Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
federal education agency
State educational institution higher vocational education
North Caucasian State Technical University.
discipline: Logic.
topic: Logical errors (paralogisms, sophisms, paradoxes, absurdities)
Stavropol 2010
Introduction
In this essay, I tried to talk about logical errors, their types and how they differ from each other. This topic turned out to be very interesting and exciting. Unfortunately, when studying the discipline of logic, due attention is not paid to such a topic as logical errors, but in vain, because thinking about logical errors, one of the best tests of our logical abilities and one of the most effective means their workouts. Acquaintance with paradoxes (and sophisms), penetration into their essence, the problems behind them is not an easy task. It requires maximum concentration and intense inventing into a few seemingly simple statements.
That is why I gave in my essay examples of sophisms, paradoxes, both with their solution and without solution.
1. Sophism - intellectual fraud?
Sophisms are usually spoken of in passing and with obvious condemnation. And in fact, is it worth it to linger and reflect on such, for example, reasoning:
<Сидящий встал; кто встал, тот стоит; следовательно, сидящий стоит>,
<Сократ - человек; человек - не то же самое, что Сократ; значит, Сократ - это нечто иное, чем Сократ>,
<Этот пес твой; он является отцом; значит, он твой отец>?
And what is the value of such, for example, "proof":<Для того чтобы видеть, нет необходимости иметь глаза, так как без правого глаза мы видим, без левого тоже видим; кроме правого и левого, других глаз у нас нет, поэтому ясно, что глаза не являются необходимыми для зрения>!
Sophism "horned" became famous in ancient Greece. And now he wanders from encyclopedia to encyclopedia as a "model". With it, you can assure everyone that he is horned: “What you did not lose, you have; you did not lose your horns; it means you have horns.” However, horns are a trifle in comparison with what can generally be proved with the help of this and similar arguments. To convince a person that he has horns, hooves and a tail, or that any arbitrarily taken father, including one who is not a person at all, is just his father, etc., is possible only through deception or abuse trust. And this is, as the criminal code says, fraud. It is no coincidence that the teacher of Emperor Nero, the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca, in his “Letters”, speaking of the imaginary persuasiveness of sophisms, compared them with the art of conjurers: we cannot say how their manipulations are performed, although we know for sure that everything is done not at all as it seems to us. Bacon compared the one who resorts to sophisms, with a fox, which winds well, and the one who reveals sophisms, with a hound who knows how to unravel traces.
So, Sophism is a reasoning that seems correct, but contains a hidden logical error and serves to give the appearance of truth to a false conclusion.
Sophism is a special method of intellectual fraud, an attempt to pass off a lie as the truth and thereby mislead. Hence, a “sophist” in a bad sense is a person who is ready to defend his beliefs with the help of any, including illegal, methods, regardless of whether they are actually true or not. Its purpose is to present falsehood as truth. It is reprehensible to resort to sophistry, as well as to deceive and inspire a false thought in general.
Sophisms have been known since antiquity, then they were used to justify deliberate absurdities, absurdities or paradoxical provisions that contradict generally accepted ideas. In ancient Greece, sophistry was considered an art. Or rather, not sophistry itself, the ability to win disputes, naturally using sophistry. This "art" was even taught in special schools.
The emergence of sophisms is usually associated with the philosophy of the sophists ( Ancient Greece, V-IV centuries. BC), which substantiated and justified them. However, sophisms existed long before the sophist philosophers, and the most famous and interesting were formulated later in the philosophical schools that developed under the influence of Socrates. Term<софизм>first introduced by Aristotle, who described sophistry as imaginary, not real wisdom. To sophisms he included Zeno's aporias directed against the movement and multiplicity of things, and the reasoning of the sophists themselves, and all those sophisms that were discovered in other philosophical schools. This suggests that sophisms were not the invention of some sophists, but rather something common to many schools of ancient philosophy.
There are three eras of sophistry:
Classical (ancient) sophistry (V - 1st half of IV century BC)
New sophistry (II - early III century AD). The main representatives are Lucian of Samosata, Flavius Philostratus and others.
Late sophistry (IV century AD). The main representatives are Libanius, Julian the Apostate.
The second and third sophists were named only by analogy with the classical one and were imitative literary movements that sought to restore the ideas and style of the classical sophists.
The most senior sophists (2nd half of the 5th century BC) include Protagoras of Abdera, Gorius of Leontius, Prodicus of Keos, Critias of Athens.
The most famous junior sophists (1st half of the 4th century BC) include Lycophron, Alkidamant, Thrasymachus. Sophisms have existed and been discussed for more than two millennia, and the sharpness of their discussion does not decrease over the years. When the first sophisms were formulated, the rules of logic were not known. To speak in this situation of a deliberate violation of the laws and rules of logic can only be a stretch. There's something different here. After all, it is not serious to assume that with the help of sophism<Рогатый>you can convince a person that he is horned. It is also doubtful that with the help of sophism<Лысый>someone hoped to assure others that there are no bald people. It is incredible that sophistical reasoning can make someone believe that his father is a dog. Obviously, this is not about<рогатых>, <лысых>etc., but about something completely different and more significant. And just to emphasize this circumstance, sophism is formulated in such a way that its conclusion is obviously false, directly and sharply contradicting the facts.
Sophisms use the ambiguity of ordinary language words, abbreviations, etc. Often sophistry is based on such logical errors, let's look at them.
Examples of sophisms
The girl is not a person.
Proof by contradiction. Let's say the girl is a man. The girl is young, which means - a young man. The young man is a boy. Contradiction. So the girl is not a person.
Half empty and half full.
Half-empty is the same as half-full. If the halves are equal, then the whole ones are equal. Therefore, empty is the same as full.
You don't know what you know.
"Do you know what I want to ask you?" - "No". “Do you know that virtue is good?” - "I know". “That's what I wanted to ask you. And you, it turns out, do not know what you know.
Medications
The medicine taken by the sick is good. The more good, the better. This means that you need to take as many drugs as possible.
A thief does not want to acquire anything bad. The acquisition of good things is a good thing. Therefore, the thief desires good things.
Sophism "Heap":
The difference between a heap and a non-heap is not in the 1st grain of sand.
Suppose we have a pile of sand. We begin to take one grain of sand from it each time. We continue this process. If 100 grains of sand are a bunch, then 99 are also a bunch, etc. .... 10 - a bunch, 9 - a bunch ... 3 - a bunch, 2 - a bunch, 1 - a bunch. So: the essence of sophism is that quantitative changes do not lead to qualitative changes.
(sophism "bald" by analogy) - Tell me, - the sophist addresses the young lover of disputes, - can the same thing have some kind of property and not have it?
Obviously not.
Let's see. Is honey sweet?
And yellow too?
Yes, honey is sweet and yellow. But what of it?
So honey is sweet and yellow at the same time. But yellow is sweet or not?
Of course not. Yellow is yellow, not sweet.
So yellow is not sweet?
You said about honey that it is sweet and yellow, and then you agreed that yellow means not sweet, and therefore, as it were, you said that honey is sweet and not sweet at the same time. But in the beginning you firmly said that not a single thing can both possess and not possess some property.
Father is a dog
Plato describes how two sophists confuse an ingenuous man named Ctesippus.
Tell me, do you have a dog?
And very evil, - answered Ctesippus.
Does she have puppies?
Yes, they are also evil.
And their father, of course, is a dog?
I even saw how he deals with a female.
Is this father yours too?
So you claim that your father is a dog and you are the brother of puppies!
The more
The more I drink vodka, the more my hands shake. The more my hands shake, the more alcohol I spill. The more alcohol I spill, the less I drink. Therefore, to drink less, you must drink more.
Mathematical sophistry.
We have a numerical identity: 4:4=5:5; we take out a common factor from each part: 4(1:1)=5(1:1). The numbers in brackets are equal, so 4=5, and hence it follows that 2*2=5.
1. Subtract from each part 3, it turns out that
2. Let's square both parts, it will turn out
4. hence it follows that 5=1
Sophists (from other Greek “craftsman, inventor, sage, connoisseur”) are ancient Greek paid teachers of eloquence, representatives of the philosophical trend of the same name, common in Greece in the 2nd half of the 5th - 1st half of the 4th centuries BC. e.
PROTAGORUS (ok.490 - 420 BC) - an ancient Greek philosopher. One of the senior sophists. Gained fame through teaching in several Greek cities, in particular, in Sicily and Italy. Protagoras taught the philosophy of Democritus, who took him as a student, seeing how he, Being a porter, rationally puts logs into bundles.
The Sophist Protagoras was a consistent sensualist and believed that the world is as it is presented in the feelings of a person, the following expressions of Protagoras came to us: “Man is the measure of all things that exist, that they exist, and that do not exist, that they do not exist.” (That is, there is only what a person perceives with his senses, and there is nothing that a person does not perceive with his senses). “As we feel, the way it really is”, “Everything is as it seems to us.” In his work “On the Gods”, he questions the possibility of objective knowledge of the deity: “It is impossible to say about the gods either that they exist or that they do not exist; for there are too many obstacles on the way to obtaining such knowledge, the main of which are the impossibility of knowing this subject by reason and brevity human life”- was put forward as a reason for accusations of godlessness and burning of the work.
Prodik (ok465 - 395 BC) - ancient Greek philosopher. One of the senior sophists of the time of Socrates, a younger contemporary of Protagoras. He arrived in Athens as an ambassador from the island of Ceos, and became known as an orator and teacher. Plato treated him with great respect. Prodic in his curriculum attaches great importance linguistics and ethics.
Prodik was from Yulida on the island of Keos. He often came to Athens to conduct business on behalf of his home city and attracted attention as an orator, although his voice was low. Plutarch describes him as a slender and physically weak man. His students were such famous orators as Theramenes and Isocrates. According to Philostratus, Prodicus gave his lecture on virtue and vice at Thebes, Sparta. Prodik gave the sophistical provisions an ethical-religious connotation; dealt with the problems of linguistics and laid the foundations of synonymy, i.e. recognition and distinction of words related in meaning. Prodicus, like some of his fellow sophists, interpreted religion in terms of naturalism. He was the creator of the theory that people began to give divine honors for them to things the sun, moon, rivers, etc., and then their inventors, and was sometimes accused of atheism.
2. Paralogisms
Paralogisms (other - Greek. ???????????? - false inference) - an unintentional logical error.
History of the term
Aristotle called paralogism any false proof, with the exception of the term sophism, that is, deliberate false proof.
One of the most important changes in the meaning of the term was made by I. Kant, who distinguished logical paralogism (which he defined as a conclusion that is false in its logical form) from transcendental paralogism (a specific philosophical error).
The Spanish philosopher Balmens, in his work on logic, defined paralogism as an inference that is false in content, and sophism is false in form.
Paralogism is a false (erroneous) in form, that is, an incorrectly constructed conclusion<#"justify">The distinction between language and metalanguage makes it possible to eliminate the "Liar" paradox. Thus, it becomes possible to correctly, without contradiction, define the classical concept of truth: a statement is true that corresponds to the one described by it. Drunkard paradox
In any tavern there is at least one person - such that if he drinks, then everyone drinks.
The reasoning proceeds as follows:
Suppose the statement that everyone drinks in a tavern is true. Let's single out one person among all those who drink in a tavern. Let's call him John. Then the statement is true that if everyone drinks, then John also drinks. Conversely, if John drinks, then everyone drinks.
Suppose now that our statement is false, that is, it is not true that everyone drinks in a tavern. Then there is at least one person in the tavern who does not drink. Let's call him, again, John. Since it is not true that John drinks, it is true that if he drinks, then everyone drinks. That is, again it turns out that if John drinks, then everyone drinks.
The latter conclusion is based on the assumption of classical logic that anything follows from a false statement. That is, if the statement that John drinks is false, and if the following statement from it that all other visitors to the tavern drink is also false, then the entire conditional (complex) statement is considered true in classical logic.
There is a similar tension in the arguments in the first conclusion. Namely, if it is true that if everyone drinks in a tavern, then John also drinks, then it is not necessarily true that if John drinks, then everyone drinks. If it is not known in advance that everyone drinks in a tavern, then the fact that everyone drinks together with John must be specified (or checked) on purpose. In classical logic, such nuances are not taken into account (the principle of exclusion of the mean), therefore, in it, when a true conditional statement is inverted, a true (conditional) statement is also obtained.
In this case, we are dealing with a variant of paradoxes of implication arising from the fact that classical logic abstracts from the semantic content of statements. Such paradoxes are solved in relevant logic, which has means that take into account the content of statements, from which classical logic abstracts and the neglect of which leads to paradoxes.
All horses are the same color.
All horses are the same color. Let's do the proof by induction<#"justify">Refutation
Contradiction<#"17" src="doc_zip1.jpg" />. For K = 1 (base of induction), the resulting sets<#"justify">Know nothing
The one who says: "I know nothing" makes a seemingly paradoxical, self-contradictory statement. He states, in essence, "I know that I know nothing." But the knowledge that there is no knowledge is still knowledge. This means that the speaker, on the one hand, assures that he does not have any knowledge, and on the other hand, by the very assertion of this he reports that he still has some knowledge. What's the matter here?
Reflecting on this difficulty, it may be recalled that Socrates expressed a similar idea more carefully. He said: "I only know that I know nothing." On the other hand, another ancient Greek, Metrodorus, asserted with complete conviction: “I don’t know anything and I don’t even know that I don’t know anything.” Is there a paradox in this statement?
Irresolvable dispute
At the heart of one famous paradox lies what seems to be a small incident that happened more than two thousand years ago and has not been forgotten to this day.
The famous sophist Protagoras, who lived in the 5th century. BC, there was a student named Euathlus, who studied law. According to the agreement concluded between them, Euathlus had to pay for training only if he won his first lawsuit. If he loses this process, he is not obliged to pay at all. However, after completing his studies, Evatl did not participate in the processes. It lasted quite a long time, the teacher's patience ran out, and he filed a lawsuit against his student. Thus, for Euathlus, this was the first trial. Protagoras substantiated his demand as follows:
Whatever the decision of the court, Euathlus will have to pay me. He will either win his first trial or lose. If he wins, he will pay by virtue of our contract. If he loses, he will pay according to this decision.
Apparently Euathlus was a capable student, as he replied to Protagoras:
Indeed, I either win the process or lose it. If I win, the court decision will release me from the obligation to pay. If the court decision is not in my favor, then I lost my first case and will not pay by virtue of our contract.
Solutions to the paradox "Protagoras and Euathlus"
Perplexed by this turn of affairs, Protagoras devoted a special essay to this dispute with Euathlus.<Тяжба о плате>. Unfortunately, it, like most of what was written by Protagoras, did not reach us. Nevertheless, one must pay tribute to Protagoras, who immediately felt behind a simple judicial incident a problem that deserves special study.
G. Leibniz, himself a lawyer by education, also took this dispute seriously. In his doctoral dissertation<Исследование о запутанных казусах в праве>he tried to prove that all cases, even the most complicated ones, like the litigation between Protagoras and Euathlus, must be properly resolved on the basis of common sense. According to Leibniz, the court should refuse Protagoras for the untimely filing of a claim, but leave, however, for him the right to demand payment of money by Evatl later, namely after the first process he won.
Many other solutions to this paradox have been proposed.
They referred, in particular, to the fact that a court decision should have greater force than a private agreement between two persons. It can be answered that without this agreement, no matter how insignificant it may seem, there would be neither a court nor its decision. After all, the court must make its decision precisely on its occasion and on its basis.
They also appealed to the general principle that every work, and therefore the work of Protagoras, must be paid. But it is known that this principle has always had exceptions, especially in a slave-owning society. In addition, it is simply not applicable to the specific situation of the dispute: after all, Protagoras, guaranteeing a high level of education, himself refused to accept payment in case of failure of his student in the first process.
But the most famous paradox is perhaps the paradox of Achilles and the Turtle. Achilles is a hero and, as we would say now, an outstanding athlete. The turtle is known to be one of the slowest animals. However, Zeno claimed that Achilles would lose the race to the tortoise. We accept the following conditions. Let Achilles be separated from the finish by a distance of 1, and a tortoise - ½. Achilles and the tortoise start moving at the same time. Let, for definiteness, Achilles run 2 times faster than the turtle (i.e., walk very slowly). Then, having run the distance Ѕ, Achilles will find that the tortoise has managed to overcome the segment ј in the same time and is still ahead of the hero. Then the picture repeats itself: having run a quarter of the way, Achilles will see the tortoise one eighth of the way ahead of him, etc. Therefore, every time Achilles overcomes the distance separating him from the tortoise, the latter manages to crawl away from him and still remains in front. Thus, Achilles will never overtake the tortoise. Knowing mathematical analysis usually indicate that the series converges to 1. Therefore, they say, Achilles will overcome the entire path in a finite period of time and, of course, overtake the tortoise. But here is what D. Gilbert and P. Bernays write about this:
One usually tries to get around this paradox by arguing that the sum of an infinite number of these time intervals still converges and, thus, gives a finite period of time. However, this reasoning absolutely does not touch upon one essentially paradoxical moment, namely the paradox, which consists in the fact that some infinite sequence of events following one after another, a sequence whose completion we cannot even imagine (not only physically, but at least in principle) , in fact, it should still end.
The fundamental incompleteness of this sequence is that it lacks the last element. Each time, having indicated the next member of the sequence, we can indicate the next one after it. An interesting remark, also pointing to the paradoxical nature of the situation, can be found in G. Weyl:
Imagine a computer that would perform the first operation in ½ minutes, the second - in ¼ minutes, the third - in? minutes, etc. Such a machine could by the end of the first minute count the whole natural series (write, for example, a countable number of units). It is clear that work on the design of such a machine is doomed to failure. So why does a body leaving point A reach the end of segment B, counting countable set of points A1, A2, ..., An, ... ? The ancient Greeks, moreover, could not imagine a complete infinite totality. Therefore, Zeno's conclusion that movement due to necessity count an infinite number of points can not end, even then made his mark. The aporia about the impossibility of starting a movement is based on similar arguments.
Dichotomy. The reasoning is very simple. In order to go all the way, the moving body must first go half the way, but to overcome this half, it is necessary to go half the half, and so on ad infinitum. In other words, under the same conditions as in the previous case, we will deal with an inverted series of points: (S)n, ..., (S)3, (S)2, (S)1. If in the case of the aporia Achilles and the tortoise the corresponding row did not have the last dot, then in the Dichotomy this row does not have the first dot. Therefore, Zeno concludes, the movement cannot begin. And since the movement not only cannot end, but also cannot begin, there is no movement.
Absurdity (from Latin absurdus, “discordant, absurd”) is something illogical, absurd, contrary to common sense. An expression is considered absurd if it is not outwardly contradictory, but from which a contradiction can nevertheless be derived. For example, in the statement "Alexander the Great was the son of childless parents" there is only an affirmation, but there is no negation and, accordingly, there is no obvious contradiction. But it is clear that an obvious contradiction follows from this statement: "Some parents have children and at the same time do not have them." The absurd differs from the meaningless: the meaningless is neither true nor false, it has nothing to compare with reality in order to decide whether it corresponds to it or not. An absurd statement is meaningful and, due to its inconsistency, is false. For example, the statement "If it rains, then the tram" is meaningless, and the statement "The apple was cut into three unequal halves" is not meaningless, but absurd. The logical law of contradiction speaks of the inadmissibility of both affirmation and negation. An absurd statement is a direct violation of this law. In logic, proofs are considered by “reduction to absurdity”: if a contradiction is derived from a certain position, then this provision is false. In ordinary language, there is no unambiguous understanding of the word "absurd". Absurd is also called an internally contradictory expression, and meaningless, and everything absurdly exaggerated. In philosophy and fiction, the epithet "absurd" is sometimes used to characterize a person's relationship to the world. Absurdity is interpreted as something irrational, devoid of any meaning and clear connection with reality. In the philosophy of existentialism, the concept of absurdity means that which does not have and cannot find a rational explanation.
Absurdism ("philosophy of the absurd") is a system of philosophical views that developed from existentialism, which affirms the absence of the meaning of human existence (the absurdity of human existence). The prerequisites for the emergence of the philosophy of the absurd were a series of world wars at the beginning of the 20th century, in which the suffering and death of people, as well as the social disorder of society, became the basis for the development and dissemination of the ideas of existentialism as, first of all, a humanistic movement. In the wake of increased interest in the works of Sartre and Camus, who came into fashion in the first half of the 20th century, the ideas of the philosophy of the absurd began to be popularized. The best proof of the insignificance of life are the examples given to prove its greatness. Kierkegaard The theory of the absurd Kierkegaard deduces in several of his works, but his work "Fear and Trembling" is considered the main one in this sense. Here, speaking from the standpoint of a critic of Christianity, Kierkegaard cites the biblical plot of Abraham's sacrifice to God of his son and, using this example, explains the absurdity of human existence, based on his lack of freedom. The faith of the biblical patriarch appears to Kierkegaard as a paradox "which is capable of turning murder into a sacred and charitable act, a paradox that returns Isaac to Abraham again, a paradox that is not subject to any thinking ...". I am incapable of a spiritual act of faith, I cannot close my eyes and blindly rush into the absurd; it is impossible for me, but I do not boast of it. Being critical of religion, Kierkegaard, however, did not belittle the importance of faith. On the contrary, he emphasized that faith is transcendent and therefore absurd. Belief in God is absurd, because it is not amenable to logical justification, however, it is effective: “Abraham believed in the power of the absurd, because all human considerations have long come to an end”; “There is nothing more subtle and remarkable than the dialectic of faith, which has the power of a spiritual swing ...” Dostoevsky. In Russian culture, the writer F. M. Dostoevsky is rightfully considered one of the brightest representatives of the direction of the literature of the absurd. Without identifying himself as an absurdist philosopher, Dostoevsky, nevertheless, in his work widely reveals the problem of the worldview of a person who has come into conflict with the surrounding reality. The loss of moral guidelines, the meaning of life, established moral norms is one of the main themes of the writer's work ("The Brothers Karamazov")
Mathematical nonsense. You are offered a logical joke in which the logical deception is brought to the point of absurdity. Try to be specific. What is the logical inconsistency of these calculations? How many logical fallacies are there?
How many days a year do we work?
1)8 hours a day - sleep. This is 122 days annually: 365 - 122 = 243.
2)8 hours a day is non-working time. This is also 122 days annually: 243 - 122 = 121.
3)There are 52 Sundays and 52 Saturdays in a year. Total 104 days off: 121 - 104 = 17.
4)There are 8 official holidays in a year: 17 - 8 = 9. Vacation 24 days: 9 - 24 = -15.
Conclusion
It has been about a century since a lively discussion of logical fallacies began. The undertaken revision of the logic did not lead, however, to their unambiguous resolution.
And at the same time, such a state is hardly of concern to anyone today. Over time, the attitude towards paradoxes and sophisms became more calm and even more tolerant than at the time of their discovery. It's not just that they have become something familiar. And, of course, not that they put up with them. They still remain in the center of attention of logicians, the search for their solutions is actively continuing. The situation changed primarily because the paradoxes turned out to be, so to speak, localized. They have found their definite, albeit troubled, place in a wide range of logical studies. It became clear that absolute austerity, as it was portrayed at the end of the last century and even sometimes at the beginning of this century, is, in principle, an unattainable ideal.
It was also realized that there is no single problem of paradoxes that stands alone. The problems associated with them are of different types and affect, in fact, all the main sections of logic. The discovery of a paradox forces us to analyze our logical intuitions more deeply and engage in a systematic reworking of the foundations of the science of logic. At the same time, the desire to avoid paradoxes and logical errors is not at all the only one, and even, perhaps, main task. Although they are important, they are only an occasion for reflection on the central themes of logic. Continuing the comparison of paradoxes with particularly pronounced symptoms of the disease, it can be said that the desire to immediately eliminate paradoxes would be like a desire to remove such symptoms without much concern for the disease itself. What is required is not just the resolution of logical errors, but their explanation, which deepens our understanding of the logical patterns of thinking. “The antinomies of logic,” writes von Wrigg, “have puzzled us since their discovery and will probably always puzzle us. We should, I think, regard them not so much as problems waiting to be solved, but as inexhaustible raw material for thought. They are important because thinking about them touches upon the most fundamental questions of all logic, and therefore all thought.”
Bibliography
1. Bryushkin V.N. "Logics". M., Gardarika, 2001
Getmonova A.D. "Logic". M., "Dobrosovet", 2001
Deimidov I.V. "Logics". M., "Dashkov and K", 2004
Ivlev Yu.V. "Textbook of logic semester course". M., "Delo", 2003
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In logic, absurdity is usually understood as an internally contradictory expression. In such an expression, something is affirmed and denied at the same time, as, say, in the statement "Mermaids exist, and there are no mermaids."
An expression is also considered absurd if it is not outwardly contradictory, but from which a contradiction can nevertheless be derived. For example, in the statement "Ivan the Terrible was the son of childless parents" there is only an affirmation, but there is no denial and, accordingly, there is no obvious contradiction. But it is clear that an obvious contradiction follows from this statement: "Some woman is a mother, and she is not a mother."
The absurd as internally contradictory does not, of course, belong to the senseless. “The robber was quartered into three unequal halves” - this, of course, is absurd, but it is not meaningless, but false, since it is internally contradictory.
The logical law of contradiction speaks of the inadmissibility of simultaneous affirmation and negation. An absurd statement is a direct violation of this law.
The understanding of absurdity as a denial or violation of some established law is widespread in the natural sciences.
According to physics, the absurd include, for example, statements that are not consistent with its principles, such as: “Astronauts flew from Jupiter to the Earth in three minutes” and “Sincere prayer overcomes earthly gravity and elevates a person to God.” Biologically absurd are the statements: "Microbes are born from dirt" and "Man appeared on Earth immediately in the form in which he exists now."
There is, of course, no particular firmness in the use of the word "absurd". Even in logic, "meaningless" and "absurd" are often used as having the same meaning and interchangeably. In ordinary language, both internally contradictory and meaningless are called absurd, and in general everything is absurdly exaggerated, caricatured, etc.
In logic, proofs are considered by “reduction to absurdity”: if a contradiction is derived from a certain position, then this provision is false.
There is also an artistic technique - bringing to the point of absurdity, which, however, has only an external resemblance to this proof.
Of American actress Barbara Streisand's nose, one reviewer said, "Her long nose starts at the roots of her hair and ends at the trombone in the orchestra." This is an absurd exaggeration, pretending to be comical.
And another example - from army life, interesting not so much in itself, but as a commentary on it.
A rookie artilleryman is not stupid, but has little interest in the service. The officer takes him aside and says, “You are no good for us. I'll give you good advice: buy yourself a gun and work on your own."
The usual comment on this advice is: “The advice is sheer nonsense. You can’t buy a cannon, besides, one person, even with a cannon, is not a warrior. However, behind the outward senselessness, an obvious and meaningful goal is visible: the officer who gives the artilleryman senseless advice pretends to be a fool to show how stupid the artilleryman himself is behaving.
This comment shows that in ordinary language a completely meaningful statement can also be called "meaningless".
From the book Philosopher at the Edge of the Universe. SF Philosophy, or Hollywood to the Rescue: Philosophical Issues in Science Fiction Films author Rowlands MarkAbsurdity and the human situation The essential difference between everyday life and philosophy is that in the first absurd occurrences happen from time to time, and the second studies situations of absurdity, which, permeating all human existence, is
From the book Postmodernism [Encyclopedia] author Gritsanov Alexander AlekseevichABSURD ABSURD (lat. absurdus - absurd, from ad absurdum - coming from the deaf) - a term of intellectual tradition, denoting the absurdity, meaninglessness of a phenomenon or phenomenon. (The development of "philosophy A." is primarily associated with Sartre's existentialism.) The concept of "A."
From the book Philosophy of Loneliness author Khamitov Nazip ValentinovichChapter 6 Love and absurdity: the loneliness of Salvador Dali 1 Mad Dali was too in love with Gala to love her. Therefore, in his work, the infinite dominates the eternal, and the high dominates the sublime. There is a lot of space in his works, but almost no time at all, because
From the book By the laws of logic author Ivin Alexander ArkhipovichABSURD In logic, absurdity is usually understood as an internally contradictory expression. In such an expression, something is affirmed and denied at the same time, as, say, in the statement “Mermaids exist, and there are no mermaids.” An expression is also considered absurd, which outwardly does not
From Spinoza's book author Sokolov Vasily Vasilievich From the book Today I saw ... author Guzman Delia Steinberg... absurdity Today I saw absurdity ... Of course, in my life I have come across it more than once, but there are times when some phenomena or events are seen especially clearly. How did I see absurdity? He was like a taut and unnaturally twisted spring, ready to shoot at the first
From the book Philosophical Dictionary author Comte Sponville AndréAbsurdity Not the absence of meaning. For example, the word "eclipse" does not mean anything, but there is nothing absurd in it. Conversely, a statement can be absurd only if it means something. Let's use some traditional examples. "On
From the book World of Images author Meneghetti AntonioAbsurd (Proof By Contradiction) (Absurde, Raisonnement Par L'-) Reasoning that proves the truth of a statement by showing the clear falsity of at least one of the consequences of the opposite statement. To prove that something is "p", a hypothesis is built,
From the author's bookAbsurdity (Reduction To Absurdity) (Absurde, Reduction A L'-) A kind of negative kind of evidence from the contrary and at the same time its beginning. Reduction to the absurd proves the falsity of a statement by demonstrating the falsity of at least one of its consequences,
From the author's bookIntroduction to the "Absurd" of images as a way of gaining a criterion of reality Imagogy is a conscious and voluntary experience of reading active images that reflect the integrity of individual existence at the conscious and
Ridiculous, stupid, out of the ordinary, contrary to common sense.
- An expression is considered absurd if it is not outwardly contradictory, but from which a contradiction can nevertheless be derived. For example, in the statement "Alexander the Great was the son of childless parents" there is only an affirmation, but there is no negation and, accordingly, there is no obvious contradiction. But it is clear that an obvious contradiction follows from this statement: "Some parents have children and at the same time do not have them."
- The absurd differs from the meaningless: the meaningless is neither true nor false, it has nothing to compare with reality in order to decide whether it corresponds to it or not. An absurd statement is meaningful and, due to its inconsistency, is false. For example, the statement "If it rains, then the tram" is meaningless, and the statement "The apple was cut into three unequal halves" is not meaningless, but absurd. The logical law of contradiction speaks of the inadmissibility of both affirmation and negation.
- An absurd statement is a direct violation of this law. In logic, proofs are considered by reductio ad absurdum ("reduction to absurdity"): if a contradiction is derived from a certain position, then this provision is false.
- Absurdity must be distinguished from semantically chaotic sentences, for example, the following "the car is telling", "the window has opened high".
- In ordinary language, there is no unambiguous understanding of the word "absurd". Absurd is also called an internally contradictory expression, and meaningless, and everything absurdly exaggerated.
- In the Ozhegov Dictionary: "absurdity, nonsense." In the "Dictionary of Foreign Words": nonsense, absurdity. Empty and meaningless definitions.
- In philosophy and fiction, the epithet "absurd" is sometimes used to characterize a person's relationship to the world. Albert Camus defines the absurd as "the impossible". Absurdity is interpreted as something irrational, devoid of any meaning and clear connection with reality. In the philosophy of existentialism, the concept of absurdity means that which does not have and cannot find a rational explanation.
- IN works of art reductio ad absurdum is used by the author to confuse the reader.
- The thinking of a character prone to a literal reading of metaphors (the identification of signified and signifier) is called absurd by Wolf Schmid ("Prose as poetry"). Among the absurdly thinking characters, he names Adrian Prokhorov, the protagonist of A. S. Pushkin's story "The Undertaker".
- In the case of "reduction to absurdity", the character with his "correct" and impeccable constructions is introduced by the author into a reality that is as close to historical artistic reality as possible. A logical impasse arises, a discrepancy, some kind of snag, which cannot be resolved without abandoning the idea. Such, according to O. L. Chernoritskaya, is the method of F. M. Dostoevsky and some other writers.
- The plays The Bald Singer by E. Ionesco () and Waiting for Godot by S. Beckett () marked the birth of the theater of the absurd as a genre or central theme. In the drama of the absurd, there is usually no intrigue and clearly defined characters, chance reigns in it, and the “plot” is built exclusively around the problem of communication. Several types of absurdity can be distinguished here: nihilistic absurdity, which does not contain even minimal information about the worldview and philosophical implications of the text and the game; absurdity as a structural principle of reflection of general chaos, the disintegration of language and the absence of a coherent image of humanity; satirical absurdity, used in separate formulations and intrigue, and quite realistically describing the world.
see also
- // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
- Absurdism is the development of the philosophy of existentialism.
- Absurd Laws
Literature
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Synonyms:See what "Absurd" is in other dictionaries:
- (from lat. absurdus ridiculous, stupid) absurdity, contradiction. In logic, A. is usually understood as a contradictory expression. In such an expression, something is affirmed and denied at the same time, as, for example, in the statement “Vanity exists and vanity ... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia
Absurd- Absurdity ♦ Absurde Not the absence of meaning. For example, the word "eclipse" does not mean anything, but there is nothing absurd in it. And vice versa, this or that statement can be absurd only on condition that it means something. Let's use…… Philosophical Dictionary of Sponville
- (lat. absurditas, from ab from and surdus deaf). Absurdity, nonsense. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910. ABSURD [lat. absurdus absurd] 1) nonsense, absurdity, nonsense; 2) lit. drama a. one of… … Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language
See absurdity... Dictionary of Russian synonyms and expressions similar in meaning. under. ed. N. Abramova, M .: Russian dictionaries, 1999. absurdity absurdity, nonsense, abracadabra, nonsense, nonsense, absurdity, gibberish, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, ... ... Synonym dictionary
absurd- a, m. absurde m. 16th century, Montaigne. Rey 1998. Absurdity, nonsense. Ush. Rewrote the explanation of the word Farce, taken from the Encyclopedia and translated l absurde et l obscène absurd and disorderly; it seems that this will go into the presentation of the comedy. 1787.… … Historical dictionary gallicisms of the Russian language
A concept showing that the world goes beyond our understanding of it; etymologically goes back to the Latin word absurdus dissonant, incongruous, absurd, from surdus deaf, secret, implicit; the most important border ... ... Encyclopedia of cultural studies
- (from lat. absurdus ridiculous) nonsense, absurdity ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
- (lat. ad absurdum coming from the deaf) a term of intellectual tradition, denoting the absurdity, meaninglessness of a phenomenon or phenomenon. In the history of philosophy, the concept of "A." began to be used by existentialism as an attributive characteristic ... ... The latest philosophical dictionary
ABSURD, absurd, man. (lat. absurdum). Absurdity, nonsense. Take it to the point of absurdity. Dictionary Ushakov. D.N. Ushakov. 1935 1940 ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov
ABSURD, husband. Absurdity, nonsense. Bring the thought to the point of absurdity. The theater (drama) of the absurd is a trend in drama that depicts the world as chaos and people's actions as illogical, meaningless. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949… … Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov
Absurdity is a term denoting the absurdity, meaninglessness of a phenomenon. The etymology of the word "absurd" refers us to the Latin absurdus - discordant, inconsistent, and surdus - deaf. Absurdity in this sense is the absence of a "sounding" meaning.
Probably, the comprehension of the absurdity should begin not with itself, but with those situations in which it manifests itself. To comprehend the absurdity directly - which would mean the removal of the absurdity - is simply impossible. Before us are only "traces" left by absurdity on the field of meaning.
There are two levels of manifestation of absurdity to consciousness. Metaphysical level and the level of everyday life. The antithesis of the sacred and the profane is also quite applicable here.
Speaking about the absurdity or meaninglessness of a phenomenon, one must remember that these definitions describe, rather, what we feel in relation to the phenomenon than the phenomenon itself. It is not the phenomenon that is absurd, the coexistence of the phenomenon is absurd. Absurdity always arises at the border. As Camus noted: “In all these cases, from the simplest to the most complex, the absurdity will be the more striking, the greater the difference between the two terms of my comparison. [...] Consequently, I have the right to say that the feeling of absurdity is not born from a simple consideration of a single fact and not from a separate impression, but is cut out when comparing the current state of things with a certain kind of reality, actions - with a world that surpasses it.
At its core, absurdity is discord. It is not reduced to any of the elements of comparison. It arises from their collision.
What properties should a phenomenon have in order to be perceived as absurd, absurd? We can distinguish two types of phenomena, the collision with which gives rise to a sense of absurdity:
- The meaning that does not fit into the construction of human logic into the structure of our thinking. In this case, we are dealing with what can be described as "an absurd excess of meaning."
- structure, onlymeaning. In this case, we are faced with the "absurdity of the void." If we agree with the definition that absurdity is the meaninglessness of a phenomenon or phenomenon, then by this we will affirm not only the absence of meaning, but also the presence of an object. It is “something” without meaning, not just “nothing”. It is the inclusion of emptiness in a certain structure that gives rise to absurdity.
Absurdity is a kind of disproportion between form and content, signified and signifier.
We also find a hint of a similar classification of the agents of the absurd in Roland Barthes. He writes: “... a holistic image excludes the emergence of a myth or, at least, forces one to mythologize only its very integrity. [...] This myth is opposite, but symmetrical to the myth of the absurd: in the second case, the form mythologizes "absence", in the first - excessive fullness.
From the point of view of metaphysics, absurdity appears either as a meaning that surpasses man, or as a gaping void.
In connection with the first meaning, it is necessary to recall the famous expression attributed to Tertullian: "Credo quia absurdum est" (I believe, because it is absurd). It is obvious that in this case a feeling of absurdity arises in a person from contact with the realm of the Divine. Since the human mind cannot accommodate the spiritual reality, the meeting itself is experienced by him as something absurd.
For Tertullian, absurdity is the manifestation of God to this world. So in the treatise “On the Flesh of Christ” he writes: “It will be clearly unreasonable if we begin to judge God, guided by our common sense [...] Virgin, and also in the flesh, Who is “mired” in all these dishonors of nature? [...] There are, of course, other "unwise" things that relate to the reproach and passion of the Lord. Or, perhaps, they will say that the crucified God is reasonable? [...] The Son of God was crucified - this is not a shame, for it is worthy of shame; and the Son of God died - this is absolutely reliable, for it is absurd; and, buried, rose again - this is certain, for it is impossible.
The sphere of otherness is an area where space and time are distorted. However, the curvature of the space-time continuum is perceived by a person as something absurd, violating the causality of events.
It is noteworthy that the distortion of space and time becomes an artistic device in the fairy tale genre. One hour spent by the hero in another world can be equal to a year in the real world. The picture of the other world is modeled through the introduction of a different chronotope. This is not unique to fairy tales. In fact, all medieval literature, imbued with a religious perception of reality, can serve as an example of the existence of a hero in two dimensions. In studies devoted to the chivalric novel, M. M. Bakhtin noted that the chronotope of the chivalric novel is a wonderful world in an adventurous time. Otherness invades the human world, changes the flow of time, the causality of events, top and bottom, right and left. “A fabulous hyperbolism of time appears, hours are stretched, and days are compressed to an instant, and time itself can be bewitched; there is a specific distortion of time perspectives characteristic of dreams. [...] This subjective game with time, this violation of elementary temporal relationships and perspectives corresponds in the chronotope of the wonderful world and the same subjective game with space, the same violation of elementary spatial relations and perspectives.
The sense of absurdity is generated in the religious consciousness not only because of the collision with divine reality. The metaphysical reality of evil also becomes an agent of the absurd. However, if the "divine" absurdity is an overabundance of meaning, then the absurdity of evil is a semantic collapse.
The most striking image of such absurdity is hell. Hebrew word"Sheol", translated into Russian as hell, means emptiness, ephemerality.
According to Christian teaching, after death, people either go to Heaven and find the truth in its entirety, or, turning away from God, find themselves in the emptiness of hell and become internally devastated.
In hell, instead of a person, only sin remains, a grimace without a face (in fact, therefore, in hell there are not faces, but masks). Speaking about hell, C. S. Lewis wrote: “Because it is difficult to understand hell, that there is almost nothing to understand, in the truest sense of the word. But it also happens on earth: [...] at first you get angry, and you know about it, and you regret it. Then, in one terrible hour, you begin to revel in malice. Well, if you're sorry again. But a time may come when there is no one to pity, no one even to revel in. The grumpiness goes by itself, as if wound up.
Not only metaphysical reality can give rise to a sense of absurdity. The very “abandonment” of a person into this world was comprehended by many thinkers of the twentieth century as something absurd. However, in the absence of a metaphysical perspective, one comes only to the absurdity of emptiness.
Describing the situation in which a person found himself, A. Camus notes: “He wants to be happy and comprehend the reasonableness of life. Absurdity is born from the collision of this human request with the silent unreason of the world. [...]
Irrationality, human nostalgia and the absurdity arising from their meeting - these are the three characters in the drama that must inevitably put an end to any logic that being is capable of.
Actually, for Camus, it is a person who becomes a kind of “other being” in this world. He is in the world, but not of the world, and this is the drama of his existence. “When the world lends itself to an explanation, even if not too reliable in its arguments, it is dear to us. On the contrary, a person feels like a stranger in the universe, suddenly freed from our illusions and attempts to shed light on it. And this exile is inescapable, as long as a person is deprived of the memory of the lost homeland or hope for the promised land. The discord between a person and the life around him, between the actor and the scenery, and gives, in fact, a sense of absurdity.
The sense of meaninglessness, aimlessness of existence, reflected in the culture of the twentieth century, is associated not only with the loss of a metaphysical perspective and secularization. Scientific progress has also contributed to the strengthening of the sense of absurdity. A new form of distortion of space and time has emerged, associated with the development of technology. Modern man receives information from the most inaccessible places in an extremely short time. Objects distant from us in space have become close thanks to new means of communication.
All this, as Marshall McLuhan notes, leads to a sense of the absurdity of what is happening. He writes: “This modern dilemma of Western man - the dilemma of a man of action who finds himself isolated from the process of action - is exhaustively embodied by the experience of the theater of the absurd. Such is the origin and appeal of Samuel Beckett's characters."
The feeling of absurdity is really, first of all, reflected in art. In different ways, in a literary, pictorial, theatrical form, the structure framing the void is played out.
According to Klyuev, the literature of the absurd is characterized by hyper-structuredness. “The 'semantic scandal' created by the absurd text is balanced - and thus virtually nullified - by absolute 'structural peace' or 'structural comfort'. [...] As for the absurd poems, they are distinguished not only visually, but meticulously organized structure to the point of mania.”
Indeed, in the literature of the absurd one can observe an extravaganza of structures devoid of meaning. However, the absurdity in the sphere of art is often only a reflection of the absurdity in public formations. It seems that social structures tend to emasculate meaning. And the less sense in the social structure, the more its structure increases.
In fiction, administrative absurdity is often one of the symbols of the absurdity of existence in general. As an illustration, one can recall at least Kafka's "Castle". It is noteworthy that the bureaucratic apparatus is most often perceived as almost the main agent of the absurd. But this is true for any situations when a person falls into a position of dependence on someone's power, becomes an object, becomes depersonalized.
F. G. Junger notes: “Where a person is perceived, assumed, affirmed not as a person, but as an integral part, fundamental changes occur. A person becomes a hand, a foot, a movement, he becomes a cog, a valve, a switch, he becomes one of the functions of a functioning mechanism. The concept of a person is reduced to the concept of a function. The insensitivity of the constituent elements is felt in everything: in administrative institutions, in factories, in control centers, in transport and in the language spoken there.
The mechanism is the apogee of structuredness, but at the same time it is something extremely absurd, since the mechanism is soulless.
The transformation of man into a mechanism is the apotheosis of absurdity. Further, the structure has nowhere to develop, it has absorbed all living things. An absolutely mechanized society is a society that is an absolute absurdity.
From a social point of view, absurdity is a situation in which a person is deprived of the meaning of his existence, loses his human face. In such a situation, human speech also loses its purpose as a means of communication. Words produced in a situation of absurdity are empty, meaningless. These are speech stamps and slogans, behind which there is nothing.
Here we can find a lot of examples in the recent Soviet past. But Western society abounds with similar examples. Roland Barthes in his article “The Pleasure of the Text” notes: “By the way, encratic language (that which arises and spreads under the protection of power) is by its very nature a language of repetition; all official language institutions are machines constantly chewing the same cud; school, sports, advertising, popular culture, song production, mass media constantly reproduce the same structure.
The situation of a person who is faced with the absurdity of some bureaucratic rules and regulations is intuitively clear to everyone. But this situation is external to the person himself. More interesting is the question - what happens to the bureaucrat? Why does a person become a "carrier" of the absurd?
Obviously, here it is appropriate to recall such psychological concept as "professional deformation of personality". The social role completely absorbs a person. In the end, only the function remains; a kind of mask behind which there is nothing. As noted by R.M. Granovskaya, “bureaucrats pass off form as content, and content as something formal. [...] A bureaucrat who thinks of himself as the embodiment of certain official functions and state interests is deformed, since his “I” contains nothing but this.”
Administrative absurdity seeks to subdue all human existence, to regulate not only external, but also internal life. The structure seeks to penetrate inside in order to produce its complete likeness from a person, to make him the embodiment of the absurd.
However, the emasculation of meaning is possible not only through bureaucracy. The "mass consumer society" is also a mechanism that generates a sense of absurdity. As Herbert Marcuse has shown, repressive desublimation is a tool for the production of a "one-dimensional man", devoid of a true meaning of existence.
Gilles Lipovetsky notes that the loss of meaning in modern culture is associated with narcissism, self-isolation.
“Just as the public sphere is emotionally emptied due to an excess of information, the growth of needs and emotions, our “I” loses its orientation and its integrity due to an excess of attention: “I” has become vague. Everywhere the disappearance of weighty reality, there is desubstantialization, the final loss of territory, characteristic of postmodernity.
Opposition to the meaninglessness of life in the European culture of the twentieth century is carried out mainly thanks to art, which reveals inauthenticity, emptiness. The theater of the absurd, the literature of the absurd, the painting of the absurd, etc., have a similar ability to "reveal". The struggle against the absurd consists here in the demonstration of empty structures devoid of content.
Ivan Goll writes: “First of all, it is necessary to break down the external form, the rational, conditional, moral order - all the formalized characteristics of our existence. Man and things should be shown as naked as possible, and to achieve the greatest effect, also through a magnifying glass. Such a magnifying glass for Gaulle is a mask. Note that the mask itself is also an empty structure. However, in the theater it can be used to radically expose social reality.
“Art, to the extent that it wants to educate, improve, be in any way effective, should suppress the ordinary person, frighten him - like a mask frightens children. [...] Art should turn a person into a child again. And the easiest way to achieve this is "grotesque", - to the extent, however, to which it does not cause laughter. The monotony and stupidity of people are so great that they can only be cured by something huge. [...] That's why the new drama will resort to all technical means, which today replace the mask, for example, to a phonograph that changes voice, to illuminated advertising or to a loudspeaker.
Similar creative intentions can be found in Eugene Ionesco. Eugene Ionesco's theater is a struggle against emptiness, a critique of empty people and empty structures.
“We are talking, first of all, about the petty bourgeoisie on a universal scale, since the petty bourgeoisie is a man of ideas, slogans, accepted by him, a universal conformist: such conformism, of course, is his automatic language, which exposes a person. Text of the "Bald Singer" or textbook in English(or Russian, or Portuguese), made up of ready-made expressions, from the most hackneyed clichés, thereby revealed to me the automatism of language, people's behavior, "a conversation conducted in order to say nothing", a conversation conducted because a person cannot say anything personal , he revealed to me the absence of inner life, the mechanism of everyday life, a person immersed in his social environment, no longer distinguishing himself from it. The Smiths, the Marguerites can no longer talk because they can no longer think, and they can’t think because they can no longer feel, they don’t have more passions, they can no longer be, they can “become” anyone, anything, for, without actually existing, they are only others, the world of the impersonal. [...] Comic characters are people who don't exist."
The theater and literature of the absurd expose the absurd in the social sphere. To some extent, they are indicators of the state of society.
The surge of works with absurd themes indicates that society is in a state of anomie. The complete absence of works of the absurd (due to their prohibition) indicates that the absurd in the social sphere has become total.
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