Rosa L has got CB again ! What a whiz CB
^^^^^ Mr B Up To His Old Tricks Mr B has once again popped his head over the parapet in a debate about 'dialectical contradictions'. ^^^^^ CB: Rosa, I'm over here. Standing out in the open all the time. ^^^^^^^ But, does he actually tell us what these obscure Hegelian entities are? No. ^^^^^ CB: Contradictions, comrade. I could have sworn I mentioned contradictions in this discussion. Let me take a look back.....Sure enough, I called them "contradictions". ^^^^^^^^ His most substantive point is contained in this argument: ^^^^^ CB: We're making progress. CB has made a "most substantive point" (smile) ^^^^^^^ On the contradiction implied in "John is a man", we might ask is John the only man? If so, then the correct expression is "John is the man". So, if John is a man , then there are other men. Joe is a man. Jack is a man. Andrew is a man. If John is identical with "a man", and Joe is identical with "a man", and Jack is identical with "a man", then through some kind of transitivity of identities we reach the contradiction that John is Joe. John is Jack. Rosa L will say what is the contradiction in "John is Jack" ? It is that John is not Jack, as stipulated above when we said there are other men besides John. Jack is another man from John is identical with the expression John is not Jack. So directly the contradiction is that we have both John is Jack and John is not Jack at the same time. I have now made the contradiction implicit in "John is a man" so explicit and patent that even contradiction-blind Rosa L. should be able to see it. But thanks to Rosa for pressing the point on this example from Lenin's philosophical notebooks, as it is only in "contradiction" with Rosa that I was moved to move the thought to full demonstration. The contradiction inherent in the verb "to be" , "is", can be seen as the same as that found in "self-reference" by modern mathematical philosophers like Russell. Russell's famous paradox derived from the self-reference of "the set of all sets that don't contain themselves". The wikipedia article on paraconsistency notes the efforts at avoiding self-reference in the logics after that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic In any sentence with a verb form of the verb "to be" makes a reference , a self-reference, of the subject of the sentence. The subject refers to itself in the predicate. "John is a man", is a reference of John to himself as "a man", a self-reference. So, modern mathematics rediscovered the paradoxes of self-reference that Hegel had discovered, perhaps as described in the quote of Hegel adduced on this thread by Rosa L. above Paraconsistent logics are propositionally weaker than classical logic "It should be emphasized that Paraconsistent logics are propositionally weaker than classical logic; that is, they deem fewer propositional inferences valid. The point is that a Paraconsistent logic can never be a propositional extension of classical logic, that is, propositionally validate everything that classical logic does. In that sense, then, Paraconsistent logic is more conservative or cautious than classical logic. It is due to such conservativeness that Paraconsistent languages can be more expressive than their classical counterparts including the hierarchy of Meta-languages due to Tarski et al. According to Feferman [1984]: '…natural language abounds with directly or indirectly self-referential (emphasis added - CB) yet apparently harmless expressions -- all of which are excluded from the Tarskian framework.' This expressive limitation can be overcome in Paraconsistent logic." ^^^^^^^^ Rosa: [I have slightly edited this so that it conforms to the formatting principles adopted at this site, as I have done Mr B's other comments below.] It always surprises me the extent to which Dialectical Mystics will tie themselves into knots in a vain effort to sell this ruling-class creed to the rest of us. They are indeed reminiscent of those Roman Catholic theologians and casuists who attempt to convince us, for example, that Jesus was 'god' incarnate, many of whom will try to employ sophisticated modern logic to that end, too. ^^^^^ CB: Perhaps Rosa Logica is confusing a discussion of “knots”, which contradictions are in a sense, with being tied up in them. ^^^^^^^ Now, the above 'argument' is supposed to be a response to a long argument of mine (much of which Mr B ignores) that aims to show that this Hegelian doctrine is flawed from beginning to end. ^^^^^ CB; Not really . It is supposed to demonstrate that there is a contradiction in "John is a man". ^^^^^^^ CB: The main points of my argument were these: 1) Traditional theorists treat all words as names or singular designating expressions (i.e., they are all supposed to 'refer' to this or that -- and if we can't find a this or a that in this world for them to refer to, 'abstractions' -- or, these days, something from meta-theory -- are invented for them to designate). This is indeed part of Plato's Beard, as Quine called it. 2) Unfortunately, this destroys the unity of the proposition, since it turns propositions into lists, and lists say nothing. So, the 'propositions' that dialecticians finally end up with destroy any capacity they have for expressing generality, since this turns predicate expression into the names of abstract particulars. [Examples below; a longer explanation can be found in Essay Three Part One.] 3) Dialecticians in particular do this when they, following Hegel, turn the "is" of predication into the "is" of identity. 4) This is the only way they can 'derive' a 'contradiction'. 5) They resist the conventions of ordinary language, since the vernacular actually prevents this trick from being carried out. ^^^^^^^ CB: Rosa never asks why is it that ordinary language itself uses the same word "is" for identity and predication, thereby itself starting down the path to contradiction. Why not use different words for the "is" of identity and the "is" of predication ? At any rate, If one just uses "is" as identifying, then the subject is identified with something that it is not, a different word that follows the verb "is". So , even the "is" of identification _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
