Non-Classical Logic, 8 (1998), 171-83.
• 'The Import of Inclosure; some Comments on Grattan-Guiness’, Mind 107 (1998), 835-40.
• 'Dialetheism', Stanford Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, created 1998. [3]
• 'What not? A Defence of a Dialetheic Account of Negation', in D.Gabbay and H.Wansing (eds.), What is Negation?, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999.
• 'Negation as Cancellation, and Connexivism', Topoi 18 (1999), 141-8.
• 'On a Version of one of Zeno's Paradoxes', Analysis 59 (1999), 1-2.
• 'Perceiving Contradictions', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 77 (1999), 439-46.
• 'Semantic Closure, Descriptions and Triviality’, the Journal of Philosophical Logic 28 (1999), 549-58.
• 'Validity', pp. 183–206 of A.Varzi (ed.) The Nature of Logic, CSLI Publications, 1999. (European Review of Philosophy, vol. 4). An abbreviated version under the same title appears as pp. 18–25 of The Logica Yearbook, 1997, ed. T.Childers, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Republic.
• 'Truth and Contradiction', Philosophical Quarterly 50 (2000), 305-19.
• 'Paraconsistent Belief Revision', Theoria 68 (2001), 214-28.
• 'Could everything be True?', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (2000), 189-95.
• 'The Logic of Backwards Inductions', Economics and Philosophy 16 (2000), 267-85.
• ‘Worlds Apart', Mind! 2000 (a supplement to Mind 109 (2000)), 25-31.
• ‘Vasil’év and Imaginary Logic’ , History and Philosophy of Logic 21 (2000), 135-46.
• 'Motivations for Paraconsistency: the Slippery Slope from Classical Logic to Dialetheism', in D.Batens et al. (eds.), Frontiers of Paraconsistent Logic, Research Studies Press, 2000.
• 'Inconsistent Models of Arithmetic II; the Genera Case', Journal of Symbolic Logic 65 (2000), 1519-29.
• ‘On the Principle of Uniform Solution: a Reply to Smith’, Mind 109 (2000), 123-6.
• ‘Objects of Thought’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 78 (2000), 494-502.
• Logic: One or Many’ in J. Woods, and B. Brown (eds.), pp. 23–28 of Logical Consequence: Rival Approaches Proceedings of the 1999 Conference of the Society of Exact Philosophy, Stanmore: Hermes, 2001.
• 'Heidegger and the Grammar of Being’, ch. 10 of R.Gaskin (ed.), Grammar in Early 20th Century Philosophy, Routledge, 2001.
• ‘Why it’s Irrational to Believe in Consistency’, pp. 284–93 of Rationality and Irrationality; Proc. 23rd International Wittgenstein Symposium, eds., B.Brogard and B.Smith, 2001.
• 'Paraconsistent Logic', Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Vol. 6, pp. 287 – 393, eds. D.Gabbay and F. Guenthner, 2nd edition, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002.
• 'Inconsistency and the Empirical Sciences', in J. Meheus (ed.), Inconsistency in Science, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002.
• ‘Logicians Setting Together Contradictories. A Perspective on Relevance, Paraconsistency, and Dialetheism’, ch. 14 of D.Jacquette (ed.), A Companion to Philosophical Logic, Blackwell, 2002.
• ‘Fuzzy Relevant Logic’, Paraconsistency: the Logical Way to the Inconsistent, ed. W.Carnielli et al., Marcel Dekker, 2002.
• 'The Hooded Man', Journal of Philosophical Logic 31 (2002), 445-67.
• ‘Rational Dilemmas’, Analysis 62 (2002), 11-16.
• ‘Meinong and the Philosophy of Mathematics’, Philosophica Mathematica 11 (2003), 3-15..
• 'On Alternative Geometries, Arithmetics and Logics, a Tribute to Lukasiewicz', Studia Logica 74 (2003), 441-468.
• 'Where is Philosophy at the Start of the Twenty First century?', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (2003), 85-96.
• ‘Geometries and Arithmetics’, pp. 65–78 of P.Weingartner (ed.), Alternative Logics; Do Sciences Need Them?, Springer Verlag, 2003.
• A Site for Sorites', pp. 9–23 of J. C. Beall (ed.), Liars and Heaps: New Essays on Paradox, Oxford University Press, 2003.
• 'Inconsistent Arithmetic: Issues Technical and Philosophical', pp. 273–99 of V. F. Hendricks and J. Malinowski (eds.), Trends in Logic: 50 Years of Studia Logica (Studia Logica Library, Vol. 21), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.
• 'Nagarjuna and the Limits of Thought’ (with Jay Garfield), Philosophy East West 53 (2003), 1-21. Reprinted as ch. 5 of J. Garfield, Empty Words, Oxford University Press, 2002.
• 'Consistency, Paraconsistency and the Logical Limitative Theorems', in Grenzen und Grenzüberschreitungen (XIX Deutscher Kongress für Philosphie), ed. W. Hogrebe and J. Bromond, Akademie Verlag, 2004.
• ‘Chunk and Permeate I: the Infinitesimal Calculus’ (with Bryson Brown), Journal of Philosophical Logic 33 (2004), 379-88.
• 'Intentionality - Meinongianisn and the Medievals', (with Stephen Read), Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 82 (2004), 421-442.
• 'Spiking the Field Artillery', in J. C. Beall and B. Armour-Garb (eds.), ch. 3 of Truth and Deflationism, Oxford University Press, 2005.
• 'Problems with the Argument for Fine Tuning' (with Mark Colyvan and Jay Garfield), Synthese 145 (2005), 325-38.
• 'Words Without Knowledge', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (2005), 686-94
• ‘The Limits of Language’ in K. Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, (second edition) Vol.7, 156-9, Elsevier, 2005.
• ‘Analetheism: a Phyrric Victory’ (with Brad Armour-Garb), Analysis 65 (2005), 167-73.
• ‘Analysing of the Iraqi Adventure’, Ormond Papers 22 (2005), 147-50.
• 'The Paradoxes of Denotation', ch. 7 of Self-Reference, eds. T. Bolander, V. F. Hendrix, and S. A Pedersen, CLSI Lecture Notes, Stanford University, 2006.
• ‘Logic, Paraconsistent’, in D. Borchert (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy (second edition), Macmillan, 2006, Vol. 7, 105-6.
• ‘Logic, Relevant (Relevance)’, in D. Borchert (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy (second edition), Macmillan, 2006, Vol. 8, 358-9.
• ‘Motion’, in D. Borchert (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy (second edition), Macmillan, 2006, Vol. 6, 409-11.
• ‘Restricted Quantification in Relevant Logic’, (with JC Beall, R. Brady, A. Hazen, and G. Restall) Journal of Philosophical Logic 35/6 (2006), 587-98. [4]
• `What is Philosophy?’, Philosophy 81 (2006), 189-207.
• ‘A Hundred Flowers’, Topoi 25 (2006), 91-5.
• ‘Not so Deep Inconsistency: a Reply to Eklund’ (with JC Beall), Australasian Journal of Logic 5 (2007) 74-84.
• ‘Paraconsistency and Dialetheism’, pp. 129–204 of Handbook of the History of Logic, Vol. 8, eds. D. Gabbay and J. Woods, North Holland, 2007.
• ‘Reply to Slater’, pp. 467–74 of J-Y Beziau, W. Carnielli and D. Gabbay (eds.), Handbook of Paraconsistency, College Publications, 2007.
• ‘60% Proof: Proof, Lakatos and Paraconsistency’, (with Neil Thomason), Australasian Journal of Logic 5 (2007), 89-100.
• ‘Revenge, Field, and ZF’, ch. 9 of JC Beall (ed.), Revenge of the Liar: New Essays on the Paradox, Oxford University Press, 2007.
• ‘How the Particular Quantifier became Existentially Loaded Behind our Backs’, Soochow Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 (2007), 197-213.
• 'Translation of ‘Logic of Paradox’, ‘La Logique du paraqdoxe’, Philosophie 94 (2007), 72-94.
• ‘The Way of the Dialetheist: Contradictions in Buddhism’ (with J. Garfield and Y. Deguchi), Philosophy East and West 58 (2008), 395-402.
• ‘Jaina Logic: a Contemporary Perspective’, History and Philosophy of Logic 29 (2008), 263-278.
• ‘Precis of Towards Non-Being’, Review of Metaphysics 74 (2008), 185-90.
• ‘Replies to Nolan and Kroon’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2008), 208-14.
• ‘Many-Valued Modal Logic: a Simple Approach’, Review of Symbolic Logic 1 (2008), 190-203.
• ‘The Closing of the Mind: How the Particular Quantifier Became Existentially Loaded Behind our Backs’, Review of Symbolic Logic 1 (2008), 42-55.
• ‘Graham Priest and Diderik Batens Interview Each Other’, The Reasoner 2 (No. 8) (2008), 2-4.
• ‘Creating Non-Existents: Some Initial Thoughts’, Studies in Logic, 1 (2008), 18-24.
• ‘Badici on Inclosures’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (2008), 583-96.
• ‘Logical Pluralism Hollandaise’, The Australasian Journal of Logic, 6 (2008), 210-14.
• 'Envelops and Indifference', (with Greg Restall), pages 283-290 in Dialogues, Logics and Other Strange Things, essays in honour of Shahid Rahman, edited by Cédric Dégremont, Laurent Keiff and Helge Rückert, College Publications, 2008. [5]
• 'Conditionals: a Debate with Jackson', ch. 13 of I. Ravenscroft (ed.), Minds, Worlds and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson. Oxford University Press, 2009.
• ‘Beyond the Limits of Knowledge’, ch. 7 (pp. 93–104) of J. Salerno (ed.), New Essays on the Knowability Paradox, Oxford University Press, 2009.
• ‘The Structure of Emptiness’, Philosophy East and West 59 (2009), 467-480.
• ‘Mountains are Just Mountains’ (with Jay Garfield), pp. 71–82 of J. Garfield and M. D’Amato (eds.), Pointing at the Moon: Buddhism. Logic and Analytic Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2009.
• ‘Obituary for Leonard Goddard’, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (2009) 693-4.
• Translation of ‘Objects of Thought’ into Japanese, in Human Ontology 15 (2009), 1-12. (Trans. S. Yamahguchi.)
• ‘Neighbourhood Semantics for Intentional Operators’, Review of Symbolic Logic, 2 (2009), 360-373.
• ‘Not to Be’, ch. 23 of R. Le Poidevin, P. Simons, A. McGonical, and R. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, Routledge 2009.
• 'Dualising Intuitionist Negation', 13(2): 165-84 (2009).
• 'A Case of Mistaken Identity’, ch. 11, pp. 205–222 of J. Lear and A. Oliver, The Force of Argument, Routledge, 2010.
• ‘Hopes Fade for Saving Truth’, Philosophy 85 (2010), 109-140. [6]
• ‘Two Truths: Two Models’, to appear in the Cowherds (eds.), Moonshadows, Oxford University Press.
• ‘The Truth(s) about the Two Truths’, (with T.Tilemans and M. Siderits) to appear in the Cowherds (eds.), Moonshadows, Oxford University Press (2010).
• ‘Inclosures, Vagueness and Self-Reference’, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, Volume 51, Number 1 (2010), 69-84.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Arche Foundations of Logical Consequence Workshop 2009, "Is the Ternary R Depraved?"
• The Monthly: Graham priest on Gottlob Frege
• The Philosopher's Zone, 10 July 2010: "It's All about Me: A Forum on the Philosophy of the Self"
• The New York Times, The Stone Blog, November 28, 2010: "Paradoxical Truth"
• Graham Priest Photograph (full NYT version) Wikimedia Sept. 2010
• Philosophy TV, January 10, 2011: Discussion of Deviant (Non-Classical) Logic, teaching logic, metafiction and logic with Maureen Eckert (UMASS Dartmouth)
• Two-Part Interview on Florida Student Philosophy Blog: Part 1 General Questions and Part 2 Technical Questions.

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2008)

Colin McGinn (born March 10, 1950) is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. McGinn has also held major teaching positions at Oxford University and Rutgers University. He is best known for his work in the philosophy of mind, though he has written on topics across the breadth of modern philosophy. Chief among his works intended for a general audience is the intellectual memoir The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (2002).

Biography[link]

Colin McGinn was born in the town of West Hartlepool, England in 1950.^[1] He enrolled in Manchester University to study psychology. However, by the time he received his degree in psychology from Manchester in 1971 (by writing a thesis focusing on the ideas of Noam Chomsky), he wanted to study philosophy as a postgraduate. By 1972, McGinn was admitted into Oxford University's Bachelor of Letters postgraduate programme, in hopes of eventually gaining entrance into Oxford's postgraduate Bachelor of Philosophy programme.

McGinn quickly made the transition from psychology to philosophy during his first term at Oxford. After working zealously to make the transition, he was soon admitted into the B.Phil. programme under the recommendation of his advisor, Michael R. Ayers. Shortly after entering the philosophy programme, he won the John Locke Prize in 1972. By 1974, McGinn received the B.Phil degree from Oxford, writing a thesis under the supervision of P. F. Strawson, which focused on the semantics of Donald Davidson.

In 1974, McGinn took his first philosophy position at University College London. In January 1980, he spent two semesters at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a visiting professor. Then, shortly after declining a job at University of Southern California, he succeeded Gareth Evans as Wilde Reader at Oxford University. In 1988, shortly after a visiting term at City University of New York (CUNY), McGinn received a job offer from Rutgers University. He accepted the offer from Rutgers, joining ranks with, among others, Jerry Fodor in the philosophy department. McGinn stayed at Rutgers until 2006, when he accepted a job offer from University of Miami as full time professor.

Work[link]

Although McGinn has written dozens of articles in philosophical logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, he is best known for his work in the philosophy of mind. In his 1989 article "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?", McGinn speculates that the human mind is innately incapable of comprehending itself entirely, and that this incapacity spawns the puzzles of consciousness that have preoccupied Western philosophy since Descartes. Thus, McGinn's answer to the hard problem of consciousness is that humans cannot find the answer. This position has been nicknamed the "New Mysterianism". The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World (2000) is a non-technical exposition of McGinn's theory.

Outside of philosophy, McGinn has written a novel entitled The Space Trap (1992). He was also featured prominently as an interviewee in Jonathan Miller's Brief History of Disbelief, a documentary mini-series about atheism's history. He discussed the philosophy of belief as well as his own beliefs as an antitheist.

He is cited by Michio Kaku in "Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize The 21st Century" and in "Physics of the Impossible" regarding the subjective experience that arises from matter or the impossibility of building machines that can think: "is like slugs trying to do Freudian psychoanalysis, they just don't have the conceptual equipment."

Books[link]

A partial list of books by Colin McGinn:

• Mindfucking (2008). Acumen, ISBN 1-84465-114-2.
• Shakespeare's Philosophy: Discovering the Meaning Behind the Plays (2006). HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-085615-7.
• The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact (2005). Pantheon, ISBN 0-375-42317-6.
• Mindsight: Image, Dream, Meaning (2004). Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-01560-6.
• Consciousness and Its Objects (2004). Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-926760-X.
• The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (2002). HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-019792-7 (first edition). (Reprint edition, 2003, Harper Perennial, ISBN 0-06-095760-3.)
• Logical Properties: Identity, Existence, Predication, Necessity, Truth (2001). Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-924181-3.
• The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World (1999). Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-01422-4.
• Knowledge and Reality: Selected Papers (1998). Oxford University Press.
• Ethics, Evil and Fiction (1997). Oxford University Press.
• Minds and Bodies: Philosophers and Their Ideas (1997). Oxford University Press.
• Problems in Philosophy: the Limits of Inquiry (1993). Blackwell.
• The Space Trap (1992). Duckworth.
• Moral Literacy: Or How To Do The Right Thing (1992). Duckworth. Hackett, 1993.
• The Problem of Consciousness (1991). Basil Blackwell.
• Mental Content (1989). Basil Blackwell.
• Wittgenstein on Meaning (1984). Basil Blackwell.
• The Subjective View: Secondary Qualities and Indexical Thoughts (1983). Oxford University Press.
• The Character of Mind (1982). Oxford University Press. (Second edition, 1997.)

Selected articles[link]

A partial list of articles by Colin McGinn (emphasis on scholarly philosophical articles):

• "Another Look at Colour" (1996). Journal of Philosophy.
• "Consciousness and Space" (1995). Journal of Consciousness Studies.
• "The Problem of Philosophy" (1994). Philosophical Studies.
• "Must I Be Morally Perfect?" (1992). Analysis.
• "Conceptual Causation: Some Elementary Reflections" (1991). Mind.
• "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?" Mind, 1989.
• "What is the Problem of Other Minds?" (1984). Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
• "Two Notions of Realism?" (1983). Philosophical Topics.
• "Realist Semantics and Content Ascription" (1982). Synthese.
• "Rigid Designation and Semantic Value" (1982). Philosophical Quarterly.
• "Philosophical Materialism" (1980). Synthese
• "An A Priori Argument for Realism" (1979). The Journal of Philosophy.
• "Single-case Probability and Logical Form" (1979). Mind.
• "Charity, Interpretation and Belief" (1977). The Journal of Philosophy.
• "Semantics for Nonindicative Sentences" (1977). Philosophical Studies.
• "A Priori and A Posteriori Knowledge" (1976). Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
• "A Note on the Frege Argument" (1976). Mind.
• "On the Necessity of Origin" (1976). The Journal of Philosophy.
• "A Note on the Essence of Natural Kinds" (1975). Analysis.
• "Mach and Husserl" (1972). Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology.

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Colin McGinn

• Colin McGinn's Blog
• CV — curriculum vitae.
• To Be Or Not To Be: Colin McGinn Dissects The Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays
• [2] — scroll down for transcript of an interview with McGinn on the 2006 PBS program "Bill Moyer on Faith & Reason".
• Conscious Entities — information on McGinn's views on consciousness.
• Colin McGinn in ZhurnalyWiki — a review of McGinn's autobiography.
• "Apes, Humans, Aliens, Vampires and Robots". In Paola Cavalieri & Peter Singer (eds.), The Great Ape Project, New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1993, pp. 146–151.

References[link]

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (April 2008)

• McGinn, Colin. (2002). The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy. HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-019792-7 (first edition). (Reprint edition, 2003, Harper Perennial, ISBN 0-06-095760-3.)

Scott Turow, January 2008

Scott F. Turow (born April 12, 1949) is an American author and a practicing lawyer. Turow has written eight fiction and two nonfiction books, which have been translated into over 20 languages and have sold over 25 million copies. Movies have been based on several of his books.

Life and career[link]

Turow was born in Chicago, attended New Trier High School, and graduated from Amherst College in 1970, as a Brother of the Alpha Delta Phi Literary Society. He received an Edith Mirrielees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, where he attended from 1970 to 1972. In 1971, he married Annette Weisberg, a painter.

Scott Turow later became a Jones Lecturer at Stanford, serving until 1975, when he entered Harvard Law School. In 1977, Turow wrote One L, a book about his first year at law school. After earning his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1978, Turow became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago, serving in that position until 1986. There he prosecuted several high-profile corruption cases, including the tax fraud case of state Attorney General William Scott. Turow also was lead counsel in Operation Greylord, the federal prosecution of Illinois judicial corruption cases.

After leaving the U.S. Attorney's office, Turow became a novelist, writing legal thrillers such as The Burden of Proof, Presumed Innocent, Pleading Guilty, and Personal Injuries, which Time magazine named as the Best Fiction Novel of 1999. All four became bestsellers, and Turow won multiple literary awards, most notably the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers. Many of the characters appear in multiple books, and all of his novels take place in Kindle County. (The state is unspecified, but the county contains a tri-city conglomerate on the Mississippi between Chicago and New Orleans [Burden of Proof p. 52]; compare the "Quad Cities" on the Mississippi, originally Davenport IA, Rock Island IL, Moline IL, and East Moline IL, but now also including Bettendorf IA.) In 1990, Turow was featured on the June 11 cover of Time, which described him as "Bard of the Litigious Age".^[1] In 1995, Canadian author Derek Lundy published a biography of Turow, entitled Scott Turow: Meeting the Enemy (ECW Press, 1995). In the 1990s a British publisher bracketed Turow’s work with that of Margaret Atwood and John Irving, republished in the series Bloomsbury Modern Library.

Turow is the president of the Authors Guild.^[2] He was also President from 1997 to 1998 and has served on its board.

From 1997 to 1998 Turow was a member of the U.S. Senate Nominations Commission for the Northern District of Illinois, which recommends federal judicial appointments.

Turow is a partner of the Chicago law firm of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. Turow works pro bono in most of his cases, including a 1995 case where he won the release of Alejandro Hernandez, who had spent 11 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. He was also appointed to the commission considering the reform of the Illinois death penalty by former Governor George Ryan and is currently a member of the Illinois State Police Merit Board. He and his wife Annette divorced in late 2008 with three grown children.

Turow gave the commencement speech at the 2011 Rutgers-Camden Law School where he proceeded to lecture on criminal law including his personal views on the death penalty and the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

In 2011, Turow met with Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig to discuss political reform including a possible Second Constitution of the United States; according to one source, Turow saw risks with having such a convention, but believed that it may be the "only alternative" given how campaign money has undermined the one-man-one-vote principle of democracy.^[3]

Controversy[link]

On March 9th 2012, Mr. Turow released a letter on the Author’s Guild regarding his sentiments on the insider publishing scandal and ensuing anti-trust lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department against Apple iBooks and five other publishing houses. Apple’s former chief executive, Steve Jobs and the publishing companies allegedly colluded to fix electronic book prices with an agency model in which Apple would collect 30% of the profit.^[4] Apple iBooks stipulated that publishers wouldn’t let rival publishers sell the book at a lower price. Turow’s letter generated controversy on numerous writer’s reviews and blogs across the internet, earning him the nickname "Turncoat Turow"^[5] when he stated that collusion might have been a “necessary” and “rational” decision made by the Apple. He blamed Amazon for the crisis, stating, ^[6]

“We have no way of knowing whether publishers colluded in adopting the agency model for e-book pricing. We do know that collusion wasn’t necessary: given the chance, any rational publisher would have leapt at Apple’s offer…Amazon was using e-book discounting to destroy bookselling, making it uneconomic for physical bookstores to keep their doors open.”^[7]

In his letter, Mr. Turow also warned the DOJ that the lawsuit might have adverse effects. “Our government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition.”^[8] His comments come at a time when the publishing industry has begun to default in favor of increasing self-published books, e-subscriptions and electronic readers.^[9]

Books[link]

Fiction[link]

• Presumed Innocent, 1987
• The Burden of Proof, 1990
• Pleading Guilty, 1993
• The Laws of Our Fathers, 1996
• Guilty As Charged, 1996 (as editor)
• Personal Injuries, 1999
• Reversible Errors, 2002
• Ordinary Heroes, 2005
• Limitations, 2006
• The Best American Mystery Stories, 2006 (as editor)
• Innocent, 2010 ISBN 978-0-446-56242-3

Non-fiction[link]

• One L, 1977
• Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty, 2003

Films[link]

• Presumed Innocent, 1990
• The Burden of Proof, 1992
• Reversible Errors, 2004

See also[link]

Novels portal

• List of bestselling novels in the United States

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Scott Turow at the Internet Movie Database
• A reading from The Laws of Our Fathers by Scott Turow
• Interview on Ordinary Heroes at the Pritzker Military Library