--- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
"That is, every act has numerous results beyond the
control (or even knowledge) of the agent. Would this not lead to actions that are self-negating, and does not self-negation bear a resemblance to the contradictions of formal logic?"
Carrol, you're getting dangerously close to the interesting meanings of contradiction -- as in the contradictions of Hamlet's character, or Creon's idea of justice, or "the free market system". The way I understand the word, as applying to historical processes, it's about unintended consequences, or doomed enterprises -- almost like "blowback".
BobW
>
>
> Jerry Monaco wrote:
> >
> > On Dec 1, 2007 12:27 PM, Robert Wrubel
> <bobwrubel at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > I'm still not sure why we should think of
> contradiction as anything but
> > artifacts of formal systems. This does not mean
> that the contradictions are
> > "unreal" but simply that they are qualities of
> formal systems. They may
> > help us to understand the rest of the world
> outside of formal systems
> > better, but it does not mean that "contradiction"
> per-se is anything but an
> > attribute of a formal system. The same for other
> notions on the same
> > logical level, such as continuity/discontinuity,
> point (in time, or on a
> > line), etc.
>
> I haven't been following this thrread either, but I
> have a query.
>
> Back in the '40s some scientist (I believe a
> biochemist) was quoted in
> Time (a vague memory from long ago) as saying that
> one can never do just
> one thing. That is, every act has numerous results
> beyond the control
> (or even knowledge) of the agent. Would this not
> lead to actions that
> are self-negating, and does not self-negation bear a
> resemblance to the
> contradictions of formal logic?
>
> A question, not an argument.
>
> Carrol
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