Entry #18: A Philosophical Lexicon for Perfumistas

Non-contradiction, the Law of Non-contradiction

I have an uncanny knack for eliciting people's capacity to contradict themselves. This tendency goes way back. In sixth grade, I corrected my English teacher's grammar, and she slapped my face in response. That put a real damper on my motivation to do any school work or to participate in any way in any intellectual activity. By the time I reached high school, I was doing no homework whatsoever, having diverted my energies to "other priorities," as former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney would say. It took me quite a few years to muster up the wherewithal to begin applying my intellect to the world once again. What I have found since then, repeatedly, is that lots of people contradict themselves, and the more power they have, the worse their behavior tends to be upon being confronted with their contradictions. My sixth grade English teacher does not hold a candle to some of what I have seen.

Socrates did a lot of this sort of thing, and look where it got him: a goblet of hemlock! To be honest, I believe that Socrates committed suicide, since there is no historical evidence that anyone forced his mouth open and poured the liquid down his throat. We know that he could have simply departed, moved to a different place, but I think that by that stage of his life, he probably realized that his legacy would be best served by a small act of martyrdom: all in the name of the law of noncontradiction.

It cannot be the case both that p and that not-p 

at the same time and in the same way.

or for those who prefer symbols:

~(p &~p)

The law of non-contradiction is the skeptic's best—and only!—theoretical friend. The skeptic can question everything under the sun, but the law of non-contradiction is the basis for all criticism, so it cannot be abandoned without lapsing into complete and utter dysfunctional insanity. No, I have not tried. The law of non-contradiction is an article of faith which I am proud to hold high, as the sole irrefutable proposition in all of space and time.

What are the perfume applications of the law of noncontradiction? Every single act of criticism depends upon this law, and while we may not know whether p or not-p is true, we can be sure that both of them cannot be at the same time.

Has Mitsouko been reformulated or has it not? p or not-p? Since this is an exclusive and exhaustive disjunction, one or the other must be the case. Guerlain and most other companies have not denied that they reformulated their perfumes, but when they claim at one point in time that they reformulated as a result of the need to comply with the restrictions placed on the perfume industry by the IFRA, and then, later on down the line, that they will soon be restoring the former classic to its original state, something has to give. 

I've encountered other self-contradictions in the perfume world as well. The Holey[sic] Book is marketed as a work of criticism, so presumably its authors value criticism, no? The answer, I'm afraid, is "no." Their goons travel to the ends of the internet to quash criticism of criticism wherever it may appear, what on its face is a flagrant contradiction. 

Not so fast, sherapop. Perhaps the authors are not really critics after all. Perhaps they are only masquerading as critics, which resolves the apparent contradiction in one fell swoop! They do not value criticism in the first place, so it is not a contradiction for them to revile criticism of criticism, since they probably think that it is twice as bad!

A third example: a fragrance community website claims to uphold freedom of expression, but then arbitrarily censors at the caprice of some of its members. This would seem to be a genuine contradiction. In order fully and truly to uphold freedom of expression, you have to accept what you take to be the good, the bad, and, yes, the ugly. To claim that one upholds freedom of expression, provided that the expression reflects one's own values and beliefs, does not demonstrate a commitment to freedom of expression. The real test of one's commitment to freedom of expression is how one reacts to expressions of ideas and values with which one disagrees...

Entry #7: A Philosophical Lexicon for Perfumistas

Truth

In some ways, the concept of truth seems too obvious to bother discussing. In other ways, it seems too elusive to pin down, which can lead to the same conclusion: why bother?

Philosophers have spent a lot of time trying to understand what it means for a statement to be true. In logic, it's pretty straightforward. There are truth conditions on each type of logical statement. Let us consider one example, the conditional or hypothetical statement:

(1) If this perfume is a genuine Chanel perfume, 

then it was produced by the house of Chanel.

(2) If this perfume was produced by the house of Chanel, 

then it is a genuine Chanel perfume.

Which of these statements are true? These are conditional statements, readily recognizable by the if-then structure. If the first part (the antecedent or "if clause") of a conditional statement is true, then the second part (the consequent or "then clause") must be true in order for the statement as a whole to be true.

If the antecedent of a conditional statement is false, then the consequent could be either true or false, and the statement as a whole would still be true. In other words, the falsehood of the antecedent automatically guarantees the truth of the conditional statement. 

The two statements together express both a necessary and a sufficient condition: we can know that any genuine Chanel perfume was produced by the house of Chanel (not a knock-off operation), and any perfume produced by the house of Chanel is a genuine Chanel perfume. Because both of these statements are true, their conjunction is as well:

(1) & (2)

The truth conditions on a conjunction (joined by and or the ampersand) are simple. Both of the conjuncts must be true in order for the statement as a whole to be true. 

If all of this seems quite boring and trivial to you, that is probably because working out truth conditions on such logical statements is a far cry from talking about truths in reality. 

According to one theory of truth, the correspondence theory,  a true statement is one which corresponds to a state of affairs. We have an intuitive grasp of what truth is, but our criterion for denying that something is true is that it contradicts something else which we know or believe to be true.

Reformulation may on its face seem to be a good example. A perfume house may deny that they reformulated a perfume, and they may be telling the truth, or they may be lying, under the assumption that they have a right to say whatever they like about their own perfumes. 

If we examine the label of our bottle of Yves Saint Laurent Champagne, which was renamed as Yvresse, and compare the ingredients listed to recent bottles of Yvresse, we may conclude that the perfume is no longer the same. (This is only an example, and I hasten to add that I am not sure that Yves Saint Laurent has ever denied having reformulated its perfumes...)

It is possible, however, that labeling conventions have changed. You may have noticed that in the past many perfume bottles listed basically three ingredients:

Alcohol, fragrance (parfum), water. 

Not so anymore! These days, the list of ingredients goes on and on and on. So just finding that the labels read differently does not necessarily mean that the perfume was prepared using a different formula.

Sometimes houses simply contradict themselves. A recent example would seem to be Guerlain's announcement that they would be bringing Mitsouko back to its former glory. If they earlier claimed that the perfume was reformulated in order to comply with IFRA restrictions, then something has to give. Either it was never necessary to reformulate the perfume in the first place, or else it is impossible to bring Mitsouko back to its former glory, given the reigning IFRA restrictions, which have become more not less strict over the last few years.

The law of non-contradiction is key here. We reject the truth of a claim by showing that it is self-contradictory or implies something which we know to be false. The law of non-contradiction is the skeptic's most faithful ally, and the only inviolable principle. The skeptic may question every other statement ever made by anyone, but the basis of his rejection of some statements and theories is that something cannot both be and not be in the same way and at the same time.

Is reformulation a kind of self-contradiction? The answer to this question appears to be: No. Although we may bemoan reformulation (a few brave souls, going against the current trend, have argued that reformulations are often improvements!), it is not necessarily a contradiction for a company such as Coty to fob off a vastly inferior version of Muguet des Bois under the very same name as the perfume formerly known as Muguet des Bois.

It may be that, in the case of perfumery, the truth conditions are slightly different than we have come to believe in the case of most objects and things. The prevailing convention regarding naming of perfumes (given rampant reformulation) is that the company which produces a perfume gets to decide what goes in it, and they can change the ingredients at their caprice—for any reason whatsoever. 

The reason why people feel that they have been cheated when they buy a bottle of reformulated perfume going by the same name (and usually sold in the same type of bottle) as a cherished perfume is because they are assuming something akin to Leibniz' law:

Two things are identical if and only if all of their properties are the same.

In perfumery, the criteria are more lax: "Shalimar is Shalimar" just means that Shalimar is still created by Guerlain. That's it. They can pour whatever they like in the bottle and call it Shalimar, and their having done so is the necessary and sufficient condition for its being Shalimar, even though it may smell nothing like the original launch of that perfume.

When we feel cheated in a case of reformulation, it is because we have not fully appreciated that the house has the final say on its own creations. It's a godlike power, in a way. The house giveth and the house taketh away, and there is absolutely nothing that we consumers can do about it—beyond voting with our wallets. That is the extent of our power  in this realm.