ELEPHANT TO RICK AND PLATT AND ALL
Although I often see the better path and follow the worse, I freely choose
both the sins and the punishment in authentic acknowledgement of my absolute
freedom. I choose, and no one else is to blame. What I choose to say is
this:
"Rick, I think you misunderstand me."
RICK WROTE:
>
> Elephant,
>
> You wrote:
> ....there really is no arguing with people who think
> that self-contradictions can be true.
>
> A wondeful post but you missed the mark.... Nobody is arguing that
> self-contradictions can be true (a strawman if I've ever read one). The
> question is whether a rule that excepts itself is a self-contradiction at
> all. Your whole post begs the question by assuming the premise that rules
> must include themselves. As there is no point in arguing with people who
> assume their conclusion as a premise in the argument that supports their
> conclusion, I think that will be all for me on this matter.
>
> Rick
>
ELEPHANT:
Interesting that you say that "Nobody is arguing that self-contradictions
can be true (a strawman if I've ever read one).", because in point of fact
I did not accuse you of *arguing* that self-contradictions can be true - I
merely pointed out at some length that this would be one (no doubt
unintended) consequence of your claim "all rules have exceptions". If you
had intended to assert that contradictions could be true, I would not have
bothered to reply to you, and you, no doubt, would have been so confused and
dysfunctional as to be incapable of posting to this forum. But I credit you
with more intelligence than you realise, and that is why I attempted to show
you that your claim reduces itself to absurdity in a few easy stages,
thinking that you might take a case of self-contradiction as evidence that
you had got your argument wrong.
Assuming my guess about your intentions and intelligence hold good, I intend
to start all over again and discover whether you have anything to say to my
points this time.
RICK 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:
One might think that this discussion of the claim "there is an exception to
every rule" is a piffling prankish little game of no wider significance
whatsoever, but I don't take that veiw. I like to seize on any opportunity
that present itself for a bit of hard thinking, and the more abstruse the
better. So we begin (again), and this time I'll imagine an interlocutor
just because I'm a bit loopy like that.
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".
'Yes.'
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?
'What do you mean?'
Well, I mean there would have to be some rule to which there are no
exceptions, wouldn't there, that is if the rule "there is an exception to
every rule" was to have an exception. Isn't that so?
'Well yes - I suppose so. But what of it?'
But don't you see, now we find that this rule requires the existence of
exactly the type of rule which it says doesn't exist! I mean, on the one
hand it's saying that all rules have exceptions, and on the other hand we
find that in order for there to be an exception to this very rule, the rule
that all rules have to have exceptions, there has to be some rule that
doesn't have an exception. So the rule is really saying both that all rules
have exceptions, and that *not* all rules have exceptions. And that's just
impossible isn't it?
'Put like that, maybe. But aren't you forgetting something?'
What?
'Well, what I said earlier, about a rule being it's own exception, and that
sorting things out.'
I confess I didn't really follow. How does that help exactly?
'Well, I imagine it's like an electrical cicuit. If things pan out the way
you say, then we get a short (I mean, a contradiction). But maybe we can
plug the rule back into itself in another way, one that keeps the
logic-current flowing. Do you see?'
Like?
'Like maybe the rule is the exeption to itself and therefore its premise is
totally consistent.'
I see. So you think that it's like this: the rule has this 'exception
socket', and the rule also has 'rule plug', and if the 'rule plug' and the
'exception socket' couple up, then there are no live wires and electrical
loose ends floating about to short and electrocute everything? Something
like that?
'Something'.
That's interesting - I mean not many people would be able to come up with a
theory like that, electricity and all. But isn't there a problem?
'No. Well I din't think so. What?'
Well, you never showed that it's really like you say - this is all just a
picture isn't it - and maybe not the right one to describe the logic of the
situation either. Because the rule you spoke of wasn't the rule: 'every
rule has one and only one exception and that is itself', now was it?
'No, that's true at anyrate.'
So in point of fact we've actually got a situation where any damm exception
will do - I mean this exception socket could have any tom dick or harry
thing plug into it, given the rule we started with.
'Maybe'.
So, thinking about that, all the claim "there are exceptions to every rule"
requires when it refers to itself is that there is there is *some* rule to
which there are no exceptions, and it doesn't say anything about what that
rule is, does it?
'Not on the surface of it.'
Well now, what that required rule which brooks no exceptions happens to be
just does not matter in the context of the argument I gave at the start, and
so it could be quite irrelevant to suggest that "the rule is the exeption to
itself and therefore its premise is totally consistent".
'I didn't get that.'
Well think about it this way. Being an example of the rule and thus it's
own exception would not make this rule that we've been talking about
self-consistent, any more that the fact that the sentence "all sentences are
false" is itself false makes that sentence self-consistent either. Indeed
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 you
want to call it "it's own exception."
'Could you be more concrete about this?'
Sure. Look, supposing a hangman became his own executioner that would not
by itself make him self-consistent, now would it? Whether the hangman is at
odds with himself in his soul is one problem, and the matter of whether the
hangman or the hangman's assistant finally pulls the leaver is quite
another. I mean the hangman's occupational plug pluging into his
head-in-noose socket isn't really going to help him. If the hangman is
mad, he is mad. That the content of his madness might take the form of
hanging himself in a "self-referential" fashion is neither here nor there on
the question of his madness.
'Gruesome.'
But true. Look, 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, not merely because it is incompatible with the content of that claim.
This is like the difference between the incoherence of the hangman's soul as
a soul, and the resultant self-referential hanging of the mad hangman by
himself. If the guy was mad, and going to kill himself, his killing himself
by his own hands isn't a way of unkilling himself. In just this way, from a
self-contradiction, anything and nothing follows: whichever point you happen
to pick up on, the contradiction is a contradiction just the same. For
example: the claim "all sentences are false" is undoubtedly
self-referentially compatible with its content, because once uttered it is
undoubtedly an example of the falseness it attributes to every sentence. But
that compatibility of the socket and the plug doesn't show that the claim is
self-consistent. The fact that this claim "all sentences are false" is
itself a sentence requires that it be something impossible and
self-refuting: both true and false at the same time. And 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, and maybe you might want to say this list of
exceptions begins with itself. So, the content of the claim as an example
of a rule is perfectly compatible with it's content as a rule,
self-referentially. We agree....
'Do we?'
...But the problem is not with the coherrence between 'the rule as a rule'
and 'the rule as an example under a rule', or between plug and socket, but
with the coherrence of 'the rule as a rule' with itself. And it turns out
that this is a rule-plug which must be false as a rule inorder to be true as
a rule, in just the way I set out to begin with.
'What was that again? - I'm quite lost, and sorry I asked, not that I can
remember what I did ask....'
I pointed ou that this rule, the rule we've been talking about, the rule
that says "every rule has exceptions", that rule requires the existence of
exactly the type of rule which it says doesn't exist. I mean, on the one
hand it's saying that all rules have exceptions, and on the other hand we
find that in order for there to be an exception to this very rule, the rule
that all rules have to have exceptions, there has to be some rule that
*doesn't* have an exception. So the rule is really saying both that *all*
rules have exceptions, and that *not all* rules have exceptions. And that's
just impossible, because it's a self-contradiction just like Platt was
saying.
'I lose the will to live.'
Nothing comparable to report. The unexamined life is not worth living, thay
say, but sometimes I lose the will to sieve.
Elephant
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