Posted: Feb 25, 2012 4:34 pm
hackenslash wrote:They're not 'out there' in any sense. It is, however, categorically true that something cannot be both 'what it is' and 'not what it is' simultaneously. This is a fact regardless of whether or not there is any mind to perceive it.
So, are you backing up from the claim that LNC is independent of the mind? You're probably trying to say that LNC is a universal property of the world as is. In that case, you need to provide evidence for this. Not even science claims that any of its laws are absolute, and in no need of revision if evidence arises otherwise. Your use of the phrase 'categorically true' doesn't add information to 'this is true', nor does it make it absolute.
hackenslash wrote:You can't prove or disprove them at all, because they are not verifiable or falsifiable, but that's not actually a problem. You could propose a paraconsistent logic, if you're a complete fuckwit, but I don't suppose you want to do that, because all such systems are incoherent.
So, an axiom that is not provable or disprovable, and for which no evidence can be offered outside of the system it creates, is 'not actually a problem'. It might not be for you, but I'd rather not call it an 'absolute truth'. Calling someone that holds LNC as dubitable a 'fuckwit' doesn't make them stop considering it dubitable, hence relativism.
hackenslash wrote:What I can say, knowing a thing or two about cosmology, is that no instance of a violation will be found there, nor anywhere else, because it is definitionally true that something cannot be both what it is and not what it is simultaneously.
You knowing a thing or two about cosmology doesn't make you omniscient. Something being 'definitionally true' doesn't make it an 'absolute truth', just a tautology.