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The psychological aspects of paraconsistency

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Abstract

The creation of paraconsistent logics have expanded the boundaries of formal logic by introducing coherent systems that tolerate contradictions without triviality. Thanks to their novel approach and rigorous formalization they have already found many applications in computer science, linguistics and mathematics. As a natural next step, some philosophers have also tried to answer the question if human everyday reasoning could be accurately modelled with paraconsistent logics. The purpose of this article is to argue against the notion that human reasoning is paraconsistent. Numerous findings in the area of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience go against the hypothesis that humans tolerate contradictions in their inferences. Humans experience severe stress and confusion when confronted with contradictions (i.e., the so-called cognitive dissonance). Experiments on the ways in which humans process contradictions point out that the first thing humans do is remove or modify one of the contradictory statements. From an evolutionary perspective, contradiction is useless and even more dangerous than lack of information because it takes up resources to process. Furthermore, it appears that when logicians, anthropologists or psychologists provide examples of contradictions in human culture and behaviour, their examples very rarely take the form of: \((p \wedge \lnot p)\). Instead, they are often conditional statements, probabilistic judgments, metaphors or seemingly incompatible beliefs. At different points in time humans are definitely able to hold contradictory beliefs, but within one reasoning leading to a particular behaviour, contradiction is never tolerated.

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Notes

  1. a in the law of identity is understood as a single term rather than a proposition.

  2. This type of proof is called “non-constructive”, in opposition to “constructive” proof, which is stronger.

  3. Originally published in Polish under the title: “O zasadzie sprzeczności u Arystotelesa. Studium krytyczne.”

  4. As translated by Vernon Wedin in 1971.

  5. In logic such an act would be described in terms of reasoning about “possible worlds,” whereas in psychology such reasonings are called: “counterfactual reasonings” (Roese 1997).

  6. “Slowly” in terms of the “slow thinking,” described by Kahneman (2011) as deliberative, highly conscious and logical form of thinking.

  7. This definition is a practical version of the popular in philosophy way of defining “belief” as an attitude of regarding something as true (Schwitzgebel 2006-Stanford).

  8. Some logicians posit that paraconsistent logics are based on a misunderstanding or fallacy, since they argue that negation which does not obey the law of non-cotradiction is not really a negation (Quine 1970; Slater 1995). In our work we assume that paraconsistent logics successfully achieve what they claim.

  9. Formalized by Arruda (1977).

  10. A common view of neuroscientists and psychologists on the nature of the mind is summed up in the quote by Swaab (2014, p. 5): “The product of the interaction of all these billions of neurons is called ‘mind’. Just as kidneys produce urine, the brain produces mind (...)”

  11. Of course, linguistic premises alone would not be sufficient to explain human behaviour as they would not properly represent e.g. emotions.

  12. I picked that work since its authors are arguably the most notable researchers of dialectical thinking and their works on the matter have been extensively cited. For more literature on the issue see also: Nisbett et al. (2001), DeMotta et al. (2016), Wong (2006).

  13. By B the authors most probably mean \(\lnot A\).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Piotr Łukowski from the Department of Logic, Jagiellonian University, for his invaluable help with conceptualizing and writing the manuscript.

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    Konrad Rudnicki

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Rudnicki, K. The psychological aspects of paraconsistency. Synthese 199, 4393–4414 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02983-8

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