In response to my remark that as yet I have been offered no rebuttal
to my "logical refutation," A poster on this thread replied that "[my]
tortured reasoning was exposed by a number of posters." Is that so? My
apologies, I did not notice. I'd be grateful if this subscriber or any
other would point out to me a post showing that the falsehood of Q
does not follow from principle of non-contradiction. Q is the
following proposition: "Two car crashes, one in Ausralia and another
in America, are correctly claimed by one party to be simultaneous and
by another not simultaneous." I noticed no rebuttal showing that the
terms "simultaneous" and "not simultaneous" in this proposition are
not contradictory.

Apparently the subscriber is thinking of several posts that discussed
the non-contradiction of different uses of terms such as "left," and
likened the two appearances of the term "simultaneous" in Q to these.
Yet of course such defenses fail, since, as I have shown at some
length, obviously Q is not like these. As I have explained hitherto,
this interpretation of the doctrine of the "relativity of
simultaneity" would trivialize it. The theory does not make the
trivial claim that the term "now" differs in sense in different
applications, like the term "left" or other relative terms, or, for
that matter, the term "cat." Rather, the theory claims (by
implication) that the two car crashes of Q may be both simultaneous
and not simultaneous in precisely the *non-trivial* sense, since,
unlike the different uses of term "left" or "cat," the claims of both
parties of Q *have the same referent.*

Moreover, the posts in question did not *show* that the two uses of
the term "simultaneous" in Q differed in sense (equivocation) or
reference; these posts merely listed some relative terms, and claimed
without further argument that the apparent contradiction of Q was
justified by its likeness to one of these relative terms. We are not
surprised that no argument was offered, since again, as I explained
above, such an interpretation of SR would trivialize it.

So again, I (patiently) await an argument rebutting the logical
refutation of SR. If it attacks the second premise, "Not Q," on the
ground of equivocation in the term "simultaneous," then I expect
citations from pertinent texts and coherent explication showing that
the doctrine of the relativity of simultaneity, as expounded by
Einstein and other principal advocates of SR, is to be understood in
the trivial rather than the non-trivial sense of the term
"simultaneous."

Have fun. ;-)

G. Harnett