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This chapter argues that MacFarlane's truth-relativism faces two problems. First, it cannot explain the existence of disputes over assessment-sensitive propositions because it does not have a viable notion of disagreement. Second, it entails the idea that knowledge of the truth-relativist thesis in the context of a dispute is dialectically inhibiting: the truth relativist is committed to an ignorance theory, for the speakers who take part, to a dispute on matters of taste.

Philosophers have thought that there are insuperable limits to rationally opposing skepticism, to pursuing epistemological investigations without substantial presuppositions, or to explaining knowledge in general. In this chapter, it is argued that there are no such constraints on an evidentialist approach.

The coherence of Sextus' philosophic stance depends on his Pyrrhonism having the internal resources to overcome well-known criticisms of global scepticism. If Sextus must be seen as an advocate of global scepticism about rational justification and such scepticism is ultimately negligible, then Sextus' Pyrrhonism also stands condemned as incoherent. Fortunately, however, the self-refutation argument and the argument that the global sceptic cannot live his scepticism are not as conclusive as their reputations suggest. This chapter shows how Sextus' comments on the constrained nature of Pyrrhonists' beliefs enables the construction of a rebuttal of the objection about rational justification, that a global sceptic ought to eschew all belief. It also shows that the self-refutation argument fails to allow for the changing role of the Pyrrhonist's arguments as he moves towards philosophical maturity.

This chapter discusses some of the deficiencies of modern accounts of scepticism, and identifies two crucial arguments — the self-refutation argument and the argument that a radical global scepticism is unlivable — that are commonly used to constrain the sceptical challenge in ways that leave it vulnerable to charges of arbitrariness and internal inconsistency.

Epictetus’ philosophy combines rationality, empiricism, and eudaimonism. He refutes scepticism by arguing that this stance involves self‐refutation. He requires his students to recognise that Stoicism requires complete commitment to the wish to live free from error. He divides his curriculum into three stages: ’desires and aversions’, ’appropriate actions’, and ’advanced logic’, emphasizing the need to master the first of these before going on to the others. In his self‐presentation, he distances himself from capitalized Philosophers, much as Plato distances Socrates from the Sophists.

In the so-called self-refutation argument of the Theaetetus, Plato has Socrates argue that Protagoras can be made to refute himself, and that someone who holds Protagoras’ position must admit that it is false. This is related to Aristotle’s claim in Metaphysics Γ5 that Protagoras is committed to denying or at least violating the principle of non-contradiction. Both Plato’s and Aristotle’s arguments are open to the objection that if Protagoras is espousing relativism about truth, then he has a way outby arguing that relativism is true for him, but false for those who don’t believe it. Aristotle recognizes this objection, but does not think it is successful.

Takes up six arguments against relativism. The most famous amongst them are Plato's self‐refutation charge, Hillary Putnam's argument based on the parallel between methodological solipsism and cultural relativism, and Donald Davidson's criticism of the very idea of conceptual schemes. It is shown that none of these arguments is decisive.

Examines the stages by which Protagorean relativism is refuted. These include the much-debated self-refutation argument, and the argument that only experts could have knowledge of the future. I maintain that these are drawing on typically Socratic insights and arguments. But the main emphasis is on the ‘Digression’, in which Socrates indicates why he rejects fashionable relativism of values. This, I argue, develops a series of Socratic positions that serve to reveal how Socrates, despite not having arrived at Plato’s theory of transcendent moral Forms, paved the way to it with a moral absolutism that depended on his insights about god’s perfect goodness. Here, Plato is also looking forward to his later interest in ‘becoming like god’. The Digression, in addition, I argue, hints at Socrates’ radical theological views, the ones that led to his execution.

The 1992 Gilson Lecture to the Mediaeval Studies Institute in Toronto, this chapter undertakes a substantial and wide-ranging critique of the theory of ‘historical’ (as opposed to ‘classical’) consciousness elaborated in the later works of Bernard Lonergan and adopted by many theologians since the 1970s. The origins of the phrase, and its self-refuting deployment by Lonergan's predecessor in use of it are traced, and the ambiguities and inconsistencies in Lonergan's employment of it are shown in detail. Weaknesses in the Thomist tradition in relation to history are pointed out, and its neglect (and Lonergan's) of rationality norms is explored in relation to Hume's argument against miracles. The relevance of these problems to moral theology is the chapter's last major theme. Karl Rahner's theory of ‘changing human nature’ is challenged, and the form of coherent moral development traced with reference to marriage, usury, and religious freedom. The fall of Jerusalem and the dating of the Gospels is discussed.

First principles, whether theoretical or practical, cannot be demonstrated, but can be defended successfully against objections by arguments of the broad kind known to Plato and Aristotle as ‘dialectical’. One such refutation of objections to a first practical principle is the ‘retorsive’ argument demonstrating the self-refutation of any serious assertion that knowledge is not an intrinsic good. There are hints of such an argument in Augustine and a few other writers, but no attempt to set the argument out with explicitness and some precision. This chapter, which first appeared in 1977, seeks to do that, building on some logical exploration of various kinds of self-refutation or performative inconsistency by J. L. Mackie, and emphasizing the importance of an exact understanding of assertion. Along the way, the chapter attends to some self-refutatory argumentation concerning legal sovereignty. The whole challenges Hart's exclusion of all goods save survival from legal theory.

This chapter reviews the course of the argument of Chapter 3 in Volume II of this text, underlines its focus on asserting, differentiates it from Mackie's ‘commitment’ analysis, and defends it against objections published by Matthew Kramer. The chapter also objects to the use of, or appeal to, self-refutation by Lonergan in Insight.

The chapter works through the emerging and disappearing notion of the political in the Talmud, with the notion and practice of refuting, and the underlying notion of interpersonality rather than intersubjectivity at the center. The analysis in the chapter advances through a case study of a particular notion of refuting in the Talmud, the notion of self-refuting or proving that an argument of one’s conversant is refuting itself. The chapter argues how neither political theology of Schmitt nor political ontology of Rancière suffice to account for interpersonal political relationships in self-refuting. In that venue, the notion of interpersonality emerges as essential for articulating the Talmudic political. That notion emerges by contrast with the intersubjectivity as the foundation of thinking the political in the modern political theory, implying as it does a fundamental loneliness of the subject, both of an individual subject and of a nation as a subject, as well.

In this chapter, Berkeley’s ‘Master Argument’ is used to analyze how Russell and Wittgenstein regard the issue of solipsism. Berkeley argues that it is self–refuting to suppose that something is unthought-of, and concludes that everything is thought-of. Russell and Wittgenstein avoid, in different ways, a comparable argument for the solipsistic view that I am acquainted with everything: Russell by means of his view of generality; Wittgenstein by denying that if it is self-refuting to suppose p, we are entitled to conclude not-p. On this reading, while Wittgenstein does not hold that solipsism is a metaphysical truth that can only be ‘shown’, the show/say distinction is not ‘kicked away’ by the end of the Tractatus. Finally, it is argued that a recent debate between Nagel and Davidson regarding the possibility of alternative conceptual schemes mirrors the debate between Russell and Wittgenstein regarding solipsism.

The paper defends egoism and consequentialism against Dancy’s charge that they are self-refuting. Exegesis and criticism is provided of relevant arguments in Parfit and Dancy, and special attention is paid to the notion of blameless wrongdoing and to the act/agent distinction. The paper concludes that neither theory, if properly stated, is self-refuting, nor indeed indirectly self-defeating.

Chapter 7 explains how the non-factualist views established in the first part of this book fit into a general anti-metaphysical view called neo-positivism. This chapter formulates neo-positivism, explains why neo-positivism isn’t self-refuting, and explains how we could argue for neo-positivism. Neo-positivism is (roughly) the view is that every metaphysical question decomposes into subquestions, and in connection with each of these subquestions, we can endorse one of the following three anti-metaphysical views: non-factualism, scientism, or metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism. Non-factualism about a question Q is the view that there’s no fact of the matter about the answer to Q. Scientism about Q is (roughly) the view that Q is an ordinary empirical-scientific question about some aspect of physical reality, and Q can’t be settled with an a priori philosophical argument. And metaphysically innocent modal-truth-ism about Q is (roughly) the view that Q asks about the truth value of a modal sentence that’s metaphysically innocent in the sense captured by the Chapter-6 view modal nothingism.

The argument of Parmenides’ Truth can be understood in dialectical terms, based on a self-verifying premiss in the second person, ‘you think’, in combination with some rules for sound argument. From this premiss he may be construed as deriving the conclusion of strong monism: there is just one, single, homogeneous being. But the conclusion serves to overturn the premiss; it appears to be directly self-refuting. The argument of the second part of Parmenides’ poem, by contrast, argues for the multifarious plurality of the phenomenal world; its connection with the Truth has long been disputed. Here the relation between the two parts is construed as dilemmatic; either there are rules for reason and no reasoners, or there are perceiving beings in the world and no rules for reason.

How are we to read Plato, and how are his arguments connected to the form of the dialogues? This chapter considers the sophists of the Euthydemus, and argues that we underestimate that dialogue if we see it as merely a handbook of fallacy. For fallacy is theory-laden; the sophistic arguments about the dog may go through if they are underpinned by an unqualified law of non-contradiction. The question then arises of how such a law (the gross law of non-contradiction) is to be refuted or modified to give a refined law of non-contradiction, which insists that contradictions can be qualified (and thence that the sophists’ arguments are indeed fallacies). This is supported by the nature of philosophical conversation itself, inherently qualified by its participants, and impossible without differences between them. These differences are exemplified by dialectical disagreement: so the refined law of non-contradiction is supported by its own dialectical context.

This chapter surveys the standard objections to relativism about truth: that it is self-refuting, that it makes disagreement impossible, that it is incompatible with the equivalence schema, that propositions cannot be the bearers of relative truth values, and that we do not understand what the relativized truth predicate means. From the discussion of these standard objections, we extract a list of problems that any truth relativist must address. These help set the agenda for Chapters 3 to 6.