You are playing with words. The world either is rational, in the sense that our logic is applicable to it, or it is not.
Rationality is a condition for survival. Just look at a rat in a lab maze, and how it tries to decipher the psychologist's intentions!

It's worth noting the distinction between saying that 'there are no contradictions in nature' (implying that, at least in principle, there could be) and that 'the very idea of a contradiction is inapplicable to nature' (i.e. that it is not impossible but non-sensical to speak of 'things/entities/events/actions' as contradictory or not: an error of grammar, as if to ask if an idea is coloured or not). The OP trades on the second kind of error - it is a grammatical mistake. — StreetlightX

If it is nonsensical to apply the law of noncontradiction to nature then what is nature? And is there any nature at all? Because if there is, then there isn't.

If it is nonsensical to apply the law of noncontradiction to nature then what is nature? — litewave

But this is the wrong question. It's a question of grammar and sense, not 'being' (what 'is'...?). It makes perfect sense to say that proposition X and proposition ¬X contradict: from this, one can draw conclusions, make inferences, etc. This is just what is means to make sense, to be sensical. No such way of proceeding presents itself when saying that some determinate thing or action or whathaveyou 'contradicts' itself or another thing. One cannot make sense of such a statement, cannot place it in the logical space of giving and asking for reasons. As Raymond Geuss points out, what we mistakenly think of as 'contradictions' in actions (for example) are generally just conflicts:

"The very idea of “contradiction,” taken strictly as a logical term, has no direct application to actions. This is not a point about logic, but about human action. Two actions can, of course, conflict in any number of ways. To use Kant’s example, two brothers, Lord X and Lord Y, may both be good Christians in that each wants what his brother wants: Milan. They can both “want Milan” (i.e., want to possess and control the city), and they can fight, either diplomatically or militarily, for control over it, but an action does not in itself become even a candidate for standing in a relation of contradiction or noncontradiction with another action until both actions are artificially “prepared” by being described in a canonical way. It is not the physical shock of Lord X’s and Lord Y’s cavalry in the Po Valley which constitutes a “contradiction” but the description of that shock in a very particular way.

It is no contradiction to say that Lord X’s cavalry were trying to move from point A to point B, and encountered Lord Y’s cavalry, who were trying to move from point B to point A. To speak of a “contradiction” one would at least need to describe what was happening in a statement like “Lord X is trying to make it the case that he (reflexive, i.e., Latin: se) controls Milan and that Lord Y does not control Milan” and “Lord Y is trying to make it the case that he (se) controls Milan and that Lord X does not control Milan.” Note how complicated and convoluted this formulation is, but note also that even this complex interpretative process has not visibly generated anything that one could call a contradiction. Lord X has a completely coherent project and so equally does Lord Y. To generate a contradiction one would have to move out of the real world altogether, in which Lord X and Lord Y are two distinct persons, and attribute the conjunction of projects of Lord X and Lord Y to the same person, say Z. About the hypothetical Z then one might say that what he wants is a contradiction: that Lord X control Milan and not control Milan, and that Lord Y control Milan and not control Milan. What status does this hypothetical Z have?" (Geuss, Moralism and Realpolitik).

To Geuss's understanding of action, one simply needs to add the category of 'events'. 'Contradiction' is a largely trivial and anaemic notion that is of limited use in approaching things. The presence of a contradiction invariably indicates a failure of thought and sense-making, not a property of the world; a failure of language and grammar, which the OP is a marvellous example of.

You are again playing with words. It is true that actions cannot contradict each other, only ideas and propositions.
But actions are guided by ideas and logic. And that is what we are talking about.

To take the example of the lab rat, it can decide than springing when the bell sounds might be the right action to perform to avoid an electric shock. If successful, the next time the bell sounds the logical "thing" to do is to jump. The action inherits its logical status from the previous reasoning.

But what happens if the next time the rat still gets an electric shock?
The answer is obvious: utter confusion.

With a sadist psychologist the lab rat has no chance of winning. The only hope for the rat is that the scientist himself is a rational being.

That is what we expect the universe to be: rational. That is the only way for us to find out when we have to jump.

That is what we expect the universe to be: rational. — Hachem

Your example has nothing to do with the universe being rational. The rat has just made either a correct or an incorrect assumption that he won't get shocked if he jumps. But if he does get shocked even if he jumps then he learns that him jumping has nothing to do with whether or not he gets shocked.

For the rat, the lab is the universe. And we, as human beings, can certainly be compared to this rodent.

For the rat, the lab is the universe. And we, as human beings, can certainly be compared to this rodent. — Hachem

How is this relevant?

how is it not?

Because it doesn't address my point that your example has nothing to do with the universe being rational. We just make certain assumptions about how the world behaves, and sometimes we're wrong.

How is this relevant? — Michael

How indeed.

If you mean by that that our assumptions, however rational, can be wrong and infirmed empirically, then I can only agree with you.

But the infirming itself is rational in the sense that it does not throw logic overboard.

Something QT is very proud of doing under the pretext that at a certain level other rules apply.

That is a metaphysical assumption that has never been empirically sustained. It seems very often to be confirmed, but only if you accept the original assumption.

But this is the wrong question. It's a question of grammar and sense, not 'being' (what 'is'...?). — StreetlightX

If you say that nature is, rather than saying that nature is and simultaneously isn't, or if you say that nature has such and such properties, rather than saying that nature has such and such properties and simultaneously doesn't have these properties, then you are applying the law of noncontradiction to nature.

It makes perfect sense to say that proposition X and proposition ¬X contradict: from this, one can draw conclusions, make inferences, etc. This is just what is means to make sense, to be sensical. No such way of proceeding presents itself when saying that some determinate thing or action or whathaveyou 'contradicts' itself or another thing. — StreetlightX

That's because it would be absurd if a thing or an action contradicted itself. It would mean that the thing or the action is not what it is. That's why I say that there can be no contradiction in reality. There can be contradictions in our descriptions of reality but such descriptions are necessarily false - they cannot correspond to reality because there are no contradictions in reality.

As Raymond Geuss points out, what we mistakenly think of as 'contradictions' in actions (for example) are generally just conflicts: — StreetlightX

I definitely don't confuse contradictions (in the logical sense) with conflicts or clashes of opposite forces or interests. Such conflicts can be perfectly logically consistent. There are conflicts in reality but there are no contradictions.

It is no contradiction to say that Lord X’s cavalry were trying to move from point A to point B, and encountered Lord Y’s cavalry, who were trying to move from point B to point A. — StreetlightX

Right. But it would be a contradiction to say that Lord X’s cavalry were trying to move from point A to point B and simultaneously Lord X’s cavalry were not trying to move from point A to point B. But since there are no contradictions in reality, such a contradictory action cannot happen.

Lord X’s cavalry were trying to move from point A to point B and simultaneously Lord X’s cavalry were not trying to move from point A to point B. — litewave

What does this even mean? Is this a state of affairs that can obtain in reality? No, but then, that's because it's your description that is absurd. It's an artificial knot you tied with language, nothing more.

it would be absurd if a thing or an action contradicted itself. It would mean that the thing or the action is not what it is. — litewave

Another knot, linguistically derived: create an absurdity, declare it's impossibility, than say that such a thing cannot be. A closed circle of triviality, finding what it put there in the first place, bewitchment of language. One wants to invert and extend Wittgenstein on this score...

""A thing is identical with itself."—There is no finer example of a useless proposition, which yet is connected with a certain play of the imagination. It is as if in imagination we put a thing into its own shape and saw that it fitted." (Wittgenstein, PI §216);

"A thing is and is not identical with itself" - The second best example of a useless proposition...

What does this even mean? Is this a state of affairs that can obtain in reality? No, but then, that's because it's your description that is absurd. It's an artificial knot you tied with language, nothing more. — StreetlightX

But if such a state of affairs obtained in reality then reality would be absurd too. But I can't imagine that reality would be absurd in this way. Reality can correspond only to logically consistent statements, never to logically inconsistent ones. In this sense, reality itself is logically consistent.

Another knot, linguistically derived: create an absurdity, declare it's impossibility, than say that such a thing cannot be. A closed circle of triviality. — StreetlightX

Yeah, it's pretty trivial that reality is logically consistent.

In this sense, reality itself is logically consistent. — litewave

Would you say that reality is true or would you say that only true statements describe reality? If the latter, then perhaps it's more correct to say that only logically consistent statements describe reality than to say that reality is logically consistent.

perhaps it's more correct to say that only logically consistent statements describe reality. — Michael

I do not agree with this implicit shift from rationality to formal consistency. Physics is not a set of syllogisms or formal logical argumentations as can be found in text books.

Rationality is more than being able to be put in a logical form. It is the ability of the human mind to construct an explanation of the world that makes sense to him

A logicist approach is a sterile approach.

I didn't say that being logically consistent is sufficient to describe reality. I only said that only logically consistent statements describe reality.

agreed.

Yes it is, strictly speaking, nonsensical to speak of "true empirical contradictions", including the empirical consequences of special or general relativity - but that isn't the sense of "contradiction" to which philosophers appear to be referring to with the theory of relativity.

For what philosophers seem to be implicitly referring to here is an observer-independent transcendental interpretation of the theory of relativity that they are imagining in line with what their common-sense intuition about what science ought to tell us about a gods-eye perspective of nature.

Special relativity in being an empirical theory is, like with any scientific theory, only designed to account for empirical observations obtainable in the first-person. The theory shows that if our common-sense notion of causation is to be consistent without contradictory implications, then nothing can travel faster than the speed of light; SR says that for any two events that cannot physically influence one-another without interacting via faster than light signals, then it is impossible to say in an observer-independent sense which event occurs first or second, let alone whether they occur simultaneously. They have as it were, a "space-like" relation without a specific temporal ordering, a opposed to a "time-like" temporal ordering.

Hence if one interpreted SR transcendentally in the sense of trying to imagine its implications from a "gods-eye" perspective of the universe as whole, it does indeed imply contradictory states of affairs relative to our notion of causality.

Of course, this is a nonsensical interpretation of SR and forgets the fact that SR is a theory that is only supposed to be meaningful *relative* to a given frame of reference and to describe a frame of reference's relation to "nearby" frames of reference for which the ordering of causation remains unchanged.

But then what of General Relativity? Does it improve matters by giving us a god's eye perspective? i think not. For it allows different frames of references for which events are either seen as time-like or space-like. For example:

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/339235/causality-in-general-relativity

I'd like a more astute philosopher of science to chime in here, but I understand that general relativity only avoids 'transcendental contradiction' in the scientifically unimportant sense when it is interpreted either

1) anti-metaphysically, instrumentally and solipsistically as a computational device for describing only a particular individual observer's experiences and hypothetical observers within his conceivable future.

or

2) as a global metaphysics without any interpretation in terms of first-person experience..

I imagine idealists to accept 1, and realists to accept 2.

Special relativity in being an empirical theory is, like with any scientific theory, only designed to account for empirical observations obtainable in the first-person. — sime

This is exactly what RT is not. If there has ever been a god-like perspective then it is that of RT. How else could you explain time dilation and space contraction? Observers in their own frame of reference do not experience it.

Would you say that reality is true or would you say that only true statements describe reality? If the latter, then perhaps it's more correct to say that only logically consistent statements describe reality. — Michael

Well, you can say that reality is true. After all, we also say that facts (the ways reality is) are truths, although truth is also often meant specifically as a property of statements. Being consistent can be understood as having an identity, being identical to oneself, and so it is a property of things in general, not just of statements.

Being consistent can be understood as having an identity, being identical to oneself, and so it is a property of things in general, not just of statements. — litewave

I am afraid your approach leads to a philosophical dead end. Speaking of things as they are without an observer or a mind is a very difficult metaphysical position to take.

This is exactly what RT is not. If there has ever been a god-like perspective then it is that of RT. How else could you explain time dilation and space contraction? Observers in their own frame of reference do not experience it. — Hachem

As i said, my understanding of SR is that it inter-translates local frames of reference that are causally connected within the speed of light of each other. But that doesn't make it a consistent theory of ALL conceivable frames of reference that lie outside of one another's light cones. Indeed SR has nothing to say about causal implications for space-like events.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity#Causality_and_prohibition_of_motion_faster_than_light

An observer in a frame of reference knows that he is moving because of acceleration. But that is something only he can experience, not somebody outside of this frame.
Acceleration is also beyond the realm of SR and belongs to General Relativity.

I am afraid your approach leads to a philosophical dead end. Speaking of things as they are without an observer or a mind is a very difficult metaphysical position to take. — Hachem

Do you think there was no moon before any mind observed it?

As I said, if reality contained a contradiction it would mean that something is not identical to itself - and that would be nonsense. — litewave

I'm afraid I don't see that at all. As an example, suppose that our current physical theories turn out to be "true" about reality. In that case, quantum physics is inconsistent with relativity, but the law of identity still holds. A thing is still identical to itself. I just don't follow your logical argument here.

Also it's worth noting that any talk about "reality" is not about physics, it's about metaphysics. The laws of physics are the historically contingent activity of humans, from Aristotle to Galileo to Newton to Einstein to the contemporary theorists. Physical law is always approximate and subject to change.

On the other hand "reality" might be created by God, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the Big Computer in the Sky as some people think. These are questions of metaphysics. You are not in a position to argue that "reality" is one way or the other. You have no evidence and you can never have evidence. If the Pope tells me that God created the universe, I respect the Pope's belief, but I'm not going to spend my time arguing with him. His beliefs are a matter of faith, not science.

Moreover, if you abandon the law of non-contradiction all your arguments automatically refute themselves. — litewave

This I also don't understand. If you mean that if I don't believe in Aristotelian logic that I can't have a rational conversation, that's clearly false. We can have rational conversations about irrationality. I've already posted links to articles on paraconsistent logic and intuitionist logic. Many contemporary theories of logic deny the law of the excluded middle. This is essentially a consequence of computer science applied to logic, since a set and its complement may both be noncomputable.

In short, I don't understand or agree with either of your assertions. And any claims you make about "reality" are equivalent to the Pope telling me about the Blood of the Lamb. It's a question of faith, not reason.

I am afraid I have lost one post. I thought it had already been posted, but that is not the case.
It preceded my last one. I think it went something like this.


RT tries to explain what happens in each individual frame of reference. But to do that it must know which frame of reference is moving relative to the other. The only way it can do that is to measure time dilation and space contraction.

That in turn presupposes a neutral frame of reference from which these measurements can be done.

End of relativity, and welcome to Newton who could could get back in via the window.

Do you think there was no moon before any mind observed it? — litewave

Of course not. The problem is talking about the moon without in someway being there to see it.

I'm afraid I don't see that at all. As an example, suppose that our current physical theories turn out to be "true" about reality. In that case, quantum physics is inconsistent with relativity, but the law of identity still holds. A think is still identical to itself. I just don't follow your logical argument here. — fishfry

Can you formulate the inconsistency between relativity and quantum physics? I just heard that they give infinite results in some situations, which does not correspond to observed reality, but infinities per se don't seem inconsistent.

This I also don't understand. If you mean that if I don't believe in Aristotelian logic that I can't have a rational conversation, that's clearly false. — fishfry

I mean that if you abandon the law of non-contradiction then you indeed can't have any meaningful conversation because there is no difference between what you say and the negation of what you say.

Of course not. The problem is talking about the moon without in someway being there to see it. — Hachem

But even if no one sees the moon or talks about it, the moon is still there and so it has its identity.