It’s the Thought That Counts

Most people (and this may be wishful thinking on my part) in the United States are familiar with the acronym SCOTUS. If you aren’t, I will give you a quick hint. It does not refer to a male body part. Rather, it refers to a group that includes male body parts but female ones, too: the Supreme Court of the United States. SCOTUS has been around since 1789, established by Article Three of the US Constitution. The article states that justices for the high and lower courts “shall hold their Offices during Good behavior.” This “good behavior tenure” means they have the job as long as they are “good,” which gets us (me at least) into thorny interpretive waters. During the court’s history, judges have been removed fourteen times, apparently for being naughty, by congressional impeachment. Two of these were for drunkenness, one for graft and corruption, and one for “failure to live in his district,” whatever that means.

Finding these things out has suddenly made SCOTUS much more interesting but not enough to stay focused on it for the remainder of this blog. What I want to write about is the other Scotus or, I should say, the other Scotuses or Scoti as it were. There have been a great many individuals named Scotus, most of them teachers, abbots, philosophers, scholars, and even one saint. The gentleman pictured above, John Duns Scotus, has been described as “one of the three most important philosopher-theologians of the High Middle Ages.” He has also been characterized as the “Subtle Doctor” for his penetrating and subtle manner of thought.

The kicker here is one other Scotus who is not really a Scotus apparently because he is referred to as the Pseudo-Scotus (PS). This person, as I understand it, is not even a person but instead an invented catch-all “author” for texts on logic falsely attributed to our pal JDS.One PS theory is called the “principle of explosion” (also known as “the principle of Pseudo-Scotus.” It states “ex falso quodlibet or from a falsehood, anything follows.” The principle posits profoundly (ah, alliteration) that “any statement can be proven from a contradiction.”

Got it? I don’t. This may help. On his philosophy blog, Gary Hayden provides this example of the principle of explosion.

A tomato is a fruit.

A tomato is not a fruit.

Therefore David Beckham has a pimple on his bottom.

Explanation: Contrary to appearances, it’s perfectly valid. Given that a tomato both is and is not a fruit, we can validly infer that David Beckham has a pimple on his bottom.

Why is it that the study of logic seems as far removed from logic as anything can get? Whatever. Still the phrase “any statement can be proven from a contradiction” sticks in my mind. Here’s a quote from Justice Antonin Scalia: “In a big family the first child is kind of like the first pancake. If it’s not perfect, that’s okay, there are a lot more coming along.” The exploded logic of this might be as follows:

A child is a pancake.

A child is not a pancake.

Justice Scalia is an ass.

Wow. It works! I think Pseudo-Scotus has just become my favorite nonexistent philosopher (not that I had another one before this). I’m tempted to adopt the name for myself. RatBlurt Scotus. It does add a bit of gravitas, doesn’t it? And if anyone can use grativas, it’s me.

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Visit Kim Pederson’s blog RatBlurt: Mostly Random Short-Attention-Span Musings