Fitch's paradox: Two attempts to rescue Tennant's proposal from the threat of ad hocness
(2012) FTEM10 20111Theoretical Philosophy
- Abstract
- Fitch's paradox is problematic to any philosopher that claims the truth to be independent of us. Neil Tennant has proposed a solution to this paradox, which has been criticized in many ways. One is that the proposal is ad hoc. In this thesis I will examine two attempts to save the proposal from that criticism. First, Tennant himself has suggested that there is a general pattern for thesis restrictions when a counterexample is found, and he claims that his proposal is an instance of that pattern. In this paper I will show that Tennant fails to save his own theory, simply because the suggested pattern does not generate proper theories but mere tautologies that are necessarily true - which is a catastrophy to any theory that wants to claim... (More)
- Fitch's paradox is problematic to any philosopher that claims the truth to be independent of us. Neil Tennant has proposed a solution to this paradox, which has been criticized in many ways. One is that the proposal is ad hoc. In this thesis I will examine two attempts to save the proposal from that criticism. First, Tennant himself has suggested that there is a general pattern for thesis restrictions when a counterexample is found, and he claims that his proposal is an instance of that pattern. In this paper I will show that Tennant fails to save his own theory, simply because the suggested pattern does not generate proper theories but mere tautologies that are necessarily true - which is a catastrophy to any theory that wants to claim something new. Second, Igor Douven has argued that Tennant's proposal is equivalent to a principled one, an therefore is rescued from the threat of ad hocness. I will not deny that the two versions are equivalent, but that Douven's is principled. More exactly, I will show that the one proposed by Douven is less principled than Tennant's original one. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/2740297
- author
- Johansson, Thomas LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- FTEM10 20111
- year
- 2012
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- language
- English
- id
- 2740297
- date added to LUP
- 2012-07-27 15:08:06
- date last changed
- 2012-07-27 15:08:06
@misc{2740297, abstract = {{Fitch's paradox is problematic to any philosopher that claims the truth to be independent of us. Neil Tennant has proposed a solution to this paradox, which has been criticized in many ways. One is that the proposal is ad hoc. In this thesis I will examine two attempts to save the proposal from that criticism. First, Tennant himself has suggested that there is a general pattern for thesis restrictions when a counterexample is found, and he claims that his proposal is an instance of that pattern. In this paper I will show that Tennant fails to save his own theory, simply because the suggested pattern does not generate proper theories but mere tautologies that are necessarily true - which is a catastrophy to any theory that wants to claim something new. Second, Igor Douven has argued that Tennant's proposal is equivalent to a principled one, an therefore is rescued from the threat of ad hocness. I will not deny that the two versions are equivalent, but that Douven's is principled. More exactly, I will show that the one proposed by Douven is less principled than Tennant's original one.}}, author = {{Johansson, Thomas}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Student Paper}}, title = {{Fitch's paradox: Two attempts to rescue Tennant's proposal from the threat of ad hocness}}, year = {{2012}}, }