Those who deny the first principle should be flogged or burned until they admit that it is not the same thing to be burned and not burned, or whipped and not whipped.
Avicenna, Metaphysics: Book I.
3 replies on “Avicenna”
That’s a bit harsh. But I did use as the canonic case of in a recently published paper.
Eh, your software deleted all my italicized characters.
I look at it as something close to a koan. If one finds a person who, as Hume put it, is “entirely disingenuous,” and holds opinions just for sport — or perhaps because of a cultish adherence to some postmodernist philosophy — then why not put him to a test the bad effects of which he could just walk away from by admitting that he isn’t serious?
“Disputes with men, pertinaciously obstinate in their principles, are, of all others, the most irksome; except, perhaps, those with persons, entirely disingenuous, who really do not believe the opinions they defend, but engage in the controversy, from affectation, from a spirit of opposition, or from a desire of showing wit and ingenuity, superior to the rest of mankind. The same blind adherence to their own arguments is to be expected in both; the same contempt of their antagonists; and the same passionate vehemence, in enforcing sophistry and falsehood. And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles.”
And in the case of someone who pretends to disbelieve in the Law of Non-Contradiction, the “First Principle,” then what objection could he make to coercion at all? Coercion is the same as non-coercion. Therefore what I, the Torturer, do to you is the same as not doing it to you!
3 replies on “Avicenna”
That’s a bit harsh. But I did use as the canonic case of in a recently published paper.
Eh, your software deleted all my italicized characters.
I look at it as something close to a koan. If one finds a person who, as Hume put it, is “entirely disingenuous,” and holds opinions just for sport — or perhaps because of a cultish adherence to some postmodernist philosophy — then why not put him to a test the bad effects of which he could just walk away from by admitting that he isn’t serious?
“Disputes with men, pertinaciously obstinate in their principles, are, of all others, the most irksome; except, perhaps, those with persons, entirely disingenuous, who really do not believe the opinions they defend, but engage in the controversy, from affectation, from a spirit of opposition, or from a desire of showing wit and ingenuity, superior to the rest of mankind. The same blind adherence to their own arguments is to be expected in both; the same contempt of their antagonists; and the same passionate vehemence, in enforcing sophistry and falsehood. And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles.”
And in the case of someone who pretends to disbelieve in the Law of Non-Contradiction, the “First Principle,” then what objection could he make to coercion at all? Coercion is the same as non-coercion. Therefore what I, the Torturer, do to you is the same as not doing it to you!