Hi. This is me intervening in defence of Socrates (and Platt):
RICHARD WROTE:
> Try this quick hypothetical dialogue....
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------
> Phaedrus and Socrates meet on the road and sit to debate, somewhere within
> their dialogue the following exchange occurs....
>
> Phaedrus: There is an exception to every rule.
>
> Socrates: Oh Phaedrus, you are quite the sophist and even a foolish old man
> like me can see that your statement is an absurdity. For your statement
> itself is a rule and if its premise is true it violates itself.
>
> Phaedrus: No Socrates, the rule is the exeption to itself and therefore its
> premise is totally consistent.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------
>
> Now Platt, is Phaedrus's argument illogical....?
>
ELEPHANT:
Well yes. It is (don't know why you ascribe it to Phaedrus). Because in
order for the claim "there is an exception to every rule" to be
self-consistent, there would, logically, have to be an exception to the rule
"there is an exception to every rule". And in order for there to be an
exception to the rule "there is an exception to every rule", there would
have to exist exactly what the claim "there is an exception to every rule"
denies the existence of, viz, some (unspecified) rule to which there are no
exceptions. QED.
To expand....
What that required rule which brooks no exceptions happens to be just does
not matter in the context of this argument, and so it is quite irrelevant
for Richard to suggest that "the rule is the exeption to itself and
therefore its premise is totally consistent". Being an example of the rule
and thus it's own exception would not make this rule self-consistent, any
more that the fact that the sentence "all sentences are false" is itself
false makes that sentence self-consistent either. Rather it is precisely
the fact that such a sentence is not self-consistent that makes it false,
just as it is precisely the fact that the sentence "there is an exception to
every rule" is inconsistent (and thus false) which makes it, apparently,
it's own exception.
Again, and more concretly, supposing a hangman became his own executioner
that would not by itself make him self-consistent either. Whether the
hangman is at odds with himself is a logical (in this case psychological)
problem, and the matter of whether the hangman or the hangman's assistant
finally pulls the leaver is really of no consequence in this matter. If the
hangman was mad, he was mad. That the content of his madness took the
particular form of hanging himself is neither here nor there on the question
of his madness.
If a claim is mad and self-refuting it is mad and self-refuting because it
is incompatible with that claim's being made as a claim (like the
incoherence of the hangman's soul as a soul), not merely because it is
incompatible with the content of that claim once made (like the resultant
hanging of the mad hangman). Thus the sentence "all sentences are false" is
compatible with its content (ie once uttered it is undoubtedly an example of
the falseness it attributes to every sentence), but not with its form as a
sentence. The fact that this claim too is a sentence requires that it be
something impossible and self-refuting: both true and false at the same
time.
It is exactly the same with the sentence "there are exeptions to every
rule". Once uttered this sentence can indeed be it's own exception, so we
can say that it is compatible with its own predictive content. In order
for the sentence "there are exceptions to every rule" to be true, there
would indeed have to be exceptions to this rule, beginning with itself. So,
the content of the sentence as an example of a rule is compatible with it's
content as a rule. But the problem is not with the coherrence of 'the rule
as a rule' with 'the rule as an example', but with the coherrence of 'the
rule as a rule' with 'the rule as a rule'. This is a rule which must be
false as a rule inorder to be true as a rule.
Since, if we allow things to be both true and false at the same time all
logic flies out the window, Platt is quite right to point out that such a
rule is incoherent and inadmissable.
I imagine that will clarify things nicely, although I am in deep sympathy
with Platt's shortness, as there really is no arguing with people who think
that self-contradictions can be true.
Puzzling Elephant
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