esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek) (04/21/85)
[or, Subject: Re: Antecedent Instance of Tenet Sought] > Ayn Rand asserted that: Logic is the art of non-contradictory > identification. Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan Please clarify the use of the word "identification" in this context. While we're on the subject of logic, I've been meaning to ask you about your use of the expression "non-vacuous tautologies". You have implied in the past (quite a while ago) that there ARE such tautologies. OK, I'll bite: what do you mean, and what's your evidence for some tautologies being non-vacuous? The received view in philosophy seems to be that all tautologies are vacuous. I don't disagree with you -- I just wanted to hear you expand on your provocative suggestion. This brings up something about Rand. I've heard that she once claimed that her whole philosophy followed from Aristotle's principle of non- contradiction. Did she ever say anything like that? There may be such a thing as non-vacuous tautologies, but to suppose that THAT much follows from logic alone strikes me as absurd. (That Leibniz made a similar assertion does not reduce the absurdity.) -- All tautologies are tautologies. Paul V. Torek, curiously