ABSTRACT
The oldest criticism of relativism, going back to Plato, is that the doctrine is self-refuting. The present chapter examines the self-refutation objection and possible responses to it. Self-refutation is a risk only for a completely general or global relativism, and not for local relativisms. Even for global relativism, some have suggested that a safe option is to insist that relativism itself is merely relatively true. Others have argued that the real problem with self-refutation is that it leads to a pernicious regress of one sort or another. Still others have analyzed the logic of truth relativism in light of the peritrope problem and tried to find a formal solution. The pros and cons of all these approaches are considered.
