Retortion – Maverick Philosopher

The Existential versus the Merely Theoretical: Some Responses to a Reader

A young Brazilian reader, Vini, refers to an article of mine, Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove? and asks me some questions about it. He is clearly one of those whose interest in philosophy is deeply existential and not merely theoretical or academic. ‘Existential’ has several meanings both inside and outside of philosophy. I am using it roughly in the way it is used by such so-called existentialists as Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Marcel, early Sartre, and many others. For such as these, philosophy is not an academic game. It is not about solving intellectual puzzles, or about achieving a merely theoretical, and thus impersonal view of the world that abstracts from the lived life of the individual truth-seeker who seeks a truth that is subjectively appropriable and personally transformative. On an existential understanding of philosophy’s task and goal it cannot be science given that science aims at a wholly impersonal, or third-personal, or objective view of things, as if Being could be wholly objectified. Being cannot be wholly objectified because, in Jaspersian terms, Being is das Umgreifende, the Encompassing, which includes both subject and objects

Now either you understand what I am driving at with these sketchy remarks or you don’t. If what I have just written doesn’t resonate with you, if you have no idea what I am getting at, then you are wasting your time reading my work. For everything I write, no matter how tediously technical or politically polemical, is oriented toward One Thing, the achieving of my individual, personal, intellectual-cum-spiritual salvation, even if such salvation requires the dissolution of the ego or separative self and its absorption into the eternal Atman or a Buddhist or Christian equivalent or near-equivalent thereof. Sounds paradoxical doesn’t it? How could the salvation of the self require the dissolution of the self? But paradox, contradiction, absurdity and mystery are endemic to our predicament and must be addressed by the philosopher who knows what he is about and is serious about penetrating to the truth of our predicament. Science, by contrast, seeks to banish mystery.

Again, you either catch my drift or you don’t. Young Vini, I suspect, does. He comes across as vexed and tormented by questions that to the superficial are merely academic puzzles. What he has written strikes me as a cri de coeur, and so I feel I ought to be of what little assistance I can be. My years of Sturm und Drang lie 50 years in the past, but their animating spirit remains for me tutelary, guarding and guiding, daimonic in the Socratic sense.

Vini writes,

4) On your post “Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove?”, you said: “3. I exist. The thought that I do not exist is unthinkable salva veritate. Only I can think this thought, and my thinking of the thought falsifies its content, and this is so even if ‘I’ picks out merely a momentary self. (I am not committed by this to a substantial self.) So we have performative inconsistency. Unfortunately, this does not show that I exist apart from my thinking.” So, I must ask: do you think that the self is a substance, or have you changed your mind? This got me a little bit confused, since I may have missed the context.

BV: I think you have missed the context. What I am asking in the post is whether retorsion/retortion is a philosophical procedure or tool that can secure metaphysical results. I wrote:

To be a successful metaphysical tool, a retorsive argument must establish the target proposition as true unconditionally and not merely on condition that there exist contingent beings like us who occasionally and contingently engage in such intellectual operations as affirmation and denial. Otherwise, it would have no metaphysical significance, but merely a transcendental one. (‘Transcendental’ is here being used in roughly the Kantian way.)

I am not addressing the question whether the self is a substance as opposed to a bundle of experiences. The point I am making is that retorsion does not establish the existence of the self on either conception. The argument I gave commits me neither to a substantial self nor to a momentary self. When you ask whether I changed my mind, you are assuming that in my “Chariot” article and the other posts directed against the Pali Buddhist ‘no self’ doctrine I am affirming a substance view of the self. But please note that if propositions P, Q are logically contradictory (i.e., cannot both be true and cannot both be false), and I show that the arguments for P are not rationally coercive, it does not follow that (a) I must find the arguments for Q rationally coercive, or (b) that I accept Q. After all, the problem may be insoluble by us. In the anti-Buddhist articles and entries I was showing that there are good reasons for rejecting the Buddhist anatta/anatman doctrine. A good reason needn’t be rationally coercive or rationally compelling or philosophically dispositive. (I am using these phrases interchangeably.)

To take a different example, if I reject every version of presentism in the philosophy of time, it does not follow that I must accept some version of anti-presentism.

5) I think this question is one of the most important ones: Can I really rest assured that the self does exist, and it is like a Substance? To be completely honest with you, Bill, one thing that this whole 6-year experience showed me is that I know nothing or almost nothing about the world. I never thought in my life that we could even doubt about the reality of things such as the self. Back in the day, this shocked me. I was (and still somehow am) very afraid of things that I don’t know, like “what if there is a hidden argument that I don’t know,” “what if they are right,” and so on. I’m 27 years old, and I got a lot of things wrong in my life — but this is one I don’t want to be wrong about. You know, there are a lot of things with an intellect far, far superior to mine, such as Butchvarov, Husserl, and so on, that you are well aware of, that may have found arguments that I couldn’t even imagine in my lifetime. But, at the same time, I think that philosophy, above all else, can give definitive and satisfactory answers to life. It’s not an empirical science ‘guessing game,’ where things can flip from right to wrong in the bat of an eye (like, if someone got something wrong, he will be wrong no matter what, and that’s what I think about Buddhists, Harris and Co. on these matters). But, at the same time, I have this insecurity of getting things wrong, of something that might not be “sufficient” to show what I want to understand (in that case, the self), since I know so little of philosophy. So how could I rest assured that, no matter the hard work, they will be wrong? The self can’t be a guessing game. I think that there must be a way to establish the truth of this, regardless of the endless discussions that philosophers may have in the future (if he’s right, he’s right; if wrong, he’s wrong). I’m very afraid of being wrong, getting something wrong, and that there is an “unknown argument” that may tumble down what I think is right, but, at the same time, if I had all these dialectical worries since 2019, how could I possibly not exist (as a Substance)? I’m confused, since I also lend more value to what others said rather than my own experience… I don’t know how to think this through. Can you share your thoughts about this? A word of experience from someone who saw a lot more in life than I ever had would be very comforting to hear, especially from a philosopher. Even though your motto is “study everything, join nothing,” I really think that you can have a definitive answer on that matter.

In all of that, sorry for the gigantic, torah-like email. I tried my best to express my worries as quickly as possible and tell you all of them in one shot. As I said, I really hope God touches your heart to help me with these questions. I really, really hope you could spare or find some time to answer me this. Even though for some people these questions are trivial, for me, I think they are life-changing and something that we live up to. I know I sound a little bit platonic (maybe I am), but I think the same centelha [scintilla, see here]of philosophy that resides in you will find and understand the questions in mine.

May God bless you, Bill.

BV: There are different types of philosopher. In another place in your Torah-like e-mail, you say you like Ed Feser’s work. Ed is an ultra-competent expositor and defender of the metaphysics underpinning traditional Roman Catholicism. For him the ultimate truth, which is a salvific truth, is housed in the (trad) RCC. He believes that he found the Answer there, his Answer, but also the Answer, the Answer for everyone whether they accept it or not. I classify him as a dogmatic affirmer. The polar opposite is the dogmatic denier. I am neither. I am a critical inquirer in the Socratic tradition. Feser thinks the existence of God can be proven. I deny that the existence of God can be proven, but I also deny that the existence of God can be disproven. What holds for God, holds for the soul, and all the rest of our highest concerns.

You want to know (with objective certainty) whether the self is a substance that persists, numerically self-same over time, an immaterial substance, capable of existing whether or not it is embodied. This burning desire to know is what distinguishes the true philosopher from the academic hacks and functionaries who dominate our universities. Many of them are clever, and some are brilliant, but they suffer from existentielle Bodenlosigkeit (Karl Jaspers). Their work is a game, a job, a way of filling their bellies. It does not well up from their Existenz. Their real lives are elsewhere. They don’t live for philosophy, but from it, and they would drop it like a hot potato if they could no longer fill their bellies from it. The great Augustine said he wanted to know, more than anything else, two things:, God and the soul: deum et animam scire cupio. So, Vini, you and I are in good company.

So are God and the soul (immaterial substantial self) real or not? Can we KNOW the answer to that question? You say it can’t be a guessing game. You are right about that. It can’t be a matter of flipping a coin or making a guess. That way of talking trivializes the question, as does, I am afraid, Pascal’s talk of a wager. The great Pascal betrays the depth and seriousness of his thought with talk like that, though one understands how a great mathematician and contributor to probability theory would think like that. Be that as it may.

It’s not a guessing game, but nonetheless in the end you must decide what you will believe and how you will live. There are no objective certainties and no knock-down proofs in this life with respect to the Big Questions and the Ultimate Objects. Genuine knowledge in these precincts is unattainable by us here below. Our cognitive architecture is not up to the task. Our reason is weak and merely discursive. And the noetic consequences of sin may have to be factored in.

“I have found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith,” wrote Kant in the preface to the 2nd edition of his Critique of Pure Reason. The great Kant was on the right track. Reason is dialectical in his sense and simply not up to the task of laying bare the nature of the ultimate.

You say, “I think that there must be a way to establish the truth of this.” That is precisely what I deny assuming by ‘establish’ you mean conclusively prove. Reasoned belief is as far as we can go. Th dogmatic affirmers, driven by overpowering doxastic security needs, fool themselves when they pass off arguments that are objectively inconclusive as proofs. I am not saying that they are intellectually dishonest; I am saying that they are in the grip of an overpowering need to be secure in their beliefs.

But more on this later, if you like. I welcome your objections, Vini. Please respond here on this blog, the latest version of Maverick Philosopher. If you do so you will have the honor of being the first to anoint my combox with comments.

Debate, Disagreement, and the Limits of Rational Discourse

I wrote a few months back,

. . . the wisest policy is not to debate leftists. Generally speaking and admitting exceptions, leftists need to be defeated, not debated. Debate is worthwhile only with open-minded truth seekers. Truth, however, is not a leftist value. At the apex of the leftist's value hierarchy stands POWER. That is not to say that a leftist will never speak the truth; he will sometimes, but only if it serves his agenda.

Tony Flood replied that the above quotation reminded him "of [Eric] Voegelin's stance on this very issue, about which I blogged a few years ago." In that post Tony reproduces the first paragraph of Voegelin's Debate and Existence as follows. [note to AGF: your hyperlink is busted: 404 error] Tony breaks Voegelin's one paragraph into four.

Continue reading “Debate, Disagreement, and the Limits of Rational Discourse”

Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove?

Retorsion (retortion) is the philosophical procedure whereby one attempts to establish a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone who denies it. It is as old as Aristotle and has been put to use by philosophers as diverse as Transcendental Thomists and Ayn Rand and her followers. Retorsion is something like an ad hominem tu quoque except that the homo in question is everyman, indeed every rational being. Proofs by retorsion have the following form:

Proposition p is such that anyone who denies it falls into performative inconsistency; ergo, p is true.

Suppose a person asserts that there are no assertions. That person falls into performative inconsistency: the propositional content of the speech act is 'inconsistent' with the performance. *There are no assertions* is the propositional content, or content, for short. The speech act of asserting is in this case the performance. The inconsistency is not strictly logical, which is why I employed scare quotes. Strictly logical inconsistency/consistency obtains between propositions, and a performance such as asserting is not a proposition. Performances belong to the category of events, not that of propositions. And yet it is clear that there is some sort of analog of inconsistency here, some sort or analog of 'contradiction.' The content asserted is falsified by the act of asserting it. The performance 'contradicts' the content.

Continue reading “Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove?”

When Is Retorsion Probative?

Retorsion (retortion) is the philosophical procedure whereby one attempts to establish a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone who denies it. It is something like an ad hominem tu quoque except that the homo in question is everyman, indeed every rational being. Proofs by retortion have the following form:

Proposition p is such that anyone who denies it falls into performative inconsistency; ergo, p is true.

Suppose a person asserts that there are no assertions. That person falls into performative inconsistency: the propositional content of the speech act is 'inconsistent' with the performance. *There are no assertions* is the propositional content, or content, for short. The speech act of asserting is in this case the performance. The inconsistency is not strictly logical, which is why I employed scare quotes. Strictly logical inconsistency obtains between or among propositions, and a performance such as asserting is not a proposition. And yet it is clear that there is some sort of inconsistency here, some sort of 'contradiction.' The content asserted is falsified by the act of asserting it. The performance 'contradicts' the content.

We can put this by saying that *There are no assertions* is unassertible salva veritate. For no one can assert it without falsifying it. Its negation, *There are assertions,* has the opposite property of being such that no one can assert it without verifying it, without making it true. (Note that 'verify' has two senses.)

To be a successful metaphysical tool, a retorsive argument must establish the target proposition as true unconditionally and not merely on condition that there exist contingent beings like us who occasionally and contingently engage in such intellectual operations as affirmation and denial. Otherwise, it would have no metaphysical significance, but merely a transcendental one. Metaphysics, more precisely, metaphysica generalis, has as its task the laying bare of the most pervasive structures of being qua being. For it is one thing for the truth of a proposition to be a necessary presupposition of our intellectual operations, and quite another for that proposition to be true in itself and apart from us and our operations of sense and intellect.

To illustrate, let the target proposition be the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), an excellent candidate for the office of 'first principle' and a principle it would be nice to be able to establish by retorsion. (One cannot argue directly for LNC without begging the question, and to simply announce that it is self-evident smacks of an unphilosophical dogmatism.) A successful retorsive argument for LNC as a truth of metaphysics and not merely as a law of thought must demonstrate that it 'governs' reality and not merely our thoughts about reality. For if LNC were merely an unavoidable constraint on our thinking, then it might be that reality does not 'obey' it.

What worries me is the putative gap between (a) LNC is a principle without which we cannot conduct our intellectual operations and (b) LNC is a principle of being itself. (Aristotle was aware of this putative gap.) I'm not sure there is a gap, but I'm not sure there isn't either. Nor am I quite sure that we need a metaphysical, as opposed to a merely transcendental, grounding of LNC.

There are very deep questions here, and they may be above my or any mortal's 'pay grade.'

My question could be put as follows. Which propositions are such that their undeniability salva veritate entails their being true independently of of us and our intellectual operations such as denial and affirmation? In other words, in which cases is retorsion a probative procedure for the establishing of metaphysical results? Let's consider some examples.

1. There are assertions. We have seen that anyone who asserts the negation of this proposition is involved in performative inconsistency. By retorsion, then, we conclude that it is true. But is it true independently of us, independently of whether or not assertors exist? No. The unassertibility salva veritate of *There are no assertions* merely shows something about us, not about reality independently of us.

It should also be noted that although *There are no assertions* is not assertible, it is thinkable without performative inconsistency. There are times at which the negative proposition is true. And though it is false now, it (logically) might have been true now. Presumably there is no necessity that there be any assertors.

2. There are thoughts. Can I think the thought that there are no thoughts? I can, but if I do I see that the thinking falsifies the thought's content. Now does this performative inconsistency show that there are thoughts in reality apart from thinkers? No. Obviously, a thought is some thinker's thought. The unthinkability salva veritate of *There are no thoughts* does not show there are thoughts in reality apart from us.

3. I exist. The thought that I do not exist is unthinkable salva veritate. Only I can think this thought, and my thinking of the thought falsifies its content, and this is so even if 'I' picks out merely a momentary self. (I am not committed by this to a substantial self.) So we have performative inconsistency. Unfortunately, this does not show that I exist apart from my thinking.

4. There are truths. Can I think, with truth, the thought that there are no truths? No. For if there are no truths then it is true that there are no truths, in which case there are truths. What we have here, though, is not a case of performative inconsistency, but a case in which a proposition refutes itself. It is not that a performance and its content are inconsistent, but that a proposition, by itself, is self-inconsistent. It is self-inconsistent inasmuch as it entails its own negation. If there are no truths, then there are some. And if there are some, then there are some. So, necessarily, there are some truths. This necessary truth is true independently of any mind. But it is not a truth known by retorsion since no performative inconsistency is involved.

5. Some memory reports are veridical. To prove this by retorsion, we begin by negating it. Negation yields *All memory reports are non-veridical.* This is subject to the retort that one who asserts it or affirms it in thought must rely on memory, and so must presuppose the reliability of the faculty whose reliability he questions by asserting it. For if anyone is to be in a position to affirm that all memory reports are non-veridical, then he must remember that on some occasions he has misremembered. He must remember and remember correctly that some of his memories were merely apparent. He must also remember and remember correctly that he has had memories. And in executing his skeptical reasoning, he must remember and remember correctly the early phases of said reasoning. It seems obvious, then, that the truth of *All memory reports are non-veridical* is inconsistent with its being affirmed. If true, it is unaffirmable as true. But does it follow that *Some memory reports are veridical* is true apart from us and our faculties?

6. Something exists. This is a proposition that is undeniable in the sense that anyone who denies it involves himself in performative inconsistency. For if one denies that something exists , then one affirms that nothing exists. But *Nothing exists* is falsfied by the very act (performance) of affirmation.

But does this undeniability show that *Something exists* is true in itself? I don't think so. It is true in itself, but not because it is undeniable. It is true in itself because the proposition, whether true or false, entails the existence of that very proposition. In this regard, #6 is like #4.

My tentative conclusion is that retorsion has merely a transcendental significance, not a metaphysical one.

Zeno and Retortion

Retortion is the philosophical procedure whereby one seeks to establish a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone who attempts to deny it. If, for example, I were to assert that there are no assertions, the very act of making this assertion would show it to be false: the performance of assertion is 'inconsistent' with the truth of the content asserted. (The scare quotes signal that this 'inconsistency' is not strictly logical since strictly logical inconsistency is a relation that holds between or among propositions. A speech act, however, is not a proposition, though its content is.)

Can a similar retorsive argument be mounted against Zeno's denials of motion and plurality?

The retorsive argument might proceed as follows. For Zeno to convey his Parmenidean thoughts to us he must wag his tongue and draw diagrams in the Eleatic sand. Does he thereby prove the actuality and thus the possibility of motion and fall into performative inconsistency? The answer depends on how we understand the purport of the Zenonian argumentation.

A. If Zeno's arguments are taken to show that motion conceived in a certain way does not exist, then the wagging of the tongue, etc. is 'consistent' with the proposition that motion conceived in that way does not exist, and the retorsive argument fails. For example, suppose one maintains that for a particle P to be in motion (relative to a reference-frame) is for P to occupy continuum-many different positions at continuum-many different times (relative to that reference-frame). This popular 'At-At' theory of motion requires the denseness of physical time and physical space. Now if it turns out that motion so conceived does not exist, it may still be the case that motion conceived in some other way does exist, and that Zeno's tongue-wagging and diagram-drawing is motion under that competing conception. The competing conception might, for example, deny the denseness of space or of time, or both.

B. If Zeno's arguments are taken to show that motion no matter how it is conceived does not exist, and is a mere illusion bare of all reality, then the retorsive argument refutes him. For then the moving of his tongue is 'inconsistent' with the truth of 'Nothing moves.' By moving his tongue, pulling his beard, flaring his nostrils, adjusting his toga, and pounding the lectern, he demonstrates the empirical reality of motion, a reality that is prior to, and neutral in respect of, all conceptions of this reality.

Although the retorsive argument works against a Zeno so interpreted, this interpretation is uncharitable in the extreme. Read charitably, Zeno is not claiming that motion and plurality are mere subjective illusions, but rather that they are something like Leibnizian well-founded phenomena (phaenomena bene fundata) or intersubjectively valid Kantian Erscheinungen. They are not mere illusions, but they are not ultimately real either.

C. If Zeno's arguments are taken to show that motion and plurality are intersubjectively valid appearances, but not ultimately real, then they are being taken to show that motion conceived in a certain way, as belonging to ultimate reality, does not exist. This view of motion seems 'consistent' with the motions required to convey Zenonian argument.

My verdict, then, is that retortion does not refute a Zeno charitably interpreted.

Thinking About Nothing

Suppose I try to think the counterfactual state of affairs of there being nothing, nothing at all. Can I succeed in thinking pure nothingness? Is this thought thinkable? And if it is, does it show that it is possible that there be nothing at all? If yes, then (i) it is contingent that anything exists, and (ii) everything that exists exists contingently, which implies that both of the following are false:

1. Necessarily, something exists. Nec(Ex)(x exists)

2. Something necessarily exists. (Ex)Nec(x exists).

(1) and (2) are not the same proposition: (2) entails (1) but not conversely.

Phylogenetically, this topic goes back to Parmenides of Elea. Ontogenetically, it goes back to what was probably my first philosophical thought when I was about eight or so years old. (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny!) I had been taught that God created everything distinct from himself. One day, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, I thought: "Well, suppose God never created anything. Then only God would exist. And if God didn't exist, then there would be nothing at all." At this my head began to swim and I felt a strange wonder that I cannot quite recapture, although the memory remains strong 50 years later. The unutterably strange thought that there might never have been anything at all — is this thought truly thinkable or does it cancel itself in the very attempt to think it?

My earlier meditation was to the effect that the thought cancels itself by issuing in contradiction. (And so I concluded that necessarily there is something, an interesting metaphysical result arrived at by pure thought.) To put it as simply as possible, and avoiding the patois of 'possible worlds': If there were nothing, then it would be a fact that there is nothing. And so there would be something, namely, that very fact. After all, that fact has a definite content and can't be nothing. But this is not quite convincing because, on the other hand, if there were truly nothing, then there wouldn't be this fact either.

On the one hand, nothingness is the determinate 'state' of there being nothing at all. Determinate, because it excludes there being something. (Spinoza: Omnis determinatio est negatio.) On the other hand, nothingness is the nonbeing of absolutely everything, including this putative 'state.' That is about as pithy a formulation of the puzzle as I can come up with.

Here is a puzzle of a similar structure. If there were no truths, then it would be true that there are no truths, which implies that there is at least one truth. The thought that there are no truths refutes itself. Hence, necessarily, there is at least one truth. On the other hand, if there 'truly' were no truths, then there would be no truth that there are no truths. We cannot deny that there are truths without presupposing that there are truths; but this does not prove the necessity of truths apart from us. Or so the objection goes.

How can we decide between these two plausible lines of argumentation?

But let me put it a third way so we get the full flavor of the problem. This is the way things are: Things exist. If nothing else, these very thoughts about being and nonbeing exist. If nothing existed, would that then be the way things are? If yes, then there is something, namely, the way things are. Or should we say that, if nothing existed, then there would be no way things are, no truth, no maximal state of affairs? In that case, no determinate 'possibility' would be actual were nothing to exist.

The last sentence may provide a clue to solving the problem. If no determinate possibility would be actual were nothing to exist, then the thought of there being nothing at all lacks determinate content. It follows that the thought that there is nothing at all is unthinkable. We may say, 'There might have been nothing at all,' but we can attach no definite thought to those words. So talking, we literally don't know what we are talking about. We are merely mouthing words. Because it is unthinkable that there be nothing at all, it is impossible, and so it is necessary that there be something.

Parmenides vindicatus est.

My conclusion is equivalent to the thesis that there is no such 'thing' as indeterminate nonbeing. Nonbeing is determinate: it is always and necessarily the nonbeing of something. For example, the nonbeing of Pierre, the nonbeing of the cafe, the nonbeing of Paris . . . the nonbeing of the Earth . . . the nonbeing of the physical universe . . . the nonbeing of everything that exists. Nonbeing, accordingly, is defined by its exclusion of what exists.

The nonbeing of everything that exists is not on an ontological par with everything that exists. The former is parasitic on the latter, as precisely the nonbeing of the latter. Being and Nothing are not equal but opposite: Nothing is derivative from Being as the negation of Being. Hegel got off on the wrong foot at the beginning of his Wissenschaft der Logik. And Heidegger, who also maintained that Being and Nothing are the same — though in a different sense than that intended by Hegel — was also out to lunch, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor.

If this is right, then nonbeing is not a source out of which what is comes or came. Accordingly, a sentence like 'The cosmos emerged from the womb of nonbeing,' whatever poetic value it might have, is literally meaningless: there is no nonbeing from which anything can emerge.

Being is. Nonbeing is not.

Five Grades of Self-Referential Inconsistency: Towards a Taxonomy

Some sentences, whether or not they are about other things, are about themselves. They refer to themselves. Hence we say they are 'self-referential.' The phenomenon of sentential self-referentiality is sometimes benign. One example is 'This sentence is true.' Another is 'Every proposition is either true or false.' Of interest here are the more or less malignant forms of self-reference. One example is the so-called Liar sentence:

1. This sentence is false.

If (1) is true, then it is false, and if false, then true. This is an example of an antinomy. In pursuit of a taxonomy, we might call this Grade I of self-referential inconsistency. Grade I, then, is the class
of self-referentially inconsistent sentences that issue in antinomies.

There are other self-referential sentences that are not antinomies, but imply their own necessary falsehood. These are such that, if true, then false, and if false, then false, and are therefore necessarily false. For example,

2. All generalizations are false.

If (2) is true, then, since (2) is itself a generalization, (2) is false. But its falsity does not imply its truth. So, if false, then false. Assuming Bivalence, it follows that (2) is necessarily false, whence it follows that its negation — Some generalizations are true – is necessarily true, and moreover an instance of itself. A second example might be

3. There are no truths.

If (3) is true, then it is false. And if false, then false. So, (3) is necessarily false, whence it follows that its negation — There are truths — is necessarily true.

Examples (2) and (3) belong to Grade II in my tentative taxonomy. These are self-referential sentences that entail their own necessary falsehood. Grade III comprises those self-referential sentences that are such that if true, then neither true nor false, and if false, then false. For example,

4. There are no truth-bearers.

If (4) is true, then, since (4) is a truth-bearer, (4) is neither true nor false. But if false, then false. If we define the cognitively meaningful as that which is either true or false, then (4) is either cognitively meaningless or false. A more interesting example that seems to belong in Grade III is the Verifiability Principle of the Logical Positivists:

5. Every cognitively meaningful sentence is either analytic or empirically verifiable in principle.

If (5) is supposed to be cognitively (as opposed to emotionally) meaningful, and thus not a mere linguistic recommendation or pure stipulation, then it applies to itself. So if (5) is true, then (5) —
which is clearly neither analytic nor verifiable — is meaningless. So, if true, then meaningless, and if false, then false. Therefore, either meaningless or false. Not good!

Grade IV comprises those self-referential sentences that can be described as self-vitiating (self-weakening) though they are not strictly self-refuting. For example,

6. All truths are relative.

If (6) is true, then (6) is relative, i.e., relatively true. It is not the case that if (6) is true, then (6) is false. So (6) is not self-refuting. Nevertheless, (6) is self-vitiating in that it relativizes and thus weakens itself: if true, it cannot be absolutely true; it can only be relatively true. It is therefore a mistake, one often made, to say that he who affirms (6) contradicts himself. He does not. He would contradict himself only if he maintained that it is nonrelatively true that all truths are relative. But no sophisticated relativist would say such a thing. Other examples which seem to fall into the category of the self-vitiating:

7. Every statement is subject to revision. (Quine)
8. Every theory reflects class interests. (Marxism)
9. All theory is ideology. (Marxism)
10. Nothing can be known.
11. Nothing is known.
12. Nothing is certain.
13. All truth is historical.
14. All is opinion.

What is wrong with self-vitiating propositions? What does their weakness consist in? Consider (8). If (8) is true, then the theory that every theory reflects class interests itself reflects class interests. Suppose (8) reflects the class interests of the proletariat. Then what is that to me, who am not a proletarian? What is it to anyone who is not a proletarian? If (8) is true only for you and those with your interests, and your interests are not my interests, then I have been given no reason to modify my views. The trouble with (7)-(14) and their ilk is that they make a claim on our rational attention, on our common rational interest, while undercutting that very claim.

It seems we need a fifth category. The sentences of Grade V are such that, if they are true then they are, not false, and not self-vitiating, but non-assertible. Consider

15. No statement is negative.

(15) applies to itself and so at first appears to refute itself: if (15) is true, then it is false. And if false, then false; hence necessarily false. But consider a possible world W in which God destroys all negative statements and makes it impossible for anyone to make a negative statement. In W, (15) is true, but non-assertible. (15) does not prove itself to be false; it proves itself to be non-assertible.

Can the same said of

16. All is empty (Buddhism)?

I think not, for reasons supplied here.

Finally, we consider

17. All memory reports are deceptive.

This is subject to the retort that one who asserts (17) must rely on memory, and so must presuppose the reliability of the faculty whose reliability he questions by asserting (17). For if anyone is to be in a position responsibly to affirm (17), to affirm it with a chance of its being true, he must remember that on some occasions he has misremembered. He must remember and remember correctly that some of his memories were merely apparent. It seems obvious, then, that the truth of (17) is inconsistent with its correctly being affirmed as true. If true, it is unaffirmable as true. But this is different from saying that (17), if true, is false. Although (17) is unaffirmable or non-assertible if true, it seems that (17) could be true nonetheless.

The Truth Operator and the Truth Predicate

This is an addendum to our earlier discussion which I hope will advance it a step or two. We heard Alan Rhoda claim that the following sentence is false: 'If nothing exists, then it is true that nothing exists.' Let's think further about this. We first note that 'If nothing exists, then it is true that nothing exists' can be parsed in two ways:

1. If nothing exists, then it is true that (nothing exists).

2. If nothing exists, then it is true (that nothing exists).

Call (1) the operator construal. 'It is true that ( )' is a sentential operator the operand of which is a sentence. The result of the operation is itself a sentence. If the operand is true, then the resulting sentence is true. If the operand is false, then the resulting sentence is false. Please note that prefixing 'It is true that' to a sentence cannot change the truth-value of the sentence. In this respect, the truth operator 'It is true that ( )' is unlike the negation operator 'It is not the case that ( ).' Assuming Bivalence — as I have been doing throughout — if you negate a true sentence you get a false one, and vice versa.

Call (2) the predicate construal. The consequent of (2) is of course a sentence, but it is not the result or product of a sentential operator operating upon a sentence. For what is within the parentheses is not a sentence. 'That nothing exists' is not a sentence. It does not have a truth-value. If I assertively utter it I do not convey a complete thought to my audience. 'That nothing exists' is the name of a proposition. It follows that 'it is true' in the consequent of (2) functions as a predicate as one can more clearly see from the equivalent

3. If nothing exists, then that nothing exists is true.

In (2) and (3) a predicate is attached to a name, whereas in (1) this is not the case: a sentential operator is attached to a sentence.

Not only are the parsings different, the ontological commitments are as well. (2) commits us to propositions while (1) doesn't. And (1) seems to commit us to operators while (2) doesn't.

Here is the place to comment on my asterisks convention. Putting asterisks around a declarative sentence forms a name of the proposition expressed by the sentence. 'The Moon is uninhabited' is a declarative sentence. '*The Moon is uninhabited*' is not a sentence but a name. It names an entity that has a truth-value, but it itself does not have a truth-value. (2) and (3) can also be rendered as

4. If nothing exists, then *Nothing exists* is true.

With the operator/predicate distinction under our belts we may be in a position to see how one philosopher (Alan) could reasonably reject 'If nothing exists, then it is true that nothing exists' while another accepts it. The one philosopher gives the original sentence the predicate construal which is committed to propositions. This philosopher then reasons that, if nothing exists, then no propositions exist either, and are therefore not available to instantiate the property of being true. The other philosopher gives the original sentence the operator construal and finds it impossible to understand how anyone could reject the original sentence so construed. This philosopher insists that if nothing exists, then it is true that nothing exists; that this truth is not nothing, and that therefore it is something, which implies that it cannot be the case that nothing exists.

Retortion Applied to the Anatta Doctrine

This post is a continuation of the line of thought in Emptiness, Self-Reference, and Assertibility, a post from the old blog which in due course will be revised and deposited here. There you will find a brief explanation of anatta. Retortion was explained in recent posts. See the contents of the Retortion category. What happens when we apply retortion to the anatta doctrine? Consider the unrestricted anatta thesis (unrestricted in the sense that it applies to absolutely everything including nibbana)

1. All is empty.

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Retortion and Performative Inconsistency Once Again

This post continues my meditations on the probative reach of retortion. See the category Retortion for more on this intriguing topic.

1. If a number of us are sitting silently in a room, I cannot say 'We are silent' without in some sense contradicting myself. In what sense, exactly? In the performative sense. Were I to say 'We are silent,' my performance (Vollzug in E. Coreth's terminology) — in this case my utterance – would be 'inconsistent' with its content. Now contents are propositions, while utterance events are not, the reason being that contents are truth-valued (either true or false assuming Bivalence) while utterance events, like all events, are not truth-valued. It follows that performative inconsistency is not identical to, or a species of, logical inconsistency. Logical consistency/inconsistency is a relation between or among propositions. Two propositions are consistent iff they can both be true, and inconsistent iff they cannot. A single proposition is self-consistent iff its logical form is such as to admit some true substitution-instances. Clearly, there is nothing logically self-inconsistent about 'We are silent.' The sentence is not logically self-contradictory. But I would contradict myself were I to say, in the situation described, 'We are silent.' Curiously, I cannot say in this situation what I know to be true. If I were to say it, I would falsify it. Therefore, the proposition that I know to be true is unassertible salva veritate in the situation in question. No doubt I have the ability to assert the sentence-type 'We are silent'; but I cannot assert it in a way that preserves truth. But this does not show that the proposition is false, or that its negation — We are not silent — is true.

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The Reach of Retortion

Tony Flood e-mails:

Bill, when you distinguish retorsive arguments that work from those that don't, I'm not clear about what you mean by "working." You haven't said that some retorsive arguments are fallacies, but if they're not, then what is their defect? A "performative contradiction," e.g., "I cannot write a sentence in English," may not be, as you noted, a contradiction between propositions, but to expose its untenability is certainly effective and therefore "works." Do you exclude performative contradictions from the class of retorsive arguments? If you do and if you're right, my celebration of that "point of connection" was misplaced. (I've modified that paragraph to include the link to your post.)

I will try to answer Tony's question by giving an example of a retorsive argument that does not 'work.' In Retortion and the Existence of Truth I gave an example that did seem to 'work.'

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Retortion and the Existence of Truth

Anthony Flood informs me that he has uploaded to his site an article I brought to his attention a couple of years ago: Retortion: The Method and Metaphysics of Gaston Isaye. Whether or not you agree with Tony's politics, and I don't, you should agree with me that his site is an ever-expanding repository of valuable articles and other materials from often neglected thinkers. The trouble with too many contemporary philosophers is that they are so bloody narrow: they read only the latest stuff, much of it destined to be ephemeral, by a few people. You've got young academic punks writing on free will who have never studied Schopenhauer's classic essay. That's contemptible. They suffer from a onesided philosophical diet as Wittgenstein said in another connection. Study everything! (But join nothing.) As I mentioned to Tony in an e-mail, retortion is a philosophical procedure that is fascinating but hard to evaluate. It seems to work on some topics, but not on others. It does seem to me to work when it comes to the topic of truth, as the following post explains:

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Retortion (also spelled 'retorsion') is the philosophical procedure whereby one seeks to establish a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone (any actual or possible rational agent) who attempts to deny it. Proofs by retortion have the following form:

Proposition p is such that anyone who denies it falls into performative inconsistency; ergo, p is true.

If we agree that a proposition is ineluctable just in case it cannot be denied by anyone without performative inconsistency, then the retorsive proof-strategy can be summed up in the conditional:

If a proposition is ineluctable, then it is true.

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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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