Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Consistency

  • Why be Consistent?

    Three types of consistency distinguished: logical, pragmatic, and Emersonian. Substack latest.

  • Are Fascist Antifa Thugs Blind to their Contradictory Behavior?

    A re-titled and redacted version of an entry originally posted 1 September 2017.  ……………………… Yes, says Jonathan Turley: At Berkeley and other universities, protesters have held up signs saying “F–k Free Speech” and have threatened to beat up anyone taking their pictures, including journalists. They seem blissfully ignorant of the contradiction in using fascistic tactics…

  • Antifa Thugs Ignorant of Contradiction?

    Jonathan Turley: At Berkeley and other universities, protesters have held up signs saying “F–k Free Speech” and have threatened to beat up anyone taking their pictures, including journalists. They seem blissfully ignorant of the contradiction in using fascistic tactics as anti-fascist protesters. After all, a leading definition of fascism is “a tendency toward or actual…

  • Why Be Consistent? Three Types of Consistency

    A reader inquires: This idea of the necessity to be consistent seems to be the logician's "absolute," as though being inconsistent was the most painful accusation one could endure. [. . .] What rule of life says that one must be absolutely consistent in how one evaluates truth? It is good to argue from first…

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson on the Trumpian ‘Flip-Flop’

    Here is a famous passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" rarely quoted in full: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you…

  • The Movies Inside Our Heads

    Scott Adams: As I often tell you, we all live in our own movies inside our heads. Humans did not evolve with the capability to understand their reality because it was not important to survival. Any illusion that keeps us alive long enough to procreate is good enough. Adams is telling us either directly or…

  • Bertrand Russell: Empiricism is Self-Refuting. Is He Right?

    An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), 1969 Pelican ed., pp. 156-157: I will observe, however, that empiricism, as a theory of knowledge, is self-refuting. For, however it may be formulated, it must involve some general proposition about the dependence of knowledge upon experience; and any such proposition, if true, must have as a consequence…

  • Nothing is Written in Stone

    The curiosity to the left, sent to me without commentary by the inscrutable and seldom seen Seldom Seen Slim, raises a number of deep and fascinating questions. The sentence to the left can be read either literally or metaphorically. My analysis in this entry is concerned with a literal reading only. 1. If nothing is…

  • The MavPhil Doctrine of Abrogation

    In cases of  'Emersonian' inconsistency, later entries of this weblog abrogate earlier ones. For an explanation of 'Emersonian' inconsistency and its difference from logical inconsistency, see On Diachronic or 'Emersonian' Consistency. Related articles On Diachronic or 'Emersonian' Consistency Logic, Hypocrisy, and Tobacco-Wackery Obama as Bullshitter More on the Supposed Non-Existence of the Self

  • On Diachronic or ‘Emersonian’ Consistency

    Yesterday I said I was opposed to ". . . misquotation, misattribution, the retailing of unsourced quotations, the passing off of unchecked second-hand quotations, and sense-altering context suppression."  An example of the last-mentioned follows.  Here is a famous passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" rarely quoted in full:  A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of…

  • Nick Gillespie on Why Youth Favor Obama and Conservatism’s Contradictions

    Support for Obama among 18-29 year olds exceeds that of any other age cohort.  Reason Magazine's Nick Gillespie argues that Obama is in the process of "screwing them big time."  Gillespie is right.   What caught my eye, however, was Gillespie's  explanation of why conservatives fail to get the youth vote: I'd argue that what makes "the conservative message"  resonate less…

  • On the Obvious

    As Hilary Putnam once said, "It ain't obvious what's obvious." Or as I like to say, "One man's datum is another man's theory." But is it obvious that it ain't obvious what's obvious?  It looks as if we have a little self-referential puzzle going here.  Does the Hilarian dictum apply to itself?  An absence of…

  • Collective Inconsistency and Plural Predication

    We often say things like 1. The propositions p, q, r are inconsistent. Suppose, to keep things simple, that each of the three propositions is self-consistent.  It will then be false that each proposition is self-inconsistent. (1), then, is a plural predication that cannot be given a distributive paraphrase.  What (1) says is that the three…

  • Five Grades of Self-Referential Inconsistency: Towards a Taxonomy

    Some sentences, whether or not they are about other things, are about themselves. They refer to themselves. Hence we say they are 'self-referential.' The phenomenon of sentential self-referentiality is sometimes benign. One example is 'This sentence is true.' Another  is 'Every proposition is either true or false.' Of interest here are the more or less…

  • A Question About Self-Referential Inconsistency

     From the mail bag: I’m hoping you can help me with an  annoying question that came up in conversation recently. I’m sure you can answer it much better than me. Statements are self-refuting when they are included in their own field of reference and fail to conform to their own criteria of validity. Thus ‘there are…