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To the charges commonly made by "anti-foundationalist," or relativist, philosophers, one can reasonably reply:

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2. Our human knowledge of the ultimate is not itself ultimate in the same sense. There is an important difference between "the [logical] necessity of the proposition" and "the [epistemological] certainty of our knowledge of it." Mistakes can be made even in arithmetic, all the more so in metaphysics; and so knowledge of necessary truths is every bit as fallible as knowledge of contingent truths. There is also the problem of expressing necessary truths in language that primarily evolved and is primarily used for formulating contingent truths. "Language is only relatively reliable; we must always be ready to reconsider formulæ, and this rule does not cease to apply merely because one is not dealing with an empirical matter. Premises are to be judged by consequences as well as consequences by premises, and this is so whether the means of judging is empirical observation or the attempt to become conscious of a priori necessity or of what is presupposed by any experience or any thought whatever" (Creativity in American Philosophy: 43 f.). 

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