Ontologically Serious and Unserious Uses of 'Something' and the Problem of Reference to the Nonexistent

If Jane is friendly, then there is something Jane is, namely, friendly. But one hesitates to infer either

1) There is (exists) such an object as friendly

which is not even well-formed, or

1*) There is (exists) such an object as friendliness

which is well-formed but offensive to the nominalist sensibility. 'Jane is friendly' commits one to Jane but not obviously to the property of being friendly. 

According to Sainsbury and Tye (Seven Puzzles of Thought and How to Solve Them, Oxford UP, 2012, p. 114), "'There is something' is not an object quantifier" in sentences like 'There is something that Jane is, namely, friendly.' In such cases, 

The 'thing' in 'something' is not ontologically serious. By contrast, expressions like 'object' and 'entity are used in philosophical discourse  to mark ontological commitment; and words like 'dagger' and 'fountain of youth' are used by everyone in that way in extensional contexts. (ibid.)

The idea is that there are two senses/uses of 'something.' One is ontologically serious because ontologically committal while the other is not.  If I kick a ball, then there is  something I kick. (Ontologically committal use of 'something' in an extensional context.) If Macbeth hallucinated a dagger, then there is something Macbeth hallucinated, namely, a dagger. (Ontologically noncommittal use of 'something' in an intensional/intentional context.)

Do we have here the makings of a solution to the ancient problem of apparent reference to the nonexistent?  I don't think so. 

Go back to Jane. Jane is friendly.  So there is something she is, namely, friendly. So far, so good. Everything is clear. But trouble starts and murk intrudes when we are told that the 'something' in play here is ontologically noncommittal: there is nothing in reality that Jane is, or is related to in virtue of which she is friendly. Thus there is no property, friendliness, that she instantiates, or any property that she has as a constituent, or anything like that. In reality there is just Jane.  But then what is the difference between Jane's being friendly and her being unfriendly?

It is evident to me that there has to be something in reality that grounds that difference. If you deny this, I will not understand you. Suppose you say  that Jane's being friendly  is just the circumstance that someone attached or applied the predicate 'is friendly' to her.  I will say: So she needs to be called friendly to BE friendly? That is absurd.  If I called her unfriendly, would she then be unfriendly? What if I called her anorexic? IS she whatever I SAY she is? Has she no properties independently of my say-so? If no one called her anything, would she have no properties at all?  Before the evolution of languages was the Earth neither spheroid nor non-spheroid?  Is there no difference between a predicate's being true of an individual and its being applied to or predicated of an individual? 

These considerations convince me that the distinction between ontologically serious and  unserious uses of 'something' has not been established.  Note that it needs to be established independently of the Macbeth problem.  To first introduce it as a solution to the Macbeth problem would be ad hoc.

There is also this question: what is the difference between saying that there is something -- in the ontologically unserious sense -- that Macbeth hallucinated and saying that Macbeth hallucinated a Meinongian nonexistent object?  How does the Sainsbury and Tye solution differ from a Meinongian one?

Comments

[oz]

I think you have a point there. Both usages are surely 'ontologically serioues'. The world is different when Jane is friendly, from how it is when she is frowny and hostile.

Not that I see any challenge to nominalism in what you say.

[BV]

What does the 'something' in 'There is something that Jane is, namely, friendly' commit one to?

[oz]

>What does the 'something' in 'There is something that Jane is, namely, friendly' commit one to?

Being friendly.

Note also my email. You haven't characterised Sainsbury's position correctly.

[BV]

I don't know what you are saying. You need to explain how a nominalist can be ontologically committed to being friendly (friendliness, the property of being friendly). Are you a trope theorist?

[BV]

Consider these two sentences

1) If I kick a ball, then something is such that I kick it.

2) If I hallucinate a ball, then something is such that I hallucinate it.

Now we presumably agree that one cannot kick what does not exist, and that whatever one hallucinates does not exist. And I take it that we agree that both sentences are true.

Now explain to me how both occurrences of 'something' are ontologically unserious, i.e., ontologically noncommittal.

Is this valid?

Venus is a planet
ergo
Something is a planet.

If that is a valid inference, and 'Venus' is ontologically committal, then 'something' in the conclusion must also be.

[oz]

>If I hallucinate a ball, then something is such that I hallucinate it.

The Sainsbury position is that ‘something’ is never serious, but requires ‘markers’. Sainsbury mentions the terms ‘object’ and ‘entity’. On my version of the Sainsbury theory, the relevant markers include putting ‘something’ in the grammatical subject position, plus ‘is such that’, which is the ‘marker’.

Hence the move from “I hallucinate something” to “Something is such that I hallucinate it” is fallacious, since it moves from a nonserious context, to a serious one. Sainsbury’s point (and mine) is that the marking is not done by ‘something’, but rather by other terms.

I set all this out at length in previous posts on the subject. You remember ‘the Intentionalist fallacy’?

Re your 'Venus' example, note that 'something' occurs as a grammatical subject. You could strengthen the conclusion by adding 'is such that'.

[BV]

Sainsbury didn't mention markers in his article. So I don't know what you are saying above.

Active voice: I kicked something.
Passive voice: Something was kicked by me.

Both can be true.

Active voice: I hallucinated something.
Passive voice: Something was hallucinated by me.

Only the first can be true.

It follows that 'something' has both ontologically serious and unserious uses. Is that not blindingly evident?

[oz]

>Sainsbury didn't mention markers in his article. So I don't know what you are saying above.

Sainsbury writes, and is quoted by you, saying “expressions like 'object' and 'entity are used in philosophical discourse TO MARK ontological commitment”. My emphasis in bold caps.

>Active voice: I hallucinated something. / Passive voice: Something was hallucinated by me. / Only the first can be true.

The active versus passive sense is discuss on p.125 of my Reference and Identity.

> It follows that 'something' has both ontologically serious and unserious uses. Is that not blindingly evident?

Sainsbury does not deny that ‘something’ can be used in both ontologically serious and unserious contexts. However his argument is that it is the context, not the word ‘something’, that determines the seriousness.