Abstract

If there are true contradictions, where are they? In language or in the world? According to one important view, best represented by Jc Beall (2009), only the former. In this paper, we raise a problem for this view. In order to defend a “merely semantic” version of dialetheism (aka ‘glut theory’), Beall adopts transparent accounts of truth and falsity, which gives rise to “dialethic ascent” on which true contradictions are also, contradictorily, untrue contradictions. This is a consequence of trying to restrict contradictions to language and keep them out of the world. However, in this paper, we show that this ascent carries over intensional contexts, so that, on this version of dialetheism, even if there are true contradictions, no one knows a true contradiction. This shows that contradictions have not been kept out of the world. We end by connecting this issue with the infamous ‘just true’ problem.