It’s Not a Contradiction, It’s Just Messy

Let’s consider Monk’s statement regarding his abilities being a blessing and a curse. Well, first, let’s be sure that Monk’s statement is really a contradiction. A genuine contradiction requires that a statement both be true and false. Generally, when something is a blessing, it is not a curse. In fact, if “blessing” means anything, it seems like “not a curse” would be logically implied by any reasonable definition of “blessing,” and similarly “not a blessing” seems a necessary implication of any reasonable definition of “curse.” If something is a blessing and a curse it seems that what we are saying is that it is both a blessing and not a blessing. Recall, though that a violation of the Law of Non-Contradiction requires that the opposing statements be true at the same time. It maybe that his gift is both a blessing and a curse, but just at different times.

Perhaps all that he means is that sometimes it is a blessing, like when solving crimes, but at other times it is a curse, like when he’s thirsty, and there is no Sierra Springs to be found. This may well be the case. And it seems as if this is a good and simple answer. The problem that I have with it is that his claim about it being a blessing and a curse is a general one. Monk seems to be stating that his gift is an actual blessing, not just “useful sometimes.” If my intuition is correct and we don’t read more deeply into what Monk really means, it seems as if he’s saying that his ability are a blessing and a curse in its entirety or else he would say “it is a blessing sometimes, and a curse sometimes.” Given Monk’s obsessive nature it’s likely that if he meant the second statement he would say so, for the sake of clarity.

Well, the other answer that we can try out is that a blessing need not be only a blessing. In other words, perhaps being a blessing doesn’t mean that something is not a curse. So Monk isn’t saying that his abilities are a blessing and not a blessing; he is just saying it is a blessing and, also, a curse. Maybe it is similar to a flavor that is both sweet and sour. But, does the word “blessing” really work like that? When we say “blessing” we mean “really good” and when we say “curse” we mean “really bad.” So how can something both be “really good” and “really bad?” The very definition of “good” means “not bad.” So, we are then stuck with the same problem. His abilities are both very good and very bad at the same time.

Either of the two answers presented seem possible, though I think the first answer is the cleanest. To be honest, I am not sure which is correct. Monk is probably just being unclear, which not only solves this problem, but also may solve many other problems in philosophy. Monk’s statement, alone, that his abilities are a blessing and a curse is not enough to prove that Monk actually believes in true contradictions. Instead, he’s likely just not being particularly clear when dealing with a possible contradiction. This may not be surprising, though. Think about how often Monk just follows his own intuitions and just “knows” that someone is “the guy.” Monk can’t give us more, or be clearer in those instances, but he knows the truth and he sticks with it.

This leads to the bigger problem. Monk is very willing to assert that something is true well before he has the evidence to prove it. Now, we may argue that his amazing brain has simply solved the crime before he can articulate it, but this seems unlikely as, often, he doesn’t have all of the information necessary to solve the crime until later in the case. Even worse, Monk is willing to entertain contradictions until the case is solved, as if it is no problem at all.

In “Mr. Monk and the Astronaut,” Monk’s sure that a man who was in space during the murder committed the crime. The Astronaut, Steve Wagner, has an airtight alibi—he was in space during the time of the murder. Nevertheless, upon meeting Wagner, Monk is convinced that Wagner is the guy. Despite the fact that a man who is in space cannot also commit a murder here on Earth at the same time, Monk holds fast to his belief that Wagner is guilty. This seems impossible and a clear violation of the Law of Non-Contradiction! How can the murderer be on Earth committing murder and in space—not on Earth—at the same time?

Despite this impossibility, Monk ignores the contradiction and maintains, that Wagner’s the guy. His intuitions alone seem to be enough for him to ignore the most fundamental law of logic. This is real problem. Imagine what would be happen if the rest of us were so willing to ignore the Law of Non-Contradiction just because of our intuitions. For example, imagine that you have an intuition that your lover was having a sex affair with a particular person last Thursday. However, much to your annoyance, your lover points out that he or she was with you all day last Thursday. Should you be willing to ignore the fact that it is impossible for your lover to do both just because of your intuition? How is what Monk does any better?

I’ll concede this much to Monk: unlike us, Mr. Monk has always been right, and the contradictions are always resolved. His intuitions prove to be correct and the contradictions prove to be only contradictions in appearance. Even so, isn’t he a bit too laid back about contradictions, even if he believes they will resolve? I don’t know how comfortable I am with a crime solver who is willing to ignore the law that prevents him from believing I committed a crime in Paris when I was in London all day!

Take Two Contradictions and Call Your Analyst in the Morning

How can Monk deal with this, then? It seems that he has allowed a contradiction into his way of thinking. This is very problematic as his whole life revolves around following logical rules. If he is willing to ignore a contradiction solely due to his intuitions, how do we know that others aren’t similarly true? Let your imagination go wild—blessings can be not blessings, murderers can be in space and not in space, the truth can be false, circles can be triangles, murder can be bad and not bad, and so on! So how do we stop it? Surly there cannot be true contradictions—a statement can’t be true and false at the same time. Monk must be mistaken by allowing his intuition to flaunt contradictions.

The philosopher Graham Priest has made a living from arguing that there can be true contradictions. And so he would argue that Mr. Monk need not be failing in his logic at all. There are times when the evidence is such that we should accept contradiction rather than blindly follow the Law of Non-Contradiction. He argues that in some rare cases a statement can both be true and false at the same time! So, Monk’s statement need not be a problem, even if it is a contradiction, if we can simply show that it is what we in the philosophical world call “a dialetheia.” More importantly, seeming contradictions like “the man who was in space during the time of the murder on Earth is the guy” may be true if we have good reason to believe the contradiction is true. Perhaps our intuitions alone would not be enough to assert that a contradiction is true, but Monk’s intuitions, which are always correct, may well be enough.

What, according to Graham Priest, is an example of a true contradiction? Here’s one: “This sentence is false.” This is often called the Liar Sentence. If the Liar Sentence is false, then when it says, “this sentence is false” it is also true, but if it is true then the statement “this sentence is false” is false, which makes it true, and so on. The Liar Sentence plagues philosophers. But Priest doesn’t think it needs to be a problem, it is simply a dialetheia—a true contradiction. So perhaps Mr. Monk, like Priest, is onto something, he is just acknowledging that we should not let our assumption that all contradictions are false lead us to reject good evidence that a particular contradiction is true.

You probably want to object at this point. If there can be true contradictions, how can we tell if any particular sentence is actually true or actually false? How can Monk use his deductive skills to solve problems if any particular statement could be true, false, or both true and false? It would seem that any of the beliefs that he uses to solve crimes like “someone who overdoses on pills uses a glass of water” could be both true and false and so any conclusions that he reaches from that statement may also be true and false. How can we be sure that any true statement we make isn’t also, at the same time, false?

Priest’s the Guy

Priest thinks he can solve this problem too. Using the ideas of another philosopher, H.P. Grice, he thinks that we can differentiate between true statements and dialetheia. Grice’s ideas work nicely with the way that Mr. Monk generally thinks. Monk doesn’t say something unless he believes there is good reason to think it is true, even if he is unable to articulate all of those reasons at the time. In the same way, Grice thinks that we can solve some philosophical problems by recognizing that when we speak, we generally mean the strongest thing that can be interpreted from our statement. So Priest argues that we can know that something isn’t a dialetheia because if I make a statement I will state that it is a dialetheia, if I believe it is a dialetheia. In other words, you never need to worry about a statement Monk makes being a contradiction because, if it is a contradiction, he’ll tell you. He would never say, “John is the guy” unless he believes he is the guy. If Monk, thought, for instance, that John was both the guy and not the guy, then Monk, by Gricean rules would say so.

How do we know that people follow Gricean rules? We know this because if you wanted to tell me that you are reading a book you would not say, “I am reading a book or I am in Spain.” It would be true to say, but you would go with the simpler, stronger statement, “I am reading a book,” for the sake of clarity. In the same way Mr. Monk would simply state the contradiction if he had reason to do so. So this may be the case with his statement that his abilities are both a blessing and a curse. In this case, it would be inaccurate to say that it is a blessing and it would be inaccurate to that it is a curse, because both of these statements do not include all of the necessary information. Unfortunately, this does not solve the problems of contradictions.

Priest’s Gricean move may help us rest assured that Monk would not state a dialetheia unless he believed it, but isn’t it still a problem for Monk to be so relaxed about contradictions in the first place? How is Monk able to assure himself that any particular statement is not a dialetheia? How can he determine which facts are dialetheia and which are not? Usually, the foremost criterion that we use to determine if a bit of logic is a bad bit of logic is if it results in a contradiction. For example, imagine that Disher states that “John committed a murder in the USA yesterday.” If Monk points out that John was in another country all day yesterday, we know that Disher must be wrong because John cannot both be in the country committing the crime and not in the country at the same time. So we believe that Disher is wrong because his conclusion—that John committed the crime results in a contradiction. But if contradictions can be true couldn’t Disher simply reply to Monk, “Well maybe John was both in the USA and not in the USA at the same time?” If contradictions can be true, how do we prove Disher wrong?

Priest would likely have to reply that we only need worry about a contradiction being true when we have reason to believe they are true. In the case above, we have no reason to believe that John can both be in the country and out of the country at the same time. The problem for Mr. Monk still seems to remain difficult. There is a well-known dictum made famous by the character Sherlock Holmes which states “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (Nils Rauhut examines this maxim in Chapter 2 of this volume.) This is a pretty useful way of thinking when one is attempting to solve a crime. I wonder, though, can this still be a true statement in light of the possibility of true contradictions? What could be impossible if contradictions are true? How do we differentiate between things that are impossible and those things that we just assume are impossible because they are contradictions?

Here’s How It Happened and Didn’t Happen

At the end of the day, my mind is eased because Monk doesn’t allow contradictions to exist unresolved. Eventually, in every case, his intuitions are proven correct and this is often because the tension caused by a contradiction is relieved due to new evidence. As a matter of fact, the contradictions that Monk seems to humor may well actually act instead to motivate Monk and the other investigators to solve the crime. In the case of “Mr. Monk and the Astronaut,” Monk knows that Wagner’s the guy and the fact that it seems impossible creates a tension that must be released. Stottlemeyer is often motivated by this tension. He knows that what Monk is saying seems impossible, but he also knows that Monk is never wrong. So he seeks a solution that both removes the contradiction and also meets Monk’s intuitions.

If Monk was actually okay with contradictions, he would likely be able to walk away from the case saying, “Yes, he was in space and he committed the murder on Earth at the same time” and be done with it. Instead, he tries to figure out how Wagner was able to commit the murder even though it seems impossible. Despite Wagner’s airtight alibi it turns out that he did commit the murder ... without violating the Law of Non-Contradiction. Before he left, he set the victim’s garage door to open and strangle her while he was in space. What we realize is that we were assuming something that was false—that Wagner must be on Earth to commit the murder—which resulted in the contradiction. Once we realize that Wagner could commit the murder while in space we no longer need to worry about the possibility of him being in space and not in space at the same time. Simply put, the contradiction is false. Wagner was in space and Wagner committed the murder.

Similarly, some philosophers believe that the Liar Sentence is also a case of not having all of the information. Perhaps we’ll discover that sentences cannot refer to themselves or that the Liar Sentence is simply a false statement. What Monk’s examples do for us is demonstrate that seemingly true contradictions are inevitably resolved. In every case, even when Monk is willing to allow for an impossibility, what seemed impossible is proved to be false. It may be that Monk never actually allows for contradictions. Instead, given his deductive powers, he uses contradictions as motivation to seek a solution. In the case of the homicidal astronaut, Monk had very good reason to believe that Wagner was guilty due to his observational powers. This truth resulted in a contradiction that Monk had to resolve. Monk continued to search for evidence and once that missing piece of information was found the contradiction proved to be false.

Priest would likely argue that I am cheating here a bit in order to avoid having to admit that some contradictions can be true. He might say that the Liar Sentence is special because it is true about its own falsity. Having said that, if I concede that there are true contradictions and that Mr. Monk indulges in them on occasion, I can’t make sense of how Monk’s crime-solving system works. Monk relies on a system of logic that negates impossibilities and requires that false statements be not true. The contradictions that he entertains are used as motivation to solve the crime—and thereby resolve the contradiction. If contradictions can be true then it seems as if Monk’s means of solving crimes becomes far less certain, and one wonders why he doesn’t simply accept the contradiction instead of being motivated to solve it.

It seems to me that, in Monk’s case, that he does not actually allow for the belief that a contradiction might be true. Quite the contrary, in each case of a seeming contradiction, Monk is very motivated to resolve the contradiction. Although he’s willing to admit that the impossible seems to be true, he does not stop there. He continues on the case until he can prove not only that a particular person is “the guy” but also demonstrate how the crime was committed, without contradiction. The worst Monk can be accused of is an occasional lack of clarity, as in the case of his gift as a blessing and curse. Which should be expected from someone who is both deeply conflicted and much smarter than the average guy. My reply, then, to Priest is a simple one in light of what we have learned about Mr. Monk. A sentence like the Liar Sentence is a crime that needs to be solved. Instead of agreeing that the contradiction is true, we should be motivated by it to figure out what the missing piece is. We might find that once we uncover that missing clue, it all makes sense and, the contradiction is resolved.