ABSTRACT
Most philosophers would probably take certainty to be a defining characteristic of basic statements. Many philosophers have taken certainty to be the same thing as logical necessity. The conception of certainty goes back to Plato’s view that knowledge and belief have separate and proprietary objects. The existence of incorrigible statements is not established by the self-refuting nature of scepticism. For the only kind of scepticism which is self-refuting proves by its failure only that there must be statements more worthy of assertion than denial. There are two general arguments for the certainty of basic statements which rest on the intuitiveness and ostensiveness which are the defining characteristics of such statements. The chapter argues that in the relevant sense of ‘certain’, which is that of incorrigibility, there need not be any contingent, empirical statements that are certain. Incorrigible contingent statements differ from incorrigible necessary truths, and just in virtue of their being contingent, in that they can be denied without self-contradiction.
