Retortion

Retortion is the act of identifying a self-referential contradiction in an opponent's position.

So, for example, if I were to write, "No one can type a coherent sentence in English," a thoughtful critic might retort: "But what you just wrote provides evidence against what you claim to be true."

Retortion is spelled "retorsion" in French. The idea of turning an opponent's self-referential contradictions into a reason for rejecting the position is common among Transcendental Thomists, who used various forms of this argument to demonstrate the instability of Kant's epistemology.

Links

• Moleski:
  • "Retortion: The Method and Metaphysics of Gaston Isaye."
  • "The Role of Retortion in the Cognitional Analyses of Lonergan and Polanyi."
  • Proving negatives.

• Wikipedia, "Self reference."
• Wikipedia, "Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems."