Stephane Lupasco and Florentin Smarandache: Conflicting Logics of Contradiction and an Included Middle
by
Joseph E. Brenner
P.O. Box 235, CH-1865 Les Diablerets, Switzerland

Responding to the failure of classical logic as a foundation for 20th Century science, Stephane Lupasco (1900 - 1988) developed the principle of dynamic opposition and a logic of the included middle. Basarab Nicolescu extended this with the principle of resolution of real contradictions at a higher level of reality. In this logic of existence, every phenomenon is accompanied by its contradictory one, such that no ideal, abstract identity is possible, and the classical values of truth and falsity are replaced by the reciprocally determined values of the actualization and potentialization of the phenomena themselves. Currently, Florentin Smarandache‚s neutrosophic logic, as does Lupasco‚s, results in abrogation of all three axioms of classical logic. Smarandache defines, in addition to truth and falsity, a third variable indeterminacy. Both logics involve generalizations of Hegelian dialectics, with different emphasis however, and attempts to apply them in specific examples lead to conflicting interpretations. In this paper, we will analyze the sources of these differences. For example, the logic of Lupasco could be considered as a „physics‰ in the sense of focus on and description of the real, energetic interactions in which both physical and mental phenomena are involved in a ternary relation to which, as Peirce has shown, more complex ones can be reduced. Smarandache‚s approach focuses on the informational aspects of propositions and beliefs, and could be considered a mathematical epistemic logic. Since energy and information must be equivalent, however, work on the foundational aspects of these emerging approaches promises to yield interesting results.

Date received: February 19, 2003

Copyright © 2003 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cajx-10.