It's interesting that there are contexts were the utterance of a tautology (is "tautology" the right word? is the law of non-contradiction a tautology?) can be, if not informative, at least therapeutic. Some of the tautologies I've given do have this therapeutic use.
In the case you cite, there have apparently historically been people who have denied the claim that truth of faith and truths of reason never contradict one another. I can kind of see how they might form a four-valued logic with the truth values TfTr, TfFr, FfTr, FfFr ("true in faith and true in reason", etc.), and then say that p is true in faith iff it has truth value TfTr or TfFr, and so on. It's a crazy view, but it is one that is worth countering.
I saw the following quote from the current Pope in today's paper and thought of this series:
ReplyDelete"truths of faith and reason never contradict one another"
(sourced here if you're interested)
It's interesting that there are contexts were the utterance of a tautology (is "tautology" the right word? is the law of non-contradiction a tautology?) can be, if not informative, at least therapeutic. Some of the tautologies I've given do have this therapeutic use.
ReplyDeleteIn the case you cite, there have apparently historically been people who have denied the claim that truth of faith and truths of reason never contradict one another. I can kind of see how they might form a four-valued logic with the truth values TfTr, TfFr, FfTr, FfFr ("true in faith and true in reason", etc.), and then say that p is true in faith iff it has truth value TfTr or TfFr, and so on. It's a crazy view, but it is one that is worth countering.