Who Says Contradictions are OK? - Maybe Quine did
Actually written MAY 7, 2023 -
Elsewhere I have written of the anti-realist/postmodernist/pragmatist’s implication that contradictions are valid. [See here] I have implied that this is their ultimate defense – to use reason to invalidate reason. Confronted with the self-contradiction of anti-realism, they hold that contradiction is valid, that anti-realism can be true even if it is self-contradictory.
Right. So I fantasize that anti-realists believe “Contradictions are valid.”. And I also imagine folks object to my fantasy, wishing to tell me “Nobody believes contradictions are ok. Nobody believes anything so crude and stupid.”. *
Well, maybe. On the one hand, I would agree. Nobody can believe in an actual contradiction. I have speculated that it is psychologically impossible to believe a contradiction. The best one can do is flip-flop between the contraries, to avoid integrating them into a coherent proposition. The serious attempt to integrate them shuts the mind down. On this point I can hear the echoes of Ayn Rand shouting “Blank out!”
But, short of integrating the contraries, there’s plenty of room to kinda-sorta-partially-maybe believe in the validity of contradiction.
Whatever, my critics could still demand proof that serious people believe contradictions are valid. I feel somewhat certain that I could provide confirmed examples if I had the discipline to study philosophy way more than I’m currently able.
Short of such confirmed specific examples, I can provide at least one quote from a recorded lecture that seems to me paraphrases “Contradictions are valid.” I might be wrong, of course. But I may as well offer it. And so here it is:
So a logical law, then – even the formal laws that Quine did so much to postulate and to clarify – are simply sentences we place at the center of the field [ie, regard as unchangeable]. And they are, behavioristially, those we are least likely, or even in fact, desirous to change. So unless we are absolutely forced to, we will keep the law of excluded middle. But it is not beyond the possibility that we will drop it. No sentence is immune to revision.
(Audio lecture by Darren Staloff, “Quine’s Ontological Relativism and the End of Philosophy”, 19:00)
In this context, I take the sentence “No sentence is immune to revision.” to mean that any sentence can be contradicted, and that the contradiction is valid. This all boils down to “Contradictions are valid.” “No sentence is immune to revision” means “Contradictions are valid.” - again, in this context.
Among the sentences now open to revision are sentences expressing the law of excluded middle. We are now free to contradict the law of non-contradiction (at least if it is convenient to do so). We can now say that contradictions are valid. We can say: “Contradictions are ok.”. We can believe it, because serious, credentialled, professional scholars believe it (insofar as they can believe it in a “blank out” sense of believing).
If Quine’s position is that “No sentence is immune to revision”, I therefore revise the sentence:
“No sentence is immune to revision.”
to
“Some sentences are immune to revision.”
This is a contradiction. But it is ok.
How is it ok? What even remains of Quine’s position if Quine allows his position to be contradicted and regards the contradiction as valid? What the fuck can that even mean? It is cognitive nihilism.
I can speculate Quine’s journey in terms of my position as put down in my other writings, like this: Quine got sucked into the Great Epistemic Quagmire, just as all serious thinkers must. Quine’s resolution to the quagmire was to side with anti-realism. How the fuck he failed to notice that it was cognitive nihilism is quite a mystery. If he noticed it, he had to “blank out”. Blank out and write those papers, get tenure, teach interesting things – don’t take it seriously – don’t try to reconcile the cognitive nihilism with any real ability to solve the complex problem of sustained widespread suffering. Finish out your journey as an absurdist disguised as a serious thinker and die in peace. At least this got you a paycheck that spared you much poverty, that spared you a lot of suffering. What else could you do?
Uhg. Please forgive my cheap shots at Quine. I should actually like the guy. His last name starts with my favorite letter. There’s my absurdist reason to like Quine. In my absurdest moments I love me some Quine. But also, in my most extreme absurdist moments, I don’t give a fuck about relieving suffering. Associate that how you will. As Richard Rorty (one of Quine's many fan-boys) would like to stress: This is merely art. This is just the art of cultural criticism. I am just an artist lampooning some professional philosophers.
Or, am I… ?
Anyway... I have just offered you a plausible concrete example of someone who “believes” contradictions are valid. Am I wrong? Did I misinterpret Staloff’s account of Quine? Maybe. By all means check it for yourself. Give Staloff’s whole lecture a listen. Ask other pros what they think Quine and Staloff meant.
* I'm paraphrasing Graeme Turner here, who is quoted as basically saying this.
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