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Critical Notices POLISH JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Vol. VI, No. 1 (Spring 2012), 89-99. Critical Notices Sextan Skepticism and Self-Refutation* Renata Ziemińska University of Szczecin Luca Castagnoli, Ancient Self-Refutation. The Logic and History of the Self- Refutation Argument from Democritus to Augustine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010, pp. XX+394. Hardback, ISBN 9780521896313. Abstract. In his book Ancient Self-Refutation L. Castagnoli rightly observes that self- refutation is not falsification; it overturns the act of assertion but does not prove that the content of the act is false. He argues against the widely spread belief that Sextus Empiricus accepted the self-refutation of his own expressions. Castagnoli also claims that Sextus was effective in answering to the self-refutation charge. The achievement of the book is the discovery that in passages where Sextus seems to embrace the self- refutation of his expressions (PH 1.14-15), he does not use the term peritropé, technical for self-refutation, but the term perigraphé, which means self-bracketing. Self- bracketing is weakening one’s own thesis, but not overturning it. Castagnoli claims that Sextus embraces the self-bracketing of his expressions, but never accepts their self- refutation. However, Castagnoli is not right in saying that self-refutation is a shameful mistake for everybody. The mature skeptic cannot even think that self-refutation is wrong, because it would be a dogmatic view. Sextus seems to accept self-refutation at the end of Against the Logicians, where he presents the argument against proof and the metaphor of the ladder (M 8.480-1). Regardless of Sextus’ declarations, we have reason to think that he does not avoid self-refutation in a pragmatic sense. Self-bracketing of his position is not a consistent dialectical strategy, as Castagnoli writes, but the end of a rational discussion. Sextus avoids absolute self-refutation (we cannot falsify what he suggests), but he is unable to avoid pragmatic self-refutation (there is no way to assert his position without contradiction). This is the case even if Sextus refuses to assert his position. * Translated into English by Agnieszka Ziemińska. Scientific work financed by funds for science in years 2009-2012 as a research project N N101 109137. 90 Critical Notices—Book Reviews—Notes on Books The book written by Luca Castagnoli is about self-refutation in ancient philosophy. I focus on Sextus Empiricus, whose extant skeptical works are the main source of ancient self-refutation arguments (apart from Plato’s Theaetetus and Aristotle’s Metaphysics). Sextus Empiricus introduces peritropé (περιτροπή) as the technical term for self-refutation, presents some self-refutation arguments concerning other philosophers, reports some self-refutation arguments against skeptical statements, and appears to accept the self-refutation of his own statements. Contrary to previous scholars (Burnyeat, 1976a; 1976b; McPherran, 1987), Castagnoli claims that Sextus does not accept the self-refutation of his own statements, especially since self-refutation is a shameful mistake, just being caught in self-contradiction (p. 252). Additionally, according to Castagnoli, Sextus’ defense of the consistency of the Pyrrhonian outlook, i.e. his dialectical strategy of answering the self-refutation charge by non-assertion, is refined, coherent, mature and systematic (p. 308). Castagnoli adopts an initial, broad definition of the self-refutation argument as “any argument which aims at showing that (and how) something is ‘self-refuting’, i.e. refutes itself” (p. 3). Since Pyrrho, skeptics have been accused of self-refutation. Carneades is aware of the impending charge of self-refutation when he says (in Cicero’s account Ac. 2.IX.28) that he cannot accept the thesis “nothing is apprehensible,” despite its being the essence of his view. If he had accepted the thesis, he would either have contradicted himself or made an unauthorized exception. According to Aristocles (in Preparation for the Gospel by Eusebius of Cesarea), skeptics like Aenesidemus “require to give assent to no one, but they command to believe them; furthermore, although they say they know nothing, they refute everyone, as if they knew well” (Eus. PE 14.18.7). Most self- refutation arguments against skeptical theses are presented by Sextus himself, who after centuries of skeptical polemics tries to deal with this charge. A textbook example of using the self-refutation argument is rejecting Protagoras’ thesis that everything is true, and Xeniades’ thesis that everything is false. Sextus writes: One cannot say that every appearance is true because of the ‘turning about’ (περιτροπής), as Democritus and Plato taught, speaking against Protagoras. For if every appearance is true, then even not every appearance’s being true, since it takes the form of an appearance, will be true, and thus every appearance’s being true will become false. (M 7.389-3902) 1 I quote as M8 and M7 the two books of: Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians transl. Richard Bett, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2005; and Critical Notices—Book Reviews—Notes on Books 91 If Protagoras was right, claiming that every opinion is true, it would mean that his opponents’ opinion is also true (see Plato Theaetetus, 171A). Making that statement actually refutes it. The same is the case with Xeniades’ thesis. “For if all appearances are false and nothing is true, ‘Nothing is true’ is true… And so Xeniades…has been brought round to the opposite of his thesis” (M 7.399, see M 8.55). According to M. Burnyeat, a self-refuting thesis is a “thesis falsified by its own content” (Burnyeat 1976, p. 59). Castagnoli does not agree with this reading of the concept of self-refutation. In his opinion there is no falsification3 here because self-refutation does not give an objective proof of the falsity of the thesis; it does not rule out that what is stated in it is the case (p.100). Self-refutation does not concern the thesis in abstracto (p. 285), but the act of speech by a person who decides to make a statement like “Everything is false.” Such a person is forced to accept the opposite thesis. If she states that nothing is true, then in the act of uttering this statement she assumes that her saying is true, and has to admit that at least one truth exists, which is contradictory to her initial thesis (p.119). Self- refutation overturns the act of assertion but does not prove that the stated thesis (the content of the act of assertion) is false. Of course, on a pragmatic level this discredits the thesis itself and is a reason to dismiss it. Until now, at least two types of self-refutation have been distinguished: absolute (the statement is falsified because of its content, for instance, “Nothing is true”) and pragmatic (the statement is falsified because of the way it is presented, for example, “I present a proof that there is no proof”). Castagnoli shows that in the strict sense it is not the theses (contents) that are self-refuting, but the acts of stating those theses. Therefore there is no absolute self-refutation, but only pragmatic. Saying Nothing is true is self- refuting not because of its content, but because of its assertion as true. If the sentence was said as a joke or an expression of feelings, there would be nothing self-refuting about it. It seems a thesis is absolutely self-refuting only when it is self-contradictory (Castagnoli does not want to call such cases self-refutation). Self-refutation is a situation in a discussion when the act of stating thesis p is contradictory to the content of the statement, and the person stating p is as PH: Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism transl. by Julia Annas, Jonathan Barnes, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2000. 3 “in neither case do ancient self-refutation arguments prove, or aim to prove, the falsehood of the thesis which incurs defeat: the thesis cannot survive dialectical scrutiny, and in some cases does not ever bear articulating, but typically the self- refutation argument does not exclude the possibility that what is expressed is the case” (s.355-356). 92 Critical Notices—Book Reviews—Notes on Books forced to accept not-p. In every case of self-refutation “the person who states that p ends up admitting that not-p in the act of, or as a consequence of, stating that p” (p. 173). Self-refutation is a type of dialectic argument against some acts of making a statement. However, what Castagnoli does not mention is that, it is possible, in a secondary sense, to talk about self- refuting theses if in typical situations the act of stating them leads to self- refutation. Castagnoli rightly notes that the anti-skeptical arguments reported by Sextus have the structure of dilemmas. One side of the dilemma leads to self-refutation, but the other opens the possibility of escaping it. Such is the structure of the stoic counterarguments against the skeptical thesis that no cause, sign, proof, or criterion of truth exists. “The dogmatists typically reply by asking how on earth the skeptic declares that nothing is a criterion. For he says this either without a criterion or with a criterion. And if it is without a criterion, he will become untrustworthy; but if it is with a criterion, he will be turned about (περιτραπήσεται), and in saying that nothing is a criterion he will agree to employ a criterion for the purpose of showing this” (M 7.440). Self-refutation is expressed in the words: “he will be turned about,” which are a translation of one of the forms of peritropé. In accordance with the previous reconstruction of the concept of self- refutation, the quoted argument does not lead to the falsification of the thesis that no criterion exists.
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