Abstract

This chapter shows that the method that Peter Unger (1979, 1980) has developed for dealing with the sorites paradox can, and perhaps should, be extended and applied to the semantic paradoxes—specifically, to Grelling’s paradox and to the liar paradox. After carefully explicating Unger’s earlier method for treating the sorites, the chapter expands on a very brief, compact argument in which he (1979) contends that, in light of certain putatively paradoxical semantic expressions, which are not obviously soritical, there are no expressions and, hence, no languages. The concluding section of the chapter identifies some important similarities between the liar paradox and the sorites.