This entry is a summary and critique of Peter van Inwagen's "A Theory of Properties," an article which first appeared in 2004 and now appears as Chapter 8 of his Existence: Essays in Ontology (Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 153-182.) Andrew Bailey has made it available on-line. (Thanks Andrew!) I will be quoting from the Existence volume. I will also be drawing upon material from other articles in this collection. This post is a warm-up for a review of the book by me commissioned by a European journal. The review wants completing by the end of February. Perhaps you can help me. Comments are enabled for those who know this subject.
Exposition
1. The Abstract and the Concrete.
Platonism is "the thesis that there are abstract objects." (153) Van Inwagen uses 'object' synonomously with 'thing,' 'item,' and 'entity.' (156) Everything is an object, which is to say: everything exists. Thus there are no nonexistent objects, pace Meinong. There are two categories of object, the abstract and the concrete. These categories are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. Thus for any x, x is either abstract or concrete, but not both, and not neither. Van Inwagen is a bit coy when it comes to telling us what 'abstract' and concrete' mean; he prefers a roundabout way of introducing these terms. He stipulates that the terms and predicates of ordinary, scientific, and philosophical discourse can be divided into two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes. The denotata of the members of these two classes of terms and predicates, if they have denotata, are concrete and abstract objects. Thus 'table,' 'God,' and 'intelligent Martian,' if they pick out anything, pick out concreta, while 'number,' 'the lion,' (as in 'The lion is of the genus Felis') and 'sentence' (as in 'The same sentence can express different propositions in different contexts'), pick out abstracta. (154) (See footnote * below)
Van Inwagen holds that platonism is to be avoided if at all possible. On platonism, there are abstract objects. This characteristic thesis does not entail, but it is consistent with, the proposition that there are also concrete objects. Van Inwagen is a platonist who accepts both abstract and concrete objects but thinks we would be better of if we could avoid commitment to abstract objects. Why? Well, apart from considerations of parsimony, the difference between members of the two categories is abysmal (my word): "the differences between God and this pen pale into insignificance when they are compared with the differences between this pen and the number 4 . . . ." (156) Such a radical difference is puzzling. So it would be preferable if the category of abstracta were empty. That the category of concreta cannot be empty is obvious: we know ourselves to be concreta. (157) Van Inwagen goes on to belabor the point that the things we can say about concrete things are practically endless, while little can be said about abstracta.
In short, reality, unlike ancient Gaul, "is divided into two parts . . . ." (158, emphasis added). The two parts of reality are radically disjoint. Everything is either abstract or concrete, nothing is both, and nothing is neither. Among the abstracta are instantiated properties. Instantiation or 'having' would seem to forge a connection between the disjoint realms. But the instantiation relation is "abstract and external." (206, 242) So it too resides in the realm of abstracta and hence (as it seems to me) does nothing to mitigate the radical dualism or span the abyss that yawns between reality's two parts. So if we could eke by without abstracta, that would be preferable. But we cannot manage without them, says van Inwagen. (158)
2. Why We Need Abstract Objects.
The short reason is that we need them because we need properties, and properties are one sort of abstract object, along with propositions and "proper relations." (240) A proper relation is a relation whose adicity is two or more; van Inwagen thinks of properties as one-place relations and propositions as zero-place relations. Every abstract object is a relation (a relation-in-intension) in the broad or improper sense, and everything else is a substance, a concrete object. (239)
But why do we need properties? We need properties because things have common features. The class of humans, for example, has something in common. This appears to be an existential claim: there is something, humanity, that the members of this class share. Platonists take the appearance at face value while nominalists maintain that the appearance is a mere appearance such that in reality there are no properties. How do we decide the issue that divides the platonists and the nominalists? Here van Inwagen is referring to what he calls "austere" nominalists, the nominalists more standardly called extreme: those who deny that there are properties at all. There are also the nominalists van Inwagen calls "luxuriant" nominalists, the ones more standardly called moderate: those who admit the existence of tropes or individual accidents or particularized properties. (203, 203 fn 5) The extreme nominalist denies that there are properties at all -- a lunatic view if I may inject my opinion -- while the moderate nominalists admit properties but deny that they are universals. Platonists are not austere nominalists because they accept properties; they are not luxuriant nominalists because they accept universals.
3. Van Inwagen's Method.
The method derives from Quine. We start with the beliefs we already have, couched in the sentences we already accept. We then see if these sentences commit us to properties. We do this by translating these sentences into "the canonical language of quantification." (160) If we need to quantify over properties for the sentences we accept as true to count as true, then we are ontologically committed to the existence of properties. If, on the other hand, we can 'paraphrase away' the apparent reference to properties in the sentences we accept that appear to refer to properties, then the ontological commitment is merely apparent.
Van Inwagen's main idea here is that our discourse commits us to quantification over properties, and thus to the existence of properties. We deduce the existence of properties from certain sentences we accept. The argument is not epistemological: it does not seek to provide evidence for the existence of properties. Nor is it transcendental, or an inference to the best explanation. (167) The operative methodological principle, if there is one, is only this: "if one does not believe that things of a certain sort exist, one shouldn't say anything that demonstrably implies that things of that sort exist." (167)
Example. We accept 'Spiders share some of the anatomical features of insects.' (159) This says nothing different from 'There are anatomical features that insects have and spiders also have.' This then is translated into canonical English. I will spare you the rigmarole. The upshot is that there are anatomical features. Hence there are properties.
The most promising way of rebutting platonism so derived is by finding a paraphrase of the original sentence that says the same thing but does not even seem to commit its acceptor to properties. (The nominalists would of course have to do this for every sentence proposed by platonists that supposedly commits its users to abstracta.) Van Inwagen, predictably, argues against the paraphrastic way out. Nominalist paraphrases are not to be had. (164-167)
4. Van Inwagen's Theory of Properties.
Given that there are properties, what are they like? What are the properties of properties? To specify them is the task of a theory of properties. What follows is my list, not his, but gleaned from what he writes. Properties are
a. abstract objects, as we have already seen. As abstract, properties are non-spatiotemporal and causally inert. (207) Better: abstract objects are categorially such as to be neither causally active nor causally passive.
b. universals, as we have already gleaned, with the exception of haecceities such as the property of being identical to Plantinga. (180) Van Inwagen has no truck with tropes. (241) See my Peter van Inwagen's Trouble with Tropes.
c. the entities that play the property role. And what role would that be? This is the role "thing that can be said of something." It is a special case of the role "thing that can be said." (175) Properties are things that can be said of or about something. Propositions are things that can be said, period, or full stop.
d. unsaturated assertibles. Things that can be said are assertibles. They are either unsaturated, in which case they are properties, or saturated, in which case they are propositions.
e. necessary beings. (207)
f. not necessarily instantiated. Many properties exist uninstantiated.
g. not all of them instantiable. Some unsaturated assertibles are necessarily uninstantiated, e.g., what is said of x if one says 'x is both round and square.'
h. such that the usual logical operations apply to them. (176) Given any two assertibles, whether saturated or unsaturated, there is 'automatically' their conjunction and their disjunction. Given any one assertible, there is 'automatically' its negation.
i. abundant, not sparse. There is a property corresponding to almost every one-place open sentence with a precise meaning. The 'almost' alludes to a variant of Russell's paradox that van Inwagen is fully aware of but that cannot be discussed here. (243) Thus, contra David Armstrong, it is not the task of what the latter calls "total [empirical] science" to determine what properties there are. Perhaps we could say that properties for van Inwagen are logical fallout from one-place predicates. (My phrase) But since properties are necessary beings, there are all the properties there might have been; hence they 'outrun' actual one-place predicates. (My way of putting it.)
j. not parts or constituents in any sense of the concrete things that have them. Indeed, it makes no sense to say that an assertible is a part of a concrete object. And although properties or unsaturated assertibles are universals, it makes no sense that such an item is 'wholly present' in concrete objects. (178) Concrete things are 'blobs' in David Armstrong's sense. They lack ontological structure. "Their only constituents are their parts, their parts in the strict and mereological sense." (243)
k. not more basic ontologically than the things whose properties they are. A concrete thing is not a bundle or cluster of properties. The very suggestion is senseless on van Inwagen's scheme. A property is an unsaturated assertible. It is very much like a Fregean (objective) concept or Begriff, even though van Inwagen does not say this in so many words. (But his talk of unsaturatedness points us back to Frege.) Clearly it would be senseless to think of a dog as a bundle of Fregean concepts. That which can be truly said of a thing like a dog, that it is furry, for example, is no part of the critter. (178-79)
I should point out that while talk of saturated and unsaturated assertibles conjures the shade of Frege, van Inwagen has no truck with Frege's concept-object dichotomy according to which no concept is an object, no object is a concept, and the concept horse is not a concept. You could say, and I mean no disrespect, that he 'peters out' with respect to this dichotomy: "I do not understand the concept-object distinction. The objects I call properties are just that: objects." (206, fn 11)
l. are not objects of sensation. (179) To put it paradoxically, and this is my formulation, not van Inwagen's, such perceptual properties as being blue and being oval in shape are not perceptible properties. One can see that a coffee cup is blue, but one cannot literally see the blueness of the coffee cup.
Critique
My readers will know that almost everything (of a substantive and controversial nature) that van Inwagen maintains, I reject and for reasons that strike me as good. Ain't philosophy grand?
1. Perceivability
I'll begin the critique with the last point. "We never see properties, although we see that certain things have certain properties." (179) If van Inwagen can 'peter out,' so can I: I honestly don't know what to make of the second clause of the quoted sentence. I am now, with a brain properly caffeinated, staring at my blue coffee cup in good light. Van Inwagen's claim is that I do not see the blueness of the cup, though I do see that the cup is blue. Here I balk. If I don't see blueness, or blue, when I look at the cup, how can I see (literally see, with the eyes of the head, not the eye of the mind) that the cup is blue?
'That it is blue' is a thing that can be said of the cup, and said with truth. This thing that can be said is an unsaturated assertible, a property in van Inwagen's sense. Van Inwagen is telling us that it cannot be seen. 'That the cup is blue' is a thing that can be said, full stop. It is a saturated assertible, a proposition, and a true one at that. Both assertibles are abstract objects. Both are invisible, and not because of any limitation in my visual power or in human visual power in general, but because abstract objects cannot be terms of causal relations, and perception involves causation. Both types of assertible are categorially disbarred from visibility. But if both the property and the proposition are invisible, then how can van Inwagen say that "we see that certain things have certain properties"? What am I missing?
How can he say that we don't see the property but we do see the proposition? Both are abstract and invisible. How is it that we can see the second but not the first? Either we see both or we see neither. If van Inwagen says that we don't see the proposition, then what do we see when we see that the cup is blue? A colorless cup? A cup that is blue but is blue in a way different from the way the cup is blue by instantiatiating the abstract unsaturated assertible expressed by 'that it is blue'? But then one has duplicated at the level of abstracta the property that one sees at the concrete cup. If there is blueness at the cup and abstract blueness in Plato's heaven, why do we need the latter? Just what is going on here?
To van Inwagen's view one could reasonably oppose the following view. I see the cup (obviously!) and I see blueness at the cup (obviously!) I don't see a colorless cup. To deny the three foregoing sentences would be to deny what is phenomenologically given. What I don't literally see, however, is that the cup is blue. (Thus I don't literally see what van Inwagen says we literally see.) For to see that the cup is blue is to see the instantiation of blueness by the cup. And I don't see that. The correlate of the 'is' in 'The cup is blue' is not an object of sensation. If you think it is, tell me how I can single it out, how I can isolate it. Where in the visual field is it? The blueness is spread out over the visible surfaces of the cup. The cup is singled out as a particular thing on the desk, next to the cat, beneath the lamp, etc. Now where is the instantiation relation? Point it out to me! You won't be able to do it. I see the cup, and I see blue/blueness where the cup is. I don't see the cup's BEING blue.
It is also hard to understand how van Inwagen, on his own assumptions, can maintain that we see that certain things have certain properties. Suppose I see that Max, a cat of my acquaintance, is black. Do I see a proposition? Not on van Inwagen's understanding of 'proposition.' His propositions are Fregean, not Russellian: they are not resident in the physical world. Do I see a proposition-like entity such as an Armstrongian state of affairs? Again, no. What do I see?
Van Inwagen claims that properties are not objects of sensation; no properties are, not even perceptual properties. I should think that some properties are objects of sensation, or better, of perception: I perceive blueness at the cup by sight; I perceive smoothness and hardness and heat at the cup by touch. If so, then (some) properties are not abstract objects residing in a domain unto themselves.
Van Inwagen's view appears to have the absurd consequence that things like coffee cups are colorless. For if colors are properties (179) and properties are abstract objects, and abstract objects are colorless (as they obviously are), then colors are colorless, and whiteness is not white and blueness is not blue. Van Inwagen bites the bullet and accepts the consequence. But we can easily run the argument in reverse: Blueness is blue; colors are properties; abstract objects are colorless; ergo, perceptual properties are not abstract objects. They are either tropes or else universals wholly present in the things that have them. Van Inwagen, a 'relation ontologist' cannot of course allow this move into 'constituent ontology.'
There is a long footnote on p. 242 that may amount to a response to something like my objection. In the main text, van Inwagen speaks of "such properties as are presented to our senses as belonging to the objects we sense . . . ." How does this square with the claim on p. 179 that properties are not objects of sensation? Can a property such as blueness be presented to our senses without being an object of sensation? Apparently yes, "In a noncausal sense of 'presented.'" (243, fn 3)
How does this solve the problem? It is phenomenologically evident that (a definite shade of) blue appears to my senses when I stare at my blue coffee cup. Now if this blueness is an abstract object as van Inwagen claims then it cannot be presented to my senses any more than it can be something with which I causally interact.
2. But Is This Ontology?
Why does van Inwagen think he is doing ontology at all? It looks more like semantics or philosophical logic or philosophy of language. I say this because van Inwagen's assertibles are very much like Fregean senses. They are intensional items. (As we noted, he reduces all his assertibles to relations-in-intension.) Taking his cue from Quine, he seeks an answer to the question, What is there? He wants an inventory, by category, of what there is. He wants to know, for example, whether in addition to concrete things there are also properties, as if properties could exist in sublime disconnection from concrete things in a separate sphere alongside this sublunary sphere. That no property is an object of sensation is just logical fallout from van Inwagen's decision to install them in Plato's heaven; but then their connection to things here below in space and time become unintelligible. It does no good, in alleviation of this unintelligibility, to say that abstract blueness -- the unsaturated assertible expressed by 'that it is blue' -- is instantiated by my blue cup. For instantiation is just another abstract object, a dyadic external relation, itself ensconced in Plato's heaven.
But not only the formulation of the question but also the method of attack come from Quine. Van Inwagen thinks he can answer what he and Quine idiosyncratically call the ontological question by examining the ontological commitments of our discourse. Starting with sentences we accept as true, he looks to see what these sentences entail as regards the types of entity there are when the sentences are properly regimented in accordance with the structures of modern predicate logic with identity.
The starting point is not things in their mind- and language-independent being, but beliefs we already have and sentences we already accept. The approach is oblique, not direct; subjective, not objective. Now to accept a sentence is to accept it as true; but a sentence accepted as true need not be true. Note also that if one sentence entails another, both can be false. So if sentences accepted as true entail the existence of properties in van Inwagen's sense, according to which properies are unsaturated assertibles, it is logically possible that there be no properties in reality. The following is not a contradiction: The sentences we accept as true entail that there are properties & There are no properties. For it may be -- it is narrowly-logically possible that -- the sentences we accept as true that entail that there are properties are all of them false. Not likely, of course, and there may be some retorsive argument against this possibility. But it cannot be ruled out by logic alone.
So there is something fishy about the whole method of 'ontological' commitment. One would have thought that ontology is concerned with the Being of beings, not with the presuppositions of sentences accepted as true by us. To put it vaguely, there is something 'transcendental' (in the Kantina sense) and 'subjective' and 'modern' about van Inwagen's Quinean method that unsuits it for for something that deserves to be called ontology.
This is connected with the point that van Inwagen's assertibles, saturated and unsaturated, are hard to distinguish from Fregean senses. They are denizens of Frege's Third Reich or Third World if you will, not his First Reich, the realm of primary reference. To illustrate: Venus is an item in the First World, while the senses of 'Morning Star' and 'Evening Star' and the sense of the sentence 'The Morning Star is the Evening Star' are three items all in the Third World. Senses, however, are logico-semantic items: their job is to mediate reference. Van Inwagen is arguably just hypostatizing items that are needed for us to secure reference -- whether thinking reference or linguistic reference -- to things that truly exist extramentally and extralinguistically.
Again, this is vague and sketchy. But good enough for a weblog entry! Is think my Czech scholastic friends will know what I am driving at.
3. Van Inwagen's Ostrich Realism and Commitment to Bare Particulars
Van Inwagen rejects both extreme and moderate nominalism. So he can't possibly be an ostrich nominalist. He is, however, as he himself appreciates, an ostrich realist or ostrich platonist. (214-15)
Suppose Max is black. What explains the predicate's being true of Max? According to the ostrich nominalist, nothing does. It is just true of him. There is nothing in or about Max that serves as the ontological ground of the correctness of his satisfying the predicate. Now 'F' is true of a iff 'a is F' is true. So we may also ask: what is the ontological ground of the truth of 'Max is black'? The ostrich reply will be: nothing. The sentence is just true. There is no need for a truth-maker.
The ostrich realist/platonist says something very similar except that in place of predicates he puts abstract properties, and in place of sentences he puts abstract propositions. In virtue of what does Max instantiate blackness? In virtue of nothing. He just instantiates it. Nothing explains why the unsaturated assertible expressed by 'x is black' is instantiated by Max. Nothing explains it because there is nothing to explain. And nothing explains why the saturated assertible expressed by 'Max is black' is true. Thus there is nothing concrete here below that could be called a state of affairs in anything like Armstrong's sense. There is in the realm of concreta no such item as Max-instantiating-blackness, or the concrete fact of Max's being black.
Here below there is just Max, and up yonder in a topos ouranos are 'his' properties (the abstract unsaturated assertibles that he, but not solely, instantiates). But then Max is a bare particular in one sense of this phrase, though not in Gustav Bergmann's exact sense of the phrase. (Bergmann is a constituent ontologist.) In what sense, then?
A bare particular is not a particular that has no properties in any sense of 'having properties'; a bare particular is a particular that has properties, but has them in a certain way: by being externally related to them. Thus bare particulars, unlike Aristotelean substances, have neither natures nor essences. Indeed, the best way to understand what a bare particular is is by contrast with the primary substances of Aristotle. These concrete individuals have natures by being (identically) natures: they are not externally related to natures that exist serenely and necessarily in Plato's heaven.
In this sense, van Inwagen's concrete things are bare particulars. There are no properties 'in' or 'at' Max; there are no properties where he is and when he is. What's more, on van Inwagen's scheme -- one he shares with Chisholm, Plantinga, et al. -- Max can only be externally related to his properties. This has the consequence that all of Max's properties are accidental. For if x, y are externally related, then x can exist without y and y can exist without x. So Max can exist without being feline just as he can exist without being asleep.
Could Max have been a poached egg? It is narrowly-logically possible. For if he has all of his properties externally, then he has all of his properties accidentally. Even if it is necessary that he have some set of properties or other, there is no necessity that he have any particular set. If properties are externally related to particulars, then any particular can have any set of properties so long as it has some set or other.
If you deny that concrete things are bare in the sense I have explained, then you seem to be committed to saying that there are two sorts of properties, PvI-properties in Plato's heaven and 'sublunary' properties at the particulars here below. But then I will ask two questions. First, what is the point of introducing PvI-properties if they merely duplicate at the abstract intensional level the 'real' properties in the sublunary sphere? Second, what justifies calling PvI-properties properties given that you still are going to need 'sublunary' properties to avoid saying that van Inwagen's concreta are bare particulars?
4. Existence
One can say of a thing that it might not have existed. For example, I can say this of myself. If so, it must be possible to say of a thing that it exists. For example, it must be possible for me to say of myself that I exist. As van Inwagen remarks, "it is hard to see how there could be such an assertible as 'that it might not have existed' if there were no such assertible as 'that it exists.'" (180) Existence, then, is a property, says van Inwagen, for properties are unsaturated assertibles, and 'that it exists' is an assertible.
There are many problems with the notion that existence is a first-level property on a van Inwagen-type construal of properties. Instantiation for van Inwagen is a full-fledged dyadic relation. (It is not a non-relational tie or Bergmannian nexus). He further characterizes it as abstract and external as we have seen. Now it is perfectly obvious to me that the very existence of Socrates cannot consist in his instantiation of any PvI-type property, let alone the putative property, existence. For given the externality of the instantiation relation, both Socrates and the putative property must 'already' exist for said relation to hold between them. So one moves in an explanatory circle of embarrassingly short diameter if one tries to account for existence in this way.
This circularity objection which I have developed in painful detail elsewhere will, I expect, leave van Inwagen stone cold. One reason is that he sees no role for explanation in metaphysics whereas I think that metaphysics without explanation is not metaphysics at all in any serious sense. This is large topic that cannot be addressed here.
I'll mention one other problem for van Inwagen. I'll put it very briefly since this entry is already too long. Van Inwagen is a Fregean about existence; but on a Fregean view existence cannot be a first-level property. For Frege, 'x exists' where 'x' ranges over individuals is a senseless open sentence or predicate. There is no unsaturated assertible corresponding to it. I have a number of posts on van Inwagen and existence. Here is one. My latest published article on existence is "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Novak and Novotny, eds., Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, Routledge 2014, 45-75.
5. Haecceities
Among the properties, van Inwagen counts haecceities. They are of course abstract objects like all properties. But they are not universals because, while they are instantiable, they are not multiply instantiable. The property of being identical with Alvin Plantinga is an example van Inwagen gives. (180) This property, if instantiated, is instantiated by Plantinga alone in the actual world and by nothing distinct from Plantinga in any possible world. Plantingitas -- to give it a name -- somehow involves Plantinga himself, that very concrete object. For this property is supposed to capture the nonqualitative thisness of Plantinga. (Haecceitas is Latin for 'thisness.')
I submit that these haecceity properties are metaphysical monstrosities. For given that they are properties, they are necessary beings. A necessary being exists at all times in all possible worlds that have time, and in all worlds, period. Plantinga, however, does not exist in all worlds since he is a contingent being; and he doesn't exist at all times in all worlds in which he exists, subject as he is to birth and death, generation and corruption. I conclude that before Plantinga came into being there could not have been any such property as the property of being identical to Plantinga. I conclude also that in worlds in which he does not exist there is no such haecceity property. For at pre-Plantingian times and non-Plantingian worlds, there is simply nothing to give content to the unsaturated assertible expressed by 'that it is Alvin Plantinga.' (Alvin Plantingas hung out at those times and in those worlds, but not our Alvin Plantinga.) Plantinga himself enters essentially into the very content of his haecceity property.
But this is absurd because PvI-properties are merely intensional entities. No such entity can have a concrete, flesh and blood man as a constituent. Just as a PvI-property cannot be a constituent of a concretum such as Plantinga, Plantinga cannot be a constituent in any sense of 'constituent' of a PvI-property.
But if Plantinga hadn't existed, might it nonetheless have been true that he might have existed? (180). Van Inwagen says yes and introduces haecceities. Plantingitas exists in every world; it is just that it is instantiated only in some. I say no, precisely because I take haecceities to be metaphysical monstrosities.
Conclusion
I am not out to refute van Inwagen or anyone. Philosophical theories, except for some sophomoric ones, cannot be refuted. At most I am out to neutralize van Inwagen's theory, or rather his type of theory, to explain why it is not compelling and how it is open to powerful objections, only some of which I have adduced in this entry. And of course I do not have a better theory. I incline toward constituent ontology myself, but it too is bristling with difficulties.
As I see it, the problems of philosophy are most of them genuine, some of them humanly important, but all of them insoluble.
______________________
*At this point I should like to record a misgiving. If sentences (sentence types, not tokens) are abstract objects, and abstract objects are necessary beings as van Inwagen holds (cf., e.g., p. 242), then sentences are necessary beings. But sentences are tied to contingently existing languages and cannot exist apart from them. Thus 'I am hungry' is a sentence of English while 'Ich habe Hunger' is a sentence of German, and neither sentence can exist apart from its respective language. A natural language, however, would seem to be a contingent being: German came into existence, but it might never have come into existence. Given all this, a contradiction appears to follow: Sentences are and are not necessary beings.
Hi Bill,
Thanks for the invitation to post! Two comments:
The first comment is about one of your key claims in section 3: that if x and y are externally related, then x can exist without y and vice versa. It seems like there are counterexamples to this principle. First, I'm inclined to think that there are necessarily existing externally related things. And van Inwagen certainly does, since he believes that assertibles necessarily exist if at all and that they lack mereological structure. But the principle above entails that there aren't any. Second, I'm inclined to think that I'm externally related to at least one necessarily existing thing, and of course van Inwagen does too. But this this too would be ruled out by the principle above.
The second comment is about the challenge about perception you raise for van Inwagen in section 1. Now, I have no idea what van Inwagen's views about perception are (or even whether he has any). But if I were van Inwagen, I would respond in the following way. (Apologies for the length of what follows.)
I'd begin on insisting one draw a distinction between the sentence "I see that the cup is blue" and "I see the proposition that the cup is blue". I'd insist on this even though "The cup is blue" has as its content the proposition that the cup is blue (outside of attitudinal contexts, at least). I'd insist on this because the second sentence makes a false statement about the object of a particular perceptual state, while the first is a true statement is about the representational content of that state--i.e., which, on my view, is a proposition that describes the conditions under which that state is veridical, and not the object perceived.
Here's a natural view, one that I'd recommend to van Inwagen: take the perceived object to be whatever it is that makes the state's representational content veridical. Now, van Inwagen does seem to believe that there are events, and what he says about them seems to suggest that they're concrete, spatiotemporally located particulars (Material Beings, pp. 82-83). And presumably, he'd deny that events so conceived would have assertibles as constituents, much less the relation of instantiation. So, I'd also recommend that he take these to be objects of perception in the type of case under consideration, since they seem to avoid the worries you raise with taking propositions to be objects of perception.
Finally, then, I recommend that van Inwagen say that one sees the cup's being blue in virtue of some relationship between a particular event involving this cup and a perceptual state--one that that has, as its representational content, the proposition that the cup is blue.
Very curious to hear your reactions...
Posted by: Alex | Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 09:08 AM
Thanks for commenting, Alex. You really know your stuff.
Your first point is correct. My formulation was sloppy. Suppose I say this: if x and y are externally related, and if one or both of them is a contingent being, then either one of them can exist without the other, or each of them can exist without the other.
Your second comment is deep and challenging. You distinguish
1. I see that the cup is blue
from
2. I see the proposition that the cup is blue.
I take (2) to be equivalent to
2*. I see the saturated assertible expressed by 'that the cup is blue.'
You say, very plausibly, that (1) is true and (2) false. You say that (1) is true because it is about the representational content of the perceptual state that one is in when one looks at a blue cup. You say that (2) is false because it is about the object (as opposed to the content) of the perceptual state.
So we have the following picture. There is a subject S of a mental act A which has a content C -- this content being a Fregean proposition -- through which a mind-independent object O is presented. A is concrete and intramental while O is concrete and extramental. C is a abstract and extramental.
So your point is that S sees (literally) the cup, a concrete thing, but does not see (literally) the abstract proposition that is the content of S's act of seeing the cup, a content that mediate S's perceiving of the cup.
Then you say that the perceived object is what makes true the representational content. But here is the rub. If O is the T-maker of C, then O cannot be an Armstrongian blob: it cannot be ontologically stuctureless (for the reasons I gave in that long paper I sent you). But PvI's concrete objects are all of them blobs. He has no truck with constituent ontology.
As I understand PvI, there is no place for events in his ontology. Everything is either an abstract object (a relation-in-intension) or a concrete substance. Events have ontological constituents, but no substance for PvI has ontological constituents, and O must be a substance. At most, concreta have mereological parts in the strict sense of classical mereology.
What you are suggesting, I think, is that van Inwagen take perceptual objects to be something like Armstrongian states of affairs (which of course are not abstract and therefore not the same as Fregean propositions). But PvI's ontology does not allow for such critters.
I hope the above is clear, and that I have understood you. Your counterresponse is welcome.
By the way, your comments can serve as a model for what good comments are like.
Posted by: BV | Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 12:49 PM
Hi, Bill. Thanks for your substantive summary and critique. Here are a few questions as I begin to think through this post. I'm just starting to reflect on this -- maybe I'm missing something.
I understand how an assertible can be uninstantiated. But can an assertible be necessarily uninstantiated? An assertible is a thing that can be said. I assume this means "meaningfully or intelligibly sayable" rather than merely "utterable."
I'm inclined to believe that if a thing is meaningfully assertible, it is intelligible, and if intelligible, it is about that which is logically possible. (I don't say that everything logically possible is assertible, but that everything assertible is about something that is logically possible.) I'm also inclined to believe that if something is logically possible, that something is possibly instantiated. If these assumptions are right (perhaps they are wrong), then wouldn't all meaningful assertibles, thus all meaningful properties, be possibly instantiated?
And if there are such things as necessarily uninstantiated assertibles then wouldn't this mean that there are necessarily uninstantiated, necessary beings? If so, this seems very strange. It seems to be a view which holds that at least part of reality necessarily exists but is necessarily unrealizable, and thus that reality is in a sense necessarily incomplete.
Posted by: Elliott | Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 01:17 PM
Thanks for the very interesting post, Bill.
I'm going to comment on both your exposition and critique, but I'll try to focus more on the critique. I'll begin with the exposition.
It does not surprise me at all that van Inwagen is coy about telling us what 'abstract' and 'concrete' mean. I don't know of anyone who clearly states what he means by these terms, but typically something similar is meant. I personally am doubtful that the distinction is a helpful one, and I'm doubtful that these terms "carve nature at its joints." I have always thought that 'concrete' is more or less supposed to track physical objects, that is, objects studied by the natural sciences. But van Inwagen includes God in the category of concrete objects, which strikes me as bizarre. God is certainly not like me. And, if we defined 'concrete' as physical objects, it would be nice to have a plausible account of what it is to be physical, and I've not heard a promising answer. And, what would we make of objects such as my gold truck stripped of its goldness? Is that a concrete object or an abstract object? I don't know. It's an awful lot like many objects that are often called concrete, in that it has a shape, a mass, and a finite extension. But, it lacks a color, which a lot of the concrete objects we use as examples do not. Which is it? So, maybe we can use this distinction, but I don't think it helps much.
Setting aside my dislike of the terms 'abstract' and 'concrete', I don't see why he thinks the difference between abstract things and concrete things is so puzzling. Is it puzzling because he enters his investigation of what there is with an assumption that everything that there is is very similar? Why should we enter the investigation with that assumption? I don't know.
Clarification question: What are the instantiation relations external to? I assume the answer is that they are external to their concrete bearers because relations are in platonic heaven, but not the concrete bearers. I wonder about abstract objects that have multiple properties. Is the intantiation relation external to them as well, despite the fact that they are also in platonic heaven?
I do not think I understand, or could explain to someone else, what you mean in (i) by "...properties for van Inwagen are logical fallout from one-place predicates." Nor do I understand what you mean when you say that properties "outrun" one-place predicates.
I will now move to comments about your critique. In these comments I will try (somewhat) to answer for van Inwagen.
I'll begin by trying to resist your argument that, given PvI's view, coffee cups are colorless. You say, "For if colors are properties (179) and properties are abstract objects, and abstract objects are colorless (as they obviously are), then colors are colorless, and whiteness is not white and blueness is not blue." I'd like you to formalize this argument. Here's one attempt:
1. Coffee cups have a color (premiss).
2. Colors are properties. (premiss)
3. Properties are abstract objects.
4. Therefore, colors are abstract objects. (2,3 transitivity)
5. Abstract objects are colorless. (premiss)
6. Therefore, colors are colorless. (4,5 transitivity)
7.Therefore, coffee cups are colorless.
It doesn't appear to me that 7 validly follows. Is there a way to formulate the argument so that it does? van Inwagen can resist this argument on the grounds that it is invalid. There may be an opening for him to say that, despite the fact that colors are colorless, coffee cups have a color.
I wonder if your criticism here is rooted in thinking that it is "in virtue of" color properties that coffee cups have their coffee. Well, van Inwagen thinks that properties are non-causal, so he might resist your here too. Properties do not cause their objects to have said properties. This sort of response to your perception worry seems to me to lead to another problem. If properties do not cause, then what is the nature of this "in virtue of" relationship? What work are properties doing on this account, anyway, if it is not color properties that make the object that possesses them have color? It is hard for me to understand how properties can account for common features if they are causally inert.
Continuing with the perception critique, you say, "How can he say that we don't see the property but we do see the proposition?" I didn't take him to be saying that we can see the proposition, 'that the cup is blue'. I thought he was merely saying that we can see that the cup is blue. That is not to say that we see the proposition. I think he would say we see neither the property nor the proposition. You ask then, "If van Inwagen says that we don't see the proposition, then what do we see when they cup is blue? I think PvI's answer would be, "You merely see the object--the blue cup." Remember that properties are not parts or constituents, so it isn't as though the properties are parts for you to see as the grill of my truck is. Objects are not bundles of properties on his view (perhaps characterizing objects are bundles would allow for you to think of properties as being like grills on trucks, since a bundle is made up of properties that constitute the bundle). (Honestly, I don't like what I'm saying here, but I'm trying hard to defend PvI, ha)
I think I'm suggesting a response, according to which, you do not see the property when you see the blue cup, but you do somehow see the affect it has. But how? This strikes me as a total mystery, and it might be unsolvable if properties are truly causally inert.
I think your first paragraph of the 'But is This Ontology?' section makes a nice point that relates up to your perception critique. Since properties are not objects of sensation (because they are in Plato's heaven), the connection between abstracta and concreta is unintelligible. This also relates to my points above about causation, and talking about causation might be another way of making your point about the connection being unintelligible. How is it that the coffee cup is blue "in virtue of" the property 'blueness' if there isn't some causal relationship? We know the connection cannot be causal.
There is one place where I might disagree with you in this section. In the third paragraph you are making the point that if we read off our ontology from the sentences we accept, then it is logically possible that there are no properties, since it is logically possible that the sentences we accept are false. Right. Then you say, "The following is not a contradiction: The sentences we accept as true entail that there are properties & There are no properties." How could THE SENTENCES, in and of themselves, ENTAIL both of these things (sorry, I want to use italics, but can't, so I'm using caps). Given that it is possible that the sentences that entail that there are properties could be false, it is logically possible that there are no properties. But this possibility isn't entailed by the sentences, is it? It's entailed by the possibility that the sentences are false.
My last point regarding this section is on whether what van Inwagen is doing should be regarded as ontology. I take your points about van Inwagen's method being 'subjective' and 'modern'. Maybe you are right that this doesn't deserve to be called ontology, but it seems to me that it is the kind of think that contemporary analytic philosophers call ontology. Perhaps that is because contemporary analytic philosophy isn't always mindful of the history of philosophy.
Moving on to criticism 3, I agree that van Inwagen is a bare particularist. Here is a question for you about van Inwagen's kind of bare particularism: If God severed the relations between my bare particular and my external properties, and if he did the same thing to the tree in my backyard (assuming for a moment that trees are things), wouldn't it be the case that there would be no difference between my bare particular and my tree's bare particular? That seems to me to be what should follow from van Inwagen's kind of bare particularism, since, according to the view, bare particulars do not have natures or essences.
Here is a clarification question for criticism 4. You say, "For given the externality of the instantiation relation, both Socrates and the putative property must 'already' exist for said relation to hold between them." Is the "'already' exist" a logical priority, a temporal priority, or both? I suppose if Socrates and the putative property do not both exist, the trouble is that there isn't enough there for the instantiation relation to relate, right? If what I said is right, then I'm tracking the problem and I agree with you.
Lastly for this section: "...metaphysics without explanation is not metaphysics at all in any serious sense." YES!
I hope these comments are helpful.
Posted by: Shields | Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 02:20 PM
Good comments, Elliot.
>>I'm inclined to believe that if a thing is meaningfully assertible, it is intelligible, and if intelligible, it is about that which is logically possible.<<
That's reasonable, but think of it this way. The open sentence or predicate 'x is both round and not round' is not gibberish in the manner of 'x is qroolublish and not qroolublish.' So the open sentence or predicate is meaningful as opposed to meaningless. If I put 'Obama' in for 'x' I get a necessarily false (closed) sentence. If I assert the sentence, I say something intelligible (understandable). If it weren't intelligible you would not be able to assign it a truth value, the value false. Now it is logically impossible for anything, including Obama, to be both round and not round. So the property corresponding to the predicate is necessarily uninstantiated.
>>And if there are such things as necessarily uninstantiated assertibles then wouldn't this mean that there are necessarily uninstantiated, necessary beings? If so, this seems very strange. It seems to be a view which holds that at least part of reality necessarily exists but is necessarily unrealizable, and thus that reality is in a sense necessarily incomplete.<<
Yes it would entail that. And I agree that it is somewhat strange. But strangeness is no objection. And I can grant that a bit of reality necessarily exists but is necessarily unrealizable, i.e., uninstantiable in concreto. But it doesn't follow that reality is incomplete.
Analogy: would you say that God is not completely omniscient because he does not know false propositions? (If you don't immediately see the relevance of this analogy, don't object to it; it would only lead us off topic.)
Posted by: BV | Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 03:46 PM
Thanks for the comments, Mr Shields.
>>I do not think I understand, or could explain to someone else, what you mean in (i) by "...properties for van Inwagen are logical fallout from one-place predicates." Nor do I understand what you mean when you say that properties "outrun" one-place predicates.<<
When I say that properties outrun predicates I mean that there are far more properties than there are actual predicates. I take it that predicates are essentially linguistic in that they are tied to natural languages. And I take it that in English (and in every natural language) there is a finite number of actual predicates, where an actual predicate is one that has been used by some person at some time either in overt speech or it thought. For example, up until just now there was no predicate 'x is a roodle.' But I just introduced it. It is true of every red noodle.
If properties are necessary beings, then there are as many properties as it is possible that there be. For every real number r, there is the property of being r units long. If so, then there are 2-to-the-aleph-nought properties. But the number of predicates of all natural languages taken together is finite.
The 'logical fallout' remark simply means that for every predicate with a definite sense, there is a corresponding property. So, corresponding to 'x is a violinist if a card shark' there is a property.
Posted by: BV | Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 04:07 PM
Further responses tomorrow. It's time for Saturday Night at the Oldies!
Posted by: BV | Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 04:29 PM
Thanks, Bill! I see that your open sentence is meaningful/intelligible. And your analogy is very good!
Omniscience is normally defined as the property of knowing all true propositions and believing no false ones. So I wouldn't say God lacks complete omniscience because He doesn't know false propositions, like I wouldn't say God lacks complete omnipotence because He doesn't create unmarried married men. Neither case shows a meaningful limit to the omni-attribute. I see how this relates to reality. It's a helpful analogy!
I agree that strangeness is no objection. After all, it may be that reality is quite strange to us finite minds. Shakespeare may be correct when he has Hamlet say that there is more to reality than we dream up in philosophy!
Posted by: Elliott | Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 04:54 PM
>> I agree that van Inwagen is a bare particularist. Here is a question for you about van Inwagen's kind of bare particularism: If God severed the relations between my bare particular and my external properties, and if he did the same thing to the tree in my backyard (assuming for a moment that trees are things), wouldn't it be the case that there would be no difference between my bare particular and my tree's bare particular? That seems to me to be what should follow from van Inwagen's kind of bare particularism, since, according to the view, bare particulars do not have natures or essences.<<
I'm glad we agree. Of course, he denies that he is committed to bare particulars because he gives 'bare particular' an absurd interpretation. He thinks it means a particular with no properties. Nobody, not Bergmann, not Armstrong, nobody, thinks that there are particulars that have no properties.
Could God disconnect a particular from its properties? I do not think so. For even if it is contingent which properties a particular has -- since BPs lack natures or essences -- it is necessary that a particular have some set of properties or other.
As for you and you tree, the BP in you and the BP in your tree are barely different, they differ *solo numero,* i.e., they are just numerically different. They do not differ in respect of some property internal to the BP (there are no such internal properties). So the BP in you and the BP in your tree do differ, but they differ only numerically, not qualitatively.
Posted by: BV | Sunday, January 25, 2015 at 05:49 AM
Thanks for the clarification of "outrun" and "logical fallout". I understand what you mean now.
What you say about God being able to disconnect a particular from its properties makes sense. I think I was aiming with that question to show that van Inwagen's bare particulars are merely numerically different. Of course, it is possible that that is the way bare particulars are. It seems it follows from this view that if my bare particular were somehow switched out for another one, there would be no change in me, except a numerical change in my bare particular. Again, that is possible, but it strikes me as odd.
It is odd that he denies he is committed to bare particulars of some kind. Since he is not a bundle theorist, he needs something for the instantiation relations to relate the properties to!
Posted by: Shields | Monday, January 26, 2015 at 09:39 PM
And that something is the concrete particular itself, a tree say. Suppose the tree is green like my palo verde. The greenness is an abstract object in Plato's heaven. But then the tree here below is bare in respect of that property.
His entire conception is absurd. The properties of a thing cannot be stripped off the thing and installed in some realm disjoint from the realm in which the concrete thing exists.
Posted by: BV | Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at 04:29 AM
Yes, that's what I think too. I'm curious about what you would say about my entailment comment. Am I misunderstanding something?
Posted by: Shields | Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at 06:46 AM
Hi Bill,
Many thanks for your very kind words -- the feeling is most definitely mutual! Two quick reactions to your responses (forgive me if this has already been covered in the discussion above).
Regarding your reformulation of the link between external relatedness and modal connectedness: my worry now is that the reformulated principle allows for van Inwagen to slip through. Suppose that Socrates and the property being human are externally related. Then the reformulated principle only requires that it be possible for at least one of the two to exist without the other. To meet that requirement, van Inwagen only needs to allow for it to be possible that the property being human can exist even when Socrates doesn't (which of course he would). But that's consistent with it being impossible for Socrates to exist unless the property being human exists too, and (presumably) as well for it to be impossible for Socrates to exist unless he is human. So, even if the reformulated principle is true, van Inwagen could still maintain that Socrates is externally related to properties he has non-accidentally.
Regarding your comments on van Inwagen and perception: suppose I grant that van Inwagen won't allow events into is ontology (or at least, events of the sort that would serve his purposes here). I wonder whether I could push my response without them. Couldn't van Inwagen maintain that it's in virtue of some (at least partially) causal relationship between the cup and a particular perceptual state of mine -- one whose representational content content is that the cup is blue -- that I see that the cup is blue? That is: why couldn't one take the perceived object to be just the cup -- and not, as I was suggesting, an event involving the cup -- but take my perceiving that it's blue to be in virtue of some (at least partially) causal relationship between this perceptual state and the cup?
One response might be to say that without allowing for the existence of events (or states-of-affairs or etc.), van Inwagen cannot even make sense of apparent truths like "there is a causal relationship between a perceptual state of mine and this cup". If that's so, the van Inwagen is in even worse trouble than you allege! But I suspect van Inwagen would (claim to) be able to make sense of them in the same way he (claims to) make sense of other relational facts.
I could just be misunderstanding the force of the challenge you're raising for van Inwagen here, so please correct me if I've gone off the rails anywhere here!
All the best,
Alex.
Posted by: Alex | Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at 12:11 PM
Thanks for the further comments, Alex.
I am assuming that when one looks at a blue cup and sees that it is blue, one sees not only the cup but also something that is blue, whether it be a blueness trope, or an immanent constituent universal, or a blue noema, or something else that is blue, right at the cup. I suspect that van Inwagen would deny my assumption and, following Chisholm and a few others, adopt an adverbial theory of sensing. I have quoted him above as saying that properties are not objects of sensation. And of course they cannot be if they are abstract objects. And yet things have properties. So the cup is blue despite the fact that the blueness of the cup is not an object of sensation. So what's going on?
Perhaps this: the concrete thing causes me to sense blue-ly. If this makes sense, then there needn't be anything that is blue that I sense. This may be a version of what you are getting at above.
There is the property blueness in the realm of abstracta, but it is not blue. And there is no constituent of the cup that is blue such as a blueness trope. (PvI is not a constituent ontologist.) So, despite the phenomenology of the situation, blueness does not appear when I look at the cup. I am being appeared to bluely or bluely appeared to.
Is this coherent? I am running slowly iff my running is slow. Note that we cannot say: I am sensing blue-ly iff my sensing is blue. For it is nonsense to say of a state of consciousness that it is blue. If my sensing were blue it would be in space, but it is not. So what is it for me to sense blue-ly if my sensing is not blue?
Furthermore, if I am being appeared to, then I am being appeared to by something. If am being appeared to bluely by something, then the something is either blue or not. Can't be blue, else we are back at square one. So I am being apeared to blue-ly by something that is colorless. But then what makes it the case that my sensing is veridical?
Posted by: BV | Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at 04:57 PM