This weblog deals with philosophical issues. Its major focus is on epistemology and fuzzy logic.
Published on June 17, 2004 By EricBright In Philosophy
Is a girl purely female, and a boy purely male?

When we are talking about relativity, the common idea reveals as, 'not everything is relative. You are either a boy or a girl, not both.' But, are we? The idea came from a statement that says, 'we cannot have one particular thing in its both opposite states at the same time.' This is apparent the most profound thought, which all critics finally claim against relativity. Sometimes, they attach a truth table of p and q statements to their papers to support their words. Here, I can see two major faults leading to the idea of 'Principle of Contradiction,'

1- Since we learnt of, and are using several new principles exactly opposite of what is strongly claimed, and it works, the claim is refuted.

2- No claim can be supported (justified) by any evidence. Statements can be only refuted, if they are at least testable.

Firstly, I like to give you a clear view of the issue. Thus I take following paragraph from 'Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion,' by William L. Reese, Humanities Press, 1996, ISBN 0-391-03865-6, pp. 139, "CONTRADICTION, PRINCIPLE OF. Along with the principle of identity and excluded middle, one of the three laws of thought.

(1) It is , according to Aristotle, ... one of the "most certain of all principles" that "the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect." This law of thought is sometimes stated as a law of being: the same thing cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same respect. Aristotle accepted both applications.

(2) Since the point is that if a given proposition is true its contradiction is false, it is not the case that the given proposition and its negation can both be held to be true, i.e., "~(p.~p)." For the truth table of this statement form refer to ... ."


The fundamental flaw is where the proportional logic is 'unquestionably' accepted, while it is questionable. Hopefully, the proper alternative has been discovered in 1965 by Professor L. A. Zadeh at Berkeley University. He opened a new window toward the way we should think through, long ago. The way that logic plays the game. The way that our universe turns.

Comments
on Jun 17, 2004
The primary problem with the article is that it assumes that "boy" is the opposite of "girl". In fact they are both subclasses of the greater collection, "human" (or "species", if you want to talk about "boy gorillas", etc.) There are many properties that are truly binary, as the principle of contradiction requires. Boy/Girl is not one of them.
on Jun 18, 2004
It is exactly what is tried to show.

Eric Bright