Wittgenstein and the liar

Abstract

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remarks on contradictions and paradoxes have been met with incomprehension and have fueled the widespread and long-standing prejudice that his later thoughts on the foundations of logic and mathematics are the “surprisingly insignificant product of a sparkling mind” (Kreisel, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 9:135–158, 1959, p. 158). This paper disagrees; it argues that Wittgenstein’s remarks on semantic paradoxes suggest an account of the Liar and its kin that is not only of historical interest but also represents a hitherto unnoticed paraconsistent alternative to established approaches to the Liar. In what follows, a reading of Wittgenstein’s remarks will be offered according to which Wittgenstein subscribes to a form of dialetheism (that is, the view that there are sentences that are both true and false). In contrast to modern dialetheist approaches to the Liar, however, some of Wittgenstein’s remarks suggest combining a dialetheist position with what is called ‘logical nihilism’ (that is, the view that there are no universally valid inference rules).