What is a contradiction? (English) Zbl 1061.03009
Priest, Graham (ed.) et al., The law of non-contradiction. New philosophical essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press (ISBN 0-19-926517-8/hbk). 49-72 (2004).
Summary: The law of non-contradiction holds that both sides of a contradiction cannot be true. Dialetheism is the view that there are contradictions both sides of which are true. Crucial to the dispute, then, is the central notion of contradiction. My first step here is to work toward clarification of that simple and central notion: Just what is a contradiction?
The notion of contradiction is far from simple, it turns out, and the search for clarification points up a menagerie of different forms of the law of non-contradiction and dialetheism as well. Might some of these at least be eliminated as trivially true or false – true or false by definition, perhaps – allowing us to concentrate on the more interesting forms?
Even the attempt to settle the easy cases raises a potential impasse in the dynamics of the debate – an impasse that can be expected to characterize the debate quite generally. The paper is devoted to the question of whether that impasse might be broken.
For the entire collection see [Zbl 1054.03003].
The notion of contradiction is far from simple, it turns out, and the search for clarification points up a menagerie of different forms of the law of non-contradiction and dialetheism as well. Might some of these at least be eliminated as trivially true or false – true or false by definition, perhaps – allowing us to concentrate on the more interesting forms?
Even the attempt to settle the easy cases raises a potential impasse in the dynamics of the debate – an impasse that can be expected to characterize the debate quite generally. The paper is devoted to the question of whether that impasse might be broken.
For the entire collection see [Zbl 1054.03003].
MSC:
| 03A05 | Philosophical and critical aspects of logic and foundations |
