Notes on Nicholas Rescher, "Nonexistents Then and Now"

0. This entry is relevant to my ongoing dialog with Dr. Novak about reference to the nonexistent. I hope he has the time and the stamina to continue the discussion. I have no doubt that he has the 'chops.' I thank him for the stimulation. We philosophize best with friends, as Aristotle says somewhere. But to the Peripatetic is also attributed the thought that amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas. 

 

 

The Rescher text under scrutiny is from a chapter in his Scholastic Meditations, Catholic UP, 2005, 126-148.

1. One objection I have is that Rescher tends to conflate the epistemological with the ontological. A careful reading of the following passage shows the conflation at work.  I have added comments in brackets in blue. Bolding added, italics in original.  

To begin, note that a merely possible world is never given. It is not something we can possibly encounter in experience. The only world that confronts us in the actual course of things is the real world, this actual world of ours -- the only world to which we gain entry effortlessly, totally free of charge. [This is practically a tautology.  All Rescher is saying is that the only world we can actually experience is the actual world, merely possible worlds being, by definition, not actual.]  To move from it, we must always do something, namely, make a hypothesis -- assumption, supposition, postulation, or the like. The route of hypotheses affords the only cognitive access to the realm of nonexistent possibility. [Rescher's wording suggests that there is a realm of nonexistent possibility and that we can gain cognitive access to it.]  For unlike the real and actual world, possible worlds never come along of themselves and become accessible to us without our actually doing something, namely, making an assumption or supposition or such-like. Any possible world with which we can possibly deal will have to be an object of our contrivance -- of our making by means of some supposition or assumption. [In this last sentence Rescher clearly slides from an epistemological claim, one about how we come to know the denizens of the realm of nonexistent possibility, to an ontological claim about what merely possible worlds and their denizens ARE, namely, objects of our contrivance.](131)

Rescher wants to say about  the merely possible what he says about the purely fictional, namely, that pure ficta are objects of our contrivance.  But this too, it seems to me, is an illicit conflation.  The purely fictional is barred from actuality by its very status as purely fictional: Sherlock Holmes cannot be actualized.  What cannot be actualized is not possible; it is impossible. Sherlock Holmes is an impossible item.  He is impossible because he is incomplete. Only the complete (completely determinate) is actualizable. Sherlock is incomplete because he is the creation of  a finite fiction writer: Sherlock has all and only the properties ascribed to him by Conan Doyle. Not even divine power could bring about the actualization of the Sherlock of the Conan Doyle stories.   What God could do is bring about the actualization of various individuals with all or some of Sherlock's properties. None of those individuals, however, would be Sherlock. Each of them would differ  property-wise from Sherlock.

2. The conflation of the merely possible with the purely fictional is connected with another mistake Rescher makes.  Describing the "medieval mainstream," (129) Rescher lumps mere possibilia and pure ficta together as entia rationis.  For this mistake, Daniel Novotny takes him to task, explaining that "Suarez and most other Baroque scholastics considered merely possible beings to be real, and hence they were not classified as beings of reason." (Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel, Fordham UP, 2013, p. 27)   Entia rationis, beings of reason, are necessarily mind-dependent impossible objects.  Mere possibilia are not, therefore, entia rationis.

3. As I understand it, the problem of the merely possible is something like this.  Merely possible individuals and states of affairs are not nothing, nor are they fictional.  And of course their possibility is not merely epistemic, or parasitic upon our ignorance.  Merely possible individuals and states of affairs have some sort of mind-independent reality.  But how the devil can we make sense of this mind-independent reality given that the merely possible, by definition, is not actual?  Suppose we cast the puzzle in the mold of an aporetic triad:

a. The merely possible is not actual.

b. The merely possible is real (independently of finite minds).

c.  Whatever is  real is actual.

Clearly, the members of this trio cannot all be true.  Any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one.  For example, the conjunction of the last two propositions entails the negation of the first.

What are the possible solutions given that the triad is  genuinely logically inconsistent and given that the triad is soluble?  I count exactly five possible solutions.

S1.  Eliminativism.  The limbs are individually undeniable but jointly inconsistent, which is to say: there are no mere possibilia.  One could be an error theorist about mere possibilia.  On this solution we deny the common presupposition of (a) and (b), namely, that there are merely possible individuals and states of affairs. 

S2.  Conceptualism.  Deny (b) while accepting the other two limbs.  There are mere possibilia, but what they are are conceptual constructions by finite minds. This is essentially Rescher's view.  See his A Theory of Possibility: A Constructivistic and Conceptualistic Theory of Possible Individuals and Possible Worlds (Basil Blackwell, 1975). He could be described as an artifactualist about possibilities: "A possible individual is an intellectual artifact: the product of a projective 'construction' . . . ." (p. 61)

S3.  Actualism/Ersatzism.  Deny (a) while accepting the other two limbs.  One looks for substitute entities -- actual entities -- to go proxy for the mere possibles.  Thus, on one approach, the merely possible state of affairs  of there being a unicorn is identified with an actual abstract entity, the property of being a unicorn.  For the possibility to be actual is for the the property to be instantiated. 

On this version of actualism, the mind-independent reality of the merely possible is identified with the mind-independent reality of certain actual abstract items. In this way one avoids both eliminativism and constructivism.

S4. Extreme Modal Realism.  Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs.  David Lewis.  There is a plurality of possible worlds conceived of as maximal merelogical sums of concreta.  The worlds and their inhabitants are all equally real.  But no world is absolutely actual.  Each is merely actual at itself.   In this world, I am a philosopher. On extreme modal realism, the possibility of my being an electrical engineer instead is understood as various counterparts of me being electrical engineers in various possible worlds.

S5. Theologism.  Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs.  We bring God into the picture to secure the reality of the possibles instead of a plurality of equally real worlds.   Consider the possibility of there being unicorns.  This is a mere possibility since it is not actual.  But the possibility is not nothing: it is a definite possibility, a real possibility that does not depend for its reality on finite minds.  There aren't any unicorns, but there really could have been some, and the fact of this mere possibility has nothing to do with what we do or think or say.  The content of the possibility subsists as an object of the divine intellect, and its actualizability is grounded in God's power.  We could perhaps say that possibilia enjoy esse intentionale in or before the divine intellect, but lack esse reale unless the divine will actualizes them. 

4.  Part of Rescher's support for his constructivism/conceptualism/artifactualism is his attack on the problem of transworld identity.  For Rescher,  "the issue of transworld identity actually poses no real problems -- a resolution is automatically available."   Rescher's argument is hard to locate due to his bloated, meandering, verbose style of writing.  Rescher rarely says anything in a direct and pithy way if he can  pad it out with circumlocutions and high-falutin' phraseology.  (I confess to sometimes being guilty of this myself.)

But basically such argument as I can discern seems to involve equivocation on such terms as 'individuation' and 'identity' as between epistemological and ontological senses.  He gives essentially the following argument on p. 141.  This is my reconstruction and is free of equivocation.

A. All genuine individuals are complete.

B.  All merely possible individuals are complete only if completely describable by us.

C.  No merely possible individuals are completely describable by us.

Therefore

D. No merely possible individuals are genuine individuals.

But why should we accept (B)? Why can't there be nonexistent individuals that are complete?  Rescher just assumes that the properties of such individuals must be supplied by us.  But that is to beg the question against those who believe in the reality of the merely possible.  He just assumes the truth of artifactualism about the merely possible.  Consider the following sentences

d. Bill Clinton is married to Hillary Rodham.

e. Bill Clinton remained single.

f. Bill Clinton  married someone distinct from Hillary Rodham.

Only the first sentence is true, but, I want to say, the other two are possibly true: they pick out merely possible states of affairs.  There are three possible worlds involved: the actual world and two merely possible worlds.  Now does 'Bill Clinton' pick out the same individual in each of these three worlds?  I am inclined to say yes, despite the fact that we cannot completely describe the world in which our boy remains single or the world in which he marries someone other than Hillary.  But Rescher will have none of this because his conceptualism/constructivism/ artifactualism bars him from holding that actual individuals in merely possible worlds or merely possible individuals have properties other that those we hypothesize them as having.  So, given the finitude of our hypothesizing, actual individuals in merely possible worlds, or merely possible individuals, can only be incomplete items, multiply realizable schemata, and thus not genuine individuals.  But then the possible is assimilated to the fictional.

5, How solve the triad?  Novak will put God to work and adopt something along the lines of (S5).  I am inclined to say that the problem, while genuine, is insoluble, and that the aporetic triad is a genuine aporia.

Comments

[Steven Nemes]

Bill,

Here is an argument that whatever is real is not necessarily actual. Or, at the very least, an argument that such a principle has to be specified further.

Consider the example of danger. You perceive danger in a situation, e.g. you see a bear cub at some small distance from you as you are hiking. What is the danger that you perceive? It is the possibility for imminent harm. But it is not something actual, since so long as you are merely in danger, nothing has actually happened to you. The danger is real, but it is not something actual, but only something possible -- unless you want to call it something actually possible?

What do you think?

[BV]

Steven,

In this case I fear my being attacked by a bear. The fear is an intentional state, and its object is a state of affairs, one that is not actual as you say, and is therefore merely possible.

If your thesis is that there are really possible states of affairs that are not actual, then of course I agree.

The philosophical problem I am addressing above is the problem of the ontological status of merely possible states of affairs and merely possible individuals. I am not denying that the merely possible is real. I am asking how we are to understand the reality of the merely possible.

Rescher thinks that the reality of the merely possible is the reality of that which is constructed by us -- a theory which is hardly obvious and I would say untenable.

[Steven Nemes]

Bill,

I would think that once you've admitted the reality of the merely possible, contrary to your (c) above, you've answered the question. The merely possible represents an irreducible ontological category and that's that. Why not?

[David Brightly]

Bill, you write,

The purely fictional is barred from actuality by its very status as purely fictional: Sherlock Holmes cannot be actualized. What cannot be actualized is not possible; it is impossible. Sherlock Holmes is an impossible item.

Conan Doyle wrote the Holmes stories as if they were accounts of Holmes's investigations written up by Dr. Watson. What you say is very much at odds with the intuition that there is a possible world in which a John Watson writes a history of a detective called Sherlock Holmes using exactly Conan Doyle's words.

[BV]

Hi David,

"There are two main problems with the claim that fictional objects are possible objects. One is the problem of impossible fictional objects. Some fictional objects are ascribed incompatible properties in their home fiction by their original author (usually inadvertently). This seems to be sufficient for them to have those properties according to their home fiction, for what the author says in the fiction (inadvertently or not) seems to hold the highest authority on truth in that fiction. On the assumption that a fictional object has a given property if it has that property according to its home fiction, those fictional objects are impossible objects, for no possible object has incompatible properties. The other problem is the failure of uniqueness. It may be viewed as the problem of meeting the Quinean demand for clear identity conditions. Holmes is a particular fictional object. So if we are to identify Holmes with a possible object, we should identify Holmes with a particular possible object. But there are many particular possible objects that are equally suited for the identification with Holmes. One of them has n-many hairs, whereas another has (n+1)-many hairs. No fictional story about a particular fictional object written or told by a human being is detailed enough to exclude all possible objects but one to be identified with that fictional object, unless it is a fiction about an actual object or a non-actual possible object analogous to Kaplan’s automobile or Salmon’s Noman."

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/possible-objects/#FicObj

[David Brightly]

Hello Bill. Yes, and we have discussed some of these arguments in these pages. I was hoping you would comment on my modal intuition that Conan Doyle's words appear as history in some possible world. If this intuition is well-founded then Sherlock would seem to be a possible item, contradicting the standard argument re fictional and possible objects.

[Lukas Novak]

Bill,

you say:

Sherlock Holmes is an impossible item. He is impossible because he is incomplete. Only the complete (completely determinate) is actualizable. Sherlock is incomplete because he is the creation of a finite fiction writer: Sherlock has all and only the properties ascribed to him by Conan Doyle.

I agree that only the complete is actualizable but I deny that Holmes is incomplete. Here is my argument: Even granting that there is an item which has exactly those properties that Doyle ascribed to Holmes, such an item -- let us call him "Ho", is not Holmes. For according to Doyle, Holmes is a man (= would be a man if he existed). Every man is complete; but Ho is not complete, so Ho is not a man, and therefore he is not Holmes.

Those who claim that ficticious entities are incomplete and impossible (which seems to be almost everybody) seem to confuse the properties of the conceived object in itself with the properties of the object insomuch as it is conceived. Holmes is incomplete insomuch as he is conceived -- as pretty much any conceived item is, due to the limited nature of our cognitive faculties. But in himself, Holmes is not incomplete. He was not intended to be an incomplete object in himself by his author (unlike Carrol's Cheshire Cat's Grin). Almost any writer intends to describe coherent, possible, and therefore complete characters and stories, despite, inevitably, describing them incompletely. Writers strive to describe an "alternative reality", as it were, for the reader. Not some weird world of incomplete logical freaks.

We never succeed in completely describing an object. But this is does not preclude us from referring to complete objects. And it is a feature of our conceptual knowledge that it is insensitive to their existential status: a concept is indifferent to the fact whether its objet exists or not, i.e. whether it is actual or merely possible. Therefore, if a concept can refer to complete actual objects, in spite of conceiving them incompletely, it can also refer to complete merely possible objects, because it refers to objects irrespective of their existential status.

[Lukas Novak]

Bill,

responding to your two problems with the claim that fictional objects are possible objects:

(1) Inadvertent ascritpions of incompatible properties. What problem is that, I wonder? Yes, some authors fail to describe possible objects in their fictions. The fact that they do it mostly inadvertently and that they consider it a failure shows that their intention is (in most cases) to describe possible, not impossible objects. If this is so, then all their descriptions can be construed as containing a tacit provision, "all inadvertent inconsistencies being suitably resolved".

(2) Failure of uniqueness. Of course no fictional story is is detailed enough to pin down exactly one individual. But from that does not follow that it pins down an incomplete impossible freak instead. Rather, it follows that the reference to that particular possible individual is vague or indefinite. But it it still is a reference to an individual, not to a class of individuals, nor to a universal, an incomplete object, or whatever.

It is like offering someone a cigar by presenting him an open cigar box full of cigars. By saying "have a cigar", you are referring to one cigar from the box (not to all of them -- you are not offering him to take all of them; and not something else), but it is undetermined which one. And if the person declines, it remains forever undetermined -- but nevertheless, you succeeded in offering him one of the cigars in the box. In a similar way, a fiction-writer succeeds in referring to one of the individuals satisfying his descriptions, without it being determined which one. And the writer does not care, for if he cared, he would be more specific in the respective point cared about.

The fact that we do not have a de re epistemic rapport with the possible individuals (as we can only refer to them through descriptions) does not preclude the possibility of de re (rigid) reference to them. In fact, it seems that we do not have de re epistemic rapport with actual individuals either (or else we would always be capable of telling qualitatively indiscernible individuals -- such as identical twins -- form each other), and yet we can -- pace Quine -- have semantic de re rapport with them.