Truth in a Logic of Formal Inconsistency: How classical can it get?

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Weakening classical logic is one of the most popular ways of dealing with semantic paradoxes. Their advocates often claim that such weakening does not affect non-semantic reasoning. Recently, however, Halbach and Horsten (2006) have shown that this is actually not the case for Kripke’s fixed-point theory based on the Strong Kleene evaluation scheme. Feferman’s axiomatization $\textsf{KF}$ in classical logic is much stronger than its paracomplete counterpart $\textsf{PKF}$, not only in terms of semantic but also in arithmetical content. This paper compares the proof-theoretic strength of an axiomatization of Kripke’s construction based on the paraconsistent evaluation scheme of $\textsf{LP}$, formulated in classical logic with that of an axiomatization directly formulated in $\textsf{LP}$, extended with a consistency operator. The ultimate goal is to find out whether paraconsistent solutions to the paradoxes that employ consistency operators fare better in this respect than paracomplete ones.</jats:p>