Philip Osborne

Just a small comment, although it may have been mentioned earlier.

The disjunction, "The coat is cut in half OR The coat is not cut in half" may not actually be a proper application of excluded middle. Properly, the disjunction would be "The coat is cut in half OR It is not the case that the coat is cut in half." Note that if the coat does not exist in the first place, the second disjunct is true. We can correctly say that the coat is not cut in half because it does not exist in the first place. This revised disjunction allows one to account for the full range of possibilities.

Sincerely,

Philip

WJ

adrian/all!

The thing to remember is that intellectualism viz. the certainty of logic thru mathematics, physics and natural sciences creates the paradoxical nature of un-certainty or incompleteness.

For instance, the case can be made about the Heisenberg principle, Godel's mathematics, and Bohr's law of complementarity in that it is simply and directly anaolgous to human limitations. The excluded middle means that we cannot know A without ruining B (either A or not A). In other words, apparently in experimental physics, one cannot observe and know everything at once.

If we can agree on the limitations of logic and reason by way of those analogies, what should follow? Another theory to solve the human condition? What theory would that be? Do you have one?

To that end, someone mentioned intellectual(ism). The incompleteness and uncertainty of what we can know relates to the nature of a thing, such as love, emotion, will, intellect, (logic) and so forth asi it directly relates to Being. Take for example philosophic voluntarism. Does the intellect preceed the will (to be) or does the will preceed the intellect? More specifically, does the intellect actually determine the will since we desire only what we know, or does the will preceed the intellect since the will determines what ideas the intellect turns to and thus what the intellect comes to know?

Is there an illogical mix of red and green all over?

I think there is. Just like the essence of the thing that we experience called love. For instance, how can the laws of logic help determine the nature of that thing? I maintain we can perceive to love and not love at the same time. In being, we call it ambivolence. Can one be ambivolent with 1+1=2? Can we observe A without ruining B? In math/logic, half-right relates to theories of incompleteness. In being, half-right relates to ambivolence and the nature of a thing.

That's the closest you can come to being mutually exclusive Logic does not have a complete theory for Being (being human). It was not designed to handle the nature of things in themselves. How can you analyze Being correctly? Further, in the face of logic, what does it actually *mean* to be correct?

Can I stand corrected anyone?

Walrus

oneofshibumi

Universatile,

Specifically the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle. If you believe these laws then do you not ever answer a question "wellll...yes and no..." because if you do or have you are a hypocrite.

The law of non-contradiction is common to the sciences and the humanities. It means that a statement or a concept does not contain any internal inconsistencies or contradiction. The excluded middle, is found many times in questions that contain the word “or.” Usually when a person has to answer yes and no, it is because of a question frame fallacy. Specifically, I refer to the fallacy of many questions and the fallacy of false dichotomous questions.

The fallacy of many questions is a common form of error, which has been variously defined as: (1) framing a question in such a way that two or more questions are asked at once, and a single answer is required; or (2) framing a question in such a way as to beg another question; (3) framing a question which makes a false presumption; or (4) framing a complex question but demanding a simple answer.

“Have you stopped beating your wife?” This, the classic textbook example, presumes, of course, that you have already begun to do so—a presumption that is not merely ungenerous but possibly mistaken. Many wife-beating questions were deliberately concocted by that playful monarch Charles II, who enjoyed assembling the learned gentlemen of his Royal Society and asking them, with a sovereign contempt for logic as well as fact, to explain “why a live fish placed in a full bowl of water does not cause it to overflow, while a dead fish does cause it to overflow.” None of his scholars dared to fault a royal question. Instead, they invented answers of magnificent absurdity as an act of homage to a man who was himself a consistent living argument for republicanism.

Other examples fly thick and fast in historiography of the American Reconstruction. Don E. Fehrenbacher, in an essay on the state of the literature, poses the following questions that he believes to be “especially worth asking and answering.”

1. “Was Reconstruction shamefully harsh or surprisingly lenient?”
2. “Was the presidential plan of reconstruction a sound one?”
3. “Could Lincoln have succeeded where Johnson failed?
4. “Was the latter a miserable bungler or a heroic victim?”
5. “What were the primary motives of the Radical Republicans?”
6. “How bad were the carpetbag governments?”
7. “How well did the freedman meet his new responsibilities?”
8. “What part did terrorism play in the ultimate triumphs of the Southern ‘redeemers’?”
9. “When did racial segregation harden into its elaborate mold?”(1)

The third question commits the fallacy of fictional questions. All others are examples of the fallacy of many questions, by any of the definitions listed above. Fehrenbacher’s first question assumes that Reconstruction was either “shamefully harsh” or “surprisingly intent,” but maybe it was something else again. The second question assumes that there was a single presidential plan of reconstruction, which is doubtful. The fourth commits precisely the same sort or error as the first; the fifth assumes that there were some clearly primary radical motives, and thereby encourages a simple motivational monism so common in historical writing. The sixth, literally construed, assumes that the carpetbag governments were bad in some degree; the seventh assumes that freedom in fact had new responsibilities, which were met in some degree. The eighth assumes that the Redeemers did “ultimately” triumph. The ninth assumes that racial segregation did at some point in time harden into an elaborate mold, but maybe that institution has been continuously in process of change.

The fallacy of false dichotomous questions is a special form of the fallacy of many questions, which deserves to be singled out for special condemnation. It arises from the abuse of an exceedingly dangerous conceptual device. Dichotomy is a division into two parts. If it is properly drawn, the parts are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, so that there is no overlap, no opening in the middle, and nothing omitted at either end. These three requirements are very difficult to satisfy in the organization of an empirical inquiry. It is rare that any two historical terms can be so related, unless one of them is specifically defined as the negation of the other. And even then, there is often trouble. The law of the excluded middle may demand instant obedience in formal logic, but in history it is as intricate in its applications as the internal revenue code. Dichotomy is used incorrectly when a question is constructed so that it demands a choice between two answers that are in fact not exclusive or not exhaustive. But historians use it often in this improper way. Indeed, a little industry has been organized around it: the manufacture of the “problems” series of pamphlets for pedagogical purposes. These works conventionally begin with a false dichotomous question, allegedly designed to “stimulate” thought. The question takes the form of “Basil of Byzantium: Rat or Fink?” Maybe Basil was the very model of a modern ratfink. Maybe that Byzantine character was neither a rat nor a fink, but something vastly more intricate, or something altogether different. But swarms of suffering undergraduates are asked to study a set of pedantical essays, half of which are exaggerated arguments for the rattiness of Basil and the other half are overdrawn portraits of Basil as a fink. The disgusted undergraduate is expected to make a choice between these unappetizing alternatives, or perhaps to combine them in some ingenious paradoxical contrivance of his own invention, which falsifies both his understanding and the problem itself.

The following examples are the actual titles of works which have been edited by reputable professional historians and issued by respectable publishers such as Holt, Rinehart; Prentice-Hall; Houghton Mufflin; Random House; and D.C. Health:

Napoleon III: Enlightened Statesman or Proto-Fascist?
The Causes of the War of 1812: National Honor or National Interest?
The Abolitionists: Reformers or Fanatics?
Jacksonian Democracy: Myth or Reality?
Plato: Totalitarian or Democrat?
The Dred Scott Decision: Law or Politics?
The Removal of the Cherokee Nation—Manifest Destiny or National Dishonor?
John D. Rockefeller—Robber Baron or Industrial Statesman?
The Robber Barons—Pirates or Pioneers?
Huey P. Long—Southern Demagogue or American Democrat?
The New Deal—Revolution or Evolution?
Industry-Wide Collective Bargaining—Promise or Menace?
Ancient Science—Metaphysical or Observational?
Feudalism—Cause or Cure of Anarchy.
The Medieval Mind—Faith or Reason?
The Parliament of Edward I—Royal Court or Representative Legislature?
Renaissance Man—Medieval or Modern?
Martin Luther—Reformer or Revolutionary?
The Absolutism of Louis XIV—The End of Anarchy or the Beginning of Tyranny?
The Scientific Revolution—Factual or Metaphysical?
The Industrial Revolution in England—Blessing or Curse to the Working Man?
The Fall of the Russian Monarchy—Inherent Failure or Planned Revolution?
The Origins of Nazi Germany—German History or Charismatic Leadership?
What Is History—Fact or Fancy?

Many of these questions are unsatisfactory in several ways at once. Some are grossly anachronistic; others encourage simple-minded moralizing. Most are very shallow. But all are structurally deficient in that they suggest a false dichotomy between two terms that are neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive. They are also imprecise, both in the dichotomous terms and in the troublesome connective “or,” which might mean “either X or Y but not both” (like the Latin aut ), or “either X or Y or both” (like the Latin vel ) or “either X or Y or both, or neither.” This ambiguity is not often clarified in context, and the reader receives no clear indication of what he is being asked to accomplish.

The “problems” that appear in these essays are not merely a result of faulty pedagogical practice. Many of these titles reflect a false dichotomy that is deeply embedded in scholarly literature on the subject at hand. They are illustrations not only of the way in which many historians teach but also of the way in which they conceptualize and carry on their own research.

What can a person do, in the face of a false dichotomy? He can try several stratagems. First, s/he might attempt to show that the dichotomous terms can coexist. Second, s/he might demonstrate that there is a third possibility. Third, s/he might repudiate one or the other or both alternatives. All of these devices will work, in a limited way. But all of them will have the effect of shackling the person’s answer to the fallacious conceptualization s/he is attempting to correct. The most satisfactory response, I think, is to indicate the structural deficiencies in the question-framing and to revise the inquiry on that level, by the introduction of a more refined and more open question, which can be flexibly adjusted as the analysis proceeds.

The problem of an exclusive choice between nonexclusive alternatives is often confronted in declarative as well as interrogative sentences. The motto of the Prince of Orange was Non rapui sed receipi, which means, “I didn’t steal; I received.” But maybe he was a receiver of stolen goods, even if they were stolen in a glorious cause. In this question, as in so many others, one can only endorse the sensible observation of Reuben Abel: “The continuum in which we live is not the kind of place in which middles can be unambiguously excluded.”(2)

I hope this helps makes clear how and why I believe in both the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle. The contradictions are in your understanding of the two concepts.

(1) Don E. Fehrenbacher, “Division and Reunion,” In John Higham, ed., The Reconstruction of American History, New York, 1962, pg. 105.

(2) “Pragmatism and the Outlook of Modern Science,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 27 (1966): 50.