by gill1109 » Tue May 28, 2019 9:14 pm
minkwe wrote:gill1109 wrote:Opposite truths *can* simultaneously be true, as Bohr reminded us (at least, that was his opinion, and it’s my opinion too). Those truths are the interesting ones.
Couldn't resist. Nothing could be further from the truth. If they are opposite, it means precisely that they can't simultaneously both be true. And if they are simultaneously true, it means precisely that they can't be opposite.
At some point we have to stick to clear meanings of words or lose the ability of making any sense when we speak. Paradoxes are interesting because they point to lapses in our logic, not contradictions in nature as it would appear to be without careful analysis.
There is a third option, Michel. If they are both simultaneously true *according to your underlying systems of logic and mathematics* then your underlying systems of logic and mathematics need to be reviewed.
So you are both right and wrong - a contradiction points to a lapse in logic, but not necessarily in the manifest logic used by the author, but in "an underlying logic" which hardly anybody ever questions (and if they do, they are thought crazy, by almost everyone).
I think that that was exactly what Niels Bohr meant, and it is also exactly (I think) what Siddhārtha Gautama meant. cf. also Pirsig's "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance".
It seems to me that this is also exactly the diagnosis of some quite well known Bell contrarians: Han Geurdes, Ilija Barukcik, and Alexandre de Castro all come to the same conclusion. They all say that there is something badly wrong in the current conventionally agreed foundations of mathematics, ie in conventionally agreed logic.
I agree with you that we have to stick to clear meanings of words or we lose the ability of making sense. The problem is that the words we use already contain ideas about the world, and those ideas might be wrong. I think that is exactly what Wittgenstein and everyone who came after him were saying. And exactly what the Buddha was saying. Turtles all the way down, too. Paradoxes of self-reference. What else is consciousness than self-reference? Call it post modernist garbage if you like, but that is still the core of post modernism *and* of Eastern mysticism (and not just Eastern mysticism. You will find it in "primitive peoples" all over God's earth). Yes. *Everything* is relative, unfortunately, we are stuck with that.
[quote="minkwe"][quote="gill1109"]Opposite truths *can* simultaneously be true, as Bohr reminded us (at least, that was his opinion, and it’s my opinion too). Those truths are the interesting ones.
[/quote]
Couldn't resist. Nothing could be further from the truth. If they are opposite, it means precisely that they can't simultaneously both be true. And if they are simultaneously true, it means precisely that they can't be opposite.
At some point we have to stick to clear meanings of words or lose the ability of making any sense when we speak. Paradoxes are interesting because they point to lapses in our logic, not contradictions in nature as it would appear to be without careful analysis.[/quote]
There is a third option, Michel. If they are both simultaneously true *according to your underlying systems of logic and mathematics* then your underlying systems of logic and mathematics need to be reviewed.
So you are both right and wrong - a contradiction points to a lapse in logic, but not necessarily in the manifest logic used by the author, but in "an underlying logic" which hardly anybody ever questions (and if they do, they are thought crazy, by almost everyone).
I think that that was exactly what Niels Bohr meant, and it is also exactly (I think) what Siddhārtha Gautama meant. cf. also Pirsig's "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance".
It seems to me that this is also exactly the diagnosis of some quite well known Bell contrarians: Han Geurdes, Ilija Barukcik, and Alexandre de Castro all come to the same conclusion. They all say that there is something badly wrong in the current conventionally agreed foundations of mathematics, ie in conventionally agreed logic.
I agree with you that we have to stick to clear meanings of words or we lose the ability of making sense. The problem is that the words we use already contain ideas about the world, and those ideas might be wrong. I think that is exactly what Wittgenstein and everyone who came after him were saying. And exactly what the Buddha was saying. Turtles all the way down, too. Paradoxes of self-reference. What else is consciousness than self-reference? Call it post modernist garbage if you like, but that is still the core of post modernism *and* of Eastern mysticism (and not just Eastern mysticism. You will find it in "primitive peoples" all over God's earth). Yes. *Everything* is relative, unfortunately, we are stuck with that.
