Graham Priest

By AI Staff

Graham Priest is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Priest received his undergraduate education at St. John’s College, Cambridge (UK) as well as the London School of Economics. He received a Doctor of Literature (DLitt) from the University of Melbourne. (A DLitt is an academic award roughly equivalent to a Ph.D.)

Priest holds a position known as dialetheism, the philosophical view that a statement can be both true and false. Dialetheism was inspired from certain paradoxes that arise in mathematical systems, as for instance with Gödel’s paradox. In this paradox, the age-old “Liar’s paradox” is put to use in mathematics; the Liar’s paradox involves the statement by a Cretan that “All Cretans are liars” when said by a Cretan (an ancient Greek paradox). Priest has developed a theory that takes both the statement and its negation as true. In general, he has written extensively on non-classical logics in his work in philosophy.

Priest is has been President of the Australasian Association for Logic, as well as the Australasian Association of Philosophy, where he was Chair of Council for 13 years. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 1995.

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