This article irritated me on several levels, so I responded. My responses won't make much sense unless you read the article so I suggest you look at the link first.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-married-bachelor-proves-that-unicorns-exist/
Things can't be mutually contradictory? Then light is a wave and not particle. Unless it's a particle and not wave. Or at least it's kind of both sometimes, and also one or the other at other times and...
And Einstein's famous train thought experiment simply can't be true. Except it is. Under certain circumstances mutually exclusive concepts are both correct. To Susan on the train, both doors open at the same moment in time and that is an absolute fact. But it is also an absolute fact that to Bob standing outside the train as it passes by, the rear door opens first. Sorry, all of you who believe in classic Greek logic as an absolute truth, but Greek logic is very limited and is not adequate for our modern level of knowledge.
The article makes a great deal of 'suppose you know one of these things is true, but how do you know they're true?' The article makes much ado about this simple point, but why? It's better to sum it up quickly.
What if you're wrong? What if you're absolutely certain you're correct, but in objective reality you are not? That's all that needs to be said about it. Going on and on about it may sound erudite, but verbally beating a dead horse is a waste of words. This article is very pretentious, but it takes simple points and makes them lengthy and abstruse.
This is a great weakness of philosophers.
To put it even more simply, the liar paradox which has so often been presented, that is still being presented with awesome respect for the brilliance of its creator is nothing but the silly nonsense of misusing and even abusing human language.
As for me, insofar as I find it profound, I find this article profoundly silly.
We don't need a lengthy philosophizing to demonstrate that it's silly. It is simply silly. All the philosophizing simply gives a nonsensical foolish statement the image of being profound and serious when fact it's nothing but a silly statement. Frankly, philosophers take themselves far too seriously.
Why say in a simple direct self evident statement that which is obviously true, when you can write an entire article endlessly dodging about and describing in exotic terms that which even a fool could see at first glance?
The answer is quite obvious and simple. Philosophers are paid by the word. Furthermore, lengthy words receive bonuses!
