system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is Quine's statement that "no statement is immune to revision" immune to revision?
gpt
We're sort of getting into kind of parlor tricks, though, aren't we?

I mean, why stop there?

Suppose you figure out there are two statements here:

*1: Quine's statement that "no statement is immune to revision" is immune to revision*

*2: Quine's statement that "no statement is immune to revision" isn't immune to revision*

So... those two statements may or may not be immune to revision, right?

That means we can make some further statements:

*1a: The statement that 'Quine's statement that "no statement is immune to revision" is immune to revision' is immune to revision*

*1b: The statement that 'Quine's statement that "no statement is immune to revision" is immune to revision' isn't immune to revision*

*2a: The statement that 'Quine's statement that "no statement is immune to revision" isn't immune to revision' is immune to revision*

*2b: The statement that 'Quine's statement that "no statement is immune to revision" isn't immune to revision' isn't immune to revision*

...

This obviously isn't the way we approach that whole project of epistemology. Can't just keep flipping things around like that. Sure, we can approach the initial claim in very narrow fashion, and if anyone would hinge the entire project on that claim and that claim alone, we could refute it.

But we talk in much wider ways about these things, and nobody really wants to create that singular hinge. Instead, we have long conversations about how it's all supposed to work together, and as a whole, we realize that the points that have been figured out so far might be altered in the future, since we've seen many cases of that happening already, and there's no good reason to assume it won't happen again. Or we even just recognize that whatever we're working on right now might not be brought forward in its current shape, since the conversation at large often shifts around and creates new discussion needs.

We're not seeking to create a "universal dictum". We can play the self-reference game, but it's not pivotal to the success and progress of the overall project. Rather, we are familiar with how these matters tend to behave, when there's active work being performed, and that's what establishes the character of the context - not these singular stance displays.