Intentionality, Singularity, and Individual Concepts

Herewith, some notes on R. M. Sainsbury, Intentionality without Exotica.  (Exotica are those items  that are "nonexistent, nonconcrete, or nonactual." (303) Examples include Superman and Arcadia.)

'Jack wants a sloop' could mean three different things. (a) There is a particular sloop Jack wants.  In this case, Jack's desire is externally singular.  Desire is an object-directed mental state, and in this case the object exists and is singular.

(b) There is no particular sloop Jack wants; what he wants is "relief from slooplessness" in Quine's phrase. In this case the desire, being "wholly non-specific," is not externally singular.  In fact, it is not singular at all.  Jack wants some sloop or other, but no particular sloop whether one that exists at present or one that is to be built.

(c) Jack wants a sloop of a certain description, one that, at the time of the initial desire, no external object satisfies. He contracts with a ship builder to build a sloop to his exact specifications, a sloop he dubs The Mary Jane. It turns out, however, that the sloop is never built.  In this case, Sainsbury tells us, the desire is not externally singular as in case (a), but internally singular:

The concept The Mary Jane that features in the content of the desire is the kind of concept appropriate to external singularity, though that kind of singularity is absent, so the desire counts as internally singular. The kind of concept that makes for singularity in thought is one produced by a concept-producing mechanism whose functional role is to generate concepts fit for using to think about individual things. I call such a concept an ‘‘individual concept’’ (Sainsbury 2005: 217ff). Individual concepts are individuated by the event in which they are introduced. In typical cases, and when all goes well, an act of attention to an object accompanies, or perhaps is a constituent of, the introduction of an individual concept, which then has that object as its bearer. In cases in which all does not go well, for example in hallucination, an individual concept is used by the subject as if it had an object even though it does not; an act internally indistinguishable from an act of attending to an object occurs, and in that act an individual concept without a bearer comes into being. A concept so introduced can be used in thought; for example an individual concept C  can be a component in wondering whether C is real or merely hallucinated. In less typical cases, it is known to the subject that the concept has no bearer. An example would be a case in which I know I am hallucinating.     

    External singularity is relational: a subject is related to an object. Internal singularity is not relational in this way. (301, bolding added.)

 

What interests me here is the notion of an individual concept (IC). We are told above that an IC is distinct from its bearer and can exist without a bearer.  So the existence and identity of an IC does not depend on its having a bearer. We are also told that one and the same IC can figure in both a veridical and a non-veridical  (hallucinatory) experience, the seeing of a dagger, say.  So it is not the bearer that individuates the IC. What individuates it is the mental event by which it is introduced.

 

To these two points I add a third: it is built into the sense of 'individual concept' that if an individual concept C has a bearer, then it has exactly one bearer in the actual world, and the same bearer in every  possible world in which it has a bearer.  So if there is an individual concept SOCRATES, and it has a bearer, then it has exactly one bearer, Socrates, and not possibly anything distinct from Socrates.  This implies that individual concepts of externally singular items are as singular in content as the items of which they are the concepts. This in turn implies that no individual concept of an externally singular item is general:  no such concept is multiply instantiable or multiply 'bearable.'

 

I now add a fourth point: concepts are mental entities in the sense that they cannot exist apart from minds. Concepts are representations and therefore mental entities in the sense indicated.  A fifth point is that our minds are finite and our powers of conceptualization correspondingly limited. One obvious limit on our power to conceptualize is that no concept of ours can capture or grasp the haecceity (thisness) of any externally singular item.  We ectypal intellects cannot conceptually eff the ineffable, where what is ineffable is the individual in its individuality or singularity or haecceity, i.e.,  in that which makes it be this individual and no other actual or possible individual.  God, the archetypal intellect, may be able to grasp the haecceity of an individual, but this is clearly beyond our 'pay grade.' If God can do it, this is presumably because he creates the individual ex nihilo.

 

It follows from the fourth and fifth points that all of our concepts are general.  Suppose that the concept FASTEST MARATHONER (FM) applies to Jones. That concept is general despite the fact that at any given time t only one person can instantiate or bear it.   For at times earlier and later than t, some other runners were and will be the FM.  Therefore, FM does not capture Jones' haecceity. But even if Jones is the FM at every time in the actual world, there are possible worlds in which some other person is the FM at every time. What's more, at any time at which Jones is the FM, he might not have been the FM at that time.

 

Sainsbury's theory of individual concepts strikes me as incoherent.  The following cannot all be true:

 

1) There are individual concepts.

2) Concepts are representations in finite minds, and our minds are finite.

3) Individual concepts of externally singular items must be as singular in content as the items of which they are the concepts.

4) Every externally singular item exists. (There are no 'exotica.')

5) Every externally singular item is wholly determinate or complete where x is complete =_df x  satisfies the property version of the Law of Excluded Middle (tertium non datur).

6) No concept in a finite mind of an externally singular item is singular in content in the sense of encoding every property of the wholly determinate or complete thing of which it is the concept.

7) One and the same individual concept can figure in both a veridical and a non-veridical  (hallucinatory) experience.

 

Sainsbury is committed to each of these seven propositions, and yet they cannot all be true. The first five propositions, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of (6).   Or if (6) is true, then (1) is false.  (6) and (7) cannot both be true.

 

I conclude that there are no individual concepts, and that the distinction between externally singular and internally singular object-directed mental states cannot be upheld.  

Comments

[oz]

I agree with the proposition (6) that "No concept in a finite mind of an externally singular item is singular in content in the sense of encoding every property of the wholly determinate or complete thing of which it is the concept", hence disagree with (7).

You conclude "there are no individual concepts". But you haven't defined 'individual concept'. How does your argument engage with the argument in Reference and Identity for 'anaphoric' singular/individual concepts? These are ultimately 'internal' in your sense. I say 'ultimately' because such anaphoric concepts are communicable or shareable, so long as we all have access to the antecedent text. And they are individual, in the sense that they cannot be plural, and continue to be anaphoric in modal contexts.

[oz]

Oh I see that Sainsbury defines 'individual concept'. But then is your conclusion directed against individual concepts as he defines them, or individual concepts in general? If the former, you should make this clear. If the latter, you should explain how you rule out anaphoric concepts as a possibility.