Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Retortion

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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'…

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…