Why, self-refutation is the most wonderful thing in the world, next to irony.
Look at this post from Thinking Matters New Zealand.
First, they define what self-refutation is:
In his Introduction to Logic, Harry Gensler defines a self-refuting statement as “[A] statement that makes negative claims so sweeping that it ends up denying itself.” [1] In other words, it results when an argument or position is undercut by its own criteria (An example of this would be saying, “I cannot speak a word of English” in English).
Then they have a list of examples of self-refutation. Here are some:
- Truth does not exist (Is that a true statement?)
- Nothing is absolute (Is that absolutely true?)
- I do not exist (You must exist to deny that you exist)
- Science is the only way to know (Can you scientifically prove that?)
- Only what can be perceived by the five senses exists (Can you prove that by the five senses?)
I work in the software engineering industry, so we have a lot of nerds running around who believe all kinds of crazy things that are self-refuting. There is a lot of skepticism of the laws of logic and analytical philosophy. A self-refuting statement that I hear a lot is: “Don’t judge me, because it’s wrong to judge other people”. And I just ask them: “Well if it’s wrong to judge other people, then why are you judging me?”. (Actually, I noticed that MandM has a post up about judging right now!)
I wonder if my regular readers have ever heard any self-refuting statements? If you know any more, leave it in the comments.
On another topic, it turns out that the author of this post on self-refutation blogs at Rational Thoughts. I added their blog to the blog roll. Check them out.
and apologetics, debate vs. dialogue, pitfalls to apologists, and more.
