A Question About Self-Referential Inconsistency

 From the mail bag:

I’m hoping you can help me with an  annoying question that came up in conversation recently. I’m sure you can answer it much better than me.

Statements are self-refuting when they are included in their own field of reference and fail to conform to their own criteria of validity. Thus ‘there are no truths’ is self-refuting because if it is false, then it is false. But if it is true, then it is false as well because then there would be no truths, including the statement itself. So what about the statement ‘all statements are self-refuting’?

You are right about 'There are no truths.'  If true, then false.  If false, then false.  So  necessarily false.  Therefore, its negation -- 'There are some truths' -- is not just true, but necessarily true.

There is exactly the same pattern with  'All statements are self-refuting.'  If true, then self-refuting and  false.  If false, then  false.  So necessarily false.  Therefore, its negation  -- Some statements are not self-refuting -- is not just true, but necessarily true.

Now an intriguing  question arises.  Are these necessities unconditional, or do they rest upon a condition?  The second necessity appears to be conditional upon the existence of statements and the beings who make them.  Statements don't 'hang in the air'; a statement is the statement of a stater, so that, in a world without rational beings, there are no statements.  'Some statements are not self-refuting,' therefore, is not true in all possible worlds, but only in those worlds in which statements are made.  Given that there are statements, it is necessarily true that some statements are not self-refuting.  But there might not have been any statements.  The existence of statements is contingent.

Now what about 'There are some truths?'  Clearly, this sentence (or rather the proposition it expresses)  is not contingently true, but necessarily true.  But is it true of absolute metaphysical necessity, or does its necessary truth rest on some condition?  Suppose something gives the following little speech:

I see your point.  There have to be truths.  Forif you say that there aren't any, you are saying that it is true that there aren't any, and you thereby contradict yourself.  So there is a sense in which there cannot not be truths.  But all this means is that WE must presuppose truth.  It doesn't mean that there are truths independently of us.  WE cannot help but assume that there are truths.  The existence of truths is a transcendental presupposition of  our kind of thinking. But it does not follow that there are truths of absolute metaphysical necessity.  If we were not to exist, then there would be no truths, not even the truth that we do not exist.

Is the little speech coherent?  The objector is inviting us to consider the possible situation in which beings like us do not exist and no truths either.  The claim that this situation is possible, however, is equivalent to the claim that it is true that this situation is possible.  But, on the transcendental hypothesis in question, the existence of this truth is relative to our existence, which implies that it is not true independently of us that it is possible that beings like us not exist and no truths either. But then it is not really possible that beings like us not exist and no truths either: the possibility exists only relative to our thinking.  So I conclude that the transcendental hypothesis is only apparently coherent, and that 'There are truths' is true of absolute metaphysical necessity.  So it is not just that we cannot deny truth; truth is undeniable an sich.