Principle of contradiction

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Related to Principle of contradiction: Law of noncontradiction

(Logic)

the axiom or law of thought that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time, or a thing must either be or not be, or the same attribute can not at the same time be affirmed and and denied of the same subject; also called the law of the excluded middle.

See also: Contradiction

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Logical impossibility

References in periodicals archive ?

Baumgarten only devotes one paragraph to the principle of contradiction and another to that of sufficient reason, while Wolff devotes a whole chapter to each.

Baumgarten, Alexander. Metaphysics: A Critical Translation, with Kant's Elucidations, Selected Notes, and Related Materials

The principle of contradiction, however, does not serve the book well in every aspect.

Matthew Rebhorn. Pioneer Performances: Staging the Frontier

Watkins discerns in the Crusius selection a sophisticated integration of empiricist and rationalist views, an account of truth rooted in something more than the mere principle of contradiction, a libertarian theory of freedom, an account of space and time that partially anticipates Kant's, and hints of a conception of necessary metaphysical truths as ' a priori conditions' of our understanding.

Eric Watkins, ed.: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Background Source Materials

Thomas Aquinas' principle of contradiction which says that something cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time.

Vision TV: subtlety and blurred vision: it presumes that all religions are equivalent by nature and that there can be no real distinctions between them

In our "present age," we are preoccupied with "reflection," wholly lacking both passion and the "revolutionary" age's embrace of the vital power of the principle of contradiction.

Bukdahl, Jorgen. Soren Kierkegaard and the Common Man

But is it not circular to define the principle of contradiction as "the proposition that no predicate contradictory of a thing can belong to it"--?

Further in A7, he says, "in accordance with the principle of contradiction.

TWO PHILOSOPHICAL LETTERS

The first stage establishes the principle of contradiction as the formal ground of possibility, the second stage proves the existence of something that can supply the content of concepts, and the third stage shows that this something not only exists, but exists necessarily and in fact must be God.

The status of the principle of contradiction is, however, somewhat different for Kant from what it is for many of his rationalist predecessors.

40) The clear implication here is that every possibility relies on the givenness of a certain content, which in turn must not violate the principle of contradiction.

KANT ON THE MATERIAL GROUND OF POSSIBILITY: FROM THE ONLY POSSIBLE ARGUMENT TO THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON