Category: Logica Docens

Retortion and Non-Contradiction in Aristotle, Metaphysics, Gamma 3, 4

Retortion is the philosophical procedure whereby one seeks to establish a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone who attempts to deny it. It is something like that benign form of ad hominem in which person A points out to person B that some proposition p that B maintains is inconsistent with some other proposition q that B maintains. "How can you maintain that p when your acceptance of p is logically ruled out by your acceptance of q? You are contradicting yourself!" This objection is to the man, or rather, to the man's doxastic system; it has no tendency to show that p is false. It shows merely that not all of B's beliefs can be true. But if the homo in question is Everyman, or every mind, then the objection gains in interest. Suppose there is a proposition that it is impossible for anyone (any rational agent) to deny; the question arises whether the undeniability or ineluctability of this proposition is a reason to consider it to be true. Does undeniability establish objective truth? Consider

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Modal Confusion in Rand/Peikoff

Comments are on.  If you have something intelligent and civil to contribute, please do.  But I have zero tolerance for cyberpunks.  If you fail to address what I actually say, or thoughtlessly spout the Rand party line, or show the least bit of disrespect to me or my commenters, then I will delete your comment.

Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology includes an essay by Leonard Peikoff entitled "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy."  The section "Necessity and Contingency" concludes with the following paragraph:

Truth is the identification of a fact with reality. Whether the fact in question is metaphysical or man-made, the fact determines the truth: if the fact exists, there is no alternative in regard to what is true. For instance, the fact that the U.S. has 50 states was not metaphysically necessary – but as long as this is men's choice, the proposition that "The U.S. has 50 states" is necessarily true.  A true proposition must describe the facts as they are.  In this sense, a "necessary truth" is a redundancy, and a "contingent truth" a self-contradiction. (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, 2nd ed., eds. Binswanger and Peikoff, NAL Books, 1990, p. 111, emphasis in original.) 

I have no objection to part of what is being said in this passage, in fact I heartily agree with it, namely, that facts determine truths.  The non-man-made fact of the moon's having craters makes-true the proposition expressed by 'The moon has craters.'  And similarly for the man-made fact regarding the 50 states cited by Peikoff.  So I cheerfully agree that "if the fact exists, there is no alternative in regard to what is true."  We can put the point as follows given that there is a fact F and a proposition p that records F:

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