Supervaluationism and Paraconsistency
Achille C. Varzi · PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) · 2000
. Supervaluational semantics have been applied rather successfully to a variety of phenomena involving truth-value gaps, such as vagueness, lack of reference, sortal incorrectedness. On the other hand, they have not registered a comparable fortune (if any) in connection with truth-value gluts, i.e., more generally, with semantic phenomena involving overdeterminacy or inconsistency as opposed to indeterminacy and incompleteness. In this paper I review some basic routes that are available for this purpose. The outcome is a family of semantic systems in which (i) logical truths and falsehoods retain their classical status even in the presence gaps and gluts, although (ii) the general notions of satifiability and refutability are radically non-classical. 1. Introduction Since its first appearance in van Fraassen's semantics for free logic [1966a, 1966b], the notion of a supervaluation has been regarded by many as a powerful tool for dealing with truth-value gaps and, more generally, with...