The Price of True Contradictions About the World

Abstract

We examine an argument advanced by Newton C. A. da Costa according to which there may be true contradictions about the concrete world. This is perhaps one of the few arguments advancing this kind of thesis in full generality in the context of a scientifically-oriented philosophy. Roughly put, the argument holds that contradictions in the concrete world may be present where paradoxes require controversial solutions, solutions which in general are radically revisionary on much of the body of established science. We argue that the argument may be successfully challenged in the face of the actual practice of science; as a consequence, commitment to true contradictions about the world may be correctly dismissed as unnecessary, at least if the route to contradictions is the one advanced in the argument. We finish by highlighting a parallel between da Costa’s argument and another typical dialetheist argument by Graham Priest to the effect that paradoxes of self-reference are true contradictions.

What contradictory beliefs guarantee us, after all, is false beliefs. Contradiction is the short road to falsehood, and if falsehood is not to be avoided, it’s not clear what is. In a way, even those who most vociferously urge us to accept contradiction seem to concede this point, for even they reject with horror the prospect of a trivial system in which anything follows. But what is wrong with triviality if not that it assures that even falsehoods will appear as theorems?

If contradiction is to be avoided whenever possible, as surely it is, then proposals that we gracefully embrace contradiction are to be rejected whenever possible as well

Grim [14, p.27]