I wanted to share this with you all.
LuigiMastɘr0 said:
I have a philosophical question:
if you had a goal, and your goal was to fail, and you succeeded,
did you succeed or fail?
Before we set out, I must insist on the axiomatic truth of the principles of causation and contradiction. All things real are inherently causal, and therefore cannot contradict existence. Anything that does not exist is contradictory to existence. There are two basic forms of a thing not existing: that it is potential, or that it is intrinsically impossible and therefore never has the potential to exist. Furthermore, for the sake of edification on this topic, we shall assume that by 'fail' you mean 'to fail in general,' or 'at all things' or any other way of framing the question that means success is contradictory to itself.
Prepare for the tautology.
The question is wrong because its language implies such a thing is possible.
'To succeed' cannot, by its nature, mean to fail, since then the action would not be success but failure. Success is not failure, therefore what the question itself implies is necessarily impossible.
Try to envision for a moment an object that is both wholly circular and wholly square. You may envision objects which have some components of each, but by taking on one aspect moreso, the other aspect must decrease.
Therefore, to be wholly circular and wholly square is, intrinsically, by the very nature of those terms, impossible.
To succeed at a goal to fail in general is metaphysically, intrinsically impossible.
This is because they are contradictory, mutually exclusive terms.
We may think of it in abstract terms, but there is no way to possibly give any example of it ever being even able to occur ever.
In this case, it means that there would be no such case that would ever exist where one would succeed at failing in general, because failing in general means to not succeed.
Furthermore, it is impossible to have a goal that contradicts itself. To complete the hypothetical goal, one must necessarily violate the terms of the goal itself, thus rendering it void.
"Ah, but the question is being posed, therefore it is possible for us to conceive of the thing, therefore it can happen."
That is false causation, and directly contradicts itself. There is no possible logical way to pass from the first part, the question 'being posed,' to the next, 'therefore it is possible.' The poser of the question is the one in error, the symptom being that they assert the question is right without proving so. In this way, they skip the crucial middle step. "The question is posed," then, "is the question correct?" if no in this case, then "therefore the question is wrong and it is not possible."