Are the paradoxes of ordinary language paradoxical?

Antoine GAZEAU, Lecturer, IPC & Doctoral Student, EPHE, CHArt Laboratory, France

There are many paradoxes that are usually considered signs of the limits of our reason; the liar is probably the most famous of them. Such sentences seem to show how vain is our language, whose aim should be to say the true and the false, i. e. to express our thoughts, the true ones, or the false ones. Are those paradoxes among the most obvious symptoms of the deep weakness fr human intelligence – who should then be considered as deeply inadequate? Should we therefore conclude that skepticism is unavoidable? Or is there an alternative: our reason bearing the necessary resources to avoid the paradoxical traps, as traitorous they might seem? Asking that question might drive us to reconsider the daily paradoxes as poorly named sentences: is a paradox known as such by common opinion still paradoxical? Ordinary language might very well haven’t said its last word yet.