Fregean Propositions, Unmereological Compositions, and Bradley's Regress

Steven Nemes writes and I respond in blue:

I know you're in a bit of a mereology phase at the moment, but I figured I'd shoot this by you.

Mereology is the theory of parts and wholes.  Now propositions, whether Fregean or Russellian, are wholes of parts.  So mereology is not irrelevant to questions about the nature and existence of propositions.  The relevance, though, appears to be negative:  propositions are unmereological compositions, unmereological wholes.  That is to say, wholes that cannot be understood in terms of classical mereology.  They cannot be understood in these terms because of the problem of the unity of the proposition.  The problem is to specify what it is about a proposition that distinguishes it from a mere aggregate of its constituents and enables it to be either true or false.  No constituent of an atomic proposition is either true or false, and neither the mathematical set, nor the mereological sum, of the constituents of any such proposition is true or false; so what is it that makes a proposition a truth-bearer?  If you say that a special unifying constituent within propositions does the job,then you ignite Bradley's regress.  Whether or not it is vicious is a further question.  Richard Gaskin maintains the surprising view that Bradley's regress is "the metaphysical ground of the unity of  the proposition."  Far from being vicious, Bradley's regress is precisely that which "guarantees our ability to say anything at all."

For more on this topic, see my "Gaskin on the Unity of the Proposition," Dialectica vol. 64, no. 2 (June 2010), 265-277.  It is part of a five article symposium on the topic.

I am not sure if you believe in Fregean propositions or not. As for myself, I don't look favorably upon the idea of Fregean propositions because of the problem of Bradley's regress. (I am assuming propositions would be composite structured entities, built out of ontologically more basic parts, maybe the senses of the individual terms of the sentences that expresses it, so that the proposition expressed by "Minerva is irate" is a structured entity composed of the senses of "Minvera", "irate", etc.)

I provisionally accept, but ultimately reject, Fregean propositions.  What the devil does that mean?  It means that I think the arguments for them are quite powerful, but that if our system contains an absolute mind, then we can and must reduce Fregean propositions to contents or accuusatives of said mind.  Doing so allows us to solve the problem of the unity of the proposition.

By the way, what you say in parentheses is accurate and lucid. 

In your book, you offer a theistic strategy for solving the problem of Bradley's regress as applied to facts. I don't know that a theistic solution to the problem as applied to propositions works as smoothly because of the queer sort of things senses of individual terms of sentences are supposed to be. The building blocks of facts are universals, which are somewhat familiar entities; but the building blocks of propositions are senses like "Minerva" which are murky and mysterious things indeed. What the hell kind of a thing is a sense anyway?

A sense is a semantic intermediary, an abstract 'third-world' object neither in the mind nor in the realm of concreta, posited to explain certain linguistic phenomena.  One is the phenomenon of informative identity statements.  How are they possible?  'George Orwell is Eric Blair'  is an informative identity statement, unlike 'George Orwell is George Orwell.' How can the first be informative, how can it have what Frege calls cognitive value (Erkenntniswert), when it appears to be of the form a = b, a form all of the substitution-instances of which are false?  Long story short, Frege distinguishes between the sense and the referent of expressions. Accordingly, 'George Orwell' and 'Eric Blair' differ in sense but have the same referent.  The difference in sense explains the informativeness of the identity statement while the sameness of referent explains its truth.

Further, propositions are supposed to be necessarily existent; hence the individual building blocks of the propositions must also exist necessarily. But how could the senses expressed by "Minerva" or "Heidegger's wife", for instance, exist when those individuals do not? (This is the same sort of argument you give against haecceity properties conceived of as non-qualitative thisnesses.)

If proper names such as 'Heidegger' have irreducibly singular Fregean senses, then, as you well appreciate, my arguments against haecceity properties (nonqualitative thisnesses) kick in.  It is particularly difficult to understand how a proper name could express an irreducibly singular Fregean sense when the name in question lacks a referent.  For if irreducibly singular, then the sense is not constructible from general senses by an analog of propositional conjunction.  So one is forced to say that the sense of 'Minerva' is the property of being identical to Minerva.  But since there is no such individual, there is no such property.  Identity-with-Minerva collapses into Identity-with- . . . nothing!  Pace Plantinga, of course.

In the case of identity-with-Heidegger, surely this property, if it exists at all, exists iff Heidegger does.  Given that Heidegger is a contingent being, his haecceity is as well.  And that conflicts with the notion that propositions are necessary beings.  Well, I suppose one could try the idea the some propositions are contingent beings.

Are there any solutions to the former problem (which you've blogged and written about before!) you think are promising? Further, what do you think of the second problem?

Perhaps you think the second problem can be sidestepped by saying that "Heidegger's wife" is just shorthand for some longer description, e.g. "the woman who was married to the man who wrote a book that began with the sentence '...'". I don't know that it is so easy, because that sentence itself makes reference to things that are contingently existent (women, men, books, sentences, marriage...).

Yes,all those things are contingent.  But that by itself does not cause a problem.  The problem is with the notion that proper names are definite descriptions in disguise.  If the very sense of 'Ben Franklin' is supplied by 'the inventor of bifocals' (to use Kripke's example), then the true 'Ben Franklin might not have invented bifocals' boils down to the necessarily false 'The inventor of bifocals might not have invented bifocals.'  (But note the ambiguity of the preceding sentence; I mean the definite description to be taken attributively not referentially.)

Comments

[Steven]

BV said: "It means that I think the arguments for them are quite powerful, but that if our system contains an absolute mind, then we can and must reduce Fregean propositions to contents or accuusatives of said mind. Doing so allows us to solve the problem of the unity of the proposition."

I don't think you could think of propositions as accusatives of the divine mind, because propositions are supposed to be things publicly accessible. (One of Frege's arguments that senses are non-mental things in his "On Sense and Reference" is that if they were mental things, then the sense of the same term in one language would be different for different people; "Bucephalus" would have a different sense and hence meaning for a zoologist, a horseman, and a painter, to use his example.)

If a proposition were an abstract object, though it is difficult to explain precisely how, it is at least conceivable that you and I would both be able to have access to it (believe it, consider it, etc.) because it isn't in anyone's mind; it's "out there". But how could the accusatives of anyone's mind, let alone the divine mind, be publicly accessible in this way?

BV said: "And that conflicts with the notion that propositions are necessary beings. Well, I suppose one could try the idea the some propositions are contingent beings."

Perhaps one could try that, but it'd be a weird position to hold. What does the contingent existence of a proposition amount to? When does it come into being? Suppose our proposition is "Daphne was born and left for dead on a Greek hillside". Does the sense of "Daphne" and hence the proposition come into being when Daphne does? How does an occurrence in the world of concrete cause the existence of an abstract object?

In any case, you say you reject propositions so conceived, so these aren't really questions for you to answer as much as they would just be questions for whoever takes that route.

[Steven]

Also, I agree with what you say about proper names not being abbreviated definite descriptions.

[Steven]

One more thing. The doctrine of divine simplicity also makes the suggestion that propositions are accusatives of divine thought really problematic; because there are, in reality, no distinct thoughts. If a proposition is an accusative of divine thought, then because there is only one thought in reality, then there is only one proposition in reality! But further, there is no distinction between the thinker and the thought, if divine simplicity were true; but then God would be the only proposition!

And that's crazy.

[Bill Vallicella]

Steven,

You need to distinguish between two sorts of mental contents, those that are only privately accessible and those that are also publically acessible. Not even Bill Clinton can feel your pain, only you can; and only I can feel my pain. But propositions are not contents in this sense; they are not parts of the mental lives of individual minds in the way pains and pleasures are. So if the existence of propositions is their being accusatives of divine awareness, this is consistent with their being publically accessible.

[Steven]

We typically think you and I can entertain the same proposition, for example, and thus have the same mental content, just because we are both standing in a relation to a third object that is outside of both of us. But this cannot be what's going on between us and God if propositions are just going to be things *inside* God's mind.

Can you give me an example of some kind of mental content that is (i) publicly accessible, i.e. I can have access to it when you have it, and not such that (ii) I have access to your mental content only by us both standing in a relation some third object outside of either of our minds?

[Bill Vallicella]

You are getting hung up on 'inside.' The word 'content' is also misleading due to its spatial connotations. That is why I used the word 'accusative' which suggests something which is a direct object of a mental act. If the existence of a proposition is just its being an accusative of a divine mental act, it doesn't follow that the content of the proposition (what the proposition 'says')is accessible only to God.

[Steven]

Let me see if I understand your position.

For you, propositions are (i) not divine ideas, and hence (ii) "out there" in the world, distinct from God and not contents strictly in his mind in the way divine ideas or concepts would be.

As regards the individual senses of terms that compose propositions, you can either hold that (a) they are generated by God and because of this are accusatives of divine thought, in an analogous fashion to how a mental image might be generated by my act of will and then become an accusative of my thought, or (b) they exist independently of God and are only unified into propositions on account of activity on God's part.

Is that more or less what you believe, then? And would you opt for (a) or (b)?