Semantic Determinacy and the Structural Limits of Unrestricted Universality

Any theory that claims truth must employ distinctions. Without them there is no way to determine what its terms apply to, what counts as relevant evidence, or what would confirm or disconfirm its claims. Every truth-claim therefore presupposes distinctions with determinate content. A distinction possesses determinate content only insofar as there exist specifiable conditions under which it applies correctly, incorrectly, requires transformation, or is legitimately suspended. On this basis, the paper develops a direct structural dilemma for any theory that claims unrestricted universal validity for a fixed set of distinctions. Such a theory must either make the relevant conditions of application explicit, thereby rendering its universality conditional rather than absolute, or leave them unspecified, thereby sacrificing the semantic determinacy needed to underwrite genuine truth-claims. The argument concludes that unrestricted universality without conditions of application does not strengthen a theory’s distinctions; it empties them.