Posted: Apr 05, 2011 7:56 pm
Thommo wrote:Mick wrote:Thommo wrote:When someone doesn't admit defeat at logical impossibility, it's time to walk away.
Logical truths and impossibilities are always truths of a system or a worldview. They might apply to "reality", but that is something to debate. Take dialetheism for instance. It's probably not the best choice tactic to walk away from a dialetheist because he doesn't admit defeat at a logical impossibility. Heck, he affirms true contradictions.
True contradictions aren't logical impossibilities in a dialethic logic. He's playing by the rules of his game, if say he's making a logic to describe "things that can be reasonably said about my couch" and he includes the phrases "it's red" and "it's not red" and even "it's red and not red".
The difference is modal logic is not dialethic. So the metaphysician who suddenly brings this up as a defence of his not playing even by his own rules (let alone the ones I would choose) is clutching at straws, he's creating new moves in his game just so he doesn't have to admit defeat.
Would you tolerate that in scrabble? I wouldn't and metaphysics isn't really such a useful or fun game, so I don't see why we should tolerate it there.
Time to walk away.Mick wrote:That means that you have quite literally proved their assertion false by the strictest possible rules and they still refuse to admit defeat. There's nothing that you can't say by those rules.
That'd be question begging if said to the dialetheist.
The arguments we have been discussing are in modal logics, not paraconsistent ones. That's telling me that if this had been a different conversation, with different things said to me, I'd need to produce a different response. Well, ok. So what?
No, I mean that he affirms true contradictions. That's part of it. For the classicalist, he's affirming a logical impossibility. That's all I meant.
You spoke in general terms. you did not say that if we play be classicalist rules, and if he does not admit defeat at a logical impossibility, then walk away. You simply just said: if he doesn't admit defeat at a logical impossibility, which, in this case means a contradiction of some sort, then walk away.