One very modern exchange goes something like this. Someone asserts two things that are at least in tension, and expresses indecision about which is true. The other person responds with Why not both? or simply Yes, and.

There’s something about this approach that frustrates me, and while keeping open the possibility that I simply cannot abide shades of gray, I will assume for our purposes that there is something to my frustration. Indeed, perhaps I cannot abide the shades of gray and there is some shady business going on in all this!

Let’s deal with the first claim and put it sharply: That two things are mutually exclusive. Logically, this looks something like the following. It may consist in two assertions: That A or B may the case, and further, that both cannot be true.

That is, when the first person is wrestling with two possibilities, they are making a second claim that is often unarticulated: That both A and B cannot be so. In fact, I think this is often the case, or else they might simply consider not wrestling at all!

When the second person responds Why not both? or Yes and, we assume they are simply saying that:

But if we take the first person to be implying mutual exclusivity, this means that we can understand the second person to be begging the question. To the first person, the second is taking a stronger stance than he admits. After all, what the neat and orderly statement above expresses is truly:

The posture of the second person is one towards agreeability and nuance, but they are in fact proposing something that is plainly incompatible with the first person’s position. They aren’t merely encouraging the first person to broaden his mind, but are making a substantive claim of their own.

To recapitulate, the first person presents with a struggle between A and B, a real contest of truth. The second person responds with what may justifiably be taken as a rather formulaic response, As you struggle to discern the truth between two possibilities, have you considered that it’s simpler to assert the truth of both? Why waste so much energy?

It is a very therapeutic intervention, seemingly conflict-averse in shifting a presumption of mutual exclusivity to one of mutual inclusivity. It is a substantive implication that the tension involved is some failure to imagine, i.e., a psychological tension, or otherwise simply illusory.

However, the tension can as easily point to a real fact about the world outside ourselves. Something cannot exist and also not exist. If we had reason to suppose something existed and did not exist, we would do well to ask ourselves whether we had the right grasp of that thing, or whether we might be mistaken about it.

It may be that the first person has a taste for absolute truth, while the second is content with something provisional. Both orientations have their uses: We often must act before we can know, and pragmatic truth is better than paralysis. But truth is not ultimately pragmatic. It is absolute. The provisional form is a concession to our limitations, not a permanent resting place, and sometimes it is too quick to concede.

The second stance seems perilously close to the view that broad agnosticism is pragmatic since we cannot know with certainty, while the first may be the more faithful one. They commit to a real and serious struggle in discerning between plausible facts, and a laudable unwillingness to compromise the ultimate. This means taking a real risk, while the second approach risks nothing.

So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.

–Revelation 3:16

Indeed the second person doesn’t seem to recognize that far from achieving real equanimity, he’s passed the buck. To show this, let us accept their Why not both? and their Yes, and. Let us accept all this purported agreeability so agreeably that we insist it upon itself:

The Curmudgeon: Which is better, a house made of brick or a house made of wood?
The Agreeable One: Why choose? A house of brick is good in some ways, a house of wood in others!
The Curmudgeon: You make an excellent, well-reasoned point. Now, why choose that a house of brick and a house of wood are each good in various ways? Perhaps one really is better than the other, or that neither is good, or that the very notion of something being better is dubious, or that things can be construed in ways or have aspects, or that there are such things as houses, wood, or brick? Why accept any of the words that I offer you at all, or even that they are not mere sounds? Perhaps you are hallucinating my very existence, and wouldn’t it be simpler, and less divisive really, to take a nap?

The demand for judgment cannot be indefinitely deferred by a posture of accommodation. At some point, someone has to say what they think is true. The curmudgeon already knows this. That’s why he’s a curmudgeon.