A performative contradiction () arises when the making of an utterance rests on necessary
presuppositions
In linguistics and philosophy, a presupposition is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include:
* ''Jane no longer writes ...
that contradict the proposition asserted in the utterance.
The term was coined by
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas ( , ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Associated with the Frankfurt S ...
and
Karl-Otto Apel, who attribute the first elaboration of the concept to
Jaakko Hintikka
Kaarlo Jaakko Juhani Hintikka (; ; 12 January 1929 – 12 August 2015) was a Finnish philosopher and logician. Hintikka is regarded as the founder of formal epistemic logic and of game semantics for logic.
Life and career
Hintikka was born in ...
, in his analysis of
Descartes' ''
cogito ergo sum
The Latin , usually translated into English as "I think, therefore I am", is the "first principle" of René Descartes's philosophy. He originally published it in French language, French as , in his 1637 ''Discourse on the Method'', so as to re ...
'' argument.
Hintikka concluding that ''cogito ergo sum'' relies on performance rather than logical inference.
Habermas claims that
post-modernism's
epistemological relativism suffers from a performative contradiction.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Hans-Hermann Hoppe (; ; born 2 September 1949) is a German-American academic associated with Austrian School economics, anarcho-capitalism, right-wing libertarianism, and opposition to democracy. He is professor emeritus of economics at th ...
claims in his theory of
discourse ethics that arguing against
self-ownership
Self-ownership, also known as sovereignty of the individual or individual sovereignty, is the concept of property in one's own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to have bodily integrity and be the exclusive controlle ...
results in a performative contradiction.
See also
*
Liar paradox
In philosophy and logic, the classical liar paradox or liar's paradox or antinomy of the liar is the statement of a liar that they are lying: for instance, declaring that "I am lying". If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the trut ...
*
Performative utterance
In the philosophy of language and speech acts theory, performative utterances are sentences which not only describe a given reality, but also change the social reality they are describing.
In a 1955 lecture series, later published as ''How to D ...
*
Self-refuting idea
A self-refuting idea or self-defeating idea is an idea or statement whose falsehood is a logical consequence of the act or situation of holding them to be true. Many ideas are called self-refuting by their detractors, and such accusations are ther ...
*
References
Further reading
*
*
Paradoxes
Philosophy of language
Grammar
Jürgen Habermas
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