Primal

This misses the point, when Socrates statement is considered meaningless it just doesn't count. It's as if Socrates spoek gibberish or nothing at all.

But it's not true: it's meaningless. A meaningless claim counts as neither no matter how many times you insert the word "true" into it.

Now why is Socrates meaningless and not counting instead of me or Plato? Basically because he's the one that started in with the meaningless statement(as it was attempting to refer to Plato's in a then meaningless way i.e. the whole circularity in reference was started by Socrates.) . After which Plato's became true, as did mine.

Primal

I likewise fail to see th difference between an unintelligible and a meaningless statement. Also what makes you think a statement must be true or false instead of it being neither?

As for your solution to the liars paradox, I don't see how it works to now simply call one of the claimns true or false, as that is what got us into the trouble in the first place. Basically you are siding with S1. Or you are playing an epistemological sleight of hand and saying s1 does not refer to s2. You are also assuming the claim was "s2 was a sentence" and/or "s1 was not a sentence" when these were not the statements at all. You simply seem to end the chain in an arbitrary place. The description is thus not a solution.(Likewise your description is incomplete).

John this is ridiculous, and not ambiguous, for if Socrates meant for a literal description, I wouldn't have put it down as an example of a meaningless statement(context John). Also I think you have to add quotation marks or at least some indication for paraphrasing John.

So to clarify it can be treated as "Plato iojhohi."

Presuming hidden meaning seems a bit spurrious John.

Total non sequitur John. It does not follow that if Plato was wrong 1) that the issue is limited to individual viewpoint. At best it can be considered circular reasoning.(As premise two contained some of the second part of the conclusion).

Primal

I don't know. The dictionary says nothing about being meaningful as a precondition to being a statement. In which case I'd say Plato's statement is nonapplicable, as the statement is meaningless but not for the reasons Plato gave. (It can be considered false had Plato put "if and only if") Hence Plato should have said "What Socrates says is false or meaningless." in order to be correct.

John Page

See explanation already provided. Example - "Penblwyd". This could appear to be unintelligible to you but to a Welsh speaker means "Brithday". More support for meaning being entirely contextual and viewpoint dependent.
Please read again - I made this in statement in context with systems of logic, some of which require a statement to be true or false.
Its not a solution its an explanation. If you would care to read it again, I'm not taking any sides but looking at the paradox from different viewpoints. The fact remains, the Liar Paradox is intelligible but cannot be sensibly explained using propositional logic. I am simply offering an explanation is to how and a method to illustrate why.
Huh? Where do you think it ends arbitrarily?
It was your use of quotation marks (or lack thereof) that caused ambiguity for me when comparing you reasoning with the statement attributed to Soccertease.
But clearly it is an option for a non-Welsh speaker. (for example)
The non-seq was in the proposed conundrum posted by Ade:"Socrates says: "The last statement Plato made was true, and the next statement Primal makes is true, unless it refers solely to this statement, in which case, its meaningless." " It seems to me that Socrates has not covered all the cases.

Cheers, John

Adrian Selby

Thanks all for your responses.

Long winded fool
I'm not sure this is the case. If you assert Socrates' statement is a lie, then when he says Plato is telling the truth with regard to him lying, if he is lying, then he cannot assert that Plato is telling the truth because that would be the truth. Isn't the paradox thus instantiated? Yours is a great post by the way, really got to the nub of my problem with this paradox stuff. I acknowledge a problem with my expression of the issue. If I may return to a point earlier which I don't feel has been countered satisfactorily, there was the expression thus:

Plato says: "The next statement Socrates makes is a lie, or, if it solely refers to this statement, is meaningless."

Socrates says: "The last statement Plato made was true."

This got a response from Primal that I felt was insufficient. Socrates did not in fact say 'Snarfwiggets'. He said what it says above. I do not see how the sentence above is equivalent to 'Snarfwiggets'. It, after all, is asserting that there is a truth value to Plato's statement. If therefore it is meaningless in Primal's eyes, then Socrates is right to say that Plato's telling the truth in Primal's eyes, however, if he is right to say this, then saying this must be meaningful. To say someone's statement is true, if true, is to acknowledge that the statement is meaningful because it is correct. I certainly do not see how the symbols are "misplaced". This smacks to me of thinking that 'they must be misplaced because there cannot be a paradox' without offering a reason as to why there cannot be a paradox or in what way they are misplaced, unless one assumes (correctly or not) that where there is a referential paradox, they must by definition be misplaced.

If so, I confess this is a move I don't fully understand.

John:

Could you elaborate, I'm not sure what you mean here Or more particularly, insofar as this comment could relate to the above reiteration of the problem, could you elaborate on what you mean.

Cheers,

Adrian

John Page

Ade:
I have cut a pasted the dialog I was responding to below for the sake of clarity.
What I mean is that Socrates' statement does not cover the case of Primal's statement being false.

There is also some linguistic ambiguity here, does Socrates' "it" and "its" refer to Plato's statement or Primal's? Also, if Plato's proposition is P1 and Primal's P2, is Socrates proposition S:

P1 and (P2 iff P2 refers solely to S else gibberish)
or
(P1 and P2) iff P2 refers solely to S else gibberish.

Cheers, John

Primal

I agree in this sense context, for translation of language is important. However when you change the context you give a reason for now believing that the statement was not meaningless i.e. such a proposition is no longer an empty assumption and no longer superfluous. However Socrates does not appear to be speaking in a different language and thus to suppose he is is still superfluous.



What system of logic exactly says any statemnent, gibberish or not, has to be assigned a truth-value?




I believe the paradox is well enough understood.....


I agree logic, in terms of assigning true/false values does not apply to the statement: which is implied when I say it is meaningless.

When you called s1 true. That suggested taking a side.



I suppose. Though I believe the common practice is to praphrase with quotation marks within quotation marks: I apologize for any confusion.

Yes provided context makes the assumption parsimonious.

Agreed.

Primal

Not verbatim but in respect to meaning.


I am then saying that the "apparent" meaning in Socrates statement is an illusion.
Yes but all Socrates can mean by Plato is correct i.e. speaking truth is that Socrates own statement is a lie or meaningless, or simply meaningless. It's not meaningless in the sense that the words do not make sense but that, in a sense of the area of interpretation it makes no sense.

I fail to see how the statement "This very statement makes no sense." Is in any way meaningful.


Well I am defending the logical viewpoint from a proposed counter-example or given disproof: this thus amounts to me trying to remove the paradox on principle.

However you likewise atttach meaning to Socrates statement on circular grounds.

John Page

Two-valued propositional logic. Arguably something cannot be a statement or gibberish at the same time, so the issue of the truth functionality of gibberish does not arise.
I differ here, most analyses that I have seen do not attack what I see as the underlying cause of the problem - we misunderstand the phenomenal nature of truth and its relation to identity.
Only for the purpose of conjecture.

Cheers, John

Primal

You are allowed to think that but until you actually solve the problem with your own system you have no higher ground so to speak.