Contradiction Club: Dialetheism and the Social World

Abstract

Putative examples of true contradictions in the social world have been given by dialetheists such as Graham Priest, Richard Routley, and Val Plumwood. However, we feel that it has not been decisively argued that these examples are in fact true contradictions rather than merely apparent. In this paper we adopt a new strategy to show that there are some true contradictions in the social world, and hence that dialetheism is correct. The strategy involves showing that a group of sincere dialetheists can, given an appropriately formed institution, bootstrap contradictions into existence. We discuss objections and consider the implications of this finding for debates over logic.

The Logic of Posthuman Inquiry: Affirmative Politics, Validity, and Futurities

“…The first principle assures that no claims in a study will be contradictory, the second that the study will present claims that are either true or not true, and the third that statements cannot change their truth value in the course of the argument. These principles are so thoroughly ingrained in Western cultural norms and conceptions of knowledge that they are used by scholars even when arguing against the principles (Berliner, 2017; Bolton & Cull, 2019; Braidotti, 2019b; Priest, 2006, 2017; Routley & Plumwood, 1989) such as when someone purports to offer an example of a form of reasoning that violates the principle of noncontradiction as a way of arguing against its absolute necessity. The presentation of such counterexamples is itself an appeal to the principle of noncontradiction.…”

Social Inconsistency

“…The case of legal contradictions is discussed in Priest (1987Priest ( /2006), with some follow-up in Beall (2017) and Priest (2017). Just recently Bolton and Cull (2020) have argued for the possibility of social dialetheias by constructing, refining and defending a thought experiment involving a club of dialetheists adopting an inconsistent set of rules to govern their club. Cameron (2022) also sketches a metaphysics of social reality which would allow for inconsistency.…”

“…I do not think that Beall is right, but if he is, it would make the law a bad source of examples (cf. Bolton & Cull 2020). Second, most legal systems have meta-principles that are designed to filter out conflicts between laws.…”