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The sign reads, 'Peace.' It neglects to say that the desert is a place of unseen warfare.
The desert fathers of old believed in demons because of their experiences in quest of the "narrow gate" that only few find. They sought to perfect themselves and so became involved as combatants in what Lorenzo Scupoli called il combattimento spirituale. They felt thwarted in their practices by opponents both malevolent and invisible. The moderns do not try to perfect themselves and so the demons leave them alone. They prefer deserts to flesh pots when it comes to hunting. Those who luxuriate in the latter have already been captured.
Moderns who enter the desert for spiritual purposes need to be aware that they may get more than they bargained for.
The Laureate of Low Life is against it. Surprised? Of some interest. Not that I think much of Buk. But you know my masthead motto: "Study everything . . . ." My Bukowski category currently sports 13 entries.
What do he and I have in common? Cacoethes scribendi. We both like to write, Write, and WRITE some more. And we both worked at the Terminal Annex postal facility in Los Angeles. And lived on Mariposa Avenue in the City of the [fallen] Angels. LaLa Land. El Lay (Cheech and Chong).
The last three horrible years make my annual Thanksgiving homily ring somewhat hollow, especially the penultimate line:
And don't forget the country that allows you to live your own kind of life in your own kind of way and say and write whatever you think in peace and safety.
This is no longer true. We are no longer the "land of the free." You are not free if you cannot express your thoughtful and heart-felt opinions without fear of reprisal. Step out of line and you will be destroyed, if not physically, then politically and economically. Examples are legion. Here is one of an increasing many.
Still and all, we have much something to be grateful for. But we will have to redouble our efforts to preserve the objects of our gratitude, in particular, what remains of our liberty, and our "sweet land of liberty." Patriots are waking up to the depredations of 'Woke' and there is reason to be hopeful. So be of good cheer, do your bit, and long live the Republic! Never give up, never give in, fight hard, and fight to win. There are a lot of us and we can win if we hang together which, to paraphrase a Founder, beats hanging separately.
Facts are the logical objects corresponding to whole declarative sentences, or rather to some of them. When it comes to facts, Panayot Butchvarov appreciates the strengths and weaknesses of both realism and anti-realism. For the realist, there are facts. For the anti-realist, there are no facts. Let us briefly review why both positions are attractive yet problematic. We will then turn to semirealism as to a via media between Scylla and Charybdis.
Take some such contingently true affirmative singular sentence as 'Al is fat.' Surely with respect to such sentences there is more to truth than the sentences that are true. There must be something external to the sentence that contributes to its being true, and this external something is not plausibly taken to be another sentence or the say-so of some person, or anything like that. 'Al is fat' is true because there is something in extralinguistic and extramental reality that 'makes' it true. There is this short man, Al, and the guy weighs 250 lbs. There is nothing linguistic or mental about the man or his weight. Here is the sound core of correspondence theories of truth. Our sample sentence is not just true; it is true because of the way the world outside the mind and outside the sentence is configured. The 'because' is not a causal 'because.' The question is not the empirical-causal one as to why Al is fat. He is fat because he eats too much. The question concerns the ontological ground of the truth of the sentential representation, 'Al is fat.' Since it is obvious that the sentence cannot just be true -- given that it is not true in virtue either of its logical form or ex vi terminorum -- we must posit something external to the sentence that 'makes' it true. I myself, a realist, don't see how this can be avoided even though I admit that 'makes true' is not perfectly clear.
Now what is the nature of this external truth-maker? It can't be Al by himself, and it can't be fatness by itself. Nor can it be the pair of the two. For it could be that Al exists and fatness exists, but the first does not instantiate the second. What's needed, apparently, is the fact of Al's being fat. So it seems we must add the category of fact to our ontology, to our categorial inventory. Veritas sequitur esse is not enough. It is not enough that 'Al' and 'fat' have worldly referents; the sentence as a whole needs a worldly referent. Truth-makers cannot be 'things' or collections of same, but must be entities of a different categorial sort. (Or at least this is so for the simple predications we are now considering.)
The argument I have just sketched, the truth-maker argument for facts, is very powerful, but it gives rises to puzzles and protests. There is the Strawsonian protest that facts are merely hypostatized sentences, shadows genuine sentences cast upon the world. Butchvarov quotes P. F. Strawson's seminal 1950 discussion: “If you prise the sentences off the world, you prise the facts off it too. . . .” (Anthropocentrism in Philosophy, 174) Strawson again: “The only plausible candidate for what (in the world) makes a sentence true is the fact it states; but the fact it states is not something in the world.” (174)
Why aren't facts in the world? Consider the putative fact of my table's being two inches from the wall. Obviously, this fact is not itself two inches from the wall or in any spatial position. The table and the wall are in space; the fact is not. One can drive a nail into the table or into the wall, but not into the fact, etc. Considerations such as these suggest to the anti-realist that facts are not in the world and that they are but sentences reified. After all, to distinguish a fact from a non-fact (whether a particular or a universal) we must have recourse to a sentence in the indicative mood: a fact is introduced as the worldly correlate of a true sentence. If there is no access to facts except via sentences, as the correlates of true sentences, then this will suggest to those of an anti-realist bent that facts are hypostatizations of true declarative sentences.
One might also cite the unperceivability of facts as a reason to deny their existence. I see the table, and I see the wall. It may also be granted that I see that the desk is about two inches from the wall. But does it follow that I see a relational fact? Not obviously. If I see a relational fact, then presumably I see the relation two inches from. But I don't see this relation. And so, Butchvarov argues (175) that one does not see the relational fact either. The invisibility of relations and facts is a strike against them. Another of the puzzles about facts concerns how a fact is related to its constituents. Obviously a fact is not identical to its constituents. This is because the constituents can exist without the fact existing. Nor can a fact be an entity in addition to its constituents, something over and above them, for the simple reason that it is composed of them. We can put this by saying that no fact is wholly distinct from its constituents. The fact is more than its constituents, but apart from them it is nothing. A third possibility is that a fact is the togetherness of its constituents, where this togetherness is grounded in a a special unifying constituent. Thus the fact of a's being F consists of a, F-ness, and a nexus of exemplification. But this leads to Bradley's regress.
A fact is not something over and above its constituents but their contingent unity. This unity, however, cannot be explained by positing a special unifying constituent, on pain of Bradley's regress. So if a fact has a unifier, that unifier must be external to the fact. But what in the world could that be? Presumably nothing in the world. It would have to be something outside the (phenomenal) world. It would have to be something like Kant's transcendental unity of apperception. I push this notion in an onto-theological direction in my book, A Paradigm Theory of Existence: Onto-Theology Vindicated. But by taking this line, I move away from the realism that the positing of facts was supposed to secure. Facts are supposed to be ontological grounds, extramental and extralinguistic. If mind or Mind is brought in in any form to secure the unity of a truth-making fact, then we end up with some form of idealism, whether pschological or transcendental or onto-theological.
So we are in an aporetic pickle. We have good reason to be realists and we have good reason to be anti-realists. (The arguments above on both sides were mere sketches; they are stronger than they might appear. ) Since we cannot be both realists and anti-realists, we might try to mediate the positions and achieve a synthesis. My book was one attempt at a synthesis. Butchvarov's semi-realism is another. I am having a hard time, though, understanding how exactly Butchvarov's semi-realism achieves the desired synthesis. Butchvarov:
Semirealism regarding facts differs from realism regarding facts by denying that true sentences stand for special entities, additional to and categorially different from the entities mentioned in the sentences, that can be referred to, described, and analyzed independently of the sentences. [. . .] But semirealism regarding facts also differs from antirealism regarding facts by acknowledging that there is more to truth than the sentences . . . that are true. (180)
In terms of my simple example, semirealism about facts holds that there is no special entity that the sentence 'Al is fat' stands for that is distinct from what 'Al and 'fat' each stand for. In reality, what we have at the very most are Al and fatness, but not Al's being fat. Semirealism about facts also holds, however, that a sentence like 'Al is fat' cannot just be true: if it is true there must be something that 'makes' it true, where this truth-maker cannot be another sentence (proposition, belief, judgment, etc.) or somebody's say-so, or something merely cultural or institutional or otherwise conventional. And let's not forget: the truth-maker cannot be Al by himself or fatness by itself or even the pair of the two. For that pair (ordered pair, set, mereological sum . . .) could exist even if Al is not fat. (Suppose Al exists and fatness exists in virtue of being instantiated by Harry but not by Al.)
How can semirealism avoid the contradiction: There are facts and there are no facts? If the realist says that there are facts, and that anti-realist says that there aren't, the semi-realist maintains that 'There are facts' is an “improper proposition” (178) so that both asserting it and denying it are improper. In explaining the impropriety, Butchvarov relies crucially on Wittgenstein's distinction between formal and material concepts and his related distinction between saying and showing. Obscurum per obscurius? Let's see.
The idea seems to be that while one can show that there are facts by using declarative sentences, one cannot say or state that there are facts by using declarative sentences, or refer to any particular fact by using a declarative sentence. If there are facts, then we should be able to give an example of one. 'This page is white is a fact,' won't do because it is ill-formed. (179) We can of course say, in correct English, 'That this page is white is a fact.' But 'that this page is white' is not a sentence, but a noun phrase. Not being a sentence, it cannot be either true or false. And since it cannot be either true or false, it cannot refer to a proposition-like item that either obtains or does not obtain. So 'that this page is white' does not refer to a fact. We cannot use this noun phrase to refer to the fact because what we end up referring to is an object, not a fact. Though a fact is not a sentence or a proposition, it is proposition-like: it has a structure that mirrors the structure of a proposition. No object, however, is proposition-like. To express the fact we must use the sentence. Using the sentence, we show what cannot be said.
On one reading, Butchvarov's semirealism about facts is the claim that there are facts but they cannot be named. They cannot be named because the only device that could name them would be a sentence and sentences are not names. On this reading, Butchvarov is close to Frege. Frege held that there are concepts, but they cannot be named. Only objects can be named, and concepts are not objects. If you try to name a concept, you will not succeed, for what is characteristic of concepts, and indeed all functions, is that they are unsaturated (ungesaettigt). And so we cannot say either
The concept horse is a concept
or
The concept horse is not a concept.
The first, though it looks like a tautology, is actually false because 'The concept horse' picks out an object. The second, though it looks like a contradiction, is actually true for the same reason. Similarly, we cannot say either
The fact that snow is white is a fact
or
The fact that snow is white is not a fact.
The first, though it looks like a tautology, is actually false because 'The fact that snow is white' picks out an object. The second, though it looks like a contradiction, is actually true for the same reason.
It is the unsaturatedness of Fregean concepts that makes them unnameable, and it is the proposition-like character of facts that makes them unnameable.
Semirealism about facts, then, seems to be the view that there are facts, but that we cannot say that there are: they have a nature which prevents us from referring to them without distorting them. But then the position is realistic, and 'semirealism' is not a good name for it: the 'semirealism' is more epistemological/referential than ontological.
Other things Butchvarov says suggest that he has something else in mind with 'semirealism about facts.' If he agrees with Strawson that facts are hypostatized declarative sentences, and argues against them on the ground of their unperceivability, then he cannot be saying that there are facts but we cannot say that there are. He must be denying that there are facts. But then why isn't he a flat-out antirealist?
Can you help me, Butch? What am I not understanding? What exactly do you mean by 'semirealism about facts'?
BUTCHVAROV RESPONDS:
Butch,
Thanks for the response. You never say "There are facts and there are no facts." But it seems to me that you give good arguments for both limbs of this (apparent) contradiction. Because the arguments on both sides are impressive, we have a very interesting, and vexing, problem on our hands, especially if you hold, as I think you do, that there are no true contradictions.
I was under the impression that the doctrine of semirealism (about facts) was supposed to eliminate the contradiction and show it to be merely apparent. It seems to me that if we distinguish between existence and subsistence as two different modes of Being, then we could say that while facts do not exist in the way their constituents do, they are not nothing either -- they don't exist but subsist. This would seem to be a way between the horns of the dilemma. In your brilliant formulation, "There is more to the truth of sentences than the sentences that are true." On the other hand, there are the Strawsonian and other arguments against facts. On this way of looking at things, semirealism comes down to a doctrine of modes of Being.
What I don't understand however, is how this is supposed to square with Wittgenstein's say vs. show distinction.
On p. 76 of Anthropocentrism you refer to the existence-subsistence distinction. But then on p. 77 you say that this distinction is not the same as W's distinction between what can be said and what can only be shown -- though it resembles it in motivation.
So here is my criticism: you are not using 'semirealism' univocally. If a subsistent, a number say, is semireal, then that is clear to me since I myself advocate (against most contemp. anal. phils.) distinctions between modes of Being. But if you say that numbers are semireal in the sense that 'There are numbers' cannot be *said,* that the existence of numbers can only be *shown* by the use of numerals, then that is a quite different use of 'semireal.'
Why? Because one could take the say-show line while holding that there are no modes of Being, and vice versa.
So I have two problems. One is that you seem to equivocate on 'semireal.' The other is that W's say-show distinction is not clear to me. So if you explain semirealism in terms of the latter, then we have a case of *obscurum per obscurius.*
Butch,
Here is another concern of mine.
>>Frege’s “The concept horse is not a concept,” Meinong’s “there are things of which it is true that there are no such things,”<<
You assimilate these to each other. But I see a crucial difference. Meinong employs a paradoxical formulation for literary effect, a formulation that expresses a proposition that is in no way contradictory. All he is saying is that some items are beingless which you will agree is non-contradictory. In other words, the proposition, the thought, that Meinong is expressing by his clever formulation is non-contradictory despite the fact that the verbal formulation he employs is either contradictory (assuming that 'there are' is used univocally) or equivocal.
But what is going on in "The concept *horse* is not a concept" is quite different. What Frege is saying in effect is that we cannot refer to concepts in a way that preserves their predicative function, their unsaturatedness. 'The concept *horse*' is a name, and only objects can be named. So when we try to say anything about a concept we must fail inasmuch as a reference to a concept transforms it into an object thereby destroying its predicative function.
Frege anticipates Wittgenstein in this. I can say '7 is prime' but not 'Primeness is instantiated by 7.'
This is similar to the problem we have with propositions and facts (which have a proposition-like structure).
As you point out, 'Snow is white is true' is ill-formed. But 'That snow is white is true' is false inasmuch as 'That snow is white' is a nominal phrase that picks out an object, and no object can be true.
At his point someone might propose a disquotational-type theory according to which 'true' in 'That snow is white is true' does not express a property of something but merely serves to transform the nominal phrase back into the sentence 'Snow is white.'
What refutes this is your point that "There is more to the truth of sentences than the sentences that are true."
I am answering two posts. As to the one about Anscombe and GeacH, I agree completely, Bill. I’ve always marveled that philosophers like Anscombe and Geach were so easily influenced by Russell’s attacks on Meinong. Russell of course did know what Meinong meant and initially even agreed with him but then invented his theory of definite descriptions that allowed him to “analyze away” Meinong’s examples.
Now I come to the other post. I am not sure there is genuine disagreement between us. Regarding existence and subsistence, we might look at [Gustav]Bergmann. He “renounced his earlier distinction between existence and subsistence, subscribing now to the seeming paradox that ‘whatever is thinkable exists.’ Yet he acknowledged that ‘the differences among some of the several existents…are very great indeed…momentous, or enormous,’ thus acknowledging the rationale for the distinction” (page 142 of Anthropocentrism in Philosophy). Whether we “distinguish between existence and subsistence as two different modes of Being” or say that everything (‘thinkable’) exists though the differences among some existents are enormous seems to me a matter of words. I am uneasy about using the phrase “modes of Being” because it has had numerous other applications, e.g., matter and mind, universals and particulars, infinite and fine, and so on.
As to the meaning of “semireal,” let me begin with a quotation from the Introduction: “[I]n the case of metaphysical antirealism, numerous qualifications, distinctions, and explanations are needed. No metaphysical antirealist denies the reality of everything, just as no metaphysical realist asserts the reality of everything, including, say, the Easter Bunny. The solipsist says, ‘Only I exist,’ not ‘Nothing exists.’ Berkeley denied that there are material objects, he called them ‘stupid material substances,’ but he insisted on the existence of minds and their ideas. According to Kant.... material objects are ‘transcendentally ideal,’ dependent on our cognitive faculties, but they are nonetheless ‘empirically real,’ not mere fancy. Bertrand Russell distinguished between existence
and subsistence: some things do not exist, yet they are not nothing – they subsist; for example, material objects exist but universals only subsist. According to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, some things cannot be “said,” i. e., represented in language,but they “show” themselves in what can be said. Among them, he held, are those that matter most in logic, ethics, and religion” (page 15).
I try to explain Wittgenstein’s distinction between saying and showing as follows: “The distinction has a straightforward, noncontroversial application even to ordinary pictures, say, paintings and photographs, indeed to representations generally. And the [associated] picture theory [of meaning] is merely a subtler version of the traditional theory of meaning and thought, which was unabashedly representational, ‘pictorial’: thought involves ‘ideas,’ often explicitly understood as mental images or pictures, and the meaning of an expression is what it stands for” (page 67).”
“In a painting, much is shown that is not and cannot be pictured by the painting or any part of it. For example, the painting may represent a tree next to a barn, each represented by a part of the painting, and the spatial relation between the parts of the painting that represent the tree and the barn would represent their relation of being next to each other. But nothing in the painting represents that relation’s being a relation, nothing ‘says’ that their being next to each other is a relation (rather than, say, a shape or color). Yet the painting shows this, indeed must show it in order to represent what it does represent. What it shows cannot be denied as one might deny, for example, that the painting is a portrait of Churchill. The absence from the painting of what it only shows would not be like Churchill’s absence. Of course, paintings do not consist of words, and sentences are only ‘logical’ pictures. But like all pictures, physical or mental, paintings are logical pictures, though not all logical pictures are paintings” (page 68).
You write, “What I don't understand however, is how this [the distinction between real and semireal] is supposed to square with Wittgenstein's say vs. show distinction.” My concern is with logical semirealism, and Wittgenstein applied his distinction mainly to logical expressions. If some things cannot be said but show themselves, neither calling them real nor calling them unreal would be quite right. So I opted for calling them semireal. Of course, nothing of philosophical importance hangs on what word is chosen.
You write, “if you say that numbers are semireal in the sense that 'There are numbers' cannot be *said,* that the existence of numbers can only be *shown* by the use of numerals, then that is a quite different use of 'semireal.'” I have offered no view about numbers, though Wittgenstein did include “number” in his list of formal concepts: “’Object,’ ‘complex,’ ‘fact,’ ‘function,’ ‘number’ signify formal concepts, represented in logical notation by variables, for example, the pseudo-concept object by the variable ‘x’ (Tractatus 4.1272). The properties they appear to stand for are formal, internal, such that it is unthinkable that what they are attributed to should not possess them (4.123). For this reason it would be just as nonsensical to assert that something has a formal property as to deny it (4.124).” But Wittgenstein was aware that the status of numbers is far too complicated an issue to be resolved by just saying that “There are numbers” cannot be “said.” Much later he wrote his Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics.
Please forgive me for resorting to such lengthy quotations. I tried to avoid them but found what I was writing inferior to what I had already written.
Posted by: Panayot Butchvarov | Sunday, November 01, 2015 at 01:31 AM
I linked to this outstanding essay about seven years ago. It is jam-packed with insights. See if you agree. The graphic below is from the essay mentioned:
Schemata such as this are useful up to a point.
Substack latest
My Substack snowball is getting bigger and bigger. Time to monetize? Well, it's a labor of love and I've got enough loot to last me my sublunary tenure, assuming the Dementocrat destruction of the economy is kept within certain bounds.
I believe that Enough is Enough when it comes to material stuff. Whatever we are here for, we are not here to pile up loot and land. You have heard it said that in the end a man needs only six feet. And not even that if the crematorium is his body's last stop.
On the other hand, as foibled as we are psychologically, people tend to value more what they pay for. And if they are paying, then they may pay closer attention 'to get their money's worth.'
Or maybe they think like this: "This guy gives away his content for free; he must not think it is worth much."
On the third hand, If I sell a product, then I am in thrall to my customers and must cater to their wants and desires. This thrall thwarts my independence. I'm big on the latter.
So you can expect my articles to stay free, free for me and free for thee.
This just over the transom from Karl White:
Hope you're well. May be of interest.
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July 30, 2018 Dearest Robert, I feel about [Henri Nouwen] as I do about Thomas Merton. There is much self-deception and muddle in their lives; and yet there is an unwavering concentration on God.
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In an earlier post, drawing on the work of Henry E. Allison, I wrote:
The standard picture opens Kant to the devastating objection that by limiting knowledge to appearances construed as mental contents he makes knowledge impossible when his stated aim is to justify the objective knowledge of nature and oppose Humean skepticism. Allison reports that Prichard "construes Kant's distinction between appearances and things in themselves in terms of the classic example of perceptual illusion: the straight stick that appears bent to an observer when it is immersed in water." (p. 6) But then knowledge is rendered impossible, and Kant is reduced to absurdity.
Anyone who studies Kant in depth and in context and with an open mind should be able to see that his transcendental idealism is not intended as a subjective idealism. A related mistake is to think that subjective idealism is the only kind of idealism. The "standard picture" is fundamentally mistaken. Appearances (Erscheinungen) for Kant are not the private data of particular minds, and thus not ideas in the Cartesian-Lockean sense, or any other sort of content of a particular mind. Kant distinguishes crucially between Erscheinung and Schein/Apparenz between appearance and illusion/semblance. Because of this distinction, appearances [in the specifically Kantian sense] cannot be assimilated to perceptual illusions in the way Prichard and the "standard picture" try to assimilate them.
In this entry I will expand upon the above by taking a close look at the stretch of text in H.A. Prichard's Kant's Theory of Knowledge (1909) in which he discusses the straight stick that appears bent when immersed in water. This is a classical example of perceptual illusion. It illustrates how an appearance (in one sense of the term) may distort reality (in one sense of the term). Call the first the A1 sense and the second the R1 sense. My claim, of course, is that this empirical A1-R1 distinction is not the same as Kant's distinction between phenomena and things in themselves, and that anyone who, like Prichard, thinks otherwise has simply failed to understand what Kant is maintaining. Kant's distinction between phenomena and things in themselves is the distinction between empirically real, intersubjectively accessible, public, causally interacting things in space and time, on the one hand, and those same things considered apart from the a priori conditions of our sensibility. The Earth and its one natural satellite, the Moon, are examples of phenomena in Kant's sense. Neither is a private, mental item in a particular mind as a modification of such a mind or an item internal to it. The Earth and the Moon are not mental phenomena in any Cartesian, Humean, or Brentanian sense, but empirically real, physical things. But though they are empirically real, they are transcendentally ideal when considered independently of the conditions of our sensibility.
In sum, there are two distinctions. The first is the distinction between private mental contents of particular minds and real things external to such minds. For example, Ed is enjoying a visual experience of his by-now-famous desk. Neither the desk as a whole nor any part of it is literally in Ed's mind, let alone in his head. The desk, like his head and the rest of his body, is in the publicly accessible external world. Now let 'A1' denote Ed's experience/experiencing whereby his desk appears to him, and let 'R1' denote the desk itself which is external to Ed's mind/consciousness. Prichard's mistake is to conflate this A1-R1 distinction with Kant's distinction between phenomena and things in themselves. The R1 of the first distinction is the A2 of Kant's distinction which, again, is the distinction between intersubjectively accessible objects in space and time and those same objects viewed independently of the conditions of our sensibility.
I now turn to Chapter IV of Prichard's book. The chapter is entitled "Phenomena and Things in Themselves." Prichard takes Kant to be saying that spatial and temporal relations are "relations which belong to things only as perceived." (p. 79.) Prichard goes on to say, "The thought of a property or a relation that belongs to things as perceived involves a contradiction." He brings up the submerged stick which is in reality straight, but appears to a perceiver as bent. Prichard then makes the unexceptionable point that
. . . the assertion that something is so and so implies that it is so and so in itself, whether it be perceived or not, and therefore the assertion that something is so and so to us as perceiving, though not in itself, is a contradiction in terms.
This is certainly true. After I explain why it is true, I will explain why it has nothing to do with Kant. One cannot assert of anything x that it is F without thereby asserting that x is F in reality. What one asserts to be the case one asserts to be the case whether or not anyone asserts it. (Of course, it doesn't follow that what one asserts to be the case is the case. All that follows is that what one asserts to be the case purports to be the case independently of anyone's act of assertion. Saying this I am merely unpacking the concept of assertion.) So if I assert of x that it is bent, then I assert that x is bent in itself or in reality whether or not there are any assertors or perceivers. To assert that x is bent is to assert that a mind-independent item is bent. (Of course, it does not follow that there is a mind-independent item that is bent; all that follows is that if some item is bent or straight or has any property, then it is mind-independent.) Therefore, if I assert of an illusory appearance that it is bent, then I fall into contradiction. For what I am then asserting is that something that is mind-dependent -- because it is illusory -- is not mind-dependent but exists in reality.
This is what I take Prichard to be maintaining in the passage quoted. Thus charitably interpreted, what he is saying is (by my lights) true. But what does this have to do with Kant? Kant is not not talking about private mental items internal to particular minds such as an illusory appearance as of a bent stick. He is not saying of such an appearance (Apparenz) or semblance (Schein) that it is the subject of spatial and temporal relations. If he were, then he would stand refuted by Prichard's unexceptionable point. But it strains credulity to think that a great philosopher could blunder so badly.
Note also that to read Kant as if his phenomena (Erscheinungen) in space and time are private mental phenomena is to impute to him the sophomoric absurdity that mental data which are unextended are extended as they must be if they stand in physical relations. Such an imputation would be exegetically uncharitable in excelsis.
Finally, if space and time and everything in it is mental in Prichard's sense, and internal to particular minds like ours, then the upshot would be an utterly absurd form of subjective idealism.
...........................................
Further tangential ruminations.
How do I know that the visual datum is an illusory appearance? If I know that what appears to me -- the immersed-stick visual datum -- is illusory, then I know that what appears to me cannot be bent or straight or have any spatial property. For what is illusory does not exist, and what does not exist cannot have properties. But how do I know that the visual datum does not exist?
That is precisely what I don't know in the cases of perceptual illusion in which I am really fooled -- unlike the classic stick case above that fools no adult. No adult is 'taken in' by acquatic refraction phenomena. "Damn that boatman! He gave me a bent oar!" Here is a real-life example.
Hiking in twilight, I experience a visual datum as of a rattlesnake. I jump back and say to my partner, "There's a rattler on the trail." I assert the visual datum to be a rattler, which of course implies that in reality there is a rattler. (And that I jumped back shows that my assertion was sincere.) A closer look, however, shows that I mistook a tree root for a snake. What I initially saw (in the phenomenological sense of 'see') was only an illusory appearance. If I then say that the illusory appearance is a rattler or is venomous, etc. then I fall into contradiction. The point is that illusory appearances do not exist and therefore cannot have properties: they cannot be bent or straight or venomous or of the species crotalus atrox, etc.
Your grasp of the issue is excellent, Bill. “[T]he 'semirealism' is more epistemological/referential than ontological” seems to me right; this is why it is semirealism, not realism. But it is logical semirealism: “Logical semirealism differs from both logical antirealism and logical realism much as Kant’s position on causality differed from both antirealism and realism regarding causality, and Wittgenstein’s position on other people’s sensations differed from both antirealism and realism regarding
“other minds” (page 166).
The reason facts are only “semireal” in my view is that they have a logical structure. As you say in your book A Paradigm Theory of Existence: Onto-Theology Vindicated, “facts could be truth-making only if they are “proposition-like,” “structured in a proposition-like way” – only if “a fact has a structure that can mirror the structure of a proposition.” The structure of a proposition is its logical structure. In Part Two of Anthropocentrism in Philosophy I argue against realism regarding logical structure, but I also reject the simplistic antirealism regarding logical structure that says “there is only language.” Surely there are no ands, ors, or iffs in the world. It’s not just that logical objects and structures cannot be perceived or even “said.” Surely words like “and,” “or,” and “if” do not stand for anything physical, mental, or other-worldly. Yet no less surely they are not merely words.
Since facts necessarily, indeed essentially, possess a logical structure, my argument against logical realism applies also to realism regarding facts but, again, I reject the simplistic antirealism regarding facts that says “there is only language.” I wrote: “[T]here is a third way of understanding facts, which is neither realist nor antirealist. It is semirealist. In general, if a proposition is in dispute between realism and antirealism, with the realist asserting and the antirealist denying it, the semirealist would differ from both by holding that it is an improper proposition, perhaps even that there is no such proposition, and thus that both asserting and denying it are improper. There is an analogy here with sophisticated agnosticism. The theist asserts the proposition “God exists” and the atheist denies it, but the sophisticated agnostic questions, for varying reasons we need not consider here, its propriety” (pages 178-9).
I would share your discomfort if a philosopher said “There are facts and there are no facts”( I can’t find the sentence in Anthropocentrism in Philosophy). But I would understand it, just as I understand Frege’s “The concept horse is not a concept,” Meinong’s “there are things of which it is true that there are no such things,” and Wittgenstein’s “some things cannot be said but show themselves.” All four are puzzling. Sometimes we have to content ourselves with truths that puzzle us, make us wonder. But philosophy begins in wonder. We could, of course, invent new terms, perhaps saying that while facts do not exist they subsist, but I doubt that this would lead to better understanding.
Butch