dialetheist means A person who believes in or advocates dialetheism, the logical or metaphysical theory that two contradictory propositions can both be true. It carries an Arena rating of 1356, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, dialetheist ranks #2,319 of 14,444 for Most Exacting Words, #2,350 of 14,448 for Most Incisive Words, #2,580 of 14,456 for The Improbable, #7,084 of 14,414 for Most Elegant Words.
Why “dialetheist” is a great word
One who holds that certain contradictions can be veridical, that some statements can be both true and false in the same respect. From dialetheism, itself from Greek di- ("twice, double") and aletheia ("truth"), with the suffix -ist ("one who believes or practices"). Unlike a trivialist, who accepts every proposition as true and thus collapses all meaning, or a classical logician, for whom contradiction is the inviolable boundary of thought, the dialetheist navigates a narrower, more treacherous path, granting reality to specific, glaring inconsistencies. It is the stance of affirming that the liar's paradox is both true and false, of looking at a completed set that contains itself and saying "yes, exactly," of finding the precise moment where the river both flows and is still—a sober admission that the maps of logic, like all maps, must sometimes fray at the edges where the territory rebels.
Etymology
From dialetheism + -ist.
noun
- A person who believes in or advocates dialetheism, the logical or metaphysical theory that two contradictory propositions can both be true.“Of course, dialetheists, who hold that some sentences are true with true negations, also provide a response that purports to resolve the paradoxes […]”
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