philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

, incorrigibility is a property of a philosophical proposition, which implies that it is necessarily true simply by virtue of being believed. A common example of such a proposition is René Descartes' " cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"). In law, incorrigibility concerns patterns of repeated or habitual disobedience of minors with respect to their guardians. Laws framed around incorrigibility were formerly used against minors to commit them for longer periods of confinement for status offenses than an adult would have been for committing the same crimes, as contested in the landmark ''

In re Gault ''In re Gault'', 387 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court decision which held the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 14th Amendment applies to Minor (la ...

'' decision from 1967.

Philosophy

Charles Raff draws a distinction between three types of incorrigibility: * Type-1: It is logically necessary that, when the statement is sincerely made, it is true. * Type-2: It is necessary that when the statement is believed to be true, it is true. * Type-3: It is necessary that when the statement is true, it is believed to be true. Type-2 and type-3 incorrigibility are logical converses, and therefore

logically independent In mathematical logic, independence is the unprovability of a sentence from other sentences. A sentence σ is independent of a given first-order theory ''T'' if ''T'' neither proves nor refutes σ; that is, it is impossible to prove σ from ''T' ...

. Charles Raff argues that introspection is not type-1 incorrigible, but is in fact type-2 and type-3 incorrigible. Johnathan Harrison has argued that " incorrigible" may be the wrong term, since it seems to imply (by the dictionary definition)The Free Dictionary
a sense that the beliefs cannot be ''changed'', which isn't actually true. In Harrison's view, the incorrigibility of a proposition actually implies something about the nature of ''believing''—for example, that one must exist in order to believe—rather than the nature of the proposition itself. For illustration, consider Descartes': ''I think, therefore I exist.'' Stated in incorrigible form, this could be: "That I believe that I exist implies that my belief is true". Harrison argues that a belief being true is really only incidental to the matter, that really what the cogito proves is that ''belief'' implies ''existence''. One could equally well say, "That I believe God exists implies that I exist." or "That I believe I do not exist implies that my belief is false."—and these would have the same essential meaning as the cogito.

References

Epistemology {{epistemology-stub