[FOM] "Hidden" contradictions

[T.Forster at dpmms.cam.ac.uk]

On Aug 25 2013, Sam Sanders wrote:

> Do people in applications really throw out classical (whatever order) 
> logic and embrace paraconsistent logic as "the true way"? Or do they just 
> think/work classically and somehow manage to contain the inconsistent 
> information, i.e. prevent it from doing damage?
>
> I have seen examples of the latter, but not the former in practice. Chow 
> similarly asked for a clear example (related to the ongoing saga 
> mentioned), I believe.


This is absolutely crucial. There is a huge mistake being made by the 
paraconsistency insurgency: the mistake of thinking that an agent who 
treads carefully on encountering a contradiction and therefore does not - 
pro tem - use the ex falso, is ``using a paraconsistent logic''. One 
absolutely does not need a new, kinky logic. What we have is an engineering 
problem not a logical problem, and it needs to be solved by engineers not 
logicians.
    I think that the error of which this is a cute example is actually
quite widespread, and we need to combat it.

          tf