A fifteenth-century Ottoman solution to the liar paradox by Ḫaṭībzāde Muḥyiddīn

Abstract

This paper deals with a solution to the infamous liar paradox, usually known in the Arabic literature as Maġlaṭat al-ǧaḏr al-aṣamm. The solution is raised by a fifteenth-century Ottoman treatise that is attributed, among others, to Ḫaṭībzāde Muḥyiddīn Efendī. The paper also compares it with the solution by the contemporary Persian philosopher, Ǧalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī. The short treatise devoted to the paradox is one of the few works by Ottomans on the subject and it comprehensively addresses the paradox in its two forms. An analysis of the solution offered by the treatise to the paradox, the paper aims to bring Ottoman discussions of the liar to the attention of contemporary scholarship and contribute to filling the obvious gap in the literature on the paradox in Islamic thought.