Treatments of the paradoxes of self-reference

Abstract

The semantic paradoxes of self-reference seem to have been discussed in both Arabic and Latin logic well before the thirteenth century so that the standard example was ‘what I utter is false’ but various authors developed versions that in many cases were interestingly different in terms of the solutions given for the core paradox. Roughly at the beginning of the fourteenth century treatments of the topic became really a flourishing genre of logic. Especially Thomas Bradwardine’s treatment accrued well-deserved fame in the following centuries. These logicians really can be said to have undertaken the task of giving a consistent, theoretically satisfactory solution to the Liar paradox and its associates rather than simply having the interest of studying various logical aspects of the Liar and other congenial paradoxes. In the following I will go through a selection of medieval texts. The choice of the texts is not straightforwardly based on the historical importance or even quality in logic. The aim is, rather, that the sample gives a picture of the multiplicity and theoretical richness of this particular medieval discussion.