Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God.
"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." (Avicenna, Medieval Philosopher)
6 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Some people just need a good hard beating to knock some sense into them. It would really do them good.
I hear so much about the failure of moderns to acknowledge the law of non-contradiction, but (likely because I've only taken one philosophy course thusfar), I cannot think of many common cases of this which are particularly offensive. Do you mean, for instance, when a person says, "There is no truth," as a truth? There appear to be ways of logically circumventing most of the examples I can think of. Can you give me a good one?
Once you move around the world a bit, you will find that the denial of the L.P. of Non C. is probably the most common philosophical position of all in our times.
I recall having an amusing converstaion with a young man who had come to World Youth Day to see the Pope, but was not a believer. He claimed to be an anarchist. I surmised that this simply meant that he could not think clearly, and it turned out to be so.
We talked about abortion, and, after about three hours of becoming more and more muddled, eventually came out with the corker: "But there's no such thing as absolute truth".
At that I nearly fell over laughing, which made him quite miffed.
6 comments:
Some people just need a good hard beating to knock some sense into them. It would really do them good.
I hear so much about the failure of moderns to acknowledge the law of non-contradiction, but (likely because I've only taken one philosophy course thusfar), I cannot think of many common cases of this which are particularly offensive. Do you mean, for instance, when a person says, "There is no truth," as a truth? There appear to be ways of logically circumventing most of the examples I can think of. Can you give me a good one?
Sorry! I didn't see the previous post.
"There is no truth," as a truth?
that certainly would be the most common one.
Once you move around the world a bit, you will find that the denial of the L.P. of Non C. is probably the most common philosophical position of all in our times.
I recall having an amusing converstaion with a young man who had come to World Youth Day to see the Pope, but was not a believer. He claimed to be an anarchist. I surmised that this simply meant that he could not think clearly, and it turned out to be so.
We talked about abortion, and, after about three hours of becoming more and more muddled, eventually came out with the corker: "But there's no such thing as absolute truth".
At that I nearly fell over laughing, which made him quite miffed.
The truth is that it is not true that it is untrue that a statement cannot both be true and untrue at the same time, including this true statement.
One of my favourite quotes :)
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