Here is Aristotle's law of non contradiction.
In respect say to say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat
Schrödinger's cat



This is a thought experiment a cat is radiated in a box. In which;" when the box is opened, the universe (or at least the part of the universe containing the observer and cat) is split into two separate universes, one containing an observer looking at a box with a dead cat, one containing an observer looking at a box with a live cat."

Although this thought breaks Aristotles rule. It has a theoretical grounding in indeterminacy.

This thought experiment did not arise spontaneously. From Schrodingers uncertainty relation" an uncertainty relation arises between any two observable quantities that can be defined by non-commuting operators"


Now there is controversy, suddenly infinite universes start to appear.

Much of all this is in the realm of scientific imagination, even big bang theory is mostly theory.

Dialectics is not a specific method, in each case those who are consciously using dialectics as a tool look at the contradictions, and the parameters, and goes deeper and deeper into the problem until the cutting edge of the history of the problem is reached.

As Hegel says. "You cannot learn how to swim without jumping into the pool.''

A conscious dialectician such as Christopher Caudwell, reflected not just on the problem but the social nature of the problem.

"In every way, theory was drifting away from practice. Art was flying away from experience. Philosophy, even philosophy of science, was becoming increasingly remote from science. Positivism, in the name of science, was a philosophy alien to the realm of scientific experiment, and science without the appeal to experiment was pure scholasticism and alexandrian futility. A theory of science drifting further and further from scientific practice gave rise to more problems than it solved.

Thus the crisis in physics. It was a part of the general crisis in science, which in turn was part of the overall crisis in culture. Caudwell saw a causal connection between the crisis in physics and that in biology, psychology, economics, morality, politics, art and, indeed, life as a whole. In a society in which consciousness had become so separated from its environment, because the thinking class had become so separated from the working class, there was growing intellectual fragmentation and cultural disorientation. Consciousness tended to gather at one pole and activity at the other, causing distortion of both. " Hannah Shennan.

Dialectics is not the forms and struggles of opposites per se but this applied to actual matter. Giving problems their context, not necessarily their solution, but perhaps to bring conditions amenable to their solution.

Yet even in a specific problem in which a dialectician was involved is captured by is history.

"At this point I bring this history of Philosophy to a close. It has been my desire that you should learn from it that the history of Philosophy is not a blind collection of fanciful ideas, nor a fortuitous progression. I have rather sought to show the necessary development of the successive philosophies from one another, so that the one of necessity presupposes another preceding it. The general result of the history of Philosophy is this: in the first place, that throughout all time there has been only one Philosophy, the contemporary differences of which constitute the necessary aspects of the one principle; in the second place, that the succession of philosophic systems is not due to chance, but represents the necessary succession of stages in the development of this science; in the third place, that the final philosophy of a period is the result of this development, and is truth in the highest form which the self-consciousness of spirit affords of itself. The latest philosophy contains therefore those which went before; it embraces in itself all the different stages thereof; it is the product and result of those that preceded it." Hegel "History of philosophy."


This latter statement is the key statement in dialectics. As it is true in Hegel's philosophy it is also true in Marx's political economy.
Marx dissects previous theory in order to come up with is own.

To think that dialectics is a mystical conjuring trick is just poppycock and insult to the great intellectual efforts of many great thinkers.

"Great deeds are done, when men and mountains meet that are not done by jostling in the street.

The study of writings on dialectics has to be tempered by practice.

All of these guides as such are useless outside of actual study.

a development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis ("the negation of the negation"),

* a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line;

* a development by leaps, catastrophes, and revolutions; - breaks in continuity";

* the transformation of quantity into quality;

* inner impulses towards development, imparted by the contradiction and conflict of the various forces and tendencies acting on a given body, or within a given phenomenon, or within a given society;

* the interdependence and the closest and indissoluble connection between all aspects of any phenomenon



These are things that happen, like shit happens, but unless you are in the middle of some real study of the history of anything. Then they will not serve very well.

Though I do think dialectical study, helps to make one quick witted and to develop
a rich sense of irony.
Postmodern philosophy is bourgeois decadence, basically irrationalism. The destruction of reason itself, by throwing mud, and dumbed down scientific formulations, at scientific thought at its height. Modern Socialists should not capitulate to it.

PN:

This, of course is a thought experiment, as you note, which many question.

So, it's not a good example to use even against a principle that was propounded 2400 years ago, let alone modern versions of this 'law' (none of which you seem to know anything about).

Not so, it challenges, according to some, the so-called 'Law of Excluded Middle', not the 'Law of Non-contradiction'.

And, unfortunately for you, it actually challenges neither.

Why? Well you will have to study some modern logic to understand the explanation.

But, I raised this with you last year, and it looks like you ignored that advice.

Still, you pontificate in areas where your ignorance is now almost legendary.

And, despite many requests to do so, you have signally failed to explain this bogus 'method' to us.

And, still you remain impressed by banalities like this.

You quoted this at me last year too, and were slapped down for it then.

Even single-celled organisms have steeper learning curves than you seem to display.

Once again, your naive faith in this ancient cult is very touching, but you should spout this in the OI/Religion section, I think.

You need to wake up. We have already shown that Marx abandoned all this Hegelian gobbledygook.

The more you post, PN, the more you confirm the accusation that you have allowed mysticism to take over your brain.

Piece of advice: quit while you are behind.

Yes, but 150 years of practice has refuted this mystical theory.

And now a hush descends on the gathered multitudes as hymn number 6547 is reverently sung by Brother PeaceNicked of the Church of the Holy Useless Dialectic:

How many more times do we have to read this banal load of tripe?

Do you honestly think that if you keep regurgitating this b*llocks that it will become true?

I fear you do, for you consistenly ignore my extensive refutations of this sub-standard waffle.

You are clearly lost in a safe little world of your own, where the mantras you post serve as a sort of metaphysical comfort blanket.

And now, hush descends once more as we have the daily lesson read to us by Cardinal Irrelevance of the Misssion To Bore The Pants Off Workers:

Who the hell is a postmodernist here?

Just who do you think you are addressing?

Sometimes I genuinely fear for your state of mind...

man, what is this

What does it look like?

unorganized rant.

I wonder how could they be able to gain more people into their dialectics if many people seem to voice opinions such as this?

Awayish:

Wholly unlike your well-typed and crystal clear prose, eh?

my prose is shitty. but i wasn't talking about you. specifically i was talking about this stuff


i should have said, metaphysical rubbish, but have at it.

that is not what schrodingers cat is about....

Ender, thanks for that -- but this comrade stopped listening to anything that contradicted his dialectical view of reality a long time ago -- which is odd really, given the way dialecticians like to see contradictions in everything.

Wasn't Schrödinger's cat about probability and the observer effect? I'm not so sure it's the best place to find dialectics in nature.

VB:

Neither is anywhere else.

Let B be a boolean value, i.e. a member of the set {0,1}, and !B be its negation (1-B = !B).

Then B+!B=1.

That is Aristotle's law of non-contradiction in mathematical form.

Does it?

No, it doesn't. According to classical logic, there is one solution to B+!B=1 and B*!B=0.

Quantum logic says there are a number of solutions, not that there are no solutions!

It's Heisenberg's uncertainty relations <_<

You can't derive the uncertainty relations from Schrodinger's equation.

No, they don't.

If you take a measurement to be an interaction between two systems, and then you introduce the linear wave function of the universe for renormalization purposes, then you get - by the Heisenberg picture - the possibility of many universes existing.

But the existence of a linear wave function of the universe has been rejected because of quantum gravity, even quantum Newtonian gravity.

Just like evolution

Sweet zombie jesus, that's not an argument.

It's a consequence of General Relativity, which empiricism tends to support.