excluded middle

noun

1. logic the principle that every proposition is either true or false, so that there is no third truth-value and no statements lack truth-value

Example Sentences

But there’s a disgraceful cynicism working in this “fallacy of the excluded middle.”

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In the face of such uncertainty, Dr. Schwitzgebel has advocated for what he calls “the design policy of the excluded middle.”

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Once more I find myself stuck in the excluded middle and this time I'm thinking about Brouwer's Theorem.

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The law of the excluded middle is a technique of logical argumentation that most famously rears its head in "proofs by contradiction", wherein you show a statement is true by assuming otherwise and use this contrary assumption as a starting point of an argument that leads to a known mathematical falsehood, like 0=1.

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Among other things Brouwer was known for founding the intuitionist school of mathematics, a movement that declared that the only true mathematics was mathematics that was careful with its infinities and didn't prove theorems through the use of the law of the excluded middle.

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