Calling KN Out On His Sophistry

_{Barry Arrington

March 17, 2013

Intelligent Design}

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Sophistry: “n. a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning.”

In a comment earlier today Kantian Naturalist stated: “The idea that the capacity to engage in reasoned discourse depends upon a commitment to ‘the rules of right reason’ is silly (at best). For one thing, there are no such rules.”

KN, I am calling you out on your sophistry. I challenge you to answer the following three simple true/false questions.

For any proposition A:

1: A=A. True or False.

2: “A is B” and “A is not B” are mutually exclusive. True or False.

3: “A is B” and “A is not B” are jointly exhaustive. True or False.

KN knows as well as anyone that the three classic laws of thought, i.e., the rules of right reason, are logical axioms that cannot be denied on pain of self-referential incoherence. In other words, in order to deny one of the three laws, one must first affirm it. What will he do now?

Prediction: KN will either ignore this challenge or dig deeper into the hole of sophistry he has dug for himself.

Comments

I have not yet been called out on anything, because the so-called "challenge" here has nothing to do with either of the philosophical points I'm making here: the plurality of logical systems, each with its own rules, or that norms are not rules, which is the Sellars-Brandom solution to Wittgenstein's thoughts on the paradoxes of rule-following.Kantian Naturalist_{March 18, 2013
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Ah, having been called out on his sophistry KN throws a tantrum and starts spewing ad hominem. And the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening. Sad really. Pathetic, yes, but mainly sad.Barry Arrington_{March 18, 2013
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Nothing is simple, transparent, or obvious.
If you say “Nothing is simple" is true, then how did you determine this to be true? Seem to me for it to be asserted as true, there would have to have been an infinite regress in the reasoning process whereby this statement was derived (i.e. things would always be complex).
Responding to the “challenge” is of no interest to me, nor are your assessments of my character.
I don't get it. If you answered his question, and you were correct in your thinking about no rules to right reasoning. You would prove your point, wouldn't you?JGuy_{March 18, 2013
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I am not in the slightest bit surprised that authoritarians who distrust and fear science and democracy -- and who really think that the Enlightenment was a bad idea -- would be made deeply anxious at the thought that there is no Bronze Age sky-god to establish the so-called "rules of right reasons."Kantian Naturalist_{March 18, 2013
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At no point did I so much as suggest that the norms constitutive of practical and theoretical reason are socially "constructed," though I do think of them as fundamentally social in character. (The norms are not socially constructed because there is no coherent notion of society as something that exists prior to norms.)Kantian Naturalist_{March 18, 2013
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Kantian Naturalist: "As I see it, the best solution is Bob Brandom’s: norms are not rules." For Kantian Naturalist, the laws of identity, non-contradiction, and causality are nothing more than socially constructed "norms." Obviously, anything that can be socially "constructed" can also be socially "deconstructed," which means that the philosophers of one era can abrogate the logical principles (arbitrarily) established by philosophers of another era. So, what does this mean? On Monday, one gathers, a reasonable person can, if it serves some useful purpose, assume that Jupiter cannot exist and not exist at the same time, but on Tuesday, he is perfectly free to change his mind, especially if he can gain some practical advantage in doing so. The idea is to transform the knowable, objective truth into an unknowable, relative truth that can be twisted and used. Man was designed to know the truth, which is the mind's destination: Reason is the vehicle that makes that journey possible. To destroy the vehicle is to end the journey even before it starts. Thus, the sophist need not militate against truth directly when he can, more surreptitiously, render reason incapable of doing its job, reducing its non-negotiable rules into negotiable, arbitrary norms.StephenB_{March 18, 2013
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...such as the error that rationality can be captured in anything that deserves to be called a “rule” or “law.”.
Without "rules" or "laws" of rational thinking that are assumed valid and binding upon both speaker and listener, asserting that an "error" of rational thinking has taken place is absurd. GIGO, apparently.William J Murray_{March 18, 2013
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KN, pardon but your statements just above pivot on the first principles of right reason you refuse to either affirm or deny. And in particular to identify something, E as an error, is to imply, NOT_E in contradistinction to E. KFkairosfocus_{March 18, 2013
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Responding to the "challenge" is of no interest to me, nor are your assessments of my character. I'm interested in doing philosophy and pointing out various errors I see bejng committed -- such as the error that rationality can be captured in anything that deserves to be called a "rule" or "law.".Kantian Naturalist_{March 18, 2013
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KN, I notice you continue studiously to avoid answering the three questions in the OP. That says a lot. I invite the onlookers to see what KN is doing here. It is so typical. It could be a case study in sophistry. KN says, “Nothing is simple, transparent, or obvious” (the sophist’s mantra by the way) and refuses to answer the question. But in refusing to answer he has answered. Consider KN’s proposition, “Nothing is simple, transparent, or obvious.” He has stated the matter in the disjunctive (i.e., he has used “or,” not “and”). Therefore, his statement can be broken down into three simpler statements: Nothing is simple. Nothing is transparent. Nothing is obvious. Let’s take the first statement (“Nothing is simple”) and substitute it for A in the three classic laws. 1. Law of Identity. “Nothing is simple” is the same as “Nothing is simple.” Check. 2. Law of Non-contradiction. Either “Nothing is simple” is true or its negation (“At least one thing is simple”) is true. They cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense. They are mutually exclusive. Check. 3. Law of Excluded Middle. “Nothing is simple” and its negation (“At least one thing is simple”) are the only two possibilities with respect to whether “nothing is simple” is true or its negation (“At least one thing is simple”) is true. They are jointly exhaustive. Check. KN’s proposition is obviously false. 1=1 is simple and true. But notice that it does NOT matter whether KN’s proposition is true or false for the three classic laws to hold. It is indisputable that whether “nothing is simple” is true or false it cannot be other than itself. It cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same sense. And it is either true or false; there is no third possibility. As I predicted, KN would not be able to deny the three laws without affirming them, and this leads to self-referential incoherence. KN is the living embodiment of the proverb, “Professing to be wise, they became fools.” He thinks he is oh so wise and sophisticated, but he is really just a fool.Barry Arrington_{March 18, 2013
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F/N: and all of this seemingly rarefied ivory tower stuff is important because we need to think straight, to act sensibly. Good reasoning is one of the most important, most practical things we need, especially in a world that seems to be going collectively mad with irrationality and folly. And so, getting things straight is vital. KFkairosfocus_{March 18, 2013
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OD: The issue is when a conclusion rightly follows from premises, and for this, the question of grounds becomes vital. For instance classical syllogisms are assertions about set membership and the meaning of clusters of such assertions. KFkairosfocus_{March 18, 2013
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Reason is whatever compels belief among reasonable people. Even David Berlinski says as much: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/03/berlinski_on_th070051.html Mr. Berlinski defines for us what a proof should do: It "compels belief." But Mr. Berlinski seems to have a controversial understanding of this compulsion. For him it is more psychological than logical, more rhetorical than mathematical, more feeling than fact. Take the author's discussion of Euclid's first proof, a demonstration of the proposition that on a given straight line segment it is always possible to construct an equilateral triangle. After agreeing with modern mathematicians that there are numerous logical lapses in Euclid's argument, Mr. Berlinski nevertheless concludes that his proof succeeds -- because, again, its combination of logic and illustration "compels belief." Of course my formulation is circular - but I don't see any way out of it - perhaps someone at UD can help? I still go with Feyerabend (whose thinking was focused on Science) . . . anything goes.owendw_{March 18, 2013
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KN: I am pointing out that logic has a natural meaning, the the study and practice of right and responsible reasoning, wherein various systems based on axioms, symbols etc are, strictly, models. Further, in the case of first principles of right reason, every attempt to create a novel system that rejects such, ends up being self referentially incoherent by implicitly using what it would deny. These first principles are necessarily so, on pain of such incoherence and consequent confusion. As has been pointed out. and notice, consistently I have spoken of first principles, underscoring their essential, foundational and non-arbitrary character. In your statements above, you intend to affirm certain things, which have a stable identity, showing just my point. KFkairosfocus_{March 18, 2013
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I fail to see how appealing to "ordinary usage", much less dictionary definitions, is going to illuminate anything of philosophical substance. You can't just say, "there aren't alternative logics" just because there's no room in the ordinary lay conception of "logic". It's precisely because there are alternative axiomatic systems that I think that rationality must be more primitive or foundational than what is captured by any logic. But if a logic is a system of rules, then if there are "rules of right reason," those rules would have to be meta-rules. And at this point the paradoxes of rule-following familiar to us since Wittgenstein and Kripke kick in with a vengeance. As I see it, the best solution is Bob Brandom's: norms are not rules.Kantian Naturalist_{March 18, 2013
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KN: Pardon, but it seems to me a little late in the day to so confine logic. Merriam-Webster online:
log·ic noun \?lä-jik\ Definition of LOGIC 1 a (1) : a science that deals with the principles and criteria of validity of inference and demonstration : the science of the formal principles of reasoning (2) : a branch or variety of logic (3) : a branch of semiotics; especially : syntactics (4) : the formal principles of a branch of knowledge b (1) : a particular mode of reasoning viewed as valid or faulty (2) : relevance, propriety c : interrelation or sequence of facts or events when seen as inevitable or predictable d : the arrangement of circuit elements (as in a computer) needed for computation; also : the circuits themselves 2 : something that forces a decision apart from or in opposition to reason — lo·gi·cian noun See logic defined for English-language learners » See logic defined for kids » Examples of LOGIC If you just use a little logic, you'll see I'm right. There's no logic in your reasoning. There's some logic to what he says. There's a certain logic in what he says. The revolution proceeded according to its own logic. the logic of the situation Origin of LOGIC Middle English logik, from Anglo-French, from Latin logica, from Greek logik?, from feminine of logikos of reason, from logos reason — more at legend First Known Use: 12th century
KFkairosfocus_{March 18, 2013
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For one thing, truth is not a logical notion, but a pre-logical, semantic notion we bring with into the study of logics. Logics study a particular class of inferences, "formal inferences". By contrast, "material inferences" (such as, "if yesterday was Monday, then tomorrow will be Wednesday" or "if it was raining, then the streets will be wet") depend on extra-logical terms. Here's another illustration of what I mean. Consider the old quip, "one person's modus ponens is another person's modus tollens". Why should this be so? Because at root both "rules" say the same thing: that one should not accept all of "p", "~q" and "p-->q". Neither rule specifies what one ought to do -- which of those three premises ought to be tossed out. There could be all sorts of good reasons for justifying one's choice, but those reasons are not to be found in rules of logic. I think that one reason my views seem odd is that I think of logic in the narrow sense of modern symbolic logic. And that would be constitutive of rationality as such only if the mind was a Turing machine, which it is not.Kantian Naturalist_{March 18, 2013
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Box, Cf the WAQ here and its extension on that case. KFkairosfocus_{March 18, 2013
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I wonder if "alternative logics" is what those with "compatibilist free will" use to arrive at the conclusion that blind, material forces can construct highly complex, hierarchical, integrated functional machines that are assembled and operate via sets of control codes? That would explain a lot.William J Murray_{March 18, 2013
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KN (& WJM): Way back in M100, Prof Neiderriter asked the question, what is mathematics, and answered it thusly: the study of structure. To that, I would add the reasoned study of structure, quantity and related things. What you have said is that in effect one can construct a set of axioms and see where it carries you as a right of exploration in mathematics. Indeed, and in so doing, as Godel reminds, we face the challenge that -- for a reasonably complex entity -- we have no set of such axioms that will be both complete and coherent, and that there is no constructive procedure that will guarantee the coherence of a set of axioms. Already, that is a hint of the problem with the suggestion of alternatives -- why is coherence so prized in mathematics? Why was Godel's result, and Turing's in its train about what an algorithm implementing abstract machine could or could not do, so devastating? Because, precisely identity, distinction and non-confusion are absolutely vital in reasoning. When an axiomatic system, relations, variables etc and rules of inference are set up in a logic system, it is implicitly assumed that there is sufficient stability of identity that we can safely use such symbols etc. Blow that up, and the whole process disintegrates. (This BTW, is why I highlighted that in regards to Quantum Physics, the other field where the errors we are dealing with are ever so common.) So, we are back at the logic race hazard, between identity and its correlates, non-contradiction and whatever novelty is being put up that tries to dismiss such. Somehow, we are being invited to split our minds and act on one hand as though the first principles of right reason obtain, then we are to turn around and announce hey, presto, we have a new mathematical logical system and it does not rely on such outdated notions. The self referential incoherence is blatant, but to those who deny such as having any force, that has no power to move them. Only, seeing the absurd results will. And yes, unless you can show why symbols, relations, inferences and actions should have a stable identity, your system is irretrievably confused. I have no problem with saying that material implication is a limited model of what implication is, and so we should not rely on it to tell us everything. But the bedrock point is there, that from truth one may properly infer only truth. And, once that is surrendered, we potentially have confusion. For, we now have a system that -- standing on a false premise -- will imply true and false statements alike. Indeed, if we believe the false, we may be in the position where we reject the true because it cuts across the false we believe. Ex falso quotlibet, as the prof used to remind us. So, truth is important, stability of identity is important, distinction is important, and coherence is important. So is proper inference. Where, for a claimed implication, the issue is always, why: why is it that we say P => Q? That is, once P is so, Q must also be so, and if Q is not so, P cannot be so? GROUNDS, are also important. Which BTW, is one reason why I much favour the old fashioned way of writing Math:
Given . . . Then . . . , as . . . So . . . , as . . . Therefore, . . . , as . . . QED
(Thank you Fr Raftery, back in 3rd Form Geometry taught a la Euclid, you with your beloved coloured chalks that made connexions so clear. [And objectors who love to mock my use of colours for clarity, now you know where they come from, a didactic purpose.]) Bare, naked assertions chained too often do not acknowledge the obligation of reasonable inference. KN, WJM has raised a crucial issue, to which you must answer convincingly, cogently and clearly, or the whole edifice collapses. (Observe the cases I picked up from SEP above to see some of what I am getting at. And note, I have no problem whatsoever with extensions of logic, indeed I think the idea of necessarily, P => Q and possibly, P => Q are very useful, as are many other things. It is also important to see what happens if we drop axioms [as with the parallel lines postulate], but when we are put in the position that we CANNOT in practice drop an axiom, it is not optional, it is a necessary truth. And it won't do to publicly kick it out the front door then sneak it back in through the back window on the alley.) KFkairosfocus_{March 18, 2013
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One cannot attempt to make sound, meaningful arguments, descriptions or predictions about any phenomena - quantum or not - without adhering to the rules of right reason and expecting others to adhere to those rules for a correct interpretation.William J Murray_{March 18, 2013
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Alternative "logics" are of course elements of a dissolutive thinking, whose target is no more simply intelligence, reason, religion, ethics, morality or whatever but directly the Truth, the Absolute. No more something can be simple, transparent, or obvious. All must be relative, muddy and confused so that the new emperor Error can finally reign undisturbed. This dissolutive thinking in philosophy and science (among many other things) is specific of the post-materialist phase that will finally led humanity to its end. (About materialism, post-materialism and dissolution see René Guénon's "The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times".)niwrad_{March 18, 2013
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Things in the subatomic world of quantum mechanics seems to defy all logic. I'm waiting on Bornagain77's participation in this threat. How about particle wave duality for instance?Box_{March 18, 2013
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This is why I tend to believe that some people - if not most - really are nothing but Turing machine, programmed, biological automatons. What else could spout such nonsense? What does a phrase so simple as "We’ve known for a while now..." even mean from the "alternative logics" or "pragmatic demand" perspective? Is this supposed to be interpreted as a "true" statement? True according to which kind of logic? Can I use a different logical heuristic to infer what this means? Is "true" even a valid concept under those alternative logics? Every sentence and meaning in KN's post relies upon the very same "classical" logic he argues against as being universally valid and necessary to be understood and evaluated. Otherwise - if he is not making either/or truth claims, and if he is not expecting "classic" inference to understanding of his assertive sentence structures, then we are free to make of his post whatever we wish, using whatever metric of evaluation we wish. If I interpret from #12 that KN has just said that he is nothing but a sophist and is here just to see how long we put up with his nonsense, KN has no supposedly valid and binding means by which to claim that interpretation is erroneous.William J Murray_{March 18, 2013
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We've known for a while now that there are alternative logics, sometimes referred to as non-classical logics. Even such a seeemingly transparent idea as implication turns out to be not so simple once one considers the paradoxes of material implication, the idea of strict implication, the debates between intensionalism and extensionalism within the history of modal logic, and so on. Nothing is simple, transparent, or obvious. The hard-and-fast distinctions that traditional philosophers have clung to, like a priori/a posteriori, analytic/synthetic, and fact/value, all become terribly complicated once one looks at them seriously and carefully, and all the more so if one considers Hegel, Meinong, Lewis, Carnap, Quine, Putnam, and Priest. Robert Hanna has argued that logic is grounded in the very nature of rational cognition as such, and while it's an attractive option, I do wonder how he treats alternative or non-classical logics. If a logic is a set of rules, then alternative logics means that there isn't any single correct set of rules. But there could be what I'm inclined to call "logicality" or "discursivity" -- what is "a priori", in a very odd sense of a priori, isn't any specific set of inferential rules, but rather the pragmatic demand that there be some set of inferential rules.Kantian Naturalist_{March 18, 2013
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Box: You are hitting on cases where superposition is possible, and we may have blends (in principle to infinite fineness). Such a superposition is precisely not a case where we are asserting a dichotomy, but of course once we hit on a value such as 70%A + 10% B + 20%C --> 100% D, we are asserting a definite point. In Zadehan, Fuzzy logic, we are not even confined to having the percentages of membership in sets [--> much better than degrees of "truth"] adding up to 100% [e.g. a certain sensed temperature may be deemed 60% cold, 40% warm and 20% hot], but on the output end of the blend, we do have a specific crisp control action. You had better, or your robot can get dangerously out of control. KFkairosfocus_{March 18, 2013
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DiEb: Observe the same logical race hazard oscillation in the discussion of the alternative logic you propose. KFkairosfocus_{March 18, 2013
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KN: Pardon a thought or two even while you have to be away. In each and every case you cite, scratch beneath the surface and you see a weird "logical race hazard" feedback oscillation in which they use the first principles of right reason implicitly (so we can make sense of what they are saying, insofar as they are making sense . . . ) while on the surface seeming to deny such. So, the issue is, which state will the outcome settle in? And, if that is out of control, something is wrong. (That is why in certain flip flop circuits, the digital feedback problems that lead to such hazards are either locked out by specifying forbidden i/p conditions, or else the circuitry is "loaded" so that one side will predictably win the race. Hence, one trick behind JK flip flops. And, this should let us know that these matters are a commonplace of digital electronics, which underlies calculators and computers as well as cell phones. if you trust such devices, you implicitly trust the first principles of right reason, expressed in Boolean forms. [That background knowledge is part of why I do not take the debates on alternatives overly seriously.) Let us take SEP on Dialetheism:
A dialetheia is a sentence, A, such that both it and its negation, ¬A, are true (we shall talk of sentences throughout this entry; but one could run the definition in terms of propositions, statements, or whatever one takes as her favourite truth-bearer: this would make little difference in the context). Assuming the fairly uncontroversial view that falsity just is the truth of negation, it can equally be claimed that a dialetheia is a sentence which is both true and false. Dialetheism is the view that there are dialetheias. One can define a contradiction as a couple of sentences, one of which is the negation of the other, or as a conjunction of such sentences. Therefore, dialetheism amounts to the claim that there are true contradictions. As such, dialetheism opposes the so-called Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC) (sometimes also called the Law of Contradiction). The Law can, and has been, expressed in various ways, but the simplest and most perspicuous for our purposes is probably the following: for any A, it is impossible for both A and ¬A to be true.
For this discussion to work at all, each assertion has to be taken as making a definite claim, not both the claim and its opposite. Each entity asserted has to be seen as having a stable identity, and where a distinction is made, it has to be seen that one is either in A or NOT_A, not in both or a blend. For instance, the first sentence:
Dialetheism is the view that there are dialetheias.
Notice the perspective, and the two assertions of existence: There exists a certain view, V, and that holders thereof assert that there exist a certain type of entity, D? At that level, we have a very ordinary composite assertion, pivoting on an existential quantification:
There exists a non-empty set V: v, any given member, believes that D is so.
Does this also mean its opposite? Does this mean that we cannot expect to find a stable identity of V and v's in it? Or that D, a definite assertion, means both what it asserts and what it denies by implication? What about D:
There exists a non-empty set, D: d, a given member of D, is such that A AND NOT_A is true.
There is a trivial case. If A is a proposition that amounts to an assertion concerning an empty set, to assert A and NOT_A is vacuously true. All Martians are red AND All Martians are green bespeaks an evidently empty set and so neither speaks about anything, strictly. Where the universal quantifier [all or none] has no existential import. But that is literally speaking about nothing. Non-being. Non_being presumably has no properties so to assert a claim and a counter claim about such is equally vacuous. But, this is meant to speak of non-empty cases. Let us look at some examples from the SEP article:
In Western Philosophy, a number of the Presocratics endorsed dialetheism. At least, Aristotle takes them to have done it, and with apparent justification. For example, in Fragment 49a, Heraclitus says: “We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and we are not” (Robinson, 1987, p. 35). Protagorean relativism may be expressed by the view that man is the measure of all things. According to Aristotle, since “Many men hold beliefs in which they conflict with one another”, it follows that “the same thing must be and not be” (1009a10–12) . . . . During the Middle Ages, the problem surfaced in connection to the paradoxes of the divine omnipotence — for instance: can God make a stone too heavy for Him to raise? . . . . According to some interpretations, Meinong, too, was a dialetheist, holding that some non-existent objects, such as the round square, have inconsistent properties (see Routley, 1980, Chapter 5). But the most obvious dialetheists since the Presocratics and before the 20th century are Hegel and his successors in dialectics, such as Marx and Engels (see Priest 1990, 1991). According to them, reality (in the form of Geist for Hegel, or social structures for Marx) may be literally inconsistent. For example, in the Logic Hegel says: “Something moves, not because at one moment it is here and another there, but because at one and the same moment it is here and not here, because in this ‘here’, it at once is and is not” (1831, p. 440). Indeed, it is the resolution of these contradictory states that drives the development of the history of thought (or society) forwards.
Each of these is radically flawed, in my view:
1 --> The declaration about stepping into the same and not the same river pivots on not using the term river in the same sense in reference to the same time and circumstances, in each case. 2 --> That men differ in their opinions and views has nothing to do with which or any of such is actually true. And yes, in the human mind, a contradiction can happily reside unresolved or even unrecognised, leading to endless confusion. That is why we need to recognise the principles of right reason involved. 3 --> Does Omnipotence require that God be able to make a stone so heavy that he cannot move it? Or, is this a case of being able to use words to say nonsense, similar to saying that if God cannot make a square circle then he is not capable of anything. In both cases, we are asserting an empty set (a contradiction in terms) and speaking about nothing, hence the vacuity. 4 --> Round squares simply do not and cannot exist, so they are getting us to a statement about an empty set, about non-being. 5 --> And finally, we wend our way to the orthodox hegelians and their heretic descendants, the marxists. That conflicts in thought or between parties and classes may obtain is not the same as that contradictions of form A AND NOT_A exist, and the resolution of same into some sort of synthesis, does not imply A and NOT_A. 6 --> As for:
“Something moves, not because at one moment it is here and another there, but because at one and the same moment it is here and not here, because in this ‘here’, it at once is and is not”
. . . I would say that Hegel here failed to avail himself of the powers of Calculus and Physics to resolve Zeno's paradoxes. That at a given snapshot instant an entity is in a given location does not mean that it does not possess momentum, i.e. there is no contradiction between location and motion, and what happens is that the infinite series involved resolve themselves by converging to finite times, speeds, overtake points and times, etc. The interested party is pointed to L'Hospital's Rules (based on Calculus and series theory) for resolving ratios of apparent form 0/0, infinity/infinity etc.
But, what about that suspect notion, the principle of explosion, whereby a contradiction is false and a false proposition materially implies any consequent? Material implication is a partial model of implication. That is, it is telling us a partial truth, and the core of that truth is that true propositions will only properly imply true consequences, but false ones are unstable in that regard. In modelling theory we routinely use this, setting up simplifications of reality -- thus, strictly false -- and drawing out correct consequences in regions of validity. But, there is no guarantee that this will hold in all regions of conceivable operation, as say was found out for Newtonian Dynamics for the worlds of the very small and the very fast [about 10% of c up]. Accordingly, models are subject to validation testing, and to correction or replacement. Which BTW, obtains for theories of science. Which is again one reason why I will never accept that a theory is definitively a "fact" or "true." It is accurate and confirmed as empirically reliable in a given zone of operations, but is subject to correction. Scientific knowledge is a weak form: at best, more or less warranted per empirical testing, as empirically reliable, but inherently and inescapably provisional. But also, notice something in all of the above: at each step, even where on the surface some seem to be denying it, we see stability of identity, coherence of meaning and preservation of distinctions. That is, we are seeing the logical oscillatory race hazard in action. In effect, behind the scenes, we have to accept the first principles of right reason even while on the surface we are seeing people arguing against them. If you doubt me, start from the distinct and clear identity required for glyphs used to express the words and sentences above. That pattern, on my considered view, is consistently present in discussions. Something I noticed in exchanges with Marxists long ago, even as I puzzled over their use of "contradictions." Conflicts of interest, parties, classes and views or halting puzzled between opinions, is entirely consistent with the first principles of right reason. KFkairosfocus_{March 18, 2013
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KN @ 4. I predicted you would ignore the questions and/or double down on your sophistry. You did both. Predictable. And boring.Barry Arrington_{March 18, 2013
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Intuitionistic logic anyone?DiEb_{March 18, 2013
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