Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
International Phenomenological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
http://www.jstor.org
abandon the theory of types and all its implications and developments,
such as the theory of metalanguages, etc.
4. My chief blunder, according to Mr. Bar-Hillel, has been the belief that
one can rely upon one logistician (Grelling) to reproduce exactly the argu-
mentation of another (Lukasiewsicz). It seems that it is by no means the
fact. Sorry. Next time I will be more careful. As for the rest, I believe
I have replied in advance to MNr.Bar-Hillel's criticism, because, as I have
stated, if Q is identical with "Q is a false sentence," i.e., if we start with the
identification, masked by a lengthy circuit and the introduction of symbols,
of P and non-P, we must not be astonished to come to contradictions.
5. Husserl's distinction of nonsense and counter-sense (of which Bar-
Hillel unwillingly gives a proof), is not identical with the modern distinction
"between contradictory sentences and word-sequences which are not built
in accordance with the rules of formation of the language in discussion."
It is, therefore, unfortunately, by no means a commonplace as Bar-Hillel
seems to believe. Quite on the contrary: it is the ignorance of this distinc-
tion that prevented Russell (and others) from giving a correct interpretation
of the so-called "logical" (and semantic) paradoxes. It is the selfsame
ignorance that leads Bar-Hillel to believe that he has shown that I "failed
to prove that the word sequence 'I am uttering a false sentence' is non-
sensical."
ALEXANDRE KOYRI.
SORBONNE, PARIS.