The Law of Non-Contradiction

Miscellaneous General
1

I think the law of non-contradiction is just an attempted antidote to the problem of how people often confuse themselves (and others) with their own diction.

Suppose a man claims, “That apple is green not green at the same time.”

Now this statement is clearly nonsense. However, calling it “nonsense” might make the man think you are just pouting in disagreement. Hence one approach is to say that the claim violates the Law of Non-Contradiction, and since it is a law and since it has a name, the man might actually consider that what he is saying could be problematic. Essentially, this approach has an extra jolt of authority behind it, because it is established as a known “law.”

That is nice and effective for getting the person to reevaluate their claim, but how elucidating is it? What is really going on in this communication situation?

One thing we know: The guy must have had some thought in his mind that prompted him to utter the statement. As Mises recognized, it is impossible to imagine an apple that is both green and not green at the same time, so we know the man could not have had such a thought. Therefore the words he spoke, at least as we interpreted them, did not faithfully represent his thoughts.

If the words did not correspond to the actual thought that prompted them in his mind, it would be misleading (or at least roundabout) to say he violated any law. It would be rather more direct to say he expressed himself poorly. One possibility is that he used the word green in two different ways in the same sentence. To take a silly example, perhaps he meant the apple was green (colored) but not green (with envy). His thought was coherent, but his words could not be interpreted coherently because he was equivocating on the word green.

Hence I contend it is more elucidating (but has less authoritative oomph) to say the problem with the claim is that it is poorly worded, rather than that it breaks a law of logic. Or more generally, invoking the law of non-contradiction is just a more authoritative-sounding way of saying that someone has worded their claim in a way that the listener cannot reasonably see how to interpret into a coherent thought. (This may mean that the underlying thought is problematic, but there is no way we listeners can know either way until the speaker clarifies.)

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2

To piggyback off the post,

The law of Non-Contradiction is misleading and abused in everyday conversation.

  1. I say an apple is red, you say purple. The law of non-contradiction is of no help here but it is often evoked in an attempt to prove that one of us must be right and the other wrong.

  2. Or when dealing with preferences, preferring a to b and b to c does not infer by law that one prefers a to c. Since preference changes over time, its possible to have changed your utility rankings during the time frame of the evaluation process

  3. Thus use of oxymoron’s (here’s a list http://www.oxymorons.info/) in everyday language is a violation of the law of non-contradiction but seems to do well in translating information

3

I take your post as suggesting - or at least, that’s what I would conclude from it - that it might be a good idea to stop saying ‘oh, you are just being stupid: you are violating the law of non-contradiction’ but in stead explain carefully why what the person said makes no sense to you and ask hem to clarify his position. In any way, even if this wasn’t your conclusion, it would be a nice conclusion. I’m in complete agreement with your post.

4

Language is always a summary of thought rather than a full account, and I think that half of the problem of communication lies in this fact.

5

Helpful post AJ. Thanks :slight_smile:

6

“That apple is green not green at the same time.”

Now this statement is clearly nonsense.

Perhaps. But this isn’t: blueberries are red when they’re green. “Green” meaning new :slight_smile:

7

I disagree that the concept is misleading, but agree that it is commonly misused. It simply states that ~(A•~A) is necessarily true. This is a purely analytic statement like 1+1=2. What could be less ambiguous or more precise? It is misused in the sense that some people misapply it in debate in order to bully their interlocutors by demonstrating their “rationality” or “mental toughness”.

Oxymorons only violate the law of non-contradiction when you take the individual words as being meaningful and combining their meaning instead of taking the entire term to be meaningful. For instance, “Jumbo Shrimp” refers to an object that can have different properties like being a kind of shell-fish; it is incorrect to interpet the term as meaning that there is an object that has the property of being small (shrimp) and has the property of being big (jumbo).

8

For this very reason, moral universalist arguments from consistency fail to make the case for one view over another.

9

“1) I say an apple is red, you say purple. The law of non-contradiction is of no help here but it is often evoked in an attempt to prove that one of us must be right and the other wrong”

Well, the law would say that each of us is entitled to the truth of their experience. But each of us cannot not have two experiences which are opposite. You could not say ‘I see red and at the same time see purple.’ Unless there are two colors. But if there is one color, the one color cannot be two. Only one of us at a time can experience and only one of us can make a statement that can be tested by the law of contradiction.

As Avicenna / ابن سينا said

“Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.”

One person doesn’t scream because the other is being tortured. He is not contradicting your experience, but he is expressing his own. They are definitely being tortured.

Conversely, red cannot be a truth over the purple and vice versa. Two subjective experiences by two people cannot be in a hierarchy of truth; even if both of them be truths, but about separate experiences. Because the statement also implies ‘human beings have separate consciousness and there is truth to their separate experience.’ This cannot be so for one and not for the other: this would bring a contradiction. Ergo, the same must be true for others. And in validating your own, you must also make other experiences themselves equally valid. But subject others to the same standard: that they must be consistent and not have two contradictory experiences. Neither you nor they can have contradictory subjective experiences. You both have a unified one experience each which doesn’t contradict itself. Whether you are talking about something like an object or mere things to do with an object.

Brainpolice: universal morality stands. Because while two people can disagree, what matters is if someone is contradicting their own system or not. Or a system (one system) which people follow is doing this or not. Whether in speech or in action. In a way, universal morality is necessary only because there are subjective moralities first. Not to battle them per se or ‘subjectivity’ at all, but because they each must be valid until proven invalid*. Anyone can create a system and some statements. Whether mathematics or anything else that can be stated or applied to something. But it must be tested for internal consistency in order to be a working system; the same way an object like a hammer is checked for its soundness as a tool. And this be done in so much as it is possible. So bad things are not stated or done. And good things are stated and done. Good and bad, in so far as a distinction can or should be made, being the domain of morality, and nothing else. Morality in that way is the same as our language about objects; as arbitrariness of signs being what they are. And the principle of non-contradiction is helpful to both.

*we could agree that you see ‘red’, until you say that the ‘red’ you see is actually a taste. Or that you see no apple at all, but see the redness or purpleness anyway. Or some other thing like that, which proves logically that you are trying to fool us about your own consciousness. Or at the very least, what you report about your consciousness doesn’t conform to the shared language we are both using to understand your consciousness. Though, this is built into what you are saying. That there is a shared language. It is not an excuse for contradiction. Being water and agua simultaneously is not a contradiction, but one person speaking English and the other Spanish.

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10

^ Story of my life.

11

That was one thing I meant to suggest, yes. But overall I was trying to make a more general point, that people’s misunderstanding of the communication process (this being woven into the language and social structure itself) is at the heart of all manner of apparent disagreements that arise in discourse, all manner of theories that are mere wordplay - yet believed by so many intelligent people - and even many ruined relationships. I do not think I have made those points yet, but I intend to.

12

To what are you opposing/ invalidating/ calling it inefficient next to, and what are you stating be done instead? These are not laws of thought any less than any other “concrete” model of reality is - be it in drawing picture format, tap dancing, empiricle models, or whatever.

The limits of language are the limits of your world - no matter how you choose to go about it or what languages you choose to communicate in or not - or what languages you know or not.

13

However, calling it “nonsense” might make the man think you are just pouting in disagreement.

Furthermore; it is about finding where the sense is, not the nonsense of it - that’s the point. Where are the categories, and how are they being contextualized in order to make sense of things, and howthey compel us to accept the realities being presented within the facts (not things) of the structure being presented.

14

I could see red and purple in the same object at the same time (even seeing it as fully red and fully purple). It could be a red apple and I am imagining what it looks like purple.

Or green and not green: A green apple that was painted over.

Squared circle? Draw a circle, now draw a square around it.

Now, granted, this could be seen as not expressing myself properly. But only to you. It’s a perfectly proper explanation to me.

These “laws” are usefull. But I wouldn’t try to think of them as laws in the same way as the law of gravity, or the 3 laws of physics. Those laws one literally cannot wiggle out of; things with mass will always have an attractive force towards other mass objects. And movement requires a force, equal to f=ma always, where the action will always be equal.

15

As stated in the OP, ask the person to clarify.

16

There is also the possibility that the words really are nonsense and mean nothing (or at least nothing at all related to the matter at hand) even to the person uttering them. Either way, asking for clarification seems to have the best chance of fixing the problem.

17

The problem with saying “squared circle” without the additional explanation is that other people might interpret it as anyone of the following, or something else. Only one of these are what you meant.

229×220 9.21 KB
331×152 4.59 KB

225×224 2.99 KB
172×171 3.56 KB

So basically I am saying that if a person appear to contradict him or her self, ask for clarification. And also, using language that appears contradictory is not a very precise way to communicate. But the Law of Non-Contradiction doesn’t elucidate any of this; in fact it obscures the fact that the problem is one of communicating what is in the speaker’s mind so that it matches what is in the mind of the listener.

18

Hmm I think I am missing the overall point. All I am reading is you don’t like calling the Law of Non-Contradiction the Law of Non Contradiction because it isn’t useful in most (or all conversations) and instead you ask people to clarify - which is more productive in your minds to find out what the thing they are talking about is.

I don’t know what it is but any critique of this stuff throws me for a loop. I can never really understand the opposition and I have a hard time trying to explain to them what it is they don’t “get” that I do

19

That is all I’m saying, except you’re still implying that it “really is a law” (whatever that means). This “law” is just a piece of advice on how to express yourself more clearly in words, elevated to the status of a lofty-sounding “law of thought” to sound authoritative in an effort to dismiss incoherent theories. But this clunky attempt to browbeat one’s opponents, however much they may deserve it, simply obscures what is going on: People who equivocate are simply being unclear, maybe even to themselves. They are not violating a law; to say they are merely invites them to respond, “So what?” Or to develop even sillier ideas like polylogism.

Clarity starts with calling a spade a spade, and miscommunications are simply not violations of some mystical law, they are merely failed communication attempts. If you want to sound high-handed for the gallery, you can still respond to their “So what?” with something like, “So I can’t figure out what the hell you’re talking about unless you clarify, without the equivocations this time please.”

20

except you’re still implying that it “really is a law” (whatever that means).

When you can compel something not to be, I guess

Clarity starts with calling a spade a spade

lol, so a thing is itself?

Anyway I think we are on the same lines we are just at different points (I think?). I was essentially raised on the classics, so maybe they just form my world picture in a more natural way, and are just ingrained in me. Or it is the language I utilize to clarify and compel myself to fact

But yes, it is awful when one uses such a thing as a pretentious device, when it should be the absolute opposite…and moreover it is probably being used incorrectly. That is, it is awful and confusing to say “you are contradicting yourself”