Kludged Logic: is this a research program?

Seeing some unconvincing attempts to solve the Liar Paradox got me thinking:

This person is treating the paradox as a sort of word-game brainteaser – they haven’t stopped to reflect on what the significance of the paradox is, and what it is that philosophers of logic are trying to achieve when they address it.

Which in turn got me thinking:

Do I know what the endgame is of research into logical paradoxes? Do I have a clear idea of what values shape a good account of logic, and why? (A: Not really.)

With that major caveat out of the way, I want to share where my thinking went after that, in the hopes that it might be of use to someone who works on this sort of thing.

My impression is that attempts to solve logical paradoxes are attempts to make logic conform to some set of values which are often only semi-explicit, and which become more explicit as the conversation becomes more philosophical. My impression is also that the method of addressing one paradox at a time is quite conservative – there is a sense that logic might need adjusting in order to be gotten quite right, but high quality work tends to focus in on a specific problem, seeking solutions which keep everything else roughly intact.

But if the rut that Aristotle got us into is a deep one, then we would expect to see exactly what (I take it) we are seeing – many small conservative solutions proposed, none of which is at all satisfying. Is there another way?

Here is a suggestion: give up on the values of minimalism and elegance; take logic and kludge it mercilessly until values like comprehensiveness are achieved as well as can be. Only once this is done, then look for minimalist and elegant patterns in the resulting mess (machine learning, perhaps a bit better than the sort we have today, might be helpful for this step). The end game would be something without paradox which embodies the other values sort by logicians.

Will this produce an ideal logic? I have no good reason to think it will, but it might be worth a shot. Actually, I suspect that the journey here might be more interesting than the destination – this could be a good exercise to let us think about and discuss what the values are which actually shape work in philosophical logic.

Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash, cropped.