Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

THE DEFENCE OF PNC 143necessarily not the case that both it and its negation are true ().There is, it is true, a relatively recent debate about whether PNC isreally an a priori and analytical truth, or whether, on the contrary, it ispossible to deny PNC and to do so for a reason. But this debate confirmsthat we find it difficult to imagine a denial of PNC. For the recent debateabout whether PNC is a priori and analytical is largely about whether PNCis revisable, i.e. whether, granted that we actually accept PNC, we couldhave reason to cease to accept it. (See, for example, Hilary Putnam 1983.)The question in this debate is whether we could have reason to think thatsome contradictions are true. But this debate assumes that, actually, we doaccept PNC, i.e. we think that no contradictions are true, and that,actually, we have no reason not to accept PNC. The recent debate isbetween those who think PNC is unrevisable, hence a priori andanalytical, and those who think that it is in principle revisable. But thisdebate is evidently very different from the debate between <strong>Aristotle</strong> andthose whom he thinks deny PNC. For those whom he thinks deny PNCare not concerned with whether we might in the future come to havereason to revise and give up PNC, i.e. to think that some contradictions aretrue. Rather, they refuse to accept PNC here and now, and they argue thatall contradictions are true.So why are we inclined to accept PNC, i.e. to think that nocontradictions are true, and why are we inclined to be confident that thereis no reason against accepting PNC? Apparently, this is precisely because weconceive of PNC as a logical principle, i.e. a principle that is aboutstatements and whose truth is based on the nature of statements. For weare perhaps inclined to reason along the following lines. Consider anystatement, p. How could one assert that p is both true and not true? If oneasserts that p is both true and not true, one asserts that p is true and oneasserts that p is not true. But to assert that p is true is to assert p, and toassert that p is not true is to deny p. Hence one both asserts and denies p.Now, there are various ways in which one may both assert and deny p.Perhaps one does so unwittingly and without realizing what one is doing.Or perhaps one is using p ambiguously in the assertion and the denial. Orperhaps one is asserting that there is good reason for asserting p and thatthere is equally good reason for denying p. But we may be inclined tothink that, once we take into account such qualifications, it is part of thenature of statements, and in particular of asserting and denying astatement, that one cannot both assert and deny one and the samestatement. For both to assert and deny one and the same statement is to