I was reading Language in Thought and Action by S.I. Hayakawa the other day (thank you, Scott, for my new copy) and I came across a section on Aristotlean logic. It was a small section, focused on linguistics, but it got me thinking. Back in high school, during my morality and debate class, Aristotle's law of noncontradiction was used to help prove the objectivity of morality. At the time, it made sense to me. For many people, though, there seemed to be something missing. The logic was unconvincing. After reading, and thinking some more, I think I've figured out why. In truth, its similar to what I've heard many people use as criticisms, but it's just that the specifics just gelled for me. The flaws of logic finally make sense and they are demonstratable.

The three "rules of logic" given in the book are ... 1. The Law of Identity: A is A, 2. The Law of the Excluded Middle: Everything is Either A or not-A, and 3. The Law of Noncontradiction: Nothing is both A and not-A.

Now, I have no problem with the first law. Yay for the "Law of Identity," you make sense. The other two laws, though, are only true under certain conditions. Okay, here goes nothing...

An example in the book to explain the limitations of the law of noncontradiction was that a football game may be both good (exciting) and bad (your team lost). The logic doesn't hold up because the words "good" and "bad" have multiple definitions. If we were talking about objective things, with one definition that can be measured, THEN the logic works. For example, in the football game, your team either won or did not win. Either you found the game exciting, or you did not (generalizing and glossing over specific moments). Things that vary, things with a spectrum of experience, things that depend upon interpretation ... for these things the law of noncontradiction simply does not work. For example, someone says that Picasso's "The Rest" is beautiful. There is no way to objectively prove this. "Beauty" cannot be objectively proven. The same goes for "good" and "bad". They are interpretive words, descriptive words, ideals. We can give evidence to support our opinion, but such relative truths can never ultimately be proven.

Even a description like "he is tall" is not objective. It depends upon the heights of people you've seen your entire life. To say that someone is objectively "tall" depends on each individual's cumulative experience and perspective. Not only does your definition of "tall" depend upon the people you've seen in your life, it also depends on your height. Someone might be taller than you, and seem tall when you look up at them, but not be considered "tall" in general. Not to mention that different races of people sometimes have a characteristic height. Hell, even the definition of "tall" changes with history. People of average height today would be considered giants to the malnourished generations of our ancestors. A spectrum of truth exists, but interpretation of it is relative. So, to say that a person must be either tall or not tall is ludicrous. Logic doesn't count.

The simplest way to explain this, is actually with grammar. Nouns and verbs obey the law of noncontradiction. An animal is either a cat or it is not, you are either playing baseball at this moment, or you are not. These things can be seen, measured, proven. They are objective, and so obey the laws of logic. Adjective and adverbs, however, are beyond logic. They are interpretive, relative. They depend upon all the experiences of a person's life, the standards they've been taught, the openness of their minds.

The same grammatical rule applies for the second law, the law of the exluded middle. Using nouns and verbs, this law works. Ie. Everything is either a cat or not a cat. Each person is either playing baseball right now, or they are not. By the same token, adjectives and adverbs don't work. It is not true that everything is fast or not fast, that everyone is tall or not tall, that any act is objectively good or not good. The rules do not apply. Fun, huh? ;-)

There's one more thing I'd like to mention. People trying to work out these laws for themselves have a common, similar mistake. To give some very basic examples, they think that "win or not win" is the same as "win or lose" (which leaves out ties), that "fast or not fast" is the same as "fast or slow" (which reduces the entire scale of speed [very slow, slow, moderately slow, moderate, moderately fast, fast, very fast, etc] to 2 opposing options), that "dog or not dog" is the same as "dog or cat" (there are many other "not dogs" in the world besides cats). To contrast a word against it's supposed "opposite", or against only one other possibility, hinders creativity and muddles up arguments. Always, always stick to "A or not-A" when thinking in these terms and stick to one definition of a word. To do so rids many arguments of vagueness and helps people really define their thoughts.

In conclusion, the practical uses and limitations of Aristotlean logic indicate a subjective morality. Good and bad are not found in answers, but in questions. They are goals which must be sought through awareness of people, their values and thought processes, and the circumstances of life. Like "tomorrow", we strive to come nearer towards morality, but we can never expect to reach it. (Okay, getting way too pedantic. I'm stopping now.)

Last thing: As I was typing this, we were watching Pleasantville. I hadn't seen it before, largely because a teacher of mine in high school said it was superficial and unsatisfactory. I thought it was wonderfully done, and subtley thought provoking. (Just goes to show you shouldn't let other people's opinions limit your own actions.) Anyway, the idea of there being a spectrum of experience pervades the movie. The world is not black and white, or even black, white and grey. Experience and individuality is a world of color. A book, one of my favorites, Lois Lowry's The Giver, deals with these issues as well (and many more). I highly recommend both Pleasantville and The Giver.

A Day of Filth
Friday, August 1, 2003

I worked at a shoe company today. They needed someone to vacuum their offices and clean their bathrooms. Judging from the thick layers of dust blanketing the entire inside of the building, I'd say it'd been at least a year since they cleaned the place. I've heard that most dust that settles around the house is actually human skin that's been shed. I got a ton of grey dust on my shirt. Meaning, my shirt was covered in aged fragments of discarded human flesh. Lovely, huh?