HOW THINGS BEGAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 554, 3 February 1950, Page 5

HOW THINGS BEGAN

Sir,-Reverting to the subject of selfcontradiction, Father Duggan now tells us (Listener, January 20) that one of the propositions which he describes in his book as self-contradictory is. only "mediately" "so, i.e., that not it, but its combination with the admission of some other proposition, is self-contradictory, or rather would be self-contradictory-for the philosophers with whom he is arguing at this point do not make the admission in question. This novel \extension of the notion of self-contradic-tion would make it applicable to any proposition which a man believes to be false on any grounds whatever. Thus since I believe that God does not turn stones into statues (without human agency), I may call it "mediately" selfcontradictory to say that He does, since it would be "immediately" self-contra-dictory to say that He both does and does not (i.e., sometimes does and never does). But I can hardly imagine anyone who holds that God does turn stones into statues being much moved by this consideration, nor can I see that he logically ought to be. Father Duggan also-tells us now that the statement that a change may be causeless is "self-contradictory, if you admit that a change must have a cause." If this is another "mediate" self-contra-diction, ie, if Father Duggan merely means that a man would contradict himself if he admitted that every change must have a cause and at the same time denied it, I agree. But this is much less than what he maintains both in his book and in his first letter, namely, that a man contradicts himself when he simply does not admit that every change must have a cause. However, I agree with this, too, if the word "change" is being used, as Father Duggan now tells us he is using it, in such a sense that "being caused" is part of its meaning (though how he differentiates a "change" in this sense of his from an "effect,"’ he declines to inform us). Certainly anything that is caused is caused, and certainly this eannot be denied without self-contradic-tion. But this is more than is generally meant by "change." When a thing has a certain quality (or relation to other, things) at one time, and lacks it (perhaps having some other instead) at anether, or has more or less of some quality at one time than at another, or exists at one time but not at another-in all these cases (my list is substantially Aristotle’s) there is what would generally be called "change," whether these alterations have causes or not. And a man may hold. without self-contradiction (though I do not say that he may hold truly) that some of them have not. The truism that any of them that have causes have causes, which We now learn is all that Father Duggan means by "Every change has a cause," has simply no bearing on the point. (To appeal to it would be like arguing that it is selfcontradictory to say that some men are not married, because it is self-contradic-tory to deny that all married men are

married.)

ARTHUR N.

PRIOR

(Christchurch).