Three laws are commonly given, named respectively the Law of Identity, the Law of Contradiction and the Law of Excluded Middle.
The inference, such as it is, depends on the Law of Excluded Middle.
As I have hitherto said nothing of the two axioms in question, those of Contradiction and of Excluded Middle, it is not unseasonable to consider them here.
The Maxim of Excluded Middle: A given attribute either does belong, or does not belong to a subject (i.
Identity (fixed meaning of terms and propositions), and the maxims of Contradiction and of Excluded Middle (impossibility that a proposition and its contradictory can either be both true or both false.
We know little about the opinions of Protagoras; but there was nothing in this canon necessarily at variance either with the Maxim of Contradiction or with that of Excluded Middle.
For, on the supposition, a thing would be something else, whereas all that the law of excluded middle demands is that it should either be itself or not.
The Law of Excluded Middle-- Everything must either be or not be; Everything is either A or not A.
If from this law we argue that, because the law of excluded middle is a proposition, therefore the law of excluded middle is true or false, we incur a vicious-circle fallacy.
Take, for example, the law ofexcluded middle in the form 'all propositions are true or false.
I concluded that the maid was uncertain as to the objective validity of the law of excluded middle, and remarked that to her mistress.
If there is a mean, the conditioned, and the two extremes, then "excluded middle" has nothing to do with the matter at all.
To mention in the same breath the law of excluded middle, and two contradictions with a mean between them, requires a hardihood unparalleled in the history of philosophy, except by Hegel.
But if a mean between the two contradictories be both impossible and absurd, (and we have hitherto so interpreted the law of excluded middle,) Hamilton's conditioned entirely vanishes.
The above list will hopefully provide you with a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "excluded middle" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this group of words.
