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If you believe that homeopathic medicines have effects lacked by water, then you put yourself in an
unenviable position. You must either deny that homeopathic medicines are just water, despite the fact that
their dilution makes the presence of the active agent impossible. Or, you must deny that objects with the
same properties have the same effects. Unless you deny one of these plausible ideas, you contradict
yourself by believing in the efficacy of homeopathic medicines.
Real Contradictions
Most are distressed to find that they have contradicted themselves. But not all. Some will declare that
yes, their position is inconsistent, but is not the world itself full of contradiction?
That all depends on what you mean by “contradiction.” I hate to say that because the meaning of
“contradiction” is quite plain. So, there ought to be no question about what you mean by it or of the
world being contradictory.
Statements are contradictory when the truth of one entails the falsity of the other, when, if one is true, the
other must be false. “Jack is fat” and “Jack is not fat” are thus contradictory. That is what “contradictory”
means. And because that is what it means, there cannot be contradictory facts. Take any supposedly
contradictory facts, such as A and B, to keep matters simple and to dodge the impossibility of producing
a real example. If A is a fact then the statement of this fact, “A,” is true. And the same goes for B and
“B.” But then the statements “A” and “B” are both true,p. 95and so not contradictory after all. The very
existence of contradictory facts would mean they weren’t really contradictory.
The idea that there are contradictions in reality, and not merely in our beliefs about it, is possible only
when “contradiction” is used to mean something other than contradiction. Misusing words may normally
be dismissed as mere illiteracy. When it is done systematically by people regarded as great thinkers,
however, the misuse is liable to gain some currency. And that is what happened with “contradiction” at
the hands of the nineteenth-century philosopher Hegel and his Communist successors, Marx, Lenin, and
Mao Tse Tung.
According to these Dialectical Materialists, real contradictions aren’t just common, they are essential to
everything. Here is Mao Tse Tung on the matter:
Engels said, “Motion itself is a contradiction.” Lenin defined the law of the unity of opposites as “the
recognition (discovery) of the contradictory,mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies inall phenomena
and processes of nature (includingmind and society).” Are these ideas correct? Yes, they are. The
interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects
determine the life of all things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain
contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist.[7.5]
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p. 96This passage helps us to understand not only what Dialectical Materialists mean by “contradiction,”
but also what it really means, by providing an example of the latter. Mao begins by agreeing with Lenin
that what is contradictory is mutually exclusive. Then he claims that what is contradictory is
interdependent. I suppose having a contradictory definition of “contradiction” is no less than you would
expect of someone who thinks everything is essentially contradictory.
Insofar as such muddles do not render their interpretation incomprehensible, Dialectical Materialists
seem to use “contradictory” simply to mean opposed or conflicting. Only this interpretation makes sense
of Lenin and Mao’s opinion that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are contradictory, along with the city
and the country, + and -, and everything else besides.
But then Dialectical Materialism provides no excuse for holding contradictory beliefs. Even if Dialectical
Materialism were right, it would show only that oppositions or conflicts are rife, not that real
contradictions are. You can’t show that reality is full of contradiction by calling conflicts “contradictions.”
No more than you could show that goblins exist by calling birds “goblins.”
The only sense in which the world is full of contradiction is that it is full of contradictory opinions and
statements. And so it is also full of error. If opinions are contradictory then one of them is false.
Contradict yourself and you are sure to be wrong. Not caring about contradiction is the same as not
caring about the truth.
8 – Equivocation
p. 97Are Christians good?
You might think the tricky word in this question is “good.” After all, “good” is a topic of philosophical
debate, and there can be no better indication that a word is tricky. But, in fact, the problem lies not with
“good” but with “Christian.” However challenging it is to define “good,” most of us share a sufficiently
common understanding of the word to agree in most of its applications. And, more importantly for the
purpose of this chapter, it is not ambiguous. There are not two or more clear and distinctly different
meanings of the word.
“Christian,” however, is ambiguous. It can be used to refer to a person who holds certain beliefs, such as
that God created the universe and that Jesus is His son (and also God Himself, if our Christian is a
Trinitarian). If this is how “Christian” is understood, then the question “Are Christians good?” is an
interestingp. 98one. They might be or they might not. To find the answer we will have to look for
evidence, such as a lower than average proportion of Christians in prison or higher than average
donations to charity or some other such fact.
There is another common use of “Christian,” however, on which our question is not in the least
interesting, namely, the sense in which “Christian” just means “good.” This is employed when people
describe immoral acts as “un-Christian,” or when Father Ted’s congregation responds to the revelation
of his pederasty by declaring that he is not a “real Christian” after all. If someone qualifies as a Christian
only if he is good, then of course Christians are good—it is true by definition. On this interpretation, it is
an open question whether those who believe in the divinity of Jesus tend to be Christians.
This ambiguity is harmless, provided we keep clear about which meaning we are using. Trouble comes
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when we slip between the two meanings, despite the validity of our argument[,|] requiring us to keep to
just one meaning, that is, when weequivocate.
Suppose, for example, that Jack recommends Christianity to Jill on the ground that it is the path to virtue.
Jill expresses some doubt about this, pointing out that most mafia assassins are Christians. Jack responds
that Guido cannot be counted a Christian; no Christian would have whacked the Don’s nephew.
Jack has equivocated. He uses “Christian” in its first, belief-based sense when he recommends
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