Among the riddles of existence are the riddles that are artifacts of the attempts of thinkers to unravel the riddle of existence. This is one way into philosophy. It is the way of G. E. Moore. What riddled him was not the world so much as the strange things philosophers such as F. H. Bradley said about it.
If the Moorean way were the only way, there would be no philosophy. Moore was very sharp but superficial. Yet you cannot ignore him if you are serious about philosophy. For you cannot ignore surfaces and seemings and the sense that is common. Bradley, perhaps not as sharp, is deep. I am of the tribe of Bradley. Temperament and sensibility play major roles in our tribal affiliation as our own William James would insist and did insist in Chapter One of his Pragmatism with his distinction between the tender-minded and the tough-minded.
The entry to which I have just linked has it that the tender-minded are dogmatic as opposed to skeptical. Bradley, though tender-minded, is not. He is avis rara, not easily pigeon-holed. He soars above the sublunary in a manner quite his own. On wings of wax like Icarus? Like Kant's dove? Said dove soars through the air and imagines it could soar higher and with less effort if there were no air to offer resistance. But the dove is mistaken. The dove on the wing does not understand the principle of the wing, Bernoulli's principle. Is the metaphysician like the dove? The dove needs the air to fly. Can the metaphysician cut loose from the sensible and sublunary and make the ascent to the Absolute?
In the face of temperament and sensibility argument comes too late.
Bradley and James seem to agree on the latterliness of argument. In the preface to Appearance and Reality, Oxford 1893, Bradley quotes from his notebook:
Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct. (p. x)
But why 'bad'? If I could speak to Bradley's shade I would suggest this emendation:
Metaphysics is the finding of plausible, though not rationally compelling, reasons for what we believe upon instinct . . . .
Nietzsche too can be brought in: "Every philosophy is its author's Selbsterkenntnis, self-knowledge."
As for Moore, is he the real deal? My young self scorned him. No true philosopher! He gets his problems from books, not from the world! The young man was basically right, but extreme in the manner of the young. I have come to appreciate Moore's subtlety and workmanship.
This is a re-do of a post from 13 April 2009. The addenda are new.
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I have argued at length for the non-intentionality of some conscious states. Here is an entry that features an uncommonly good comment thread. None of the opposing comments made on the various posts inclined me to modify my view. I was especially pleased recently to stumble upon a passage by the great F. H. Bradley in support of the non-intentionality of some experiences. Please note that the intentionality of my being PLEASED to find the supporting Bradley passage has no tendency to show that PLEASURE is an intentional state, as 'pleasure' is used below by Bradley. No doubt one can be pleased by such-and-such or pained at this-or-that, but these facts are consistent with there being non-intentional pleasures and pains. The passage infra is from Bradley's magisterial "Pleasure for Pleasure's Sake" (Ethical Studies (Selected Essays), LLA, 1951, p. 37, bolding added):
Pleasure and pain are feelings and they are nothing but feelings. It would perhaps be right to call them the two simple modes of self-feeling; but we are not here concerned with psychological accuracy. The point which we wish to emphasize and which we think is not doubtful is that, considered psychically, they are nothing whatever but states of the feeling self. This means that they exist in me only as long as I feel them, and only as I feel them, that beyond this they have no reference to anything else, no validity and no meaning whatsoever. They are 'subjective' because they neither have, nor pretend to, reality beyond this or that subject. They are as they are felt to be, but they tell us nothing. In one word, they have no content; they are as states of us, but they have nothing for us.
How do I know that Bradley is right? By doing a little phenomenology. Right now I am stretching my back in consequence of which I am experiencing a pleasant kinaesthetic sensation. At the same time I am gazing out my window at a blooming palo verde tree. Both the kinaesthetic sensation and the gazing are 'states of me' to adapt a Bradleyan phrase, but only the second 'has anything for me,' i.e., presents an object, pretends to a reality beyond the subject, intends or means something, takes an accusative, has an intentional object, possesses a content, refers beyond itself -- pick your favorite phraseology. The second 'state of me' is object-directed; the first is not. Either you 'see' (with the mind's eye) the distinction between the seeing of the tree (using the eyes in your head) and the feeling of the sensation, or you do not. No amount of argument or dialectic can make you 'see.' At most, argument and dialectic can remove impediments to 'seeing.' And if there were no 'seeing,' how could there be arguments? Arguments need premises, and not all premises can be the conclusions of arguments.
ADDENDA (11 December 2020)
1) The issue is whether Franz Brentano was right to maintain that intentionality is the mark of the mental, and that therefore every mental state is object-directed. I have long held, probably under the influence of Edmund Husserl (Logical Investigations, vol. II, tr. J. N. Findlay, Humanities Press, 1970, 572 ff.) that this is not right, that there are mental states that are not object-directed. From the entry referenced above:
Let's think about Searle's example of an itch, one 'in' the scalp, say. Not every mental item is a conscious item, but this itch I feel right now is a conscious mental item. Attending to this datum, a distinction suggests itself: there is the qualitative character of the itch, its sensory quale or raw feel, and there is its unpleasantness. Since I am attending to the itch, it is the intentional object of a series of acts of phenomenological reflection. At the same time of course, I am 'living' the itch, not just reflecting on it and analyzing it. The itch is an experience, an Erlebnis in something like Husserl's sense; it is something man erlebt, one lives through.
Now the question is whether the itch itself is directed to an object or 'takes an accusative.' Please don't confuse this question with the question whether the itch can itself be made the intentional object of acts of reflection. Of course it can, and I just did. But that is not to say that the itch has an intentional object. Attending carefully to the itch as it presents itself to me, I discern no object to which it points. Surely Searle is right: itches and the like are not about anything in the way a desire to drink a cold beer is about drinking a cold beer, or the seeing of a bobcat is about a bobcat and not a tire iron or nothing at all.
2) I suggest above that some questions in philosophy can be answered phenomenologically, just by carefully attending to what is qiven, the itch sensation in our example, under bracketing of all questions about causes and effects. One compares the felt itch, precisely as felt, with a clearly object-directed conscious mental state such as desiring to be itch-free. The act of desiring is obviously a desiring of something, namely, being itch-free. The act (intentional experience) refers beyond itself to something not contained within it. One cannot just desire; necessarily, to desire is to desire something that is no part of the act of desiring. Having done the comparison, one just 'sees' the difference: it is not intrinsic to sensory qualia that they refer to anything beyond themselves in such a way as to present an object to a subject; but this is intrinsic to intentional states. As Bradley puts it, sensory qualia, "have no reference to anything else . . . ." They have "no meaning whatsoever." That is, they do not mean, signify, intend, or refer. Qualia have content alright, but not intentional or representative content. (Cf. Husserl's distinction between descriptive and intentional content, Log. Inv. II, 576 ff.)
3) Was I able to make my point above with phenomenology alone thereby avoiding dialectic or argument entirely? No, I argued in a way that can be explicitly set forth as follows:
a) Some sensory qualia are not object-directed. b) All sensory qualia are mental states. Therefore c) Some mental states are not object-directed.
I had to reason to my conclusion, but I did so from a premise -- (a) -- the evidence for which is phenomenological. To be precise, (a) itself is a conclusion of an inference from 'This itch sensation is not object-directed.' Phenomenology needs dialectic and vice versa.
4) In the comment thread to the linked entry above, Harry Binswanger, the noted Objectivist (follower of Ayn Rand ), gives essentially the following argument against that thesis that some mental states are non-intentional:
d) An itch is a bodily sensation. e) The intentional objects of bodily sensations are states of one's body. Therefore f) An itch is an intentional mental state.
But in what sense is an itch a bodily sensation? Only in the sense that its cause is physical. In itself, the itch is not bodily or physical but mental. It is a mental state with a physical cause. But one ought not confuse cause with intentional object, a mistake that Husserl exposes at Log. Inv. II, 572. Binswanger's argument commits this very mistake. Whatever the cause in the scalp or elsewhere of the itchy sensation, that cause is not presented by the sensory state. The state has a cause but no intentional object.
Among the riddles of existence are the artifacts of the attempts of thinkers to unravel the riddle of existence. What started G. E. Moore philosophizing was not so much the world as the puzzling things people such as F. H. Bradley said about it. That too is a way into philosophy, if an inauthentic one. The authentic philosopher gets his problems from the world, directly.
The concept horse is not a concept. Thus spoke Frege, paradoxically. Why does he say such a thing? Because the subject expression 'the concept horse' refers to an object. It names an object. Concepts and objects on his scheme are mutually exclusive. No concept is an object and conversely. Only objects can be named. No concept can be named. Predicates are not names. If you try to name a concept you will fail. You will succeed only in naming an object. You will not succeed in expressing the predicativity of the concept. Concepts are predicable while objects are not. It is clear that one cannot predicate Socrates of Socrates. We can, however, predicate wisdom of Socrates. It is just that wisdom is not an object.
But now we are smack in the middle of the paradox. For to explain Frege's view I need to be able to talk about the referent of the gappy predicate ' ___ is wise.' I need to be able to say that it is a predicable entity, a concept. But how can I do this without naming it, and thus objectifying it? Ineffability may be the wages of Frege's absolute object-concept distinction.
To savor the full flavor of the paradox, note that the sentence 'No concept can be named' contains the general name 'concept.' It seems we, or rather the Fregeans, cannot say what we or they mean. But if we cannot say what we mean, how do we know that we mean anything at all? Is an inexpressible meaning a meaning? Are there things that cannot be said but only shown? (Wittgenstein) Perhaps we cannot say that concepts are concepts; all we can do is show that they are by employing open sentences or predicates such as '___ is tall.' Unfortunately, this is also paradoxical. For I had to say what the gappy predicate shows. I had to say that concepts are concepts and that concepts are what gappy predicates (predicates that are not construed as names) express.
Why can't concepts be named? Why aren't they a kind of higher-order object? Why can't they be picked out using abstract substantives? Why can't we say that, in a sentence such as 'Tom is sad,' 'Tom' names an object while 'sad' names a different sort of object, a concept/property? Frege's thought seems to be that if concepts are objects, then they cannot exercise their predicative function. Concepts are essentially and irreducibly predicative, and if you objectify them -- think or speak of them as objects -- then you destroy their predicative function. A predicative proposition is not a juxtaposition of two objects. If there is Tom and there is sadness, it doesn't follow that sadness is true of Tom. What makes a property true of its subject? An obvious equivalence: if F-ness is true of a, then *a is F* is true. So we might ask the questions this way: What makes *a is F* true?
The Problem of the Unity of the Proposition and the Fregean Solution
We are brought back to the problem of the unity of the proposition. It's as old as Plato. It is a genuine problem, but no one has ever solved it. (Of course, I am using 'solve' as a verb of success.)
A collection of two objects is not a proposition. The mereological sum Tom + sadness is neither true nor false; propositions are either true or false. The unity of a proposition is a type of unity that attracts a truth value, whereas the unity of a sum does not attract a truth value. The unity of a proposition is mighty puzzling even in the simplest cases. It does no good to say that the copula 'is' in 'Tom is sad' refers to the instantiation relation R and that this relation connects the concept/property to the object, sadness to Tom, and in such a way as to make sadness true of Tom. For then you sire Mr Bradley's relation regress. It's infinite and it's vicious. Note that if the sum Tom + sadness can exist without it being true that Tom is sad, then the sum Tom + R + sadness can also exist without it being true that Tom is sad.
Enter Frege with his obscure talk of the unsaturatedness of concepts. Concepts exist whether or not they are instantiated, but they are 'gappy': if a first-level concept is instantiated by an object, there is no need for a tertium quid to connect concept and object. They fit together like plug and socket, where the plug is the object and the concept the socket. The female receptacle accepts the male plug without the need of anything to hold the two together.
On this approach no regress arises. For if there is no third thing that holds concept and object together, then no worries can arise as to how the third thing is related to the concept on the one side and the object on the other. But our problem about the unity of the proposition remains unsolved. For if the concept can exist uninstantiated, then both object and concept, Tom and sadness, can exist without it being true that Tom is sad.
The dialectic continues on and on. Philosophia longa, vita brevis. Life is brief; blog posts ought to be.
What follows is largely a summary and restatement of points I make in "The Moreland-Willard-Lotze Thesis on Being," Philosophia Christi, vol. 6, no. 1, 2004, pp. 27-58. It is a 'popular' or 'bloggity-blog' version of a part of that lengthy technical article. First I summarize my agreements with J. P. Moreland. Then I explain and raise two objections to this theory. I post the following on account of hearing from a student of Moreland who is himself now a professor of philosophy. He has some criticisms to make. I should like to hear them in the ComBox. Another student of Moreland says he agrees with me. He may wish to chime in as well. The other day a third student of Moreland surfaced. The Moreland text I have under my logical microscope is pp. 134-139 of his 2001 Universals (McGill-Queen's University Press).
Common Ground with Moreland on Existence
We agree on the following five points (which is not to say that Moreland will agree with every detail of my explanation of these five points):
Existence is attributable to individuals. The cat that just jumped into my lap exists. This very cat, Manny, exists. Existence belongs to it and is meaningfully attributable to it. Pace Frege and Russell, 'Manny exists' is a meaningful sentence, and it is meaningful as it stands, as predicating existence of an individual. It is nothing like 'Manny is numerous.' To argue that since cats are numerous, and Manny is a cat, that therefore Manny is numerous is to commit the fallacy of division. Russell held that the same fallacy is committed by someone who thinks that since cats exist, and Manny is a cat, that therefore Manny exists. But Russell was mistaken: there is no fallacy of division; there is an equivocation on 'exists.' It has a general or second-level use and a singular or first-level use.
There are admissible first-level uses of '. . .exist(s).' It is not the case that only second-level uses are admissible. And it is only because Manny, or some other individual cat, exists that the concept cat is instantiated. The existence of an individual cannot be reduced to the being-instantiated of a property or concept. If you like, you can say that the existence of a concept is its being instantiated. We sometimes speak like that. A typical utterance of 'Beauty exists,' say, is not intended to convey that Beauty itself exists, but is intended to convey that Beauty is exemplified, that there are beautiful things. But then one is speaking of general existence, not of singular existence.
Clearly, general existence presupposes singular existence in the following sense: if a first-level concept or property is instantiated, then it is instantiated by an individual, and this individual must exist in order to stand in the instantiation nexus to a concept or property. From here on out, by 'existence' I mean 'singular existence.' There is really no need for 'general existence' inasmuch as we can speak of instantiation or of someness, as when we say that cats exist if and only something is a cat. The fundamental error of what Peter van Inwagen calls the 'thin theory' of existence is to imagine that existence can be reduced to the purely logical notion of someness. That would be to suppose, falsely, that singular existence can be dispensed with in favor of general existence. Existence is not a merely logical topic ; existence is a metaphysical topic.
Existence cannot be an ordinary property of individuals. While existence is attributable to individuals, it is no ordinary property of them. There are several reasons for this, but I will mention only one: you cannot add to a thing's description by saying of it that it exists. Nothing is added to the description of a tomato if one adds 'exists' to its descriptors: 'red,' round,' ripe,' etc. As Kant famously observed, "Being is not a real predicate," i.e., being or existence adds nothing to the realitas or whatness of a thing. Contrary to popular scholarly opinion, Kant did not anticipate the Frege-Russell theory. He does not deny that 'exist(s)' is an admissible first-level predicate. (See my "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Novotny and Novak, eds. Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, Routledge 2014, pp. 45-75, esp. 48-50.)
Existence is not a classificatory concept or property. The reason is simple: there is no logically prior domain of items classifiable as either existent or nonexistent. Pace Meinong, everything exists. There are no nonexistent items. On Meinong's view, some items actually have properties despite having no Being at all.
Existence makes a real difference to a thing that exists. In one sense existence adds nothing to a thing. It adds nothing quidditative. In another sense it adds everything: if a thing does not exist, it is nothing at all! To be or not to be -- not just a question, but the most 'abysmal' difference conceivable. In this connection, Moreland rightly speaks of a "real difference between existence and non-existence." (137)
Existence itself exists. This is not the trivial claim that existing things exist. It is the momentous claim that that in virtue of which existing things exist itself exists. It is a logical consequence of (4) in conjunction with (3). As Moreland puts it, "[i]f existence itself does not exist, then nothing else could exist in virtue of having existence." (135)
The above five points are criteria of adequacy for a theory of existence: any adequate theory must include or entail each of these points. Most philosophers nowadays will not agree, but I think Moreland will. So he and I stand on common ground. I should think that the only fruitful disputes are those that play out over a large chunk of common ground.
But these criteria of adequacy also pose a problem: How can existence belong to individuals without being a property of them? Existence belongs to individual as it would not belong to them if it were a property of properties or concepts; but it is not a property of individuals.
Moreland's Theory
Moreland's theory gets off to a good start: "existence is not a property which belongs, but is the belonging of a property." (137) This insight nicely accommodates points (1) and (2) above: existence is attributable to individuals without being an ordinary property of them. Indeed, it is not a property at all. I infer from this that existence is not the property of having properties. It is rather the mutual belongingness of a thing and its properties. Moreland continues:
Existence is the entering into the exemplification nexus . . . . In the case of Tony the tiger, the fact [that] the property of being a tiger belongs to something and that something has this property belonging to it is what confers existence. (137)
I take this to mean that existence is the mutual belonging together of individual and property. It is 'between' a thing and its properties as that which unifies them, thereby tying them into a concrete fact or state of affairs. The existence of Tony is not one of his properties; nor is it Tony. And of course the existence of Tony is not the being-exemplified of some such haecceity property as identity-with-Tony. Rather, the existence of Tony, of that very individual, is his exemplifying of his properties. The existence of a (thick) individual in general is then the exemplification relation itself insofar as this relation actually relates (thin) individual and properties.
Moreland implies as much. In answer to the question how existence itself exists, he explains that "The belonging-to (exemplification, predication) relation is itself exemplified . . ." (137) Thus the asymmetrical exemplification relation x exemplifies P is exemplified by Tony and the property of being a tiger (in that order). Existence itself exists because existence itself is the universal exemplification relation which is itself exemplified. It exists in that it is exemplified by a and F-ness, a and G-ness, a and H-ness, b and F-ness, b and G-ness, b and H-ness, and so on. An individual existent exists in that its ontological constituents (thin particular and properties) exemplify the exemplification relation which is existence itself.
The basic idea is this. The existence of a thick particular such as Tony, that is, a particular taken together with all its monadic properties, is the unity of its ontological constituents. (This is not just any old kind of unity, of course, but a type of unity that ties items that are not facts into a fact.) This unity is brought about by the exemplification relation within the thick particular. The terms of this relation are the thin particular on the one hand and the properties on the other.
Moreland's theory accommodates all five of the desiderata listed above which in my book is a strong point in its favor.
A Bradleyan Difficulty
A sentence such as 'Al is fat' is not a list of its constituent words. The sentence is either true or false, but neither the corresponding list, nor any item on the list, is either true or false. So there is something more to a declarative sentence than its constituent words. Something very similar holds for the fact that makes the sentence true, if it is true. I mean the extralinguistic fact of Al's being fat. The primary constituents of this fact, Al and fatness, can exist without the fact existing. The fact, therefore, cannot be identified with its primary constituents, taken either singly, or collectively. A fact is more than its primary constituents. But how are we to account for this 'more'?
On Moreland's theory, as I understand it, this problem is solved by adding a secondary constituent, the exemplification relation, call it EX, whose task is to connect the primary constituents. This relation ties the primary constituents into a fact. It is what makes a fact more than its primary constituents. Unfortunately, this proposal leads to Bradley's Regress. For if Al + fatness do not add up to the fact of Al's being fat, then Al + fatness + EX won't either. If Al and fatness can exist without forming the fact of Al's being fat, then Al and fatness and EX can all exist without forming the fact in question. How can adding a constituent to the primary constituents bring about the fact-constituting unity of all constituents? EX has not only to connect a and F-ness, but also to connect itself to a and to F-ness. How can it do the latter? The answer to this, presumably, will be that EX is a relation and the business of a relation is to relate. EX, relating itself to a and to F-ness, relates them to each other. EX is an active ingredient in the fact, not an inert ingredient. It is a relating relation, and not just one more constituent that needs relating to the others by something distinct from itself. For this reason, Bradley's regress can't get started.
The problem, however, is that EX can exist without relating the relata that it happens to relate in a given case. This is because EX is a universal. If it were a relation-instance as on D. W. Mertz's theory, then it would be a particular, an unrepeatable, and could not exist apart from the very items it relates. Bradley's regress could not then arise. But if EX is a universal, then it can exist without relating any specific relata that it does relate, even though, as an immanent universal, it must relate some relata or other. This implies that a relation's relating what it relates is contingent to its being the relation it is. For example, x loves y contingently relates Al and Barbara, which implies that the relation is distinct from its relating. The same goes for EX: it is distinct from its relating. It is more than just a constituent of any fact into which it enters; it is a constituent that does something to the other constituents, and in so doing does something to itself, namely, connect itself to the other constituents. Relating relations are active ingredients in facts, not inert ingredients. Or we could say that a relating relation is ontologically participial in addition to its being ontologically substantival. And since the relating is contingent in any given case, the relating in any given case requires a ground. What could this ground be?
My claim is that it cannot be any relation, including the relation, Exemplification. More generally, no constituent of a fact can serve as ontological ground of the unity of a fact's constituents. For any such putatively unifying constituent will either need a further really unifying constituent to connect it to what it connects, in which case Bradley's regress is up and running, or the unifying constituent will have to be ascribed a 'magical' power, a power no abstract object could possess, namely, the power to unify itself with what it unifies. Such an item would be a self-grounding ground: a ground of unity that grounds its unity with that which it unifies. The synthetic unity at the heart of each contingent fact needs to be grounded in an act of synthesis that cannot be brought about by any constituent of a fact, or by the fact itself.
My first objection to Moreland's theory may be put as follows. The existence of a thick particular (which we are assaying as a concrete fact along the lines of Gustav Bergmann and David Armstrong) cannot be the fact's constituents' standing in the exemplification relation. And existence itself, existence in its difference from existents, cannot be identified with the exemplification relation.
Can Existence Exist Without Being Uniquely Self-Existent?
I agree with Moreland that existence itself exists. One reason was supplied by Reinhardt Grossmann: "If existence did not exist, then nothing would exist." (Categorial Structure of the World, 405) But I have trouble with the notion that existence itself is the exemplification relation. Existence as that which is common to all that exists, and as that in virtue of which everything exists cannot be just one more thing that exists. Existence cannot be a member of an extant category that admits of multiple membership, such as the category of relations. For reasons like these such penetrating minds as Martin Heidegger, Roman Ingarden, and Panayot Butchvarov have denied that existence itself exists.
In my 2002 existence book I proposed a synthesis of these competing theses: Existence exists as a paradigm existent, one whose mode of existence is radically different from the mode of existence of the beings ontologically dependent on it. From this point of view, Moreland has a genuine insight, but he has not taken it far enough: he stops short at the dubious view that existence is the relation of exemplification. But if you drive all the way down the road with me you end up at Divine Simplicity, which Moreland has good reasons for rejecting.
The other day I was pleased to receive an e-mail message from Francesco Orilia whom I hadn't heard from in several years. He inquired about some correspondence we engaged in back in the spring of 2004. I thought it had evaporated into the aether, but the Wayback Machine came to the rescue. I reproduce it below, warts and all. But first a demonstration of how Italians speak with their hands. This is from our meeting at a conference on Bradley's Regress in Geneva, Switzerland in December of 2008.
Note to Steven Nemes: Tell me if you find this totally clear, and if not, point out what is unclear. Tell me whether you accept my overall argument.
The day before yesterday in conversation Steven Nemes presented a challenge I am not sure I can meet. I have maintained (in my book, in published articles, and in these pages) that the difference between a fact and its constituents cannot be a brute difference and must therefore have a ground or explanation. But what exactly is my reasoning?
Consider a simple atomic fact of the form, a's being F. This fact has two primary constituents, the individual a, and the monadic property F-ness, which a possesses contingently. But surely there is more to the fact than these two primary constituents, and for at least two reasons. I'll mention just one, which I consider decisive: the constituents can exist without the fact existing. The individual and the property could each exist without the former exemplifying the second. This is so even if we assume that there are no propertyless individuals and no unexemplified properties. Consider a world W which includes the facts Ga and Fb. In W, a is propertied and F-ness is exemplified; hence there is no bar to saying that both exist in W. But Fa does not exist in W. So a fact is more than its primary constituents because they can exist without it existing.
A fact is not its constituents, but those constituents unified in a particular way. Now if you try to secure fact-unity by introducing one or more secondary constituents such an exemplification relation, then you will ignite Bradley's regress. For if the constituents include a, F-ness, and EX, then you still have the problem of their unity since the three can exist without constituting a fact.
So I take it as established that a fact is more than its constituents and therefore different from its constituents. A fact is different from any one of its constituents, and also from all of them taken collectively, as a mereological sum, say. The question is: What is the ontological ground of the difference? What is it that makes them different? That they are different is plain. I want to know what makes them different. It won't do to say that one is a fact while the other is not since that simply underscores that they are different. I'm on the hunt for a difference-maker.
To feel the force of the question consider what makes two different sets different. If S1 and S2 are different sets, then it is reasonable to ask what makes them different, and one would presumably not accept the answer that they are just different, that the difference is a brute difference. Let S1 be my singleton and S2 the set consisting of me and Nemes. It would not do to say that they are just different. We need a difference-maker. In this case it is easy to specify: Nemes. He is what makes S1 different from S2. Both sets contain me, but only one contains him. Generalizing, we can say that for sets at least,
DM. No difference without a difference-maker.
So I could argue that the difference between a fact and (the sum of) its constituents cannot be a brute difference because (i) there is no difference without a difference-maker and (ii) facts, sets, and sums, being complexes, are relevantly similar. (I needn't hold that the numerical difference of two simples needs a difference-maker.) But why accept (DM) in full generality as applying to all types of wholes and parts? Perhaps the principle, while applying to sets, does not apply to facts and their constituents. How do I answer the person who argues that the difference is brute, a factum brutum, and that therefore (DM), taken in full generality, is false? As we say in the trade, one man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens.
Can I show that there is a logical contradiction in maintaining that facts and their constituents just differ? That was my strategy in the book on existence. The strategy is to argue that without an external ground of unity -- an external unifer -- one lands in a contradiction, or rather cannot avoid a contradiction. That the unifier, if there is one, must be external as opposed to internal is established by showing that otherwise a vicious infinite regress ensues of the Bradley-type. I cover this ground in my book and in articles in mind-numbing detail; I cannot go over it again here. But I will refer the reader to my 2010 Dialectica article which discusses a fascinating proposal according to which unity is constituted by an internal infinite, but nonvicious, regress. But for now I assume that the unifier, if there is one, must be external. If there is one, then the difference between a fact and its constituents cannot be brute. But why must there be a unifier?
Consider this aporetic triad:
1. Facts exist. 2. A fact is its constituents taken collectively. 3. A fact is not its constituents taken collectively.
What I want to argue is that facts exist, but that they are contradictory structures in the absence of an external unifier that removes the contradiction. Since Nemes agrees with me about (1), I assume it for present purposes. (The justification is via the truth-maker argument).
Note that (2) and (3) are logical contradictories, and yet each exerts a strong claim on our acceptance. I have already argued for (3). But (2) is also exceedingly plausible. For if you analyze a fact, what will you uncover? Its constituents and nothing besides. The unity of the constituents whereby it is a fact as opposed to a nonfact like a mereological sum eludes analysis. The unity cannot be isolated or located within the fact. For to locate it within the fact you would have to find it as one of the constituents. And that you cannot do.
Note also that unity is not perceivable or in any way empirically detectable. Consider a simple Bergmann-style or 'Iowa' example, a red round spot. The redness and the roundness are perceivable, and the spot is perceivable. But the spot's being red and round is not perceivable. The existence of a fact is the unity of its constituents. So what I am claiming is equivalent to claiming that existence is not perceivable, which seems right: existence is not an empirical feature like redness and roundness.
So when we consider a fact by itself, there seems to be nothing more to it than its constituents.
Each limb of the triad has a strong claim on our acceptance, but they cannot all be true as formulated. The contradiction can be removed if we ascend to a higher point of view and posit an external unifier. What does that mean?
Well, suppose there is a unifier U external to the fact and thus not identifiable with one or more of its primary or secondary constituents. Suppose U brings together the constituents in the fact-making way. U would then be the sought-for ground of the fact's unity. The difference between a fact and its constituents could then be explained by saying that the difference is due to U's 'activity': U operates on the constituents to produce the fact. Our original triad can then be replaced by the following all of whose limbs can be true:
1. Facts exist 2*. A fact, considered analytically, is its constituents taken collectively. 3. A fact is not its constituents taken collectively.
This triad is consistent. The limbs can all be true. And I think we have excellent reason to say that each IS true. The truthmaker argument vouches for (1). (2*) looks to be true by definition. The argumentation I gave for (3) above strikes me as well-night irresistible.
But if you accept the limbs of the modified triad, then you must accept that there is something external to facts which functions as their unifier. Difficult questions about what U is and about whether U is unique and the same for all facts remain; but that U exists is 'fallout' from the modified triad. For if each limb is true, then a fact's being more than its constituents can be accounted for only by appeal to an external unifier.
But how exactly does this show that the difference between a fact and its constituents is not a brute difference? The move from the original to the modified triad is motivated by the laudable desire to avoid contradiction. So my argument boils down to this: If the difference is brute, then we get a logical contradiction. So the difference is not brute.
But it all depends on whether or not there are facts. If facts can be reasonably denied, then my reasoning to a unifer can be reasonably rejected. But that's a whole other can of worms: the truthmaker argument.
Analytically considered, a fact is just its constituents. But holistically considered it is not. Unity eludes analysis, and yet without unities there would be nothing to analyze! Analytic understanding operates under the aegis of two distinctions: whole/part, and complex/simple. Analysis generates insight by reducing wholes to their parts, and complex parts to simpler and simpler parts, and possibly right down to ultimate simples (assuming that complexity does not extend 'all the way down.') But analysis is a onesided epistemic procedure. For again, without unities there would be nothing to analyze. To understand the being-unified of a unity therefore requires that we ascend to a point of view external to the unity under analysis.
I know you're in a bit of a mereology phase at the moment, but I figured I'd shoot this by you.
Mereology is the theory of parts and wholes. Now propositions, whether Fregean or Russellian, are wholes of parts. So mereology is not irrelevant to questions about the nature and existence of propositions. The relevance, though, appears to be negative: propositions are unmereological compositions, unmereological wholes. That is to say, wholes that cannot be understood in terms of classical mereology. They cannot be understood in these terms because of the problem of the unity of the proposition. The problem is to specify what it is about a proposition that distinguishes it from a mere aggregate of its constituents and enables it to be either true or false. No constituent of an atomic proposition is either true or false, and neither the mathematical set, nor the mereological sum, of the constituents of any such proposition is true or false; so what is it that makes a proposition a truth-bearer? If you say that a special unifying constituent within propositions does the job,then you ignite Bradley's regress. Whether or not it is vicious is a further question. Richard Gaskin maintains the surprising view that Bradley's regress is "the metaphysical ground of the unity of the proposition." Far from being vicious, Bradley's regress is precisely that which "guarantees our ability to say anything at all."
For more on this topic, see my "Gaskin on the Unity of the Proposition," Dialectica vol. 64, no. 2 (June 2010), 265-277. It is part of a five article symposium on the topic.
I am not sure if you believe in Fregean propositions or not. As for myself, I don't look favorably upon the idea of Fregean propositions because of the problem of Bradley's regress. (I am assuming propositions would be composite structured entities, built out of ontologically more basic parts, maybe the senses of the individual terms of the sentences that expresses it, so that the proposition expressed by "Minerva is irate" is a structured entity composed of the senses of "Minvera", "irate", etc.)
I provisionally accept, but ultimately reject, Fregean propositions. What the devil does that mean? It means that I think the arguments for them are quite powerful, but that if our system contains an absolute mind, then we can and must reduce Fregean propositions to contents or accuusatives of said mind. Doing so allows us to solve the problem of the unity of the proposition.
By the way, what you say in parentheses is accurate and lucid.
In your book, you offer a theistic strategy for solving the problem of Bradley's regress as applied to facts. I don't know that a theistic solution to the problem as applied to propositions works as smoothly because of the queer sort of things senses of individual terms of sentences are supposed to be. The building blocks of facts are universals, which are somewhat familiar entities; but the building blocks of propositions are senses like "Minerva" which are murky and mysterious things indeed. What the hell kind of a thing is a sense anyway?
A sense is a semantic intermediary, an abstract 'third-world' object neither in the mind nor in the realm of concreta, posited to explain certain linguistic phenomena. One is the phenomenon of informative identity statements. How are they possible? 'George Orwell is Eric Blair' is an informative identity statement, unlike 'George Orwell is George Orwell.' How can the first be informative, how can it have what Frege calls cognitive value (Erkenntniswert), when it appears to be of the form a = b, a form all of the substitution-instances of which are false? Long story short, Frege distinguishes between the sense and the referent of expressions. Accordingly, 'George Orwell' and 'Eric Blair' differ in sense but have the same referent. The difference in sense explains the informativeness of the identity statement while the sameness of referent explains its truth.
Further, propositions are supposed to be necessarily existent; hence the individual building blocks of the propositions must also exist necessarily. But how could the senses expressed by "Minerva" or "Heidegger's wife", for instance, exist when those individuals do not? (This is the same sort of argument you give against haecceity properties conceived of as non-qualitative thisnesses.)
If proper names such as 'Heidegger' have irreducibly singular Fregean senses, then, as you well appreciate, my arguments against haecceity properties (nonqualitative thisnesses) kick in. It is particularly difficult to understand how a proper name could express an irreducibly singular Fregean sense when the name in question lacks a referent. For if irreducibly singular, then the sense is not constructible from general senses by an analog of propositional conjunction. So one is forced to say that the sense of 'Minerva' is the property of being identical to Minerva. But since there is no such individual, there is no such property. Identity-with-Minerva collapses into Identity-with- . . . nothing! Pace Plantinga, of course.
In the case of identity-with-Heidegger, surely this property, if it exists at all, exists iff Heidegger does. Given that Heidegger is a contingent being, his haecceity is as well. And that conflicts with the notion that propositions are necessary beings. Well, I suppose one could try the idea the some propositions are contingent beings.
Are there any solutions to the former problem (which you've blogged and written about before!) you think are promising? Further, what do you think of the second problem?
Perhaps you think the second problem can be sidestepped by saying that "Heidegger's wife" is just shorthand for some longer description, e.g. "the woman who was married to the man who wrote a book that began with the sentence '...'". I don't know that it is so easy, because that sentence itself makes reference to things that are contingently existent (women, men, books, sentences, marriage...).
Yes,all those things are contingent. But that by itself does not cause a problem. The problem is with the notion that proper names are definite descriptions in disguise. If the very sense of 'Ben Franklin' is supplied by 'the inventor of bifocals' (to use Kripke's example), then the true 'Ben Franklin might not have invented bifocals' boils down to the necessarily false 'The inventor of bifocals might not have invented bifocals.' (But note the ambiguity of the preceding sentence; I mean the definite description to be taken attributively not referentially.)
The following is my contribution to a symposium on Richard Gaskin's The Unity of the Proposition. The symposium, together with Gaskin's replies, is scheduled to appear in the December 2009 issue of Dialectica.
GASKIN ON THE UNITY OF THE PROPOSITION
William F. Vallicella
While studying Richard Gaskin’s The Unity of the Proposition (Oxford 2008), the word ‘magisterial’came repeatedly to mind. Gaskin’s mastery of the history, literature, and dialectical intricacies of the problem of the unity of the proposition in all its ramifications is in evidence on every page. More than a treatment of a particular problem, Gaskin’s book is a systematic treatise in the philosophy of language organized around a particular but centrally important problem. To my knowledge, it is the most thorough and penetrating discussion of the unity of the proposition ever to appear. The fact that Gaskin’s solution to the unity problem is set within a systematic philosophy of language contributes to the book’s depth and richness, but also makes the task of the critic difficult. In a few pages, the critic cannot properly convey the systematic underpinnings of Gaskin’s formulation of the problem and his solution to it. And when the critic evaluates, he is forced to acknowledge that he is evaluating a solution embedded in a far-flung system whose ideas are mutually reinforcing. His critical points may then appear as ‘dialectical potshots’ if he cannot, as he cannot in a few pages, bring a competing system of mutually reinforcing ideas onto the field. These caveats having been registered, I proceed to sketch Gaskin’s project and raise some questions about his formulation of the unity problem. After conceding that Gaskin has solved the problem as he understands it, I will suggest that the problem lies deeper than he recognizes, and that the linguistic idealism in which he embeds his solution is problematic.
The following quotations are from A. E. Taylor's "F. H. Bradley" which is an account of his relation with the great philosopher, an account published in Mind, vol. XXXIV, no. 133 (January 1925), pp. 1-12. A. E. Taylor is an important philosopher in his own right whose works, unfortunately, are little read nowadays.
Bradley as a Religious Man
I am confident that no one who knew Bradley personally at any time would have supposed him to be anything but what he actually was, an intensely religious man, in the sense of a man whose whole life and thought was permeated by a conviction of the reality of unseen things and a supreme devotion to them.
Bradley on Bibliolatry
In the last conversation I had with him . . . He spoke bitterly of the Christian Church in our country, chiefly on the charge of an alleged 'idolatry' of the text of the Bible, a fault not, I think, really common among Anglicans at the present. He commended the Roman Church for its discouragement of promiscuous Bible-reading, but held that it did not go far enough. He would have the Church, he said, cease to appeal to any literature from the past and insist directly upon its own inherent authority as the living voice of the divine Spirit.
Bradley on Purgatory
Possibly some of my readers who know Bradley only from his books may be surprised at a remark called from him by a passing reference in the same conversation to Purgatory. "But what do you mean by Purgatory? Does it mean that when I die I shall go somewhere where I shall be made better by discipline? If so, that is what I very much hope." In another mood, no doubt, he might have dwelt on the intellectual difficulties in the way of such a hope, but it was characteristic, or at least I thought so, that he evidently clung to it.
Bradley a Mystic
Bradley's own personal religion was of a strongly marked mystical type, in fact of the specific type common to the Christian mystics. Religion meant to him, as to Plotinus or to Newman, direct personal contact with the Supreme and Ineffable, unmediated through any forms of ceremonial prayer, or ritual, and like all mystics in whom this passion for direct access to God is not moderated by the the habit of organised communal worship, he was inclined to set little store on the historical and institutional element in the great religions.
Bradley on the Incarnation
Thus while the conception of the meeting of the divine and the human in one 'by unity of person' lay at the very heart of his philosophy, he was wholly indifferent to the question whether the ideal of the God-Man has or has not been actually realised in flesh and blood in a definite historical person. Like Hegel, he thought it the significant thing about Christianity that it had believed in the incarnation of God in a definite person, but also, like Hegel, he seemed to think it a matter of small importance that the person in which the 'hypostatic union' was believed to have been accomplished should be Jesus the Nazarene rather than any other, and again whether or not the belief was strictly true to fact. The important thing, to his mind, was that the belief stimulates to the attempt to the achievement of 'deiformity' in our own personality.
at length for the non-intentionality of some conscious states. None of the opposing comments made on the various posts inclined me to modify my view. The agreement of Peter Lupu, however, fortified me in my adherence to it. I was especially pleased recently to stumble upon a passage by the great F. H. Bradley in support of the non-intentionality of some experiences. Please note that the intentionality of my being PLEASED to find the supporting Bradley passage has no tendency to show that PLEASURE is an intentional state, as 'pleasure' is used below. No doubt one can be pleased by such-and-such or pained at this-or-that, but these facts are consistent with there being non-intentional pleasures and pains. The passage infra is from Bradley's magisterial "Pleasure for Pleasure's Sake" (Ethical Studies (Selected Essays), LLA, 1951, p. 37, bolding added):
Having recently returned from the Geneva conference on Bradley's regress, I have much to ruminate upon and digest. I'll start my ruminations with some comments on Richard Gaskin's work.
In an earlier post I suggested that we ought to make a tripartite distinction among vicious, benign (harmless), and virtuous (helpful) infinite regresses. To put it crudely, a vicious regress prevents an explanatory job from getting done; a benign regress does not prevent an explanatory job from getting done; and a virtuous regress makes a positive contribution to an explanatory job's getting done. I gave an example of a putative virtuous regress in the earlier post which example I will not repeat here. In this post I draw your attention to a second putative example from the work of Richard Gaskin, whom I was happy to meet at the Geneva conference on Bradley's Regress. Gaskin's proposal is that "Bradley's regress is, contrary to to the tradition, so far from being harmful that it is even the availability of the regress which guarantees our ability to say anything at all. Bradley's regress is the metaphysical ground of the unity of the proposition." ("Bradley's Regress, the Copula, and the Unity of the Proposition," The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 179, April 1995, p. 176) In terms of my schema above, Gaskin is claiming that Bradley's regress is positively virtuous (not merely benign) in that it plays a positive explanatory role: it explains (metaphysically grounds) the unity of the proposition.
I will now attempt to summarize and evaluate Gaskin's position on the basis of two papers of his that I have read, and on the basis of his presentation in Geneva. (I should say that he has just published a book, The Unity of the Proposition, which I have not yet secured, so the following remarks may need revision in light of his later work.)
This is an addendum to Trope Theory Meets Bradley's Regress. In that paper I touched upon the question whether the compresence relation is dyadic or not, but did not delve into the matter in any depth. Now I will say a little more with the help of George Molnar's excellent discussion in Powers: A Study in Metaphysics (Oxford 2003), pp. 48-51. Molnar draws upon Peter Simons, "Particulars in Particular Clothing: Three Trope Theories of Substance (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, September 1994, 553-575), which I have also consulted.
This is the paper Iam scheduled to present at the Bradley Conference at the University of Geneva in early December, warts and all. No doubt it needs more work. So comments and criticism are welcome.
Trope Theory Meets Bradley's Regress
William F. Vallicella
1. Introduction
One of the perennial tasks of ontology is that of analyzing a thing’s having of properties. That things have properties is a datum consistent with different theories as to what properties are, what the things are that have the properties, and how best the having is to be understood. Any theory will have to provide a three-fold answer to this three-fold question. In so doing, it must show how the elements it distinguishes fit together to form the unified phenomenon of a thing having properties. Analysis is not enough for understanding; synthesis is also needed to show how the elements separated out by analysis form a unity. One of the criteria of adequacy for any theory is whether or not it can avoid the threat to unity known as Bradley’s regress.
This paper argues that trope theory may have trouble passing the Bradley test. In particular, what it argues is that (i) trope theory requires a compresence relation to account for the difference between a unified thing and its disparate property-constituents; (ii) the compresence relation is external and therefore open to Bradleyan challenge; (iii) the various attempts to defuse Bradley’s regress are unsuccessful; hence, (iv) Bradley’s vicious infinite regress is unavoidable and trope theory in its current versions may be untenable.
At Metaphysics Zeta (Book VII, Chapter 17, Bekker 1041b10-30), there is a clear anticipation of Bradley's Regress and an interesting formulation of what may well count as the fundamental problem of metaphysics, the problem of unity. What follows is the W. D. Ross translation of the passage. It is a mess presumably because the underlying Greek text is a mess. The Montgomery Furth and Richard Hope translations are not much better. But the meaning is to me quite clear, and I will explain it after I cite the passage:
In Part I of this series I provided a preliminary description of the problem that exercises Orilia and me and a partial list of assumptions we share. One of these assumptions is that there are truth-making facts. We also both appreciate that Bradley's Regress ('the Regress') threatens the existence of facts. Why should this be so? Well, the existence of a fact is the unity of its constitutents: when they are unified in the peculiar fact-constituting manner, then the fact exists. But this unity needs an explanation, which cannot be empirical-causal, but must be ontological. The existence of facts cannot be taken as a brute ontological fact. But when we cast about for an explanation, we bang into the Regress. Let me now try to clarify this a bit further. We distinguish between an internal Regress and an external Regress, and in both cases we must investigate whether it is vicious or benign.
I was invited to attend a workshop on Bradley's Regress at the University of Geneva this December. Francesco Orilia will also be in attendance. He and I corresponded about Bradley and facts four or so years ago. He has read some of my work and I have read some of his. This series of posts is a new attempt at understanding his position and differentiating it from mine. It is based on his "States of Affairs: Bradley vs. Meinong" in Venanzio Raspa, ed., Meinongian Issues in Contemporary Italian Philosophy, Ontos Verlag, 2006, pp. 213-238.
1. The Problem in a First Rough Formulation
A fact or state of affairs (STOA) is a contingent unity of certain ontological constituents, for example, a (thin) particular and a universal. It is this unity that is responsible for a fact's being a truth-maker, as opposed to a mere collection of entities. Obviously, it is Al’s being fat, rather than the mere collection of Al and fatness, that makes true the proposition that Al is fat. We take as given the difference between a fact and its constituents, between a's being F, on the one hand, and the set or sum consisting of a and F-ness, on the other. The difference is clear if one notes that, for example, Al and fatness can exist without it being the case that Al is fat. (The converse of course does not hold.) There is more to Al's being fat than Al and fatness. The problem is to give an account of this 'more.' What is it that makes a fact more than its constituents?
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