In the first of a series of three lectures on the human condition, Sherman Fairchild Professor in the Humanities and Philosophy Department Chair Robert Fogelin examined whether contradictions in our social systems render them useless.
Fogelin delivered his speech titled "The Precarious Life of a Rational Animal: Why Obey the Laws of Logic?" to an audience of about 100 people in Loew Auditorium.
The speech was a part of this year's Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa Professional Lecture Series.
College President James Freedman kicked off the series by introducing Fogelin, who previously chaired the philosophy department at Yale University and taught philosophy at Pamona College.
Fogelin has received "wide recognition for powerful work in various areas of philosophy," Freedman said. "He's a distinguished teacher."
Fogelin was recently rewarded the Romanell professorship by the Alpha of New Hampshire chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa which recognizes scholarship and a public understanding in philosophy.
Fogelin noted the importance of coupling teaching with scholarship.
"Scholarship is absolutely essential to good teaching," he said.
Fogelin went on to exhibit his own scholarly findings by addressing Aristotle's deduction, "Man is a rational animal."
"He was at least half right," Fogelin said. "Man has the capacity to figure things out but is not necessarily rational."
"He was smarter than that," he said of Aristotle, jokingly.
Fogelin entertained the audience by reading various philosophical quotations from the likes of Emerson to Nietzsche, and asked the audience to identify the quotes.
He then delved into the three laws of logic: identity, the excluded middle and the law of non-contradiction. Questioning from where their authority is drawn, Fogelin opted to place his focus on the third.
"What's wrong with asserting something and then denying it?" he asked.
Using the examples of whether President Bill Clinton is, in fact, from Arkansas and whether a number is prime, Fogelin proposed an answer to this question.
"Either something is or it isn't," he said. "The law of non-contradiction is as trivial a law as you can imagine."
Fogelin weighed the strength of different types of laws, contrasting human ordinances with the unchanging law of gravity.
"The laws of logic are super-constraining laws that govern," he said.
"Even God cannot violate the law of non-contradiction," Fogelin pointed out.
However, he noted that in an endlessly changing universe, this law might not hold.
Fogelin took the words "and" and "not," in order to question their purposes and lead the audience into a philosophical lesson on truth table definitions and truth functional connectors.
"These are very useful animals in a language," he said.
"Have I proved the law?" Fogelin asked shortly after these lessons. "Aristotle says this is impossible."
He attempted to assert basic arguments to conspicuously convey his overall stance.
"If you deny the law, there is no significant difference between asserting something and denying it," he said.
"If I say 'I don't really accept the law of non-contradiction,' you reply, 'Oh you do, huh?,' 'No, but I just said I didn't,'" Fogelin said, illustrating his point humorously.
Two additional lectures in the series, which will be held tomorrow and Thursday, will further examine the rational animal, Fogelin said.
In his upcoming two lectures, Fogelin will seek to answer the following questions: "How is it that we know anything at all?" and furthermore, "How did science arrive?"
