ellauri096.html on line 151: If paradoxes were always sets of propositions or arguments or conclusions, then they would always be meaningful. But some paradoxes are semantically flawed (Sorensen 2003b, 352) and some have answers that are backed by a pseudo-argument employing a defective “lemma” that lacks a truth-value. Kurt Grelling’s paradox, for instance, opens with a distinction between autological and heterological words. An autological word describes itself, e.g., ‘polysyllabic’ is polysllabic, ‘English’ is English, ‘noun’ is a noun, etc. A heterological word does not describe itself, e.g., ‘monosyllabic’ is not monosyllabic, ‘Chinese’ is not Chinese, ‘verb’ is not a verb, etc. Now for the riddle: Is ‘heterological’ heterological or autological? If ‘heterological’ is heterological, then since it describes itself, it is autological. But if ‘heterological’ is autological, then since it is a word that does not describe itself, it is heterological. The common solution to this puzzle is that ‘heterological’, as defined by Grelling, is not a genuine predicate (Thomson 1962). In other words, “Is ‘heterological’ heterological?” is without meaning. There can be no predicate that applies to all and only those predicates it does not apply to for the same reason that there can be no barber who shaves all and only those people who do not shave themselves.
ellauri119.html on line 688: From a philosophical viewpoint, Ayn Rand´s objectivism is an inconsistent pile of faulty axioms and absurd conclusions. Her tautological A = A and her invalid claim that all thought is verbal have been shown, long ago, to be either useless information or demonstrably false. Wittgenstein dismissed tautologies as telling us anything new about the world before Rand came to the USA and phenomenology had dismissed a verbal mentalese grammar of the brain. Noam Chomsky´s innate grammar is only true for words, but thoughts are far more than just words since all thought appears to be motor based. What you might need is a grammar of the body instead. Thoughts seem to be closer to the movements of an athlete than to the words in a sentence. For some reason most people ignore that all speech is base on wagging the tongue, and the vibrations in middle ear and cochlea, a motor based capability that we have learned to use to communicate with. Is there an isomorphism between the movement of the tongue and those of sign language that would show a fundamental grammar shared by both?
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