Abstract

One of the difficulties surrounding the ancient Paradox of the Liar is that it is unclear what philosophical problem it poses. In this thesis, I offer a diagnosis of the problem, and defend a solution to it. In Chapter I, I argue that the problem posed is one about the relation between a sentence uttered in a context and the proposition expressed. Chapter II supports this conclusion, by arguing against most notions of truth-value gap, and by elaborating on the notion of failing to express a proposition. ;To develop a solution to the problem, I argue in Chapter III that the notion of context must be expanded to take into account structural features of the discourse in which an utterance is made. So understood, a context determines a domain from which the truth conditions available for the construction of propositions expressible in the context must be drawn. ;This theory is applied to the Liar Paradox in Chapter IV. Under my enhanced notion of context, we can see certain inferences as changing a context just by introducing novel words into a conversation. In the Liar Paradox case, the term for the semantic relation of expressing a proposition is introduced. Because such relations have a highly complex local character, this context-change induces a substantial change in the domain of available truth conditions. The result is, I show, that there are effectively more propositions that can be expressed in the new context than there were in the old. Among the new propositions that can be identified in the new context is the one expressed by the Liar Sentence. ;One of the most striking features of a hierarchical account of this kind is the result that any quantification, whether syntactically unrestricted or not, is interpreted as being over some restricted domain. I go on to argue in Chapter V that in fact there are independent reasons for thinking that quantification must behave in this way. ;Finally, I elaborate some of the more general consequences of the theory I develop. First, I claim that the notion of expression I propose undermines any sharp and substantial distinction between semantics and pragmatics. Second, in Chapter VI, I argue that the theory has some consequences for contemporary debates over realism and truth