Sense Generating Process in Logic Paradoxes: the Principle of Communicative Certainty. Part II

Abstract

The article considers logical paradoxes (the sign paradox, Putnam’s model-theoretic argument, liar’s paradox, Zeno’s paradoxes, Russell’s paradox) from the point of view of the communicative model of sense production. The semiotic actions of the authors of paradoxes are analyzed on the basis of the so-called communicative key, or the principle of semiotic (communicative) certainty, according to which: any paradox is a personal communicative act (a series of communicative impacts, or attempts to semiotic influence); in any communicative action what is understood is the author’s cognitive state (process) at the moment of acting, in the absence of which the sign (verbal, gestural, behavioral, etc.) does not have the self-identity; the paradox is the communicant’s attempt to “suspend” the addressee’s cognitive process, to give impossible instructions on how to think, on the basis of “plausible assumptions by a chain of undeniable- looking reasonings”; “subjects” in communication, including the data, is appointed and thought of by the owner of consciousness; a sign cannot produce an effect autonomously, outside the author’s conceivable communicative action; the actor in the communication is the signifier, not the sign; the analyzed sign sequence cannot mean more or less than what the communicant who committed the action, thought of them. The article also formulates the so-called law of the assignment of relevant (actual) communicative sets. A communicative interpretation of paradoxes (antinomies, aporias) reveals that their authors go beyond logic to achieve the goals of semiotic influence (for example, they violate the law of the excluded middle), demonstrating the process of absorbing logic by communication. At the same time, it is impossible for the authors of paradoxes to violate communicative constants: they cannot abandon the actual assignment of objects (sets), recognize the performative nature of semiotic acts, remove the communicant from the communicative procedure, recognize the autonomous meaning of “signs” and “languages”. In all communicative acts, the only basis of the identical sense-formation is the active consciousness of the semiotic actor, aimed at changing the cognitive state of the conceivable addressee. Paradoxes are eliminated if the principle of communicative certainty is applied.