Incompleteness, Completeness, and the External World

David Brightly comments:

I appreciate that in discussing these epistemological issues we must use the non-question-begging, existence-neutral sense of 'see'. My point is that for the distinction between 'complete' and 'incomplete' to make any sense, the epistemological question as to whether seeing is existence-entailing has to have already been settled favourably, though with the caveat that mistakes occur sometimes. In the context of your latest aporetic tetrad,

1. If S sees x, then x exists
2. Seeing is an intentional state
3. Every intentional state is such that its intentional object is incomplete
4. Nothing that exists is incomplete,

this would rule out the escape of denying (1). Indeed, can we not replace 'see' with 'veridically see' in (1) and (2) and obtain a rather more vexing aporia?

If I understand David's point, it is that the very sense of the distinction between an incomplete and a complete object requires that in at least some (if not the vast majority) of cases, the intentional objects of (outer) perceptual experience really exist.  Equivalently, if there were no really existent (finite-mind-independent)  material meso-particulars (e.g., trees and rocks and stars), then not only would the predicate 'complete' not apply to anything, but also would be bereft of sense or meaning, and with it the distinction between incomplete and complete.

I am afraid I don't agree. 

Suppose one were to argue that the very sense of the distinction between God and creatures logically requires that God exist.  Surely that person would be wrong.  At most, the concept creature logically requires the concept God.  But while the concept God is a concept, God is not a concept, and the God concept may or may not be instantiated without prejudice to its being the very concept it is.  (Don't confuse this with the very different thesis that the essence of God may or may not be exemplified without prejudice to its being the very essence it is.)

I say, contra David, that it is is the same with incomplete and complete objects.  The sense of the distinction does not logically require that there be any complete objects of outer perception; it requires only the concept complete object.  This is a concept we form quite easily by extrapolation from the concept incomplete object.

As I always say, the more vexatious an aporetic polyad, the better.  I am ever on the hunt for insolubilia.  So I thank David for suggesting the following beefed-up tetrad:

1. If S veridically sees x, then x exists
2. Veridical seeing is an intentional state
3. Every intentional state is such that its intentional object is incomplete
4. Nothing that exists is incomplete.

This is more vexing than the original tetrad, but I think it falls short of a genuine aporia (a polyad in which the limbs are individually undeniable but jointly inconsistent).  For why can't I deny (1) by claiming that veridical seeing does not logically require the real (extramental) existence of the thing seen but only that the incomplete intentional objects cohere?  Coherence versus correspondence as the nature of truth.

Related articles

On Seeing: Intentionality without Aspectuality?

Seeing: Internalist and Externalist Perspectives

The Epistemologically Primary Sense of 'See'

Comments

[David Brightly]

Bill, I think this gets things backwards:

...the concept complete object [] is a concept we form quite easily by extrapolation from the concept incomplete object.

Consider the phenomenology of this well-known image from the psychology lab. Looking at this, it seems that we go from a state of no knowledge at all to one in which we have incomplete knowledge of a complete object. We might say that our visual system pre-cognitively 'gives' us complete objects and this enables us to grasp the concept 'object'. Could an unfortunate Mary, brought up surrounded by random patches of light and dark like the background in the image, or like so many Jackson Pollocks, understand the concept 'object'? I suspect that we arrive at the idea of complete knowledge of incomplete objects only by philosophical theorising that depends on the already acquired concept '(complete) object'. Moreover, if our visual system handed us complete knowledge of incomplete objects, how would we ever come to think that two distinct incomplete objects were somehow 'aspects' of a single complete object? This would have to be a cognitive process requiring argument from principles, and I'm not aware of this going on in my mind.

On the tetrad front, it would seem that the price of making sense of 'incomplete intentional object' is going through the roof. Can we escape the latest round of inflation by simplifying (1) to There is a cat and S sees it?

[BV]

" Looking at this, it seems that we go from a state of no knowledge at all to one in which we have incomplete knowledge of a complete object."

Would you explain what you mean by this?

[David Brightly]

When people see this picture for the first time, initially they report seeing nothing but random patches of black on white. They cannot describe the scene in terms of objects with properties. So I say they have no knowledge of what is before them. Then, usually, there is an AHA! moment when they find themselves seeing a familiar kind of object. So I say they now have knowledge of the scene. The object is an ordinary one and therefore complete in the technical sense of being determinate with respect to all properties. But their knowledge of the object is far from complete in the ordinary sense---there is much that is true of the object that they do not know. I put it this way to contrast with the alternative view, if I have understood you, that they have complete (ordinary sense) knowledge of an incomplete (technical sense) object.