Talk:Contra principia negantem non est disputandum

Who uses this phrase?

I did a quick search on Google Scholar and Google Books, and found that most of the available writings that use this phrase are written in German or Russian. My knowledge of those languages is sadly minimal, so I put in an {{Unreferenced}} tag. It sounds like there is an interesting story to tell about "Contra principia negantem disputari non potest." What speech community has mostly used this phrase, and in which circumstances did they call upon the principle? The answers would probably make good material for the article. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 04:11, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the sources and correction to the article, Theirrulez and Wareh! —Ben Kovitz (talk) 18:55, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

What does it mean, exactly?

The current version of the page says that the phrase demands "common communication bases" and "common accepted, primarily logical communication elements". I find that very unclear. My reading of a few sources (those currently cited on the page and a few places I've found that appeal to the principle) suggest to me that the phrase really means, in essence, either "Without assuming the principles of logic, there can be no reasoned argument" or "People can't meaningfully argue a disagreement unless they agree on premises specific to the topic." These are rather different interpretations, and both are principles of logic rather than communication. Lenin brings up both interpretations when replying to a critic who said "Contra principia negantem disputari non potest" (footnote on p. 433 here). Can someone find a source that says explicitly, "The phrase means ____"? (I don't think Lenin is quite the source we're looking for.) —Ben Kovitz (talk) 18:55, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I think principia is vague, and that the vagueness has contributed to the life and usefulness of the phrase. For the Scholastics it might have meant such axioms as the principle of non-contradiction, or on the other hand a whole "framework" of received philosophical system (as in Duns Scotus' reference to "the philosophers"). In the English legal tradition, where there seems to be a strong tradition of citing it deriving from Coke on Littleton, it refers to the kind of legal maxim of which a good example (taken from Coke) is, "The king can do no wrong." So I think, while the two "different interpretations" you mention are indeed different, there is not going to be an authoritative source that says that one is a misuse of the phrase. (Of course, with enough additional research, we probably could show that how the phrase was used in its first attestations and give a history from there. But please consider that until my edits today, the article falsely said it came from Aristotle and had no specific citation of its actual usage predating Schopenhauer! So we're a ways off from that.) Whoever drafted the article may have had a bias towards communication theory of some kind, but I think everything suggested in the article is within the actual range of the phrase's usage.

You also raise (here and on my talk page: I'll make a single response here) the fact that Google turns up the phrase in German and Russian sources. I doubt that Schopenhauer was the only German philosopher to refer to the phrase, so there may be more to be said about what has been made of it in German philosophy. (One writer uses it to illustrate the sort of rule Popper criticizes as falsely exempting the framework from discussion and contemplation, and relates Popper's attitude to Hegel and Marx. I also find it in a recent secondary work on Kant in German and on the first page of a 1901 essay in German, "Thomas of Aquinas and Kant," but not in a way that supports its having anything to do with Aquinas, a claim I removed from the article.) Some Russian sources perhaps because of Lenin's citation, to which you have already alluded, and which might be notable enough to discuss, especially since as you say he complains that the validity of the citation to end an argument depends on how we understand principia, "as general propositions and notes, or as a different understanding of the facts of Russian history and present-day reality" (he seems to have chafed against the phrase for reasons quite similar to Popper's). However, I think if we search all the variant wordings, the German sources do not really overwhelm the English ones, and it has to be remembered that in German, in general, there's a disproportionate amount of talk about philosophy.

John Lacy has a character quote the maxim in the fifth act of The Dumb Lady (1672).

These are maybe many words with little matter. In short, if we're looking for sources among what the article already cites for each of the two interpretations you mention: the passages from Aristotle's Metaphysics and Analytics are cited by scholars who use the first interpretation, while the very concept of a legal maxim, and the phrase's use in the law, take us clearly outside the realm of philosophical necessity at a date far earlier than Lenin. You say "premises specific to the topic": I think, in general, principia has meant "the first principles from which we proceed when we have a sound discussion of x," and how specific they are depends on x. Wareh (talk) 21:09, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the extensive information. I'm especially glad to see the early attestations make it into the article, showing when and why people appealed to the principle. I just updated the page to define the phrase with the ambiguity that we both found: requiring agreement about principles or facts, and not being clear what those principles are. This 1906 book on German universities explicitly brings up the principle to say that when facts are the matters in dispute, there can be no debate. (This is partly why I avoided translating principia as "principles".)

Theirrulez uncovered the reason for my shortage of English sources: I searched the "non est disputandum" phrasing with quotation marks, and the "disputari non potest" phrasing has not been much used in English.

Regarding the Lenin quote, are you sure that he was taking Popper's angle that logical canons are above criticism? I read it as "Sure, there is no debate without common ground, but here we have plenty of room for debate, because the general propositions you're appealing to are really abstract conclusions you've drawn from the facts of Russian history, and you haven't spelled out the argument for them; we can agree on the facts, which are the true common ground of our disagreement." Lenin is accusing the appeal to contra principia of begging the question. No? —Ben Kovitz (talk) 22:52, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with how you read Lenin--I've confused matters by completely misunderstanding Popper. I was actually getting Popper and Kuhn confused in my mind--how embarrassing--which led me to interpret "the myth of the framework" as some kind of approving statement of how scientific thought breaks free of a paradigm that is only mythically-falsely infallible. I now see that Popper's essay by that title challenges relativism by insisting on a framework of basic principles defined minimally/generally enough. I don't have the patience to sort all this out, but I gather the writer who says, "Popper criticizes rules of the sort as Contra principia negantem... as 'the myth of the framework'" imagines the aphorism's speaker as a relativist who happily says, "You work within your relative framework, and I'll work within mine: discussion between us is impossible because there is no universal framework under which both of our perspectives can be discussed"(bearing in mind that Popper himself doesn't seem to have used our phrase). So I guess the writer's point about Hegel is that Popper would have criticized Hegel's exotic logics as wrongly fragmenting the single arena of logical discourse into various domains that negate each other's principles?

Now, for an odd excursion: who is "the writer" of that German sentence about Popper? I believe the answer is, German Wikipedians (who by the way cite this page of Popper)! Apparently, the pirates who offer this book for sale, have generated editorial matter by cut-and-paste plagiarism of German Wikipedia, complete with square-bracketed footnote numbers that point nowhere. O tempora o mores. I'm a little shocked at the apparent result that the Popper-"Contra principia" connection is entirely the work of Wikipedians: maybe someone can falsify this for me.

Now, Lenin seems to be saying (please correct me if I'm mistaken), "Maybe it's proper to dismiss a dispute with someone denying logical principles, but I am not that someone. The 'principles' about which I differ with you are historical facts, which can most certainly be investigated and adjudicated between us in a dispute." Therefore, I think I may have been correct (albeit entirely by accident) when I suggested Lenin "chafed against the phrase for reasons quite similar to Popper's." For Lenin could also be paraphrased as saying, "What kind of a relativist are you, Struve? We differ over a couple of facts, which can be determined by fair disputants. And yet because we 'see the facts differently,' you claim I'm so far beyond the pale of the applicable general principles of discourse that you come at me with that Medieval Schoolman's tag, as if I used some alternate system of logic. No, as Popper will argue in the future, our different historico-cultural frameworks fit under a broader framework within which disputation between us is entirely proper and possible."

I think "principles" is going to be the necessary English translation, even if it may seem surprising that some take the principles in question to be certain relevant facts. Wareh (talk) 15:47, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

P.S. It appears that German Wikipedia, for the sentence about Contra principia... should really cite p. 59 not p. 70 of The Myth of the Framework: "The myth of the framework is clearly the same as the doctrine that one cannot rationally discuss anything that is fundamental, or that a rational discussion of principles is impossible." I think I'll try to work this into the article, though I willingly leave myself subject to correction after mangling Popper so badly in my first comments!! Wareh (talk) 15:54, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Rename to more common phrasing?

Would anyone object if I renamed this page to "Contra principia negantem non est disputandum"? Here are the results of some searches on Google Books:

"Contra principia negantem non est disputandum"	172 hits, many in English
"Contra principia negantem disputari non potest"	48 hits, largely German
"Non est disputandum contra principia negantem"	17 hits, all in English, all but one of them law dictionaries
"Contra principia negantem disputandum non est"	1 hit, in Polish

—Ben Kovitz (talk) 02:34, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't object. Perhaps include some of the variants in the article. Also note Contra principia negantem disputari nequit. Wareh (talk) 15:47, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Source of the translation?

Is this the standard/conventional/traditional translation of this maxim?
"Against those who deny the foundations, there can be no debate"

Because there is no "those" in any of the variants.
They all read "against him who denies". Singular, not plural.
The choice of "foundations" seems a little idiosyncratic, when it reads "principles".

The word "can" does not appear here. However it does appear here:
"Contra principia negantem disputari non potest"
namely the word "potest".

"Contra principia negantem non est disputandum"
"Non est disputandum contra principia negantem"
"Contra principia negantem disputandum non est"
These all have essentially the same meaning; it's the emphasis which is changing in each instance.

Varlaam (talk) 03:21, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I now notice up above that "foundations" vs. "principles" was a conscious choice.

But surely a set translation already exists?

Varlaam (talk) 03:25, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there's a standard translation. As you've noted, even the Latin phrase varies. Admittedly, coming up with a faithful translation comes perilously close to WP:OR. But, here are some reasons for preferring "Against those who deny the foundations, there can be no debate."

• "Those" over "one": often the phrase is invoked against a school of thought rather than an individual. I could be wrong (my Latin is poor), but I think the Latin singular often plays the role of the English plural in universal propositions.

• "Foundations" over "principles": the phrase isn't about "principles", but fundamental propositions: those which, at least in the epistemological theory that the phrase gives voice to, are underived from any prior propositions and thus are not subject to argument. I don't think "principles" is the most natural translation of "principia", despite the resemblance; "foundations" seems more common, at least in matters of logic. In Latin, "principia" suggests "first" or "origin" in a way that "principles" doesn't in English. See Cassell's. In English, "principles" unambiguously means abstract propositions, but the "principia" of the phrase can also refer to concrete facts (see the Lenin quotation, p. 433). There might be yet better choices than "foundations" in English. (And I have to suspect translators who've chosen "principles" of being seduced by the resemblance between the words.)

• "Can be" over "is": Here, "non est" refers to impossibility, not the mere current lack of a debate. "Est" ≠ "is". In English "there is no debate" means that a debate could happen, but "there can be no debate" suggests that a debate would be pointless—which is what the Latin phrase is really saying. A purely literal translation is inaccurate.

Perhaps the clearest and most accurate translation would be, "There can be no debate with people who reject axioms," but that might stray too far from the literal. What would you say to "There can be no debate with people who reject fundamental propositions"? —Ben Kovitz (talk) 19:32, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd say, it needs a source (either a published translation or at least an authoritative statement about what principium meant first and foremost in the time/place/context of this maxim's origination). As you know, I was content to let your work stand, but I'm not comfortable retaining it unchanged, now that its idiosyncrasy and original interpretive contribution have been noted. OED s.v. "principle" has, "A fundamental truth or proposition on which others depend." So your interpretation of principia as "fundamental propositions" is in no tension whatsoever with the translation "principles," which has the advantage of being unadventurous and sourceable. No error introduced. I don't think it's our job to produce our own dynamic equivalences: this sells the reader short. If we quote Herodotus saying that, "The barbarian was attacking," I don't think we need to retranslate him because we're afraid the reader will think only a single person was attacking, who satisfied every dictionary meaning of English "barbarian." That's to say, the English singular can sometimes play the role of the plural in universal propositions, so we should keep a light touch. Finally, the attempt to analyze non est apart from the context of the passive periphrastic construction is not persuasive. I think Varlaam was closer to the mark pointing out that the translation of possibility better fits the alternative. I'll fudge it by moving those alternatives up to the lead sentence. I don't mean to pronounce ex cathedra--by all means continue the discussion if this is not satisfactory. My intention is to respond to Varlaam by putting the translation into a form to which no exception can be taken. Wareh (talk) 20:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)