The law of contradiction in the light of recent investigations of Bertrand Russell

Leon Chwistek

pp. 227-289

in: Anna Broek, Friedrich Stadler, Jan Woleński (eds), The significance of the Lvov-Warsaw school in the European culture, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

In this article I endeavour to discuss a question on a topic that after simplification can be expressed as the following great problem: is contradiction an essential feature of the human mind? Philosophers have discussed that problem since ancient times. And since ancient times one has discussed it together with the problem of Existence. Even before the Law of Contradiction was formulated, and even before one found criteria to distinguish contradiction from non-contradiction, the Eleatics had based the criterion of existence on the concept of contradiction. We know that Parmenides rejected the existence of the world of phenomena because he saw everywhere in it a contradiction. Indeed Greek philosophy is full of observations of contradiction, starting with the sophisms without value and ending with the deep and currently interesting paradoxes. Although all philosophers are interested in the observation of contradictions, not all of them follow the way of the Eleatics. The need to deal with contradictions, their removal and depreciation was not so universal in Greece as it is today and views asserting contradictions were not rare. Already the great Heracleitos had the opinion that one and the same is and is not and Protagoras stated categorically that every opinion is true and therefore accepted that two contradictory propositions can be true.

Cited authors

Russell Bertrand

Parmenides

Protagoras