[lbo-talk] law of value

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Nov 29 08:59:26 PST 2007


Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
>
> important response of course Wojtek. Note that I am not challenging
> at present law of non contradiction or law of excluded middle.
> Philosophy may well begin in Zeno's paradoxes. See Mazur The Paradox
> of Motion. I don't think Collier's def of immanent contradiction
> implies challenge to above laws. Perhaps you could tell us how you
> describe the two situations I have described as expressions of
> immanent contradictions.
> Won't be able to respond till much later.
> Yours, Rakesh
>
> [WS:] Contradiction is a state of mind, not a state of reality.

Tsk Tsk. As I used to tell my students, since there are more "things" in the world than there are words in any language we have no choice but to use the same word to mean many different things. I've never checked out the history of the word "contradiction," but I'll risk a guess on that history: It BEGAN by naming situations such as two rams butting each other or two armies clashing, and only later was metaphorically applied in the sense W identifies. There are probably other important uses of the word incompatible with _either_ Rakesh's or W's usage. Live with it. That's the way language operates.

Carrol



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