So QM determines that determinism is impossible?Asserting determinism, or at least what is often referred to as "hard" or "rigid" determinism consists in claiming that from any set of conditions there can arise only one outcome at any subsequent time. An often cited "thought experiment" is that if it were possible to restart the evolution of the universe from the initial moment it came into being it would again unfold exactly, down to the minutest detail, as it has actually done this time.
This is an entirely groundless assumption. Under the aegis of Newtonian mechanics this may have seemed obviously true, but in the light of QM it seems not only vanishingly unlikely, but even just plain impossible. — Janus
Sounds like more determinism. Seems like errors determine outcomes.Simplest interpretation is that he doesn't understand a measurement's being accurate to within a certain error. — Banno
Then you seem to be saying that the words, "married", "bachelor" and "married-bachelor" are meaningless and that there is no difference between them, or that they could mean anything about a man. What is the relationship between these different strings of scribbles? Is a contradiction a misuse of language? Do you agree that there is such a thing as a misuse of language? If so, then what would a misuse of language entail?Married men don't need to wear a wedding band and bachelors can if they like. And neither needs to be doing "married" or "bachelor" things to be married or a bachelor. A married man and a bachelor can be sitting in a Jacuzzi together wearing nothing but swimming trunks. How do I draw that one is a married man and one is a bachelor? — Michael
While I may not be refuting dialetheism directly, I believe that I am at least doing indirectly by refuting the concept of a "married-bachelor" as meaningless. Contradictions are a means of refuting arguments. I've made contradictions and you showed how that refutes my argument (and I agree which is why I've been trying to rephrase and rework my argument), so if contradictions are used to refute and argument, then what use is dialetheism?So again, you're just denying dialetheism rather than refuting it, and what you said earlier about not being able to picture certain things in the mind is an irrelevant comment that does nothing to further your case (and has been shown false by my example of the number of stars in the universe, or the existence of dark matter). — Michael
That's good enough for me. I can't really refute the existence of god(s) or idealism/solipsism, only deny it, and the fact that you can deny them means that there are other means of solving the problems it attempts to solve, not the only solution to those kinds of problems. But tell me, can you deny the LNC and still solve problems like distinguishing between things, like true and false?Then you're just begging the question by asserting that contradictions are impossible. That's not a refutation of dialetheism, it's just a denial of it. — Michael
A married man could have a ring on his finger and the bachelor without. How would you represent a married-bachelor?You may have missed my edit, and it may be redundant now that you're backtracking from your talk about being able to draw stars, but how would drawings of a married man, a bachelor, and a married bachelor even differ? They'll just be drawings of a man that I say is married, a bachelor, or a married bachelor. — Michael
No, I'm saying that things can only be the case if they aren't immediately negated in the same instant by it's opposite. As I said, a contradiction amounts to a net-zero information. The moment you draw something or think of something you must draw or think of it's opposite in the same moment of time and the same area of (mental/material) space. All you end up with is one or the other in any moment of time or space. Just as if I were to write a computer program where x = 1 and then the next line will be x = 0, the computer will use the last definition, not both.So now you're saying that things can only be the case if they can be drawn? What about dark matter? — Michael
It seems to me that in saying that there are borderline cases is the same as making a level of semantic granularity. The colors blue and green are distinct, yet we also have blue-green which is also distinct - related to blue and green, yet not blue or green. It seems to me that there are instances where something seems like a contradiction, yet it isn't because we find that they weren't opposing qualities, just different qualities that can interact and cause something new.Right. And so the word "contradiction" doesn't mean zero information, for that is nonsensical, but refers to conflicting sources of information, actions, intentions, judgements and so on. A "true" contradiction can be taken to refer to an unresolved conflict that is logically implied.
For example, conflicts of judgement that are present in discrete borderline categorisation problems, as in being in the kitchen and not in the kitchen, are not resolvable by introducing more linguistic precision, for the same borderline problem resurfaces on a finer level of semantic granularity; here the "true" contradiction refers to the fact that the concept of discreteness cannot be reconciled with the existence of borderline cases. It's all well and good hoping that the conflict is potentially resolvable, but there is no reason to believe that all such conflicts are resolvable. — sime
You seem to be saying that married bachelors and square-circles can't be the case because I can't picture them in my mind, and yet there are 1021 stars in the universe even though I can't picture that many stars in my mind.
You then say that this doesn't matter because I can symbolize the fact that there are 1021 stars in the universe with scribbles on the screen, but I can also symbolize married bachelors and square-circles with scribbles on the screen.
So which is it? Must I be able to picture things in my mind for them to be the case, in which case there can't be 1021 stars in the universe, or is it enough that I can symbolize things with scribbles on the screen, in which case there could be married bachelors and square-circles? — Michael
Exactly. The key phrase here is "refer to opposite things" - as if opposite attributes can be the innate nature of something other than a phrase in some language. Do objects with opposing properties exist?What do you mean by symbolize? How does it differ from picturing? It's not just about being able to say the words is it? As you said before "the fact that you can put two scribbles or sounds that refer to opposite things together in space and time doesn't make what those scribbles refer to real, or true." — Michael
These objects are mental objects. They are real in the sense that the mind and thoughts are real because they establish causal relationships. Can you draw a picture of pictures in your mind?And on the other side I can picture impossible objects like a Penrose triangle, so looking to what we can or can't imagine just doesn't seem like the appropriate way to determine what can or can't be the case. — Michael
Yet you symbolized the fact that there are more stars in the universe than you can "picture" with scribbles on screen.There are more stars in the universe than I can picture at any one time, yet presumably they still exist. — Michael
Would it be better if I had said that things can't be the case if we can't represent, symbolize, or simulate them in our mind? — Harry Hindu
Would it be better if I had said that things can't be the case if we can't represent, symbolize, or simulate them in our mind?Here you claimed that things can't be the case if we can't picture them in our mind, and now you're saying that the innate nature of cups can't be pictured in our mind; only their appearances can. — Michael
Yes in the sense of contradictory propositions. Nobody of course, experiences contradictory propositions - which goes to show that the general meaning of "contradiction" isn't to refer to propositions but to conflicts, such as the conflict between the definition of a language and it's application, or the rules of a sport and the moral notion of fair-play etc. — sime
Right, and what I was talking about when it comes to picturing things in the mind were contradictions - like cups and non-cups. Do cups and non-cups exists as one entity either in your mind as an appearance (can you imagine a cup and non-cup entity?) or outside of your mind as an innate object of the universe? From where do contradictions come from - from somewhere out in the world for to be experienced by a mind that observes them, or are they created by the mind as a misuse of language, and then projected onto the world as if they existed outside of the mind?Then you're contradicting yourself. Here you claimed that things can't be the case if we can't picture them in our mind, and now you're saying that the innate nature of cups can't be pictured in our mind; only their appearances can.
You need to drop one of these claims. Either only appearances are the case or things can be the case that can't be pictured in our mind. — Michael
Sure it does.This doesn't answer my question. — Michael
Like I said, pictures/appearances/looks only exist in minds, so no you can't picture a cup without picturing how a cup appears in the mind. The question is nonsensical. It's like asking, can you think about a cup without thinking about it?Can you picture a cup without just picturing how a cup appears to us? — Michael
Like I said, the picture is an effect of the innate nature of the cup, innate nature of light, innate nature of your brain and eyes. You can get at the innate nature of all of these things via the innate nature of the picture. Turn out the lights and that changes the picture of the cup. Grow a tumor in your brain, or on the eye stem, and that changes the picture of the cup.Can you picture just the innate nature of the cup? — Michael
Can you picture a cup without picturing the look of a cup, or the feel of a cup, i.e. how a cup is experienced? — Michael
The innateness of the look, or appearance, of the cup lies in the mind. The way the cup is, is irrespective of what they look/appear and feel like in our mind.Or are you saying that cups have some innate appearance, irrespective of what they look and feel like to us? — Michael
A contradictory statement says nothing at all, and is therefore useless. It is basically asserting something and then walking back that assertion at the same time resulting in a net zero amount of information. It is basically scribbles on a page, or sounds in the air.i) Self-negating universal imperatives, i.e. hypocritical statements such as "Don't live by rules!". — sime
There is also the problem of ignorance of the language being used. I could just say, "being in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room". Languages are typically malleable and new things can be said using the same words (or even new words) in different patterns in different contexts, given the intelligence and wittiness of the person using some language. It's one of the ways that languages evolve.ii) When a semantic distinction is more fined grained than is expressible in the language used, such as when standing in a doorway and thereby "being in the kitchen but not in the kitchen". — sime
Vagueness or uncertainty don't count as a contradiction. A contradiction is a set of clearly defined assertions that stand in direct opposition to each other. There is no vagueness or uncertainty there, except as an effect of the contradiction, as per my response to i). A contradiction provides zero information, and zero use.iii) When a semantic distinction is vague or uncertain, such as "a heap of sand" that isn't defined in terms of a particular numeric range of sand grains Hence "heaps of sand" exist, but no particular collection of sand grains constitutes a heap. — sime
If a contradiction provides zero information, and zero use, then what would it look like to act on zero information? What information would it be using to act on? When a contradiction arises, alternative reasons for acting or not acting a certain way will be searched for, so the reason for acting or not will actually have nothing to do with the contradiction.ii + iii are contradictions that programmers have to deal with, but they also present challenges for self-learning autonomous agents, that like human beings must somehow internalise a truth-language distinction.
I suspect that like humans, AI agents will also behave in a logically inconsistent fashion relative to their self-knowledge. — sime
It's a wonder that them physicist get anything right. — Banno
Priest (and other dialetheists) would obviously disagree. They present arguments. You should study them sometime. — Theorem
Obviously you weren't moved by their arguments or else you would endorse them. Why aren't you endorsing them? What is it that you find lacking, or unreasonable, in their arguments?And while I find them fascinating and worth learning about, I wouldn't say that I endorse them. — Theorem
Sure. Why not? We, and our minds, are governed by the same laws of the universe as everything else. It seems to me that the burden is upon those that claim otherwise - to explain why a mind that is governed by the same laws of the universe wouldn't be able to understand the laws of the universe.Are you saying that things can only be the case if we can picture them in our mind? — Michael
Sounds like determinism to me. Initial conditions lead to subsequent conditions. Banno is using determinism to show that determinism is false.It's also worth noting that if our measurements of initial position and velocity are inherently imperfect, so will any subsequent measurements of position and velocity also be imperfect. — Janus
There isn't much difference between the political parties in the U.S. They both promote bigger government. And the reason that we will always switch back and forth (and a reason for the Electoral College) is that if one party gains to much power and the other party is never able to take the majority temporarily, then many states will secede. To appease the masses and keep the union unified, both parties take turns being the majority.The whole thing reminds me of the political entity we so fondly call "government" of, say, the USA. At the end of every term, the entire team that is the government is changed (barring the times when a party gets re-elected) - the president is different, the vice president is different, and so on, and yet, we still refer to every one of these disparate entities as the government of the USA. Likewise, every little essential detail of the LNC has been altered and all that remains of the real LNC is just the label - the law of noncontradiction. It's an empty word if you ask me. — TheMadFool
More precisely, he argues that there are actual situations containing statements that are both true and false, namely, those situations that fit the semantics of the enclosure schema. These situations involve self-reference and/or reference to absolute limits. — Theorem
Thank you both for your informative posts.One compelling example of an alleged true contradiction is, of course, the Liar sentence. It is surprisingly difficult to develop a classical account of the Liar that satisfies everyone and that is not prey to revenge paradoxes. Dialetheism provides a very straightforward solution to this and related paradoxes. — Nagase
Second, paraconsistent logics in general are concerned with controlling the trivialization that follows from the principle of explosion. That is, such logics provide a workaround for when we find contradictions in our belief set or in our model. Now, you may say, why would we want such a workaround? Shouldn't we just jettison the contradiction and be done with it? Well, yes, but the problem is, how do we do this? Suppose I have beliefs A1,…,AnA1,…,An, and from these beliefs I eventually derive a contradiction, say B&¬BB&¬B. This means that I should give up one of the AiAi's, but which one? There may be no obvious way of selecting such an AiAi, since there may be equal evidence for each of them. In that case, a reasonable course of action would be to investigate further into the source of the contradiction so that I can eventually revise my beliefs. In the meantime, however, do I need to act irrationally, as if I believed everything (which would follow from the explosion)? Of course not. But this means that I will need to employ a paraconsistent logic, since I will need to ignore explosion. So paraconsistency may be a useful tool in "controlling" a contradiction during belief revision. — Nagase
This seems to be very rare occasions where two contradictory beliefs have the same amount of information. I am finding it difficult to even think of an actual example.And per ↪Nagase regarding belief revision, dialetheism could also have practical applications within the field(s) of artificial intelligence and machine learning. In fact, now that I look at it, the SEP article linked in the OP actually contains a short section devoted to this topic. — Theorem
Then dialetheism and LNC are talking past each other when using these terms?Since the law of noncontradiction (LNC), expressed as ~(p & ~p), is critically dependent on the definitions of negation and the AND logical connective, it follows that paraconsistent logic or dialetheism has different definitions for both of them. — TheMadFool
You're so silly, Banno.Taking subjective to mean "influenced by or based on personal beliefs or feelings", it's a simple matter to find such statements:
Banno likes vanilla ice cream.
Trump is a poor excuse for a president
Being cold is unpleasant
Each of these is based on personal beliefs or feelings. Each is true. — Banno
More word games, Banno?The standard philosophical prejudice is that given an accurate enough account of the position of the box and a given ball, a competent physicist will be able to tell us which of the bins across the bottom the ball will land in.
And in this sense the path of the ball is determined.
But of course no one could determine the final resting place of the ball. Even the smallest error in the initial positions will be magnified until it throws out the calculations. — Banno
You actually showed that it doesn't because you used reasons to determine your conclusion.wrote this in a time of only nascent chaos theory, which could only serve to amplify her point.
The notion that the universe is determined fails. — Banno
Agreed.And it's with the "exact," it seems to me, that dialetheism fails. And this because with exactness it must affirm and then deny what it affirms. — tim wood
What use is vageness other than to keep others ill-informed or to prevent one's self from being trapped by the rules of logic (especially when appealing to one's own emotions)?Vagueness — bongo fury
This is one of those times where you must ask yourself, "why ask why?". If the universe worked some other way, we'd still be asking why it doesn't work another way.Physics has shown us the universe has many laws or rules by which it operates; gravitational constant, conservation laws, uncertainty principle, thermodynamics etc.
But why? Why have any consistency to anything? Why not have a gravitational force that changes constantly or a conservation law that works "most" of the time. — Benj96
Sure, you and your feelings are part of the "objective truth of the world", so to speak, just as me and my feelings are. We can talk about each other's mental states in objective ways, as our mental states play a causal role in the world, and are a part of the world like boulders and waterfalls are.Aren't their truths about individuals? I can say I'm angry, you can say that I don't look angry. I can reply that I'm holding it in. Surely there is a truth about whether I feel angry — Marchesk
Which metaphysical and epistemological problems need to be solved prior to understanding, or being able to use, logic? Tell me how you answer that question without using logic. — Harry Hindu
All of them or any of them, when applicable. To my knowledge, none of them contradict any other one, except maybe dialetheism, but I am beginning to think that that is just psuedo-logic (see my other thread).Which logical axioms should we accept? — 83nt0n
How so?I think that depends on what you mean by some element of truth. Newtonian mechanics is wrong but useful. — 83nt0n
I think that you are confusing a galaxy with a picture of a galaxy.Picturing an entire galaxy in your mind is impossible. — 83nt0n

It seems obvious to me that we have errors in our thinking - where what we thought was true wasn't. And when we look closer at why it wasn't true, it was because we didn't apply all the rules of logic.Is this statement about logic true? If logic isn't used to "establish logic", how do we "establish truth" about logic without "using logic"? — 180 Proof
Really? Which metaphysical and epistemological problems need to be solved prior to understanding, or being able to use, logic? Tell me how you answer that question without using logic.This is why I am not outright saying one of these fields should be first. It seems like metaphysics/epistemology depend on logic, but logic depends on metaphysics/epistemology. Analogous to the problem of the criterion. — 83nt0n
Useful, as in which problems could dialetheism be applied and then solve? We aren't using logic to establish logic. We use logic to establish truth - truth about metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, etc. statements. How would you know that any metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, etc. statements are true without logic? And if you can't distinguish between different statements, then what use is even making any statements at all?What do you mean by useful? If you mean how is it relevant to the discussion, well dialetheism goes to show that the foundations of logic are disputed, so how do we find a 'correct' logic? If we use logic to establish logic, this would be circular. — 83nt0n
If something is useful then that implies that there is some element of truth.Are you implying that because something habitually works that it is true/correct? — 83nt0n
So what useful assertions can be made in the fields of epistemology or ontology where the conclusion doesn't follow the premise, or that you don't need to provide reasons for your conclusion?Let's just say I don't necessarily agree that logic is first. It seems that if we want our logical system to be justified/true we will need to employ epistemology or ontology/metaphysics, otherwise we're in danger of arbitrarily picking axioms. — 83nt0n
Then dialetheism both denies and assumes the law of non-contradiction. How is that statement useful?This question is already assuming that the law of non-contradiction to be the case, so I'd imagine a dialetheist would answer by saying that the question is not well formed. — 83nt0n
You mean it habitually works and provides useful information via deduction and induction.Yes of course you can't escape the classical laws of logic if you assume the classical laws of logic. Just like if you wore red sunglasses you wouldn't be able to escape seeing everything as red until you take the glasses off. The reason why I personally find it hard to escape classical logic is probably because it is habitual. — 83nt0n
Science has gone on since the first hominid began using tools. Looking under a rock is just as scientific as looking through a telescope. Philosophy has been going on ever since humans created art and buried their dead. And logical and illogical thinking have occured since thinking began, just as tyrannosaurus rexes and triceratops existed before they were identified and given names as such. I never said logic equates to all thinking - just a certain type of thinking.Sure -- but it wasn't "science" or "logic" in the sense that was meant above. Hunter-gathers weren't conducting controlled experiments, nor were they doing syllogisms. Again, this is why I said the equating of "logic" to "thinking" is misleading. Thinking has gone on for millennia, just as language has. Logic and grammar are not that. — Xtrix
Telling you that your thinking is error-free when it comes to understanding the concepts of the other fields of philosophy doesn't tell you much? Are you kidding?To say thinking is "correct" because it conforms to the rules of logic just doesn't tell you much. — Xtrix
So, you don't seem to be disagreeing with me that logic is a fundamental field of philosophy, rather you are disagreeing which form of logic is more fundamental?There are several conflicting systems of logic. For example, dialetheism denies the law of non-contradiction. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism/ Even the axioms of logic are disputed. So how do we know which system to use? — 83nt0n
So you agree with me that "true" and "objective" are synonyms
— Harry Hindu
No, I said that you used "objective" to take on the sense of "true". — Banno
What is a synonym if not a word that can replace another and does so without replacing its meaning?I'll agree with you that "objective" can take on the sense of "true"; hence, when it replaces "true" in the OP it does so without replacing the meaning. — Banno
