LLC Seminar: David Liggins

Non-nominal quantification is quantification into a syntactic position other than name position, such as predicate or sentence position. Metaphysicians are increasingly interested in putting such quantification to work: this is a major part of the contemporary movement known as “higher-order metaphysics”. However, non-nominal quantification generates various paradoxes, so it is timely to revisit these. This talk is about one of them: a paradox raised by A. N. Prior. In his 1961 paper ‘On a family of paradoxes’, Prior proved a theorem which seems to contradict easily observable facts involving belief, assertion, and many other phenomena. In this talk, I will set out the paradox, propose a new solution to it, and offer an explanation of why the flawed part of the paradoxical reasoning initially seemed compelling.