(May 14, 2012 at 3:22 pm)genkaus Wrote:(May 14, 2012 at 2:38 pm)Logic Wrote: That's my point exactly! The law of non-contradiction was spawned by Aristotle approximately 2300 years ago. Why does everybody assume that this law applies to absolutely everything in existence? It clearly does not; contradictions exist all over the place, most impressively in field of quantum mechanics.
We still accept it because without it no proof, evidence or knowledge is possible. Even saying that the law of non-contradiction is inapplicable assumes that there can be only two cases -applicability and non-applicability - that it has to be one or the other, but not both.
And apparent contradictions in quantum mechanics are not actual contradictions.
On one level this sounds remarkably like a theist argument for God. They really want to believe God's existence is possible. We really want to believe proof, evidence and knowledge are possible. Have we evidence of evidence? Proof of proving? Sure knowledge .. of anything? I find I have plenty of actionable knowledge but not much knowledge which can satisfy every possible objection. Language, evidence and proof are very new. Informal knowing is ancient. Who really knows what the limits are for these new phenomena? I'm skeptical about assuming too much here just because to do so would be useful.
