Organon F
Volume 31, May 2024, Issue 2, Pages 141–182
ISSN 2585-7150 (online) ISSN 1335-0668 (print)
Research Article
How to Defend the Law of Non-Contradiction without Incurring the Dialetheist’s Charge of (Viciously) Begging the Question
Marco Simionato
According to some critics, Aristotle’s elenctic defence (elenchos, elenchus) of the Law of Non-Contradiction (Metaphysics IV) would be ineffective because it viciously begs the question. After briefly recalling the elenctic refutation of the denier of the Law of Non-Contradiction, I will first focus on Filippo Costantini’s objection to the elenchus, which, in turn, is based on the dialetheic account of negation developed by Graham Priest. Then, I will argue that there is at least one reading of the elenchus that might not be viciously question-begging. In doing so, I will leverage, reinterpret and adjust the distinction between two senses of epistemic dependence, offered by Noah Lemos and originally based on some thoughts about George Edward Moore’s ‘proof of an external world.’ The key point of my counter-objection to recover the elenchus is to use the distinction between a necessary-condition relation between propositions (p only if q) and a grounding relation between facts (the fact that an epistemic agent S believes that p is grounded in the fact that S believes that q), where p and q are the content of S’s beliefs.
Aristotle’s elenctic refutation; Epistemic dependence; Grounding; Law of Non-Contradiction; Moore, G.E.; Question-begging arguments.
Author
Marco Simionato
Affiliation
Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy
Address
Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Dorsoduro 3246, 30123 Venice, Italy
Received
10 August 2023
Revised
11 March 2024
Accepted
15 April 2024
Publishers
Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
APA
Simionato, M. (2024). How to Defend the Law of Non-Contradiction without Incurring the Dialetheist’s Charge of (Viciously) Begging the Question. Organon F, 31(2), 141–182. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2024.31203
Chicago
Simionato, Marco. 2024. "How to Defend the Law of Non-Contradiction without Incurring the Dialetheist’s Charge of (Viciously) Begging the Question." Organon F 31 (2): 141–182. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2024.31203
Harvard
Simionato, M. (2024). How to Defend the Law of Non-Contradiction without Incurring the Dialetheist’s Charge of (Viciously) Begging the Question. Organon F, 31(2), pp. 141–182. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2024.31203
© Marco Simionato
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