First off, shout out to you for putting your thoughts out there, most people are afraid of doing so and shy away from criticism, you seem to be embracing it, which is admirable. I had a few thoughts regarding your Wulture example that I haven’t (yet) seen any of the comments point out, they are as follows: In your explication of a Wulture, you mentioned that there are two rules associated with the term, the first being that all vultures are Wultures and the second being that no white thing is a Wulture. The above ‘rules’ (so to speak) can be formalized in the following manner - 1) If it’s a vulture, then it’s a Wulture | V -> WV 2) If it’s white then it’s not a Wulture | W -> ~WV From these two, I can derive two more statements - 3) If it’s not a Wulture then it’s not a vulture | ~WV -> ~V (Contrapositive of 1) 4) If it’s a Wulture then it’s not white | WV -> ~W (Contrapositive of 2) Given the above conditions, we can derive two statements which I believe clarify things: _“If it’s a vulture then it’s not white”_. And “_If it’s white, it’s not a vulture”_ These statements are derived from 1-4 via the following : 5) If it’s a vulture it is a Wulture, if it’s a Wulture it is not white (V -> WV -> ~ W) (1&4) 6) If it’s a vulture it’s not white (V -> ~W) (5, Transitivity) 7) If it’s white it’s not a vulture (W -> ~V) (6, Contrapositive) It seems that 6 and 7 make the flaw in the problem you have presented us very clear, that being that your conditions result in an implicit redefining of what constitutes a vulture, as logical consequence in this case dictates that all vultures be white and that if it is white it is not a vulture. So the hypothetical in this case, that of a “white vulture”, is not possible, as if it is white, the term vulture is inapplicable and if it is a vulture the term white is inapplicable. Hence, given the initial constraints, you are violating the definition of what constitutes a Vulture by postulating your white vulture (meaning the entity you postulated is, in reality, not a vulture). Another way to look at it is that by asserting that the word Wulture simply means all Vultures are white, which can be true or false, with the existence of white vultures showing the claim to be false. That’s my two cents, feel free to critique.
@@MehtaEthics 3 is simply the contraposition of 1. The law of contraposition states that for any case in which [P -> Q] then it is (materially) equivlent to [~Q -> ~P], this is also true from an angle of intuition. For example if I state that "If someone is tall, then they are taller than 6 feet", if the first condition is true (the antecedent) the consequent must be true, so we know that if the consequent is false, it could not have been the case that the antecedent is true. In our example, that would be akin to saying "if someone is *not* taller than 6 feet, then they are not tall", which would be true based on the initial statement. Likewise, in my original comment we have the conditional statement: 1) If it’s a vulture, then it’s a Wulture | [V -> WV] In which its contraposition would be (3) 3) If it’s not a Wulture then it’s not a vulture | [~WV -> ~V]
Damn, this is actually a really good point! We could even apply this to a more on-the-nose example. A machelor includes all bachelors but excludes all men. Bach -> Mach Man -> ~Mach. Contrapositives: ~Mach -> ~Bach Mach -> ~Man so Bach -> Mach -> ~Man so Bach -> ~Man (1) But of course a Bachelor is an unmarried man so Bach -> Man Contra: ~Man -> ~Bach (2) So putting (1) and (2) together we get Bach -> ~Bach i.e. if you are a bachelor, you are not a bachelor! XD The trick here was that being a man is necessary component of being a bachelor, so you can pull this trick with any definition that involves a necessary component. So if you're a human, you're not a human (as humans are mammals), anything blue is not actually blue ( as blue is a colour) etc. The introduction of these new terms therefore seems to reject tautologies which seems wild to me.
@@minch333 Exactly, though there seems to be one more pertinent thing to point out, that being the “term” Wulture is not really a new “word” or term in the traditional sense of a word or term. Words are usually defined in terms of what they _mean_ (usually in terms of essences), not what they include or exclude, what is included or excluded follows from the definition. For example, a triangle is crudely defined as a shape with three sides that connect at three different vertices, it is not defined in terms of “this term applies to all x but no y”. Rather, in the case of a Wulture it is akin to a variable (or if you are familiar with Tarski, a quotation mark name) that denotes a _conditional_. So in essence, the term Wulture is equivalent to the two conditionals I listed above, those being: If it’s a vulture then it’s a Wulture And If it’s white, then it’s not a Wulture With that in mind, if this is not seen so much as a word, but rather a variable for the above conditionals, it becomes clear that this can be dismissed as empirically false based off of what we derived ([if it’s a vulture, then it’s not white (and vice versa)]) and hence one can coherently _reject_ the “term” which denotes the conditional.
It seems to me that the confusion happens because you haven't specified the logical operator in between the two conditions Let A be "Applies to all things that are vultures" Let B be "Excludes all things that are white" So the classification criteria is (A and B) or (A or B) ? if you choose "and", than Delia is not a wulture because B is false if you choose "or", than Delia is a Wulture because A is true. there you have it, I think it's more of a misunderstanding than a true contradiction
@@avaragedude6223 If you choose "and", then "wulture" applies to Delia so Delia is a wulture. Unless, of course, you're just stipulating different rules for using the term. Obviously you can do that; you can stipulate whatever rules you want. I'm not sure how this is supposed to be an objection to my view though.
@@KaneB Yeah, I definitely don't get your point. The classification is gonna depend on the operator. Clearly, choosing "and" makes Delia not a wulture because "B" is false, "A" being true alone is not sufficient for classifing Delia as a wulture, that's just how the operator "and" works. And if you just choose to apply theese criteria separately (without operators) than they're just two different criteria for the same word, thus making a confusion with the term "wulture". At this point i'm just repeating myself.
@@avaragedude6223 it's not that a wulture is a non-white vulture. It's that wulture is "all things that are vultures AND all things that are not white"
The proponent of classical logic can always just say, "nope, you're wrong" and come away looking more reasonable. The problem that all these silly games run into is that contradictions are obviously false. They're self-evidently false. You're arguing against something more obvious than any premise you could ever create; you're always going to lose. Your "wulture" concept is obviously nonsensical as it entails a contradiction. But, are we allowed to reject it on that basis? Well, of course we are. It's not as though there has ever been a stronger objection to anything before. All you did was try to obscure the contradiction. Yes, each of the rules is clear when kept separate. But, while it isn't instantly apparent, their combination allows for items to be included and excluded at the same time. The unintelligible part is that Delia *is and is not* a wulture. That is OBVIOUSLY impossible, and you acting like you can easily wrap your mind around it just makes you look insane. So it's your absurd, useless concept vs the most obvious truth in the world.
To make your nonsense more perspicuous, you're saying "Wulture includes all vultures, but excludes all white vultures" and you're like, yep, makes PERFECT SENSE, better pull the rug out from my entire body of knowledge. Surely your epistemology is completely bankrupt with the way you molest intuition and flee from self-evident truths. It's really trendy among low-T philosophers to accept tons of propositions that lead directly to global skepticism, yet to continue to argue as if that makes no difference.
IMO the logical sleight of hand is that the concept of a wulture is not actually a "definition", but it is introduced implicitly as two separate implications (if vulture then wulture; if white then not wulture). the existence of a delia makes these two implications inconsistent. if wulture was actually a definition, it would have to be e.g. an intersection (wulture ::= vulture and not white) which would not be inconsistent (delia is not wulture)
You said that a white vulture is and is not a "wulture", because it follows rule 1 for it, and doesn't follow rule 2, however, for a white vulture to be considered a wulture it would have to follow both rules, right? So, it's not like it is both considered and not considered a wulture, it's just not a wulture.
I think Quine hit it right on the nose when he suggested that what is going on in an argument like this is that the proponent of the argument is changing the definition of "not." To say "wulture can't be defined that way because it would lead to one and the same thing being a wulture and not being a wulture" isn't so much begging the question as it is saying, "no, wait, remember how we had defined the word 'not'?"
It seems to me that dialetheism simply redefines the negation operator. Sure, I can decide to use "¬" such that "A and ¬A" is sometimes true. But I could equally just stipulate that "A and ¬A" is never true, simply because that is how I decide to define "¬". As for paradoxical statements/properties, it seems fairly easy to just stipulate that the relevant sentences do not express propositions and therefore cannot be interpreted in the system of rules that we have decided upon.
Though on this point: >> it seems fairly easy to just stipulate that the relevant sentences do not express propositions Sure, you can stipulate this. You can use language in whatever way you like. So if you want to use a language in which terms like "wulture" are prohibited, that's cool. It would be another matter, however, to claim that "wulture" is meaningless or unintelligible. I'm not sure you can just stipulate that.
@@KaneBI think you can and I think I have somewhat a good argument for this (I am not that experienced in philosphical debates, so forgive me if it seems just stupid) A „wulture“ or something like this don’t „exist“ in reality. If we agree this bird is a „wulture“, by the second rule it already has to be black and in my opinion the first rule doesn’t make sense to me. But my point is, if we agree it is a „wulture“ and the „wulture“ happens to be white, then we need to adjust the rules to make the term consistent with reality. There are two possibilities how to resolve this inconsistency. 1. we come to the conclusion that the concept „wulture“ is meaningless, because you can‘t say if this white bird is a „wulture“ or not. 2. we losen or throw the second rule out and say only „most wultures are not white“ or we don’t make this statement about them. So what I propose I think is that we only „accept“ definitions of words, if they are consistent with reality.
It is not sufficient for the purposes of formal dialethism to merely redefine negation. If you do not reject any classical truths and do not accept any classical falsehoods then your dialethism is going to be subclassical or superclassical; in the case that you go subclassical, you have to have functional completeness as independent to your calculus to avoid a calculus that degenerates to classical logic. The specific rule that gets rejected or held as independent typically is one direction of double negation, and the other direction is what gets rejected or held as independent for intuitionistic logic as they're dual. This all requires that not only do we redefine negation but also our units and some number of other connectives that would satisfy functional completeness; there's a structural dimension for blocking functional incompleteness but that requires altering units. If your calculus is anti or counter classical in the sense of rejecting some classical truths or accepting some classical falsehoods then we get things more like connexive logics. A radical dialethist will have to choose an anti or counter classical calculus which has semantics which are incompatible fundamentally with the semantics of classical logic (but not necessarily incompatible with the semantics of physical reality or metaphysical semantics). Syntactical restrictions to the negation are insufficient and potentially unnecessary. Consider the following: all your "axioms" are contradictions, all operations are from contradictions to contradictions, and soundness in this calculus preserves contradictions; almost all theorems of the calculus are contradictions. Metalinguistically starting from Tarski's definition of theoretical consistency such that there exists a contradiction if and only if every possible combination of symbols of a formal language are theorems in the formal language; we can either affirm or reject that equivalence; let's say we reject it such that there exists contradictions such that there is a formal language which does not have every possible combination of symbols as its theorems. Going from that there exists a theorem of the calculus I've asked you to consider which is not a contradiction. This can all get much hairier once we start talking about how contradiction-based calculi are generally non-bivalent and generally fuzzy, complex-valued, or multivalent.
@@fable4315What if we just looked at the concept of the wulture instead of the term and the concept. You can always redefine the word wulture but like the original concept will always be a concept that exist. And how is the concept meaningless? If you understand what it means for something to always be a vulture and you understand what it means for something to always not be white then you just have to combine those two concepts.
Are the conditions you gave individually sufficient such that something that satisfies either is enough to classify it or are things required to meet both qualifiers?
There is one way of framing this as well; I don't think the rules generate contradictions, as much as the rules are generated from contradictions. That cleans up the logic more when stated that way.
In the case of the wulture example, it does feel very linguistic to me. wultures = vultures ¬wultures = white vultures and all non-vultures Obviously the white vultures are in the intersection. If you change the names to A and B or whatever, the contradiction vanishes. Moreover the objects satisfying (wulture ∧ ¬wulture) are precisely the white vultures, so really there is still unique truth assignment to every object, just slightly obscured by clever use of the word "not".
If "A and not A" can be true, what does "not" mean? (I'm trying to formulate why i do not understand what "not" means but every explanation I can come up with uses the word "not" in a way that I think fails to capture what I mean if "A" can be true when "not A", including this one)
I still don’t get it. In the fork of the contradiction between the world and those proposed over-inclusive terms, what would motivate a person to consider the terms to be the useful path to choose? Why would one give up on the world being true for wulture to be so?
@@KaneB cool, I’m strongly pro useful terms. We’ve identified our gap in goals of using terms. That’ll be useful in understanding how and why we use terms
@@benzur3503 Why should something be abandoned for appearing useless? There are things beyond what one knows to be useful that will be useful. Learning is finding tools to use, creativity is in finding how something can be used. In this example, perhaps understanding the contradiction could lead one to understand where contradictions originate and find how it will develop. Then you can find utility in application later. For the video though, the understanding of true contradictions could be useful in understanding others positions on things, understanding why one can say that a white vulture is a wulture in this instance, and potentially understanding the development of linguistics over time. That is how this appears useful to me.
Using normal consistent logic is also just playing with words and not getting at anything concrete. I think that's the whole point. Logic is something we construct not discover. Whether it's normal or weird logic. What counts as weird will depend on the person
In a sense, dialetheism could serve as a deterrent to belief systems that attempt to teleologize the foundations of reason, as such belief systems have often been shown to be ill-pragmatic due to their staunch dogmatism.
This implies some sort of naive relativism, so, no its not just a construct. Even if it was a construct, contradictions are by definition false, therefore this is just meaningless wordplay
Personally, with the wulture example it feels much more intuitive to say that it's indeterminate whether a white vulture is a wulture than it both is and isn't a wulture. Although that may be my history with coding where it's often reasonable conceptualize some if statements as having 3 potential results of True, False, and Error.
This is what's called the truth gap response. The issue i take with this line of thinking is if you ask the question "is the statement 'Deliah is a wulture' true?" Then by virtue of the first criteria, it obviously is. And same for asking whether its false. You get obvious truth values, you just get more than one. So it doesn't seem like there's any in-between at play here, just truth and falsity.
I have to object to the example: Proposition A: wulture applies to wultures Proposition B: wulture doesn't apply to whites Proposition C: x is a wulture. So C is true if A(x)&B(x) is true If it were x a white wulture, B(x) would be false, so x can't be a wulture.
But couldn’t you apply the same statement in reverse for the “vulture” requirement to show that the discussed specimen must be a wulture? Is there asymmetry in proving the negative vs the positive?
Yes, Delia can't be a wulture (because she's white). But she also is a wulture, because she is a vulture and by definition, "wulture" applies to all vultures.
It appears to me that what you are trying to describe is instances of different definitions of a wulture leading to a consensus on what a wulture is that is inconsistent with the definition given to a wulture. Kind of like how tomato is a fruit given the botanical definition as opposed to the nutritional definition being a vegetable.
I don't get the contradiction. Being a vulture is simply necessary but not sufficient for being a wulture... as is must being non-white. Delia is therefore not a wulture, as she does not have all the necessary properties. That's all... Am I missing something?
@@KaneB I just read other replies and understood that a Wulture is not (a non-white vulture), but rather any member of a set that contains all vultures and also only contains all things that are not white.
@@davidantinucci8027 You're wrong about what the definition of wulture is. Here is an explanation in set theory. v is the set of vultures w is the set of white things v & w ≠ ∅ We define W, the set of wultures, such that: v ⊆ W w ⊆ ~W In set theory, this is impossible. This definition implies a contradiction, and contradictions are banned in most formal systems like mathematics. But the argument of this video is that we don't have to be restricted by such formal rules unless we want to.
Delia the vulture is not a wulture. This is because she has to be both a vulture and not white, but she is white. One of the conditions is not satisfied, so she is not a wolture. There is no contradiction
I'm not entirely convinced by the prospect of dialetheism if we consider it only in terms of analytical philosophy. Although there are some philosophical systems that admit contradictions as something that exists in the world, like in hegelian dialectics or in the zen and phenomenology inspired philosophy of the Kyoto School
One could be a Sassurian and say that wulture is an arbitrary contradiction. A type of subjective fictional classification applied to a partially apprehended objective world. The truthfulness is entirely mental. There are no contradictions outside of language. It’s an emergent property of classification.
I'd probably be happy agree that there are no contradictions outside of language -- as long as we are clear that, in exactly the same sense, there is no consistency outside of language either.
The example of a white wulture doesn't seem to me to imply a genuine contradiction, any more than a black swan does. The problem here is simply one where the world does not conform to a construct such as language. The kind of contradiction not involving natural language that would be impossible is one where we have two sets of facts/circumstances/conditions that are mutually exclusive: e.g. Schrödinger's cat, Russell's set of all sets that don't contain themselves, your both-occupied-and-empty box, and anything that is the case and not the case at the same time and in the same respect. You can make new rules for your language to accommodate mutually excluding words, e.g. inventing new predicates like "occuempty", and you can make these rules internally consistent. But what does that have to do with the world? The contradiction would be (per impossibile) in the world, not in the language.
I think contradictions arrise in languages where there are specifications for things that have no possible implementation. If there were a finite set of vultures and a finite set of white things including at least one white vulture, then there is no algorithm that can construct the Wulture set. If you construct a language which has these kinds of contradictions, then the language will crash when you try to implement its causal structure in the world. I think this makes it unsuitable for describing fundamental reality, since reality does not seem to crash.
@@KaneB So my suspicion would go so far: Excludes just is the negation of applies Applies means something like: A word applies just in case it's usage conforms to it's application rule So we for example have certain conventions for the term "car" If I would say "This is a car" and hold up a pencile, I would violate these conventions So could we say something like 1. If something is a vulture, it is appropriate to call it a wulture 2. If something is white, it is not appropriate to call it a wulture ?
@@justus4684 Yep, we could say that. Per the rules for the use of the term "wulture", it is appropriate to apply the term to all vultures, and not appropriate to apply the term to any white thing. Here's an analogy that might help illustrate what's going on. Suppose you are playing a game which involves putting stickers on objects. You are told the following rules: (1) You must attach a sticker to every object that is a vulture. (2) You must ensure that there is no sticker on anything that is white. What do you do when you come across a white vulture? Given the rules we have stipulated, it seems that you should both apply the sticker and not apply the sticker. "Wulture" works just like the sticker in the game. You attach it to vultures and remove it from white things.
@@KaneB That's a pretty helpful analogy But I think "It is permissible to apply the term to all vultures" implies "If Delia is a vulture, then it is permissible to apply the term" "It is not permissible to apply the term to any white thing" would entail that "If Delia is white, then it is not permissible to apply the term" Now Delia is a white vulture so it would be both permissible and not permissible to apply the term, which is a contradiction I think the same applies to "You must attach a sticker to all vultures" and "You must not attach a sticker to anything white", this will entail that you must and must not apply a sticker to Delia But maybe this is a problem with how we interpret the rules that can be avoided
This seems a bit strange... It seems quite straight forward that Delia doesn't fit the description of a wulture. a(x) and b(x) = c true and false = false It seems like it may not be being specified if both qualifiers for classifying are required or if only one is required. It seems simple to resolve and would then just be a lack of specificity. If you are saying the lack of declaring "and" or "or" of multiple qualifiers for a classification results in a set of members which is uncertain... that seems fine but doesn't seem like a contradiction at all.
it is a shame that the closed captions can't really tell what you are saying (tbh it's difficult for me too, but there is some context). Was it Walter? Wulture? Maybe call them Scott and Fred, this is even worse in German when V and W are the same, as in wegetable.
I'd say a thing is contradictory if you could conclude that that thing is not, based solely on the fact that it belongs to a specific category. For instance, a white vulture may conflict with the definition of wulture, but a black vulture forms no such contradiction so belonging to the category is not enough. A square circle on the other hand is inherently contradictory.
I don't think that the discretness of the properties actually makes the category any diffrent. We create categories in function to our needs. Things happen out there and we parse them as we see fit. If our terms create contradictions, then state the facts and propose new terms that take in account the nuance that showed why our prior categories don't suffice.
True contradiction seem to have a scale of perplexity. So the prime exemplar mentioned on a scale of 1 to 10 is manageable because the rules are stipulated idiosyncratically by a speaker of a natural language. A listener seems not to loose their bearings due to the discourse being within standard English or whatever, and therefore phenomenologically has sense of paradoxically because true and false is harnessing a linguistic schema within language change (old English changed into Middle English into this), so giving 5ish from an outsider stance of Productivity - how efficiently labour produces goods and services, so not as a fellow logician. Santa Claus as a negative existential paradox gets 1ish for its part of my imagined community where it's socially embedded in traditional rituals. Whereas, as was implied, its all an illusion, or contemporarily imagined as I am a simulation, that entails an genuine existential modal truth/false binary that explodes into all language systems and can be verified through the history of world religious thought. Garden variety paradoxes are ritualistically managed by public discourse, however there are a few such paradoxes that arguably emerged in classic text, like the Upanishads that give contemporary artistic licence to dilethism through an interdependency to Buddhist and Jain logic as a world religious phenomenology. The contradiction of self worth and societies norms via money supply is a contradiction pertaining to work. So I can see infinite value in my art, be that what it may, as in philosophical outpourings or painting but there is price market monetary value associated with it so cannot pay the mortgage, and hence I have to do gardening work which give price market value to society within the nation state, but not to self categorisation within the social paradigm. The personal identity alignment paradox is one of self to social construction where market price as social indicator hooks into personal identity. This arguable causes a form of alienation of self. If so the social alienation with sense of self will exponentially increase in the advent of advanced AI. So within the modernisation paradigm that is based on social identity and meritocracy correlated to personal identity the self can amount to being valued at zero. Hence the scramble to be institutionalised for value is hinged onto the role played rather than price value. The institutional paradox is for example when the philosophy department constructs as it were philosophy graduates who are not philosophers through the schema of public recognition qua social self evaluation based on stratification of voice being relegated to professor hood status all things being equal (high net worth individuals exempt). So it turns out the 'q's and p's contradictions are are clever paradoxes albeit without the wisdom or profound overtones that entangle self as a world identifying prototype.
I think this confuses statements of application conditions with statements of general hypotheses. There's an obvious parallel to Hempel's paradox in how the application conditions of "wulture" are formulated. By the logic of this formulation, not only is Delia (a white vulture) both a wulture and not a wulture at the same time, but every non-white non-vulture (my shoe for example) is similarly both a wulture and not a wulture at the same time. In so far as linguistic items even have application conditions, this is not how they tend to be structured. Not even in regular, non-contradictory cases. The conjunction connective taking wide scope over the quantifiers (rather than the other way around) is pretty weird. The word "bachelor" doesn't refer to EVERYTHING that is a man and EVERYTHING that is unmarried, such that both unmarried women and married men constitute walking contradictions. However, if we were to formulate a general hypothesis on the basis of the application conditions of "bachelor" - i.e. "Every man is unmarried" - then something like this would follow. The implication of that hypothesis would be that no married person is a man. So, given "hypothesis structured" application conditions, the word "bachelor" refers to everything that is a man AND everything that is unmarried. However the correct response to confronting a case that contradicts the hypothesis/application conditions is not to call it a true contradiction, but to trash the hypothesis/application conditions.
If we accept that people are allowed to define words like "wulture" then why would we not accept that people can define words like "not"? If "not P" is defined to be the rejection of the truth of P, then to say that Delia is not a wulture would be to reject the proposition of Delia being a wulture, which we cannot do if we are intent upon claiming that Delia is a wulture. Various systems of logic will define the word "not" in various ways, since the whole point of a system of logic is to make such language formal and rigorous, and some systems can choose to define "not" in a way such that "not P" does not totally reject the truth of P, but that would only apply within that system. For most people in colloquial English, the word "not" does mean a total denial of the proposition, and dialetheism is just oblivious to this fact of the English language. Dialetheism is taking a commonly used word, arbitrarily changing the meaning of that word, and then trying to convince everyone that this new meaning is the meaning that the word has always had. It is a pointless semantic game.
>> why would we not accept that people can define words like "not" Of course people can do that. This is pretty much the whole point of the video... >> then to say that Delia is not a wulture would be to reject the proposition of Delia being a wulture, which we cannot do if we are intent upon claiming that Delia is a wulture Sure we can. I can accept the proposition that Delia is a wulture and reject the proposition that Delia is wulture. Seems totally straightforward to me. >> For most people in colloquial English, the word "not" does mean a total denial of the proposition Ordinary people are garbage and I couldn't care less how they speak, so I don't really have a dog in this fight. Out of curiosity though, do you have any empirical evidence for your claim about how ordinary people use the term "not", or is this more based on your feelings? >> It is a pointless semantic game So what if it is?
@@KaneB "I can accept the proposition that Delia is a wulture and reject the proposition that Delia is wulture." You seem to be speaking a different language that I cannot understand. I can only conclude that some of the words you are using mean something different from what they mean when I use them, and there is no way to know which. I suspect the word "reject" may be the culprit here, so I might ask how you define that word, but the problem might also be in the word "accept." The problem could even be in the word "and," or it might be in the grammatical structure of the sentence. Ordinary dialetheism as best I can understand it just redefines the word "not," but you managed to say something incoherent without that word, so some other word is probably being redefined here, but what would be the point of putting in effort to try to decode dialetheist language? The whole point of language is to facilitate communication so we can understand and be understood, yet dialetheism causes confusion instead of understanding by rejecting the common way in which words are used. It is as if dialetheists don't want their words to be understood, so perhaps the best thing we can do for dialetheists is to not try to understand what they are saying. "Out of curiosity though, do you have any empirical evidence for your claim about how ordinary people use the term 'not', or is this more based on your feelings?" It is how I use the word "not" and my usage of that word only ever seems to cause difficulties in communication when talking to dialetheists.
I wish Kane B would express his definition of "wulture" in computer code. In PowerShell, it could be: ($x_species -eq "vulture" -and (-not($x_color -eq "white"))) or ($x_species -eq "vulture" -or (-not($x_color -eq "white"))) Can anyone else present his definition better?
He's applying both rules simultaneously, so the closest code can get is an infinite loop. If you go through line by line there isn't really a contradiction, just two conditions that disagree.
@@gray875 It doesn't seem like you could code for that though. Maybe if you run the code for each rule on different threads but then you would still need an operator to join the 2 conditions together.
I think of the absence of contradictions is a criterion for honest speech such that an argument using a contradiction is invalid, whether there are contradictions in the world or not, and whether there are contradictions in the language or not. Any argument that doesn't provide a definitive clear answer like the argument for whether the vulture that is not white is a wulture is invalid. Words which are categories are filled by an argument for their being in the category and not by mere consistency with the definition. if in order to fit the black vulture into the category of wulture I must make an argument that leads to a paradox or contradiction it becomes indeterminate whether the black vulture is a wulture.
I didn't really understand the contradiction in the definition here. I could easily resolve it by making the definition of wulture "all non-black vultures" which effectively serves the same purpose as having two qualifiers. It's just bad English, not a contradiction imo. Maybe there are better examples?
Yes, you could define the word differently. You can define words however you want. So what? The question is whether the definition that I have proposed is inconsistent.
@@KaneB I don't think I'm defining the word differently though. There are two qualifiers a) must be a vulture, b) must be not white. There is no contradiction in applying both part of this definition step by step. We look at something, we determine if it is a vulture, and if it's a vulture then we determine whether it's white or not and then we can say whether it's a wulture or not. I think understand the concept vaguely, I just don't know if I can think of *any* real world examples that applies. Honestly, if you're fine with calling this a contradiction then it might be better to say wulture is a word that has two rules: 1) wulture applies to all things that are vultures, and 2) wulture excludes all things that are vultures.
The issue hinges on how one interprets a ruleset. If one takes the ruleset to be an AND function, then only non-white vultures can be denoted as wulture. If one takes the ruleset to be an OR function, then ANYTHING that is a vulture OR ANYTHING that is not white could be denoted as wulture. In either case P and NOT P are well defined. If one takes the ruleset to have the first rule be a requirement and the subsequent rules to be optional, then we have an inconsistent set P and thus not P would also be inconsistent and thus not following any consistent set logic by which to claim a P or NOT P split. I have not been moved to the idea that there are true contradictions only that we have various ambiguities and inconsistences that result in some defining the resulting mess as being a "true contradiction".
Consider this scenario. Suppose you are playing a game which involves putting stickers on objects. You are told the following rules: (1) You must attach a sticker to every object that is a vulture. (2) You must ensure that there is no sticker on anything that is white. Now, what do you do when you come across a white vulture? Given the rules we have stipulated, it seems that you should both apply the sticker and not apply the sticker. It's not particularly surprising that this kind of situation might arise: the rules of games are purely conventional, and obviously there can be inconsistent rules. In practice, when we realize that rules are inconsistent, we usually decide to change -- but we're not forced to do that. We could just continue working with the inconsistent rules. Anyway, my word "wulture" works like the rules for this game. It applies to all things that are vultures, but it does not apply to anything that is white. This is very different from saying that it applies to non-white vultures. That would be analogous to the following rule: (1a) You must attach a sticker to every object that is a non-white vulture. This wouldn't create any difficulties at all. When you come across a white vulture, you just wouldn't apply the sticker to it.
@@KaneB [Given the rules we have stipulated, it seems that you should both apply the sticker and not apply the sticker.] WHY? Are you ignoring the fact that it is a ruleset (collection of rules)? The moment there are multiple rules, then one has a ruleset. The result of the ruleset is [(1a) You must attach a sticker to every object that is a non-white vulture.] --- If one considers the ruleset to be a cumulative process (an AND function) of review BEFORE one does an action, then only non-white vultures will have a sticker applied. If one considers the ruleset to be an order of processing per sticker, then one will initially place a sticker on all vultures and then remove the sticker. Thus, at the end of the process ONLY non-white vultures will have a sticker remaining. If one considers the ruleset to be an order of processing, then one will initially place a sticker on all vultures and then come back and remove any sticker placed on a white vulture. --- However, the more I thought about it. It really doesn't matter whether the ruleset is applied consistently or not with regard to the construction of set P. Why? If we have some collection of P, then NOT P is simply that which is NOT in the collection P. This is automatically the case conceptually given that every object in P is a unique object regardless of how the set P was constructed. This is an immediate dismissal of the idea of P and NOT P being equal to each other. This dismisses the idea of a "true contradiction". --- It should be noted that I do not identify the rules for constructing a set to be the same as the set itself even as I grant that depending on the selection criteria the resultant set is often equivalent. The map (selection criteria) is not the territory (the set of objects).
@@KaneB In my attempt to understand why one would accept dialethism, I am now considering motivations. I have a friend who seems to accept that determinism is true and libertarian free will is true while not being a compatibilist. The acceptance of determinism seems to be predicated on an actual understanding of the observed linkages that support the idea being correct. The acceptance of free will seems to be predicated on the acceptance of the concept of responsibility which demands free will in the fashion that he employs the term. The idea of responsibility seems to be core to many of his sociological judgements. (Basically, giving up on the linkage would seem to be like giving up a finger maybe even an arm!) I will now attempt to find whether he holds other such contradictions and later review whether he would accept the label of dialethism.
If someone would see truth as a similarity between a mental representation and the represented referent, would this still allow contradiction? I mean it is not obvious that contradiction in the application of the rules of usage is the same as a contradiction in structural similarity. Edit: I mean if you accept something like correspondence theory then „wulture“ may be not a contradiction in correspondence but just a contradiction in the rules of usage.
have u come across Jared Warren much? I thought his defence of unrestricted inferentialism was p refreshing given how much people seem to take it that Prior was basically right
I agree with you, but it seems to me that there could be better examples of contradictions. that's because defining a term as "it includes x and excludes y" is strange, since we normally define as "it includes only Xs but also excludes all Ys" in this second formulation, the exclusion is kind of "superior", beyond that, it doesn't make sense to state that a definition includes something without saying it includes only something. Like, it is strange to say that "cat" includes cats, we should say that "cat" includes only cats.
I agree that it's a strange concept, but why is that a problem? Perhaps there are less strange examples of true contradictions, e.g. Liar-type paradoxes. But then, it's very controversial whether these are genuine contradictions. The benefit of "wulture" is that per the rules I've stipulated, it seems totally clear that it generates a contradiction; so all I need for the example to work is that you agree that people can define new terms however they want.
@@Felipecamargo13579 The response to "you can't use language like that" is, of course, "who's going to stop me?" Anyway, I need to go pet my wulture & non-wulture with my wand & non-wand.
0.01010011101b10010 ... is a real number, where b means both zero and one. This is proved by Cantor's diagonal argument. Apparently, some reals have unknowable digits.
The major problem with a dialetheic system of logic is that it invalidates Modus Ponens. Modus Ponens is invalid in both Logic and Paradox and First Degree Entailment. Logical consequence is the essence of logic.
I don't think dialetheists need to get rid of modus ponens, I think they might make disjunction elimination an invalid rule of inference, if there is a contradiction in the premises.
You can't include quantification in the definition of a term. That's what you're doing by saying part of the definition of 'wulture' is that all vultures are wultures, or that no white things are wultures. Those concepts involve universal quantification. Instead quantification is for propositions. Individual words - in this case nouns, naming things or supposed things - are not propositions, but merely collections of attributes, logically speaking.
If we accept contradictions in our language, then we must give up on the principle of non-contradiction. But this principle is very useful, because it allows us to use proofs by contradictions. I don't see why this trade-off is worth it, considering that adding the term "wulture" to our language doesn't seem to serve any purpose.
Another question: is the square root of two a rational number? The claim that it is not is proved by contradiction. If contradictions exist, that proof, and many others too, is invalid. There goes mathematics. As a result, mathematicians and hard scientists will go out of their way to preserve the principle of non-contradiction. They're helpless without it. Can you give them any solace?
ig while there might be true contradictions, not every contradiction is true. given the way we use mathematical language currently, the kind of contradiction u get at the end of the sqrt(2) proof isn't gunna be true. but we could introduce new mathematical terms that would give true contradictions if we wanted to, and if we were using them, maybe proof by contradiction gets less useful
>> Can you give them any solace? I'm not really interested in doing that. I'm sure we could come up with an argument that most of the time, we can assume we're operating in consistent situations, or we can assume we're using a consistent language... contradictions will be relatively rare, and will crop up only in cases where there are weird semantic tricks like the Liar paradox or my "wulture" concept. This is kind of line that Graham Priest takes, I think.
Well.. this is basically asserting a contradiction and does not really show much. I would say the wulture concept has about as much explanatory power as simply asserting p and not p.
The conditions for being a wulture are disjunctive or conjunctive? If the first is the case, Delia is a wulture, period. If the latter is the case, Delia ia not a wulture, period.
Neither. Consider "wulture1": x is a wulture iff x is a vulture and x is not white. "wulture2": x is a wulture iff x is a vulture or x is not white. I agree that "wulture1" and "wulture2" are perfectly consistent. But "wulture" is not like either of these. By definition, "wulture" applies to all things that are vultures. So Delia is a wulture, period. By definition, "wulture" excludes all things that are white. So Delia is not a wulture, period. "Wulture" is, of course, a very unusual concept, but I see no reason why I can't stipulate that the concept works this way.
@@KaneB so by definition, "wulture" applies to all vultures, and also by definition, "wulture" applies to all non-white things. This really sounds like a disjunction, but phrased differently than your "wulture2". I see no way to phrase it wothout falling into one of these definitions. But a simpler way to define find a true contradiction would be to define wulture: x is a wulture iff x is a vulture and x is not q vulture. Then let's say Delia is a vulture and at the same time she's not a vulture. So we have a true contradiction. But I'm sure that's not the way you intended to produce your true contradiction, because it's circular.
@@KaneB Hey Kane. I came to the same conclusion as @tudormarginean. I don't understand your response, you say : *"By definition, "wulture" applies to all things that are vultures. So Delia is a wulture, period. By definition, "wulture" excludes all things that are white. So Delia is not a wulture, period."* It almost seems like you want to propose some other way to put two predicates in relation, other than the disjunct, the conjunct, the negation or the conditional. It almost seems like you want to invent a new logical operator ? Is that it ?
@@tudormarginean4776 Hey, I don't understand your example of a *"true contradiction"* ? You say : *"A simpler way to define find a true contradiction would be to define wulture: x is a wulture iff x is a vulture and x is not q vulture"* Can you explain ? What is "q" here ?
@@KaneB let's formalize it: U here stands for the universal quantifer. UxVulture(x)->Wulture(x), Ux~White(x)->Wulture(x) implies Ux(Vulture(x ) v ~White(x)) -> Wulture(x) You cannot make the conclusion false without making at least one premise false, so the conclusion is implied by the premises.
Interesting idea; but a very specific way to use language i would say. The first question tho would be: what is a vulture? And to that i think we must give a definition under which everything similar can be put under - if we want to talk about (scientific) truth other than using the word correctly in the concrete. And colour, in general and thereby not even any in particular, wont be part of the proper definition of a vulture because you wont be able to seperate this type of bird to others. So what is a wulture? Nothing much; what you do is to combine two properties into one word. You try to predicate to properties at once. And that is why you get the contradiction - because they are never inherently together in a class of objects; because you already adhere to a set class named 'vultures' and 'addon' another class of objects, rejecting others. (It reminds me of russells paradox) And i would say that this is fine. Also from the 2 3 comments i read: you never redefined the logical junctures; i dont see this point. I dont get why they say that. You rather mess with the semantics and the conclusion to take would rather be imo to analyse this difference and its implication; maybe we can say that we cannot just form words which predicate 2 distinguished properties at once and have those be logically valid or interesting. But just because something isnt logically valid or interesting doesnt make it nonsense. Addon: When you say one can experience contradictions just everywhere - would i understand you correctly if it is because one can predicate properties and make such 'inconsistent words' and thereby make it for oneself contradictory?
This reminds me of the domain of a function. If a function is defined in a subset of the real numbers, is the function defined in R? Well, yes and no. You just state which subset of R it is defined and you go home. There are no issue here, at least I don't see the value in giving so much importance to certain categories.
Its really easy to refute this actually. The contradiction is not generated by the rules of "wulture". The contradiction lies entirely within delia. The first rule is "wulture" applies only to wultures. the second rule is "wulture" doesnt apply to white things therefore when the first rule uses the word "wulture" it is only referring to non-white things. Therefore delia determinately does not satisfy the first rule. So to say that delia is a white wulture is a making of a claim and a retraction of that same claim hence "delia" does not refer to a concept, it is free from all ontology, whatness and intelligibility it is a flatus vocis.
To say, that there is a true contradiction is equivalent to saying, that there is a true Error, that is a Error, that is No Error, or a Error, that is right. For whom it is Not more clear and obvious then the existence of thinking itself right now, that this is absurd, i dont know anything, that could concievably Help.
wulture just needs two conditions to define it. not white and vulture. i don't see how delia falls under this rule set. Think of an odd number that isn't 3, we can call that wodd. 5 is wodd, 3 is not wodd i'm not seeing the contradiction.
There’s a difference between including everything in a set and excluding everything in another set, and including everything in a set if it isn’t in another specified set
I address this point at length in the video. My view is that it only makes sense to attribute consistency or contradiction to propositions. That is, there are no "real contradictions", but similarly there is no "real consistency". The world itself is neither consistent nor contradictory, though we may truly describe it in either consistent or inconsistent ways.
@@KaneB This'll be hard to explain but I'll give it a shot... "The world itself is neither consistent nor contradictory" is silly because to be consistent or contradictory requires a relation with some other thing beyond itself. Truth is about the correspondence of a proposition/model to the world, the degree of accuracy of predictions given by the model (a proposition in language is a lossy compression of a predictive model). The "wulture" definition is incoherent, claiming to both include and exclude white vultures because the inclusion of all vultures necessarily entails inclusion of white vultures by the fact that vultures can be white. Therefore, Delia the animal is not a contradiction in reality, both exhibiting and not exhibiting a trait, but the contradiction is only in linguistic space. There was no contradiction of truths because one side of this supposed contradiction is untrue, not corresponding to the world via predictive power. Once you've chosen to define the first half of the "wulture" definition as true, the second half cannot be true, or vice versa.
I think these rules for wulture can be interpreted like that: Wulture= all things that are vultures Not wulture= all things that are white >>>> all wultures = some things that are not white From this, we get another equation All things that are vultures = some things that are not white, which is empirically wrong. It is not the case that vultures are equal to something that are not white because there are white vultures. That shows your rules for the concept 'wulture' give us a wrong proposition in the first place. If our categories requires wrong propositions, can't we just conclude they are meaningless?
Maybe it's just because I studied linguistics but the early part of this video doesn't really work for me. No word like that would survive for something concrete. You could absolutely coin a word whose definition entails a contradiction, the printen is that no one would ever use it that way, and the real definitions of words are based on how they're used by people. Even if you coined that word and it caught on, the definition would pretty quickly assist to be something less contradictory. Given that to my knowledge white vultures don't exist, potentially barring albinism, it might replace the word vulture, or should white vultures become common reckon that a meaningful distinction became necessary, the word might shift to mean "any vulture that is not white" rather than "all vultures and not white things."Even saying that is very difficult for my brain because the rules as your gage them entailed no contradiction to me, some I applied the rules sequentially, I was thinking" This word applies to A) all cultures, B) that are not white. "
The stronger argument would be the conjunction operator. Wultures are members of the set W_and={x in Universe, x is not white and x is a vulture}. Dilia is not a wulture. Wultures are members of he set W_or={x in Universe, x is not white or x is a vulture} Dilia is a wulture. Now we have a problem in classical logic there are only two truth values. True or false. Which limits the number of interaction between 2 propositions and 2 truth values you can only have 16 operators between these propositions, namely (0000 Contradiction, 0001 Nor, 0010 Not If, 0011 Not Premise 1, 0100 Not Only If, 0101 Not Premise 2, 0110 Exclusive Or, 0111 Not And, 1000 And, 1001 If and Only If,
1010 Premise 2, 1011 Only If, 1100 Premise 1, 1101 if, 1110 Or, 1111 Tautología) There is no room to build a word that contradicts itself. Aka provide necessary an sufficient conditions such that your relationship both maps and doesn't map to a value. For a contradiction to exists you need to create space for it in language which then clearly would mean i is consistent with this new logic.
interesting but I think unsuccessful argument. If the conditions are separated out, then you can get a contradiction since: rule1: forallX(VultureX → WultureX) rule2: forallX(WultureX → ~WhiteX) 3X(VultureX & WhiteX) You can modus ponens the first rule and modus tollens the second rule, thus deriving a contradiction. But I think the rule for wulture should look like this, using necessary and sufficient conditions: i.e., forallX(WultureX iff (VultureX & ~WhiteX)) that is to say, wulture should just work as a neologism for 'non-white vulture.' Something to be said about using biconditionals instead of conditionals too since you might vacuously say that everything is a wulture. I suppose this is partly why T-schema use them plus conjunctions / disjunctions. On the other hand, if you look at what sets you're talking about, you beg the question by issuing a contradictory description. Converting the conditionals with their contrapositives into set descriptions: rule1: forallX(VultureX → WultureX) rule1*: forallX(~WultureX → ~VultureX)
rule2: forallX(WultureX → ~WhiteX) rule2*: forallX(WhiteX → ~WultureX) We have the sets (A|vultures) (B|wultures) (C|nonwultures) (D|white things) (E|nonwhite things) (F|nonvultures) - for rule 1 we'll say that A is a subset of B / vultures are wultures - for rule 2 we'll say that B is a subset of E / wultures are nonwhite things - and for rule 2* we'll say that D is a subset of C / white things are nonwultures - It also turns out that there's something that is a member of both A and D, namely the existent white vulture Delia. These claims are jointly inconsistent descriptions if we don't clarify that some subsets here are proper subsets. Either A is a proper subset of B, i.e., there are vultures that are not wultures i.e., there are vultures that are not nonwhite vultures OR D is a proper subset of C, i.e., there are white things that are not nonwultures i.e., there are white things that are not white vultures Lest A completely overlap B and D completely overlap C, so making Delia a member of both the B wulture and C non-wulture sets. If B and C are supposed to be exhaustive and mutually exclusive sets and delia is put in both, you of course get weird results since you assumed a contradiction.
Personally I like there exists every sequence of consecutive 1s in the decimal expansion of pi, p. This satamente is neither true nor false. As the infinite decimal expansion of pi has a definite value (depending on your axioms) there is a fact of the matter. But there is an infinite number of sequences so the statement is unknowable. p is true or false is true contradiction. In classical logic p is not a statement, an expression with a value of true or false.
how do we know that delia is a wulture? because she says so? why should we care / believe this makes it true that she is in fact a wulture? what does it mean to determinedly be a wulture? what are the actual determining conditions? supposedly one of them would be "not being white", so I don't see how you're justified in claiming that it is just true that "she is a wulture." either we agree that delia is a wulture and that this invalidates rule 2 or we agree that rule 2 is correct and that hence delia cannot be wulture by definition.
We know that Delia is a wulture because she's a vulture. As for how we know she's a vulture, I guess that's a question for the ornithologists. >> what are the actual determining conditions? By definition, all that's required for x to be a wulture is that x is a vulture. It strikes me as odd to say that either of the rules of use are correct or incorrect. Those are just the rules I've stipulated for using the term. How could I be incorrect about that? It would be like asking whether the en passant rule in chess is correct or incorrect. You can choose to play the game with the rule or without it... it's up to you; there's no right or wrong there.
@@KaneB "By definition, all that's required for x to be a wulture is that x is a vulture." by definition, two rules have to be met, so no that's not all that's required. being a vulture is rule 1, being not white is rule 2. otherwise what's the difference between a wulture and vulture? if delia is a white vulture, then she's a vulture, not a wulture, by definition.
Something is a “wulture” if it satisfies both being a vulture and is not white. The set of “wultures” includes only non white vultures. Delia doesn’t satisfy the sufficient conditions to be classified as a “wulture”. Therefore Delia is not a “wulture”, there is no contradiction. That I think is if it’s to be interpreted as a conjunction.
You made up the word "wulture" and there are no penrose stairs in reality. What is a "true contradiction" in reality? Reality is contradictory? If a box is both empty and not empty, you are hallucinating. What is the point? Dialetheism can be used to manipulate others?
The point is just to think it through and it doesn't need to be any more than that. What does it mean that reality is non-contradictory? Is reality defined as non-contradictory? Or is reality in practice observed to be non-contradictory? I find this goes back to Rationalism v. Empiricism, if Truth is defined by coherence or correspondence. No object is in itself contradictory or non-contradictory, something must be contradicted by something else. However the definition of an object could have contradictory propositions. A proposed definition to Truth is (1) correspondent to all empirical experience and (2) coherent or non-contradictory. The definition is structured just like that of Wulture, (1) all vultures and (2) non-white. We just can't disprove the null-hypothesis, any empirical experience is contradictory, basically due to the Problem of Induction. I find it somewhat plausible something like Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem does also hold for the proposed definition of Truth, such that empirical experience remains coherent in so far as it remains incomplete, which would make the definition of Truth strictly incoherent if correct.
The wulture case could be used to support another sort of non-classical logic, without necessarily giving up on the notion that contradictions are meaningless. Someone could just reject bivalence and say the proposition "Delia is a vulture" is neither true nor false but would be gappy. Or it could be a case - in line with the partialist reading - of relative identity "Delia is not the same colour as a wulture" and "Delia is the same animal as a wulture".
Maybe fuzzy logic with a 0.5 truth value for p and -p? But this would still give you a contradiction value of maximal 0.25, this would introduce a dichotomy between hard and soft contradictions. Edit: -I just found it interesting to point out that one can have some contradictions without having to giving up consistency as a epistemic value. -It also seems more intuitive if you see truth as a similarity between representation and the represented that comes with varying degrees.
@@Opposite271 Interesting. I've never considered it through the lens of fuzzy logic. Although, and I ask as someone not as familiar with it, wouldn't a value between True and False constitute a degree of confidence, like in probability?
@@TheCanadianCatholicChannel I thought more about a degree of correspondence then about a degree of believe, but sure why not? You can use fuzzy logic the way you want to use it. The initial Idea was that correspondence is a similarity between the representational structure and the represented structure, while 1 is the maximal amount of similarity that is cognitively possible.
Something even cooler might be a super vulture 1. "Super vulture" applies to all vultures 2. "Super vulture" applies to all non-vultures Turns out everything is a super vulture
There's no contradiction in Justus's statements, or the concept of a super vulture. It has nothing to do with the principle of explosion. It's closer to the law of excluded middle.
Don't try to draw-out the set dictated by the definition of a Wulture, you'll just be left with an overlapping Venn-diagram with the words "Vultures" and "Non-Whites" written above the segments
I mean, can we agree, if we describe our perceived reality, then we can not have a contradiction, this is impossible. If reality contradict itself then what exactly is reality. At least this is how physics and every natural science subject function and it works pretty amazing in my opinion.
"Delia is a wulture and it is not the case that Delia is a wulture" is a description of reality... at least, it is as much a description of reality as "Delia is a vulture" and "Delia is white" are.
You can treat Wulture like a set. If x is required to be either a vulture or not-white, but not both, then a white vulture is a wulture. If both are required then a white vulture is not a wulture. If one but not both are required then a white vulture is a wulture. There's no contradiction here.
No, you have not described a true contradiction. All you have done is provide an incoherent definition. If put in terms of set theory, you have defined a set that both contains the complete set of all vultures and does not contain a subset of of the set of all vultures (specifically white vultures). That is incoherent. Thus, the proposition _is Dalia a wulture_ is not both true and false; it's just incoherent. (A proposition that contains an incoherent term is rendered incoherent.)
I agree with dialetheism. Although the 'wulture' argument relies on creating an explicitly contradictory term - not really showing that contradiction also exists in cases not explicitly created to be so - there are plenty of other examples in practical use. In politics, the contradiction manifests in a superposition that any subject can collapse and interpret in whichever way is most favorable. For example, an ideologue can view any news favorable to their ideology as confirmation of their ideas, and any news refuting its ideas as a clear sign that the enemy controls the very media apparatus. This would be the equivalent of looking at a white vulture and, depending on subjective inclination, calling her a wulture because she is a vulture, and at other times not calling her a wulture because she is white. The difference between the two examples, historical and fictional, is that the latter explicitly poses the contradiction in the same level (of the content analyzed as truth or not), while for the former it is displaced (between content and form). For the Germans in WW2, if the enemy commited evil actions, they were analyzed at the level of content. If the enemy commited good actions, they were analyzed at the level of form: the enemy is so evil that it can lie and disguise itself perfectly, appear just like any one of us. This forms the foundation of ideology (any attempts to refute it only vindicate its beliefs), the basis on contradiction. Whether dialetheism is "true" or not, we have to imagine that people are at least "practical" dialetheists, believing in contradictions, in order to account for historical events like the witch trials, the red scare, and so on.
(And, yes, this does offer an explanation to historical "irrationality" and dogma by identifying it as the manifestation of the principle of explosion as a consequence of these practical contradictions)
@@legendary3952 which means you cannot claim an empty object. Any claim has to contain predicates, which may or may not apply to existing or potential state of being.
@@benzur3503 oh okay. Not to sure if I would hold to this if Future Contingents are to be understood as propositions(claims) why would we accept that they have predicates too?
@@legendary3952 because they are claimed as particular kind of contingents and not “there will be contingents”, and even as such: contingency is a predicate the hypothesised subject has. Otherwise you don’t hypothesise any thing
I don't know how to have a rational debate about dialetheism. Even if I was able to show that dialetheism is false, this doesn't stop a dialetheist from taking the view that dialetheism is both true and false. I guess I would have to also argue that dialetheism is not true but I have no idea how to do this without arguing that dialetheism is false.
You can as long as they don't pull that move. You can argue that classical logic is the default position and that there are no good reasons to give it up. The problem that you're getting at is the same problem as arguing with trivialists. Anything you say is already part of their view, so nothing you say can be effective at least on a dialectical level.
I don't understand why the white vulture could be interpreted as a whulture if whulture is 1) a vulture 2) not white. Don't you have to meet all the criteria to be classified as something? My ford mc crap is not in some way a ford mustang if ford mustangs must be 1) fords 2) mustang... it has to be both to be the thing, right? Bad example maybe, but use anything, like I don't have the keys to the white house in my pocket even if the keys to the white house must first be a key. Crows are not in some way partially penguins because they are also birds etc. I don't think you'd be very happy if you ordered a coffee and they came out with a cup of salted urine, right? I just dont see how this can be a valid take on language itself, really, am i missing something here? Am only half way through, but enjoying it anyway :) you can make basically anything fun lol
>> Don't you have to meet all the criteria to be classified as something? That's how most words seem to work, but "wulture" is an unusual word. Here's an analogy that might help illustrate what's going on. Suppose you are playing a game which involves putting stickers on objects. You are told the following rules: (1) You must attach a sticker to every object that is a vulture. (2) You must ensure that there is no sticker on anything that is white. Now, what do you do when you come across a white vulture? Given the rules we have stipulated, it seems that you should both apply the sticker and not apply the sticker. "Wulture" works just like this sticker game.
@@KaneB I like the sticker analogy. But what do you mean by "how most words seem to work"? I can't think of one that doesnt, but I've seen/heard you say about "if that's how you want to use language, thats cool" ... is this what you're getting at here? Sorry if i have misunderstood, but it seems a bit strange to me to take this special word that works differently, say that it's contradictory, thus the world is full of contradictions
Identity and distinction if not contradiction, each is (an) imaginary ie NO-thing - ie does not exist ie does not cause. All that you DO have here and ARE using diligently, it is - SOME-thing, such as objects (REFERENCE) - SOME-thing such as the assertion (SYMBOL) {OF=reifying} the imaginary (REFERENCE). The imaginary ie NO-thing is merely attributed TO SOME-thing You are most likely not familiar with the Semiotic Triangle. The essential element of Ogden et al's 3-categorization is - the assertion is real (SYMBOL) - the being asserted is imaginary (REFERENCE) the imaginary is also called informedness or just INFORMATION, but also "world"2 (in the 3 "worlds" by Sire KR Popper) but also "Psyche" in the ole' greek categorization (Physis versus Psyche versus Logos, logoi pl.
The best counter-argument against Dialethism or even Trivialism (for me) is that they use classical logic on their meta-level. Else one could always change „true contradiction“ into „untrue contradiction“ (since contradictions are supposed to be true) and no one would understand what’s going on. Such hypocritical position is always shady. In fact you could argue that Dialethism/Trivialism are just variants of classical logic with some odd constant T(p & ~p) that is applied according to certain rules - everything stays classical though.
This is not correct at all. There has been work on non-classical meta logic, where for example you have a Paraconsistent logic with a purely Paraconsistent metatheory (the papers name escapes my mind, it's something like "Inconsistent Truth tables"). There is no sense in which this example is reliant on classical logic in its metatheory, and it still avoids triviality. But even this wasn't the case, it's not a real criticism. One can choose can any logic they want for the metatheory. One can give classical logic a non-classical metatheory, but this doesn't make classical logic "hypocritical" or whatever. It's possible that metatheory determines object theory, but that's not actually a given. It's not an established fact at all. Oftentimes metatheory is just chosen because it's well understood and it's easier to just get on with the business of giving the interesting proofs in your object theory.
@@wayner.2707 I try to explain on a concrete example. Imagine your (paraconsistent) logic tells you that some proposition p = 0.3-true. Its (paraconsistent) metatheory tells you that „p = 0.3-true“ = 0.99-true. What does this even mean? It only means something if you have a classical metametatheory that tells you „‚p = 0.3-true‘ = 0.99-true“ = true. At some point you NEED someone or something to tell you what is true and what not (classical logic) or you will not understand what’s going on and slip into an infinite regress. But then one could easily say: its just classical logic with fractal objects like real numbers.
@@ostihpem This example makes me think you're not familiar with the literature at all. I already addressed this exact so-called critique. In the metatheory,what truth and falsity are can be and has been entirely defined without reference to classical definitions of those terms. Yes, this includes the meta-metatheory. I found the paper: What is an Inconsistent Truth Table (Z Weber, 2016) First off, Paraconsistent logic doesn't tend to (if ever) speak of truth in degrees. You're giving a criticism of fuzzy logic's characterization of truth. And even fuzzy logic has been given a fuzzy metatheory with an explication of what truth and false mean without reference to classical models by use of fuzzy set theory (see the work of G Resconi, for example). There's not going to be any difference in the meta-metatheory, anymore than classical logic is subject to a regress of explaining what truth and falsity are by abstracting to another meta level. if this is to be a real critique, classical logic would be just as subject to it. But this criticism is wrong on account of those definitions being given using the appropriate mathematical construction. Aka, you can define these notions like truth an falsity and the logic itself using something like Paraconsistent set theory or fuzzy set theory to get your non-classical semantics for your logic. Classical logic is not present there at all.
It seems to me illegitimate to attempt to define a term by stating what is included and what is excluded. At best this is only a constraint, not a definition, and even then the constraint cannot be guaranteed to work. Let's change the example. Suppose I wish to define, or at least constrain, the word 'pacifist'. I declare that all Quakers are included, and all Republicans are excluded. Is Richard Nixon a pacifist? He cannot both be and not be. He must be an exception to one of the rules: and he is... a non-pacifist Quaker.
if "wultures" refers to a set of things, and "non-wultures" refers to the things outside of the set, then you're saying that x can both be in a set and not be in a set, which is nonsense. if "wultures" refers to a set of things, and "non-wultures" sometimes refers to something inside the set, then that's not what anyone thinks non-wultures means, so who cares.. you still need a new term for ACTUAL NON-WULTURES which are outside the set.
>> then you're saying that x can both be in a set and not be in a set, which is nonsense Yes, that is what I'm saying. Seems easily intelligible to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why not say. It is true in the sense that she is a vulture It is false in the sense that she is white No contradiction. Just different senses of the word. Also. I totally agree we can just decide how to use words. With a word such as not I've decided that I use it such that it is never correct to say of something that it is X and not X in the same sense.
@@Riskofdisconnect yeah but it is not partial as in I think it's a vague boundary. I'm unsure about how the rules apply given how I use the word "not". Let's say someone set up the rules to a game. They said 1 points for each red thing you catch. No point for any cube you catch. You catch a red cube and confusion sets in. How do the rules apply. The partialist solution is half a point. In the middle. The one or the otherist is fine with either rule trumphing the other. Either a point or no point. The contradiction happy says you got a point and you didn't get a point. You score now is 5 and your score now is 4. Given how I understand how we use point systems. (Similar to how I like the word "not" be used) I don't like the contradiction solution.
@@Riskofdisconnect It's like saying. According to the red rule I would get a point. But according to the no cube rule I wouldn't. Imagine some people are arguing who won some game. One says, the judge said we won, we got the trophy. The other one says "Sure but you clearly cheated". The first guy agrees. They turn to you and say did team A win. I think it's reasonable to answer "In one sense team A won, in the other sense the other team won"
@@Oskar1000 I'd agree that you can do so and it's reasonable if you're trying to be pragmatic, it seems to me though that all it does is move the contradiction downstream. Obviously both teams can't win the same game without some contradiction and so in a sense saying they both won is accepting true contradictions as possible anyway.
Of course, Delia is no wulture, for Delia is a White vulture, and wulture can never be a White vulture. So either a White vulture does Not exist, or Delia is no wulture. But Most probably, the term wulture itself is absurd or useless. I would Not even need any example whatsoever of a true contradiction, for there cannot only be no one example, but the notion of a true contradiction is itself absurd and Impossible. For If one breaks the Nature of contradictions, there could Not be a true contradiction either, for it would be equally true and false, Rendering it to nothing, at least of any sense. For people who Go around claiming that contradictions are everywhere, they are clearly either only refering to the contradictions Made in Minds and them being existent for what they are, or they are plainly talking and being absurd, of which i dont hesitate to say so If accurate.
I am 100% in agreement with this video. As Graham Priest points out, the preface paradox is a slam-dunk example of a true contradiction. I remember when my professor introduced explosion. I was like, "we've seen problems arise in logic, but this time you have gone too far; logic and reason are divorced!" Anyways, I do have a potential argument not addressed in this video - there could be a hierarchy of rules for evaluating definitions. Consider the game Magic The Gathering. In this game there are tens of thousands of different cards. Sometimes cards will contradict each other. Let's suppose there's a card that says "all players must draw five cards" and another card that says 'no one may draw any cards". Well, in the game, the restrictive statement wins - players in this case cannot draw cards. Using this rule, the white vulture would not be a wulture. Of course, this argument would still be subject to your argument that we are just creating a consistent language. But, I thought I would bring it up. What does your tattoo say? Not sure if I can make it out. Nice drip btw. Looking sharp.
Yeah, nothing stops people from adopting that rule, but then we're altering the rules for the use of the term. As I've defined it, there is no higher-level rule that determines which lower-level rule trumps the other in cases of conflict. It's a tattoo of explosion. It says: 1 | P 2 | ~P 3 | P v Q 4 | Q
Why do you philosophers keep coming up with words which portmanteau the word white with another word, _and have that word's definition exclude things that are white?!_
Bruh, I’ve said it to you before, but you really should ditch these analytic squares…. Come to the dark side. Those of us on the “continental” side have been comfortable with contradiction since Hegel.
I agree -- and I'm not being tongue-in-cheek (I'm not sure if "we're both right" was serious or a joke playing on the idea of true contradictions). The reason why we're both right is that you can, in principle, stipulate whatever rules you want for a language. Nobody makes any error in committing to the methodological requirement that contradictions are forbidden, and specifying rules for their language to ensure this.
Definitions constructed like 'wulture' are poorly constructed because they lead to this type of ambiguity. We could call these 'improper' definitions, though we are free to use them and we should be aware of their pitfalls. Improper definitions don't have contradictions, they just have three states of affairs: true, false, and indeterminate. By contrast we can imagine defining a 'proper' definition as one where each portion or subpart of the definition must explicitly join itself to the whole with either an 'and' or an 'or'. Now the and/or do good work for us and restrict the states of affairs to only true and false. These 'proper' definitions don't have contradictions either. I far prefer proper definitions.
I both affirm and deny the existence of true contradictions.
this is what skepticism overdose does
you have strayed too far
First off, shout out to you for putting your thoughts out there, most people are afraid of doing so and shy away from criticism, you seem to be embracing it, which is admirable.
I had a few thoughts regarding your Wulture example that I haven’t (yet) seen any of the comments point out, they are as follows:
In your explication of a Wulture, you mentioned that there are two rules associated with the term, the first being that all vultures are Wultures and the second being that no white thing is a Wulture.
The above ‘rules’ (so to speak) can be formalized in the following manner -
1) If it’s a vulture, then it’s a Wulture | V -> WV
2) If it’s white then it’s not a Wulture | W -> ~WV
From these two, I can derive two more statements -
3) If it’s not a Wulture then it’s not a vulture | ~WV -> ~V (Contrapositive of 1)
4) If it’s a Wulture then it’s not white | WV -> ~W
(Contrapositive of 2)
Given the above conditions, we can derive two statements which I believe clarify things: _“If it’s a vulture then it’s not white”_. And “_If it’s white, it’s not a vulture”_
These statements are derived from 1-4 via the following :
5) If it’s a vulture it is a Wulture, if it’s a Wulture it is not white
(V -> WV -> ~ W) (1&4)
6) If it’s a vulture it’s not white (V -> ~W) (5, Transitivity)
7) If it’s white it’s not a vulture
(W -> ~V) (6, Contrapositive)
It seems that 6 and 7 make the flaw in the problem you have presented us very clear, that being that your conditions result in an implicit redefining of what constitutes a vulture, as logical consequence in this case dictates that all vultures be white and that if it is white it is not a vulture. So the hypothetical in this case, that of a “white vulture”, is not possible, as if it is white, the term vulture is inapplicable and if it is a vulture the term white is inapplicable. Hence, given the initial constraints, you are violating the definition of what constitutes a Vulture by postulating your white vulture (meaning the entity you postulated is, in reality, not a vulture).
Another way to look at it is that by asserting that the word Wulture simply means all Vultures are white, which can be true or false, with the existence of white vultures showing the claim to be false.
That’s my two cents, feel free to critique.
Maybe I've missed something, but I see no reason to believe 3. It seems like that would only be the case if 1 were a bicondition, not an implication.
@@MehtaEthics 3 is simply the contraposition of 1. The law of contraposition states that for any case in which [P -> Q] then it is (materially) equivlent to [~Q -> ~P], this is also true from an angle of intuition. For example if I state that "If someone is tall, then they are taller than 6 feet", if the first condition is true (the antecedent) the consequent must be true, so we know that if the consequent is false, it could not have been the case that the antecedent is true. In our example, that would be akin to saying "if someone is *not* taller than 6 feet, then they are not tall", which would be true based on the initial statement.
Likewise, in my original comment we have the conditional statement:
1) If it’s a vulture, then it’s a Wulture | [V -> WV]
In which its contraposition would be (3)
3) If it’s not a Wulture then it’s not a vulture | [~WV -> ~V]
Damn, this is actually a really good point! We could even apply this to a more on-the-nose example.
A machelor includes all bachelors but excludes all men.
Bach -> Mach
Man -> ~Mach.
Contrapositives:
~Mach -> ~Bach
Mach -> ~Man
so
Bach -> Mach -> ~Man
so
Bach -> ~Man (1)
But of course a Bachelor is an unmarried man so
Bach -> Man
Contra:
~Man -> ~Bach (2)
So putting (1) and (2) together we get
Bach -> ~Bach
i.e. if you are a bachelor, you are not a bachelor! XD The trick here was that being a man is necessary component of being a bachelor, so you can pull this trick with any definition that involves a necessary component. So if you're a human, you're not a human (as humans are mammals), anything blue is not actually blue ( as blue is a colour) etc. The introduction of these new terms therefore seems to reject tautologies which seems wild to me.
@@JohnSmith-rz7fh Ah, thanks for clearing that up for me. I thought you were saying that from P > Q, you can derive ~P > ~Q.
@@minch333 Exactly, though there seems to be one more pertinent thing to point out, that being the “term” Wulture is not really a new “word” or term in the traditional sense of a word or term. Words are usually defined in terms of what they _mean_ (usually in terms of essences), not what they include or exclude, what is included or excluded follows from the definition. For example, a triangle is crudely defined as a shape with three sides that connect at three different vertices, it is not defined in terms of “this term applies to all x but no y”. Rather, in the case of a Wulture it is akin to a variable (or if you are familiar with Tarski, a quotation mark name) that denotes a _conditional_. So in essence, the term Wulture is equivalent to the two conditionals I listed above, those being:
If it’s a vulture then it’s a Wulture
And
If it’s white, then it’s not a Wulture
With that in mind, if this is not seen so much as a word, but rather a variable for the above conditionals, it becomes clear that this can be dismissed as empirically false based off of what we derived ([if it’s a vulture, then it’s not white (and vice versa)]) and hence one can coherently _reject_ the “term” which denotes the conditional.
what radical skepticism does to a mfer 😂
yeah but do challenge him on this and his demeanor changes from a cateful skeptic to a rude fanatic real quick.
It seems to me that the confusion happens because you haven't specified the logical operator in between the two conditions
Let A be "Applies to all things that are vultures"
Let B be "Excludes all things that are white"
So the classification criteria is (A and B) or (A or B) ?
if you choose "and", than Delia is not a wulture because B is false
if you choose "or", than Delia is a Wulture because A is true.
there you have it, I think it's more of a misunderstanding than a true contradiction
If you choose "and", then Delia is wulture because Delia is a vulture, and Delia is not a wulture because Delia is white. There you have it.
@@KaneB i don't think we're on the same page here. if you Choose "and", than B is false and the entire conjunction is false. Therefore not a wulture
@@avaragedude6223 If you choose "and", then "wulture" applies to Delia so Delia is a wulture. Unless, of course, you're just stipulating different rules for using the term. Obviously you can do that; you can stipulate whatever rules you want. I'm not sure how this is supposed to be an objection to my view though.
@@KaneB Yeah, I definitely don't get your point. The classification is gonna depend on the operator. Clearly, choosing "and" makes Delia not a wulture because "B" is false, "A" being true alone is not sufficient for classifing Delia as a wulture, that's just how the operator "and" works. And if you just choose to apply theese criteria separately (without operators) than they're just two different criteria for the same word, thus making a confusion with the term "wulture". At this point i'm just repeating myself.
@@avaragedude6223 it's not that a wulture is a non-white vulture. It's that wulture is "all things that are vultures AND all things that are not white"
The proponent of classical logic can always just say, "nope, you're wrong" and come away looking more reasonable. The problem that all these silly games run into is that contradictions are obviously false. They're self-evidently false. You're arguing against something more obvious than any premise you could ever create; you're always going to lose.
Your "wulture" concept is obviously nonsensical as it entails a contradiction. But, are we allowed to reject it on that basis? Well, of course we are. It's not as though there has ever been a stronger objection to anything before.
All you did was try to obscure the contradiction. Yes, each of the rules is clear when kept separate. But, while it isn't instantly apparent, their combination allows for items to be included and excluded at the same time. The unintelligible part is that Delia *is and is not* a wulture. That is OBVIOUSLY impossible, and you acting like you can easily wrap your mind around it just makes you look insane.
So it's your absurd, useless concept vs the most obvious truth in the world.
To make your nonsense more perspicuous, you're saying "Wulture includes all vultures, but excludes all white vultures" and you're like, yep, makes PERFECT SENSE, better pull the rug out from my entire body of knowledge. Surely your epistemology is completely bankrupt with the way you molest intuition and flee from self-evident truths. It's really trendy among low-T philosophers to accept tons of propositions that lead directly to global skepticism, yet to continue to argue as if that makes no difference.
in the video, he asked us to think about there being a box that is both empty and occupied lmao, as if we could, as if it's not nonsense
based common sense user
IMO the logical sleight of hand is that the concept of a wulture is not actually a "definition", but it is introduced implicitly as two separate implications (if vulture then wulture; if white then not wulture). the existence of a delia makes these two implications inconsistent. if wulture was actually a definition, it would have to be e.g. an intersection (wulture ::= vulture and not white) which would not be inconsistent (delia is not wulture)
You said that a white vulture is and is not a "wulture", because it follows rule 1 for it, and doesn't follow rule 2, however, for a white vulture to be considered a wulture it would have to follow both rules, right? So, it's not like it is both considered and not considered a wulture, it's just not a wulture.
He defined the category of wultures to include “all things that are vultures,” so it is a wulture by that definition.
I think Quine hit it right on the nose when he suggested that what is going on in an argument like this is that the proponent of the argument is changing the definition of "not." To say "wulture can't be defined that way because it would lead to one and the same thing being a wulture and not being a wulture" isn't so much begging the question as it is saying, "no, wait, remember how we had defined the word 'not'?"
It seems to me that dialetheism simply redefines the negation operator. Sure, I can decide to use "¬" such that "A and ¬A" is sometimes true. But I could equally just stipulate that "A and ¬A" is never true, simply because that is how I decide to define "¬".
As for paradoxical statements/properties, it seems fairly easy to just stipulate that the relevant sentences do not express propositions and therefore cannot be interpreted in the system of rules that we have decided upon.
I agree that people can choose to use language that way.
Though on this point:
>> it seems fairly easy to just stipulate that the relevant sentences do not express propositions
Sure, you can stipulate this. You can use language in whatever way you like. So if you want to use a language in which terms like "wulture" are prohibited, that's cool. It would be another matter, however, to claim that "wulture" is meaningless or unintelligible. I'm not sure you can just stipulate that.
@@KaneBI think you can and I think I have somewhat a good argument for this (I am not that experienced in philosphical debates, so forgive me if it seems just stupid)
A „wulture“ or something like this don’t „exist“ in reality. If we agree this bird is a „wulture“, by the second rule it already has to be black and in my opinion the first rule doesn’t make sense to me. But my point is, if we agree it is a „wulture“ and the „wulture“ happens to be white, then we need to adjust the rules to make the term consistent with reality. There are two possibilities how to resolve this inconsistency. 1. we come to the conclusion that the concept „wulture“ is meaningless, because you can‘t say if this white bird is a „wulture“ or not. 2. we losen or throw the second rule out and say only „most wultures are not white“ or we don’t make this statement about them. So what I propose I think is that we only „accept“ definitions of words, if they are consistent with reality.
It is not sufficient for the purposes of formal dialethism to merely redefine negation. If you do not reject any classical truths and do not accept any classical falsehoods then your dialethism is going to be subclassical or superclassical; in the case that you go subclassical, you have to have functional completeness as independent to your calculus to avoid a calculus that degenerates to classical logic. The specific rule that gets rejected or held as independent typically is one direction of double negation, and the other direction is what gets rejected or held as independent for intuitionistic logic as they're dual. This all requires that not only do we redefine negation but also our units and some number of other connectives that would satisfy functional completeness; there's a structural dimension for blocking functional incompleteness but that requires altering units.
If your calculus is anti or counter classical in the sense of rejecting some classical truths or accepting some classical falsehoods then we get things more like connexive logics. A radical dialethist will have to choose an anti or counter classical calculus which has semantics which are incompatible fundamentally with the semantics of classical logic (but not necessarily incompatible with the semantics of physical reality or metaphysical semantics). Syntactical restrictions to the negation are insufficient and potentially unnecessary.
Consider the following: all your "axioms" are contradictions, all operations are from contradictions to contradictions, and soundness in this calculus preserves contradictions; almost all theorems of the calculus are contradictions. Metalinguistically starting from Tarski's definition of theoretical consistency such that there exists a contradiction if and only if every possible combination of symbols of a formal language are theorems in the formal language; we can either affirm or reject that equivalence; let's say we reject it such that there exists contradictions such that there is a formal language which does not have every possible combination of symbols as its theorems. Going from that there exists a theorem of the calculus I've asked you to consider which is not a contradiction.
This can all get much hairier once we start talking about how contradiction-based calculi are generally non-bivalent and generally fuzzy, complex-valued, or multivalent.
@@fable4315What if we just looked at the concept of the wulture instead of the term and the concept. You can always redefine the word wulture but like the original concept will always be a concept that exist.
And how is the concept meaningless? If you understand what it means for something to always be a vulture and you understand what it means for something to always not be white then you just have to combine those two concepts.
Are the conditions you gave individually sufficient such that something that satisfies either is enough to classify it or are things required to meet both qualifiers?
There is one way of framing this as well; I don't think the rules generate contradictions, as much as the rules are generated from contradictions. That cleans up the logic more when stated that way.
In the case of the wulture example, it does feel very linguistic to me.
wultures = vultures
¬wultures = white vultures and all non-vultures
Obviously the white vultures are in the intersection. If you change the names to A and B or whatever, the contradiction vanishes. Moreover the objects satisfying (wulture ∧ ¬wulture) are precisely the white vultures, so really there is still unique truth assignment to every object, just slightly obscured by clever use of the word "not".
I don't see his wulture example at all. If wultures really are non-white, then a white vulture can't be a wulture. Where's the doubt?
If "A and not A" can be true, what does "not" mean?
(I'm trying to formulate why i do not understand what "not" means but every explanation I can come up with uses the word "not" in a way that I think fails to capture what I mean if "A" can be true when "not A", including this one)
I still don’t get it. In the fork of the contradiction between the world and those proposed over-inclusive terms, what would motivate a person to consider the terms to be the useful path to choose? Why would one give up on the world being true for wulture to be so?
Why does it matter whether they're useful?
@@KaneB pragmatism
@@benzur3503 That kind of pragmatism is garbage though. I'm strongly pro-uselessness.
@@KaneB cool, I’m strongly pro useful terms. We’ve identified our gap in goals of using terms. That’ll be useful in understanding how and why we use terms
@@benzur3503 Why should something be abandoned for appearing useless? There are things beyond what one knows to be useful that will be useful. Learning is finding tools to use, creativity is in finding how something can be used. In this example, perhaps understanding the contradiction could lead one to understand where contradictions originate and find how it will develop. Then you can find utility in application later. For the video though, the understanding of true contradictions could be useful in understanding others positions on things, understanding why one can say that a white vulture is a wulture in this instance, and potentially understanding the development of linguistics over time. That is how this appears useful to me.
This just feels like playing with words and not getting at anything concrete
I addressed this criticism at length in the video so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Using normal consistent logic is also just playing with words and not getting at anything concrete.
I think that's the whole point.
Logic is something we construct not discover. Whether it's normal or weird logic. What counts as weird will depend on the person
@@juliohernandez3509 Right!
In a sense, dialetheism could serve as a deterrent to belief systems that attempt to teleologize the foundations of reason, as such belief systems have often been shown to be ill-pragmatic due to their staunch dogmatism.
This implies some sort of naive relativism, so, no its not just a construct. Even if it was a construct, contradictions are by definition false, therefore this is just meaningless wordplay
Hey Kane, do you plan something about neuroscience and scientific anti-realism? Do you know any books or papers in this topic?
Personally, with the wulture example it feels much more intuitive to say that it's indeterminate whether a white vulture is a wulture than it both is and isn't a wulture. Although that may be my history with coding where it's often reasonable conceptualize some if statements as having 3 potential results of True, False, and Error.
This is what's called the truth gap response. The issue i take with this line of thinking is if you ask the question "is the statement 'Deliah is a wulture' true?" Then by virtue of the first criteria, it obviously is. And same for asking whether its false. You get obvious truth values, you just get more than one. So it doesn't seem like there's any in-between at play here, just truth and falsity.
I have to object to the example:
Proposition A: wulture applies to wultures
Proposition B: wulture doesn't apply to whites
Proposition C: x is a wulture.
So C is true if A(x)&B(x) is true
If it were x a white wulture, B(x) would be false, so x can't be a wulture.
But couldn’t you apply the same statement in reverse for the “vulture” requirement to show that the discussed specimen must be a wulture? Is there asymmetry in proving the negative vs the positive?
Yes, Delia can't be a wulture (because she's white). But she also is a wulture, because she is a vulture and by definition, "wulture" applies to all vultures.
The ending would've been much more effective if you had used a wenis instead of a wand.
It appears to me that what you are trying to describe is instances of different definitions of a wulture leading to a consensus on what a wulture is that is inconsistent with the definition given to a wulture. Kind of like how tomato is a fruit given the botanical definition as opposed to the nutritional definition being a vegetable.
I don't get the contradiction. Being a vulture is simply necessary but not sufficient for being a wulture... as is must being non-white. Delia is therefore not a wulture, as she does not have all the necessary properties. That's all... Am I missing something?
"Wulture", by stipulation, applies to anything that is a vulture. Delia is a vulture, so Delia is a wulture.
@@KaneB
I just read other replies and understood that a Wulture is not (a non-white vulture), but rather any member of a set that contains all vultures and also only contains all things that are not white.
@@davidantinucci8027 You're wrong about what the definition of wulture is. Here is an explanation in set theory.
v is the set of vultures
w is the set of white things
v & w ≠ ∅
We define W, the set of wultures, such that:
v ⊆ W
w ⊆ ~W
In set theory, this is impossible. This definition implies a contradiction, and contradictions are banned in most formal systems like mathematics. But the argument of this video is that we don't have to be restricted by such formal rules unless we want to.
@@f1urps so are you saying that in set theory the example is impossible, or that the example shows a contradiction?
@@f1urps then explain why "x is in W and x is not in W" is not meaningless
Delia the vulture is not a wulture.
This is because she has to be both a vulture and not white, but she is white. One of the conditions is not satisfied, so she is not a wolture. There is no contradiction
I'm not entirely convinced by the prospect of dialetheism if we consider it only in terms of analytical philosophy. Although there are some philosophical systems that admit contradictions as something that exists in the world, like in hegelian dialectics or in the zen and phenomenology inspired philosophy of the Kyoto School
this is why dialetheists engage with phenomenology and hegelianism. Priest, Beall, and others have all engaged with Hegel and Heidegger.
@@dissatisfiedphilosophy I didn't know, nice
One could be a Sassurian and say that wulture is an arbitrary contradiction.
A type of subjective fictional classification applied to a partially apprehended objective world.
The truthfulness is entirely mental.
There are no contradictions outside of language.
It’s an emergent property of classification.
I also feel that Wittgenstein was kinda on point for cases like this: metaphysical problems are frequently just problems of language.
I'd probably be happy agree that there are no contradictions outside of language -- as long as we are clear that, in exactly the same sense, there is no consistency outside of language either.
The example of a white wulture doesn't seem to me to imply a genuine contradiction, any more than a black swan does. The problem here is simply one where the world does not conform to a construct such as language. The kind of contradiction not involving natural language that would be impossible is one where we have two sets of facts/circumstances/conditions that are mutually exclusive: e.g. Schrödinger's cat, Russell's set of all sets that don't contain themselves, your both-occupied-and-empty box, and anything that is the case and not the case at the same time and in the same respect. You can make new rules for your language to accommodate mutually excluding words, e.g. inventing new predicates like "occuempty", and you can make these rules internally consistent. But what does that have to do with the world? The contradiction would be (per impossibile) in the world, not in the language.
I agree with this. The existence of a white wulture rejects the definition of wulture excluding everything that is white
I think contradictions arrise in languages where there are specifications for things that have no possible implementation. If there were a finite set of vultures and a finite set of white things including at least one white vulture, then there is no algorithm that can construct the Wulture set.
If you construct a language which has these kinds of contradictions, then the language will crash when you try to implement its causal structure in the world. I think this makes it unsuitable for describing fundamental reality, since reality does not seem to crash.
What do you mean by applying and excluding exactly?
Why don't you explain what difficulty you're having understanding those terms, and then I can clarify?
@@KaneB
So my suspicion would go so far:
Excludes just is the negation of applies
Applies means something like:
A word applies just in case it's usage conforms to it's application rule
So we for example have certain conventions for the term "car"
If I would say "This is a car" and hold up a pencile, I would violate these conventions
So could we say something like
1. If something is a vulture, it is appropriate to call it a wulture
2. If something is white, it is not appropriate to call it a wulture
?
@@justus4684 Yep, we could say that. Per the rules for the use of the term "wulture", it is appropriate to apply the term to all vultures, and not appropriate to apply the term to any white thing. Here's an analogy that might help illustrate what's going on. Suppose you are playing a game which involves putting stickers on objects. You are told the following rules:
(1) You must attach a sticker to every object that is a vulture.
(2) You must ensure that there is no sticker on anything that is white.
What do you do when you come across a white vulture? Given the rules we have stipulated, it seems that you should both apply the sticker and not apply the sticker. "Wulture" works just like the sticker in the game. You attach it to vultures and remove it from white things.
@@KaneB
That's a pretty helpful analogy
But I think "It is permissible to apply the term to all vultures" implies "If Delia is a vulture, then it is permissible to apply the term"
"It is not permissible to apply the term to any white thing" would entail that "If Delia is white, then it is not permissible to apply the term"
Now Delia is a white vulture so it would be both permissible and not permissible to apply the term, which is a contradiction
I think the same applies to "You must attach a sticker to all vultures" and "You must not attach a sticker to anything white", this will entail that you must and must not apply a sticker to Delia
But maybe this is a problem with how we interpret the rules that can be avoided
This seems a bit strange... It seems quite straight forward that Delia doesn't fit the description of a wulture.
a(x) and b(x) = c
true and false = false
It seems like it may not be being specified if both qualifiers for classifying are required or if only one is required. It seems simple to resolve and would then just be a lack of specificity.
If you are saying the lack of declaring "and" or "or" of multiple qualifiers for a classification results in a set of members which is uncertain... that seems fine but doesn't seem like a contradiction at all.
Props for your proof of impossibility of external world. Slayed all the incredulous skeptics in one blow
it is a shame that the closed captions can't really tell what you are saying (tbh it's difficult for me too, but there is some context). Was it Walter? Wulture? Maybe call them Scott and Fred, this is even worse in German when V and W are the same, as in wegetable.
I'd say a thing is contradictory if you could conclude that that thing is not, based solely on the fact that it belongs to a specific category. For instance, a white vulture may conflict with the definition of wulture, but a black vulture forms no such contradiction so belonging to the category is not enough. A square circle on the other hand is inherently contradictory.
I don't think that the discretness of the properties actually makes the category any diffrent.
We create categories in function to our needs.
Things happen out there and we parse them as we see fit.
If our terms create contradictions, then state the facts and propose new terms that take in account the nuance that showed why our prior categories don't suffice.
True contradiction seem to have a scale of perplexity. So the prime exemplar mentioned on a scale of 1 to 10 is manageable because the rules are stipulated idiosyncratically by a speaker of a natural language. A listener seems not to loose their bearings due to the discourse being within standard English or whatever, and therefore phenomenologically has sense of paradoxically because true and false is harnessing a linguistic schema within language change (old English changed into Middle English into this), so giving 5ish from an outsider stance of Productivity - how efficiently labour produces goods and services, so not as a fellow logician. Santa Claus as a negative existential paradox gets 1ish for its part of my imagined community where it's socially embedded in traditional rituals. Whereas, as was implied, its all an illusion, or contemporarily imagined as I am a simulation, that entails an genuine existential modal truth/false binary that explodes into all language systems and can be verified through the history of world religious thought. Garden variety paradoxes are ritualistically managed by public discourse, however there are a few such paradoxes that arguably emerged in classic text, like the Upanishads that give contemporary artistic licence to dilethism through an interdependency to Buddhist and Jain logic as a world religious phenomenology. The contradiction of self worth and societies norms via money supply is a contradiction pertaining to work. So I can see infinite value in my art, be that what it may, as in philosophical outpourings or painting but there is price market monetary value associated with it so cannot pay the mortgage, and hence I have to do gardening work which give price market value to society within the nation state, but not to self categorisation within the social paradigm. The personal identity alignment paradox is one of self to social construction where market price as social indicator hooks into personal identity. This arguable causes a form of alienation of self. If so the social alienation with sense of self will exponentially increase in the advent of advanced AI. So within the modernisation paradigm that is based on social identity and meritocracy correlated to personal identity the self can amount to being valued at zero. Hence the scramble to be institutionalised for value is hinged onto the role played rather than price value. The institutional paradox is for example when the philosophy department constructs as it were philosophy graduates who are not philosophers through the schema of public recognition qua social self evaluation based on stratification of voice being relegated to professor hood status all things being equal (high net worth individuals exempt). So it turns out the 'q's and p's contradictions are are clever paradoxes albeit without the wisdom or profound overtones that entangle self as a world identifying prototype.
I think this confuses statements of application conditions with statements of general hypotheses. There's an obvious parallel to Hempel's paradox in how the application conditions of "wulture" are formulated. By the logic of this formulation, not only is Delia (a white vulture) both a wulture and not a wulture at the same time, but every non-white non-vulture (my shoe for example) is similarly both a wulture and not a wulture at the same time.
In so far as linguistic items even have application conditions, this is not how they tend to be structured. Not even in regular, non-contradictory cases. The conjunction connective taking wide scope over the quantifiers (rather than the other way around) is pretty weird. The word "bachelor" doesn't refer to EVERYTHING that is a man and EVERYTHING that is unmarried, such that both unmarried women and married men constitute walking contradictions. However, if we were to formulate a general hypothesis on the basis of the application conditions of "bachelor" - i.e. "Every man is unmarried" - then something like this would follow. The implication of that hypothesis would be that no married person is a man. So, given "hypothesis structured" application conditions, the word "bachelor" refers to everything that is a man AND everything that is unmarried.
However the correct response to confronting a case that contradicts the hypothesis/application conditions is not to call it a true contradiction, but to trash the hypothesis/application conditions.
If we accept that people are allowed to define words like "wulture" then why would we not accept that people can define words like "not"? If "not P" is defined to be the rejection of the truth of P, then to say that Delia is not a wulture would be to reject the proposition of Delia being a wulture, which we cannot do if we are intent upon claiming that Delia is a wulture.
Various systems of logic will define the word "not" in various ways, since the whole point of a system of logic is to make such language formal and rigorous, and some systems can choose to define "not" in a way such that "not P" does not totally reject the truth of P, but that would only apply within that system. For most people in colloquial English, the word "not" does mean a total denial of the proposition, and dialetheism is just oblivious to this fact of the English language. Dialetheism is taking a commonly used word, arbitrarily changing the meaning of that word, and then trying to convince everyone that this new meaning is the meaning that the word has always had. It is a pointless semantic game.
>> why would we not accept that people can define words like "not"
Of course people can do that. This is pretty much the whole point of the video...
>> then to say that Delia is not a wulture would be to reject the proposition of Delia being a wulture, which we cannot do if we are intent upon claiming that Delia is a wulture
Sure we can. I can accept the proposition that Delia is a wulture and reject the proposition that Delia is wulture. Seems totally straightforward to me.
>> For most people in colloquial English, the word "not" does mean a total denial of the proposition
Ordinary people are garbage and I couldn't care less how they speak, so I don't really have a dog in this fight. Out of curiosity though, do you have any empirical evidence for your claim about how ordinary people use the term "not", or is this more based on your feelings?
>> It is a pointless semantic game
So what if it is?
@@KaneB "I can accept the proposition that Delia is a wulture and reject the proposition that Delia is wulture."
You seem to be speaking a different language that I cannot understand. I can only conclude that some of the words you are using mean something different from what they mean when I use them, and there is no way to know which. I suspect the word "reject" may be the culprit here, so I might ask how you define that word, but the problem might also be in the word "accept." The problem could even be in the word "and," or it might be in the grammatical structure of the sentence.
Ordinary dialetheism as best I can understand it just redefines the word "not," but you managed to say something incoherent without that word, so some other word is probably being redefined here, but what would be the point of putting in effort to try to decode dialetheist language? The whole point of language is to facilitate communication so we can understand and be understood, yet dialetheism causes confusion instead of understanding by rejecting the common way in which words are used. It is as if dialetheists don't want their words to be understood, so perhaps the best thing we can do for dialetheists is to not try to understand what they are saying.
"Out of curiosity though, do you have any empirical evidence for your claim about how ordinary people use the term 'not', or is this more based on your feelings?"
It is how I use the word "not" and my usage of that word only ever seems to cause difficulties in communication when talking to dialetheists.
I wish Kane B would express his definition of "wulture" in computer code. In PowerShell, it could be:
($x_species -eq "vulture" -and (-not($x_color -eq "white")))
or
($x_species -eq "vulture" -or (-not($x_color -eq "white")))
Can anyone else present his definition better?
He's applying both rules simultaneously, so the closest code can get is an infinite loop. If you go through line by line there isn't really a contradiction, just two conditions that disagree.
@@gray875 It doesn't seem like you could code for that though. Maybe if you run the code for each rule on different threads but then you would still need an operator to join the 2 conditions together.
I think of the absence of contradictions is a criterion for honest speech such that an argument using a contradiction is invalid, whether there are contradictions in the world or not, and whether there are contradictions in the language or not. Any argument that doesn't provide a definitive clear answer like the argument for whether the vulture that is not white is a wulture is invalid. Words which are categories are filled by an argument for their being in the category and not by mere consistency with the definition. if in order to fit the black vulture into the category of wulture I must make an argument that leads to a paradox or contradiction it becomes indeterminate whether the black vulture is a wulture.
I didn't really understand the contradiction in the definition here. I could easily resolve it by making the definition of wulture "all non-black vultures" which effectively serves the same purpose as having two qualifiers. It's just bad English, not a contradiction imo. Maybe there are better examples?
Yes, you could define the word differently. You can define words however you want. So what? The question is whether the definition that I have proposed is inconsistent.
@@KaneB I don't think I'm defining the word differently though. There are two qualifiers a) must be a vulture, b) must be not white. There is no contradiction in applying both part of this definition step by step. We look at something, we determine if it is a vulture, and if it's a vulture then we determine whether it's white or not and then we can say whether it's a wulture or not.
I think understand the concept vaguely, I just don't know if I can think of *any* real world examples that applies. Honestly, if you're fine with calling this a contradiction then it might be better to say wulture is a word that has two rules: 1) wulture applies to all things that are vultures, and 2) wulture excludes all things that are vultures.
The issue hinges on how one interprets a ruleset.
If one takes the ruleset to be an AND function, then only non-white vultures can be denoted as wulture. If one takes the ruleset to be an OR function, then ANYTHING that is a vulture OR ANYTHING that is not white could be denoted as wulture.
In either case P and NOT P are well defined.
If one takes the ruleset to have the first rule be a requirement and the subsequent rules to be optional, then we have an inconsistent set P and thus not P would also be inconsistent and thus not following any consistent set logic by which to claim a P or NOT P split.
I have not been moved to the idea that there are true contradictions only that we have various ambiguities and inconsistences that result in some defining the resulting mess as being a "true contradiction".
Consider this scenario. Suppose you are playing a game which involves putting stickers on objects. You are told the following rules:
(1) You must attach a sticker to every object that is a vulture.
(2) You must ensure that there is no sticker on anything that is white.
Now, what do you do when you come across a white vulture? Given the rules we have stipulated, it seems that you should both apply the sticker and not apply the sticker. It's not particularly surprising that this kind of situation might arise: the rules of games are purely conventional, and obviously there can be inconsistent rules. In practice, when we realize that rules are inconsistent, we usually decide to change -- but we're not forced to do that. We could just continue working with the inconsistent rules. Anyway, my word "wulture" works like the rules for this game. It applies to all things that are vultures, but it does not apply to anything that is white. This is very different from saying that it applies to non-white vultures. That would be analogous to the following rule:
(1a) You must attach a sticker to every object that is a non-white vulture.
This wouldn't create any difficulties at all. When you come across a white vulture, you just wouldn't apply the sticker to it.
@@KaneB
[Given the rules we have stipulated, it seems that you should both apply the sticker and not apply the sticker.]
WHY? Are you ignoring the fact that it is a ruleset (collection of rules)?
The moment there are multiple rules, then one has a ruleset. The result of the ruleset is
[(1a) You must attach a sticker to every object that is a non-white vulture.]
---
If one considers the ruleset to be a cumulative process (an AND function) of review BEFORE one does an action, then only non-white vultures will have a sticker applied.
If one considers the ruleset to be an order of processing per sticker, then one will initially place a sticker on all vultures and then remove the sticker. Thus, at the end of the process ONLY non-white vultures will have a sticker remaining.
If one considers the ruleset to be an order of processing, then one will initially place a sticker on all vultures and then come back and remove any sticker placed on a white vulture.
---
However, the more I thought about it. It really doesn't matter whether the ruleset is applied consistently or not with regard to the construction of set P. Why?
If we have some collection of P, then NOT P is simply that which is NOT in the collection P.
This is automatically the case conceptually given that every object in P is a unique object regardless of how the set P was constructed. This is an immediate dismissal of the idea of P and NOT P being equal to each other. This dismisses the idea of a "true contradiction".
---
It should be noted that I do not identify the rules for constructing a set to be the same as the set itself even as I grant that depending on the selection criteria the resultant set is often equivalent.
The map (selection criteria) is not the territory (the set of objects).
@@KaneB
In my attempt to understand why one would accept dialethism, I am now considering motivations.
I have a friend who seems to accept that determinism is true and libertarian free will is true while not being a compatibilist.
The acceptance of determinism seems to be predicated on an actual understanding of the observed linkages that support the idea being correct.
The acceptance of free will seems to be predicated on the acceptance of the concept of responsibility which demands free will in the fashion that he employs the term. The idea of responsibility seems to be core to many of his sociological judgements. (Basically, giving up on the linkage would seem to be like giving up a finger maybe even an arm!)
I will now attempt to find whether he holds other such contradictions and later review whether he would accept the label of dialethism.
Isn’t shrodinger’s cat a true contradiction?
If someone would see truth as a similarity between a mental representation and the represented referent, would this still allow contradiction?
I mean it is not obvious that contradiction in the application of the rules of usage is the same as a contradiction in structural similarity.
Edit: I mean if you accept something like correspondence theory then „wulture“ may be not a contradiction in correspondence but just a contradiction in the rules of usage.
lmaoo it kills me when you were like just calmly explaining stuff and suddenly pull off your shirt and show the tattoo..just so hilarious
Is an El Camino a car or a pickup?
It's an automobile.
Just brainstorming: Have you ever experienced grief? Do you have a philosophy about it? Maybe an idea for another video.
have u come across Jared Warren much? I thought his defence of unrestricted inferentialism was p refreshing given how much people seem to take it that Prior was basically right
No I haven't, but his work looks interesting. Thanks for drawing my attention to this!
I agree with you, but it seems to me that there could be better examples of contradictions. that's because defining a term as "it includes x and excludes y" is strange, since we normally define as "it includes only Xs but also excludes all Ys" in this second formulation, the exclusion is kind of "superior", beyond that, it doesn't make sense to state that a definition includes something without saying it includes only something. Like, it is strange to say that "cat" includes cats, we should say that "cat" includes only cats.
I agree that it's a strange concept, but why is that a problem? Perhaps there are less strange examples of true contradictions, e.g. Liar-type paradoxes. But then, it's very controversial whether these are genuine contradictions. The benefit of "wulture" is that per the rules I've stipulated, it seems totally clear that it generates a contradiction; so all I need for the example to work is that you agree that people can define new terms however they want.
@@KaneB undersand, maybe any other example of paradox would leave to a similar response of "you can't use language like that, that's not how it works"
@@Felipecamargo13579 The response to "you can't use language like that" is, of course, "who's going to stop me?" Anyway, I need to go pet my wulture & non-wulture with my wand & non-wand.
0.01010011101b10010 ... is a real number, where b means both zero and one. This is proved by Cantor's diagonal argument. Apparently, some reals have unknowable digits.
The major problem with a dialetheic system of logic is that it invalidates Modus Ponens. Modus Ponens is invalid in both Logic and Paradox and First Degree Entailment. Logical consequence is the essence of logic.
I don't think dialetheists need to get rid of modus ponens, I think they might make disjunction elimination an invalid rule of inference, if there is a contradiction in the premises.
Delia the Vulture merch when?
You can't include quantification in the definition of a term. That's what you're doing by saying part of the definition of 'wulture' is that all vultures are wultures, or that no white things are wultures. Those concepts involve universal quantification. Instead quantification is for propositions. Individual words - in this case nouns, naming things or supposed things - are not propositions, but merely collections of attributes, logically speaking.
If we accept contradictions in our language, then we must give up on the principle of non-contradiction. But this principle is very useful, because it allows us to use proofs by contradictions. I don't see why this trade-off is worth it, considering that adding the term "wulture" to our language doesn't seem to serve any purpose.
Another question: is the square root of two a rational number? The claim that it is not is proved by contradiction. If contradictions exist, that proof, and many others too, is invalid. There goes mathematics. As a result, mathematicians and hard scientists will go out of their way to preserve the principle of non-contradiction. They're helpless without it. Can you give them any solace?
ig while there might be true contradictions, not every contradiction is true. given the way we use mathematical language currently, the kind of contradiction u get at the end of the sqrt(2) proof isn't gunna be true. but we could introduce new mathematical terms that would give true contradictions if we wanted to, and if we were using them, maybe proof by contradiction gets less useful
>> Can you give them any solace?
I'm not really interested in doing that. I'm sure we could come up with an argument that most of the time, we can assume we're operating in consistent situations, or we can assume we're using a consistent language... contradictions will be relatively rare, and will crop up only in cases where there are weird semantic tricks like the Liar paradox or my "wulture" concept. This is kind of line that Graham Priest takes, I think.
Well.. this is basically asserting a contradiction and does not really show much. I would say the wulture concept has about as much explanatory power as simply asserting p and not p.
The conditions for being a wulture are disjunctive or conjunctive? If the first is the case, Delia is a wulture, period. If the latter is the case, Delia ia not a wulture, period.
Neither. Consider
"wulture1": x is a wulture iff x is a vulture and x is not white.
"wulture2": x is a wulture iff x is a vulture or x is not white.
I agree that "wulture1" and "wulture2" are perfectly consistent. But "wulture" is not like either of these. By definition, "wulture" applies to all things that are vultures. So Delia is a wulture, period. By definition, "wulture" excludes all things that are white. So Delia is not a wulture, period. "Wulture" is, of course, a very unusual concept, but I see no reason why I can't stipulate that the concept works this way.
@@KaneB so by definition, "wulture" applies to all vultures, and also by definition, "wulture" applies to all non-white things. This really sounds like a disjunction, but phrased differently than your "wulture2". I see no way to phrase it wothout falling into one of these definitions. But a simpler way to define find a true contradiction would be to define wulture: x is a wulture iff x is a vulture and x is not q vulture. Then let's say Delia is a vulture and at the same time she's not a vulture. So we have a true contradiction. But I'm sure that's not the way you intended to produce your true contradiction, because it's circular.
@@KaneB Hey Kane.
I came to the same conclusion as @tudormarginean.
I don't understand your response, you say :
*"By definition, "wulture" applies to all things that are vultures. So Delia is a wulture, period. By definition, "wulture" excludes all things that are white. So Delia is not a wulture, period."*
It almost seems like you want to propose some other way to put two predicates in relation, other than the disjunct, the conjunct, the negation or the conditional.
It almost seems like you want to invent a new logical operator ?
Is that it ?
@@tudormarginean4776 Hey,
I don't understand your example of a *"true contradiction"* ?
You say :
*"A simpler way to define find a true contradiction would be to define wulture: x is a wulture iff x is a vulture and x is not q vulture"*
Can you explain ? What is "q" here ?
@@KaneB let's formalize it: U here stands for the universal quantifer. UxVulture(x)->Wulture(x), Ux~White(x)->Wulture(x) implies Ux(Vulture(x ) v ~White(x)) -> Wulture(x) You cannot make the conclusion false without making at least one premise false, so the conclusion is implied by the premises.
Interesting idea; but a very specific way to use language i would say.
The first question tho would be: what is a vulture?
And to that i think we must give a definition under which everything similar can be put under - if we want to talk about (scientific) truth other than using the word correctly in the concrete.
And colour, in general and thereby not even any in particular, wont be part of the proper definition of a vulture because you wont be able to seperate this type of bird to others.
So what is a wulture? Nothing much; what you do is to combine two properties into one word. You try to predicate to properties at once. And that is why you get the contradiction - because they are never inherently together in a class of objects; because you already adhere to a set class named 'vultures' and 'addon' another class of objects, rejecting others. (It reminds me of russells paradox)
And i would say that this is fine.
Also from the 2 3 comments i read: you never redefined the logical junctures; i dont see this point. I dont get why they say that. You rather mess with the semantics and the conclusion to take would rather be imo to analyse this difference and its implication; maybe we can say that we cannot just form words which predicate 2 distinguished properties at once and have those be logically valid or interesting. But just because something isnt logically valid or interesting doesnt make it nonsense.
Addon:
When you say one can experience contradictions just everywhere - would i understand you correctly if it is because one can predicate properties and make such 'inconsistent words' and thereby make it for oneself contradictory?
This reminds me of the domain of a function.
If a function is defined in a subset of the real numbers, is the function defined in R?
Well, yes and no.
You just state which subset of R it is defined and you go home.
There are no issue here, at least I don't see the value in giving so much importance to certain categories.
Its really easy to refute this actually. The contradiction is not generated by the rules of "wulture". The contradiction lies entirely within delia.
The first rule is "wulture" applies only to wultures. the second rule is "wulture" doesnt apply to white things therefore when the first rule uses the word "wulture" it is only referring to non-white things. Therefore delia determinately does not satisfy the first rule.
So to say that delia is a white wulture is a making of a claim and a retraction of that same claim hence "delia" does not refer to a concept, it is free from all ontology, whatness and intelligibility it is a flatus vocis.
To say, that there is a true contradiction is equivalent to saying, that there is a true Error, that is a Error, that is No Error, or a Error, that is right.
For whom it is Not more clear and obvious then the existence of thinking itself right now, that this is absurd, i dont know anything, that could concievably Help.
I think you may enjoy diving into 4 valued buddhist logic
Lmao the moorian joke at the end was Gold!!!
wulture just needs two conditions to define it. not white and vulture. i don't see how delia falls under this rule set. Think of an odd number that isn't 3, we can call that wodd. 5 is wodd, 3 is not wodd
i'm not seeing the contradiction.
There’s a difference between including everything in a set and excluding everything in another set, and including everything in a set if it isn’t in another specified set
@@ahmedal-hijazi3618 Ah, thank you.
23:08
Holy shit is that real?
Yes. I got it when I visited Mexico.
@@KaneB
You are an absolute chad 😤😳
I found this extremely unconvincing... It seems you've confirmed the existence of linguistic contradictions but not _real_ contradictions...
I address this point at length in the video. My view is that it only makes sense to attribute consistency or contradiction to propositions. That is, there are no "real contradictions", but similarly there is no "real consistency". The world itself is neither consistent nor contradictory, though we may truly describe it in either consistent or inconsistent ways.
@@KaneB This'll be hard to explain but I'll give it a shot... "The world itself is neither consistent nor contradictory" is silly because to be consistent or contradictory requires a relation with some other thing beyond itself. Truth is about the correspondence of a proposition/model to the world, the degree of accuracy of predictions given by the model (a proposition in language is a lossy compression of a predictive model). The "wulture" definition is incoherent, claiming to both include and exclude white vultures because the inclusion of all vultures necessarily entails inclusion of white vultures by the fact that vultures can be white. Therefore, Delia the animal is not a contradiction in reality, both exhibiting and not exhibiting a trait, but the contradiction is only in linguistic space. There was no contradiction of truths because one side of this supposed contradiction is untrue, not corresponding to the world via predictive power. Once you've chosen to define the first half of the "wulture" definition as true, the second half cannot be true, or vice versa.
I think these rules for wulture can be interpreted like that:
Wulture= all things that are vultures
Not wulture= all things that are white >>>> all wultures = some things that are not white
From this, we get another equation
All things that are vultures = some things that are not white, which is empirically wrong. It is not the case that vultures are equal to something that are not white because there are white vultures. That shows your rules for the concept 'wulture' give us a wrong proposition in the first place. If our categories requires wrong propositions, can't we just conclude they are meaningless?
Maybe it's just because I studied linguistics but the early part of this video doesn't really work for me. No word like that would survive for something concrete. You could absolutely coin a word whose definition entails a contradiction, the printen is that no one would ever use it that way, and the real definitions of words are based on how they're used by people. Even if you coined that word and it caught on, the definition would pretty quickly assist to be something less contradictory. Given that to my knowledge white vultures don't exist, potentially barring albinism, it might replace the word vulture, or should white vultures become common reckon that a meaningful distinction became necessary, the word might shift to mean "any vulture that is not white" rather than "all vultures and not white things."Even saying that is very difficult for my brain because the rules as your gage them entailed no contradiction to me, some I applied the rules sequentially, I was thinking" This word applies to A) all cultures, B) that are not white. "
The stronger argument would be the conjunction operator. Wultures are members of the set W_and={x in Universe, x is not white and x is a vulture}. Dilia is not a wulture. Wultures are members of he set W_or={x in Universe, x is not white or x is a vulture} Dilia is a wulture.
Now we have a problem in classical logic there are only two truth values. True or false. Which limits the number of interaction between 2 propositions and 2 truth values you can only have 16 operators between these propositions, namely (0000 Contradiction, 0001 Nor, 0010 Not If, 0011 Not Premise 1, 0100 Not Only If, 0101 Not Premise 2, 0110 Exclusive Or, 0111 Not And, 1000 And, 1001 If and Only If,
1010 Premise 2, 1011 Only If, 1100 Premise 1, 1101 if, 1110 Or, 1111 Tautología) There is no room to build a word that contradicts itself. Aka provide necessary an sufficient conditions such that your relationship both maps and doesn't map to a value. For a contradiction to exists you need to create space for it in language which then clearly would mean i is consistent with this new logic.
interesting but I think unsuccessful argument. If the conditions are separated out, then you can get a contradiction since:
rule1: forallX(VultureX → WultureX)
rule2: forallX(WultureX → ~WhiteX)
3X(VultureX & WhiteX)
You can modus ponens the first rule and modus tollens the second rule, thus deriving a contradiction.
But I think the rule for wulture should look like this, using necessary and sufficient conditions:
i.e., forallX(WultureX iff (VultureX & ~WhiteX))
that is to say, wulture should just work as a neologism for 'non-white vulture.'
Something to be said about using biconditionals instead of conditionals too since you might vacuously say that everything is a wulture. I suppose this is partly why T-schema use them plus conjunctions / disjunctions.
On the other hand, if you look at what sets you're talking about, you beg the question by issuing a contradictory description.
Converting the conditionals with their contrapositives into set descriptions:
rule1: forallX(VultureX → WultureX) rule1*: forallX(~WultureX → ~VultureX)
rule2: forallX(WultureX → ~WhiteX) rule2*: forallX(WhiteX → ~WultureX)
We have the sets (A|vultures) (B|wultures) (C|nonwultures) (D|white things) (E|nonwhite things) (F|nonvultures)
- for rule 1 we'll say that A is a subset of B / vultures are wultures
- for rule 2 we'll say that B is a subset of E / wultures are nonwhite things
- and for rule 2* we'll say that D is a subset of C / white things are nonwultures
- It also turns out that there's something that is a member of both A and D, namely the existent white vulture Delia.
These claims are jointly inconsistent descriptions if we don't clarify that some subsets here are proper subsets.
Either A is a proper subset of B, i.e., there are vultures that are not wultures i.e., there are vultures that are not nonwhite vultures
OR
D is a proper subset of C, i.e., there are white things that are not nonwultures i.e., there are white things that are not white vultures
Lest A completely overlap B and D completely overlap C, so making Delia a member of both the B wulture and C non-wulture sets. If B and C are supposed to be exhaustive and mutually exclusive sets and delia is put in both, you of course get weird results since you assumed a contradiction.
Personally I like there exists every sequence of consecutive 1s in the decimal expansion of pi, p. This satamente is neither true nor false. As the infinite decimal expansion of pi has a definite value (depending on your axioms) there is a fact of the matter. But there is an infinite number of sequences so the statement is unknowable. p is true or false is true contradiction. In classical logic p is not a statement, an expression with a value of true or false.
how do we know that delia is a wulture? because she says so? why should we care / believe this makes it true that she is in fact a wulture? what does it mean to determinedly be a wulture? what are the actual determining conditions? supposedly one of them would be "not being white", so I don't see how you're justified in claiming that it is just true that "she is a wulture." either we agree that delia is a wulture and that this invalidates rule 2 or we agree that rule 2 is correct and that hence delia cannot be wulture by definition.
We know that Delia is a wulture because she's a vulture. As for how we know she's a vulture, I guess that's a question for the ornithologists.
>> what are the actual determining conditions?
By definition, all that's required for x to be a wulture is that x is a vulture.
It strikes me as odd to say that either of the rules of use are correct or incorrect. Those are just the rules I've stipulated for using the term. How could I be incorrect about that? It would be like asking whether the en passant rule in chess is correct or incorrect. You can choose to play the game with the rule or without it... it's up to you; there's no right or wrong there.
@@KaneB "By definition, all that's required for x to be a wulture is that x is a vulture." by definition, two rules have to be met, so no that's not all that's required. being a vulture is rule 1, being not white is rule 2. otherwise what's the difference between a wulture and vulture? if delia is a white vulture, then she's a vulture, not a wulture, by definition.
This convinced me
Something is a “wulture” if it satisfies both being a vulture and is not white.
The set of “wultures” includes only non white vultures.
Delia doesn’t satisfy the sufficient conditions to be classified as a “wulture”.
Therefore Delia is not a “wulture”, there is no contradiction. That I think is if it’s to be interpreted as a conjunction.
if you liked Wulture you may also like:
Quadriangle - A tirangle with 4 sides
Notriang - A triangle that does not have three sides
There simply are not any quadriangles or notriangs, I don't see any contradiction.
Definitions don't have any truth value, only propositions do.
You made up the word "wulture" and there are no penrose stairs in reality. What is a "true contradiction" in reality? Reality is contradictory? If a box is both empty and not empty, you are hallucinating. What is the point? Dialetheism can be used to manipulate others?
The point is just to think it through and it doesn't need to be any more than that.
What does it mean that reality is non-contradictory? Is reality defined as non-contradictory? Or is reality in practice observed to be non-contradictory?
I find this goes back to Rationalism v. Empiricism, if Truth is defined by coherence or correspondence. No object is in itself contradictory or non-contradictory, something must be contradicted by something else. However the definition of an object could have contradictory propositions. A proposed definition to Truth is (1) correspondent to all empirical experience and (2) coherent or non-contradictory. The definition is structured just like that of Wulture, (1) all vultures and (2) non-white. We just can't disprove the null-hypothesis, any empirical experience is contradictory, basically due to the Problem of Induction. I find it somewhat plausible something like Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem does also hold for the proposed definition of Truth, such that empirical experience remains coherent in so far as it remains incomplete, which would make the definition of Truth strictly incoherent if correct.
The wulture case could be used to support another sort of non-classical logic, without necessarily giving up on the notion that contradictions are meaningless. Someone could just reject bivalence and say the proposition "Delia is a vulture" is neither true nor false but would be gappy. Or it could be a case - in line with the partialist reading - of relative identity "Delia is not the same colour as a wulture" and "Delia is the same animal as a wulture".
Maybe fuzzy logic with a 0.5 truth value for p and -p?
But this would still give you a contradiction value of maximal 0.25, this would introduce a dichotomy between hard and soft contradictions.
Edit:
-I just found it interesting to point out that one can have some contradictions without having to giving up consistency as a epistemic value.
-It also seems more intuitive if you see truth as a similarity between representation and the represented that comes with varying degrees.
@@Opposite271 Interesting. I've never considered it through the lens of fuzzy logic. Although, and I ask as someone not as familiar with it, wouldn't a value between True and False constitute a degree of confidence, like in probability?
@@TheCanadianCatholicChannel
I thought more about a degree of correspondence then about a degree of believe, but sure why not? You can use fuzzy logic the way you want to use it.
The initial Idea was that correspondence is a similarity between the representational structure and the represented structure, while 1 is the maximal amount of similarity that is cognitively possible.
@@Opposite271 That makes sense! Yeah, this strikes me as a live alternative as well.
Something even cooler might be a super vulture
1. "Super vulture" applies to all vultures
2. "Super vulture" applies to all non-vultures
Turns out everything is a super vulture
Yes. This is known as the principle of explosion. From contradiction, anything follows.
There's no contradiction in Justus's statements, or the concept of a super vulture. It has nothing to do with the principle of explosion. It's closer to the law of excluded middle.
@@teolandon225 I don't understand. Premise 1 seems to be X --> all Y and premise 2 seems to be X --> not (all Y). Is that not a contradiction?
@@FloydFp It's X --> all Y and X --> all (not Y)
@@teolandon225 which leads to Y and not(Y) which is a contradiction which gives us the principle of explosion.
Don't try to draw-out the set dictated by the definition of a Wulture, you'll just be left with an overlapping Venn-diagram with the words "Vultures" and "Non-Whites" written above the segments
I mean, can we agree, if we describe our perceived reality, then we can not have a contradiction, this is impossible. If reality contradict itself then what exactly is reality. At least this is how physics and every natural science subject function and it works pretty amazing in my opinion.
"Delia is a wulture and it is not the case that Delia is a wulture" is a description of reality... at least, it is as much a description of reality as "Delia is a vulture" and "Delia is white" are.
You can treat Wulture like a set. If x is required to be either a vulture or not-white, but not both, then a white vulture is a wulture. If both are required then a white vulture is not a wulture. If one but not both are required then a white vulture is a wulture. There's no contradiction here.
No, you have not described a true contradiction. All you have done is provide an incoherent definition.
If put in terms of set theory, you have defined a set that both contains the complete set of all vultures and does not contain a subset of of the set of all vultures (specifically white vultures). That is incoherent.
Thus, the proposition _is Dalia a wulture_ is not both true and false; it's just incoherent. (A proposition that contains an incoherent term is rendered incoherent.)
I agree with dialetheism. Although the 'wulture' argument relies on creating an explicitly contradictory term - not really showing that contradiction also exists in cases not explicitly created to be so - there are plenty of other examples in practical use.
In politics, the contradiction manifests in a superposition that any subject can collapse and interpret in whichever way is most favorable. For example, an ideologue can view any news favorable to their ideology as confirmation of their ideas, and any news refuting its ideas as a clear sign that the enemy controls the very media apparatus. This would be the equivalent of looking at a white vulture and, depending on subjective inclination, calling her a wulture because she is a vulture, and at other times not calling her a wulture because she is white.
The difference between the two examples, historical and fictional, is that the latter explicitly poses the contradiction in the same level (of the content analyzed as truth or not), while for the former it is displaced (between content and form). For the Germans in WW2, if the enemy commited evil actions, they were analyzed at the level of content. If the enemy commited good actions, they were analyzed at the level of form: the enemy is so evil that it can lie and disguise itself perfectly, appear just like any one of us.
This forms the foundation of ideology (any attempts to refute it only vindicate its beliefs), the basis on contradiction. Whether dialetheism is "true" or not, we have to imagine that people are at least "practical" dialetheists, believing in contradictions, in order to account for historical events like the witch trials, the red scare, and so on.
(And, yes, this does offer an explanation to historical "irrationality" and dogma by identifying it as the manifestation of the principle of explosion as a consequence of these practical contradictions)
No offense but this video was completely vapid. This is why people don't like philosophy
One could be Berklian and insist that you can’t simply claim “an object” without claiming a quality for that object
Which means what?
@@legendary3952 which means you cannot claim an empty object. Any claim has to contain predicates, which may or may not apply to existing or potential state of being.
@@benzur3503 oh okay.
Not to sure if I would hold to this if Future Contingents are to be understood as propositions(claims) why would we accept that they have predicates too?
@@legendary3952 because they are claimed as particular kind of contingents and not “there will be contingents”, and even as such: contingency is a predicate the hypothesised subject has. Otherwise you don’t hypothesise any thing
I'm claiming that Delia both is a wulture and is not a wulture. This is in virtue of the following qualities: Delia is a vulture, and Delia is white.
I don't know how to have a rational debate about dialetheism. Even if I was able to show that dialetheism is false, this doesn't stop a dialetheist from taking the view that dialetheism is both true and false. I guess I would have to also argue that dialetheism is not true but I have no idea how to do this without arguing that dialetheism is false.
You can as long as they don't pull that move. You can argue that classical logic is the default position and that there are no good reasons to give it up.
The problem that you're getting at is the same problem as arguing with trivialists. Anything you say is already part of their view, so nothing you say can be effective at least on a dialectical level.
I don't understand why the white vulture could be interpreted as a whulture if whulture is 1) a vulture 2) not white. Don't you have to meet all the criteria to be classified as something? My ford mc crap is not in some way a ford mustang if ford mustangs must be 1) fords 2) mustang... it has to be both to be the thing, right? Bad example maybe, but use anything, like I don't have the keys to the white house in my pocket even if the keys to the white house must first be a key. Crows are not in some way partially penguins because they are also birds etc.
I don't think you'd be very happy if you ordered a coffee and they came out with a cup of salted urine, right?
I just dont see how this can be a valid take on language itself, really, am i missing something here?
Am only half way through, but enjoying it anyway :) you can make basically anything fun lol
>> Don't you have to meet all the criteria to be classified as something?
That's how most words seem to work, but "wulture" is an unusual word. Here's an analogy that might help illustrate what's going on. Suppose you are playing a game which involves putting stickers on objects. You are told the following rules:
(1) You must attach a sticker to every object that is a vulture.
(2) You must ensure that there is no sticker on anything that is white.
Now, what do you do when you come across a white vulture? Given the rules we have stipulated, it seems that you should both apply the sticker and not apply the sticker. "Wulture" works just like this sticker game.
@@KaneB I like the sticker analogy. But what do you mean by "how most words seem to work"? I can't think of one that doesnt, but I've seen/heard you say about "if that's how you want to use language, thats cool" ... is this what you're getting at here?
Sorry if i have misunderstood, but it seems a bit strange to me to take this special word that works differently, say that it's contradictory, thus the world is full of contradictions
Identity and distinction if not contradiction, each is (an) imaginary ie NO-thing
- ie does not exist ie does not cause.
All that you DO have here and ARE using diligently, it is
- SOME-thing, such as objects (REFERENCE)
- SOME-thing such as the assertion (SYMBOL) {OF=reifying} the imaginary (REFERENCE).
The imaginary ie NO-thing is merely attributed TO SOME-thing
You are most likely not familiar with the Semiotic Triangle.
The essential element of Ogden et al's 3-categorization is
- the assertion is real (SYMBOL)
- the being asserted is imaginary (REFERENCE)
the imaginary is also called informedness or just INFORMATION,
but also "world"2 (in the 3 "worlds" by Sire KR Popper)
but also "Psyche" in the ole' greek categorization (Physis versus Psyche versus Logos, logoi pl.
The best counter-argument against Dialethism or even Trivialism (for me) is that they use classical logic on their meta-level. Else one could always change „true contradiction“ into „untrue contradiction“ (since contradictions are supposed to be true) and no one would understand what’s going on. Such hypocritical position is always shady. In fact you could argue that Dialethism/Trivialism are just variants of classical logic with some odd constant T(p & ~p) that is applied according to certain rules - everything stays classical though.
This is not correct at all. There has been work on non-classical meta logic, where for example you have a Paraconsistent logic with a purely Paraconsistent metatheory (the papers name escapes my mind, it's something like "Inconsistent Truth tables"). There is no sense in which this example is reliant on classical logic in its metatheory, and it still avoids triviality.
But even this wasn't the case, it's not a real criticism. One can choose can any logic they want for the metatheory. One can give classical logic a non-classical metatheory, but this doesn't make classical logic "hypocritical" or whatever. It's possible that metatheory determines object theory, but that's not actually a given. It's not an established fact at all. Oftentimes metatheory is just chosen because it's well understood and it's easier to just get on with the business of giving the interesting proofs in your object theory.
@@wayner.2707 I try to explain on a concrete example.
Imagine your (paraconsistent) logic tells you that some proposition p = 0.3-true. Its (paraconsistent) metatheory tells you that „p = 0.3-true“ = 0.99-true. What does this even mean? It only means something if you have a classical metametatheory that tells you „‚p = 0.3-true‘ = 0.99-true“ = true. At some point you NEED someone or something to tell you what is true and what not (classical logic) or you will not understand what’s going on and slip into an infinite regress. But then one could easily say: its just classical logic with fractal objects like real numbers.
@@ostihpem This example makes me think you're not familiar with the literature at all. I already addressed this exact so-called critique. In the metatheory,what truth and falsity are can be and has been entirely defined without reference to classical definitions of those terms. Yes, this includes the meta-metatheory.
I found the paper: What is an Inconsistent Truth Table (Z Weber, 2016)
First off, Paraconsistent logic doesn't tend to (if ever) speak of truth in degrees. You're giving a criticism of fuzzy logic's characterization of truth. And even fuzzy logic has been given a fuzzy metatheory with an explication of what truth and false mean without reference to classical models by use of fuzzy set theory (see the work of G Resconi, for example). There's not going to be any difference in the meta-metatheory, anymore than classical logic is subject to a regress of explaining what truth and falsity are by abstracting to another meta level. if this is to be a real critique, classical logic would be just as subject to it. But this criticism is wrong on account of those definitions being given using the appropriate mathematical construction.
Aka, you can define these notions like truth an falsity and the logic itself using something like Paraconsistent set theory or fuzzy set theory to get your non-classical semantics for your logic. Classical logic is not present there at all.
It seems to me illegitimate to attempt to define a term by stating what is included and what is excluded. At best this is only a constraint, not a definition, and even then the constraint cannot be guaranteed to work. Let's change the example. Suppose I wish to define, or at least constrain, the word 'pacifist'. I declare that all Quakers are included, and all Republicans are excluded. Is Richard Nixon a pacifist? He cannot both be and not be. He must be an exception to one of the rules: and he is... a non-pacifist Quaker.
Is my blue toothbrush a wulture?
The world might be contradictory and completely impossible..let’s have a panic attack together sometime, Kane 🤣
Amazingly presented
Thanks dawg, glad you enjoyed it!
if "wultures" refers to a set of things, and "non-wultures" refers to the things outside of the set, then you're saying that x can both be in a set and not be in a set, which is nonsense.
if "wultures" refers to a set of things, and "non-wultures" sometimes refers to something inside the set, then that's not what anyone thinks non-wultures means, so who cares.. you still need a new term for ACTUAL NON-WULTURES which are outside the set.
>> then you're saying that x can both be in a set and not be in a set, which is nonsense
Yes, that is what I'm saying. Seems easily intelligible to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why not say.
It is true in the sense that she is a vulture
It is false in the sense that she is white
No contradiction. Just different senses of the word.
Also. I totally agree we can just decide how to use words. With a word such as not I've decided that I use it such that it is never correct to say of something that it is X and not X in the same sense.
I think this is what he was addressing when he spoke about "partial wultures".
@@Riskofdisconnect yeah but it is not partial as in I think it's a vague boundary. I'm unsure about how the rules apply given how I use the word "not".
Let's say someone set up the rules to a game. They said 1 points for each red thing you catch. No point for any cube you catch.
You catch a red cube and confusion sets in. How do the rules apply.
The partialist solution is half a point. In the middle.
The one or the otherist is fine with either rule trumphing the other. Either a point or no point.
The contradiction happy says you got a point and you didn't get a point. You score now is 5 and your score now is 4.
Given how I understand how we use point systems. (Similar to how I like the word "not" be used) I don't like the contradiction solution.
@@Oskar1000 How would your sense idea apply to your points scenario?
@@Riskofdisconnect It's like saying. According to the red rule I would get a point. But according to the no cube rule I wouldn't.
Imagine some people are arguing who won some game. One says, the judge said we won, we got the trophy. The other one says "Sure but you clearly cheated". The first guy agrees.
They turn to you and say did team A win. I think it's reasonable to answer "In one sense team A won, in the other sense the other team won"
@@Oskar1000 I'd agree that you can do so and it's reasonable if you're trying to be pragmatic, it seems to me though that all it does is move the contradiction downstream. Obviously both teams can't win the same game without some contradiction and so in a sense saying they both won is accepting true contradictions as possible anyway.
Of course, Delia is no wulture, for Delia is a White vulture, and wulture can never be a White vulture. So either a White vulture does Not exist, or Delia is no wulture. But Most probably, the term wulture itself is absurd or useless.
I would Not even need any example whatsoever of a true contradiction, for there cannot only be no one example, but the notion of a true contradiction is itself absurd and Impossible. For If one breaks the Nature of contradictions, there could Not be a true contradiction either, for it would be equally true and false, Rendering it to nothing, at least of any sense.
For people who Go around claiming that contradictions are everywhere, they are clearly either only refering to the contradictions Made in Minds and them being existent for what they are, or they are plainly talking and being absurd, of which i dont hesitate to say so If accurate.
Read Chomsky. See what he says then return to this and see it for what it is: verbiage.
I am 100% in agreement with this video. As Graham Priest points out, the preface paradox is a slam-dunk example of a true contradiction.
I remember when my professor introduced explosion. I was like, "we've seen problems arise in logic, but this time you have gone too far; logic and reason are divorced!"
Anyways, I do have a potential argument not addressed in this video - there could be a hierarchy of rules for evaluating definitions. Consider the game Magic The Gathering. In this game there are tens of thousands of different cards. Sometimes cards will contradict each other. Let's suppose there's a card that says "all players must draw five cards" and another card that says 'no one may draw any cards". Well, in the game, the restrictive statement wins - players in this case cannot draw cards. Using this rule, the white vulture would not be a wulture.
Of course, this argument would still be subject to your argument that we are just creating a consistent language. But, I thought I would bring it up.
What does your tattoo say? Not sure if I can make it out.
Nice drip btw. Looking sharp.
Yeah, nothing stops people from adopting that rule, but then we're altering the rules for the use of the term. As I've defined it, there is no higher-level rule that determines which lower-level rule trumps the other in cases of conflict.
It's a tattoo of explosion. It says:
1 | P
2 | ~P
3 | P v Q
4 | Q
So "everywhere" = "in my head". LOL
Delia isn't in my head.
Why do you philosophers keep coming up with words which portmanteau the word white with another word, _and have that word's definition exclude things that are white?!_
Bruh, I’ve said it to you before, but you really should ditch these analytic squares…. Come to the dark side. Those of us on the “continental” side have been comfortable with contradiction since Hegel.
No there aren't. (We're both right)
I agree -- and I'm not being tongue-in-cheek (I'm not sure if "we're both right" was serious or a joke playing on the idea of true contradictions). The reason why we're both right is that you can, in principle, stipulate whatever rules you want for a language. Nobody makes any error in committing to the methodological requirement that contradictions are forbidden, and specifying rules for their language to ensure this.
Definitions constructed like 'wulture' are poorly constructed because they lead to this type of ambiguity. We could call these 'improper' definitions, though we are free to use them and we should be aware of their pitfalls. Improper definitions don't have contradictions, they just have three states of affairs: true, false, and indeterminate.
By contrast we can imagine defining a 'proper' definition as one where each portion or subpart of the definition must explicitly join itself to the whole with either an 'and' or an 'or'. Now the and/or do good work for us and restrict the states of affairs to only true and false. These 'proper' definitions don't have contradictions either. I far prefer proper definitions.