Law of Identity contradiction

[danilofaria]

Question: Does the fact that identity is an illusion contradict Aristotle's Law of Identity (from the 3 fundamental laws of logic)?

I was reading a recently added book to Leo's booklist about the fundamentals of logic and it made me think.

Since I cannot define anything in a precise, fixed, unambiguous way, what are the consequences of that to logic?

Can I say a=a if there is no a I can define?

[zurew]

5 hours ago, danilofaria said:

Since I cannot define anything in a precise, fixed, unambiguous way, what are the consequences of that to logic?

Generally speaking, nothing.

You dont need to be able to explicitly define the meaning behind terms in a 100% precise way in order for classical or propositional logic to "work". As long as the sense behind letters or terms is used in a consistent way (there is no equivocation), and as long as your statement is truth apt (your statement can be true or false), there shouldnt be an issue.

In fact this is one reason why logic is useful - because you can use it for abstract operations, where you can replace letters or phrases (in this case "a") with anything and it will still work. For example you can derive contradictions from someone's worldview without even knowing the meaning behind their words (again assuming that their statements are truth apt and also assuming that they arent engaging in equivocation)

 

As a sidenote - I would be careful with attaching special metaphysics behind any given logic. The term "logic" is ambiguous, because there are many different kind of logics. You dont need to take any stance on the ontology of any given logic in order for that logic to be useful. Im personally inclined to say that statements like "logic exists" is meaningless and isnt even truth apt.

 

Edited Sunday at 05:54 PM by zurew

[Xonas Pitfall]

@danilofaria

Ironically, no! In fact, it’s the ONLY law needed to understand the entire universe and God. It’s also the only law that not even “God” can break, because it is God (God can only ever be God, aka God Must Equal to God, God = God, the Identity of God).

All = All; Everything = Everything; 1 = 1; Infinity = Infinity.

If you have a set of all 10 numbers, then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 must be included. If they weren’t, then the set of “all 10 numbers” wouldn’t actually be a set of all 10 numbers. The set of 10 would not be equal to the set containing 10.

The same goes for infinity. Infinity means it contains everything.

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Tautological simply means self-referentially true. There are things that are what they are in their essence. They don't need anything "outside" or "other" to define them, or verify their truthfulness.

To show you a simple example:

A greenhouse is a greenhouse. (You don’t have to verify anything in this sentence, or anything outside of it, because it follows base logic: A = A.)

Goodness is good.

A circle is a circle.

Or, you can have a tautology that takes extra steps, but it’s still a tautology, like:

A bachelor is an unmarried man.

All squares have four sides.

A triangle has three sides.

A bachelor, by definition, is an unmarried man, so:
> An unmarried man is an unmarried man.
Squares, by definition, have four sides, so:
> All things that have four sides have four sides.

You get the point. These things might seem silly or trivial, but this is how reality works.

Reality has to be all that is real, because if a thing were not real, it wouldn’t exist, or it cannot be. Hence, reality is all.

All is Everything. Everything must include everything, so it cannot exclude anything outside of it.

Since it includes everything, it must be one, as it contains all. This leads to solipsism.

Since it is all, and I myself as a finite thing can keep including +1, +2, +3 forever, it means infinity must be included in reality. Infinity is real.

Since it is all, it must be both infinite and finite; this is non-dualism.

Since it is all, it must be ever-present; hence, you get omnipotence and omnipresence.

And so on, so on...

As you can see, these traits and properties describe God or Reality.

Now you can just notice that there are things that are "tautological".

Goodness can only truly be good if it’s good for the purpose of being good.
Beautiful things are beautiful in and of themselves.
The most unconditional love is the love that just wants to love for the sake of being loving.

It’s like they are their own fuel, their own creator; there’s no causal effect. They are their own effect and result. This is how God functions. When you "awaken," you just realize that this is how things "are", how it must function.

 

Edited Sunday at 09:25 PM by Xonas Pitfall

[Hojo]

This law requires two people to clearly communicate. Its like a law of language not fact of reality. It isnt nessesary as a law when solo it dosent make sense to have it solo. A shovel can be a bat if you want it to be. But when trying to be logical it must be a bat. So its like a law meaning people must do this with language for society to function.

Unless hes arguing identity of objects is a fact of reality which I would think he would be smarter than that.

Edited Monday at 07:00 AM by Hojo

[danilofaria]

Thanks for the replies, folks. So I am trying to reconcile the following things in my mind:

@zurew says 

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I would be careful with attaching special metaphysics behind any given logic.

@Hojo says

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Its like a law of language not fact of reality.

While @Xonas Pitfall says 

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It’s also the only law that not even “God” can break, because it is God

Which is similar to what @Leo Gura says in Quotes #303

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Because logic is God's Will. Logic doesn't just exist by itself. God is not a mere subject of logic, God is logic. Existence is logic. God is existence.

So I am confused whether logic is a fundamental property of reality or a tool of language. If logic is a fundamental property of reality, then how closely does ”reality's logic” equate to textbook logic used in language by humans?

[Leo Gura]

God IS Identity.

God IS Infinite Identity. God's true identity is Infinity.

The relativity of defining finite identity IS the key feature of Infinite Identity.

Infinity cannot be precisely defined because it is all things and definition is finite. The indefiniteness of God is what allows God to create endless finite sub-identities. Logic deals with the sub-identities of God.

Yes, you can say A=A. That's the definition of truth. God = God.

Edited Monday at 11:12 PM by Leo Gura

[zurew]

16 hours ago, danilofaria said:

So I am confused whether logic is a fundamental property of reality or a tool of language.

Thats good - dont take a position on it unless you have more clarity on it and much better understanding about it - lets just say there is a lot that you can learn about many different kind of logics and on meta logic as well.

The lay folk understanding and intuition on logic is bad and without reading up on it you will make bad inferences about it (and this includes the law of identity as well, and includes what kind of implications would come from the law of identity being false)

All I can confidently say is that the law of non-contradiction is one law that not all academic philosophers who specialize in logic accept - some of them suggest that there are some true contradictions ( for example this usually includes the liars paradox)

[Xonas Pitfall]

On 9/8/2025 at 2:48 PM, danilofaria said:

So I am confused whether logic is a fundamental property of reality or a tool of language. If logic is a fundamental property of reality, then how closely does ”reality's logic” equate to textbook logic used in language by humans?

You have to contemplate what are truth and logic.

To "spoil it" for you, haha, you can do a dictionary lookup:

What is logic?
Reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity.

What is validity?
The quality of being logically or factually sound; soundness or cogency.

What is factually sound?
With regard to what is actually the case; in relation to fact.

What is a fact?
A thing that is known or proved to be true.

What is "to be true", truth?
The quality or state of being true. (This definition becomes self-referential, as 'truth' is being defined in terms of itself, leading to an infinite regress: 'truth' can only be explained by itself, and thus cannot be further defined without repeating the same concept.)

It'll always end up with something related to true, truth, or being truthful.
Logic is the foundation of truth, or that which describes truth, or gets to the truth.

You should be able to see the correspondence between truth and logic (I don’t think you should have issues agreeing with this, as it’s highly intuitive that we use logic to get to “correct,” “right,” or “truthful” expressions). So, this step of contemplation shouldn’t be an issue.

Now, the question becomes: What is truth?

Well, the definition itself is self-referential in most dictionaries; it just means "to be true, to be factual, to be real," but you don’t really contemplate further what that means in the mainstream.

Simply put, truth means correspondence, connection, A=A, symmetry, that things ARE what they ARE. Look up what a truism is or what a tautology is.

Basically, if A = A, it means A being A is true. If we said A is not A, but A = B, then A is not A, but A is B. This would imply the initial A was not “real,” “truthful," “actual,” or "properly described/understood," but what is actually real is B, so B is real, and A is fake. It's very loopy and almost silly to say this out loud, but this is the foundation of logic and truth.

Examples of Tautologies:

• A circle is a circle.
• A bachelor is an unmarried man.
• A square has four sides.
• A leaf is a leaf.
• The blue sky is blue.

These are tautologies because they are true by definition; they cannot be false. They simply restate the same thing in different words or affirm the same concept.

The Law of Identity you mentioned here, which is the foundation of truth and logic, is the core of what God is (truth).

The Law of Identity asserts that "A is A," meaning that something must be itself. If A were not A (if God were not God), it would contradict its own identity, making it unreal or false. The moment something is not itself, it ceases to exist in the realm of truth, because it violates its own identity. In other words, if A is not A, then it is no longer a real thing; it becomes an illusion or a lie. Logic seeks to identify the truth, and a lie cannot be truth because it does not correspond to reality.

To make this a little less abstract, it’s similar to how scientists constantly push off the answer to the question of reality by narrowing it down to smaller and smaller subatomic particles.

What is the foundation of the universe? What is truth?
“Ah! Molecules created everything.”
So, truth = molecule?

Okay, how did the molecule come to be?
“Uh... atoms!”
So, molecule isn’t truth, then? You’re saying the atom is truth?

Okay, how did the atom come to be?
“Uhh... !?” And the answer might shift to "quarks," "strings," or something else.

Do you see how they’re constantly pushing the question of truth to a second, third, and even smaller order of explanations, but never actually addressing it directly? This cycle continues indefinitely. The deeper you go, the more distant the original question becomes, without ever touching on what the true foundation of reality actually is. This mirrors a kind of infinite regression, always searching for smaller and smaller explanations, but never answering the original question.

This means that all of these explanations are second-order concepts, never truly addressing the actual "first-order" truth.

However, 

God is THAT absolute, direct "first-order" truth, or correspondence to reality.
Reality = Reality; God = God; Reality = God, God is being itself, God.

That’s what you experience during enlightenment, psychedelics, yoga, etc. You remove all the filters of others, your ego, language, and you just are pure identity, pure being, pure God, pure reality. It’s a direct connection to the actuality of things, with no filters of comprehension.

The Law of Identity simply states that things are what they are, and this is the purest form of truth and what it means to "be."

A less abstract example: When are you the most truthful?
Answer: When you simply are who you are, when you are your purest self, your most "authentic" and real self. When you don’t filter your words, when you don’t white lie or obfuscate, when you don’t hide or camouflage for the sake of your ego. That purity and unfilteredness is God.

Edited Wednesday at 02:28 AM by Xonas Pitfall