[This is partly the result of an exchange with a utilitarian theorist, of Benthams on Substack, who I thank for the exchange. It caused me to clarify a number of points.]
This is not limited to, for example, the question of whether utilitarianism itself is merely useful for being happy, and not even a theory.
Generally it would apply to the status of any denial that denies objective truth or objectivity itself in relation to adjudicating truth. I call that the self-referential algorithm of deception, exposed by questions.
Specifically, how can one claim that any of the following theories themselves are true, when by their own assertions truth is merely the cognitive product of the comprehensively explaining and determining factors that those theories specify?
Is the belief that naturalism is true itself completely determined by natural causes and laws, merely the function of our adjustment as organisms to our environment?
If physical matter is the only reality, how can materialism itself be true, in addition to being merely a physical object or merely a function of physical objects?
Is relativism itself relative? (Made fun of but still never answered.)
Is social constructivism itself merely a social construct?
Is subjectivism itself subjective? How could the term even have meaning if we're locked inside our own subjective experience, much less the question of its truth?
And so on:
Is Marxism itself merely an economically determined set of brain actions?
Is behaviorism itself merely an observable and quantifiable product of environmental conditioning?
Is psychologism itself merely the product of psychological factors?
Is skepticism itself and its challenges and requirements as uncertain and unknowable as all the other items of possible knowledge it denies?
Does empiricism itself have any empirical evidence or sense experience that justifies believing it?
Is existentialism itself unexplainable and absurd?
Is idealism itself a mere mental construct about alleged objects of external perception?
Is logical positivism itself meaningless because it can't be logically analyzed into elementary tautologies or empirically verifiable statements?
Is pragmatism itself true, or merely practical? How could anyone know it's practical without the fact of its practicality itself being merely practical and in that way merely repeating the problem of truth beyond sheer practicality?
Is there a +rational* argument for why pure rationalism excludes empirical factors in knowing?
Does hedonism contradict its own criterion of pleasure/pain by having theoretic justifications instead of just advocating it because--consistent with its claimed pleasure/pain criterion--it simply feels good to believe it?
Is Quine's holistic naturalized epistemology itself even a theory, when the revisability principle that maintains the hierarchical network of beliefs cannot itself survive its own revision as just another belief in the network?
Does anti-foundationalism treat its own assumptions as having all the characteristics of the grounding assumptions claimed by foundationalism to be irreducibly basic?
Does nominalism use its own assumptions and basic concepts as having all the characteristics of the universal abstract objects it denies?
