Dialetheism
Dialetheism is the view that there are
statements which are both true and
false. More precisely, it is the belief that
there can be a true statement whose
negation is also true. Such statements
are called "true contradictions",
dialetheia, or nondualisms.
Dialetheism is not a system of formal
logic; instead, it is a thesis about truth
that influences the construction of a
formal logic, often based on pre-existing
systems. Introducing dialetheism has
various consequences, depending on the
theory into which it is introduced. A
common mistake resulting from this is to
reject dialetheism on the basis that, in
traditional systems of logic (e.g.,
classical logic and intuitionistic logic),
every statement becomes false if a
contradiction is true; this means that
such systems become trivial when
dialetheism is included as an axiom.[1]
Other logical systems, however, do not
explode in this manner when
contradictions are introduced; such
contradiction-tolerant systems are
known as paraconsistent logics.
Dialetheists who do not want to allow
that every statement is true are free to
favour these over traditional, explosive
logics.
Graham Priest defines dialetheism as the
view that there are true contradictions.[2]
Jc Beall is another advocate; his position
differs from Priest's in advocating
constructive (methodological)
deflationism regarding the truth
predicate.[3]
Motivations
Dialetheism resolves certain
paradoxes
The Liar's paradox and Russell's paradox
deal with self-contradictory statements
in classical logic and naïve set theory,
respectively. Contradictions are
problematic in these theories because
they cause the theories to explode—if a
contradiction is true, then every
proposition is true. The classical way to
solve this problem is to ban contradictory
statements, to revise the axioms of the
logic so that self-contradictory
statements do not appear. Dialetheists,
on the other hand, respond to this
problem by accepting the contradictions
as true. Dialetheism allows for the
unrestricted axiom of comprehension in
set theory, claiming that any resulting
contradiction is a theorem.[4]
Human reasoning
Ambiguous situations may cause
humans to affirm both a proposition and
its negation. For example, if John stands
in the doorway to a room, it may seem
reasonable both to affirm that John is in
the room and to affirm that John is not in
the room.
Critics argue that this merely reflects an
ambiguity in our language rather than a
dialetheic quality in our thoughts; if we
replace the given statement with one that
is less ambiguous (such as "John is
halfway in the room" or "John is in the
doorway"), the contradiction disappears.
The statements appeared contradictory
only because of a syntactic play; here,
the actual meaning of "being in the room"
is not the same in both instances, and
thus each sentence is not the exact
logical negation of the other: therefore,
they are not necessarily contradictory.
Apparent dialetheism in other
philosophical doctrines
The Jain philosophical doctrine of
anekantavada—non-one-sidedness—
states that all statements are true in
some sense and false in another.[5] Some
interpret this as saying that dialetheia not
only exist but are ubiquitous. Technically,
however, a logical contradiction is a
proposition that is true and false in the
same sense; a proposition which is true
in one sense and false in another does
not constitute a logical contradiction.
(For example, although in one sense a
man cannot both be a "father" and
"celibate"—leaving aside such cases as a
celibate man adopting a child or a man
fathering a child and only later adopting
celibacy—there is no contradiction for a
man to be a spiritual father and also
celibate; the sense of the word father is
different here. In another example,
although at the same time George W.
Bush cannot both be President and not
be President, he was President from
2001-2009, but was not President before
2001 or after 2009, so in different times
he was both President and not
President.)
The Buddhist logic system named
Catuṣkoṭi similarly implies that a
statement and its negation may possibly
co-exist.[6][7]
Graham Priest argues in Beyond the
Limits of Thought that dialetheia arise at
the borders of expressibility, in a number
of philosophical contexts other than
formal semantics.
Formal consequences
In classical logics, taking a contradiction
(see List of logic symbols) as a
premise (that is, taking as a premise the
truth of both and ), allows us to
prove any statement . Indeed, since is
true, the statement is true (by
generalization). Taking together
with is a disjunctive syllogism from
which we can conclude . (This is often
called the principle of explosion, since the
truth of a contradiction is imagined to
make the number of theorems in a
system "explode".)[1]
Advantages
The proponents of dialetheism mainly
advocate its ability to avoid problems
faced by other more orthodox resolutions
as a consequence of their appeals to
hierarchies. According to Graham Priest,
"the whole point of the dialetheic solution
to the semantic paradoxes is to get rid of
the distinction between object language
and meta-language".[2] Another
possibility is to utilize dialetheism along
with a paraconsistent logic to resurrect
the program of logicism advocated for by
Frege and Russell.[8] This even allows
one to prove the truth of otherwise
unprovable theorems such as the well-
ordering theorem and the falsity of
others such as the continuum
hypothesis.
There are also dialetheic solutions to the
sorites paradox.
Criticisms
One criticism of dialetheism is that it
fails to capture a crucial feature about
negation, known as absoluteness of
disagreement.[9]
Imagine John's utterance of P. Sally's
typical way of disagreeing with John is a
consequent utterance of ¬P. Yet, if we
accept dialetheism, Sally's so uttering
does not prevent her from also accepting
P; after all, P may be a dialetheia and
therefore it and its negation are both
true. The absoluteness of disagreement
is lost.
A response is that disagreement can be
displayed by uttering "¬P and,
furthermore, P is not a dialetheia".
However, the most obvious codification
of "P is not a dialetheia" is ¬(P & ¬P). But
what if this itself is a dialetheia as well?
One dialetheist response is to offer a
distinction between assertion and
rejection. This distinction might be
hashed out in terms of the traditional
distinction between logical qualities, or
as a distinction between two illocutionary
speech acts: assertion and rejection.
Another criticism is that dialetheism
cannot describe logical consequences,
once we believe in the relevance of
logical consequences, because of its
inability to describe hierarchies.[2]
See also
Doublethink
Leibniz's compossibility
Problem of future contingents
Trivialism
References
1. Ben Burgis, Visiting Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Ulsan in
South Korea, in (Blog&~Blog)
http://blogandnot-
blog.blogspot.co.za/2007/11/why-
contradictions-dont-explode-or-how.html
2. Whittle, Bruno. "Dialetheism, logical
consequence and hierarchy." Analysis Vol.
64 Issue 4 (2004): 318–326.
3. Jc Beall in The Law of Non-
Contradiction: New Philosophical Essays
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),
pp. 197–219.
4. Transfinite Numbers in Paraconsistent
Set Theory (Review of Symbolic Logic
3(1), 2010), pp. 71-92..
5. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. (1998), "The
character of logic in India" (Albany, State
University of New York press), 127-139
6. http://www.iep.utm.edu/nagarjun/#H2
7. ed : Ganeri, J. (2002), "The Collected
Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal: Mind,
Language and World" (Oxford University
Press), 77-79
8. Mortensen, Chris, "Inconsistent
Mathematics", The Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward
N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2
017/entries/mathematics-inconsistent/ >.
9. Wang, W.w (2011). "Against Classical
Dialetheism". Frontiers of Philosophy in
China. 6 (3): 492–500.
doi:10.1007/s11466-011-0152-4 .
Sources
Frege, Gottlob. "Negation." Logical
Investigations. Trans. P. Geach and R.
H Stoothoff. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1977. 31–53.
Parsons, Terence. "Assertion, Denial,
and the Liar Paradox." Journal of
Philosophical Logic 13 (1984): 137–
152.
Parsons, Terence. "True
Contradictions." Canadian Journal of
Philosophy 20 (1990): 335–354.
Priest, Graham. In Contradiction.
Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff (1987).
(Second Edition, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006.)
Priest, Graham. "What Is So Bad About
Contradictions?" Journal of Philosophy
95 (1998): 410–426.
External links
Francesco Berto and Graham Priest.
Dialetheism . In the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
JC Beall UCONN Homepage
(Blog & ~Blog)
Dialetheism Web Page
Kabay on dialetheism and trivialism
(includes both published and
unpublished works)
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