Recently, I posted a call for a renewed reverence for Truth.
In case any of you are willing to join me in that pursuit, I thought I would now write a number of articles about how to think clearly and accurately, to equip you with the tools you’ll need in your search for Truth—and to recognize it when you’ve found it. In this first article, I want to discuss one of the foundational principles of logic: the law of the excluded middle.
The law of the excluded middle is simple, but its implications are profound. In short, the law of the excluded middle just means that any statement or claim you make is either true, or it is not true. Period. There is no middle ground, no “gray” area.
If that thought bothers you, if you find yourself instinctively pulled to disagree…well, that’s why I’ve chosen this as the subject of my first article about how to think accurately!
In our culture, we tend to reflexively distrust what we call “black-and-white” thinking. It’s often viewed as too rigid, and blind to nuance. We then praise ourselves when we rise above the perceived limits of black-and-white thinking and feel exceedingly sophisticated by seeing all of the gray area between the figurative black and white.
However, accurate thinking can not be accomplished by wandering about within the near limitless expanse of gray area. You see, the grey area avoids at all costs making a firm distinction, of saying with conviction, “this is true” or “that is false“. You are then merely a wanderer with no map and no destination. Clear, accurate thinking demands that you eventually step out of the fog of all that might be true and into the bright light of what is true. Such clarity can only be found in the precision offered by thinking solely within the confines of “true” and “false”.
When you commit to thinking in terms of true or not-true, you now have an exceedingly powerful tool to cut straight to the heart of any issue. You are now attacking the problem with the logical precision of a computer, which under the hood processes all of its “thoughts” in terms of true and not-true, on and not-on.
As it happens, the problem with “black and white” thinking is that it isn’t rigid enough: rather than “black or white”, you should be thinking in terms of “black or not-black” and “white or not-white” (or “gray or not-gray”). In other words, true or not-true.
Is Trump a corrupt president? Was Obama a scandal-free president? Does God exist? The Truth of these questions can be sought out with dogged tenacity, because you can have confidence that the answers are going to be either “yes” or “no.” You need only find the evidence.
Of course, there’s a lot more that goes into Truth-seeking than this, but simply by getting comfortable with declaring things to be true or false, you will already be well on your way!
Okay, so pop quiz: are zebras black? Or are they white? Are they both? Are they neither? It will all come down to how we define what it means for a zebra to “be black” or to “be white.” I’ll discuss the importance of definitions in my next article.