Most silly question: A=A

Scene: In a coffee shop, while sipping tea and Coca-cola, 2 young kids talks. The taller of the two opens a book. He is bored. With shaking fingers, he peruses its pages and suddenly asks a question.


Deuterious: Tell me, when I tell you that "A is A", have I say a thing?

Pronious: Probably not. You have not tell me anything. It is meaningless.

Deuterious: Why does it sound right, obvious that this is the truth? In other words, why do we accept this identity as meaningfull? I do not see anybody question it.

Pronious: Probably we need to look deeper. When I say, "It is meaningless.", I am saying that nothing is convey in the proposition. No communication between you and. You did not learn anything from me. I might as well say that the proposition is rubish.

Deuterious: But did not Aristotle say "Now 'why a thing is itself' is a meaningless inquiry (for -- to give meaning to the question 'why' -- the fact or the existence of the thing must already be evident-e.g. that the moon is eclipsed-but the fact that a thing is itself is the single reason and the single cause to be given in answer to all such questions as why the man is man, or the musician musical', unless one were to answer 'because each thing is inseparable from itself, and its being one just meant this' this, however, is common to all things and is a short and easy way with the question)." - Metaphysics Book VII, Part 17?

Pronious: Sure. It is equivalent, as Aris says, that "A is itself." It seems to be unavoidable that you cannot be but who you are. Now let us assume that you are somebody else, then you would not be yourself. So A cannot be the opposite of A. In other words, either you are yourself or you are NOT you but somebody else. These are the law of identity and the Principle of contradiction.

Deuterious: Why should I care?

Pronious: Because it shows that those that say that God is both individual and collective are illogical as where as those that believe that God is the one and the many at the same time. Remember the Trinity of the Catholic church. It is the same problem here.

Deuterious: The problem of the existance of God behind a simple affirmation of "A=A." Hard to belief.

Pronious: Yes, as white as mozzarella cheese.

Deuterious: What about if logic is man made?

Pronious: That get us into Kant, I think, and into another day.