Correcting the Principle of Identity

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The discussion at http://able2know.org/topic/152707-1 shows the statement "every truth must be true" to be an instance of "A is A."

So every truth must be true. And what about falsehoods? We have a problem here: if we say that every falsehood must be false, then we are saying that every falsehood must be the truth it falsifies. The solution is to say that every true falsehood must be a truth, by which any falsehood, if true, is also a truth. But its truth must be different from that of a truth, since it is a falsehood. And what could such a difference be? The only possible difference between a truth and a falsehood is that a falsehood must have no being: its being consists in referring to nothing, which makes it also nothing, despite being something that refers to nothing. So the statement "every true falsehood must be a truth" possibly means "nothing must be nothing," which in turn possibly means:

1. Anything -- possibly nothing -- can be something.

2. Nothing -- as possibly something -- must be what it is, which is nothing.

Both meanings refer to a falsehood only as the falsity of something, rather than as a truth -- one of a falsehood. Indeed, as a truth, no falsehood can be nothing. So despite making a falsehood nothing we possibly get something, first explicitly -- the first meaning -- then implicitly -- the second meaning. The reason is that, since every true falsehood must also be a truth, even as nothing it still can be something: it always has a possible being. Which becomes clear when we formulate "A must be A" as "nothing can be different from itself." In this form, the so-called "principle of identity" becomes either:

1. Everything must be identical to itself.

2. The being of nothing can be different from itself.

And whenever "nothing" means a falsehood "nothing can be different from itself" cannot mean "everything must be identical to itself" -- since it means "a falsehood can be different from itself." Hence, by being a falsehood, nothing is -- or at least can be -- no longer nothing, so "A must be A" can apply to falsehoods only by applying to their truth -- by which a correct reformulation of the so-called "principle of identity" would be the statement "every truth must be true."

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Since my first post in this thread had no answer in three days, I will proceed with unfolding the consequences of the statement "every truth must be true." First, I will rewrite it in the following way:

Quote:

If any truth were untrue, then it would not be a truth: every truth must be true.

In this form, the necessary truth of any truth becomes just obvious, exempting us from further discussions: every truth must be true simply because no truth can be false without ceasing to be a truth.

However, things now become complicated by that we are no longer talking about anything at all, or some "A," but about any truth:

1. Since a truth does not refer to whatever is true, but rather to the circumstance of its being true, it is the truth of a being, rather than that being itself.

2. The truth of a being is identical to that same being as true -- a true being -- or nothing else than the true being it refers to, which is different from it, by which it is different from itself:

Quote:

And yet, since the truth of a being is a true being, for any truth to be true it must have itself as a truth, which must be different from it.

Thus we have now two different moments:

1. If any truth were untrue, then it would not be a truth: every truth must be true.

2. And yet, since the truth of a being is a true being, for any truth to be true it must have itself as a truth, which must be different from it.

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@guigus,

Dude, seriously, have you been a CEO? ..very unlikely. Have you engaged in politics as politician or lobbyist? ..very unlikely.

When you get a very high ranking job, or get to know something about leadership, you'll know that your thesis are nothing bot rainbowchasing.

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@HexHammer,

HexHammer wrote:

Dude, seriously, have you been a CEO? ..very unlikely. Have you engaged in politics as politician or lobbyist? ..very unlikely.

When you get a very high ranking job, or get to know something about leadership, you'll know that your thesis are nothing bot rainbowchasing.

This is a philosophy forum, right? Or is it a business management forum? If you want to be a very succe$$ful man, I think you are in the wrong place, dude.

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@HexHammer,

HexHammer wrote:

Dude, seriously, have you been a CEO? ..very unlikely. Have you engaged in politics as politician or lobbyist? ..very unlikely.

When you get a very high ranking job, or get to know something about leadership, you'll know that your thesis are nothing bot rainbowchasing.

Now, seriously, let me continue with my philosophy stuff, despite knowing I will not be able to use it in my business management curriculum.

What we have here is a consequence of rigorously avoiding a reification of truth, by considering it as the circumstance of anything being true, rather than as whatever is true. Considering any truth as whatever is true makes it necessary, as the necessary truth of the being it refers to.

However, the circumstance of anything being true is identical to something as true -- a true being -- so every truth must be identical to a true being, which is different from it: every truth must be different from itself.

By identifying any truth with a true something through the circumstance of that something being true, we avoid reifying all truth, but we end up with a truth being different from itself. Indeed, reifying all truth is not simply identifying it with something true, but omitting in that process the means by which that identification becomes legitimate: the circumstance of that something being true.

1 Reply

@guigus,

You are totally missing my point, it isn't about buisness or politics, it's about the stuff you make, it's nonsens.

Truth is usually subjective, truth can be misunderstood, truth can be bended and twistet by demagogues.
..it's a very naive approach with this "truth". Wake up dude.

It's like saying if a christmas present exist, then Santa Claus must exist.

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@HexHammer,

HexHammer wrote:

You are totally missing my point, it isn't about buisness or politics, it's about the stuff you make, it's nonsens.

Truth is usually subjective, truth can be misunderstood, truth can be bended and twistet by demagogues.
..it's a very naive approach with this "truth". Wake up dude.

It's like saying if a christmas present exist, then Santa Claus must exist.

You are not entirely wrong: truth has indeed a subjective dimension, it can indeed be misunderstood, and it can be "bended" and "twisted" by demagogues -- and not only by them. And so? What is your point? If you are trying to say that because truth can be manipulated it does not exist, then you are losing your time (and remember, dear leader, time is money): if truth did not exist, then it would be impossible for demagogues (or you) to manipulate it. And your last reasoning, "It's like saying if a Christmas present exist, then Santa Claus must exist," besides manifestly wrong, what relation to my previous post could it possibly have? Could you be confusing a Christmas present with a truth and Santa with the circumstance of that Christmas present being true? If so, then the correct relation would make a Christmas present in your mind (a truth) refer to a Christmas present in your living room (a true being), rather than to Santa. Then why Santa? Do you still need Santa to get Christmas presents?

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@guigus,

You see truth, because you "want to see it". Your kind of truth only works in a rethorical universe, not in real life, there you can't make use of any of your rethorical things.

I'v seen so many "truth" threads where navelgazing philosophers gets their mental mastrubation lead by naive ideologies and meteaphors, blinded by beautiful rethorics.

I'll save the both of us a headache and just put you on ignore.

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@HexHammer,

HexHammer wrote:

You see truth, because you "want to see it".

Let me "see": are you telling me there is no truth? Then how can you be saying the truth? Or you are lying? Perhaps what you are saying is neither true nor false, just meaningless and indifferent.

HexHammer wrote:

Your kind of truth only works in a rethorical universe, not in real life, there you can't make use of any of your rethorical things.

What is the difference between "real" and "true" life? So truth for you is a joke, but not reality? How is that? And regarding (correctly spelled) rhetoric, I suspect you to be the rhetoric guy: I don't see the slightest mention to any of my arguments in your post.

HexHammer wrote:

I'v seen so many "truth" threads where navelgazing philosophers gets their mental mastrubation lead by naive ideologies and meteaphors, blinded by beautiful rethorics.

Did you ever heard about psychoanalytic projection?

HexHammer wrote:

I'll save the both of us a headache and just put you on ignore.

You have so far made nothing else than ignoring me, so I don't mind if you make it official. And my head is fine, so speak for yourself.

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@HexHammer,

HexHammer wrote:

You see truth, because you "want to see it".

One thing is for sure: I want to see the truth, don't you? So let us proceed. I will add two more logical steps to complete what I call "truth variability":

If any truth were untrue, then it would not be a truth: every truth must be true. And yet, since the truth of a being is a true being, for any truth to be true it must have itself as a truth, which must be different from it. So its truth must be different from itself, hence untrue. But if the truth of a truth is untrue, then the truth it makes true is also untrue: any truth becomes its falsity, which makes every truth variable.

We have four steps here:

1) Any truth is necessarily true.
2) A truth is different from a true being, which it is its necessary truth.
3) A true being is different from itself, hence false, by being different from the truth it makes true, to which it is identical.
4) Any truth is false, for being made true by a falsehood.

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I have said what other speak in silence.

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Truth is an agreement between people. You can go no further than that and keep speaking with sense.

I mean, you can't talk about things that are beyond language, all metaphisics suffer from this problem. There is no thing in itself to speak of, it's all language and the sense that a sentence can have in a language game.

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@chicalleje,

so truth is inter-subjective in nature, and it is therefore about sharing a common meaning, right?

1 Reply

@HexHammer,

HexHammer wrote:

I have said what other speak in silence.

You mean the dead?

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@chicalleje,

chicalleje wrote:

Truth is an agreement between people.

And so it happens that I do not agree with you, then what is your way out of disagreement? Or perhaps only agreement is true for you?

chicalleje wrote:

You can go no further than that and keep speaking with sense.

Sorry, I didn't know I couldn't go further than that, so now it's too late. By the way, where are your arguments?

chicalleje wrote:

I mean, you can't talk about things that are beyond language, all metaphisics suffer from this problem.

So far I didn't go beyond language, although I will -- if you have the patience to follow me there -- and my reasoning is not metaphysical: it is an investigation of the very concept of truth -- the same concept of truth you follow yourself, despite not being aware of it.

chicalleje wrote:

There is no thing in itself to speak of, it's all language and the sense that a sentence can have in a language game.

So "it's all language"? A "game"? And I am the metaphysical guy? Besides, if there is no thing in itself to speak of, then what are you speaking of when you say "thing in itself"? Are you saying that you are not saying anything? It seems to me that you are losing that "game" of yours...

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@existential potential,

existential potential wrote:

so truth is inter-subjective in nature, and it is therefore about sharing a common meaning, right?

I am just beginning my investigation of truth, so please be patient: it will take seventy-two logical steps -- including those already presented -- to get there.

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@guigus,

guigus wrote:

The discussion at http://able2know.org/topic/152707-1 shows the statement "every truth must be true" to be an instance of "A is A."

No, that's not really an instance of "A is A." "Truth" is a noun. It is something. "True" is an adjective. It describes something. An instance of "A is A" would be "all dogs are dogs." "Every truth must be true" is more like the statement "all dogs must have four legs." Although "true" describes true statements, just as "four-legged" describes dogs, "true" and "truth" are not the same things.

guigus wrote:

And what about falsehoods? We have a problem here: if we say that every falsehood must be false, then we are saying that every falsehood must be the truth it falsifies.

That makes absolutely no sense. You're confusing the statement "every falsehood must be false" with the statement "it is true that every falsehood must be false" and coming up with something that sounds like the Liar's Paradox, but it's not paradoxical, it's just bad reasoning. In any event, "every falsehood must be false" has the same problem as the statement "every truth must be true" -- they're not equivalent to "A is A."

guigus wrote:

The solution is to say that every true falsehood must be a truth, by which any falsehood, if true, is also a truth....

Everything from here on is pure rubbish.

1 Reply

Help me out, I don't speak english very well.

What we call reality, the objetive world, the physical world, you name it, it 'is our view of the world. Truth is our interpretations of the sense data, what we all agree that happens, what we can share. You can desagree in various matters, but you can't desagree in logical thinking, not matter how hard you try, you can't think ilogically, so logic is an agreement. The scientific method is another tool of agreement. Reality is what we all agree to be true using language.

You can't say that truth must be true, that sentences has no meaning at all.
Can I say that every object with length either has a meter long or that it hasn't? Answer is NO, theres one thing that have length but I can not say that it is a meter long or that it's not. That thing is the International Prototype Meter.

"A = A" is one thing, but you are doing something different with "A truth must be True", what you can say is "truth = truth" and that says nothing. All your reasoning is based upon a senseless statement, that every truth must be true, that is the same as to remain in silence.

Sorry if I can't make myself clear. I though that I could do it but I can't find the right words.

Good Luck.

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

guigus wrote:
The discussion at http://able2know.org/topic/152707-1 shows the statement "every truth must be true" to be an instance of "A is A."

No, that's not really an instance of "A is A." "Truth" is a noun. It is something.

So every noun guarantees the existence of whatever it refers to: God exists just because "God" is a noun, Santa Claus exists just because "Santa Claus" is a noun, and so on. This remembers me of the "proofs" of God's existence from medieval times.

joefromchicago wrote:

"True" is an adjective. It describes something. An instance of "A is A" would be "all dogs are dogs." "Every truth must be true" is more like the statement "all dogs must have four legs." Although "true" describes true statements, just as "four-legged" describes dogs, "true" and "truth" are not the same things.

Take the adjective "existent." According to you, "existence is existent" is not an instance of "A is A" (every noun has a corresponding adjective form conveying the same meaning, so its form cannot be used to determine its philosophical status: syntax analysis is not yet philosophy). The sentence "every truth must be true" has the same meaning of the sentence "every truth must be a truth," since to be a truth and to be true are the same "thing." However, the statement "all dogs must have four legs" is not an instance of "A is A," just because not all "things" with four legs are dogs.

joefromchicago wrote:

guigus wrote:
And what about falsehoods? We have a problem here: if we say that every falsehood must be false, then we are saying that every falsehood must be the truth it falsifies.

That makes absolutely no sense. You're confusing the statement "every falsehood must be false" with the statement "it is true that every falsehood must be false" and coming up with something that sounds like the Liar's Paradox, but it's not paradoxical, it's just bad reasoning. In any event, "every falsehood must be false" has the same problem as the statement "every truth must be true" -- they're not equivalent to "A is A."

Although that has not much to do with my reasoning, the statement "every falsehood must be false" means exactly the same thing as the statement "it is true that every falsehood must be false," as any statement contains an implicit assertion of its own truth: "it is false that it is raining" is perfectly equivalent to "it is false that it is true that it is raining."

guigus wrote:

The solution is to say that every true falsehood must be a truth, by which any falsehood, if true, is also a truth....

Everything from here on is pure rubbish.
[/quote]

Better than impure rubbish.

1 Reply

@guigus,

guigus wrote:

So every noun guarantees the existence of whatever it refers to: God exists just because "God" is a noun, Santa Claus exists just because "Santa Claus" is a noun, and so on. This remembers me of the "proofs" of God's existence from medieval times.

No, a noun doesn't guarantee the existence of whatever it refers to. I'm not sure how you could have jumped to that absurd conclusion. A deductive statement need not be empirically true, only logically valid. "All unicorns are unicorns" is a valid statement, despite the fact that there are no such things as unicorns.

guigus wrote:

Take the adjective "existent." According to you, "existence is existent" is not an instance of "A is A" (every noun has a corresponding adjective form conveying the same meaning, so its form cannot be used to determine its philosophical status: syntax analysis is not yet philosophy).

No, nouns and their corresponding adjectives do not convey the same meaning. If they did, they'd be the same words.

guigus wrote:

The sentence "every truth must be true" has the same meaning of the sentence "every truth must be a truth," since to be a truth and to be true are the same "thing."

Nope.

guigus wrote:

However, the statement "all dogs must have four legs" is not an instance of "A is A," just because not all "things" with four legs are dogs.

No, "all dogs must have four legs" is not an instance of "A is A" because "dogs" and "things with four legs" aren't the same thing.

guigus wrote:

Although that has not much to do with my reasoning, the statement "every falsehood must be false" means exactly the same thing as the statement "it is true that every falsehood must be false," as any statement contains an implicit assertion of its own truth: "it is false that it is raining" is perfectly equivalent to "it is false that it is true that it is raining."

Indeed.

guigus wrote:

Better than impure rubbish.

To each his own.

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Correcting the Principle of Identity

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