Abstract
The procedure for treating the problems of the moment of change seems, in a way, predetermined. First and foremost one attempts to avoid a result in which an object is simultaneously in two contradictory (or even just contrary) states. As we have seen, there are various ways to achieve this. One should hardly think that it could seriously occur to anyone that accepting a contradiction should be accepted as the solution to the problem, i.e. the best description of what is the case at the limiting instant.
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Notes
Graham Priest: Dialectical Tense Logic [Priest DTL], in: Studia Logica XLI 2/3 (1981), pp.249–268. Cf. also his: Logic of Paradox, in: Journal of Philosophical Logic 8 (1979), pp.219241, and for an application to Hegel’s concept of motion and for the ‘spread principle’ his: Inconsistencies in Motion, in: American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 22, Number 4, October 1985, pp.339–346.
Cf. Chris Mortensen: The Limits of Change, in: Australasian Journal of Philosophy vol.63 No.1 March 1985, pp.3f.
G.W.F. Hegel, Logik part 1, book 2, section 1, ch.2., remark 3 ad point C (Werke [collected works] vol.6, p.76).
Hegel’s concept of motion is dealt with in Priest’s ‘Inconsistencies...’, the moment of change in DTL.
The same opinion is found in Friedrich Engels. Cf. Anti Düring, Moskow 1947 (first edition 1878), p.139 and Priest: DTL, pp.266f.
lbid.
Hegel loc.cit. g Cf. Priest: Inconsistencies... , from p.341 passim.
Priest: Inconsistencies..., p.342 and p.344. On p.344 Priest, in a sketch, represents the positions of an object at rest as a mere line, but the position of the same object in motion as a kind of flatworm of considerable breadth.
Priest sees Quantum Mechanics as a possible field of application for paraconsistent logic. Cf. Inconsistencies: p.345. Time will tell whether this is plausible. Anyhow the idea is not farfetched.
Priest: DTL, p.249.
Cf. about the following Priest: DTL, pp.250f.
Ibid., p.251.
Ibid., p.252.
Ibid.
Ibid., p.253.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Priest: DTL, p.254. I am unable to recognize very much of this in the passage in Leibniz Priest refers to, which is a letter from Leibniz to Bayle, edited in: Die philosophischen Schriften von G.W. Leibniz, hrsg. von C.J. Gerhardt, vol.3 Hildesheim 1965, pp.52ff.
For example Priest himself mentions (loc.cit.) that by applying this principle without any restriction one could prove that every real number is a rational number, since a real number is defined as the limit of a rational number.
Priest DTL: p.262.
Ibid.
Ibid., p.263.
Ibid.
Priest himself holds it to be an important reason for regarding discontinuous changes as either β- or γ-changes that “[t]he situation is symmetrical” (Priest: DTL, p.252).
Priest: DTL, p.266.
Mortensen: The Limits of Change, esp. p.4.
Joseph Wayne Smith: Time, Change and Contradiction, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol.68 N o.2, June 1990, pp.178–188.
Smith: p.184.
Ibid., p.183.
Ibid., p.184: “[Priest] does not exclude the possibility that nature may be arbitrary so that either s0 or s1 may obtain quite randomly at the point of change. This option should be preferred [...] unless demonstrated to be inadequate on an independent basis...”
I am sympathetic to the view which Michael Esfeld expressed to me on this point, that there might be no case in which arbitrariness would not save the LNC; this would probably leave paraconsistent logic without application.
Priest: DTL, p.252.
Ibid., p.266 (my italics).
This is, no doubt, genuine Hegel; cf. again Logik loc.cit. remark 3: “Die gemeine Erfahrung aber spricht es selbst aus, daß es wenigstens eine Menge widersprechender Dinge, widersprechender Einrichtungen usf. gebe, deren Widerspruch nicht bloß in einer äußerlichen Reflexion, sondern in ihnen selbst vorhanden ist.” (Common experience itself pronounces that there is a lot of contradictory things, contradictory institutions etc. whose contradiction is not only present in external reflection but in themselves). A clear critical introduction into this concept of contradiction is found in Michael Wolff: Der Begriff des Widerspruchs — eine Studie zur Dialektik Kants und Hegels, Königsstein/Taunus 1981 (Philosophie, Analyse und Grundlegung vol.5).
In Met.IV (G), 4–6. Cf. for a very detailed analysis of the text and discussion of the literature on this issue: Burkhard Hafemann: Aristoteles’ Transzendentaler Realismus — Zur Rechtfertigung erster Prinzipien in der ‘Metaphysik’ (Dissertation WWU Münster 1996, forthcoming with De Gruyter ), §6.
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Strobach, N. (1998). The Both-States-Option. In: The Moment of Change. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 45. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9127-0_8
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