I think non-contradiction is a terrible foundation of philosophy, since it leads to ideas like "free will is an illusion". Since the notion of free will contradicts the mechanistic nature of science, people will try to eliminate it philosophically in the name of non-contradiction.
That will not make us stop talking and reasoning as if free will existed for real. So the entire exercise just makes philosophy as a whole seem ridiculous.
I agree somewhat but from the other end, 'sorta'’ kinda’ with both of you.
A lot of philosophical thickets arise because of quite logical extrapolations, in a very large 'solution' space. (Or art space to quote Hofstadter.) I call them thickets because the amount of time it would take to get to know them, or just learn about them is enormous. Let alone work through them, sift them …. This is why I am a fan of J. N. Nielsen’s substack. I read everything he is cross-posting from a big back catalogue on substack. And his work is just reviewing on philosophy/history|history/philosophy.
If non-contradiction or the excluded middle raises is ugly head it probably means one is using the wrong framework. The tetralemma is a method to be aware of this 'framing' issue to avoid being stuck in a neural-net learning pot-hole. It is not a counter-argument on the same level. It is not a rook taking a bishop, it asks, why are you playing chess here?
Gödelian theorems on incompleteness is another frame raising question at a more meta-level remove, using recursive mapping, and indicates, or intimates, that the ugly-head is a deep part of any logical system. But if so, or if not, we may never know. It may be rash to assume anything. The gap may always remain, even if littler gaps disappear. (This is despite Gödel's intuitions about Plato's intuitions.)
We all love to through stuff into the gap.
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In Pyrrhonist terms (Sextus Empirius was the most notable follower) one does not clunk-on down into contradiction, but where it arises as a gap of understanding (among other occasions) then it is wise to suspend judgement until the numbers or evidence is in. And suspend even unto forever (this is different from the Academic Skeptics who dogmatically say you cannot know), And one does not rashly choose dogma to die by, or shibboleth together with. Ratcheting the whole thing into a logical mechanical boxed set is a rash thing to do they say.
Lots of philosophies/people/cultures do this, even if they are avowedly anti-mechanistic, because they rashly throw stuff into the gap/s. Sometimes they call it the name of god, sometimes they call these axioms, but ya-gotta-start-somewhere. [priors in Bayesian speak]
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This is why I say logic, successful logicks, is a hindsight. It is not a starting place. A gathering of wisdom perhaps.
The logic might be perfect and the gods themselves cannot make 2+2=5 but maths describes all kinds of crazy stuff, but it is in hindsight that we choose the best fit, the best mapping, for now. The best scrapping of axioms, starts, priors.
This wisdom applies to non-contradiction too, and the law of the excluded middle. Some peeps want to wield these laws as if they were some sort of mental hygiene, but this might be rash. (Even if those wielding them like mantras are doctrinal narcissists. This is bad worlding. Rationalists are in danger of this path.)
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"Prediction is hard especially about the future."
Consciousness is a Janus-faced bet-placing effort, as is life, looking back, guessing forward.
But survival often mistakes its success for future-proofing, as if learning finished once we work it out (like say, a law of non-contradiction) (metaphor doesn't give a flying about that mapping, and being alive is more like metaphor than logic.) The non-contradiction and excluded middles are abstract mantras in a hindsight game and are as good as far as they go. But no mantra will stop your children from being eaten by a shark. We don't see the toad of perfection excluding middles successfully on a day to day basis, even if the frog of understanding can see how the toad’s stomach works quite logically.
Even the basic mathematics of counting requires a point-of-view (POV), and logic is an extrapolation of that effort to align marks with consistent mapping across domains. Consistency and coherence require memory. Abstract laws seek power beyond that memory, beyond any POV towards some objective stance, which is thus a derivative of POVs (who may negotiate with each other.)
We must judge where we cut, score, judge, count and can we call the derivative of that a truly objective science? Why is there this bias everywhere we look? Ya-gotta-start-somewhere.
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And this is also why the worries about mechanistic whatevers.... in philosophical thickets... are easily over-emphasized. Non-mechanistic philosophies make the same rash mistakes. (Not all philosophies are analytic).
Note that 'metaphysics' ares often just other peoples' ‘philosophies’. It depends where you start. Where you start depends on fashion.
but mind Keynes' nostrum that any economists who says they do not use theory is simply in the grip of an older theory (I tend to agree more with the less annoying of these two critics in the video discussing the very annoying Sam Harris).
I can't see how science would destroy free will because it is mechanistic. I *can* see how science might possibly do away with free will because it finds the universe is too *unpredictable.*
At the large scale many deterministic systems are chaotic - even very simple systems like a double pendulum behave chaotically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwT0k09w-jw Most systems show more chaos than this, which is why (for instance) it's impossible to accurately predict the weather indefinitely far into the future.
But science is even less mechanistic at the small scale where human thought seems to be processed, since quantum mechanics holds that the behavior of subatomic particles like electrons is not even deterministic. As in, "What thought was I having? Wait, an electron tunneled and now my neurons are firing in the part of my brain dealing with pies again." And let's face it, apple pies are really, really yummy.
Ah, I interpreted "non-contradiction" in a too strict sense. Science and free will are incompatible or at least difficult to combine, but as you say, they do not contradict each other in the strictest sense of the word.
I think non-contradiction is a terrible foundation of philosophy, since it leads to ideas like "free will is an illusion". Since the notion of free will contradicts the mechanistic nature of science, people will try to eliminate it philosophically in the name of non-contradiction.
That will not make us stop talking and reasoning as if free will existed for real. So the entire exercise just makes philosophy as a whole seem ridiculous.
I agree somewhat but from the other end, 'sorta'’ kinda’ with both of you.
A lot of philosophical thickets arise because of quite logical extrapolations, in a very large 'solution' space. (Or art space to quote Hofstadter.) I call them thickets because the amount of time it would take to get to know them, or just learn about them is enormous. Let alone work through them, sift them …. This is why I am a fan of J. N. Nielsen’s substack. I read everything he is cross-posting from a big back catalogue on substack. And his work is just reviewing on philosophy/history|history/philosophy.
Here is a recent one on Vico whose assumes things are made, obviously, and makes very logical arguments, that one can see reflected today in intelligent design arguments. https://geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/giambattista-vico-and-ideal-eternal
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tetralemma
If non-contradiction or the excluded middle raises is ugly head it probably means one is using the wrong framework. The tetralemma is a method to be aware of this 'framing' issue to avoid being stuck in a neural-net learning pot-hole. It is not a counter-argument on the same level. It is not a rook taking a bishop, it asks, why are you playing chess here?
Gödelian theorems on incompleteness is another frame raising question at a more meta-level remove, using recursive mapping, and indicates, or intimates, that the ugly-head is a deep part of any logical system. But if so, or if not, we may never know. It may be rash to assume anything. The gap may always remain, even if littler gaps disappear. (This is despite Gödel's intuitions about Plato's intuitions.)
We all love to through stuff into the gap.
_______________________
In Pyrrhonist terms (Sextus Empirius was the most notable follower) one does not clunk-on down into contradiction, but where it arises as a gap of understanding (among other occasions) then it is wise to suspend judgement until the numbers or evidence is in. And suspend even unto forever (this is different from the Academic Skeptics who dogmatically say you cannot know), And one does not rashly choose dogma to die by, or shibboleth together with. Ratcheting the whole thing into a logical mechanical boxed set is a rash thing to do they say.
Lots of philosophies/people/cultures do this, even if they are avowedly anti-mechanistic, because they rashly throw stuff into the gap/s. Sometimes they call it the name of god, sometimes they call these axioms, but ya-gotta-start-somewhere. [priors in Bayesian speak]
_________________
This is why I say logic, successful logicks, is a hindsight. It is not a starting place. A gathering of wisdom perhaps.
The logic might be perfect and the gods themselves cannot make 2+2=5 but maths describes all kinds of crazy stuff, but it is in hindsight that we choose the best fit, the best mapping, for now. The best scrapping of axioms, starts, priors.
This wisdom applies to non-contradiction too, and the law of the excluded middle. Some peeps want to wield these laws as if they were some sort of mental hygiene, but this might be rash. (Even if those wielding them like mantras are doctrinal narcissists. This is bad worlding. Rationalists are in danger of this path.)
_______________________________
"Prediction is hard especially about the future."
Consciousness is a Janus-faced bet-placing effort, as is life, looking back, guessing forward.
But survival often mistakes its success for future-proofing, as if learning finished once we work it out (like say, a law of non-contradiction) (metaphor doesn't give a flying about that mapping, and being alive is more like metaphor than logic.) The non-contradiction and excluded middles are abstract mantras in a hindsight game and are as good as far as they go. But no mantra will stop your children from being eaten by a shark. We don't see the toad of perfection excluding middles successfully on a day to day basis, even if the frog of understanding can see how the toad’s stomach works quite logically.
Even the basic mathematics of counting requires a point-of-view (POV), and logic is an extrapolation of that effort to align marks with consistent mapping across domains. Consistency and coherence require memory. Abstract laws seek power beyond that memory, beyond any POV towards some objective stance, which is thus a derivative of POVs (who may negotiate with each other.)
We must judge where we cut, score, judge, count and can we call the derivative of that a truly objective science? Why is there this bias everywhere we look? Ya-gotta-start-somewhere.
__________________________
And this is also why the worries about mechanistic whatevers.... in philosophical thickets... are easily over-emphasized. Non-mechanistic philosophies make the same rash mistakes. (Not all philosophies are analytic).
Note that 'metaphysics' ares often just other peoples' ‘philosophies’. It depends where you start. Where you start depends on fashion.
_________crazy stuff in maths________
Andrej Bauer: Constructive Mathematics - How to Not Believe in the Law of Excluded Middle, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96iHUx0aGDs
Also to here is some professional distaste about the thickets being called ‘boring’ so don't bother with them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWHV-NtPoYA
but mind Keynes' nostrum that any economists who says they do not use theory is simply in the grip of an older theory (I tend to agree more with the less annoying of these two critics in the video discussing the very annoying Sam Harris).
I can't see how science would destroy free will because it is mechanistic. I *can* see how science might possibly do away with free will because it finds the universe is too *unpredictable.*
At the large scale many deterministic systems are chaotic - even very simple systems like a double pendulum behave chaotically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwT0k09w-jw Most systems show more chaos than this, which is why (for instance) it's impossible to accurately predict the weather indefinitely far into the future.
But science is even less mechanistic at the small scale where human thought seems to be processed, since quantum mechanics holds that the behavior of subatomic particles like electrons is not even deterministic. As in, "What thought was I having? Wait, an electron tunneled and now my neurons are firing in the part of my brain dealing with pies again." And let's face it, apple pies are really, really yummy.
Ah, I interpreted "non-contradiction" in a too strict sense. Science and free will are incompatible or at least difficult to combine, but as you say, they do not contradict each other in the strictest sense of the word.