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The Big Questions by Solomon: A tautology is a trivially true statement. Some examples:A man is free if he is free.You can't know anything unless you know something.I wouldn't be here if I hadn't arrived. Are these four statements all tautologies?

User Yifan Sun
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Final answer:

A tautology is a statement that is true in all possible interpretations due to its logical form. The examples given are redundancies that restate the same fact in different words and, by definition, cannot be false, which is consistent with the law of noncontradiction.

Step-by-step explanation:

A tautology in philosophy is a logically true statement that is true in every possible interpretation. It's a statement that, by its logical form, cannot ever be false because it repeats the same information or uses definitions that universally apply. Statements like "A man is free if he is free" and "You can't know anything unless you know something" are examples of tautologies because they affirm the same thing in different words, making the statement inherently true. Such statements are considered redundant and don’t provide any new information beyond what is already given.

The law of noncontradiction is a fundamental principle that states a proposition cannot be both true and not true at the same time when talking about the same context. Tautologies are consistent with this law because they don’t assert contradictory positions; they affirm the same proposition in different wording.

Philosophy uses various types of statements, and understanding them is critical when assessing truth. In this context, tautologies help frame irrefutable truths, often utilized in philosophical debates.

User Dustinnoe
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