Against Ostrich Nominalism (2021 Update)

Cyrus asked me whether being an ostrich indicates a moral defect. He is invited to repeat his question in his own words in the Comments. Logically prior question: what is an ostrich? The entry below is a redacted version of one from January 2013.

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As magnificent a subject as philosophy is, grappling as it does with the ultimate concerns of human existence, and thus surpassing in nobility any other human pursuit, it is also miserable in that nothing goes uncontested, and nothing ever gets established to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners.  (This is true of other disciplines as well, but in philosophy it is true in excelsis.) Suppose I say, as I have in various places:

That things have properties and stand in relations is a plain Moorean fact beyond the reach of reasonable controversy. After all, my cat is black and he is sleeping next to my blue coffee cup.  ‘Black’ picks out a property, an extralinguistic feature of my cat.

Is that obvious?  Not to some.  Not to the ornery and recalcitrant critter known as the ostrich nominalist.  My cat, Max Black, is black.  That, surely, is a Moorean fact. Now consider the following biconditional and consider whether it too is a Moorean fact:

1. Max is black iff Max has the property of being black.

As I see it, there are three main ways of construing a biconditional such as (1):

A.  Ostrich Nominalism.  The right-hand side (RHS) says exactly what the left-hand side (LHS) says, but in a verbose and high-falutin' and dispensable way.  Thus the use of 'property' on the RHS does not commit one ontologically to properties beyond predicates.  (By definition, predicates are linguistic items while properties are extralinguistic and extramental.)  For the ostrich nominalist, predication is primitive and in no need of  philosophical explanation.  On this approach, (1) is trivially true.  One needn't posit properties, and in consequence one needn't worry about the nature of property-possession. (Is Max related to his blackness, or does Max have his blackness quasi-mereologically  by having it as an ontological constituent of him?) And if one needn't posit properties, no questions need arise about what they are: sets? universals? tropes? mereological sums? and so on.

B. Ostrich Realism.  The RHS commits one ontologically to properties, but in no sense does the RHS serve to ground or explain the LHS.  On this approach, (1) is false if there are no properties.  For the ostrich realist, (1) is true, indeed necessarily true, but it is not the case that the LHS is true because the RHS is true.  Such notions as metaphysical grounding and philosophical explanation are foreign to the ostrich realist, but not in virtue of his being a realist, but  in virtue of his being an ostrich. Peter van Inwagen is an ostrich realist.

C. Non-Ostrich Realism.  On this approach, the RHS both commits one to properties, but also proffers a metaphysical ground of the truth of the LHS: the LHS is true because (ontologically or metaphysically speaking, not causally)  the concrete particular Max has the property of being black, and not vice versa.

Note 1: Explanation is asymmetrical; biconditionality is symmetrical.

Note 2: Properties needn't be universals.  They might be (abstract) particulars (unrepeatables) such as the tropes of D. C. Williams and the abstract particulars of Keith Campbell.  Properties must, however, be extralinguistic and extramental,  by definition.

Note 3: Property-possession needn't be understood in terms of instantiation or exemplification or Fregean 'falling-under'; it might be construed quasi-mereologically as constituency: a thing has a property by having it as a proper ontological part.

Against Ostrich Nominalism

On (A) there are neither properties, nor do properties enter into any explanation of predication.  Predication is primitive and in need of no explanation.  In virtue of what does 'black' correctly apply to Max? In virtue of nothing.  It just applies to him and does so correctly.  Max is black, but there is no feature of reality that explains why 'black' is true of Max, or why 'Max is black' is true.  It is just true!  There is nothing in reality that serves as the ontological ground of this contingent truth.  Nothing 'makes' it true.  There are no truth-makers and no need for any.

I find ostrich nominalism preposterous.  'Black' is true of Max, 'white' is not, but there is no feature of reality, nothing in or at or about Max that explains why the one predicate is true of him and the other is not!?  This is not really an argument but more an expression of incomprehension or incredulity, an autobiographical comment, if you will.  I may just be petering out, pace  Peter van Inwagen.

Can I do better than peter?  'Black' is a predicate of English.  Schwarz is a predicate of German.  If there are no properties,  then Max is black relative to English, schwarz relative to German, noir relative to French, and thus no one color.  But this is absurd.  Max is not three different colors, but one color, the color we use 'black' to pick out, and the Germans use schwarz to pick out. When Karl, Pierre, and I look at Max we see the same color.  So there is one color we both see -- which would not be the case if there were no properties beyond predicates.  It is not as if I see the color black while Karl sees the color schwarz.  We see the same color.  And we see it at the cat.  This is not a visio intellectualis whereby we peer into some Platonic topos ouranios.  Therefore, there is something in, at, or about the cat, something extralinguistic, that grounds the correctness of the application of the predicate to the cat.

A related argument.  I say, 'Max is black.'  Karl says, Max ist schwarz.  'Is' and ist are token-distinct and type-distinct words of different languages.  If there is nothing in reality (no relation whether of instantiation or of constituency, no non-relational tie, Bergmannian nexus, etc.) that the copula picks out, then it is only relative to German that Max ist schwarz, and only relative to English that Max is black.  But this is absurd.  There are not two different facts here but one.  Max is the same color for Karl and me, and his being black is the same fact for Karl and me. Copulae as bits of language belonging to different languages are token-distinct and type-distinct. But they pick out the copulative tie that is logically and metaphysically antecedent to language.  Or will you say that reality is language all the way down? That way lies the madness of an absurd linguistic idealism.

Finally, 'Max is black' is true.  Is it true ex vi terminorum?  Of course not.  It is contingently true.  Is it just contingently true?  Of course not.  It is true because of the way extralinguistic reality is arranged. It is modally contingent (possibly false if true; possibly true if false), but also contingent upon the way the world is.  There's this cat that exists whether or not any language exists, and it is black whether or not any language exists.

Therefore, I say that for a predicate to be contingently true of an individual, (i) there must be individuals independently of language; (ii) there must be properties independently of language; and there must be facts or truth-making states of affairs independently of language.  Otherwise, you end up with (i) total linguistic idealism, which is absurd; or (ii) linguistic idealism about properties which is absurd; or (iii) a chaos, a world of disconnected particulars and properties.

The above is a shoot-from-the hip, bloggity-blog exposition of ideas that can be put more rigorously, but it seems to to me to show that ostrich nominalism and ostrich realism for that matter are untenable -- and this despite the fact that a positive theory invoking facts has its own very serious problems.

Metaphilosophical Coda: If a theory has insurmountable problems, these problems are not removed by the fact that every other theory has problems.  For it might be that no theory is tenable, while the problem itself is genuine.  If I argue against a position, that does not make me for its opposite. So when I argue against presentism in the philosophy of time that does not make me for eternalism, even if eternalism is the contradictory opposite of presentism.

One cannot exclude a priori the existence of genuine  aporiai or insolubilia.  Curators of logic museums take note.

Comments

[Cyrus]

Cyrus asked me whether being an ostrich indicates a moral defect. He is invited to repeat his question in his own words in the Comments.

So, yes. I asked if being an ostrich indicates a moral defect, and is therefore enough to disqualify someone as a competent practitioner in the sense Bill uses in his argument from disagreement. (This was a sort of belated reply to Bill raising Quine as an example of a competent practitioner who disagreed with a thesis I proposed didn't fall prey to his argument. The thread is on here somewhere.)

[oz]

>One cannot exclude a priori the existence of genuine aporiai or insolubilia. Curators of logic museums take note.

I’m impressed with the Greek plural.

Logic has little to say about genuine aporiai, if they exist. If A and B are both self-evident, then logic (1) will tell us whether they lead, directly or indirectly, to a contradiction, and (2) may give some insight into the nature of the self-evidence, e.g. whether the predicate is included in the subject, or conversely.

Generally the aporiai result from some elementary logical slip. As Ockham writes

… because it often happens that younger students of theology and other faculties overlay their study with subtleties, before they have much experience in logic, and through this fall into difficulties that are inexplicable to them - difficulties which are nonetheless little or nothing to others - and slip into manifold errors, casting off true demonstrations as if they were sophisms, and taking sophistry for demonstrations, I have been led to write this treatise, not infrequently by clarifying rules by both philosophical and theological examples, as I go along.

Not just younger students, in my view.

[Cyrus]

Oz,

What do you mean by 'self-evident'?

[Cyrus]

Generally the aporiai result from some elementary logical slip. As Ockham writes

… because it often happens that younger students of theology and other faculties overlay their study with subtleties, before they have much experience in logic, and through this fall into difficulties that are inexplicable to them - difficulties which are nonetheless little or nothing to others - and slip into manifold errors, casting off true demonstrations as if they were sophisms, and taking sophistry for demonstrations, I have been led to write this treatise, not infrequently by clarifying rules by both philosophical and theological examples, as I go along.

Among scholastics, I slightly prefer Ockham's great rival to Ockham himself.

[BV]

Cyrus,

Why do you think that an ostrich nominalist suffers from a moral defect?

[Cyrus]

Bill,

When listing moral flaws in “A Quasi-Pyrrhonian Metaphilosophical Puzzle”, you write that the competent practitioner must be 'a sincere truth seeker, not a quibbler or a sophist'. Ostriches (especially as Armstrong uses the term) are people who refuse to face up to problems with their positions. They “stick their heads in the ground” and hold out come what may. This seems like an indication that they're not sincere truthseekers.

[BV]

Cyrus,

I believe that there are positions the holding of which shows moral deficiency on the part of the holder. But I doubt that ostrich nominalism is one of them.

Charitably viewed, the ostrich nominalist is so convinced of the untenability of other positions that he 'goes ostrich.' Like almost all philosophers, he is convinced that there just has to be a solution and so he plumps for his own, blind as he is to its problems due to his revulsion at the alternatives.

In virtue of what is 'red' true of the tomato? In virtue of nothing, the ostrich may snort, and follow up by refusing to grant the intelligibility of the question. He might simply deny that there is any such thing as metaphysical explanation.

The ostrich is a bird built close to the ground -- when he is not underground.

He needn't be a sophist or a quibbler.

[BV]

OZstrich,

>>Generally the aporiai result from some elementary logical slip.<<

That's impossible if the aporiai are genuine. What you want to say is that there are no problems that are both genuine and absolutely insoluble.

[Cyrus]

Bill,

You're right that this is a more charitable view of ostriches:

Charitably viewed, the ostrich nominalist is so convinced of the untenability of other positions that he 'goes ostrich.' Like almost all philosophers, he is convinced that there just has to be a solution and so he plumps for his own, blind as he is to its problems due to his revulsion at the alternatives.

Thank you.

The ostrich is a bird built close to the ground -- when he is not underground.

He needn't be a sophist or a quibbler.

Just to clarify, I don't think 'quibbler' and 'sophist' are the only alternatives to 'sincere truth seeker' (I'm not sure you think this either, but want to clarify just in case), and didn't mean to imply that ostriches are either sophists or quibblers. I had something more like dogmatists in the pejorative sense outlined below in mind:

The ancient sceptics labelled their opponents 'dogmatists'. The word 'dogmatist' in contemporary English has a pejorative tone – it hints at an irrational rigidity of opinion, a refusal to look impartially at the evidence. In its ancient sense the word lacked that tone: a dogmatist was simply someone who subscribed to dogmas or doctrines. We shall use the word in the ancient sense. The disadvantage of this practice is off-set by the convenience of having a short label for all those who are not sceptical philosophers. (Annas and Barnes, The Modes of Scepticism)

[Cyrus]

By the way, I realize asking a question like this runs the risk of being a bit rude. I trusted that 'a philosophical bar-room fighter' like Oz can handle a few cuts and bruises when I asked, but I am sorry to anyone I've been rude to or insulted by asking. That isn't my intention.

[BV]

Cyrus,

I doubt he'll take offense.