There are still true contradictions

[@KaneB]

Original video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/omnUfXR-Zt6IgdE

[@onion4062]

I feel like this is the ultimate problem I have with "true contradictions": As an analogy, suppose we are playing a game of chess. We both know that a king can only be moved one square at a time. But then you say "what if I create this new move where the King can move five squares at a time". Like, sure... you can do that in the same way that you can create a word like "Wulture". But why? You've just spoiled the game-you are no longer playing chess! To get "true contradictions" you would have to change the meaning of "true" because in its original conception, it cannot apply to contradictions. But what have you achieved? You changed "true" from meaning *true* to something more like *true or contradictory* . All we are doing is needlessly muddling our language.

[@KaneB]

I don't see any reason to suppose that there is any singular "original conception" of truth, nor that truth in the ordinary sense rules out the possibility of true contradictions. I suspect that you're presupposing some technical philosophical account of what truth is. But even there, I don't think my position is incompatible with many of these accounts. For example, suppose we endorse some sort of deflationism, and we think that the role of truth is captured by the equivalence schema: "P" is true if and only if P. Then we can say: "wulture" applies to anything that is a vulture. Delia is a vulture. So Delia is a wulture. So by the equivalence schema, "Delia is a wulture" is true. Additionally, "wulture" fails to apply to anything that is white. Delia is white. So it is not the case that Delia is a wulture. So by the equivalence schema, "it is not the case that Delia is a wulture" is true.

[@onion4062]

@@KaneB "original conception" as in a pre-theoretic conception-how we ordinarily use the word. I feel like any ordinary person using the word "truth" would refuse to accept that Delia can both be a thing and not be a thing at the same time. Technical accounts of truth may yield it possible for contradictions to be "true" in the framework being worked in, but I fail to see the utility of this. Philosophical terms should not needlessly stray from their ordinary use, especially since this dialetiest notion of "truth" doesn't yield any new expressive power: whatever you call "true" I can paraphrase as "true or a sentence resulting from such and such linguistic rules that oblidge contradictions" without myself having to accept true contradictions.

[@guppy9250]

@@KaneB Based on what you have said in your other videos, it seems to me your usual approach in similar cases would be to say that patterns of usage in ordinary language are insufficient to determine how the predicate "true" should be applied when we extend the language to include concepts like "wulture." When we extend the language to include such concepts, we need to make a decision about whether or not the sentence "Delia is a wulture" is true, false, both true and false, neither true nor false (etc.). Different choices here will result in different technical dialects, some of which allow true contradictions, and some of which will not. In other words, the choice between classical and dialethic logic is tantamount to an choice between two different language games. There's no objective reason to prefer one of these games over the other: we just have to make the decision for ourselves, depending on what sort of conversation we want to have. (Btw, I think one of the things this conversation demonstrates is that deflationism is just plain inadequate as a theory of truth, since it fails to account for the most basic patterns of linguistic behaviour.)

[@CjqNslXUcM]

How is that a true contradiction? it sounds like it's just a regular contradiction. one of the premises is false.

[@ChipKempston]

This is silly. Ambiguities, semantic games, and failures of definition due to factual errors do not constitute true contradictions. They simply indicate that, for instance, greater clarity might be needed, or that the ability to say a thing does not mean it corresponds to reality, or that a definition might be deficient, among other things.

[@tobiasyoder]

Right, saying that a human construct like an adjective or legal right both applies and doesn’t apply is fundamentally different from metaphysical true contradictions like what quantum mechanics has led some to believe. One is word games - the other is “the rock is both there and not there”

[@lockytonight5110]

lol

[@heathflick8937]

​@tobiasyoder but the point here isn't that reality contradicts itself. The point is that way we use language lends itself very obviously to contradiction.

[@ChipKempston]

@@heathflick8937 That doesn't make true contradictions, it means that language is able to express untrue things.

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

"or that the ability to say a thing does not mean it corresponds to reality" Not all dialethists think true contradictions can exist in reality/in regards solely to concrete objects. Dialethism is more baseline conservative than that.

[@blacky7801]

Formulating the problem in predicate logic we get the four formulas: I. forall x. isVulture(x) -> isWulture(x) II. forall x. isWhite(x) -> not isWulture(x) III. isVulture(delia) IV. isWhite(delia) We can infer the following consequences: V. IsWulture(delia) [I. + III. using the substitution x -> delia] VI. not IsWulture(delia) [II. + IV. using the substitution x -> delia] VII. false [V. + VI.] From our assumptions we infer false in all interpretations, which means there exists no interpretation in which they are true at the same time. In formal logic we say that the assumptions I-IV are inconsistent with each other. There are no true contradictions at play here, just inconsistent assumptions. Edit: corrected the first statement. I thought he said that every wulture is a wulture, but reading the comments it looks like he means every vulture is a wulture. anyways the conclusion that the assumptions are inconsistent remains

[@BenStowell]

So basically: 1. ∀x(Hx ⟶ ~Wx) [For all x, if x is white, x is not a wulture.] 2. ∃x(Hx ∧Wx) [There is an x that is white and a wulture.] 3. ∴∃x(Wx ∧ ~Wx) [Therfore, there is something that is a wulture and not a wulture.] The person who accepts contradictory x's would just quantify over them in this way, no? While every else would say ~∃x((x ∧ ~x) ⟶ ~∃x(Wx ∧ ~Wx)) So we're back where we started: Some people say there are true contradictions, some people say there aren't.

[@blacky7801]

But there is nothing "true" in this contradiction? Yes, from ∀x(Hx ⟶ ~Wx) ∧ ∃x(Hx ∧Wx) follows ∃x(Wx ∧ ~Wx), but that is, because both formulas evaluate to false in all interpretations. You can deduce a conclusion from the axioms, but that does not make the conclusion automatically true. Only if the axioms are consistent with each other.

[@4dtoaster819]

Step VII uses the rule: ∀x: (x ∧ ~x) -> F [contradiction implies false] To prove: ~∃x: (x ∧~x) [There exist no contradictions] 1. ~∃x: (x ∧~x) 2. ∀x: ~(x ∧~x) | ~∃x: P(x) -> ∀x:~P(x) 3. ∀x: ~(x ∧~x) ∨ F | a -> (a ∨ F) 4. ∀x: (x ∧~x) -> F | (~a ∨ b) -> (a -> b) The assumption needed to do step VII (∀x: (x ∧ ~x) -> F) is logically equivalent to the statement you are trying to prove (~∃x: (x ∧~x))

[@blacky7801]

Is the argument that I was trying to derive the statement "there are no true contradictions" and used the statement "contradiction implies false" to prove that? And that that is invalid, because I the statement to prove is equivalent to one of the assumptions? First of all, in the derivation I was not trying to prove that there exist no true contradictions. The goal was to show that the assumptions I-IV from the wulture example are inconsistent with each other. Second, even if I was trying to prove that "there are no false contradictions" and used "contradiction implies false" as an assumption that would still be a valid deduction. This is not an instance of begging the question. That applies in more informal logic, where stating something as an assumption assert / presupposed that that as true. Formal Logic does not assert that the assumption are true. As we can see in this example they cannot be true at the same time! Formal Logic concerns itself with deriving everything possible from the assumptions. Third, I wouldn't call it an assumption as it is tautological. ∀x.((p(x) ∧ ~p(x)) -> false) ∀x.(~(p(x) ∧ ~p(x)) ∨ false) [by definition] ∀x.(~p(x) ∨ ~~p(x) ∨ false) [by de morgan] ∀x.(~p(x) ∨ p(x) ∨ false) [by definition] ∀x.(true ∨ false) [by law of excluded middle] ∀x.(true) [by absorbtion] true [by definition]

[@4dtoaster819]

​@@blacky7801 Thank you for a well thought out response Your summary of my argument is good. My intention was to show it was an circular argument. Since you commented on a video about the existence of contradictions I read your comment with that context in mind. You argued that there was a contradiction. I assumed that this was to show that Kane B's argument did not work. My previous comment only makes sense when the contradiction is used to discredit the possibility of contradictions. You did not not explicitly say this. If you did not intend to make this point implicitly, I am sorry for misrepresenting you and wasting your time. "law of excluded middle" falls in the same camp as "there are no false contradictions" and "contradiction implies false". They are all logically equivalent, so using "law of excluded middle" would have the same problem with circularity. edit: "there are no true contradictions"*

[@zolotuchien]

Funnily enough, the original Wulture video first seemed to be totally unintelligible to me due to me confusing W and V sounds. You know, "nuclear wessels" and all that.

[@heathflick8937]

Reading a lot of dissenting comments, the pattern that i see is that most of them think that theres something defective about the way the wulture is being defined. Like i see a lot of people saying that "all vultures are wultures" is incorrect because there are white vultures and their whiteness would disqualify them from being wultures. Or vice versa. But seems to me like this and other related responses are begging the question in that they presuppose a consistent languistic framework. And you can stipulate that if you want, but you dont have to. We can stipulate whatever we want in definitions, and we can stipulate whatever we want in terms of languistic contraints. And its pretty obvious that with the correct set of conditions you can get true contradictions.

[@BenStowell]

"And its pretty obvious that with the correct set of conditions you can get true contradictions." The defender of classical logic will just say it's pretty obvious that there are no conditions that give rise to true contradictions because true contradictions are impossible.

[@heathflick8937]

@@BenStowell I know, my point is just that both sides are on equal footing. There's no reason to favor classical over nonclassical or vice versa

[@clashmanthethird]

If someone convinced you otherwise, would you make another video titled "There used to be true contradictions"?

[@kamiii6700]

Suggestion: an episode on intellectual property (for and against it).

[@ThatSkiFreak]

Intellectual property doesn't exist for philosophical reasons though (for the most part). Most of why it exists is because people decided that it'll make the economy run better in some sense, especially with copyright. I guess talking about whether and to what extent it exists in a fundamental rights sense could be interesting but it'll be pretty divorced from whether we should recognize it in practice to some degree, since that mostly comes down to a kind of contractarian approach to whether it is beneficial for actual people in real life. I say this to mean that for and against ip in a general sense would not really fit very well with Kane's style of videos, but maybe a more narrow discussion would?

[@self_improvement_d]

To me it seems that "wulture" as you use it is just two homonyms. You have "Wulture: A vulture" and "Wulture: Anything that isn't white." It's like saying "Neven is any number that is even, and neven is any number that is uneven. Now 7 both is and isn't neven."

[@JadeVanadiumResearch]

I think the sticker game is what most clearly explains your position, and there's some interesting stuff going on there, but I also think you've described the game incorrectly. The sticker game you've described is that every vulture gets a sticker, and no white thing gets a sticker. The problem then arises when we see a white vulture: the fact of the matter is, it is not possible to simultaneously put and not put a sticker on something. This is a physical contradiction which we all understand to be as impossible as anything ever could be. In a world where a white vulture exists, it's abjectly impossible to play the wulture sticker game correctly, you *must* break a rule. In particular, it's impossible for *you* to correctly play this game, and so you must be playing a slightly different game. This is relevant to the example of social/legal contradictions too: either the land-owning woman votes or she doesn't. Voting is a physical act, and either she can or can't vote (and not both!). In the presence of a legal contradiction, the question of whether she has a "legal right" is immaterial: if the law saying she can't vote prevents her from voting, then defacto she does not have a right to vote, and the text asserting she "has a right to vote" is demonstrably a lie (under conventional semantics). The material facts reveal what game is really being played. In the example of legal contradictions, evidently the law intends for women to be poor, and for the poor to not vote. The legal contradiction occurs precisely when a woman has beaten the game she was intended to lose. Similarly, if we look at how you use the word "wulture" throughout the video, we can see clearly what game you're really playing. You call Delia a wulture, and in effect, you put the "wulture" sticker on her. However, simultaneously, you also call Delia "not a wulture". This doesn't somehow undo the fact that you've already called her a wulture. Instead, it seems that we have a second sticker called "not wulture". The sticker game you're playing now becomes obvious: the "wulture" sticker goes on all vultures, and the "not wulture" sticker goes on all white things. It's not that Delia both "does and doesn't" get a sticker, but rather, she is assigned *two* stickers: she is "wulture", and she is "not wulture". The problem many people are noticing is that, under these rules, the two stickers seem to be completely unrelated. The fact that "wulture" is a substring of "not wulture", as preceded by "not", seems to have absolutely no bearing on how the terms are actually used. When I said "it is not possible to simultaneously put and not put a sticker", it's understood that I mean "not" in the strongest possible sense. There's something fundamentally impossible about that situation, and the word "not" in "not possible" is an expression of that impossibility. To be clear, I agree entirely that this modified "(not) wulture" sticker game is a game that you can play. It's a (para)consistent way to use words, and it doesn't need to assume any false empirical claim either. In that same vein though, it really just seems to be a semantic game. Unlike the conventional game however, I don't think anyone has any clue what you mean when you say "not". I understand what you mean when you say "wulture" or "not wulture", but I have no clue what you think "not" means. The objection of meaninglessness is extremely relevant since, even in *minimal logic* which does almost nothing to define "not", asserting a contradiction *still* allows you to infer "not P" for every proposition P. One of the best objections to "true contradictions" is precisely that you become unable to forcefully object to anything at all. When I assert "not P", what I'm really saying is "I'm not allowed to assert P". To assert "P and not P" is to openly confess that I'm breaking the rules. The conventional punishment for breaking that rule is Explosion: if you break the rules then so can I, and I can assert anything I want to. This rule is also pretty hard to beat: if I say "from a contradiction, anything follows" and you say "no that's not valid", then it's unclear whether "not valid" is even a complaint at all. When you said Delia was not a wulture, that didn't stop you from saying she was a wulture, so why should Explosion being "not valid" stop it from being valid?

[@4dtoaster819]

I am sceptical to the argument that understanding a rule in it's simple cases shows that the rules is understood in it's totality. It does not seam difficult to pad out any rule by increasing the amount of simple cases. for example: "generator a random number between 1 and 10^10000 If number = 1 -> fulfil the meaning of life if number ≠ 1 -> breath" Is not easier to understand than: "fulfil the meaning of life" Even though the first rule is almost always trivial to execute

[@anthonyspencer766]

An additional note: I think a lot of this depends on how you want to set up your epistemology. Like, you can either think that our concepts aim to really 'be about' an external world, or you can think that they don't. If they do, then it becomes a question about whether we have the 'right' concepts. Here, I mean something like a successful concept where success is a match between representation and world. If you think success is something far weaker than this, or that we shouldn't even be supposing that our assertions are literally aimed at this target, then sure, we can probably entertain true contradictions. But at that point, you might wonder what their significance is or why we should care about them. Maybe it shouldn't surprise us that language that doesn't even aim to represent an external world the right way could result in concepts that yield contradictory sentences if applied a certain way. But one consequence of this seems to be our committment not to care, or at least to not use the language of 'problems'. If we think there are genuine semantic problems, then aren't we going to be committed to something like what we denied earlier? If not, then the scope of the problem should be limited to resolving particular miscommunications between people. My intuition is that generalizing these resolutions so they pre-resolve such problems and so evolve the language just is the motivation that leads us to thinking that language aims to represent things the right way.

[@michaelns9887]

Words in a natural language are fuzzy. Definitions are derived from usage. So this argument doesn't apply. If we talk about formal systems (e.g. ornithology or jurisprudence) then such presuppositions are false.

[@lilemont9302]

But it's entirely a matter of faith to assume some static intent of usage for every utterance to ground real communication in formal systems.

[@Juttutin]

I think this video is in some way an exploration of the way we imperfect and imprecise humans switch between these two ways of dealing with language and logic, depending on which better supports our worldview or argument in the context of the topic under discussion.

[@KManAbout]

There are formal systems of logical that allow for contradictions to be non exploding.

[@philosophicalmixedmedia]

Guess the recording devise is set on the table that is attached to the seat which plausible causes camera shake. A tripod is a cheap investment would eliminate this issue as well as give eye level elevation which is a standard when filming the self. Also an extra light can dramatically give a depth to the profile so allow a mood to develop like a Rembrandt lighting that alludes to contradictions in the manifest image.

[@perplexedon9834]

I dont think these examples provide examples of true contradictions, just examples of ambiguity. "All Vultures are Wultures and all Wulture are non-white" is most naturally interpretated as meaning either "A Wulture is any non-white vulture" or "A Wulture is any vulture or non-white thing". The first statement simply does not specify which of those more precise definitions applies. Saying that the first definitions implies a contradiction is like saying "this album is sick" implies a contradiction because it is ambiguous whether I like it because I think it is awesome, or hate it because it is morally repulsive. The language game simply includes statements that are insufficiently specified and allow distinct interpretations that imply contradictory facts, not that there are actually true contradictions

[@christiangreff5764]

I think the whole thing could profit from looking at it through the lense of language as labels for classification. What do I mean with that? 1) Words (at least words like 'wulture') are effectively labels which we assign to things that fullfill a set of criteria (things are classified to be 'wultures' depending on a set of criteria) 2) The label 'wulture' is proposed with a classification based on 1. something being a vulture (aka fullfilling all the criteria to be classified as a vulture; which notably do not contain any criteria about being or not being white), 2. That thing not being white; note the lack of connector between these two statements, which indicates that: 3) The defintion of 'wulture' is, under that lense, simply incomplete: conditions for classification have to be connected by some logical connector; it could be "is a vulture AND is not white" (what I would guess is the intuitive reading given the above definition) but could also be "is a vulture OR is not white" or any other variation; it just must have any connector, otherwise what we are doing is performing two independent classifications and then complain about the results of those two classifications standing in no relation to each other and not having a clear definition on how to apply the given label based on those results

[@MatthewKelley-mq4ce]

The negation in my mind is more strong in this case, in the sticker game. I might wonder why this is, but it is the case for me

[@KaneBaker420]

Also, there are still no true contradictions.

[@iruleandyoudont9]

the issue isnt that it makes a false empirical claim, it's that it posits analytic truths that are in conflict with the analytic truths concerning the predicates it bases itself on

[@onty-op5587]

Am I missing something, or is a white vulture not a wulture? The criterion for being a wulture is: x is a wulture iff x is a vulture and x is not white. A white vulture fails the second condition, and is therefore not a wulture. What is the contradiction?

[@endersteph]

Supposedly anything that is a vulture is a wulture by definition.

[@MofoWoW]

Looks like there are two criteria, not one: 1) if x is a vulture then x is a wulture. 2) if x is white then x is not a wulture.

[@KManAbout]

We can conjoint the two with and

[@MofoWoW]

@@KManAbout Sure, but that doesn’t result in a statement that is logically equivalent to the one OP wrote. Separating the two conditions serves to emphasize that point, imo

[@KManAbout]

@@MofoWoW I agree

[@Kglëüghb]

Look, here's the issue. Since "Every x (Wulture (x) iff Vulture (x))" and "Every x (Wulture(x) iff not White(x))" are quantified expressions that universally quantify over the same domain, they validate the entailment of a conjunction of these predicates within the scope of a single quantifier, i.e: "Every x (Wulture(x) iff (Vulture(x) & not White(x))" This shows that "Wulture" is a consistent predicate referring to non-white vultures.

[@BumbleTheBard]

If you change the usual semantics of truth, it will have many knock-on effects. What is the probability of an event, if it may both happen and not happen? What reading would you get on a thermometer if it is both hot and not hot? What enclosure should Delia be put in if wultures need to be separated from non-wultures? It seems unsatisfactory just to say such examples are puzzling or confusing. In practice, we need a decision. In the case of the law, there are meta-level principles that can be used to resolve contradictions, e.g. recent legislation has priority over older. You would need to supply a dialethic probability theory, measure theory, decision theory, etc., as well as a logic.

[@bayardstringer6042]

I think it's more than just semantics. It's actually a different kind of logical system. "Normal" logic that we are used to has two values: true and false. This one has three: true, false, and both. Imagine a boolean statement (a && b) will evaluate to false if either are false and will evaluate to true only if both are true. Now throw in the possibility of both. If either a or b is both, then the whole thing evaluates to both (I think?). Whereas the truth table for (a && b) is a 2x2 square in "normal" logic, the new one is 3x3. Now as to what is the practical usefulness of such a logic, I have no idea. It strikes me like how mathematicians are able to invent new maths without them having any necessary connection to the material world to qualify them as legitimate maths. Maybe there is some practicality here in making sense of contradictory data, like in a corrupted file system on a computer.

[@TheAntira]

@@bayardstringer6042 if kanes argument succeeds, then he has described a connection between paraconsistent logic and the material world. but even if not, the wikipedia page on paraconsistent logic as a whole list if you are interested.

[@helveticaneptune537]

Kane what is your opinion on Bertrand Russell's philosophical oeuvre?

[@anthonyspencer766]

Hey Kane, I think that maybe some version of an unsatisfiable pair argument could work here regarding the setup of the problem (this objection is normally made to Benardette paradoxes, but I don't see anything that would rule it out when it comes to assessing any putative paradoxes). The basic idea is that the problem description or setup asks you to postulate two things that are mutually unsatisfiable, revealing that the source of the contradiction is not in some consequence but is rather in the setup (thus short-circuiting the reductio). The pair in the 'wulture case' might be: 1. There is an X such that all P are X, but no X is Q. 2. Some P are Q. It is clear that the setup is inconsistent. It seems satisfying to me to say that no P can be an X just in case it is possible that P is Q and impossible that X is Q. Probably, a realist of one stripe or another is going to want to say there isn't a sufficient description of wulture here that satisfies the specific differences required to posit a distinct species. But I also grasp that essences aren't central to your point; it seems like you want to rely on conceivability here, i.e., there is nothing inconceivable about the problem description, so why should we think there is something wrong with it prima facie?

[@JackPullen-Paradox]

How would a computer apply this rule? Well, it would have to have a definition for vulture and for white. Since the biological essence would probably not include the color, the color white would probably not occur. In the definition Now the two conditions must be applied simultaneously. So the program enters the room with you and encounters a white vulture. The program must be “sticker X if X is a vulture and not white”. So, the program would advise you to not sticker the white vulture because, although it is a vulture, it is not nonwhite. If the definition includes not white or the possible colors not including white, then the program will advise you to not sticker the white vulture because it is not a vulture and it is not nonwhite. To cause the program as much grief as possible, do the following: Rule 1: Sticker if vulture. Rule 2: Do not sticker if white. Rule 3: Sticker if white vulture and require a single outcome. So, the outcome is toSticker = isVulture ^ Not isWhite ^ isWhite ^ isVulture (= False) So, not so much grief to the program.

[@EdgarQer]

What do you say to this kind of objection that debates and participation in them presuppose that we do not allow contradictions, and the false presupposition of dialetheists is that they believe that such debates are possible? Last time, you said that opponents of contradictions cannot consider your concept of Wulture as defective just because it implies a contradiction, since in this context there is a debate between supporters of true contradictions and their opponents. It would be begging the question. But the objection is that you cannot demand that opponents of contradictions do not claim such concept to be defective, since the debate itself assumes this (that all contradictions are false). So, there is no begging the question, but a reductio ad absurdum.

[@michaeldalscais2538]

@KaneB - I know you like Zappa. So, at the risk of venturing a little off-topic: Zappa or Miles?

[@eoghan.5003]

My only objection is that I was initially confused in the first video because I would have transcribed your word as "waltcha"! Then I realised my mistake, and the subtle cunning of the word.

[@andretaurines1704]

Danke!

[@KaneB]

Thanks so much! I really appreciate it!

[@ahuk]

Danke.

[@Paradoxarn.]

Can someone explain why this argument isn't begging the question? It seems to me that it tries to show that there are true contradictions by postulating the existence of a particular true contradiction. This essentially becomes a play with definitions where you say that according to the definition of wulture, there are true contradictions. However, just as you cannot define God into existence, you cannot define true contradictions into existence.

[@duder6387]

All definitions are question begging; you wouldn’t accuse me of question begging if I said, “a bachelor is an unmarried man. David is an unmarried man, therefore David is a bachelor.” Kane’s wulture example takes a similar form, “a wulture is anything that is a vulture but it is nothing that is white. Delia is a white vulture, therefore she both is and is not a wulture.” That’s why Kane says that you can have true contradictions if you want them. Also, why can’t you define God into existence? If I said God was the pencil I’m holding, then God would exist.

[@Paradoxarn.]

@@duder6387 Question begging is a property of (some) arguments, it's a category error to say that all definitions are question begging. You can ostensively and nominally define 'God' as the pencil you are holding, but it would only show that "God" exists. You would fail to show that God actually exists because 'God' has a real definition which differs from your hypothetical nominal definition.

[@sukka4pain]

Priest's example only holds if legal positivism is true. But there's no reason to accept legal positivism and, if anything, legal contradictions only prove that legal positivism is false.

[@murathax6587]

Hello Kane. I've been following you for a while. Do a room tour please.

[@misterkefir]

A Bookshelf tour would be nice too.

[@davidfoley8546]

If "wulture" so-defined is meant to be an example of a true contradiction, what distinguishes it from plain-old contradictions you encounter in any other context? Is this simply meant to illustrate that I may foot stomp about the word "true"? English speakers, regardless of their pretheoretical commitments, certainly know that the word "true" is the opposite of the word "false".

[@hamzam11]

There is a problem with the "rules" or conditions you have described for the proposition "x is a wulter" to be true. the problem is with the specific rule "the term wulter is applyed on wulters" circular reasoning here

[@mateok8789]

Could it be explained that you have built what would be recognized as a contradiction according to another logic into the truth conditions of your new logic that features terms like ‘wulture’? So false in the system that says that contradictions are false? And true in the system that permits (at least some) contradictions to be true? I feel like people are not understanding that there are multiple object languages at hand here.

[@4dtoaster819]

Symbols gets their meaning by the rules we assign them. Just like the law fails to fulfil it's functions when it has contradicting rules, language fails in creating propositions.

[@jontedeakin1986]

I was just talking about this with my girlfriend! So glad you did a follow up

[@StefanTravis]

Priest's example of contradictory laws is intelligible - it's just a case of trying to simultaneously obey two irreconcilable imperatives. It's a double bind, a kafkatrap, a situation very familiar to anyone who's tried to please a parent. It's like a falsidical paradox - one the describes a situation which cannot exist because it's contradictory, like Russell's "barber paradox". Priest's example is imperative rather than declarative, so would result in paralysis for anyone who tried to apply it. But with "Wulture", we have a word with two irreconcilable references. There are real world examples of this - autoantonyms like "Bound". And we only get a contradiction when we try to apply both simultaneously. So I think here, with "Delia is a wulture", you're conflating an ambiguous sentence with an ambivalent one. The former has two possible meanings, but we're not sure which to choose. The latter would have two irreconcilable meanings at the same time. If you feel ambiguous, you're not sure how you feel. If you feel ambivalent, you know exactly what you feel, but the emotions are diametrically opposed, you're in two minds, you love something and you hate it - and we all know what that's like. The problem with this video's argument then, is that you haven't shown ambivalent references can exist, only ambiguous ones.

[@MsNikeNike]

What do you mean by "not"?

[@gabrielduran291]

Is a wolture any vulture (which subsumes vultures attributes such as their color implicitly) or is it things that are not white (which would include vultures that are not white). My critique is you start woth a contradiction implicitly and then blame human logic for it. From a contradiction, one does not ask what follows you instead make up your mind. Your rules already contained a contradiction from the beginning albeit implicitly. -- The law of excluded middle.

[@enzomerdicane]

How are these truecontradictions ? What do you mean by true ?

[@Reddles37]

You've given two separate contradictory definitions for "Wulture", so it isn't surprising or particularly interesting that you get contradictions when you try to use it. I could just as easily invent the term "Nulture" and say it applies to anything that is a vulture but also does not apply to anything that is a vulture. Then every vulture both would and would not be a nulture, but only because I made up a silly nonsense definition. To actually have a meaningful definition you would need to connect the two requirements somehow to make it clear which one takes priority in a conflict. I also don't understand what you're trying to get at with the sticker game, that doesn't solve anything and I don't agree that the game is easy to understand. If there are no white vultures then its OK, except the rule about vultures has already completely specified where the stickers should go so the second rule about white objects is redundant and I'd be a bit confused about why it was stated. And if there are white vultures then I'd be significantly more confused, and since I don't know what to do with a white vulture I certainly wouldn't say I "totally understand the rules of the game". Actually though, I think the natural way to interpret the rules would be "put a sticker on every vulture except those that are white", again making one rule take priority. Similarly for the legal example, we wouldn't just say a female landowner both is and is not a voter. It would go through some sort of court where a judge would decide which law was more important in this case, resolving the ambiguity. And all this shows is that the original laws were poorly conceived, definitely not something profound about true contradictions.

[@hegelsmonster5521]

Well; I think in order that a statement is informative -- that is, that it can tell us something about the world -- is must have a true value of "true" [it is the case that] or "false" [it is not the case that]. If something is true in a possible world, I know that I can find it in this world. If something is false, I know that something can't be found in this world. But if something is true and false together, it would be that it can be found and not be found in this world. If that is the case what would I do to set my attitude toward the thing in question. Should I be not be bothered by it and try to find it or should I abandon the search for the thing is question? A contradiction can't inform me, under every end I choose, what to do with the thing in question. And if can't inform me or give me any other clear (definite -- that is in a certain and not certain other ways applicable) meaning, then the statement is worth absolutely nothing if try to preserve it's nearest original meaning (I could change the meaning of the statement by explaining what this statement express in myself or something like that). Through the contradiction the parts of the statements can not inform me of anything, there are -- in a sense (if you don't want to talk about the parts as parts in themselves but as parts of a whole matter, the whole statement, in question).-- nothing. This "nothingness" in contradiction explains why we so confused if we try to visualize or conceive a contradiction. There is nothing to tell to how to do with the statement in question. The statement leads to nothing. Of course we can conceive the parts in themselves -- not as parts of the whole contradictory statement -- and apply those parts as parts in themselves to the thing in question. I can conceive (as a statement that stand as a part in themselves) that a thing can be conceived as "vulture" -- no problem!; and then (and so on.) that a thing is white. But I can not conceive any part of those part of the whole statement applied to a white vulture: A wulture is a vulture and is not something white, then it's nothing.

[@tonyd3743]

I remember when I watched the first video, I felt really strongly against it but I've been thinking about truth recently and I've grown a lot more sympathetic to this sort of view. Combined with being much closer to the layperson than the professional philosopher, I might be able to offer some insight into where Kane's coming from. What makes cereal a soup or not a soup? I don't accept that there's some abstract object or universal or some metaphysical structure called soup that cereal instantiates or fails to instantiate. It's just a label that we put on some things and not on other things. In other words, I think the concept of soup is just as substantive as our dealings with it. The big claim is that truth is just the same: the substance to truth is just in our dealings with it. We call some things true and some things not true and that's all there is to truth. (I think this view might be related to deflationary theories of truth? I'm not sure, I have a hard time understanding them) Under this sort of view, saying that something is true and not true might not be saying anything substantive, at least metaphysically. In the language of the sticker game, all that's said is that when we play through the game, there's something that the rules tell us to put the sticker on and to not put the sticker on. Why I rejected true contradictions initially was, to continue the sticker game analogy, because I identified true contradictions with putting a sticker on something and not putting a sticker on the same thing (at the same time, at the same place, no trickery here!). That, to me, seems unintelligible if not outright impossible still. Whether you accept the view above or not, hopefully this at least gives some sense on why true contradictions aren't as crazy as they sound. I think the key point is to recontextualize the true contradictions talk on a higher order level of discussion.

[@jamestagge3429]

This is a very clever and interesting video, but I think that it is missing a consideration which addresses the confusion. That is context. In the proper context of consideration, there can be no actual contradictions either in material terms (this rock cannot be both here and there at once) or in the realm of abstraction (one cannot appeal to truths to formulate a position which denies the existence of truth or one cannot claim, I think I am not thinking). Truly, one can coin a term such as wulture and state that in the context of his intentions and efforts that it means this or that. All that is required from there is our collective agreement as to the meaning of the term. So the term is not that which it represents, i.e., that for which it is a proxy, it is merely a place holder for it in our consciousness. There are no contradictions as suggested in the video. That we might play a game to place a sticker on every wulture but on nothing that is white, does as suggested, infer that all wultures are white, but only in one context of consideration and that one would not submit to the governance of the proper context, the contradiction suggests itself. In order to participate in the discussion at all we must assume that it is a fact that there are no white wultures or what is the point of the discussion? To consider a paradox, initially one must submit to the semantic architecture from which it arises. This is true with all supposed paradoxes. But all the presence of a white wulture indicates is that our assumption was wrong. Our assumption is pitted against a discovery in reality, i.e., that there is a white wulture for it is discovered to challenge our assumption. What then of the rules of this game? The first rule, to put a sticker on every wulture is satisfied comfortably. The second rule to not put a sticker on anything that is why becomes invalid for there are white wultures. This is analogous to claiming that a rock can in materiality be both here and there at the same time. Consider the raven paradox by Hempel in which the hypothesis that all ravens are black and the logical equivalent that all non-black things are not ravens. In this context of consideration, any object of any kind if not black (“all non-black things are not ravens”), validates the hypothesis that all ravens are black. This was purported to challenge or at least weaken the scientific method but it does no such thing. Think of these two statements as ““if” all ravens are black, “then” all non-black things are not ravens.” Several points considered in the proper context, e.g., here the second statement is not the logical equivalent but rather is contingent upon the truth of the first. Also “all ravens are black” is a singular statement about a single characteristic whereas “all non-black things are not ravens” is a statement of multiple objects about multiple characteristics. Again, they are not logical equivalents though they do appear so when considered in the wrong context. There is thus no threat to the scientific method. Here you are playing with the same kind of scheme. Another example might be the ancient Greek paradox in which a Cretan states that “all Cretans are liars”. If he is a Cretan, then his claim about all Cretans being liars is paradoxical when considered in the wrong context. But this also is just more sophistry for there are things that if said by any Cretan “could not be” a lie such as “I am”, or “I am speaking (to you, about you)”, etc. Since it is impossible for everything that could be said by a Cretan could be a lie, the paradox fails and the Cretan who made the statement that “all Cretans were liars” would be necessarily telling the truth. The context then, as with your scheme would have to be reconfigured to “all Cretans are liars when it is possible to lie”. So, place a sticker on all wultures even if one is white would be the modification of the rule of your game when considered in the proper context. If there are white wultures and your rule states to put a sticker on all wultures, you cannot contradict that first rule with the second, i.e., put no sticker on anything that is white. Since that required for this scheme to be valid is the truth of the assumption that there are no white wultures, that there are proves that assumption false and by that, the paradoxical function fails. What do you think?

[@Kglëüghb]

To make this argument you probably shouldn't use two words that sound so similar to eachother (especially to those of us whose primary languages aren't English).

[@philbelanger2]

Some thoughts: - This shows that we can invent a language in which there are true contradictions. - It doesn't show that there are true contradictions in English. "Wulture" is not an English word. - It doesn't show that there are true contradictions, if contradictions are propositions which exist independently of our linguistic behavior. - We could speak a language in which there are true contradictions, but we don't. As fas as I know, no society does. Why?

[@philosophicsblog]

Is this related to black swans?

[@jherbranson]

At first glance, it seems like all of this is just growing from contradictions that are embedded in the rules you are following. So, in the end, there are contradictions that are derived from the behavior of the rules. If the identities and definitions of 'white' and 'vulture' and 'wulture' are all well formed, then so long as these identities don't contradict (does the definition of vulture exclude white object? This should be derivable either way) then you shouldn't experience these issues. Really, the white bird isn't a vulture at all, even though genetically it was born from vultures. One can easily derive the observation that the white bird can't categorically be included into your vulture as an identity until you recalibrate you assumptions at an axiomatic level.

[@Kentrosauruses]

Justice for Cordelia! She’s been trapped by consistent logics for too long, let her be free!

[@Kentrosauruses]

Dr Baker people are really upset about this video. I’m not though, nothing scares me anymore. 🔴

[@prippripprip7094]

As a practical matter, no contradiction need exist with the wulture example in any given language as the statement "wulture means something that is a vulture but not white" is an empirical claim regarding the meaning of a word within the context of communications between some group of people. It is perfectly reasonable for users of the term wulture to disagree as to its meaning, either resolving the contradiction by asserting an exception (effectively adding a third rule), or by disputing the generality of the rules "must be a vulture" and "must not be white". The former is the most likely in any case, as with the voting example - at the point where votes are tallied the choice must be made whether or not to count the apparently contradictory vote, or indeed whether to abandon the voting entirely, which is itself a resolution. Whether or not an exception is made explicit, even the act of failing to reach a decision is effectively an exception - "in the case of a contradiction, cease counting until a decision is reached". The assertion that there are only two rules regarding the wulture classification can only be true for as long as a contradition is not found. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so to speak.

[@Tobifyable]

I'm glad you gave a new (and, to me, even neater) presentation of your argument, thanks! Your reference to a similarly structured example of Priest's reminded me that I wanted to share a similarly structured of Arthur Prior's, viz. his introduction of the notorious tonk-operator (see his "The Runabout Inference-Ticket", in: Analysis 21.2 [1960] 38-39). The literature on tonk and "acceptable" intro-/elim-rules might be of great relevance to your argument! The mentioned paper is especially fun to read because of its great irony and sarcasm. Prior addressed it against proponents of a too naive inferentialism. It is crucial to your argument (if I get you right) that your explanation of the meaning of "wulture" is essentially inferentialistic. Your introduction and elimination rules for "wulture" could be reconstructed in different ways, but the following pair I take to be quite adequate to your Delia-case: (INTRO) From "x is a vulture" you may infer "x is a wulture"; (ELIM) from "x is a wulture" you may infer "x is not white". According to my reconstruction, the contradiction will be that Delia is white (by being a white vulture) and Delia is not white (by being a vulture, the application of INTRO first, then ELIM). I think you will agree that my reconstruction is charitable in that the conclusion is a contradiction and the argument makes essential use of "wulture" for deriving this conclusion. Yet, if your argument is really tonk-like in this way, the analogy gets us an even worse, yet still similarly structured argument for trivialism! Here is my explanation of the general term "trulture": (INTRO2) from "x is a vulture" you may infer "x is a trulture"; (ELIM2) from "x is a trulture" you may infer "if x is white, then p" ("p" arbitrary). Since Delia is a vulture, by INTRO2 she is a trulture. From this and her being white, via ELIM2 we may infer anything - i.e. trivialism. Therefore, I wonder if your argument, which was intended to be a good argument for dialetheism, really is any good for this. Its resources are too powerful in allowing us to construct arguments for trivialism. In the end rather a disservice to dialetheists? Would appreciate your thoughts on this very much, love your vids! :-)

[@Tobifyable]

p.s.: In case anyone is wondering whether it makes a relevant difference that Prior's tonk operator is a dyadic sentence operator, but in Kane's argument "x is a wulture" is a monadic predicate: No, it does not. It is not the syntactic category of the introduced expression that matters, but the way it is introduced, viz. via inferentialistic introduction and elimination rules. For note, e.g., that neither Prior's "p tonk q" nor Kane's "x is a wulture" can be introduced by a definition in standard form, naming necessary and jointly sufficient conditions ("p tonk q : ... p ... q ..." or "x is a wulture : ... x ...").

[@d.l.7416]

It seems like people's objections are that they happen to use the word "concept" to mean "non contradictory concept". Then they use this to deny that "contradictory concepts" work, even though they demonstrably do. Like, you can limit yourself to non contradictory concepts, but you don't need to (as shown by wulture).

[@TheFinntronaut]

Here's a different critique. Let's name it the "semantic analysis critique". "Delia is a wulture & Delia is not a wulture." What is meant by "Delia is a wulture"? That either Delia is a vulture or Delia is not white. Although Delia is white, nevertheless Delia is a vulture, so thus this disjunction is true. What is meant by "Delia is not a wulture"? That either Delia is not a vulture or Delia is white. Although Delia is a vulture, nevertheless Delia is white, so thus this disjunction is also true. Thus, upon semantic analysis we get the proposition "Either Delia is a vulture or Delia is not white & either Delia is not a vulture or Delia is white" ((P∨¬Q)&(¬P∨Q)), which is a consistent statement.

[@henrikmunch8609]

I am not sure I'd know how to play the sticker game. For simplicity, suppose I'm in a room containing only non-white things. The 1st condition (x is x) is too empty to guide me. The 2nd condition tells me that some subset of the things in the room should get a sticker. But which subset? There is not enough information to play the game. I suppose that vagueness is a property of most definitions, but here the vagueness becomes overpowering. Moreover, you say that "well, we know that there are white wultures". Again, I fail to see how we know this. The two conditions in the definition don't specify when I can point to things that are wultures. It seems like there is some 3rd condition that has been smuggled in, which allows to pinpoint wultures. (I should say that I do believe in true contradictions, e.g. the Liar, I just don't understand this example well enough to say it is one.)

[@Moley1Moleo]

At around 12:40 you mention "Of course we shouldn't make the inference that if X is a vulture, then X is not white." because we know there are white vultures. That intution seems to stem from *not* allowing true contradictions. If we are allowing true contraidctions, then yes, Wultures make sense, as might "There are white vultures." and "There are no white vultures." You could make some argument that there are different types of contradictions, and only some of them should be accepted as true contradictions, but some more work is needed there.

[@josephtnied]

Can I object by saying that you're actually invoking two separate words with separate definitions? I can say "A wulture is any creature that is a vulture and is not white", in which case a vulture that is white is not a wulture. But you're saying "A wulture is any creature that's a vulture" and then "A wulture is anything that isn't white". The reason a white vulture is and is not a wulture simultaneously is only because you've provided two separate definitions for this word "wulture." This doesn't mean there are true contradictions. You'd have to create a definition for wulture that's something like "a wulture is a creature that is a vulture and is not a vulture" in which case an argument that your definition is logically incoherent would be accurate.

[@realSAPERE_AUDE]

I guess I don’t understand why people have such an issue with saying that there could be straightforwardly true contradictions, at least in principle..why do people care about that? People want to say true contradictions can’t in any sense ever be possible even in principle?

[@QuiVeutUneMerguez]

If I accept that we get to use truth and language whichever way we want, and accept wulture as a concept, then I think the terms "true", "false", "applies", "doesn't apply" now mean something else. More precisely, if you get to independently define what wulture "applies to" and what it "doesn't apply to", then "apply" and "doesn't apply" are not longer opposites, they are no longer P and not P. So you have something that, at a glance, looks like "P and not P" but which is not actually a contradiction in the typical sense of the word. In that sense, it would be uninterestingly true that Delia is both a wulture and not a wulture. I suppose I'm just paraphrasing Quine here. Like, if we can make up any language rules, and all we care about is what we can derive from the initial rules then I can just stipulate one of the rules of my language is that "There are true contradictions" is a true statement. Therefore there are true contradictions? But that's also just trivialism. Another way to put it: of course there can be true contradictions if you get to choose what "true" and "contradictions" mean.

[@davsamp7301]

But thank you for your vigor and work. All the best to you.

[@toa12th4]

I've thought of another objection that you might want to consider. You can only validly define a word by what it applies to, not what it doesn't apply to. If you only had as the definition that it doesn't apply to anything that's white, well, that makes everything non-white indeterminite unless you also presuppose that it applies to whatever it doesn't explicitly not apply to. It also looks like you've got two definitions for one term - 'Wulture is whatever is a vulture' and 'wulture is whatever isn't white.' You could have a definition in the from of (vulture and not white) or something like that, but that's white one criteria, rather than having vulture and not white be two separate definitions you're trying to apply at once. It seems pretty reasonable to me that either of these things could be seen as a reason to say this isn't a valid way of constructing a concept.

[@davejacob5208]

the way you described how the concept "works" was already pretty odd: we usually say "an x refers to a (single) thing of this and that kind", not "the word x is applicable/to be applied to ALL things of this and that kind". (where "of this and that kind" already includes "not being white" - we do not specifify the reference of words by making lists of independant descriptions of all conceivable referents (like 1. being a vulture, 2. not being white), but by describing a single thing AS the single type of referent of the word: "a human is a bipedal animal without feathers", not "ALL humans 1. are bipedal, 2. are animals, 3. have no feathers.") so if you want to argue about what would usually follow from having such a word in such a language, you should have started by first following the basic rules of how we construct languages /ascribe meaning to words. otherwise, you are basically arguing about the consequences of a new game-rule you made up, but supposedly, those should be consequences for a game that already exists, which you have not made up, and which everyone else plays by the official, well known rules already.

[@LordOfFlies]

This is very offensive. Delete this video.

[@marcuskissinger3842]

The way you clarify the concept of “wulture” is by making two statements with the term that are supposed to give us some sort of idea of how it’s used (in contrast to providing a definition.) but there is no concept that obeys the rules you set out, so you fail to specify a concept in doing so.

[@KaneB]

The term "wulture" obeys those rules. At least, nothing stops people from using the term in accordance with those rules. If your objection is that nevertheless, this is not a "real" concept, then I would wonder (a) what are the criteria for a term expressing a "real" concept and (b) why the assessment of a statement as true or false would require that the statement express "real" concepts (as opposed to mere symbols like "wulture" that have precisely defined rules and can be used to communicate information).

[@СергейМакеев-ж2н]

@@KaneB One way to cache out this so-called "realness" is that, there must be a physically possible placement *of real physical stickers* that satisfies both of your rules. But there clearly isn't.

[@sneakocentral4245]

What do you mean by "concept"? If "concept" is just the rules the term-use obeys, then "there is no concept that obeys the rules" would just be that no term obeys the rules that Kane sets out. So we'd just need the argument for that. Or you may mean something else by "concept".

[@sneakocentral4245]

@@KaneB I don't think he's invoking "real concepts". But his term "concept" is unclear. So better to just ask what @marcuskissinger means by "concept" here.

[@visibleplane]

I feel uncomfortable with the wulture argument because it demonstrates dialetheism but does not demonstrate its significance. I'm happy to grant that "Delia is a wulture" is a true contradiction, but this is due to wulture being poorly defined. In this case, I mean the definition cannot be written as in predicate logic on one line, as specifying conjunctive between "x is not white" and "x is a vulture" clears up the ambiguity in the definition and prevents "Delia is a wulture" from being a true contradiction. This is not to say that "Delia is a wulture" is not a true contradiction, however, someone could defend reasoning by contradiction by saying that only inferences made on well-defined terms are permitted.

[@reclawyxhush]

This is exactly why mathematicians invented the set theory, to get rid of that kind of messiness of the natural language patterns. And in any data processing system whenever any white wulture happens, it churns out error.

[@Juttutin]

This is a commentary on language in the context of transfolk. e.g. 1. men don't have ovaries, but that also 2. transmen are men. It's an interesting approach to the discussion.

[@matthewalan59]

My understanding of the concept of contradiction is that something cannot be "A" and "Not A" at the same time and in the same respect. So, with respect to color (being white), can something be a wulture and not a wulture? No. With respect to being a vulture, can a something be a wulture and not a wulture? No. In comparison to a grain of rice my arm is "long." In comparison to the distance from the earth to the Sun my arm is "not long." So, is it a contradiction to say that my arm is both long and not long at the same time? Obviously not, because a contradiction has that added requirement of "in the same respect." DUH!

[@Songriquole]

Maybe I missed something really obvious but, I don't understand why what you're saying by "wulture" is not just "non-white vultures". If it's not, I don't understand how "is a vulture" and "is not white" are part of the definition of the same term. What connects these rules? Is it "is a vulture OR is not white", or "is a vulture AND is not white"? Something else? Nothing is said about that, unless I missed it. Seems like an ambiguity that is exploited as a proof that true contradictions exist, when in fact it's just an incomplete definition. You need to explicitly say in what way "is a vulture" and "is not white" are linked logically. Otherwise nobody really knows how to apply that concept - or have to make assumptions to use it.

[@QuiVeutUneMerguez]

Yeah, that's the natural assumption, but it's not what Kane means. It's not an AND statement. It's supposed to be two independent rules, none of which have priority over the other.

[@nospagetti3766]

the true contradiction is that it is true that it is a contradiction 💬

[@turtledruid464]

Personally I would consider the case of wultures to be one of ambiguity rather than contradiction. The word wulture is going to correspond to some concept which itself is consistent, but the linguistic interpretation of that concept leads to ambiguity in its application (i.e. there is a fact of the matter as to whether delia is or is not a wulture but the language makes determining that fact impossible). That being said, I don't think the idea of a true contradiction is an indefensible position. Obviously it would be circular to deny the existence of true contradictions on the grounds that they are axiomatically impossible (as some are trying to do in the comments). It seems to me that whether or not there can be true contradictions is a matter of open debate and that the existence or lack thereof of true contradictions can be postulated coherently as a defense of a particular argument. In the end it's down to the individual to decide which option they find more plausible.

[@warptens5652]

I can just say: (1) "The word zblurk applies to me, and the word zblurk doesn't apply to me." And so I'm both a zblurk and not a zblurk, so I found a true contradiction! Except no because 1 was just false. When you remove the talk of vultures and of white and of "applies to all", which is just here to obfuscate, it becomes clear that the reason we end up with a contradiction is simply because we started with a false statement. The statement (2) "wulture applies to all vultures and to no white thing" entails that Bob-the-white-vulture is not white, which is false, therefore 2 is false.

[@GodelsLaw]

We can go further and look at the word "vulture". We might define a vulture as a large carrion eating bird which is also the descendant of any bird which we have previously agreed is a vulture. Of course this is somewhat artificial and not engaging with the scientific problems with the use of the term "vulture". But using this definition anyway, we can consistently apply it to many birds. But considering the case of the Palm-Nut Vulture gives us pause, because here is a small-to-medium sized, fruit eating bird, which is a clear descendant of other vultures. So by our definition, the Palm-Nut Vulture is both a vulture and not a vulture. This reflects a breakdown of our definition. Your example of the "wulture" user encountering a white vulture is clearly analogous to a biologist encountering a Palm-Nut Vulture. Upon inspection, almost all words in natural languages are subject to this kind of breakdown. One possible response to all this is a more phenomenological/psychological approach to "truth". Forget about metaphysics for a moment. Truth is then a disposition or feeling that exists around linguistic utterances, it doesn't appear that we experience around in other perceptions. Seeing a wooden table induces no feeling of truth, falsity, or contradiction, but thinking the statements "that is a wooden table", "that is not a wooden table" and "that is and is not a wooden table" does. The feature of truth that we should emphasize here is that it is social. Who has not said something with confidence to themselves which they later were much less sure of in company. The ability of others to question our statements is an important feature of our experience of truth. This accounts for both why you made your video and I made this comment. So how do we mesh the phenomenological and social aspects of truth? We want to find some way to get your and my sensations to come into alignment. Especially our sensations of "truth" and "contradiction". This is where you introduce your sticker game. But this is, as you know, just an example of a language game. The people who are making reference to formal logic are playing a different language game. Often definitions are just games that link words to parts of language where we understand how to behave. The experience of contradiction is usually linked with not knowing how to behave, just as truth is linked to feeling that we know what to do. The moments of breakdown in the words "vulture" and "wulture" give us precisely this uneasy sense of not knowing what to do. We typically want to feel that we understand true statements. I think that this is why you are encountering so much resistance to the idea of a true contradiction. Interestingly from this phenomenological/psychological perspective it is clear why being false and being contradictory are not the same. Falsity is much closer to the experience of truth than it is to contradiction. It might therefore be interesting to search for more false contradictions, or false truths which are not contradictory. It might be that case that the wulture situation is more like a non-contradictory false truth than it is like a true contradiction.

[@AntonioV42]

I certainly agree that it is possible to construct a viable logical system that tolerates true contradictions. You and other dialetheists are on unassailable grounds as long as that's all you're arguing. What I've yet to see is an argument for why adopting such a logical system would actually be desirable. Personally, it seems to me that in most circumstances when we run into a true contradiction, this tends to cause us problems, and we'd be better off revising our terms in order to avoid it. Like in the case of the inconsistent election rules, lawmakers on all sides would probably want to close the loophole (whether by explicitly enfranchising landowning women or explicitly disenfranchising them). That said, there is a valid place for true contradictions in some forms of speech. Poetry and songs for example can make a great use of them in order to describe experiences that otherwise transcend our ordinary language.

[@ostihpem]

You cannot have true contradictions _in classical logic_. You‘d need a new (paraconsistent) logic. But such logics are dubious because they make only sense with classical logic as interpretation, e.g. 0,25 true or „p and ~p“ make only sense if „0,25 true“ or „p and ~p“ is actually supposed to be true and only classical logic gives that to you. So paraconsistent logic can never actually escape classical logic, it is just a weird model within classical logic as its meta theory. As you can never escape yourself as the perceiver of things you can never escape classical logic and that means: no true contradiction whatsoever.

[@yoavco99]

pretty sure you can have dialetheia in classical logic, you would just have to deal with the principle of explosion.

[@ostihpem]

@@yoavco99 That is just syntax stuff. In semantics p, ~p is false in classical logic. And he talks about true contradictions.

[@P.Ripper]

You're wrong. Paraconsistent logics have their own semantics different to classical logic's one. Actually, there are a lot of ways to give the semantics of paraconsistent logics: quasi-truth functional semantics (with quasi-matrices), partial structures, or even one can resort to dual entailment relations as in bilateral (multilateral) logics. Nevertheless, cocnerning true contradictions, I don't have much to say.

[@KaneB]

@@ostihpem If it turns out that there is no logic that can model this pattern of language use, or if it turns out that paraconsisent logics "make sense only with classical logic as interpretation", I'd take that merely as one among many limitations of formal logic. It's not, in my view, a reason to think that there is anything defective about the language I've described. Formal logic is only a tool -- perhaps it's not the right tool for the job here. So be it.

[@ostihpem]

​@@KaneB But formal (classical) logic underlies our thinking and language. It is our most basic theory at all. Abandoning it would mean you are completely and only in the realm of irrationality. And then can you abandon it at all? When you talk about true contradictions you use classical logic because you want to say: for some p & ~p = T but you just can‘t because classical logic denies. True contradictions are like a foursided triangle: there are symbols and the single words mean something but it doesn‘t fit, and so you must aquit your idea. ;)

[@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd]

My Opinion Wulture (an adjective that applies to that which is wulture and does not apply to that which is white). If an entity is wulture, that entity cannot be white. If I encounter a white entity, that entity is not wulture. If I nonetheless come across an entity that is simultaneously wulture and white, then I must correct my definition of wulture. Now: Wulture (an adjective that applies to that which is wulture)

[@ahuk]

Pookie s

[@josephtnied]

In English, the word "angel" refers to spiritual beings. In German, the word "angel" refers to fishing rods. So a fishing rod is both an "angel" and not an "angel" at the same time, true contradiction, right? No, it's just the same word with two different definitions. Which is exactly how you use the word "wulture" when you provide two definitions: "A wulture is anything that's a vulture" "A wulture is anything that's not white" These are two different definitions of wulture. If you try to put them together, then it'd be like this: "A wulture is anything that is a vulture and is not white." If you do this, then it's immediately obvious that a white vulture would not be a wulture, no contradiction.

[@simorote]

I don't think this is right. With the vulture example you haven't established a contradiction, what you did is set up an inconsistent set of sentences and then derived a contradiction, but that's not surprising nor does it make the contradiction true.

[@Mataw0]

I'm sorry but I really don't understand what you're talking about. Language and logic are tools. If you take the axioms : 1) everything that is a vulture is a wulture 2) every wulture is not white Then you can deduce that there is no white vulture. If you add the axiom "there are white vulture", then your system is inconsistent and as such you can deduce anything, making it useless. There are probaly ways to fix this but I don't know how useful that is. I can always says true is false and false is true but then I don't know how useful that system is. What are you trying to say there?

[@alish4498]

your white wulture example is nothing different than saying today I saw a triangle with four sides. that's it. you can say the sentence. it's a proper use of grammar. but If you tell me I saw a triangle with four sides. what I would tell you is that no. you didn't see a triangle then It was something else. the term wulture definitely doesn't include whitness. change it with "pink panter" is it possible to see a yellow-pink panter? no. there is no contradiction. you are just defining a word and don't apply the rules you set and somehow you are surprised why there is a contradition. the real contradiction is you, buddy. I think you are making a mistake because you use the color which is always a adjective. let say there are wultures and wultures are definitely not sphere-shaped. then you say I saw a sphere-shaped vulture. then that's not a vulture. your claim is a misunderstanding of the word.

[@alish4498]

also there is somthing wrong with the definition itself. wulture should also be recognizable. how do you recognize a wulture when you see one? by your definition being non-white is the only way to get to it. so defiantly you cannot " see " a white wulture to begin with by your oun standard. I hope I was clear.

[@babylundun]

THOS WA TOO TRUE AND FUNNY TOO 😅🤣😂😭

[@alish4498]

@@babylundun :)

[@juliohernandez3509]

There is so much copium in the comments. Its like the law of non contradiction is a religious principle to some people. Logic is so obviously just a feature of formal systems not a feature of reality itself. Kane's position shouldn't be controversial at all

[@juliohernandez3509]

To all the people saying: "You cant define a concept this way... blah blah blah" why not? Who is going to stop anyone from using words this way? If language is man made then we make the rules. The universe isnt going to impose linguistic conventions on us. Why would anyone assume that the way we talk ought to be governed by something outside of us? It's as if people fetishize authority. They want to be told that they can or can't talk a certain way. Humans are baffling

[@aaronchipp-miller9608]

People might just disagree with you

[@juliohernandez3509]

@@aaronchipp-miller9608 people might just be wrong and can't handle it. Not my problem

[@horsymandias-ur]

What silliness when we ALL know one is wrong or right

[@juliohernandez3509]

@@horsymandias-ur what do we ALL know?

[@JimFarrand]

Kane's shirt both is and is not better than in the last True Contradictions video. That aside, I wouldn't say that the definition of "wulture" is unintelligible, but I do think it's just fails to apply to certain things. We can all see what it's telling us to do, but it's also clear that following what it says doesn't always lead to an answer. But I don't see how we can use this failure to justify the idea that there are true contradictions. I don't think you can say that Delia the white vulture both is and is-not a wulture. To say that she is a wulture, you have to selectively apply only part of the definition of wulture. And to say that she is not a wulture, you have to selectively apply only the other part of the definition. But you can't do that with definitions. You don't get to chop up the definition and only apply part of it. And in this case, when do try to apply the whole definition, you see that different parts of the definition conflict, that there is no way to resolve the conflict, and so there is no answer as to whether Delia is a wulture. This is totally different from Delia both being and not being a wulture - if the definition fails to give an answer, then that seems like it's a problem with the definition itself. So I would argue that the definition of "wulture" is basically false. In other cases, where we try to assume something and it leads to an immediate contradiction, that's exactly the conclusion we reach. Eg the famous proof that starts: "Assume sqrt(2) is rational". The conclusion we reach when this leads to contradiction is not that contradictions are true, it's that our assumed definition cannot be. Similarly, the Barber Paradox.

[@beckhamjenkins4798]

Kind of simple but let’s say being a vulture has two rules. One it’s a vulture and two it isn’t white. So a white vulture wouldn’t be a vulture. I think it’s simple but I don’t see how this resolves as a paradox. You would have to define a vulture as both white and non white and then the contradiction seems to be in the set up. That doesn’t mean it’s true. The idea of a square circle is simple. As I say it you can imagine a shape with 4 sides and no angles and one side and 4 angles. I think if you are asked questions about this squircle you could answer them but regardless I don’t think it could exist in the material world in the same way a white vulture couldn’t exist with that set up. If a white vulture exists it would contradict the second claim.

[@samlastname1252]

Hello thank you for the video, I think you should explain why someone would want to incorporate this into their way of thinking. I have read a little Derrida and he gets to a place where I understand why it follows that I should understand everything as being both X and not X at the same time, because all X's rely on a principle of essence and fullness, which itself relies on a principle of non-essence and emptiness, therefore everything is always already full and empty at the same time (oversimplified but I hope not incorrect) I do not see why I would seek to include words with dual definitions into my language. For instance (and I hope this is not an unfair example) if I'd never met a bisexual or nonbinary person, I would think that gay = attracted to the same sex && not attracted to the opposite sex, and straight = attracted to the opposite sex && not attracted to the same sex. When I met a bisexual person, I could decide that (like you have done with the wulture) that the bisexual is both gay and not gay, both straight and not straight, at the same time. Instead of doing that, I am inclined to update my definitions to: gay = only attracted to same sex bi = attracted to both straight = only attracted to the opposite sex And then update my positions again once coming into contact with nonbinary people. Why would I not simply rework my definition of wulture once I come across Delia, who the word does poorly with, rather than incorporating such ambiguity into the sentence "X is not a Wulture". Simply, I think the definition 'A Wulture is a non-white Vulture' would work much the same in most contexts, and delete confusion in the case of Delia. I look forward to your response, and hope that this comment comes across as a genuine question rather than an attack, yours, sam

[@samlastname1252]

Hi I've just watched your video on contradictions in science & that explains why one /should/ believe in contradictions, but not necessarily in true contradictions, nor Wultures. :) Just want to confirm that I see the benefits of certain instances of dialethiesm, but not in the case of the Wulture :) Perhaps I am missing something.

[@dylansmith999]

This is you; "Contradictory scenarios exist guys look: - It is green and it is not green. - So it is green and it's not green. So it's true that it is green AND it's true that it's not green. Wow. This means something and does not indicate an inconsistency problem nor any need for clarification or alteration of definitions." A contradiction is not an observation to which can be assigned a truth value. Noting the occurence of a contradiction is definitionally to note that 2 or more definitions, facts, or scenarios cannot all occur at once. So unless your saying that in the case of a contradiction between A and B it is true that A and B cannot both be simultaneously the case then you are misusing the word. Saying " a white vulture is a vulture and it's white. So it is a wulture, that's true. And it's not a wulture, that's also true." Does nothing. You're like the guy in the butterfly meme. You're ppinting to a contradiction and saying "is this truth?" - no, it's a contradiction. you constructed a contradiction, explained what makes the statements contradictory over and over but then just conclude that your word IS well defined and BOTH statements are true despite the contradiction that you yourself constructed. This is circular reasoning without any payoff. Assume two contradictory statements could both be simultaneously true, (which in itself is like a meta contradiction) - then what? How does reason even work in such a scenario?

[@ahuk]

Ye s' Vulture 's cuz (p)(5' 5"p)in(v)

[@hasanplaster1510]

~pp a classic problem that we get in multiple forms of statement that breaks the concept of non contradiction as a weird things a lot of people in the comment seems to think that it only showes in your example and not in real life language but you can easily take a statement like that in real life spichally in how loose some definitions are a basic example is " *this statement is false* " its a statement in which its truthfulness implies that its false and its falsehood implies that its true now for the point of the video is it technically fine to do it logically yes if you want to do your own system of logic in genral logic is a system that we human made by ourselves and we directed it to give us information and knowledge about reality but you can go against that and not try to make it describe it or get close to it for the system of formal logic that we use we have a simple rule to dodge such paradoxes "any statement that following one (defintion/set of the information that it have) necessitate that its true and following another (definitions/set of information that it have) necessitate that its false *is automatically refused* " (i wrote it on the fly you can probably word it in a better way) so the example before "this statement is false" is refused according to the rule before cause following the info that it have (it being false) give it the "false" attribute but following the definition of a true statement "a statement that only have correct information" we get that its true to put it simple true contradiction are refused in our formal logic cause we simply put a rule to refute it and make our assumptions consistent

[@PrinceofQuarkness]

A vulture is a wulture iff the following sentence is true: "this sentence is false"

[@PrinceofQuarkness]

Perfectly intelligible. If you see a vulture, you evaluate the truth of "this sentence is false" and if it's true, you put a sticker on the vulture. A child could understand it.

[@Paradoxarn.]

If there are true contradictions, then there is a contradiction. From a contradiction every proposition can be derived. If every proposition can be derived from a contradiction then it follows that if there are true contradictions, then every proposition is true. Thus, every proposition is true, including that there are no true contradictions. Still, your example is rather ingenious and I'm aware of the existence of non-classical logic systems which can accommodate true contradictions, so I want to add three other objections to your argument. One possible response is that your argument is in some sense begging the question since it tries to show that there are true contradictions by postulating the existence of a particular true contradiction. This essentially becomes a play with definitions where you say that according to your definition of wulture, there are true contradictions. However, just as you cannot define God into existence, you cannot define true contradictions into existence. Second, your suggestion, when responding to the meaninglessness objection, that there are further conditions to what counts as a genuine word seems that it could be correct. It might be that the meaning of real words cannot be fully captured by a set of sufficient and necessary conditions as you try to do with “wulture”. Thirdly, you presuppose that propositions are truth-bearers. However, if propositions aren’t truth-bearers, then propositions cannot be true in a strict sense and thus no proposition is a true contradiction.

[@bo6686]

Words don't have definitions, words have usages, wulture can't have that usage, becuase you have to either use it for white vultures, not use it for white vultures or sometimes/some people using it for white vultures. None of which are contradictions.

[@real_pattern]

weird flex but ok. such contradictions elicit the same response as claims of moral realism; 'so what? idc.' but as someone also asked, if for x to be a wulture is for x to be a vulture *and* non-white, and delia is a white vulture, then delia just isn't a wulture, no? i don't grok wulture culture. (i see i was wrong here now.)

[@duder6387]

No this is not correct; the term wulture applies to all vultures but does not apply to things that are white.

[@real_pattern]

​​@@duder6387 i see, so if neither criteria is prioritized and delia is a white vulture, then delia is a wulture according to one criterion, but isn't according to the other. can we say that whether delia is a wulture is indeterminate or there's no fact of the matter about it or it's undecidable? it seems like whether delia is a wulture just depends on which criteria you prioritize, since no 'and' or 'or' connects them into one compound criterion, and delia isn't both a wulture and not with either separate criteria alone. are there examples of contradictions that don't rely on conventional categories we stipulate into existence that won't ever get picked up by natural languages, that actually matter?

[@duder6387]

The fact that it’s indeterminate seems to indicate that it is a contradiction. If Delia is a vulture she is a wulture but if she is white she is not a wulture, so she both is an is not a wulture. A classic contradiction would be, “This statement is false” or its strengthened version “this statement is not true.” It’s called the Liar’s Paradox, and it has some vast implications in logic and mathematics.

[@davsamp7301]

There is Not, what cannot be, for what is, is, and what is Not, is Not, and If it where to be, that what is Not would be, it would be not. A contradiction describes an Impossibility, so If one would be true, meaning that it would be, ergo possible, the Impossible would be possible, but that is Not possible. Therefore, to speak of true contradictions is to speak absurdly indeed, for it says Something absurd and it is absurd to suppose, that a contradiction, being a contradiction, could nontheless be true and Not False, presupposing the non-contradiction of itself, which is Impossible, as it is a contradiction. Even, If it May Not be False, it would Not be true, for it cannot. And to try to argue in any way whatsoever would be futile from the get Go, as wrong as it is, for there is No sense at all to the idea Put forth, and No way to be gone, to reach or defend it, that would Not turn upon itself by necessity. There is No escape to anywhere Else, for never will Shake and tremble the Heart of Truth, that what is, is, and what is Not, is Not, and never both Nor neither if adressed. Those who where shaken by the seeming Option of its possibility where, although mistaken, at least right enough to fear what must be feared. But those, who did Not even that, but either rejoiced in it or stayed at ease and Disinterest to it, have understood nothing at all, wandering blind with seeing eyes. Blinded by Darkness and filled to the brim by emptyness. Not for to insult is this meant to be written, but to Help, while only hinting at the depth of tragedy, that plagues us since the dawn of memory.

[@dominiks5068]

ngl the "wulture" video is still by far the worst you've ever made

[@KaneB]

Very convincing objection.

[@dominiks5068]

@@KaneB This wasn't meant to be an objection, obviously. You got 278 comments under your initiial video, many of which pointed out why the video is terrible.

[@KaneB]

@@dominiks5068 Well, I'd say it's about as convincing as the comments that were intended as objections.

[@rebeccar25]

Here’s a comment of how upset I am and how silly this all is. Imagine there’s multiple paragraphs.

[@jonathangjertsen3450]

I disagree. By which I mean I agree

[@yoavco99]

needed this video

[@aelamf]

That's pretty intersting

[@FuzzyJeffTheory]

If you want to play this game, you have to say any proposition is both true and false, by the principle of explosion. Not really useful, but if you want to define truth in that way, fine. It is much more useful to take presuppose that propositions cannot be both true and false.

[@TheAntira]

only in classical logic - by using a paraconsistent logic, i.e. one where explosion fails, you avoid this problem

[@FuzzyJeffTheory]

@@TheAntira Okay, that's fair enough. I guess an apt way to summarize this is that "there are true contradictions if you use a logic that allows contradictions". Then I guess which logic to use is a practical matter.

[@fable4315]

I as a computer science with an interest in mathematics (and formal logic), the first objection is not resolved. The definition can be understandable but still not well-formed. You haven’t shown that there exist true contradictions, you have shown that there exist unintelligible definitions. In classical logic you have violated the law of the excluded middle. Mathematically, if there exists a „true contradiction“ then everything is meaningless, because we can derive False and from False we can derive anything. Where is the formal logic system? For the second objection I don’t agree either. If we know there are white wultures, it makes no sense to define a wulture as not being white. This indeed is inconsistent with reality. It feels like you are mixing language with logic/math. Yes I can say anything, but it doesn’t mean that this is „true“. Because for me true/false, something is or something isn’t is a mathematical claim.

[@drachnae]

Of course, if it is the case that there are true contradictions, then the laws of classical logic which preclude true contradictions would not hold. Citing these rules of classical logic in your objection seems question-begging to me.

[@fable4315]

@@drachnae no, because then it is your responsibility (or the one who says there are true contradictions) to come up with a consistent framework, which allows for (true) contradictions and is useful. I have studied the basics of discrete mathematics and we covered like proof systems. Formally a proof system consists of two things. A function, that assigns each „Statement“ there is in your language a truth value (0 or 1) and a proof function which takes a statement and another element in your universe and outputs it the second input is a proof for the first input. Then you can talk about completeness (every true statement has a prove) and soundness (every statement that has a prove is true). But this also assumes classical set theory and also it excludes true contradictions by the mean that a function has for one input only one possible output (left-uniqueness). So if you reject all of that, then you have to think of axioms and all that stuff which are useful. And no one can deny that the current axioms and fundamental concepts if math are not useful right now.