by Axel Arturo Barceló Aspeitia
In philosophy, as in any other theoretical endeavour, it is not rare to face conflicting positions - one that says that an object A is P and another that says that A is not P. In these situations, philosophers have several options. Obviously, they can defend one of the positions and criticise the other – in what I will call a “monist” solution. In fact, in most philosophical debates, responses of these monist types are the most common. However, throughout history, philosophers have developed a few, more sophisticated options that attempt to incorporate the insights, intuitions and arguments from both sides of the debate, into a third conciliatory option. The purpose of this article is classify the kinds of possible positions that can be taken, in general, in philosophy when we faced with two conflicting positions, each based on prima facie equally good arguments and intuitions. Besides the aforementioned obvious choices of defending one thesis and criticising the arguments and intuition behind the other, there are at least five other options that try to incorporate the insights behind the two positions into a unified theory:
- Dialetheism
- Gradualism
- Pluralism
- Relativism
In this and following posts, I will analyse each of them in detail, giving not only the advantages and disadvantages of each one, but mostly trying to determine in which situations is one more appropriate than the others. I am starting with dialetheism:
Dialetheism
The first, and perhaps most radical solution to conflicting evidence is to accept the ensuing contradiction, not as a problem to solve, but as a feature of the phenomenon. The basic idea is that, since both the evidence for and against A being P must be accepted as equally good, then what it shows is that, for the particular case of A and P, it must be true true that A its both P and not P. That this sort of solution is not absurd has been productively explored by philosophers and logicians like Graham Priest (1985) or JC Beall (2009), among others. This solution is usually accompanied by a proposal to change the underlying logic to a paraconsistent logic to allow this kind of contradictions. The main feature of these logics that makes them fit for dialetheism is that they help us distinguish between exploding and non-exploding contradictions, that is, contradictions that entail everything and, therefore, make any theory that contains them collapse into absurdity, and contradictions that do not and, therefore, can be incorporated into a theory without catastrophic consequences.
This option is especially attractive when the evidence in favor of each of the options is the same or similar. In such cases, inserting a wedge between A being P and A not being P is especially difficult. For example, in considering the Liar sentence – “This sentence is not true” – the reasons we might have for taking it to be true are so intimately interlocked with those we might have for taking it to be not true that any attempt to argue for one and against the other would seem doomed from the start. Similar considerations have moved some philosophers to embrace dialetheism as a solution to the metaphysical problem of Transition states. A very simple example is given by (Priest & Berto 2013):
when I exit the room, I am inside the room at one time, and outside of it at another. Given the continuity of motion, there must be a precise instant in time, call it t, at which I leave the room. Am I inside the room or outside at time t? Four answers are available: (a) I am inside; (b) I am outside; (c) I am both; and (d) I am neither. (a) and (b) are ruled out by symmetry: choosing either would be completely arbitrary. As for (d): if I am neither inside not outside the room, then I am not inside and not-not inside; therefore, I am either inside and not inside (option (c)), or not inside and not-not inside (which follows from option (d)); in both cases, a dialetheic situation.
For another, recent example, JC Beall (Manuscript) has argued that, since the conciliar fathers if orthodox Christianity have supplied the very same sort of evidence in favour of the contradictory claims that Jesus is both mutable and immutable, the best option for the Christian theologian is to accept as true the contradiction that Jesus is both mutable and immutable. Arguing for just one of the contradictory claims would entail diverging from Christian theology in an unacceptable manner and, furthermore, since the evidence is exactly of the same sort for each one of the claims, there is no principled way of choosing a single side.
It has been argued (for example, in Littman & Simmons 2004) that since dialetheism is a symmetric proposal, the same reasons that make it seem as a better solution than monism define a dual argument for taking it as a worse solution than monism. Yes, it is true that dialetheism incorporates the good reasons we have for accepting that A is P and accepting that A is not P and thus seems, at least prima facie, a better option that just accepting the good reasons in favour of one of them and not those in favour of the opposite one. Unfortunately, defenders of A being P commonly also have good reasons for rejecting A not being P (actually, the same reasons can be interpreted both ways: as reasons for accepting that A is P and reasons for rejecting that A is not P) and vice versa. Thus, since dialetheism accepts both that A is P and that A is not P, it goes against both the reasons we have for rejecting that A is P and for rejecting that A is not P. And thus it is not better, but worse that either monist option. The monist option of, say, accepting only that A is P, and rejecting that A is not P, at least do justice of our good reasons for rejecting that A is not P, even if it does not incorporate our other good reasons for rejecting that A is P.
Similar concerns regarding the symmetry of dialetheism have given rise to a dual strategy, known as “analetheism” (Beall & Ripley 2004), according to which instead of accepting both that A is P and that A is not P, we must reject both. Since we have good reasons against each of the contradictory claims, that means that we have also good reasons for rejecting them both. And just as dialetheism is well accompanied by a paraconsistent logic where propositions of the form P and not P can be true, so analetheism is well accompanied by a paraconsistent logic where where propositions of the form P or not P can be false. Instead of distinguishing between exploding and non-exploding contradictions, what this logic allows the analetheist is to distinguish between imploding and non-imploding disjunctions of the form P or no P, where an imploding proposition is one that follows from anything.
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