Binary and Non-Binary Discourse: A Meta-Rule on the Legitimacy of Assertion [Bilingual: Chinese/English]

This paper proposes a meta-rule governing the form of assertion: discourse can be divided, by its logical structure, into binary and non-binary. Binary discourse makes a formal commitment to an answer space of exactly two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive options; this commitment logically entails the existence of a decidable criterion. Binary discourse without a decidable criterion does not assert imprecisely—it has not demonstrated that it has asserted anything at all. Non-binary discourse makes no such commitment and bears no such obligation. This distinction exposes a systematic class of linguistic failure: deploying the form of binary discourse for concepts that cannot sustain the binary commitment, producing what appears to be argument but is structurally noise. The paper demonstrates the explanatory reach of this meta-rule through analysis of the most persistent and contentious philosophical disputes in the Western tradition.