One Answer

    1. Sergey, something is not right/wrong in itself, and even more so not in comparison with something arbitrarily assumed to be wrong/right. In such cases, you always run the risk of falling into subjectivism, which is what George drew your attention to. Language (“the genius of language”) suggests that” correct ” is what corresponds to the rules that are explicitly formulated or implicitly accepted as the basis for the truth/value/meaningfulness of certain judgments. These rules can also be questioned, but at a different level (relative to the primary issue)…

    2. The phrase you are challenging – “you cannot enter the same river twice” – cannot be correctly challenged because it is not original. First of all, Heraclitus did not say this and did not speak about it. This phrase is a paraphrase (excuse the pun) of the aphorism of Heraclitus (see point 3), attributed to the philosopher of Ephesus, but very far removed from the original. There is a more similar version – “You can't enter the waters of the same river twice.” Secondly, this phrase is usually used not as a logical argument with its own well-established content, but as an illustration or summary, determined by the context of the conversation and the position of the speaker. And here, as they say, tastes differ.

    3. As for the original, according to the classical translation of Diels-Kranz, the aphorism about the river sounds like this:”On entering the same rivers, some waters flow at one time, and other waters flow at another time.” Here are possible interpretations (see for example Cassidy F. X. Heraclitus, Moscow, 1982 or Fragments of early Greek Philosophers, Moscow, 1989)

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