[lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 15:35:24 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Sat, 6/12/08, wokshevs@xxxxxx <wokshevs@xxxxxx> wrote:
> From: wokshevs@xxxxxx <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life
> No, logically contradictory statements cannot both be true
> in "real" life or
> any other kind of life characterized by rationality. Nor
> can they both be
> false.
> It's just another one of them transcendental things.
I don't have any objection to this apart from the claim that this is something
"transcendental". It seems to me it is rather that 'logical space' (in
Wittgenstein's TLP sense) cannot contain _both_ of certain kinds of object -
namely, both the 'object' posited by a proposition and its negation. 'Empirical
space' also obeys the rules of 'logical space' or, at least, cannot contradict
them - that is, it is empirically impossible (just as it is logically
impossible) that at the _self-same_ point in space and time 'x' there is both a
swan and an emu. It appears that Aristotle stated this.
If there is to be an attack on this long-held orthodoxy it might be best coming
from modern maths and physics, where some theorists seem to think something can
be two things at once [e.g. a particle and a wave] and so on. Whether such an
attack is valid is something that is unclear to me, especially as there is an
apparent divide between those physicists who accept the apparent contradictions
between Einstein's theories of big things and his theories of tiny, quantum
things (accept because both theories are so successful within there own domain)
and those (like Einstein himself) who take the position these apparent
contradictions need to be resolved within a more general unified field theory.
Donal
London
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