[Avodah] Rav Sharki on university students

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 09:46:56PM +0000, Rich, Joel via Avodah wrote:
: I heard him say several times that Judaism does not believe in the law
: of the excluded middle.
: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_excluded_middle


However, not only does RYBS's discussion of bein hashemashos really rely
on defying the law of contradiction by saying "both" rather than the
excluded middle's "something in between", so does his invocation of
"almanas isa" and "isa lashon safeiq hu" -- safeiq is a dough.

For that matter, the same could be said of erev (although RYBS didn't)
-- an irbuvia of day and night.

So I think that RYBS actually meant that halakhah had no law of
contradiction. Which may be a consequence of allowing middle values
between yes and no, I haven't found it spelled out anywhere.

BTW, the notion that a tenai needs to be said in both positive and
negative is also relevant, as only saying "I promise to do X if Y"
is insufficient if Y could be both true and false or somewhere between
true and false -- in those cases, whether or not I commit to doing X is
ambiguous. Eg "I promise to do X if the next person to enter the room
is tall" would lead to a she'eilah if the person walking in is a 5'11"
American man (where Google the average is 5'10"). "Tall" is a non-boolean
predicate -- a person could be somewhat tall, and not just because it's
a matter of opinion, but between there is a gray area about the bottom
of the set.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 10th day, which is
micha at aishdas.org        1 week and 3 days in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org   Tifferes sheb'Gevurah: When does strict
Fax: (270) 514-1507                  judgment bring balance and harmony?