Paradox of Self-Amendment by Peter Suber Hoerster adopts an acceptance theory as his final answer to Ross. There may have been a defect in the adoption of the current AC or the ancient ancestor of the current AC, under the terms of the tacit, transcendent rule:[Note 31] But the important thing is, we don't ever care to know, if we want to find out how to settle basic constitutional questions: To this task political history is simply irrelevant. All that is relevant is whether [the current AC] in our community is accepted as basic. E. One more try at satisfying the inference model If Ross takes pains to deny transtemporal validation, then it seems he believes that the old AC can authorize nothing after it loses validity, not even the norms consistent with it. But suppose one argued that the old AC authorizes its successors while it is still valid, and that it passes out of validity just as its successor becomes effective. It is true, as Hoerster argued, that the new AC never contradicts valid law, but might it also be the case that it never contradicts the old AC for the same reason that the old AC is unable to authorize any new norms? Are the old and new ACs really inconsistent, logically, as opposed to legally, if they are never thought to bear the status of valid law at the same time? The procedural model denies transtemporal validation, and permits new rules to become and remain valid even though their authorizing rules have been repealed. If the vanishing of the old AC is not likened to the denial of a premise in an inference, as Ross has it, but is likened to the discontinued assertion of a premise, then might the inference work? If the old AC is not positively denied, but simply dropped from the set of asserted premises, before or as the conclusion comes to be asserted, then does the conclusion contradict any premise? This is like asking whether p and ~p are inconsistent if only one of them is asserted to be true. The answer may be yes or no depending on one's metaphysic of asserted and unasserted meanings. A surer route to an answer is to note that the inference model requires integrity of inference in general, and that consistency is just one element of this. The inference is also unsuccessful in establishing its conclusion if we cease asserting an indispensable premise just before, or just as, we assert the conclusion. Logic has no name for this defect because logicians evaluate inferences under the assumption that all the premises are true. That all are asserted to be true is thereby also assumed, but tacitly. The consequences for the proof of denying a premise are well known: the conclusion is no longer proved. The consequences of ceasing to assert a premise midway in the inference are novel. Logicians also consider inferences to occur instantaneously. A set of premises implies or determines a set of conclusions without any lapse of time; only the human logician is under the sway of time in discovering (or proving or writing) those conclusions. A set of premises asserted to be true determines a set of conclusions at once; there is literally no time to change the status of a premises after an inference has begun and before it has ended, unless we consider inferences to be psychological processes. But if do that, then the concept of validity used by Ross and other logicians also vanishes. Logically, the jurist who defends the inference model must choose between (1) asserting all and only the conclusions determined by the joint assertion of all her premises, and forgoing the derivation of all conclusions inconsistent with any premise, and (2) asserting all and only the conclusions determined by the joint assertion of those premises she is willing to leave asserted throughout the inference, and forgoing all the premises inconsistent with the conclusions she desires to derive. (The third option of using inconsistent premises deliberately is omitted because it clearly would not solve Ross's problem.) In short, the paradox of self-amendment will still arise, even under the inference model, when we assume that the old and new ACs were never in effect at the same time. However, under the procedural model we may accomplish something very similar to the derivation of a conclusion after ceasing to assert an indispensable premise. For procedures do take time, and do not fail merely because the technical rules of inference are not satisfied. The old AC specifies the procedures of change, and ex hypothesi of its own change. Under the procedural model we may rely on the validity of the procedure, and just as we assert the validity of the new AC deny or suspend our assertion of the validity of the procedure. (While this is so, it is also the case that under the procedural model such maneuvers to avoid contradiction are unnecessary.) Because procedures are not instantaneous, there is time between the steps to change the status of a "premise". Moreover, the logical difficulty or impossibility of asserting and ceasing to assert the same premise in the same inference becomes irrelevant. If it seems preposterous and illogical, it may be because one has not fully appreciated the freedom from logic that the procedural model finds in law. The fact that the old and new ACs are never in effect (valid and supreme) at the same time, does not dissolve the paradox for the inference model. If one thinks it does, one may unconsciously have exchanged the procedural for the inference model, and forgotten that the inference model requires logically valid deductive inferences, not merely well-run, valid procedures. One may also have forgotten that the inference model requires the continuing validity (or "truth") of the premises in order to provide continuing validity (or "truth") to the conclusion. In sum, under the inference model self-amendment of an AC to a form inconsistent with its original form requires either (1) the inconsistency between a premise and the conclusion, when the premises are consistent with one another, which makes the inference logically invalid and the conclusion legally invalid, or (2) the abstract separation of steps in the inference, as if in time, and the arrest of our assertion of an indispensable premise just as we conclude the conclusion, which is either impossible or a dressed up description of contradictory attitudes toward a premise. The attempt to avoid the former fallacy by keeping the old and new ACs separate in time, while still deriving the new from the old, leads to the latter fallacy. 79