Maverick Philosopher

Our Knowledge of Sameness (2021 Version)

How ubiquitous, yet how strange, is sameness!  The strangeness of the ordinary. Sameness is a structure of reality so pervasive and fundamental that a world that did not exhibit it would be inconceivable. There is synchronic and diachronic sameness. I will be discussing the latter.

How do I know that the tree I now see in my backyard is numerically the same as the one I saw there yesterday? Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford 1993, p. 124) says in a Reidian vein that one knows this "by induction." I take him to mean that the tree I now see resembles very closely the one I saw yesterday in the same place and that I therefore inductively infer that they are numerically the same. Thus the resemblance in respect of a very large number of properties provides overwhelming evidence of their identity.

But this answer is open to objection. First of all, there is something instantaneous and immediate about my judgment of identity in a case like this: I don't compare the tree-perceived-yesterday, or rather my memory of the tree-perceived-yesterday, with the tree-perceived-today, property for property, to see how close they resemble in order to hazard the inference that they are identical. There is no 'hazarding' at all.  Phenomenologically, there is no comparison and no inference. I just see that they are the same. But this 'seeing' is of course not with the eyes. For sameness is not an empirically detectable property or relation. I am just immediately aware -- not mediately via inference -- that they are the same.  Greenness is empirically detectable, but sameness is not.

What is the nature of this immediate awareness given that we do not come to it by inductive inference or by literally seeing (with the eyes) the numerical sameness of yesterday's tree and today's tree?   And what exactly is the object of the awareness, identity itself?

A problem with Plantinga's answer is that it allows the possibility that the two objects are not strictly and numerically the same, but are merely exact duplicates or indiscernible twins. But I want to discuss this in terms of the problem of how we perceive or know or become aware of change.  Change  is linked to identity since for a thing to change is for one and the same thing to change. 

Let's consider alterational (as opposed to existential) change. A thing alters if and only if it has incompatible properties at different times.  Do we perceive alteration with the outer senses? A banana on my kitchen counter on Monday is yellow with a little green. On Wednesday the green is gone and the banana is wholly yellow. On Friday, a little brown is included in the color mix. We want to say that the banana, one and the same banana,  has objectively changed in respect of color.

But what justifies our saying this? Do we literally see, see with the eyes, that the banana has changed in color? That literal seeing would seem to require that I literally see that it is the same thing that has altered property-wise over the time period. But how do I know that it is numerically the same banana present on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? How do I know that someone hasn't arranged things so that there are three different bananas, indiscernible except for color, that I perceive on the three different days? On that extraordinary arrangement I could not be said to be perceiving alterational change. To perceive alterational change one must perceive identity over time. For there is change only if one and the same thing has different properties at different times. But I do not perceive the identity over time of the banana.

I perceive a banana on Monday and a banana on Wednesday; but I do not visually perceive that these are numerically the same banana. For it is consistent with what I perceive that there be two very similar bananas, call them the Monday banana and the Wednesday banana.   I cannot tell from sense perception alone whether I am confronting numerically the same banana on two different occasions or two numerically different bananas on the two occasions. If you disagree with this, tell me what sameness looks like. Tell me how to empirically detect the property or relation of numerical sameness. Tell me what I have to look for.  Sameness is like existence: neither are empirically detectable features of things. 

Suppose I get wired up on methamphetamines and stare at the banana the whole week long. That still would not amount to the perception of alterational change. For it is consistent with what I sense-perceive that there be a series of momentary bananas coming in and out of existence so fast that I cannot tell that this is happening. (Think of what goes on when you go to the movies.) To perceive change, I must perceive diachronic identity, identity over time. I do not perceive the latter; so I do not perceive change. I don't know sameness by sense perception, and pace Plantinga I don't know it by induction. For no matter how close the resemblance between two objects, that is consistent with their being numerically distinct. And note that my judgment that the X I now perceive is the same as the X I perceived in the past has nothing tentative or shaky about it. I judge immediately and with assurance that it is the same tree, the same banana, the same car, the same woman. What then is the basis of this judgment? How do I know that this tree is the same as the one I saw in this spot yesterday? Or in the case of a moving object, how do I know that this girl who I now see on the street is the same as the one I saw a moment ago in the coffee house? Surely I don't know this by induction.

How then do I know it?  I don't for a second doubt that it is the same tree, the same banana, the same girl. I am strongly inclined to say that I know that it is the same tree, etc.  The question, however, is how I know it. How is it possible that I know such a thing given that transtemporal identity is not empirically detectable?  My inability to explain how it is possible would seem to some to cast doubt on my claim that I do know that it is the same tree, etc.  Others will demur and say that what is actual is possible whether or not one can explain how it is possible.  One simply waxes dogmatic in the face of critical raisonnement.

If I cannot know diachronic identity empirically, do I impose the concept of such identity on what I literally see so as to enforce the numerical identity of the two trees, the two bananas, the two girls?  Do I really want to say that identity is a transcendental concept to which nothing in the sensory manifold corresponds, a concept that I impose on the manifold?

A Most Remarkable Prophecy

The Question

Suppose there had been a prophet among the ancient Athenians who prophesied the birth among them of a most remarkable man, a man having the properties we associate with Socrates, including the property of being named 'Socrates.'  Suppose this prophet, now exceedingly old, is asked after having followed Socrates' career and having witnessed his execution: Was that the man whom you prophesied?

Does this question make sense?  Suppose the prophet had answered, "Yes, that very man, the one who just now drank the hemlock, is the very man whose birth I prophesied long ago before he was born!"  Does this answer make sense?  

An Assumption

To focus the question, let us assume that there is no pre-existence of the souls of creatures.  Let us assume that Socrates, body and soul, came into existence at or near the time of his conception.  For our problem is not whether we can name something that already exists, but whether we can name something that does not yet exist.

Thesis 

I say that neither the question nor the answer make sense.  (Of course they both make semantic sense; my claim is that they make no metaphysical or broadly logical sense.)  What the prophet prophesied was the coming of some man or other with the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  What he could not have prophesied was the very man that subsequently came to possess the properties in question.  This is equivalent to saying that there was no individual Socrates before he came into existence. Before he came into existence there was no merely possible Socrates.

What the prophet prophesied was general, not singular:  he prophesied that a certain definite description would come to be satisfied by some man or other. Equivalently, what the prophet prophesied was that a certain conjunctive property would come in the fullness of time to be instantiated, a property among whose conjuncts are such properties as being snubnosed, being married to a shrewish woman, being a master dialectician, being  accused of being a corrupter of youth, etc.  Even if the prophet had been omniscient and had been operating with a complete description, a description such that only one person in the actual world satisfies it if anything satisfies it, the prophecy would still be general. 

Why would the complete description, satisfied uniquely if satisfied at all, still be general?  Because of the possibility that some other individual, call him 'Schmocrates,' satisfy the description.  For such a complete description, uniquely satisfied if satisfied at all, could not capture the very haecceity and ipseity and identity of a concrete individual.

We can call this view I am espousing anti-haecceitist:  the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual cannot antedate the individual's existence.  Opposing this view is that of the haecceitist who holds that temporally prior to the coming into existence of a concrete individual such as Socrates, the non-qualitative thisness of the individual is already part of the furniture of the universe.

My terminology is perhaps not felicitous.  I am not denying that concrete individuals possess haecceity.  I grant that haecceity is a factor in an individual's  ontological 'assay' or analysis.  What I am denying is that the haecceity of an individual can exist apart from the individual whose haecceity it is.  From this it follows that the haecceity of an individual cannot exist before the individual exists.

But how could the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual be thought to antedate the individual whose thisness it is?  We might try transforming the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual into an abstract object, a property that exists in every possible world, and thus at every time in those worlds having time.

Consider the putative property, identity-with-Socrates.  Call it Socrateity.   Suppose our Athenian prophet has the power to 'grasp' (conceive, understand) this non-qualitative property long before it is instantiated. Suppose he can grasp it just as well as he can grasp the conjunctive property mentioned above.    Then, in prophesying the coming of Socrates, the prophet would be prophesying the coming of Socrates himself.  His prophecy would be singular, or, if you prefer, de re: it would involve Socrates himself.  

What do I mean by "involve Socrates himself"?  Before Socrates comes to be there is no Socrates.  But there is, on the haecceitist view I reject, Socrateity.  This property 'deputizes' for Socrates at times and in possible worlds at which our man does not exist.  It cannot be instantiated without being instantiated by Socrates.  And it cannot be instantiated by anything other than Socrates in the actual world or in any possible world.  By conceiving of Socrateity before Socrates comes to be, the Athenian prophet is conceiving of Socrates before he comes to be, Socrates himself, not a mere instance of a conjunctive property or a mere satisfier of a description.  Our Athenian prophet is mentally grabbing onto the very haecceity or thisness of Socrates which is unique to him and 'incommunicable' (as a Medieval philosopher might say) to any other in the actual world or in any possible world.

But what do I mean by "a mere instance" or a "mere satisfier"?

Let us say that the conjunctive property of Socrates mentioned above is a qualitative essence of Socrates if it entails every qualitative or pure property of Socrates whether essential, accidental, monadic, or relational.  If Socrates has an indiscernible twin, Schmocrates, then both individuals instantiate the same qualitative essence.  It follows that, qua instances of this qualitative essence, they are indistinguishable.  This implies that, if the prophet thinks of Socrates in terms of his qualitative essence, then his prophetic thought does not reach Socrates himself, but only a mere instance of his qualitative essence.  

My claim, then, is that one cannot conceive of an individual that has not yet come into existence.  Not even God can do it.  For until an individual comes into existence it is not a genuine individual.  Before Socrates came into existence, there was no possibility that he, that very man, come into existence.  (In general, there are no de re possibilities involving future, not-yet-existent, individuals.)  At best there was the possibility that some man or other come into existence possessing the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  To conceive of some man or other is to think a general thought: it is not to think a singular thought that somehow reaches an individual in its individuality.

To conceive of a complete description's being satisfied uniquely by some individual or other it not to conceive of a particular individual that satisfies it.  If this is right, then one cannot name an individual before it exists.

The Question

Suppose there had been a prophet among the ancient Athenians who prophesied the birth among them of a most remarkable man, a man having the properties we associate with Socrates, including the property of being named 'Socrates.'  Suppose this prophet, now exceedingly old, is asked after having followed Socrates' career and having witnessed his execution: Was that the man whom you prophesied?

Does this question make sense?  Suppose the prophet had answered, "Yes, that very man, the one who just now drank the hemlock, is the very man whose birth I prophesied long ago before he was born!"  Does this answer make sense?  

An Assumption

To focus the question, let us assume that there is no pre-existence of the souls of creatures.  Let us assume that Socrates, body and soul, came into existence at or near the time of his conception.  For our problem is not whether we can name something that already exists, but whether we can name something that does not yet exist.

Thesis 

I say that neither the question nor the answer make sense.  (Of course they both make semantic sense; my claim is that they make no metaphysical or broadly logical sense.)  What the prophet prophesied was the coming of some man or other with the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  What he could not have prophesied was the very man that subsequently came to possess the properties in question.  This is equivalent to saying that there was no individual Socrates before he came into existence. Before he came into existence there was no merely possible Socrates.

What the prophet prophesied was general, not singular:  he prophesied that a certain definite description would come to be satisfied by some man or other. Equivalently, what the prophet prophesied was that a certain conjunctive property would come in the fullness of time to be instantiated, a property among whose conjuncts are such properties as being snubnosed, being married to a shrewish woman, being a master dialectician, being  accused of being a corrupter of youth, etc.  Even if the prophet had been omniscient and had been operating with a complete description, a description such that only one person in the actual world satisfies it if anything satisfies it, the prophecy would still be general. 

Why would the complete description, satisfied uniquely if satisfied at all, still be general?  Because of the possibility that some other individual, call him 'Schmocrates,' satisfy the description.  For such a complete description, uniquely satisfied if satisfied at all, could not capture the very haecceity and ipseity and identity of a concrete individual.

We can call this view I am espousing anti-haecceitist:  the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual cannot antedate the individual's existence.  Opposing this view is that of the haecceitist who holds that temporally prior to the coming into existence of a concrete individual such as Socrates, the non-qualitative thisness of the individual is already part of the furniture of the universe.

My terminology is perhaps not felicitous.  I am not denying that concrete individuals possess haecceity.  I grant that haecceity is a factor in an individual's  ontological 'assay' or analysis.  What I am denying is that the haecceity of an individual can exist apart from the individual whose haecceity it is.  From this it follows that the haecceity of an individual cannot exist before the individual exists.

But how could the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual be thought to antedate the individual whose thisness it is?  We might try transforming the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual into an abstract object, a property that exists in every possible world, and thus at every time in those worlds having time.

Consider the putative property, identity-with-Socrates.  Call it Socrateity.   Suppose our Athenian prophet has the power to 'grasp' (conceive, understand) this non-qualitative property long before it is instantiated. Suppose he can grasp it just as well as he can grasp the conjunctive property mentioned above.    Then, in prophesying the coming of Socrates, the prophet would be prophesying the coming of Socrates himself.  His prophecy would be singular, or, if you prefer, de re: it would involve Socrates himself.  

What do I mean by "involve Socrates himself"?  Before Socrates comes to be there is no Socrates.  But there is, on the haecceitist view I reject, Socrateity.  This property 'deputizes' for Socrates at times and in possible worlds at which our man does not exist.  It cannot be instantiated without being instantiated by Socrates.  And it cannot be instantiated by anything other than Socrates in the actual world or in any possible world.  By conceiving of Socrateity before Socrates comes to be, the Athenian prophet is conceiving of Socrates before he comes to be, Socrates himself, not a mere instance of a conjunctive property or a mere satisfier of a description.  Our Athenian prophet is mentally grabbing onto the very haecceity or thisness of Socrates which is unique to him and 'incommunicable' (as a Medieval philosopher might say) to any other in the actual world or in any possible world.

But what do I mean by "a mere instance" or a "mere satisfier"?

Let us say that the conjunctive property of Socrates mentioned above is a qualitative essence of Socrates if it entails every qualitative or pure property of Socrates whether essential, accidental, monadic, or relational.  If Socrates has an indiscernible twin, Schmocrates, then both individuals instantiate the same qualitative essence.  It follows that, qua instances of this qualitative essence, they are indistinguishable.  This implies that, if the prophet thinks of Socrates in terms of his qualitative essence, then his prophetic thought does not reach Socrates himself, but only a mere instance of his qualitative essence.  

My claim, then, is that one cannot conceive of an individual that has not yet come into existence.  Not even God can do it.  For until an individual comes into existence it is not a genuine individual.  Before Socrates came into existence, there was no possibility that he, that very man, come into existence.  (In general, there are no de re possibilities involving future, not-yet-existent, individuals.)  At best there was the possibility that some man or other come into existence possessing the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  To conceive of some man or other is to think a general thought: it is not to think a singular thought that somehow reaches an individual in its individuality.

To conceive of a complete description's being satisfied uniquely by some individual or other it not to conceive of a particular individual that satisfies it.  If this is right, then one cannot name an individual before it exists.

Existence, Unity, Possibility, and Actuality: Are There Merely Possible Individuals?

Steven Nemes by e-mail:

Here’s a question for you about existence, perhaps one you could discuss on the blog.

In your book, you argue that existence is ontological unity. I think that’s right. But a merely possible this-such is a unity as much as an actual this-such. What then distinguishes merely possible existence from actual existence?

To put it precisely, the existence of a contingent being is the contingent unity of its ontological constituents.  Such a being is appropriately referred to as a this-such or as a concrete individual.  I assume that existence and actuality are the same: to exist = to be actual. I also assume that existence and Being are the same: to exist = to be.  Thus I reject the quasi-Meinongian thesis forwarded by Bertrand Russell in his 1903 Principles of Mathematics (449) according to which there ARE items that do not EXIST. 

It follows from these two assumptions that there are no individuals that are merely possible. For if there were merely possible individuals, they would have Being, but not existence.

Objection.   "This very table that I just finished building, was, before I built it, a merely possible table.  One and the same table went from being merely possible to being actual.  No temporal individual becomes actual unless it, that very individual, was previously possible.  Now the table is actual; hence it, that very individual, had to have been previously a merely possible table. A merely possible table is a table, but one that does not exist."

Reply. "I deny that a merely possible table is a table.  'Merely possible' here functions as an alienans adjective like 'decoy' in 'decoy duck.'  A decoy duck is not a duck, but a hunk of wood made to appear, to a duck, as a duck. A merely possible table is not a table, but the possibility that there come to exist a table that satisfies a certain description. 

The possibility of there coming to exist a table of such-and-such a description could be understood as a set of properties, or as perhaps a big conjunctive property. Either way, the possibility would not be a possible individual.

I deny the presupposition of your question, Steven, namely, that "a merely possible this-such is a unity as much as an actual this-such."  What you are assuming is that there are merely possible individuals. A merely possible individual is a nonexistent individual, and on the view I take in my existence book, there are no nonexistent individuals. 

The next post -- scroll up -- will help you understand the subtlety of this problematic.

A Most Remarkable Prophecy

The Question

Suppose there had been a prophet among the ancient Athenians who prophesied the birth among them of a most remarkable man, a man having the properties we associate with Socrates, including the property of being named 'Socrates.'  Suppose this prophet, now exceedingly old, is asked after having followed Socrates' career and having witnessed his execution: Was that the man you prophesied?

Does this question make sense?  Suppose the prophet had answered, "Yes, that very man, the one who just now drank the hemlock, is the very man whose birth I prophesied long ago before he was born!"  Does this answer make sense?  

An Assumption

To focus the question, let us assume that there is no pre-existence of the souls of creatures.  Let us assume that Socrates, body and soul, comes into existence at or near the time of his conception.  For our problem is not whether we can name something that already exists, but whether we can name something that does not yet exist.

Thesis 

I say that neither the question nor the answer make sense.  (Of course they both make semantic sense; my claim is that they make no metaphysical or broadly logical sense.)  What the prophet prophesied was the coming of some man with the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  What he could not have prophesied was the very man that subsequently came to possess the properties in question.  

What the prophet prophesied was general, not singular:  he prophesied that a certain definite description would come to be satisfied by some man or other. Equivalently, what the prophet prophesied was that a certain conjunctive property would come in the fullness of time to be instantiated, a property among whose conjuncts are such properties as being snubnosed, being married to a shrewish woman, being a master dialectician, being  accused of being a corrupter of youth, etc.  Even if the prophet had been omniscient and had been operating with a complete description, a description such that only one person in the actual world satisfies it if anything satisfies it, the prophecy would still be general. 

Why would the complete description, satisfied uniquely if satisfied at all, still be general?  Because of the possibility that some other individual, call him 'Schmocrates,' satisfy the description.  For such a complete description, uniquely satisfied if satisfied at all, could not capture the very haecceity and ipseity and identity of a concrete individual.

We can call this view I am espousing anti-haecceitist:  the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual cannot antedate the individual's existence.  Opposing this view is that of the haecceitist who holds that temporally prior to the coming into existence of a concrete individual such as Socrates, the non-qualitative thisness of the individual is already part of the furniture of the universe.

My terminology is perhaps not felicitous.  I am not denying that concrete individuals possess haecceity.  I grant that haecceity is a factor in an individual's  ontological 'assay' or analysis.  What I am denying is that the haecceity of an individual can exist apart from the individual whose haecceity it is.  From this it follows that the haecceity of an individual cannot exist before the individual exists.

But how could the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual be thought to antedate the individual whose thisness it is?  We might try transforming the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual into an abstract object, a property that exists in every possible world, and thus at every time in those worlds having time.

Consider the putative property, identity-with-Socrates.  Call it Socrateity.   Suppose our Athenian prophet has the power to 'grasp' (conceive, understand) this non-qualitative property long before it is instantiated. Suppose he can grasp it just as well as he can grasp the conjunctive property mentioned above.    Then, in prophesying the coming of Socrates, the prophet would be prophesying the coming of Socrates himself.  His prophecy would be singular, or, if you prefer, de re: it would involve Socrates himself.  

What do I mean by "involve Socrates himself"?  Before Socrates comes to be there is no Socrates.  But there is, on the haecceitist view I reject, Socrateity.  This property 'deputizes' for Socrates at times and in possible worlds at which our man does not exist.  It cannot be instantiated without being instantiated by Socrates.  And it cannot be instantiated by anything other than Socrates in the actual world or in any possible world.  By conceiving of Socrateity before Socrates comes to be, the Athenian prophet is conceiving of Socrates before he comes to be, Socrates himself, not a mere instance of a conjunctive property or a mere satisfier of a description.  Our Athenian prophet is mentally grabbing onto the very haecceity or thisness of Socrates which is unique to him and 'incommunicable' (as a Medieval philosopher might say) to any other in the actual world or in any possible world.

But what do I mean by "a mere instance" or a "mere satisfier"?

Let us say that the conjunctive property of Socrates mentioned above is a qualitative essence of Socrates if it entails every qualitative or pure property of Socrates whether essential, accidental, monadic, or relational.  If Socrates has an indiscernible twin, Schmocrates, then both individuals instantiate the same qualitative essence.  It follows that, qua instances of this qualitative essence, they are indistinguishable.  This implies that, if the prophet thinks of Socrates in terms of his qualitative essence, then his prophetic thought does not reach Socrates himself, but only a mere instance of his qualitative essence.  

My claim, then, is that one cannot conceive of an individual that has not yet come into existence.  Not even God can do it.  For until an individual comes into existence it is not a genuine individual.  Before Socrates came into existence, there was no possibility that he, that very man, come into existence.  (In general, there are no de re possibilities involving future, not-yet-existent, individuals.)  At best there was the possibility that some man or other come into existence possessing the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  To conceive of some man or other is to think a general thought: it is not to think a singular thought that somehow reaches an individual in its individuality.

To conceive of a complete description's being satisfied uniquely by some individual or other it not to conceive of a particular individual that satisfies it.  If this is right, then one cannot name an individual before it exists.

The Puzzle of Dion and Theon

This puzzle, similar to Peter Geach's Tibbles the Cat in content, is unlike it in vintage. Its origin is attributed by Philo of Alexandria (30 B.C. - 45 A. D.) to Chrysippus the Stoic (c. 280 B.C. - c. 206 B. C.) What follows is my take on the puzzle. I draw heavily upon Michael B. Burke, "Dion and Theon: An Essentialist Solution to an Ancient Puzzle," The Journal of Philosophy, 1994, pp. 129-139.

Yesterday, Dion was a whole man, but today he had his left foot successfully amputated. Yesterday, 'Theon' was introduced as a name for that proper part of Dion that consisted of the whole of Dion except his left foot. (To keep the formulation of the puzzle simple, let us assume that dualism is false and that Dion is just a living human organism.) It is clear that yesterday Dion and Theon were numerically distinct individuals, the reason being that yesterday Theon was a proper part of Dion.  (By definition of 'proper part,' if x is a proper part of y, then x is not identical to y.  And if x and y are not identical, then x and y are distinct.  Two items can be distinct without being wholly distinct.)  Now the question is which of the following is true today, after the amputation:

 

 

 

A. Both Dion and Theon exist.
B. Neither Dion nor Theon exist.
C. Dion exists but Theon does not.
D. Theon exists but Dion does not.

The problem is to justify one of these answers. If none of the answers can be rationally justified, then we have a tetralemma which might be taken to suggest that there is something deeply problematic about our ordinary talk and thought about material particulars and their persistence. Given my conception of philosophy as at once both aporetic and revisionist, this would be a welcome result if I could support it. 

Ad (A). Because Dion and Theon both existed yesterday, you might think they both exist today.  There is, however,  a reason to think that it cannot be true that both Dion and Theon exist today after the amputation. The reason is that it is impossible both that (i) Dion and Theon be numerically distinct and that (ii) Dion and Theon occupy exactly the same place and be composed of exactly the same matter arranged in exactly the same way, as is the case today after the amputation.

Could we say that Dion and Theon both survived the operation but are now one and the same? This is impossible given the Indiscernibility of Identicals. For today, after the operation, something is true of Dion which is not true of Theon, namely, that he, Dion, once had two feet. So Dion and Theon cannot be or have become identical.

Ad (B). This option is so counterintuitive that no one has maintained it.

Ad (C). It seem obvious that Dion survives the amputation. But what about Theon? Can we say that Theon ceases to exist after the amputation? Michael Burke (p. 134 ff.) thinks we can. He gives something like the following argument:

1. The concept of a person is maximal: the proper parts of persons are not themselves persons.
Therefore
2. Theon before the amputation was not a person.
3. Persons are essentially persons, and hence nonpersons are essentially nonpersons.
Therefore
4. Theon before the amputation was essentially a nonperson.
Therefore
5. Theon could not have survived a change that would have made it, if it survived, a person.
6. The amputation of Dion's left foot is a change that would have made Theon, if it survived, a person.
Therefore
7. Theon did not survive the amputation of Dion's left foot, and so does not exist after the amputation.

Ad (D). If one adopts mereological essentialism, then one can say that Theon survives but Dion does not. Mereological essentialism is the doctrine that wholes have their parts essentially. Accordingly, for any whole W and part x of W, if x is a part of W, then necessarily x is a part of W. This implies that no whole can survive the gain or loss of a part. If so, then Dion ceases to exist when he loses his left foot. But Theon continues to exist. Unfortunately, mereological essentialism applied to ordinary continuants such as cats and cabbages and cars is highly counterintuitive. My car does not cease to exist when the antenna is snapped off.

None of the solutions is satisfying as far as I can see. One might conclude that reason in us is weak and dialectical in Kant's sense.

Who am I? Personal Identity versus Identity Politics

Preliminary note: what has been exercising me lately is the question whether there is a deep common root to the political identitarianism of the Left and the Right, and if there is, what this root is. Nihilism, perhaps?

I wrote:

. . . my identity as a person trumps my identity as an animal. Part of what this means is that it would be a false self-identification were I to identify myself as a member of a racial or ethnic group or subgroup.  For if a person identifies himself as a white male or a black female, then he reduces himself to what fundamentally he is not, namely, an animal, when what he fundamentally and most truly is is a person.

My right-wing identitarian sparring partner reasonably objects:

This is puzzling to me.  If I 'identify' myself as a man, or a human being, I don't think I'm reducing myself to anything.  I'm just stating an obvious fact about myself or, if you prefer, myself qua mammal or living organism or something of the kind.  Is there some contradiction or tension between 'I am a human being' or 'I am an animal' and 'I am a person'? 

Later on in his comments he says that "to defend an identitarian position in politics" it is not necessary to engage with the metaphysics of personhood.  I am inclined to disagree.

No Escaping Metaphysics

As I see it, practical politics presupposes political philosophy which presupposes normative ethics which presupposes philosophical anthropology which is a discipline of special metaphysics. Philosophical anthropology, in turn, finds its place within general metaphysics.  Rationally informed political action requires a theory of the human good that needs to be grounded in a theory of human nature which itself needs embedding in a comprehensive metaphysics.  And if the political action is to be truly ameliorative, then the theory of human nature had better be correct. For example, the terrible scourge on humanity that Communism has proven to be flows from the Left's false understanding of human nature.

Concessions

But before getting in too deep, let me concede some points to my interlocutor.  I concede that if he tells me he is a Caucasian male, then there is an innocuous  sense of 'identify' according to which he has identified himself as Causasian and male, and that in so doing he needn't be 'reducing' himself to anything in any pejorative sense. He is simply giving me information about his sex and his ancestry.  He is simply pointing out a couple of his attributes.

By the same token, he can identify himself as a citizen of this country or that, a member of this political party or that, an adherent of this religion or that, or an adherent of no religion at all.  And so on for a long list of essential and accidental attributes: military veteran? blood type? Social Security number?   Take larger and larger conjunctions of these attributes and you get closer and closer to zeroing  in on the individuating identity of a particular human animal in society, that which distinguishes him from every other human animal.

Personalism and False Self-Identification

But what I am getting at is something different. Not WHAT  I am objectively viewed in my animal and social features, but WHO I am as a person, as a unique conscious and self-conscious subject of experience and as a morally responsible free agent, as an I who can address a Thou and be addressed in turn by an I. (M. Buber)  I am a subject for whom there is a world and not merely an object in the physical and social worlds.

The question concerns the 'true self,' WHO I am at the deepest level. Who am I? A mere token of a type? But that is all I would be if I were to identify myself in terms of my race.  This is one example of what I am calling a false self-identification.  A tribal black who identifies himself in his innermost ipseity as black has reduced himself to a mere token of a racial type, a mere instance of it, when being an interchangeable token cannot possibly be what makes him the unique person that he is.  After all, there are many tokens of the type, black human being. 

Not only does he reduce himself to a mere instance of one of his attributes, he reduces himself to a mere instance of one of his animal attributes.  It is qua animal that he has a race, not qua person. But we are not mere animals; we are spiritual animals.   

Such false self-identification is a form of spiritual self-degradation.

And the same goes for whites who seek their true identity in their racial 'identity.' That is a false self-identification because who I am as this unique individual cannot be reduced to being a repeatable and interchangeable token of a type.  The reason, again, is that (i) there are indefinitely many tokens of the type, white human animal, but there is exactly one me, and (ii) a self-identification in terms of a bodily attribute pertains to my animality but not to my spirituality.  

Suppose I address a black man or woman as a person. When I do that I am precisely not confronting an instance of black human animal with all the stereotypes that go with it. I am then attempting an I-Thou relation with the black man or woman and not an I-It relation with an instance of black human animal. I am showing respect for the person.

There are many types of false self-identification and I oppose them all. On the present occasion I come out against racial self-identification. You cannot be in your innermost ipseity (selfhood) white or black, and any such self-identification is false. Now what does this have to do with identity politics?

Connection with Identity Politics

First of all, what is identity politics?  Logically prior question: What is politics? Politics is the art of achieving the common human good in the public sphere. Human flourishing is not possible apart from social interaction and when that interaction is public, as opposed to private, we are in the political sphere. Such interaction is both cooperative and conflictual. So perhaps we can say that politics aims at maximizing cooperation and minimizing conflict within a given society for the benefit of all involved.

Identity politics, however, is not concerned primarily with the promotion of the common human good within the public sphere but with the empowering of particular factions within it.  An oppressed group will seek power to alleviate its oppression. Think of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA in the '50s and '60s. The identity politics of that movement was understandable and probably necessary for blacks to make the progress they did.  Blacks exhorted each other to stand tall and take pride in being black.  Some of us are old enough to remember the "Black is beautiful" bumperstickers of that era.

Before long the Civil Rights movement turned into a hustle with race-hustlers such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton leading the pack. Long story short, the instrumentally necessary identity politics of the Civil Rights movement came to displace politics in its proper sense which has to aim at comity and the common good and not at the appeasing of aggrieved parties.  No surprise, then, at the rise of white resistance to the excesses and absurdities of Affirmative Action with its reverse discrimination, minority set-asides, and race-norming.

But tribalism  is tribalism whether black or white. Our only hope is to get beyond tribalism.  (I am not sanguine.) But when I pointed this out to my interlocutor and some of his fellow travellers a year or so ago in these pages,  I was shocked, SHOCKED (well, not really) to find them disagreeing me. They apparently think that whites need their own tribalism, their own White Pride, their own consciousness-raising.

This makes no sense to me. How can you take legitimate pride in what is merely an element of your facticity (in Sartre's Being and Nothingness sense of 'facticity.')  You had to be born somewhere, to some pair of parents or other, of some race or other, of some sex, and so on.  You're stuck with that. If you need to feel pride, feel pride in what you have done with your facticity, with what you have made of yourself, with the free accomplishments of yourself as a person, as an individual.

Common Human Good?

I wrote, "Politics is the art of achieving the common human good in the public sphere." But can we agree on what the common human good is? Not if we are identity-political in our approach.  Can we even agree that there is such a thing as the common human good? Not if we are identity-political. 

If who I am at the deepest level of the self is a white man, if my race is constitutive of my very innermost ipseity, then I have nothing fundamentally in common with blacks. But then conflict can be avoided only by racial segregation.

It is worth noting that one could be a white -identitarian without being a white-supremacist.  One could hold that one's innermist identity as a person is racially constituted without holding that white identity is any better than black identity.

I hope it is becoming clear that we cannot avoid in these discussions what my sparring partner calls "heavy-duty metaphysics." Whether you affirm or deny a common human good, you are doing metaphysics.  And if metaphysics gets in, theology is sure to follow. Justin Dean Lee in his review of Mark Lilla writes, 

. . . any serious — that is, internally coherent — movement away from identity politics and toward a robust discourse of the common good requires that we reintroduce metaphysics into our politics. This entails granting theology a privileged place in the public square at a time when most of the left and the far right are loath to grant it any place at all.

Nihilism as the Common Root of Left and Right Identity Politics

Rod Dreher:

So, to recap: Justin Dean Lee rightly says we cannot have a politics of the common good without substantive agreement on what the Good is, or how it might be known. Liberalism, in both its classical and progressivist forms, is agnostic on that question, or at most assumes things (“all men are created equal”) that cannot be sustained absent a shared commitment to a metaphysical ideal. Last week in Paris, talking about these things with Alain Finkielkraut, the philosopher said that he sees no exit for the French, because they have concluded as a society that there is no realm beyond the material. Most Americans would deny that they believe this, but that’s not the way we live, not even Christians. It is true that we Americans are not as far gone into atheism as the French are, so we still have time to recover. But to recover, you first have to recognize the problem. You first have to recognize that the way you are living as a Christian is not going to survive the prolonged encounter with liquid modernity.

Ta-Nehisi Coates and Richard Spencer are both atheists who have found a strong source of belief in their respective races. Spencer, a Nietzschean, has said that Christianity is a religion of the weak. They have drawn the line between good and evil not down the middle of every human heart, as that great Christian prophet Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did, but between their race and the Other. There is immense power in that kind of tribalism, and it lies in large part because it denies the fallenness of one’s own people. Where in contemporary American Christianity can we find the resources to resist falling prey to the malign power of racialism, in all its versions?

[. . .]

Only a strong Christianity can counter this nihilistic tribal religion. But this we do not have today. 

Royce Revisited: Individuality and Immortality

This is a draft of a paper from years ago (early aughts) that it looks like I may never finish. But it is relevant to present concerns. So here it is.

............................................................

ROYCE REVISITED: INDIVIDUALITY AND IMMORTALITY

    “What is it that makes any real being an individual?” Near the beginning of his 1899 Ingersoll lecture, The Conception of Immortality, Josiah Royce identifies this as the fundamental question whose answering must precede any serious discussion of the immortality question.ⁱ Since the latter concerns whether we survive bodily death as individuals, it is clear that the logically prior question is: What is it to be an individual?

    This question, “formal and dreary” as it may seem, yet “pulsates with all the mystery of life.”ⁱⁱ I share Royce’s enthusiasm since I count it as one of his greatest insights that “the logical problem as to what constitutes an individual being” is identical to “the problem as to the worthy object of love.” (CI 32-33) This essay sets itself three tasks. The first is to expound the main features of Royce’s doctrine of individuality in a rigorous and contemporary manner. The second is to raise some critical objections to it. The third is to sketch an alternative which preserves Royce’s insights.

 

Use, Mention, and Identity

Ed plausibly maintains that the following argument is invalid:

Hesperus is so-called because it appears in the evening
Hesperus = Phosphorus
--------------
Phosphorus is so-called because it appears in the evening.

But then he asks: if the above is invalid why isn't the following argument also invalid?

'Hesperus’ designates Hesperus
Hesperus = Phosphorus
-------------
‘Hesperus’ designates Phosphorus.

I say both arguments are valid. The second strikes me as obviously valid.  As for the first, suppose we rewrite it by replacing 'so-called' with an equivalent expression. We get an argument I will call the REWRITE:

Hesperus is called 'Hesperus' because it appears in the evening
Hesperus = Phosphorus
-------------
Phosphorus is called 'Hesperus' because it appears in the evening.

Now the conclusion of the REWRITE is admittedly strange. But it is true! Phosphorus is called 'Hesperus' when it appears in the evening, and it is called that because it appears in the evening.   So the REWRITE is valid, whence  it follows that the first argument, pace Ed, is valid.

So both arguments are valid.    

UPDATE (9/12). My thesis is refuted in the combox. But as Chisholm once said after some point of his had been refuted, "Well, at least I said something clear enough to be refuted!"  I am not suggesting, however, that Ed's suggestion that the second argument supra is invalid has any merit.

Do We Love the Person or Only Her Qualities?

The following ruminations belong among the metaphysical foundations of debates about tribalism, racism, and the differences between my brand of conservatism and the neo-reactionary variety.  For example, I say things like, "We should  aspire to treat individuals as individuals rather than reduce them to tokens of types or members of groups or instances of attributes."  This of course gives rise to questions like, "What exactly is it to treat an individual as an individual, given that there are no individuals bereft of attributes?"  And before you know it we are deep in the bowels of metaphysics, entangled, to shift metaphors, in conundra that may well be  insoluble.  Here are two theses I will just state on the present occasion:

T1. All the hot-button issues (abortion, immigration, capital punishment, etc.) are metaphysical at bottom.

T2. The insolubility of the underlying metaphysical problems, if they are insoluble, 'percolates up' into the popular debates and renders them insoluble as well.

....................................................

Here is a remarkable passage from Pascal's remarkable Pensées:


A man goes to the window to see the passers by. If I happen to pass by, can I say that he has gone there to see me? No; for he is not thinking of me in particular. But does he who loves someone for her   beauty, really love her? No; for small-pox, destroying the beauty without destroying the person, will put an end to love. And if I am loved for my judgment, for my memory, am I loved? No; for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where then is this 'I,' if it resides neither in the body, nor the soul [mind]? And how  love the body or the soul [mind] save for these qualities which do not  make the 'me,' since they are doomed to perish? For can one love the soul [mind] of a person in the abstract, irrespective of its qualities? Impossible and wrong! So we never love anyone, but only  qualities. (p. 337,  tr. H. F. Stewart)

This passage raises the following question. When I love a person, is it the person in her particularity and uniqueness that I love, or merely the being-instantiated of certain lovable properties? Do I love Mary as Mary, or merely as an instance of helpfulness, friendliness, faithfulness, etc.?  The issue is not whether I love Mary as Mary versus loving attributes in abstracto; the issue is whether I love Mary as Mary versus loving her as an instance of lovable attributes.

These are clearly different. If it is merely the being-instantiated of an ensemble of lovable properties that I love, then it would not matter if the love object were replaced by another with the same ensemble of properties. It would not matter if Mary were replaced by her indiscernible twin Sherry. Mary, Sherry, what's the difference? Either way you get a package of the very same delectable attributes.

But if it is the person in her uniqueness that I love, then it would matter if someone else with exactly the same ensemble of properties were substituted for the love object. It would matter to me, and it would matter even more to the one I love. Mary would complain bitterly if Sherry were to replace her in my  affections. "I want to be loved for being ME, not for what I have in common with HER!"

Self Love

The point is subtle.  It is perhaps more clearly made using the example of self-love.  Suppose Phil is my indiscernible twin.  Now it is a fact that I love myself.  But if I love myself in virtue of my instantiation of a set of properties, then I should love Phil equally.  For he instantiates exactly the same properties as I do.  But if one of us has to be annihilated, then I prefer that it be Phil.  Suppose God decides that one of us is more than enough, and that one of us has to go.  I say, 'Let it be Phil!' and Phil says, 'Let it be Bill!' So I don't love Phil equally even though he has all the same properties that I have.  I prefer myself and love myself  just because I am myself.

This little thought-experiment suggests that there is more to self-love than love of the being-instantiated of an ensemble of properties.  For Phil and I have the same properties, and yet each is willing to sacrifice the other.  This would make no sense if the being of each of us were exhausted by our being instances of sets of properties.  In other words, I do not love myself solely as an instance of properties but also as a unique existent individual who cannot be reduced to a mere instance of properties. I love myself as a unique individual.  And the same goes for Phil: he loves himself as a unique individual.  Each of us loves himself as a unique individual numerically distinct from his indiscernible twin.

We can take it a step further.   If love is blind as folk wisdom has it, self-love is blind in excelsis.  In some cases self-love is present even when the lover/beloved lacks any and all lovable attributes.  If there are cases like this then there is love of self as a pure individual. I love me just because I am me and not because I instantiate lovable attributes.  I love myself, not as an instance of attributes, but as a case of existence.  Instances are interchangeable; cases of existence are not.   I love myself in that I am in a sense of 'am' that cannot be identified with the being-instantiated of a set of properties. I love my very existing.   If so, and if my love is a 'correct emotion' (Brentano), then my sheer existing must be good. 

I take this to show that self-love cannot be identified with, or reduced to, love of an instance of lovable attributes qua instance of those attributes.

Other Love

Now it is a point of phenomenology that love intends to reach the very haecceity and ipseity of the beloved: in loving someone we mean to  make contact with his or her unique thisness and selfhood. It is not a mere instance of lovable properties that love intends, but the very  being of the beloved. It is also true that this intending or meaning is in some cases fulfilled: we actually do sometimes make conscious contact with the haecceity and ipseity of the beloved. In the case of self love we not only intend, but arrive at, the very being of the beloved, not merely at the co-instantiation of a set of multiply instantiable lovable properties.  In the case of other love, there is the intention to reach the haecceity and ipseity of the beloved, but it is not clear how arriving at it is possible given Pascal's argument.

In the case of self love, my love 'reaches' the beloved because I am the beloved.  In the case of other-love, my love intends the beloved, but it is not clear that it 'reaches' her.

The question underlying all of this is quite fundamental: Are there any genuine individuals? X is a genuine individual if and only if X is essentially unique. The Bill and Phil example suggests that selves are genuine individuals and not mere bundles of multiply instantiable properties.  For each of the twins is acutely aware that he is not the other despite complete agreement in respect of  pure properties. 

Here are some of my metaphysical theses: 

1. There exist genuine individuals.
2. Genuine individuals cannot be reduced to bundles of properties.
3. The Identity of Indiscernibles is false.
4. Numerical difference is numerical-existential difference: the existence of an individual is implicated in its very haecceity. 
5.  There are no nonexistent individuals. 
6. There are no not-yet existent individuals.

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Predication as Identity: Another Round

The Opponent is a patient man:

Trying again.

(1) Sam is poor at t1 iff Sam is identical with some poor person at t1
(2) Sam is poor at t1 iff Sam is self-identical at t1

(1) is self-evidently true. For it cannot be true that Sam is poor, but not identical with some poor person. Nor can it be false that Sam is poor, but true that he is identical with some poor person.

But (2) is false. Sam is necessarily self-identical, but not necessarily poor. Therefore (2) does not follow from (1), for a false statement cannot follow from a true one.

The fallacy is in assuming that being identical with some poor person is the same fact as being identical with oneself.

I plead innocent of the charge of having committed a logical mistake.  I accept (1) but I reject (2) and for the very reason the Opponent supplies: "Sam is necessarily self-identical, but not necessarily poor."  In fact, this is the very point I use against him. I claim that his theory cannot accommodate it. 

The Issue

The issue is whether predication can be assimilated to identity. 'Sam is poor' is an example of a sentence which, on the face of it, features a predicative use of 'is' as opposed to an identitarian use.   Connected with this is the fact that 'poor' is a predicate adjective, not a noun proper or common.  So surface indications are that predication cannot be assimilated to identity, or vice versa, and that the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication are distinct and mutually irreducible.

When we say that Sam is poor we cannot possibly mean that Sam is identical to the property of being poor. Why not? First, if Sam is identical to a property, then he is a property -- which is precisely what he isn't. Second,  if Sam is poor and his father Dave is poor, and to be poor is to be identical to the property of being poor, then, by the Transitivity of Identity, Sam is identical to Dave, which is absurd.

On the other hand, 'Sam is poor' is equivalent to 'Sam is a poor man.'  What we have done is replace the adjective with a (common) name. This lends sanction to the notion that our original sentence can be construed to express  an identity between the denotatum of 'Sam' and exactly one of the denotata of 'poor man.'  We can give this poor guy a (proper) name: 'Poboy.'  

I now ask: what is the truth-maker of 'Sam is a poor man' given that the 'is' expresses numerical identity? What in the world makes-true 'Sam is a poor man'?  (If the Opponent declares that there is no need for a truth-maker for this obviously contingent true sentence, then Game Over, and we have nothing more to discuss.)  The answer has to be, on the theory under discussion: the numerical identity of Sam with Poboy. Since Sam and Poboy are one and the same, this amounts to saying that the truth-maker of 'Sam is a poor man' is Sam's being Sam.

The Problem

The difficult with this identity theory of predication ought to be obvious.  It succumbs to two related objections as I said earlier:

Objection 1. Sam might not have been poor.  But it is not the case that Sam might not have been Sam. So the manifestly contingent truth  of 'Sam is poor' cannot be explained in terms of identity. 

Objection 2. That was a modal objection; now for a temporal one. The poor have been known to become rich. Suppose Sam goes from poor to rich.  The identity theory implies that Sam, who was identical to Poboy, ceases to be identical to Poboy and becomes identical to Richboy.  But surely this is absurd inasmuch as it is equivalent to saying that Sam, who was numerically the same as himself, is now no longer numerically the same as himself.

This is absurd because, if Sam changes in respect of wealth, going from poor to rich, there has to be a self-same substrate of this change. Sam must remain numerically the same through the change. After all, the change is accidental, not substantial. The identity theory of predication, however, cannot accommodate these truisms. For if Sam is poor in virtue of being identical to one of the poor individuals, then he cannot become rich without ceasing to be himself.

An Alternative Which Avoids These Objections

Suppose we construe 'Sam is poor' to express the instantiation by Sam of the property of being poor.  Then the objections can't get started. The Opponent, however, cannot avail himself of this way out since he is a nominalist, one who rejects properties.  He may appreciate that man does not live by bread, or bed, alone, but he does not appreciate that the philosopher does not live by predicates alone -- even if he turns them into names.

But I am not endorsing the alternative since it too has difficulties. Here is one.  Sam's going from poor to rich or hot to cold or whatever is an intrinsic accidental change, a real change in Sam. It is not a relational change.  But if Sam merely instantiates the property of being poor, and this property is a universal, and indeed a universal that is not a constituent of Sam, then it would seem that what is plainly an intrinsic change has been misconstrued as a relational change. 

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An Identity Theory of Predication

I will sketch a two-name, quasi-Scholastic, nominalistic/reistic  theory of predication that I believe is quite hopeless. But it may serve as a foil against which and in comparison to which a more plausible theory may be developed.

Suppose it is true that Sam is poor. What are the truth-conditions of 'Sam is poor'?  Rewrite the sentence as 'Sam is a poor individual.' Think of 'Sam' ('S') and ''poor individual' ('P') as names where the first name is proper and the second common. We assume that there are no universals. Accordingly, 'poor' in our original sentence cannot be construed as an abstract substantive, as a proper name for the universal poorness.  It must be construed as a common name for poor individuals.

And because we are assuming that there are no universals, we cannot parse 'Sam is poor' as 'Sam instantiates poorness.' Nor can we take the truth-maker of 'Sam is poor' to be the state of affairs, Sam's being poor.

First idea. 'Sam is a poor individual' is true just in case:

A. For some x, 'S' denotes x and for some x, 'P' denotes x.

This is obviously insufficient since it doesn't guarantee that the item denoted by 'S' is numerically the same as one of the items denoted by 'P.'  While the second two occurrences of 'x' are bound variables, they are not bound by the same quantifier. So we try 

B. For some x, 'S' denotes x and 'P' denotes x.

This is much better. The second and third occurrences of 'x' are bound by the same quantifier. This ensures that the item denoted by 'S' is identical to one of the items denoted by 'P.'  The first item is called 'Sam' and the second we can call 'Poboy.'  Obviously these names denote one and the same item given that our sentence is true.

This yields an identity theory of predication. A simple predicative sentence such as 'Sam is poor' is true just in case the denotatum of the subject term is identical to one of the denotata of the predicate term.  The truth-maker of the sentence is the identity of Sam with Poboy, i.e., the identity of Sam with himself.

Objection 1. Sam might not have been poor.  But it is not the case that Sam might not have been Sam. So the manifestly contingent truth  of 'Sam is poor' cannot be explained in terms of identity. 

Objection 2. That was a modal objection; now for a temporal one. The poor have been known to become rich. Suppose Sam goes from poor to rich.  The identity theory implies that Sam, who was identical to Poboy, ceases to be identical to Poboy and become identical to Richboy.  But surely this is absurd inasmuch as it is equivalent to saying that Sam, who was numerically the same as himself, is now no longer numerically the same as himself.

This is absurd because, if Sam changes in respect of wealth, going from poor to rich, there has to be a self-same substrate of this change. Sam must remain numerically the same through the change. After all, the change is accidental, not substantial. The identity theory of predication, however, cannot accommodate these truisms. For if Sam is poor in virtue of being identical to one of the poor individuals, then he cannot become rich without ceasing to be himself.

Notice how these problems disappear if properties are admitted.  Sam instantiates the property of being poor, but he might not have. Sam instantiates the property of being poor at one time but not at others.

I now invite the Noble Opponent to show how his version of the identity theory circumvents these objections, if it does.  

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The 'Is' of Identity and the 'Is' of Predication: Contra Sommers

Dedication: To Bill Clinton who taught us that much can ride on what the meaning of 'is' is.

..................

The Opponent has a very good post in which he raises the question whether the standard analytic distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication is but fallout from an antecedent decision to adhere to an absolute distinction between names and predicates according to which no name is a predicate and no predicate is a name. If the distinction is absolute, as Gottlob Frege and his epigoni maintain, then names cannot occur in predicate position, and a distinction between the two uses of 'is' is the consequence.  But what if no such absolute distinction is made?  Could one then dispense with the standard analytic distinction between the two uses of 'is'?  Or are there reasons independent of Frege's function-argument analysis of propositions for upholding the distinction between the two uses? 

To illustrate the putative distinction, consider

1. George Orwell is Eric Blair

and

2. George Orwell is famous.

Both sentences feature a token of 'is.'  Now ask yourself: is 'is' functioning in the same way in both sentences? The standard analytic line is that 'is' functions differently in the two sentences.  In (1) it expresses (numerical) identity; in (2) it expresses predication. Identity, among other features, is symmetrical; predication is not.  That suffices to distinguish the two uses of 'is.'  'Famous' is predicable of Orwell, but Orwell is not predicable of  'famous.'  But if Blair is Orwell, then Orwell is Blair.

Now it is clear, I think, that if one begins with the absolute name-predicate distinction, then the other distinction is also required. For if  'Eric Blair' in (1) cannot be construed as a predicate, then surely the 'is' in (1) does not express predication.  The question I am raising, however, is whether the distinction between the two uses of 'is' arises ONLY IF one distinguishes absolutely and categorially between names and predicates.

Fred Sommers seems to think so.  The Opponent follows him in this. Referencing the example 'The morning star is Venus,' Sommers  writes, "Clearly it is only after one has adopted the syntax that prohibits the predication of proper names that one is forced to read 'a is b' dyadically and to see in it a sign of identity." (The Logic of Natural Language, Oxford 1982, p. 121, emphasis added)  The contemporary reader will of course wonder how else 'a is b' could be read if it is not read as expressing a dyadic relation between a and b.  How the devil could the 'is' in 'a is b' be read as a sign of predication?

The question can be put like this. Can we justify a distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication even if we do not make an absolute distinction between names (object words) and predicates (concept words)?  I think we can.

Is it not obvious that if an individual has a property, then it is not identical to that property? Tom is hypertensive. But it would be absurd to say that Tom is identical to this property.  This is so whether you think of properties as universals or as particulars (tropes). Suppose the property of being hypertensive (H-ness) is a universal and that Tom's brother Sal is also hypertensive. It follows that they share this property.  So if Tom = H-ness, and Sal = H-ness, then, by the transitivity and symmetry of identity, Tom = Sal, which is absurd.

If properties are tropes, we also get an absurdity. On a trope bundle theory, Tom is a bundle of tropes. But surely Tom cannot be identical to one of his tropes, his H-trope.  On a trope substratum theory, tropes are like Aristotelian accidents inhering in a substance. But surely no substance is identical to one of its accidents.

So whether properties are universals or tropes, we cannot sensibly think of an individual's having a property in terms of identity with that property.  If H-ness is a universal, then we would speak of Tom's instantiating H-ness, where this relation is obviously asymmetrical and for this reason and others distinct from identity.

Now 'H' is a predicate whereas 'H-ness' is a name. But nothing stops us from parsing 'Tom is hypertensive' as 'Tom instantiates hypertensiveness.' This shows that we can uphold the distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication with a two-name theory of predication, and thus without making Frege's absolute distinction between names and predicates.  It appears that Sommers is mistaken in his claim that  "Clearly it is only after one has adopted the syntax that prohibits the predication of proper names that one is forced to read 'a is b' dyadically and to see in it a sign of identity."

I am assuming of course that we cannot eke by on predicates alone: we need properties.  By my lights this should not be controversial in the least. My nominalist Opponent will demur. In 'Orwell is famous' he seems to be wanting to say that 'Orwell' and 'famous' refer to the same thing.  But what could that mean? 

First of all, 'Orwell' and 'famous' do not have the same extension: there are many famous people, but only one Orwell. 'Orwell is famous' is true. What makes it true? Presumably the fact that 'Orwell' and 'famous' denote one and the same individual. And which individual is that? Why, it's Orwell! But Orwell might not have been famous.  Since it is contingent that Orwell is famous, but noncontingent that Orwell is Orwell, the truth-maker of 'Orwell is famous' cannot be Orwell alone.  It has has to be the fact of Orwell's being famous, which fact involves the property of being famous in addition to Orwell.  

Nominalists insist that we ought not multiply entities beyond necessity. They are right! But there is no multiplication beyond necessity here since we need to admit properties as features of extralinguistic reality.  To explain why 'Orwell is famous' is contingent, one must distinguish Orwell from his contingently possessed properties.  Man does not live or think truly by predicates alone. 

Nominalism and an Identity Theory of Predication

The Worthy Opponent comments,

We nominalists hold that 'God is good' is true when what is signified by 'God' and what is signified by 'good' are numerically one and the same thing.

I stumble over this. 

Apparently, it is The Opponent's view that a sentence such 'Socrates is good' is true when what is signified by 'Socrates' and what is signified by 'good' are numerically one and the same thing. I don't understand. 'Good,' unlike 'Socrates,' is a common term: it applies to many individuals. So there cannot be numerically one thing that both 'Socrates' and 'good' signify. 'Socrates' signifies one thing; 'good' signifies many things.

If, contrary to fact, there were only one good thing, then it would make some sense to say that 'Socrates is good,' which is by its surface grammar a predication, could be read as asserting the numerical identity of Socrates with the one good thing.  But if Socrates is good, or seated, or conversing with Theaetetus, this is only contingently the case. So how analyze the possibly true 'Socrates is not good' on the assumption that there is only one good thing?  We would have to say that Socrates is distinct from himself -- which is absurd.  For if, in actuality, Socrates is good in virtue of being identical to the one good thing, then, in the possible counterfactual situation in which he -- the very same individual --  is not good, he would have to be numerically diverse from the one good thing, namely, himself!

The same argument goes through even if there are many good things. For the Opponent's claim is that Socrates is good in virtue of being identical to one of the many good things. Call this good thing G.  The claim is that 'Socrates is good' is an identity proposition in disguise, and that its deep logical form is: S = G.

The problem is that 'Socrates is good' is contingently true. But 'S = G' is not contingently true. So the predication is not an identity proposition in disguise.  

This looks to be a pretty powerful objection.

I am assuming something that is well-nigh self-evident, but which I fear the Illustrious Opponent will deny, namely, that if a = b, then this is non-contingently the case.  In other words, I am assuming that if a = b, then there is no possible situation in which a and b both exist but are numerically distinct.

Curiously, the Opponent's theory works in one case and one case only. But he has to admit the divine simplicity.  So assume that God exists, that God is essentially good, and that God is identical to his attributes, and that therefore God alone is good in this sense. If God is identical to his attributes, then God = the one and only good thing. (Socrates is good only in an analogical and derivative sense.) In this one case, 'God is good' is an identity proposition in disguise.  

Related articles

Peter van Inwagen, "A Theory of Properties," Exposition and Critique

Review of Barry Miller, A Most Unlikely God

<i>Luke</i> 2:21: Can the Not-Yet-Existent be Named?

Is God Beyond All Being?

Numerical and Qualitative Identity and Radical Flux

Philosophers often use 'numerically' in contrast with 'qualitatively' when speaking of identity or sameness.  If I tell you that I drive the same car as Jane, that is ambiguous: it could mean that Jane and I drive one and the same car, or it could mean that Jane and I drive the same make and model of car, but not one and the same car. To take a second example, six bottles of beer in a typical six-pack are numerically distinct but qualitatively identical. Suppose you want a beer from the six-pack. It won't matter which bottle of the six I hand you since they are all qualitatively the same (qualitatively identical) in respect of both bottle and contents, at least with regard to the properties that you would find relevant such as quantity, taste, inebriatory potential, etc. If I hand you a beer and you say you want a different beer from the same six-pack, you mean a numerically different one. If I reply by saying that they are all the same, I mean they are all qualitatively the same.

If A and B are numerically identical, it follows that they are one and the same. A and B are one, not two.  If A and B are qualitatively identical, it does not follow that they are one and the same. But they might be.  For if A and B are numerically identical, then they share all properties, in which case they are qualitatively identical.  Furthermore, if A and B are qualitatively identical, it does not follow that they share every property: it suffices that they share some properties.

To see this, suppose that you and I both order the 'monster chimichanga' at the local Mexican eatery. We have ordered the same item, qualitatively speaking.  But it turns out that the one served to you is slightly more 'monstrous' (a wee bit bigger) than mine. That doesn't change the fact that they are qualitatively the same or qualitatively identical as I use these phrases.  The chimis are two, not one, hence numerically different.  They are the same in that they share most properties.

I suppose we could nuance this by distinguishing strict from loose qualitative identity.  Strict implies indiscernibility; loose does not. 

Can One Step Twice into the Same River?

Stephen Law (HT: Sed Contra) thinks one can make short work of a Heraclitean puzzle if one observes the numerical-qualitative distinction:

If you jump into a river and then jump in again, the river will have changed in the interim. So it won't be the same. But if it's not the same river, then the number of rivers that you jump into is two, not one. It seems we're forced to accept the paradoxical - indeed, absurd - conclusion that you can't jump into one and the same river twice. Being forced into such a paradox by a seemingly cogent argument is a common philosophical predicament.

This particular puzzle is fairly easily solved: the paradoxical conclusion that the number of rivers jumped into is two not one is generated by a faulty inference. Philosophers distinguish at least two kinds of identity or sameness. Numerical identity holds where the number of objects is one, not two (as when we discover that Hesperus, the evening star, is identical with Phosphorus, the morning star). Qualitative identity holds where two objects share the same qualities (e.g. two billiard balls that are molecule-for molecule duplicates of each other, for example). We use the expression 'the same' to refer to both sorts of identity. Having made this conceptual clarification, we can now see that the argument that generates our paradox trades on an ambiguity. It involves a slide from the true premise that the river jumped in the second time isn't qualitatively 'the same' to the conclusion that it is not numerically 'the same'. We fail to spot the flaw in the reasoning because the words 'the same' are used in each case. But now the paradox is resolved: we don't have to accept that absurd conclusion. Here's an example of how, by unpacking and clarifying concepts, it is possible to solve a classical philosophical puzzle. Perhaps not all philosophical puzzles can be solved by such means, but at least one can. 

Problem Solved?

Not so fast.  Although superficially plausible, the above solution/dissolution of the puzzle begs the question against the doctrine of Heraclitean flux. Law goes at Heraclitus with the numerical-qualitative identity distinction.  But this distinction presupposes a distinction between individuals and qualities.  Given this distinction one can say that one and the same individual has different qualities at different times.  Thus one and the same river is stepped into at different times. But on a doctrine of Heraclitean flux, there are no individuals that remain self-same over time.  There is no substrate of change.  Change cuts so deep that it cannot be confined to the properties of a thing leaving the thing, as the substrate of change, relatively unchanged.  For Heracliteans as for Buddhists, it's flux all the way down.

Law taxes Heraclitus with an illicit inferential slide from

The river jumped into the second time is not qualitatively the same

to

The river jumped into the second time is not numerically the same.

But there is no equivocation on 'same' unless we can sustain a distinction between the thing and its properties.  Is this distinction unproblematic?  Of course not. It reeks with problems. Just what is a thing in distinction from its properties?  A Bergmannian bare particular? An Armstrongian thin particular? An Aristotelian primary substance? There are problems galore with these conceptions. Has anyone ever really clarified the notion of prote ousia in Aristotle? Nope. Is a thing a bundle of its properties? More problems. And what is a property? An abstract object? In what sense of 'abstract'? A universal? A trope?  Will you say that there are no properties at all, only predicates?  And what about the thing's HAVING of properties? What is that? Instantiation? Is instantiation a relation? If yes, does it sire Bradley's Regress?  Are properties/concepts perhaps unsaturated in Frege's sense?  Can sense be made of that?  Is HAVING some sort of containment relation? Are the properties of a thing ontological constituents of it? And what could that mean? And so it goes.

We are presented with a puzzle and a seeming absurdity: There is no stepping twice into the same river. The Moorean rebuttal comes quickly: Of course, there is! Common sense, convinced that it is  right, attempts to dissolve the puzzle by making a simple distinction between numerical and qualitative identity.  The dissolution seems to work — but only if we remain on the surface of the troubled waters. Think a little more and you realize that the distinction presupposes a deeper distinction between thing and properties. But now we are launched into a labyrinth of ontological problems for which there is no accepted solution. The unclarity of the individual-property distinction percolates back upwards to disturb the numerical-qualitative distinction. 

Law has not definitively solved the Heraclitean puzzle.

The Numerical-Qualitative Distinction is Valid at the Level of Ordinary Language

We need to make the distinction, of course: it is fallout from, and exegesis of, ordinary usage.  'Same' is indeed ambiguous in ordinary English. The distinction does useful work at the level of ordinary language. The Heraclitean, however, need not be taken as contesting, at that level, the truth that one can step twice into the same river.  He is making a metaphysical claim: there is in reality, below the level of conventional talk and understanding, radical flux. If so, there is nothing that remains self-same over time, such as a river,  into which one can step twice.

Summary

To think clearly and avoid confusion one must observe the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity. But this distinction, which is serviceable enough for ordinary purposes, rests on a distinction, that of individual and property, which is metaphysically murky. Therefore, the common sense distinction cannot be used to dispatch the Heracliteans' metaphysical claim.

The deep metaphilosophical issue here concerns the role and status of Moorean rebuttals to seemingly crazy metaphysical claims. The illustrious Peter van Inwagen famously denies the existence of artifacts.  But he is not crazy, and you won't be able to blow him out of the water with some simple-minded distinction.

See Peter van Inwagen, Artifacts, and Moorean Rebuttals 

Belief, Designation, and Substitution

Suppose it is true that Sam believes that Hesperus is a planet.  One cannot substitute 'Phosphorus' for 'Hesperus' in 'Sam believes that Hesperus is a planet' and be assured that the resulting sentence will also be true.  And this despite the fact that Hesperus is Phosphorus. The reason is that Sam may be ignorant of the fact that Hesperus is Phosphorus.  So here we have a context, that of belief de dicto, in which the substitution of one co-referential expression for another fails to preserve truth.

Valid: Hesperus is a planet; Hesperus is Phosphorus; ergo, Phosphorus is a planet.

Invalid: Sam believes that Hesperus is a planet; Hesperus is Phosphorus; ergo, Sam believes that Phosphorus is a planet.

The difference in Quinean jargon is that in the valid argument, each name is in a referentially transparent position, while in the invalid argument the first occurrence of 'Hesperus' and the second occurrence of 'Phosphorous' are in referentially opaque positions. (Cf. Word and Object, sec. 30)

So far the Opponent will agree.  But he has a question for me.

Why does substitution succeed for the ‘designates’ relation, but fail for the ‘believes’ relation? The two arguments below are of exactly the same logical form:

A. ‘H’ designates H; H = P, therefore ‘H’ designates P.
B.  Sam believes that H is a planet; H = P, therefore S believes that P is a planet.

My answer is that substitution succeeds for the 'designates' relation because there is no referential opacity in (A).  'H' in (A) -- I am mentioning the third word in (A) -- is referentially transparent.  Let's not forget that we are assuming that names are rigid designators that refer directly to their designata, not via a Fregean sense or a Russellian description.

A directly referential term 'lassoes' its object, or you could say it 'harpoons' it or 'grabs' it. If I grab my cat I don't grab him under a description or via a Fregean "mode of presentation."  I grab the cat himself, all 25 lbs of him with all his parts and properties. Analogously, successful reference on Kripke's scheme get us right to the thing itself.  

I am maintaining against the Opponent that if names are rigid designators that target their designata directly and not via any sort of semantic intermediary, then the (A) and (B) cases are very different.  (B)-type cases are counterexamples to universal substitutivity salva veritate; (A)-type cases are not.  He is maintaining that the cases are parallel and that both generate referential opacity.

The Opponent's view might make sense if we add to the dialectic the Opponent's surprising thesis that all reference is intralinguistic reference, but this thesis cannot be brought into a discussion of Kripke who holds no such view.  My view is that while there is of course intralinguistic reference, it is a derivative phenomenon:  the paradigm cases are of extralinguistic reference.  Reference to a massive planet is nothing like a pronoun's back-reference to its antecedent.

But I don't endorse Kripke's views.  I incline toward a descriptivist theory of names.  Names don't refer; people or rather their minds refer using names that need not be publicly expressed.  Linguistic reference is built upon, and nothing without, thinking reference, or intentionality. The primacy of the intentional! (Chisholm would be proud of me.) The intentionality of finite mind, however, never presents us with the thing itself, Venus say, in all its infinitely-propertied glory.  Mental reference in never direct but mediated by a semantic intermediary, whether a Fregean sense, an Husserlian noema, a Castanedan guise, or something of that order.

Thinking about my cat is quite unlike picking him up.  When I pick him up I get the whole cat including stomach contents into my hand.  But I can't get the whole cat into my mind when I think about him.  I can only think of him under a description which doesn't begin to exhaust his full kitty-kat kwiddity. 

Kripke's scheme is crude, especially when he tries to explain via causation how a name acquires its reference.  The causal theory of reference quite hopeless for reasons canvassed in other posts.

Finally, if 'a' and 'b' are rigid designators that directly target their objects, and a = b, then surely there is no possible world in which the referents of these names both exist and are numerically different.  If substitution comes into this at all, it cannot fail to preserve truth. For if the meaning of 'a' is exhausted by a, and the meaning of 'b' exhausted by b, and a = b, then there is no additional factor that could induce referential opacity.

If a = b, it does not follow that necessarily, a = b, for if a/b is contingent, there there are worlds in which the identity does not hold.  But we can say this: if a = b, then essentially, a = b.  This rules out the contingency of their identity across all worlds in which a/b exists.

Yet Another Exchange on the Necessity of Identity

The Opponent by e-mail:

Still puzzling over this. I think Kripke believes we can get to N of I directly, via rigidity of designation.

If names are rigid designators, then there can be no question about identities being necessary, because ‘a’ and ‘b’ will be rigid designators of a certain man or thing x. Then even in every possible world, ‘a’ and ‘b’ will both refer to this same object x, and to no other, and so there will be no situation in which a might not have been b. That would have to be a situation in which the object which we are also now calling ‘x’ would not have been identical with itself. Then one could not possibly have a situation in which Cicero would not have been Tully or Hesperus would not have been Phosphorus. (‘Identity and Necessity’ p. 154, there is a similar argument in N&N p.104).

BV's comment: The great Kripke is being a little sloppy above inasmuch as a rigid designator does not designate the same object in every possible world, but the same object in every possible world in which the object exists.  Socrates, to coin an example, is a contingent being: he exists in some but not all metaphysically possible worlds.  If names are rigid designators, then 'Socrates' picks out Socrates in every world in which the philosopher exists, but not in every world, and this for the simple reason that he does not exist in every world. 'Socrates' if rigid is known in the trade as weakly rigid.  'God,' by contrast, if a name, and if a rigid designator, is strongly rigid since God exists in every possible world.

But I don't think this caveat affects the the main bone of contention.

My interpretation:

1. Let ‘a’ rigidly designate a  and ‘b’ rigidly designate b
2. Suppose a=b
3. Then there is a single thing, call it ‘x’, such that x=a and x = b
4. ‘a’ designates x and ‘b’ designates x
5. If designation is rigid, ‘a’ designates x in every possible world, likewise ‘b’
6. If ‘a’ and ‘b’ designate x in any possible world w, and not a=b, then not x=x
7. Therefore a=b in w
8. But w was any possible world. Therefore, necessarily a=b.

I claim that all the steps are valid, except 4, which requires substitutivity. But Kripke does not assume, or endorse, substitutivity (neither do I).

BV's interpretation:

A. 'a' and 'b' are rigid designators.
B. 'a' and 'b' designate the same object x in the actual world. 
Therefore
C. 'a' and 'b' designate the same object x in every possible world in which x exists.  (By the df. of 'rigidity')
Therefore
D. There is no possible world in which x exists and it is the case that ~(a = b).
Therefore
E. If  a = b, then necessarily, a = b.

I see no reason for Substitutivity if we are given Rigidity and Coreferentiality.   

Another Round With the Opponent on the Necessity of Identity

The Opponent writes,

The Maverick Philosopher has a comment on my earlier question about the necessity of identity. Can we get from ‘a=b’ to ‘necessarily a=b’ in a simple step? He thinks we can.

Now if ‘H’ and ‘P’ designate one and the same entity, then what appears to be of the form a = b, reduces to the form a = a. Clearly, if a = a, then necessarily, a = a. The assumption that the identity of H with P is contingent entails the absurdity that a thing is distinct from itself. Therefore the relation denoted by ‘=’ holds necessarily in every case in which it holds. Q. E. D.

The problem is the claim that ‘H’ (‘Hesperus’) and ‘P’ (‘Phosphorus’) designate one and the same entity. How do we get there, given only that H is the same object as P? Suppose we grant that H and P are this ‘one and the same entity’. We are saying that there is some entity, call it ‘V’ (i.e. Venus), such that H is identical with V and P is identical with V. Fair enough. But how do we get from there to the claim that the names designate this one and the same entity, i.e. that ‘H’ designates V and ‘P’ designates V? I.e. what validates the move from 2 to 3 in the following argument?

1. H=V
2. ‘H’ designates H
3. Therefore ‘H’ designates V.

You need the principle of substitutivity, the principle that if a=b and Fa, then infer Fb. For example, let F be the function ‘‘H’ designates –’. Then we agree that F(H), because we assumed that ‘H’ designates H. And we posit that H=V. Given substitutivity, it follow that F(V). But only given that substitutivity is valid in this case, which is not at all obvious, at least to me.

RESPONSE

I am afraid I just don't understand what the Opponent's problem is.  He writes, "The problem is the claim that ‘H’ (‘Hesperus’) and ‘P’ (‘Phosphorus’) designate one and the same entity. How do we get there, given only that H is the same object as P?"  Apparently, the Opponent wants to know what validates the inference from

Hesperus is the same entity as Phosphorus

to

'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus' designate the same entity.

What validates the inference is the principle that if two putatively distinct entities are in fact numerically the same entity, then the names for these putatively distinct entities are co-referential: they designate one and the same entity.

I don't see the need to invoke a principle of substitutivity.  In the above inference there was no substitution of a name for a name.   

The Necessity of Identity: A Puzzle and a Challenge

The Opponent comments in black; my responses are in blue:

Here is the puzzle: how can we establish the necessity of identity without appealing to principles which are either insufficient, or which are not universally valid? The principle of identity (necessarily, a = a) is not sufficient. We agree that necessarily, Hesperus is identical with Hesperus. That planet could not be numerically different from itself in any circumstance. But the question is whether necessarily, Hesperus is identical with Phosphorus. You will object that if H = P, then necessarily, H = P, because necessarily, H = H. is H. I reply: this begs the question. Under what law of logic or reasoning does nec (H = H) imply nec (H = P)? The principle of identity is insufficient on its own to establish necessity of identity.

BV:  This seems correct.  There is no immediate valid inference from the principle of identity to the necessity of identity.  The inference would seem to be  valid only in the presence of auxiliary 'mediating' premises.

But let me play the role of advocatus diaboli.  We know empirically that H = P. And we know a priori about the identity relation. We know that it is an equivalence relation (reflexive, symmetric, transitive). We also know that it is governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals  (InId) which states that for any x, y, if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and vice versa.  InId is not a principle external to the notion of (numerical) identity, but part of what we mean by 'identity.'  Obviously, if two putatively distinct items are one item, i.e., are identical, then whatever is true of the one is true of the other, and vice versa.  We would never apply the concept of identity to any thing or thing that violated InId.

So if we know that H = P, then we know that in reality (i.e., extralinguistically, and extramentally) there is just one thing where H and P are.  Call this one thing 'V.'   We know from the principle of identity that necessarily, V = V.  Now suppose, for reductio, that it is not the case that necessarily, H = P.  Suppose, in other words that possibly, ~(H = P).  One would then be supposing that the identity of H and P is contingent.  But that is to suppose that the identity of V with itself is contingent, which is absurd. Therefore, the necessity of identity holds.

So it appears that I have validated the inference from the the principle of identity to the necessity of identity by adducing premises that are well-nigh self-evident.  One of my supplementary premises is that we know some such truths as that H = P.  I also assumed that if x = y, then there are not two things denoted by 'x' and 'y,' but one thing.  I also assumed that when we use terms like 'H' and 'P' we are referring to things in reality with all their properties and relations and not to items like sense data or Husserlian noemata or Castanedan guises or any sort of incomplete object or epistemic deputy.  I am assuming that our thought and talk about planets and such reaches right up to the thing itself and does not stop short at some epistemic/doxastic intermediary.

And now back to the Opponent:

What if ‘Hesperus’ means exactly the same thing as ‘Phosphorus’? This is the principle of Semantic Identity. Then it certainly follows that nec (H = H) implies nec(H = P), because both statements mean exactly the same thing. But does ‘Hesperus’ mean exactly the same thing as ‘Phosphorus’? Surely not. When the names were given, when those planets were dubbed, people understood the meaning of both names perfectly. But while they understood that H=H, they did not understand that H=P. The names cannot have meant the same. So the assumption of semantic identity does not hold.

BV:  That's right.  The names do not have the same Fregean sense (Sinn). This is why 'H = H' and 'H = P' do not have the same Fregean cognitive value (Erkenntniswert).  To know one is to know an instance of the principle of identity.  It is to know a logical truth.  To know the other is to know a non-logical truth, one that is synthetic a posteriori in Kant's sense.

Finally, let’s try the principle of substitutivity, which states that Fa and a = b implies that Fb. Then let F be ‘nec (a = --)’. The principle of identity says that nec(a = a), i.e. Fa. Then if a = b, the principle of substitutivity says that Fb, i.e. nec(a = b). This is valid, but is the principle of substitutivity valid? There are many counterexamples to this, so we cannot assume it is valid. You will object that the principle of substitutivity may be invalid for a type of necessity known as ‘epistemic necessity’, but valid for a type of necessity known as ‘metaphysical necessity’. I reply: under what assumption or principle can you justify that substitutivity is valid for metaphysical necessity, when it is clearly not valid for other types of necessity. You object: we shall define metaphysical necessity as that type of necessity for which substitutivity is valid. I reply: how do you know that anything whatsoever fits that definition? You need to establish that the principle of substitutivity holds for some kind of necessity, without assuming the principle of substitutivity itself. But of course you can’t. If this were possible, Marcus and Quine would have been able to prove the necessity of identity without having to assume substitutivity. But they couldn’t.

BV:  it is true that there are counterexamples to the principle of substitutivity in the 'wide open' formulation that the Opponent provides. Sam can believe that Hesperus is a planet, not a star, without believing that Phosphorus is a planet, not a star, despite the fact that Hesperus = Phosphorus.  So the following is a non sequitur:

Hesperus has the property of being believed by Sam to be a planet.
Hesperus = Phosphorus.
Ergo
Phosphorus has the property of being believed by Sam to be a planet.

This example is also a counterexample to the Indiscernibility of Identicals which is presumably equivalent to the substitutivity principle.  I think that should worry us a bit.

To appreciate the dialectical lay of the land it may help to set forth the problem as an aporetic tetrad:

A. InId:  For any x, y, if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and conversely.
B. Hesperus = Phosphorus.
C. It is true of Hesperus that it is believed by Sam to be a planet.
D. It is not true of Phosphorus that it is believed by Sam to be a planet.

The tetrad is inconsistent: any three limbs entail the negation of the fourth.  One could solve the problem by rejecting InId in its wide-open or unrestricted formulation.  What speaks against this solution is that InId in its unrestricted formulation is part and parcel of what we mean by '=.'  If you were trying to explain to a student what relation '=' stands for, you couldn't just say that it stands for an equivalence relation since not every such relation is picked out by '=.'  You would have to bring in InId.

A second way to solve the tetrad is by denying (B).  It can be true that H is the same as P without it being the case that H = P.  Note that '=' is not a bit of ordinary language; it is a terminus technicus.  One can't just assume that the only type of sameness is the sameness denoted by '=.'  Suppose we distinguish between formal identity statements of the form a = a and material identity statements of the form a =* b.  While both are equivalence relations, the former are necessary while the latter are contingent.  We can then say that H and P are materially identical and thus contingently the same.  Because they are contingently the same, they are not one and the same.  H and P are together in reality but are nonetheless distinct items.  If so, (C) and (D) can both be true in the presence of InId/Substitutivity.

At this point I ask the Opponent whether his denial of the necessity of identity amounts to an affirmation of the contingency of the relation picked out by '=,' or whether it amounts to a rejection of the relation picked out by '=.'  It seems to me that if you admit that there is a relation picked out by '=,' then you must also admit that it holds noncontingently in every case in which it holds.

One could hold the following view.  There is a relation picked out by '=.' Call it formal identity.  It holds of everything.  But no synthetic identity statement is noncontingently true if true.  No such statement is reducible to the form a = a. All are contingently true if true.  So 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' is contingently true, and what the names refer to are distinct items.  They refer directly to these items.  But these items are something like Castaneda's ontological guises or Butchvarov's objects.   

My problem is therefore that we cannot establish the identity of necessity without appealing to principles which are either insufficient (the principle of identity) or which are not universally valid (the principles of semantic identity and substitutivity). We could of course assume it as a sort of bedrock, a truth which is obviously true in its own right, a per se nota principle which requires no further demonstration. But I am not sure it is such a truth. It’s not obvious to me, for a start.

So my challenge to Bill and others is to demonstrate necessity of identity by appeal to principles of reasoning which are stronger than the ones given above, or by demonstrating its self-evidence. Neither will work, in my view.

BV:  It seems to me I gave a reductio-type demonstration in my first comment. The paradigm cases of the relation picked out by '=' are the cases of the form a = a.  Now if 'H' and 'P' designate one and the same entity, then what appears to be of the form a = b, reduces to the form a = a.  Clearly, if a = a, then necessarily a = a.  The assumption that the identity of H and P is contingent entails the absurdity that a thing is distinct from itself. Therefore the relation denoted by '=' holds necessarily in every case in which it holds. Q. E. D.

Note that I didn't use Substitutivity/Inid or Semantic Identity in this reductio.   But I did assume that there is a relation picked out by '=' -- which is not obvious! -- and that it is this relation that the 'is' expresses in the synthetic truth 'H is P.'  Which is also not obvious!

Luke 2:21: Can the Not-Yet-Existent be Named?

Luke 2:21 (NIV): On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived. (emphasis added)

This New Testament passage implies that before a certain human individual came into existence, he was named, and therefore could be named.  The implication is that before an individual comes into existence, that very individual can be an object of irreducibly singular reference by a logically proper name.  That is by no means obvious as I shall now argue.

To simplify the discussion let us revert to a mundane example, Socrates, to keep the particulars of Christian incarnational theology from clouding the issue.  We will have enough on our plates even with this simplification.  At the end of this entry I will return to the theological question.

A Remarkable Prophecy

Suppose there had been a prophet among the ancient Athenians who prophesied the birth among them of a most remarkable man, a man having the properties we associate with Socrates, including the property of being named 'Socrates.'  Suppose this prophet, now exceedingly old, is asked after having followed Socrates' career and having witnessed his execution: Was that the man you prophesied?

 

Does this question make sense?  Suppose the prophet had answered, "Yes, that very man, the one who just now drank the hemlock, is the very man whose birth I prophesied long ago before he was born!"  Does this answer make sense?  

An Assumption

To focus the question, let us assume that there is no pre-existence of the souls of creatures.  Let us assume that Socrates, body and soul, comes into existence at or near the time of his conception.  For our problem is not whether we can name something that already exists, but whether we can name something that does not yet exist.

Thesis 

I say that neither the question nor the answer make sense.  (Of course they both make semantic sense; my claim is that they make no metaphysical or broadly logical sense.)  What the prophet prophesied was the coming of some man with the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  What he could not have prophesied was the very man that subsequently came to possess the properties in question.  

What the prophet prophesied was general, not singular:  he prophesied that a certain definite description would come to be satisfied by some man or other. Equivalently, what the prophet prophesied was that a certain conjunctive property would come in the fullness of time to be instantiated, a property among whose conjuncts are such properties as being snubnosed, being married to a shrewish woman, being a master dialectician, being  accused of being a corrupter of youth, etc.  Even if the prophet had been omniscient and had been operating with a complete description, a description such that only one person in the actual world satisfies it if anything satisfies it, the prophecy would still be general. 

Why would the complete description, satisfied uniquely if satisfied at all, still be general?  Because of the possibility that some other individual, call him 'Schmocrates,' satisfy the description.  For such a complete description, uniquely satisfied if satisfied at all, could not capture the very haecceity and ipseity and identity of a concrete individual.

We can call this view I am espousing anti-haecceitist:  the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual cannot antedate the individual's existence.  Opposing this view is that of the haecceitist who holds that temporally prior to the coming into existence of a concrete individual such as Socrates, the non-qualitative thisness of the individual is already part of the furniture of the universe.

My terminology is perhaps not felicitous.  I am not denying that concrete individuals possess haecceity.  I grant that haecceity is a factor in an individual's  ontological 'assay' or analysis.  What I am denying is that the haecceity of an individual can exist apart from the individual whose haecceity it is.  From this it follows that the haecceity of an individual cannot exist before the individual exists.

But how could the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual be thought to antedate the individual whose thisness it is?  We might try transforming the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual into an abstract object, a property that exists in every possible world, and thus at every time in those worlds having time.

Consider the putative property, identity-with-Socrates.  Call it Socrateity.   Suppose our Athenian prophet has the power to 'grasp' (conceive, understand) this non-qualitative property long before it is instantiated. Suppose he can grasp it just as well as he can grasp the conjunctive property mentioned above.    Then, in prophesying the coming of Socrates, the prophet would be prophesying the coming of Socrates himself.  His prophecy would be singular, or, if you prefer, de re: it would involve Socrates himself.  

What do I mean by "involve Socrates himself"?  Before Socrates comes to be there is no Socrates.  But there is, on the haecceitist view I reject, Socrateity.  This property 'deputizes' for Socrates at times and in possible worlds at which our man does not exist.  It cannot be instantiated without being instantiated by Socrates.  And it cannot be instantiated by anything other than Socrates in the actual world or in any possible world.  By conceiving of Socrateity before Socrates comes to be, the Athenian prophet is conceiving of Socrates before he comes to be, Socrates himself, not a mere instance of a conjunctive property or a mere satisfier of a description.  Our Athenian prophet is mentally grabbing onto the very haecceity or thisness of Socrates which is unique to him and 'incommunicable' (as a Medieval philosopher might say) to any other in the actual world or in any possible world.

But what do I mean by "a mere instance" or a "mere satisfier"?

Let us say that the conjunctive property of Socrates mentioned above is a qualitative essence of Socrates if it entails every qualitative or pure property of Socrates whether essential, accidental, monadic, or relational.  If Socrates has an indiscernible twin, Schmocrates, then both individuals instantiate the same qualitative essence.  It follows that, qua instances of this qualitative essence, they are indistinguishable.  This implies that, if the prophet thinks of Socrates in terms of his qualitative essence, then his prophetic thought does not reach Socrates himself, but only a mere instance of his qualitative essence.  

My claim, then, is that one cannot conceive of an individual that has not yet come into existence.  For until an individual comes into existence it is not a genuine individual.  Before Socrates came into existence, there was no possibility that he, that very man, come into existence.  (In general, there are no de re possibilities involving future, not-yet-existent, individuals.)  At best there was the possibility that some man or other come into existence possessing the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  To conceive of some man or other is to think a general thought: it is not to think a singular thought that somehow reaches an individual in its individuality.

To conceive of a complete description's being satisfied uniquely by some individual or other it not to conceive of a particular individual that satisfies it.  If this is right, then one cannot name an individual before it exists.

Back to Theology

Could an angel have named Jesus before he was conceived?  If I am right, no angel, nor even God, could name Socrates before he came to be.  But the case is different for Jesus on classical Trinitarian theology.  For while there is on Christian doctrine no pre-existence of the souls of creatures, there is on Christian doctrine the pre-existence of the Word or Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity.  So one could possibly say that the angel named the pre-existent Word 'Jesus.' 

Identity and Quasi-Epistemic Contingency

The Opponent sends the following puzzle to vex us:

Story: there was someone called 'a', and there was someone called 'b'.

This is all we have of the story. Let the predicate F be 'The story is consistent with a
not being identical with ___'. Then clearly Fa is false, and Fb is true. 

This is the case even if a, in fact, is identical with b.

Is there a puzzle here?  It may be only a malformed attempt at a puzzle. We are presented with a very short story consisting of exactly two claims.  We are given no information as to whether the person called 'a' is the same as or different from the person called 'b.'  So the story allows for the possibility that the person called 'a' is not the same as the person called 'b.'  This is the case even if, in fact, outside the story, it is not the case that a = b.

It is not clear that there is a puzzle here since the following propositions are logically consistent:

A. Within the story, it is possible that the person called 'a' is not the same as the person called 'b.' 
B.  It is the case that a = b.
C. For any x, y, if x = y, then necessarily, x = y.  (Kripke's Necessity of Identity thesis)

It is the presence of the story operator in (A) that saves the triad from inconsistency.

Suppose 'Axwell' and 'Buswell' are the two names in the story and that both refer to an existing man, the same man.  That a = b is no part of the story.  Given only what we know from the story it is possible that a not be identical to b.  But this possibility is something like an epistemic possibility which, as such, cannot be used to show the real (non-epistemic) possibility that a not be identical to b in reality.

So on this New Year's Day I tax the Noble Opponent with a metabasis eis allo genos (μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος), which is something like a Rylean category mistake: he shifts illicitly from a story-immanent perspective to a story-transcendent perspective. Within the story there is a story-immanent contingency as to both the identity and the difference of the referents of the names.  But this is a sort of epistemic contingency consequent upon the fact that literary fiction leaves much indeterminate: the literary characters have all and only the properties assigned to them in the story.  

So it looks as if the Opponent may be conflating a sort of epistemic contingency with real contingency.  He does not have the makings of a sound argument for the claim  that real-world identities are contingent, contra Kripke.

By contrast, the following triad is plainly inconsistent.  This is the case whether we take names to be Kripkean rigid designators or Russellian definite descriptions in disguise. 

A*. Possibly, it is not the case that a = b.
B. It is the case that a = b.
C. For any x, y, if x = y, then necessarily, x = y.   

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Our Knowledge of Sameness

How ubiquitous, yet how strange, is sameness!  A structure of reality so pervasive and fundamental that a world that did not exhibit it would be inconceivable. 

How do I know that the tree I now see in my backyard is numerically the same as the one I saw there yesterday? Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford 1993, p. 124) says in a Reidian vein that one knows this "by induction." I take him to mean that the tree I now see resembles very closely the one I saw yesterday in the same place and that I therefore inductively infer that they are numerically the same. Thus the resemblance in respect of a very large number of properties provides overwhelming evidence of their identity.

But this answer seems open to objection. First of all, there is something instantaneous and immediate about my judgment of identity in a case like this: I don't compare the tree-perceived-yesterday, or my memory of the tree-perceived-yesterday, with the tree-perceived-today, property for property, to see how close they resemble in order to hazard the inference that they are identical. There is no 'hazarding' at all.  Phenomenologically, there is no comparison and no inference. I just see that they are the same. But this 'seeing' is of course not with the eyes. For sameness is not an empirically detectable property or relation. I am just immediately aware -- not mediately via inference -- that they are the same.  Greenness is empirically detectable, but sameness is not.

What is the nature of this awareness given that we do not come to it by inductive inference?   And what exactly is the object of the awareness, identity itself?

A problem with Plantinga's answer is that it allows the possibility that the two objects are not strictly and numerically the same, but are merely exact duplicates or indiscernible twins. But I want to discuss this in terms of the problem of how we perceive or know or become aware of change.  Change  is linked to identity since for a thing to change is for one and the same thing to change. 

Let's consider alterational (as opposed to existential) change. A thing alters iff it has incompatible properties at different times.  Do we perceive alteration with the outer senses? A banana on my counter on Monday is yellow with a little green. On Wednesday the green is gone and the banana is wholly yellow. On Friday, a little brown is included in the color mix. We want to say that the banana, one and the same banana,  has objectively changed in respect of color.

But what justifies our saying this? Do we literally see, see with the eyes, that the banana has changed in color? That literal seeing would seem to require that I literally see that it is the same thing that has altered property-wise over the time period. But how do I know that it is numerically the same banana present on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? How do I know that someone hasn't arranged things so that there are three different bananas, indiscernible except for color, that I perceive on the three different days? On that extraordinary arrangement I could not be said to be perceiving alterational change. To perceive alterational change one must perceive identity over time. For there is change only if one and the same thing has different properties at different times. But I do not perceive the identity over time of the banana.

I perceive a banana on Monday and a banana on Wednesday; but I do not visually perceive that these are numerically the same banana. For it is consistent with what I perceive that there be two very similar bananas, call them the Monday banana and the Wednesday banana.   I cannot tell from sense perception alone whether I am confronting numerically the same banana on two different occasions or two numerically different bananas on the two occasions. If you disagree with this, tell me what sameness looks like. Tell me how to empirically detect the property or relation of numerical sameness. Tell me what I have to look for.

Suppose I get wired up on methamphetamines and stare at the banana the whole week long. That still would not amount to the perception of alterational change. For it is consistent with what I sense-perceive that there be a series of momentary bananas coming in and out of existence so fast that I cannot tell that this is happening. (Think of what goes on when you go to the movies.) To perceive change, I must perceive diachronic identity, identity over time. I do not perceive the latter; so I do not perceive change. I don't know sameness by sense perception, and pace Plantinga I don't know it by induction. For no matter how close the resemblance between two objects, that is consistent with their being numerically distinct. And note that my judgment that the X I now perceive is the same as the X I perceived in the past has nothing tentative or shaky about it. I judge immediately and with assurance that it is the same tree, the same banana, the same car, the same woman. What then is the basis of this judgment? How do I know that this tree is the same as the one I saw in this spot yesterday? Or in the case of a moving object, how do I know that this girl who I now see on the street is the same as the one I saw a moment ago in the coffee house? Surely I don't know this by induction.

How then do I know it?

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Edward of the Logic Museum bids us ruminate upon the following aporetic hexad:

1. We agree that visual and propositional content can be the same. The content-clause ‘that a man was dead’ specifies a content that can be seen (‘the armour-bearer saw (or seemed to see) that a man was dead’) or told (‘the armour-bearer was told that a man was dead’).

2. If so, content can be veridical or not. What we were told (that a man was dead) would be false if no man was dead. And it can visually appear so (‘seemed to see’), without it being so (perhaps the man is unconscious).

3. Content clauses can be general (‘a man was alive’) or singular (‘the same man is dead’).

4. Two contents can imply a third. If true (A) that a man was alive, and true (B) that the same man is dead, then true (C) that a man who was alive is now dead.

5. From (1) above, the same must be true if the contents are visual. If there are visual contents corresponding to A and B, then these together imply C.

6. But there cannot be two such visual contents A and B, because for the inference to work, the visual content must contain something corresponding to ‘the same’, in ‘that the same man is dead this afternoon’.  But there is no such content. Suppose the armour-bearer sees a man alive at midday, who he takes to be Saul, but who in fact is Saul’s identical twin. Then he sees Saul dead in the afternoon. But the first visual content would be the same if it were Saul, or his twin. That is the whole point of identical twins being ‘identical’, i.e. they look exactly the same. So it is perfectly possible for two visual contents to be veridical, yet with the third content (that a man who was alive is now dead) false.

The 6 claims above cannot all be true. Clearly some must be true, and we probably have to choose between 1 and 5. Either there are some propositional contents which do not have visual correlates (1 is false), or there is some ‘singular’ ingredient in some visual contents, which generate inferences such as above. But that is implausible. How can a visual content ever contain the information that some object is identical to the object of a content perceived earlier?  We might believe that, or infer it, or know it for other reasons. But there is nothing in the content itself that signifies identity.

Note there is no epistemological point is at issue. I am not asking how we know that people are the same or not. Rather, what are the logical connections between contents, and are those connections incompatible with the phenomenology of visual content?

......................

You have mastered the aporetic method, Ed.  This is a very hard nut to crack.

Perhaps I was premature to agree with you about (1).  Premature excogitation?  I can easily believe that the dead man is the same as the man who was alive at midday, but I cannot see that the dead man is the same as the man who was alive at midday.   And this for the reason you gave.  In this case, the visual content is poorer than the propositional content.

But I don't understand why you say that there is no epistemological point at issue.  After all, your point, I think, is that the phenomenology of visual  content does not reveal diachronic numerical identity.  Identity is not empirically detectable.

See the next post in the queue.

Lecturer on Personal Identity Denied Honorarium

The members of the philosophy department were so convinced by the lecturer's case against diachronic personal identity that they refused to pay him his honorarium on the ground that the potential recipient could not be the same person as the lecturer. This from a piece by Stanley Hauerwas:

It is by no means clear to me that I am the same person who wrote Hannah's Child. Although philosophically I have a stronger sense of personal identity than Daniel Dennett, who after having given a lecture to a department of philosophy on personal identity, was not given his honorarium. The department refused to give him his honorarium because, given Dennett's arguments about personal identity, or lack thereof, the department was not confident that the person who had delivered the lecture would be the same person who would receive the honorarium.

That has to be a joke, right?  It sounds like the sort of tall tale that Dennett would tell. 

My understanding of character, which at least promises more continuity in our lives than Dennett thinks he can claim, does not let me assume that I am the same person who wrote Hannah's Child. I cannot be confident I am the same person because the person who wrote Hannah's Child no doubt was changed by having done so. While I'm unable to state what I learned by writing the book, I can at least acknowledge that I must have been changed by having done so.

Hauerwas is confusing numerical and qualitative identity. Yes, you have been changed by writing your book.  No doubt about it.  Does it follow that you are a numerically different person than the one who wrote the book?  Of course not.  What follows is merely that you are qualitatively different, different in respect of some properties or qualities.

Perhaps there is no strict diachronic personal identity.  This cannot be demonstrated, however, from the trivial observation that people change property-wise over time.  For that is consistent with strict diachronic identity.

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Haecceitism and Future Individuals: Focusing the Question

Suppose there had been a prophet among the ancient Athenians who prophesied the birth among them of a most remarkable man, a man having the properties we associate with Socrates.  Suppose this prophet, now exceedingly old, is asked after having witnessed the execution of Socrates: Was that the man you prophesied?

Does this question make sense?  Suppose the prophet had answered, "Yes, that man, the one who just now drank the hemlock, is the very man I prophesied!"  Does this answer make sense?

I say that neither the question nor the answer make sense.  (Of course they both make semantic sense; my claim is that they make no metaphysical or broadly logical sense.)  What the prophet prophesied was the coming of some man with the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  What he could not have prophesied was the very man that subsequently came to possess the properties in question.  

What the prophet prophesied was general, not singular:  he prophesied that a certain definite description would come to be satisfied by some man or other. Equivalently, what the prophet prophesied was that a certain conjunctive property would come in the fullness of time to be instantiated, a property among whose conjuncts are such properties as being snubnosed, being married to a shrewish woman, being a master dialectician, being  accused of being a corrupter of youth, etc.  Even if the prophet had been omniscient and had been operating with a complete description, a description such that only one person in the actual world satisfies it if anything satisfies it, the prophecy would still be general. 

We can call this view I am espousing anti-haecceitist:  the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual cannot antedate the individual's existence.  Opposing this view is that of the haecceitist who holds that temporally prior to the coming into existence of a concrete individual such as Socrates, the non-qualitative thisness of the individual is already part of the furniture of the universe.

Consider the putative property, identity-with-Socrates.  Call it Socrateity.   Suppose our Athenian prophet has the power to 'grasp' (conceive, understand) this non-qualitative property long before it is instantiated. Suppose he can grasp it just as well as he can grasp the conjunctive property mentioned above.    Then, in prophesying the coming of Socrates, the prophet would be prophesying the coming of Socrates himself.  His prophecy would be singular, or, if you prefer, de re: it would involve Socrates himself.

What do I mean by "involve Socrates himself"?  Before Socrates comes to be there is no Socrates.  But there is, on the haecceitist view I reject, Socrateity.  This property 'deputizes' for Socrates at times and in worlds at which our man does not exist.  It cannot be instantiated without being instantiated by Socrates.  And it cannot be instantiated by anything other than Socrates in the actual world or in any possible world.  By conceiving of Socrateity before Socrates comes to be, the Athenian prophet is conceiving of Socrates before he comes to be, Socrates himself, not a mere instance of a conjunctive property or a mere satisfier of a description. 

But what do I mean by "a mere instance" or a "mere satisfier"?

Let us say that the conjunctive property of Socrates mentioned above is a qualitative essence of Socrates if it entails every qualitative or pure property of Socrates whether essential, accidental, monadic, or relational.  If Socrates has an indiscernible twin, Schmocrates, then both individuals instantiate the same qualitative essence.  It follows that, qua instances of this qualitative essence, they are indistinguishable.  This implies that, if the prophet thinks of Socrates in terms of his qualitative essence, then his prophetic thought does not reach Socrates himself, but only a mere instance of his qualitative essence.  

My claim, then, is that one cannot conceive of a putative individual that has not yet come into existence.  For until an individual comes into existence it is not a genuine individual.  Before Socrates came into existence, there was no possibility that he, that very man, come into existence.  (In general, there are no de re possibilities involving future, not-yet-existent, individuals.)  At best there was the possibility that some man or other come into existence possessing the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  To conceive of some man or other is to think a general thought: it is not to think a singular thought that somehow reaches an individual in its individuality.

Now a question for anyone who cares to comment.  Is it at least clear what the issue is here?

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Divine Creation and Haecceity Properties

Having somewhat churlishly accused Daniel M. of failing to understand my post Does Classical Theism Logically Require Haecceitism, he wrote back in detail demonstrating that he did understand me quite well.  I will now post his e-mail with some responses in blue.

I'm sorry. I've re-read your post, and it strikes me as quite clear, and I think I understand it. So perhaps the problem lies in my rather compressed e-mail, and not in my understanding of your post. Any rate, if this is wrong then this message should reinforce that. I elaborate a bit below on my earlier email, but this isn't meant to stop you from writing another post about the matter if that was your intent.

 

1. I agreed with your claim that classical theism does not entail haecceitism. I did not mean to imply, in saying this, that I agree either with the specific view of pre-creation divine knowledge you articulated, or with Mason's view. I agree that classical theism doesn't entail haecceitism because I don't think that the nature of classical theism forces a particular choice on this issue, either between your view or Mason's view or another.

 

BV:  Good.  I agree that a particular choice is not forced by the nature of classical theism.

 

2. I agreed (or rather said I'm inclined to agree) that there are no *non*-qualitative individual essences / haecceities prior to creation.

 

BV:  I missed this; thanks for the clarification.  It now seems we are on the same page.  To spell it out:  prior to God's creation of Socrates, and thus prior to the latter's coming into existence (actuality), there was no such non-qualitative property as identity-with-Socrates, or any other property involving Socrates himself as part of its very content.  The modal analog holds as well: in those metaphysically possible worlds in which Socrates does not exist, there is no such property as identity-with-Socrates.

 

Of course, I am not saying that when Socrates does exist, then there is the haecceity property identity-with-Socrates instantiated by Socrates; I am saying that there are no haecceity properties at all, where an haecceity property is an abstract object that exists in every metaphysically possible world but is instantiated in only some such worlds, and furthermore satisfies this definition:

A haecceity property is a property H of x such that: (i) H is essential to x; (ii) nothing distinct from x instantiates H in the actual world; (iii) nothing distinct from x instantiates H in any metaphysically possible world.

An item is abstract iff it does not exist  in space or time.  An item is concrete iff it is not abstract.

 

Please note that when I say that there are no haecceity properties in the sense defined, that does not exclude there being haecceity properties in some other (non-Plantingian) sense.  Note also that there might be haecceities that are in no sense properties.  The materia signata of Socrates is not a property of him; so if someone holds that the haecceity (thisness) of Socrates either is or is grounded in his materia signata, then he would be holding that there are haecceities which are not properties.  Similarly if spatiotemporal location is the principium individuationis, and if a thing's thisness = its principium individuationis.

 

 Thus, if I am right,  there is no sense in which the identity and individuality of Socrates somehow pre-exist his actual existence as they would pre-exist him if there were such a property as his nonqualitative haecceity property identity-with-Socrates.   If so, then divine creation cannot be understood as God's bringing it about that the haecceity property identity-with-Socrates is instantiated.  We would then need a different model of creation.

 

3. I then said that, notwithstanding (1) and (2), I defend a view that is close to haecceitism. I'll just elaborate a bit more here on where I'm coming from.

 

It seems to me you articulate a view like Robert Adams in his 1981 "Actualism and Thisness", and Christopher Menzel in his 1991 "Temporal Actualism and Singular Foreknowledge", with two key components.

 

First component: (A) Prior to creation, God's knowledge of what he might create is exclusively qualitative or pure in content (no reference to particular individuals). In light of my (2) above, I'm inclined to agree with this. Now let's say (this is admittedly imprecise, but I'm trying to be concise) that an item Q of qualitative knowledge *individuates* a particular possible creature C just in case Q's instantiation would be sufficient for C's existence and exemplification of Q.

 

Second component: (B) None of the aforementioned qualitative knowledge individuates a particular possible creature (such as Socrates). The reason for this is that for any relevant item of knowledge Q, there are multiple possible creatures that might exemplify Q (e.g., Socrates and Schmocrates), and so Q's instantiation is not *sufficient* for a *particular* possible creature to exist and exemplify Q.

 

The view I'm attracted to accepts (A) but denies (B). I think that purely qualitative knowledge could individuate possible creatures. (Thus far this view looks like Leibniz's, as I understand it.) So, were I arguing against you, your paragraph on Socrates/Schmocrates and the next paragraph on the Biblical / Platonic contrast would be areas of focus.

 

BV: Now I think I understand what your project is.   You are right to mention Leibniz.  I was all along assuming that the Identity of Indiscernibles is false: it is broadly logically possible that there be two individuals that share all qualitative or pure properties, whether essential or accidental, monadic or relational.  I believe my view is committed to the rejection of the Identity of Indiscernibles.  Could there not have been exactly two iron spheres alike in every respect and nothing else?  This is at least thinkable if not really possible.  You on the other had seem committed to the Identity of Indiscernibles:  it is not broadly logically possible that there be two individuals sharing all the same qualitative or pure properties.

 

Suppose the Identity of Indiscernibles is true. And suppose God has before his mind a wholly determinate, but merely possible, concrete individual.  Let it be an iron sphere.  Equivalently, he has before his mind a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are the properties of the sphere he is contemplating creating.   Call this conjunctive property a qualitative individual essence (QIE).  It is qualitative in that it makes no reference to any actual individual in the way identity-with-Socrates does.    It is an individual essence in that only one thing in the actual world has it, and this thing that has it must have it.  If creation is actualization, all God has to do to create the wholly determinate mere possible iron sphere is add existence to it, or else bring it about that the qualitative individual essence is instantiated.

 

But then how could God create Max Black's world in which there are exactly two indiscernible iron spheres?  He couldn't.  There would be nothing  to make the spheres numerically distinct.  If x and y are instances of a QIE, then x = y.  For there is nothing that could distinguish them.  Contrapositively, if x is not identical to y, then it is not the case that x and y are instances of the same QIE.  That is what you are committed to if you uphold the Identity of Indiscernibles. 

 

On my view of creation, divine creation is not the bestowal of actuality upon pre-existent individuals; God creates the very individuality of individuals in creating them.  In doing so he creates their numerical difference from one another.  This is equivalent to  the view that existence is a principle of numerical diversification, a thesis Aquinas held, as it would not be if existence were merely the being instantiated of a property.   Thus individuals differ in their very existence: existence and individuality are bound up with each other.  This view of creation involves God more intimately in what he creates: he creates both the existence and the identity of the things he creates.  Thus he does not create out of mere possibles, or out of haecceity properties, whether qualitative or nonqualitative: he creates out of nothing!

 

On Plantinga's scheme, as it seems to me, creation is not ex nihilo but out of a certain 'matter,' the 'matter' of haecceity properties.  Since they are necessary beings, there are all the haecceity properties there might have been, and what God does is cause some of them to be instantiated.

 

The view I've described might seem to commit me to this: (C) prior to creation, there exist *qualitative* haecceities (again, using your definition of 'haecceity') or individual essences for *every* possible creature. And the (compressed) part of my email about a "new kind of essence" is meant to challenge the implication of (C). (Here is where my view departs from Leibniz's.) I think that God can know precisely which individuals he will get (not just which pure descriptions would be satisfied), even if *some* possible creatures lack qualitative haecceities. However, I was imprecise at best in telling you that my view is "close to" haecceitism. Given that you define haecceitism as the view that there are haecceities, I think the view I've described is committed to haecceitism - it just isn't committed to the view that *every* possible creature has a haecceity. I don't claim to have adequately explained or motivated, either in this email or the last, this particular view of pre-creation knowledge. I was only trying to quickly sketch the view I defend in the paper I mentioned.

 

BV.  Very interesting.  Perhaps you could explain this more fully in the ComBox.  I don't understand how any possible creature could lack a qualitative haecceity.  Only wholly determinate (complete) mere possibles are fit to become actual.  This is because it is a law of (my) metaphysics that existence entails completeness, though not conversely.  Completeness is thus a necessary condition of (real) existence.  But if x is complete, then has a qualitative thisness which can be understood to be a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are all of x's qualitative properties.

 

So why do you think that some possible creatures lack qualitative haecceities?

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Does Classical Theism Logically Require Haecceitism?

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God and Socrates: Two Different Ways of Existing?

God and Mann: Divine Simplicity and Property-Instances

Does Classical Theism Logically Require Haecceitism?

Haecceitism is the doctrine that there are haecceities. But what is an haecceity? 

Suppose we take on board for the space of this post the assumptions that (i) properties are abstract objects, that (ii) they can exist unexemplified, and that (iii) they are necessary beings. We may then define the subclass of haecceity properties as follows.

A haecceity is a property H of x such that: (i) H is essential to x; (ii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in the actual world; (iii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in any metaphysically possible world.

So if there is a property of Socrates that is his haecceity, then there is a property that individuates him, and indeed individuates him across all times and worlds at which he exists: it is a property that he must have, that nothing distinct from him has, and that nothing distinct from him could have. Call this property Socrateity. Being abstract and necessary, Socrateity is obviously distinct from Socrates, who is concrete and contingent. Socrateity exists in every world, but is exemplified (instantiated) in only some worlds. What's more, Socrateity exists at every time in every world that is temporally qualified, whereas Socrates exist in only some worlds and only at some times in the worlds in which he exists.

Now suppose you are a classical theist.  Must you accept haecceitism (as defined above) in virtue of being a classical theist?  I answer in the negative.  Franklin Mason answers in the affirmative.  In a comment on an earlier post, Mason gives this intriguing argument into which I have interpolated numerals for ease of reference.

[1] When God created the world, he knew precisely which individuals he would get.  Thus [2] he didn't need to have those very individuals in front of him to know which ones they were.  Thus [3] there must be a way to individuate all possible individuals that in no way depends upon their actual existence. [4] Such a thing is by definition a haecceity. Thus [5] there are haecceities.

I don't anticipate any disagreement with Mason as to what an haecceity is.  We are both operating with the Plantingian notion.  We disagree, however, on (i) whether there are any haecceities and (ii) whether classical theism is committed to them. I deny both (i) and (ii).  In this post I focus on (ii).  In particular, I will explain why I do not find Mason's argument compelling.

My reservations concern premise [1].  There is a sense in which it is true that when God created Socrates, he knew which individual he would get.  But there is also a sense in which it is not true.  So we need to make a distinction.  We may suppose, given the divine omniscience, that before God created Socrates he had before his mind a completely determinate description, down to the very last detail, of the individual he was about to bring into existence.  In this sense, God knew precisely which individual he would get before bringing said individual into existence.  Now either this description is pure or it is impure.

A pure description is one that includes no proper names, demonstratives or other indexicals, or references to singular properties.  Otherwise the description is impure.  Thus 'snub-nosed, rationalist philosopher married to Xanthippe' is an impure description because it includes the proper name 'Xanthippe.'  'Snubnosed, rationalist, married  philosopher,' by contrast, is pure.  (And this despite the fact that 'married' is a relational predicate: necessarily, to be married is to be married to someone or other.)  Pure descriptions are qualitative in that they include no references to specific individuals.  Impure descriptions are nonqualitative in that they do include references to specific individuals.  Thus 'person identical to Socrates' is a nonqualitative description.

Now if God has before his mind a complete pure description of the individual he wills to create then that description could apply to precisely one individual after creation without being restricted to any precise one.  (Cf. Barry Miller, "Future Individuals and Haecceitism," Review of Metaphysics 45, September 1991, p. 14)  This is a subtle distinction but an important one.  It is possible that Socrates have an indiscernible twin.  Call his 'Schmocrates.'  So the complete description 'snub-nosed, rationalist philosopher, etc.' could apply to precisely one individual without applying to Socrates, the man in the actual world that we know and love as Socrates.  This is because his indiscernible twin Schmocrates would satisfy it just as well as he does.  The description would then apply to precisely one individual without being restricted to any precise one.  So there is a clear sense, pace Mason, in which  God, prior to creation, would not know which individual he would get.  Prior to creation, God knows that there will be an individual satisfying a complete description.  But until the individual comes into existence, he won't know which individual this will be.

As I see it, creation understood Biblically as opposed to Platonically is not the bestowal of existence upon  a pre-existent, fully-formed, wholly determinate essence.  It is not the actualization of a wholly determinate mere possible.  There is no individual essence or haecceity prior to creation.  Creation is the creation ex nihilo of a  new individual.  God creates out of nothing, not out of pre-existent individual essences or pre-existent mere possibles.  Thus the very individuality of the individual first comes into being in the creative act.  Socrates' individuality and haecceity  and ipsiety do not antedate (whether temporally or logically) his actual existence.

Mason would have to be able rationally to exclude this view of creation, and this view of the relation of existence and individuality, for his argument to be compelling.  As it is, he seems merely to assume that they are false.

Could God, before creation, have before his mind a complete impure description, one that made reference to the specific individual that was to result from the creative act?  No, and this for the simple reason that before the creative act that individual would not exist.  And therein lies the absurdity of Plantingian haecceities.  The property of identity-with-Socrates  is a nonqualitative haecceity that makes essential reference to Socrates.  Surely it is absurd to suppose that that this 'property' exists at times and in possible worlds at which Socrates does not exist.  To put it another way, it is absurd to suppose that this 'property' could antedate (whether temporally or logically) the existence of Socrates.

We are now in a position to see why Mason's argument is not compelling.  If [1] is true, then [2] doesn't follow from it.  And if [2] follows from [1], then [1] is false.  Thus [1] conflates two distinct propositions:

1a.  When God created the world, he knew precisely which pure complete descriptions would be satisfied.

1b.  When God created the world, he knew precisely which individuals would exist.

(1a) is true, but it does not entail

2.  God didn't need to have those very individuals in front of him to know which ones they were.

(1b) entails (2), but (1b) is false.

I conclude that classical theism does not entail haecceitism.  One can be such a theist without accepting haecceities.  This is a good thing since there are no haecceity properties!

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God and Socrates: Two Different Ways of Existing?

Haecceitism is the doctrine that there are haecceities. But what is an haecceity? 

Suppose we take on board for the space of this post the assumptions that (i) properties are abstract objects, that (ii) they can exist unexemplified, and that (iii) they are necessary beings. We may then define the subclass of haecceity properties as follows.

A haecceity is a property H of x such that: (i) H is essential to x; (ii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in the actual world; (iii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in any metaphysically possible world.

So if there is a property of Socrates that is his haecceity, then there is a property that individuates him, and indeed individuates him across all times and worlds at which he exists: it is a property that he must have, that nothing distinct from him has, and that nothing distinct from him could have. Call this property Socrateity. Being abstract and necessary, Socrateity is obviously distinct from Socrates, who is concrete and contingent. Socrateity exists in every world, but is exemplified (instantiated) in only some worlds. What's more, Socrateity exists at every time in every world that is temporally qualified, whereas Socrates exist in only some worlds and only at some times in the worlds in which he exists.

Now suppose you are a classical theist.  Must you accept haecceitism (as defined above) in virtue of being a classical theist?  I answer in the negative.  Franklin Mason answers in the affirmative.  In a comment on an earlier post, Mason gives this intriguing argument into which I have interpolated numerals for ease of reference.

[1] When God created the world, he knew precisely which individuals he would get.  Thus [2] he didn't need to have those very individuals in front of him to know which ones they were.  Thus [3] there must be a way to individuate all possible individuals that in no way depends upon their actual existence. [4] Such a thing is by definition a haecceity. Thus [5] there are haecceities.

I don't anticipate any disagreement with Mason as to what an haecceity is.  We are both operating with the Plantingian notion.  We disagree, however, on (i) whether there are any haecceities and (ii) whether classical theism is committed to them. I deny both (i) and (ii).  In this post I focus on (ii).  In particular, I will explain why I do not find Mason's argument compelling.

My reservations concern premise [1].  There is a sense in which it is true that when God created Socrates, he knew which individual he would get.  But there is also a sense in which it is not true.  So we need to make a distinction.  We may suppose, given the divine omniscience, that before God created Socrates he had before his mind a completely determinate description, down to the very last detail, of the individual he was about to bring into existence.  In this sense, God knew precisely which individual he would get before bringing said individual into existence.  Now either this description is pure or it is impure.

A pure description is one that includes no proper names, demonstratives or other indexicals, or references to singular properties.  Otherwise the description is impure.  Thus 'snub-nosed, rationalist philosopher married to Xanthippe' is an impure description because it includes the proper name 'Xanthippe.'  'Snubnosed, rationalist, married  philosopher,' by contrast, is pure.  (And this despite the fact that 'married' is a relational predicate: necessarily, to be married is to be married to someone or other.)  Pure descriptions are qualitative in that they include no references to specific individuals.  Impure descriptions are nonqualitative in that they do include references to specific individuals.  Thus 'person identical to Socrates' is a nonqualitative description.

Now if God has before his mind a complete pure description of the individual he wills to create then that description could apply to precisely one individual after creation without being restricted to any precise one.  (Cf. Barry Miller, "Future Individuals and Haecceitism," Review of Metaphysics 45, September 1991, p. 14)  This is a subtle distinction but an important one.  It is possible that Socrates have an indiscernible twin.  Call his 'Schmocrates.'  So the complete description 'snub-nosed, rationalist philosopher, etc.' could apply to precisely one individual without applying to Socrates, the man in the actual world that we know and love as Socrates.  This is because his indiscernible twin Schmocrates would satisfy it just as well as he does.  The description would then apply to precisely one individual without being restricted to any precise one.  So there is a clear sense, pace Mason, in which  God, prior to creation, would not know which individual he would get.  Prior to creation, God knows that there will be an individual satisfying a complete description.  But until the individual comes into existence, he won't know which individual this will be.

As I see it, creation understood Biblically as opposed to Platonically is not the bestowal of existence upon  a pre-existent, fully-formed, wholly determinate essence.  It is not the actualization of a wholly determinate mere possible.  There is no individual essence or haecceity prior to creation.  Creation is the creation ex nihilo of a  new individual.  God creates out of nothing, not out of pre-existent individual essences or pre-existent mere possibles.  Thus the very individuality of the individual first comes into being in the creative act.  Socrates' individuality and haecceity  and ipsiety do not antedate (whether temporally or logically) his actual existence.

Mason would have to be able rationally to exclude this view of creation, and this view of the relation of existence and individuality, for his argument to be compelling.  As it is, he seems merely to assume that they are false.

Could God, before creation, have before his mind a complete impure description, one that made reference to the specific individual that was to result from the creative act?  No, and this for the simple reason that before the creative act that individual would not exist.  And therein lies the absurdity of Plantingian haecceities.  The property of identity-with-Socrates  is a nonqualitative haecceity that makes essential reference to Socrates.  Surely it is absurd to suppose that that this 'property' exists at times and in possible worlds at which Socrates does not exist.  To put it another way, it is absurd to suppose that this 'property' could antedate (whether temporally or logically) the existence of Socrates.

We are now in a position to see why Mason's argument is not compelling.  If [1] is true, then [2] doesn't follow from it.  And if [2] follows from [1], then [1] is false.  Thus [1] conflates two distinct propositions:

1a.  When God created the world, he knew precisely which pure complete descriptions would be satisfied.

1b.  When God created the world, he knew precisely which individuals would exist.

(1a) is true, but it does not entail

2.  God didn't need to have those very individuals in front of him to know which ones they were.

(1b) entails (2), but (1b) is false.

I conclude that classical theism does not entail haecceitism.  One can be such a theist without accepting haecceities.  This is a good thing since there are no haecceity properties!

London Ed on Geach on Intentional Identity

I am happy to see that Ed is back to blogging.  It have reproduced his latest entry and added some comments.

 

....................

 

Peter Geach (“Intentional Identity.” Journal of Philosophy 64, 627-32, reprinted in Logic Matters. Oxford: Blackwell, 1972) argues that the following sentence can be true even if there are no witches, yet can only be true if Hob and Nob are, as it were, thinking of the same witch.

Hob thinks that a witch has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow.

But how it could be true? If we read it in the opaque way of reading indirect speech clauses then each that-clause must stand on its own syntactically, but there is no way of interpreting the pronoun ‘she’ as a bound variable. The two thoughts add up, as it were, to ‘for some x, x has blighted Bob’s mare, and x killed Cob’s sow. But we can’t split them up into two separate thoughts, because of the second part of the conjunction. I.e. the following is not well-formed.

* Hob thinks that for some x, x has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether x killed Cob’s sow.

On the other hand, if we render the original sentence in the transparent way, we have to presume the existence of a real witch, i.e. some witch such that Hob thinks that she has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow. Neither of these are satisfactory. I don’t propose any answer yet, but I will start by noticing that the same problem attaches to saying what sentences say, rather than what people think.

(1) A witch has blighted Bob’s mare.
(2) She killed Cob’s sow.
(3) Sentence (1) says that a witch has blighted Bob’s mare.
(4) Sentence (2) says that she (or the witch) has blighted Bob’s mare.

Clearly sentences (3) and (4) are true, even though sentences (1) and (2) are false. Yet the problem is exactly the same as the problem involving different thoughts. Thus we have simplified the problem. We don’t have to worry about explaining thoughts in different minds, but only how we express the meaning of different sentences. Meanings are a little easier than thoughts.

 

...................................

 

Ed maintains that the problem of intentional identity can be put as a problem concerning what sentences say rather than as a problem concerning what people think.  Ed thinks that this reformulation renders the problem simpler and more tractable.  But here I object.

 

Strictly speaking, sentences don't say anything; people say things using sentences.  For (1) to express a thought or proposition, it must be assertively uttered by a definite person in definite circumstances.  What's more, the assertive utterance has to be thoughtful, i.e., made by a thinker who intends to express a proposition by his assertive utterance of (1).  So we are brought right back to people and their thoughts.  We have turned in a circle.  (Out of respect for Ed, I will not comment on the 'diameter' of the circle.)

 

To exfoliate or unwrap what I just wrote:

 

a. Strictly speaking.  In philosophy we must speak and write strictly and avoid the sorts of shorthand expression that are perfectly acceptable in ordinary discourse.  Philosophy is not ordinary discourse.  It is (in part) an attempt to understand ordinary discourse, its logic, its ontological commitments, and its connections with thought.

 

b. Utterance.  To utter a sentence is to produce a token of it consisting of sounds or phonemes.  If x is a token of y, then y is a type.  So (1) above represents a sentence-type.  What your eyes see is of course a token of that type, a token that deputizes for the type, which you cannot see with your eyes. The token you see is of course not an utterance, but an inscription consisting of visible marks.  To utter a sentence is only one way of tokening it.  To token is to produce a token in some  medium.

 

c. Assertive utterance.  Not every tokening is assertive.  If I write or say 'Cats are animals' in English class to illustrate, say, noun-verb agreement, I have not asserted that cats are animals.  Assertion is a speech act.  I can utter a sentence without asserting anything even if the sentence is grammatically declarative.

 

d. Circumstances.  There are many people in the world who rejoice under the nickname 'Bob.'  A context of utterance, or, more broadly, a context of tokening is required to know which Bob is being referred to when (1) is assertively uttered.

 

e. Thoughtful. To say something I cannot merely mechanically  produce a token of a sentence even if the sentence upon being heard by a hearer conveys a proposition or thought to the hearer.  Voice synthesizers never say anything, even when they produce such sentence tokens as 'Your prescription is ready at Walgreen's pharmacy at the corner of Fifth and Vermouth.'  Saying involves a person or thinker's  intention to express a thought or proposition.

 

As for solving Geach's puzzle, I have nothing to propose with confidence.  But how would Ed counter the following suggestion?  Ed tells us that, "if we render the original sentence in the transparent way, we have to presume the existence of a real witch, i.e. some witch such that Hob thinks that she has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow."

 

Ed is assuming that the particular quantifier is an existential quantifier.  He is assuming that 'Some witch is such that _______' is logically equivalent to 'There exists a witch  such that ________.'  The assumption is entirely plausible. But it could be rejected by a Meinongian.  If 'a witch' picks out a nonexistent item from the realm of Aussersein, then what would be wrong with a transparent reading of the original sentence?  If there are nonexistent items, then one can  quantify over them using quantifiers that are objectual (as opposed to substitutional) but not existentially loaded.

 

Might Geach's puzzle dissolve on a Meinongian approach?  Is there any literature on this?

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Is Anything Real Self-Identical?

I am sometimes tempted by the following line of thought.  But I am also deeply suspicious of it.

Are the 'laws of thought' 'laws of reality' as well? Since such laws are necessities of thought, the question can also be put by asking whether or not the necessities of thought are also necessities of being. It is surely not self-evident that principles that govern how we must think if we are to make sense to ourselves and to others must also apply to mind-independent reality. One cannot invoke self-evidence since such philosophers as Nagarjuna and Hegel and Nietzsche have denied (in different ways) that the laws of thought apply to the real.

Consider, for example, the Law of Identity:

Id. Necessarily, for any x, x = x.

(Id) seems harmless enough and indisputable. Everything, absolutely everything, is identical to itself, and this doesn't just happen to be the case.  But what does 'x' range over? Thought-accusatives? Or reals? Or both? What I single out in an act of mind, as so singled out, cannot be thought of as self-diverse. No object of thought, qua object of thought, is self-diverse. And no object of thought, as such, is both F and not F at the same time, in the same respect, and in the same sense. So there is no question but that Identity and Non-Contradiction apply to objects of thought, and are aptly described as laws of thought.  (Excluded Middle is trickier and so I leave it to one side.) What's more, these laws of thought hold for all possible finite, discursive, ectypal intellects.  Thus what we have here is a transcendental principle, at least, not one grounded in the contingent empirical psychology or physiology of the type of animals we happen to be.  Transcendentalism maybe, but no psychologism or physiologism!

But do Identity and Non-Contradiction apply to 'reals,' i.e., to entities  whose existence is independent of their being objects of thought?  Are these transcendental principles also ontological principles?  Is the necessity of such principles as (Id) grounded in the transcendental structure of the finite intellect, or in being itself?  Are the principles merely transcendental or are they also transcendent? (It goes without saying that I am using these 't' words in the Kantian way.)

The answer is not obvious. 

Consider a pile of leaves. If I refer to something using the phrase, 'that pile of leaves,' I thereby refer to one self-identical pile; as so referred to, the pile cannot be self-diverse. But is the pile self-identical in itself (apart from my referring to it, whether in thought or in overt  speech)?

In itself, in its full concrete extramental reality, the pile is not self-identical in that it is composed of many numerically different leaves, and has many different properties. In itself, the pile is both one and many. As both one and many, it is both self-identical and self-diverse. It is self-identical in that it is one pile; it is self-diverse in that this one pile is composed of many numerically different parts and has many different properties. Since the parts and properties are diverse from each other, and these parts and properties make up the pile, the pile is just as much self-diverse as it is self-identical. The pile is of course not a pure diversity; it is a diversity that constitutes one thing. So, in concrete reality, the pile of leaves is both self-identical and self-diverse.

If you insist that the pile's being self-identical excludes its being self-diverse, then you are abstracting from its having many parts and properties. So abstracting, you are no longer viewing the pile as it is in concrete mind-independent reality, but considering it as an object of thought merely. You are simply leaving out of consideration its plurality of parts and of properties. For the pile to be self-identical in a manner to exclude self-diversity, the pile would have to be simple as opposed to complex. But it is not simple in that it has many parts and many properties.

The upshot is that the pile of leaves, in concrete reality, is both one and many and therefore both self-identical and self-diverse. But this is a contradiction. Or is the contradiction merely apparent? Now the time-honored way to defuse a contradiction is by making a distinction.

One will be tempted to say that the respect in which the pile is self-identical is distinct from the respect in which it is self-diverse. The pile is self-identical in that it is one pile; the pile is self-diverse in that it has many parts and properties. No doubt.

But 'it has many parts and properties' already contains a contradiction. For what does 'it' refer to? 'It' refers to the pile which does not have parts and properties, but is its parts and properties. The pile is not something distinct from its parts and properties. The pile is a unity in and through a diversity of parts and properties. As such, the pile is both self-identical and self-diverse.

What the above reasoning suggests is that such 'laws of thought' as Identity and Non-Contradiction do not apply to extramental reality. No partite thing, such as a pile of leaves, is self-identical in a manner to exclude self-diversity. Such things are as self-diverse as they are self-identical. So partite things are self-contradictory.

From here we can proceed in two ways.

The contradictoriness of partite entities can be taken to argue their relative unreality. For nothing that truly exists can be self-contradictory. This is the way of   F. H. Bradley. One takes the laws of thought as criterial for what is ultimately real, shows that partite entities are not up to this exacting standard, and concludes that partite entities belong to Appearance.

The other way takes the lack of fit between logic and reality as reflecting poorly on logic: partite entities are taken to be fully real, and logic as a falsification. One can find this theme in Nietzsche and in Hegel.

Guilt and Identity

Can I assuage my feelings of guilt over a long past misdeed by telling myself that I was a different person then?  Not very well.  I was different all right, but not numerically.

One could try to soften strict numerical identity of a person over time by adopting a bundle theory of diachronic personal identity.  (Roughly, a person at a time is a bundle of mental data; a person over time is a bundle of these bundles.)  But even if such a theory were otherwise in the clear it is difficult to square such a theory with what appears to be a non-negotiable datum:  I and no one else did such-and-such 30, 40, 50 years ago; I am the source of that misdeed; I could have, and should have, done otherwise.  We convict ourselves in memory knowing that the one who remembers is strictly the same as the one who did the deed.

The mystery of the self!

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Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change

Lecturer on Personal Identity Denied Honorarium

The members of the philosophy department were so convinced by the lecturer's case against personal identity that they refused to pay him his honorarium on the ground that the potential recipient could not be the same person as the lecturer.  This from a piece by Stanley Hauerwas:

It is by no means clear to me that I am the same person who wrote Hannah's Child. Although philosophically I have a stronger sense of personal identity than Daniel Dennett, who after having given a lecture to a department of philosophy on personal identity, was not given his honorarium. The department refused to give him his honorarium because, given Dennett's arguments about personal identity, or lack thereof, the department was not confident that the person who had delivered the lecture would be the same person who would receive the honorarium.

That has to be a joke, right?  It sounds like the sort of tall tale that Dennett would tell. 

My understanding of character, which at least promises more continuity in our lives than Dennett thinks he can claim, does not let me assume that I am the same person who wrote Hannah's Child. I cannot be confident I am the same person because the person who wrote Hannah's Child no doubt was changed by having done so. While I'm unable to state what I learned by writing the book, I can at least acknowledge that I must have been changed by having done so.

Hauerwas is confusing numerical and qualitative identity. Yes, you have been changed by writing your book.  No doubt about it.  Does it follow that you are a numerically different person than the one who wrote the book?  Of course not.  What follows is merely that you are qualitatively different, different in respect of some properties or qualities.

Perhaps there is no strict diachronic personal identity.  This cannot be demonstrated, however, from the trivial observation that people change property-wise over time.  For that is consistent with strict diachronic identity.

Related articles

The Problem of First-Person identity Sentences

Being is Said in Many Ways: On the Uses of 'Is'

Chad reports:

In the opening pages of More Kinds of Being: A Further Study of Individuation, Identity, and the Logic of Sortal Terms (Blackwell, 2009), E. J. Lowe distinguishes five uses of ‘is’ as a copula: 1. The ‘is’ of attribution, as in ‘Socrates is wise’ and ‘Grass is green’.2. The ‘is’ of identity, as in ‘Napoleon is Bonaparte’ and ‘Water is H2O’.3. The ‘is’ of instantiation, as in ‘Mars is a planet’ and ‘A horse is a mammal’.4. The ‘is’ of constitution, as in ‘This ring is gold’ and ‘A human body is a collection of cells’.5. The ‘is’ of existence, as in ‘The Dodo is no more’.He says some may be reducible to others, and that one or two must be primitive. I thought this was a helpful spread.

That is indeed helpful, but here are some comments and questions.

1. First of all, I would be surprised if Lowe referred to the five uses as five uses of 'is' as a copula.  The 'is' of existence is not a copula because it doesn't couple.  There is no copulation, grammatical or logical, in 'God is.'  The 'is' of existence does not pick out any sort of two-termed relation such as identity, instantiation, or constitution. Calling the 'is' of identity a copula is a bit of a stretch, and I don't think most philosophers would.

2. Is there a veritative use of 'is'?  'It is so.'  'It is the case that Frege died in 1925.'  One could say, though it is not idiomatic: 'Obama's being president is.'  One would be expressing that the state of affairs obtains or that the corresponding proposition is true.  So it looks as if there is a veritative use of 'is.'

3. Reducibility of one use to another does not show that they are not distinct uses.  Perhaps the veritative use can be reduced to what Lowe calls the attributive use.  Attributions of truth, however, imply that truth is a property.  Frege famously argued that truth cannot be a property.  That is a messy separate can of worms.

4.  There are also tensed and tenseless uses of 'is.'  'Obama is president' versus '7 + 5 is 12.'  With respect to the latter, it would be a bad joke, one reminiscent of Yogi Berra, were I to ask,"You mean now?"  Yogi Berra was once asked the time.  He said,"You mean now?"

'Hume is an empiricist' can be used both in a tensed way and an untensed way.  If I say that Hume is an empiricist what I say is true despite the present nonexistence of Hume.  'Grass is green,' however, is never used in a tensed way, though one can imagine circumstances in which it could.

5. One and the same tokening of 'is' can do more than one job. Is the 'is' in 'Max is black' as used by me in the presence of my cat Max the 'is' of predication merely?  I don't think so.  It also expresses existence.  But this requires argument:

1. 'Max is black' and 'Black Max exists' are intertranslatable. 
2. Intertranslatable sentences have the same sense.
Therefore
3. 'Max is black' and 'Black Max exists' express the very same (Fregean) sense.
Therefore
4. Both sentences express both predication and existence: a property is predicated of something that cannot have properties unless it exists.
Therefore
5. The 'is' in 'Max is black' has a double function: it expresses both predication and existence. 

Note that both sentences include a sign for the predicative tie.  The sign is 'is' in the first sentence and in the second sentence the sign is the immediate concatenation of 'black' and 'Max' in that order. This shows that to refer to logical (as opposed to grammatical) copulation does not require a separate stand-alone sign.  'Black Max exists' expresses both existence via the sign 'exsts' and predication via the immeditae concatenation of 'black' and 'Max' in that order in the context of the sentence in question. 

Related articles

A Question About Predication and Identity

A Question About Predication and Identity

Chad M. sent me a paper of his in which he illustrates the distinction between the 'is' of predication and the 'is' of identity using the following examples:

1. Joseph Ratzinger is [the] Pope

and

2. Water is H₂O

where the first sentence is proposed as an example of a predication and the second as an identity sentence.  If I were to explain the distinction, I would use these examples:

3. Joseph Ratzinger is German

and  (for consistency of subject matter)

4. Joseph Ratzinger is Pope Benedict XVI.

(2) and (4) are clearly sentences expressing strict, numerical, identity.  Identity is an equivalence relation: reflexive, symmetrical, transitive.  It is also governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals: if x = y, then whatever is true of  x is true of y, and vice versa.  By these four tests, the 'is' in (4) is the 'is' of identity.  The 'is' in (3) expresses a different relation.  Frege would say that it is the relation of falling under: the object JR falls under the concept German.  That relation fails each of the four tests. It is not reflexive, not symmetrical, etc.

Now my problem is that I don't find (1) to be a clear example of a predication in the way that (3) is a clear example. 

Although 'The Pope' is a definite description, not a name (Kripkean rigid designator), (1) could be construed as asserting an identity, albeit a contingent identity, between the object picked out by 'JR' and the object picked out by 'the Pope.'  After all, the sentence passes the four tests, at least if we confine ourselves to the present time and the actual world.  The relation is reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive.  For example, if JR is the Pope, and the Pope is the vicar of Christ, then JR is the vicar of Christ.  Furthermore, whatever is true of JR now is also true of the Pope now, and vice versa. So the indiscernibility test is satisfied as well.

Why not then say that (1) expresses contingent identity and that the 'is' is an 'is' of identity, not of predication?  The fact that one could maintain this, with some show of plausibility, indicates that Chad's example is not a clear one.  That is my only point, actually.

I grant that the notion of contingent identity can be questioned.  How could x and y just happen to be identical?  For Kripke, identity is governed by the Necessity of Identity: if x = y, then necessarily x = y.  This has the interesting implication that if it is so much as possible that x and y are distinct, then x and y are distinct.  (Shades of the ontological argument!)

But there are philosophers who propose to speak of contingent sameness relations.  Hector Castaneda is one.  So I am merely asking Chad why he uses the puzzling and provocative (1) as illustrative of the 'is' of predication.

There is a labyrinth of deep questions lurking  below the surface, questions relevant to Chad's real concern, namely the coherence of the Trinity doctrine and its (in)coherence with the doctrine of divine simplicity. 

Related articles

The 'Is' of Identity and the 'Is' of Predication

Does the Notion of a Bare Particular Make Sense Only in Constituent Ontology?

The Dispute

In an earlier entry that addressed Lukas Novak's argument against bare particulars I said the following:

The notion of a bare particular makes sense only in the context of a constituent ontology according to which ordinary particulars, 'thick particulars' in the jargon of Armstrong, have ontological constituents or metaphysical parts.

[. . .]

LN suggests that the intuitions behind the theory of bare particulars are rooted in Frege's mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive distinction between concepts and objects. "Once this distinction has been made, it is very hard to see how there might be a genuine case of logical de re necessity." (115) The sentence quoted is true,  but as I said above, the notion of a bare particular makes no sense except in the context of a constituent ontology.   Frege's, however, is not a constituent ontology like Bergmann's but what Bergmann calls a function ontology.  (See G. Bergmann, Realism, p. 7.  Wolterstorff's constituent versus relation ontology distinction is already in Bergmann as the distinct between complex and function ontologies.)  So I deny that part of the motivation for  the positing of bare particulars is an antecedent acceptance of Frege's concept-object distinction.  I agree that if one accepts that distinction, then logical or rather metaphysical de re necessity goes by the boards.  But the Fregean distinction is not part of the motivation or argumentation for bare particulars. 

My claim that bare particulars are at home only in constituent ontology raised the eyebrows of commenter John and of LN, who writes:

I cannot see why the notion of a bare particular should make sense only in a constituent ontology. A bare particular is a particular which has none of its non-trivial properties de re necessarily. This notion is quite intelligible, irrespectively of the way we go on to explain the relation of "having" between the particular and the property, whether we employ a constituent or functional or some other approach (of course, saying that it is intelligible is not saying that it is consistent!). If Bill agrees that once one makes the sharp Fregean distinction between concepts and objects then there is a strong motivation against conceding any de re necessity, then he should also agree that making this distinction provides a strong motivation for claiming the bareness of all particulars.

Resolving the Dispute

I believe that this is a merely a terminological dispute concerning the use of 'bare particular.'  I am a terminological conservative who favors using words and phrases strictly and with close attention to their historical provenience.  To enshrine this preference as a methodological principle:

MP:  To avoid confusion and merely verbal disputes, never use a word or phrase that already has an established use in a new way! Coin a new word or phrase and explain how you will be using it.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, the phrase 'bare particular' enters philosophy first in the writings of Gustav Bergmann.  So we must attend to his writings if we are concerned to use this phrase correctly.  Now in the terminology of Wolterstorff, Bergmann is a constituent ontologist as opposed to a relational ontologist.  In Bergmann's own terms, he is a "complex" as opposed to a "function" ontologist, Frege being the chief representative for him of the latter style of ontology.

"In complex ontologies, as I shall call them, some entities are constituents of others." (Realism, p. 7) "In function ontologies, as I shall call them, some entities are, as one says, 'coordinated' to some others, without any connotation whatsoever of the one being  'in' the other, being either a constituent or a part or a component of it." (Ibid.)

Bergmann, then, is a constituent or complex ontologist and his introduction of bare particulars (BPs) is within this context.  BPs are introduced to solve "the problem of individuation."  A better name for this problem is 'problem of differentiation.'  After all, the problem is not to specify what it is that makes an individual an individual as oppose to a member of some other category; the problem is to specify what it is that makes two individuals (or two entities of any category) two and not one.

How does the problem of individuation/differentiation arise?  Well, suppose you have already decided that "some entities are constituents of others."  For example, you have already decided that ordinary particulars (OPs) have, in addition to their spatial parts, special ontological parts and that among these parts are the OP's properties.  Properties for Bergmann are universals.  Now suppose you have two qualitatively indiscernible round red spots.  They are the same in respect of every universal 'in' them and yet they are two, not one.  What is the ontological ground of the numerical difference? 

On Bergmann's way of thinking, one needs an entity to do the job of individuation/differentiation.  Enter bare particulars.  And pay close attention to how Bergmann describes them:

A bare particular is a mere individuator.  Structurally, that is its only job.  It does nothing else.  In this respect it is like Aristotle's matter, or, perhaps more closely, like Thomas' materia signata.  Only, it is a thing. (Realism, p. 24, emphasis added)

Bare particulars, then, have but one explanatory job: to ground or account for numerical difference.  They are the Bergmannian answer to the question about the principium individuationis.  But please note that the positing of such individuators/differentiators would make no sense at all if one held to a style of ontology according to which round red spots just differ without any need for a ground of numerical difference.  For a relational ontologist, OPs have no internal ontological structure: they are ontological simples , not ontological complexes.  Here is  Peter and here is Paul.  They just differ.  They don't differ on account of some internal differentiator.  Peter and Paul have properties, but these are in no sense parts of them, but entities external to them to which they are related by an exemplification relation that spans the chasm separating the concrete from the abstract.  And because OPs do not have properties as parts, there is no need to posit some additional ontological factor to account for numerical difference.

I think I have made it quite clear that if we use 'bare particular' strictly and in accordance with the phrases' provenience, then it simply makes no sense to speak of bare particulars outside the context of constituent ontology.

Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, I am not the king of all philosophers and I lack both the authority and the brute power to enforce the above methodological imperative.  So I can't force otber philosophers to use 'bare particular' correctly, or to put it less tendentiously: in accordance with Bergmann's usage.  But I can issue the humble request that other philosophers not confuse the strict use of the phrase with their preferred usages, and that they tell us exactly how they are using the phrase.

Novak's usage is different than mine.  He tell us that "A bare particular is a particular which has none of its non-trivial properties de re necessarily."  On this usage my cat would count as a bare particular if one held the view that there are no non-trivial essential properties, that all non-trivial properties are accidental.  But for Bergmann a cat is not a bare particular.  It -- or to be precise, a cat at a time -- is a complex one of whose constituents is a bare particular.  My cat Max is a Fregean object (Gegenstand) but surely no Fregean object is a Bergmannian bare particular.  For objects and concepts do not form complexes in the way BPs and universals form complexes for Bergmann.

On a Fregean analysis, the propositional function denoted by '___ is a cat' has the value True for Max as argument.  On a Bergmannian analysis, 'Max is a cat' picks out a fact or state of affairs.  But there are no facts in Frege's ontology.

To conclude: if we use 'bare particular' strictly and in accordance with Bergmann's usage, one cannot speak of bare particulars except in constituent ontology. 

Related articles

Constituent Ontology Versus Relational Ontology and an Argument Against the Latter

Bare Particulars and Lukáš Novák's Argument Against Them

Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change

Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change

In an earlier entry I sketched the difference between constituent ontology (C-ontology) and relational ontology (R-ontology) and outlined an argument against R-ontology.  I concluded that post with the claim that C-ontology also faces serious objections.  One of them could be called the 'argument from change.'

The Argument from Change

Suppose avocado A, which was unripe a week ago is ripe today. This is an example of alterational (as opposed to existential) change.  The avocado has become different. But it has also remained the same. It is different in respect of ripeness but it is one and the same avocado that was unripe and is now ripe.

Alterational change  is neither destruction nor duplication. The ripening of an avocado does not cause it to cease to exist. The ripening of an avocado is not the ceasing to exist of one particular (the unripe avocado) followed by the coming into existence of a numerically distinct avocado (the ripe one).

It is also clear that one cannot speak of change if there are two avocados, A and B, indiscernible except in respect of ripeness/unripeness, such that A is unripe at time t while B is ripe at time t* (t*> t). If my avocado is unripe at t while yours is ripe at t*, that circumstance does not constitute a change.  Alteration requires that one and the same thing have incompatible properties at different times. This is necessary for alteration; whether it is sufficient is a further question.

That there is alterational change is a datum.  That it requires  that one and the same thing persist over an interval of time during which it has incompatible properties follows from elementary  'exegesis' or 'unpacking' of the datum.

The question before us is whether any C-ontology can do justice to the datum and its exegesis.

All C-ontologists are committed to what Michael J. Loux calls "Constituent Essentialism."  ("What is Constituent Ontology?" Novak et al. eds., p. 52) It is the C-ontological analog of mereological essentialism.  We can put it like this:

Constituent Essentialism: A thing has each of its ontological parts necessarily.  This implies that a thing cannot gain or lose an ontological part without ceasing  to be same thing.

Mereological Essentialism: A thing has each of its commonsense parts necessarily.  This implies that a thing cannot gain or lose a commonsense part without ceasing to be the same thing.

To illustrate, suppose an ordinary particular (OP) is a bundle of compresent universals.  The universals are the ontological parts of the OP as a whole.  The first of the two principles entails that ordinary particulars cannot change.  For (alterational) change is change in respect of properties under preservation of numerical diachronic identity.  But preservation of identity is not possible on Constituent Essentialism.  The simple  bundle-of-universals theory appears incompatible with the fact of change.

I agree with Loux that Constituent Essentialism is a "framework principle" (p. 52) of C-ontology.  It cannot be abandoned without abandoning C-ontology.  And of course the fact of change and what it entails (persistence of the same thing over time)  cannot be denied.  So the 'argument from change' does seem to score against primitive versions of the bundle-of-universals theory.

Can the Objection Be Met?

The foregoing objection can perhaps be met met by sophisticating the bundle theory and adopting a bundle-bundle theory.  Call this BBT.  Accordingly, a thing that persists over time such as an avocado is a diachronic bundle of synchronic or momentary bundles.  The theory  has two stages. 

First, there is the construction of momentary bundles from universals.  Thus my avocado at a time  is a bundle of universals. Then there is the construction of a diachronic bundle from these synchronic bundles. The momentary bundles have universals as constituents while the diachronic bundles do not have universals as constituents, but individuals.  This is because a bundle of universals at a time is an individual.  At both stages the bundling is contingent: the properties are contingently bundled to form momentary bundles and these resulting bundles are contingently bundled to form the persisting thing.

Accordingly, the unripe avocado is numerically the same as the ripe avocado in virtue of the fact that the earlier momentary bundles which have unripeness as a constituent  are ontological parts
of the same diachronic whole as the later momentary bundles which have ripeness as a constituent.  

A sophisticated bundle theory does not, therefore, claim that a persisting thing is a bundle of properties; the claim is that a persisting thing is a bundle of individuals which are themselves bundles of properties.  This disposes of the objection from change at least as formulated above. 

There are of course a number of other objections that need to be considered -- in separate posts.  But on the problem of change C-ontology looks to be in better shape than Loux makes it out to be.

I should add that I am not defending the bundle-bundle theory.  In my Existence book I take a different C-ontological tack.

Related articles

Constituent Ontology Versus Relational Ontology and an Argument Against the Latter

Bare Particulars and Lukáš Novák's Argument Against Them

In his contribution to the book I am reviewing, Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Ontos Verlag, 2012), Lukáš Novák mounts an Aristotelian argument against bare particulars.  In this entry I will try to understand his argument.  I will hereafter refer to Professor Novák as 'LN' to avoid the trouble of having to paste in the diacriticals that his Czech name requires.

As I see it, the overall structure of LN's argument is an instance of modus tollens:

1. If some particulars are bare, then all particulars are bare.
2. It is not the case that all particulars are bare.
Therefore
3. No particulars are bare.

On the Very Idea of a Bare Particular

'Bare particular' is a technical term in philosophy the provenance of which is the work of Gustav Bergmann. (D. M. Armstrong flies a similar idea under the flag 'thin particular.')  Being a terminus technicus,  the term does not wear its meaning on its sleeve. It does not refer to particulars that lack properties; there are none.  It refers to particulars that lack natures or nontrivial essential properties.  (Being self-identical is an example of a trivial essential property; being human of a nontrivial essential property.)  Bare particulars differ among themselves solo numero: they are not intrinsically or essentially different, but only numerically different.  Or you could say that they are barely different. Leibniz with his identitas indiscernibilium would not have approved. 

The notion of a bare particular makes sense only in the context of a constituent ontology according to which ordinary particulars, 'thick particulars' in the jargon of Armstrong, have ontological constituents or metaphysical parts.  Consider two qualitatively indiscernible round red spots.  There are two of them and thay share all their features.  What is the ontological ground of the sameness of features?  The sameness of the universals 'in' each spot.  What grounds the  numerical difference? What makes them two and not one?  Each has a different bare particular among its ontological constituents.  BPs, accordingly, are individuators/differentiators. On this sort of ontological analysis an ordinary particular is a whole of ontological parts including universals and a bare particular.  But of course the particulars exemplify the universals, so a tertium quid is needed, a nexus of exemplification to tie the bare particular to the universals. 

The main point, however, is that there is nothing in the nature of a bare particular to dictate which universals it exemplifies: BPs don't have natures.  Thus any BP is 'promiscuously combinable' with any first-order universal.  On this Bergmannian ontological scheme it is not ruled out that Socrates might have been an octopus or a valve-lifter in a '57 Chevy.  The other side of the coin is that there is no DE RE metaphysical necessity that Socrates be human.  Of course, there is the DE DICTO metaphysical impossibility, grounded in the respective properties, that an octopus be human.  But it is natural to want to say more, namely that it is DE RE metaphysically impossible that Socrates be an octopus.  But then the problem is: how can a particular qua particular 'contradict' any property?  Being an octopus 'contradicts' (is metaphysically inconsistent with)  being a man.  But how can a particular be such as to disallow  its exemplification of some properties? (116)

Thus I agree with LN that if there are bare particulars, then there are no DE RE metaphysical necessities pertaining to ordinary particulars, and vice versa. This is why LN, an Aristotelian, needs to be able to refute the very notion of a bare particular.

LN's Argument for premise (2) in the Master Argument Above

LN draws our attention to the phenomenon of accidental change.  A rock goes from being cold to being hot.  Peter goes from being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras to being  knowledgeable about it.  These are accidental changes: one and the same particular has different properties at different times.  Now a necessary condition of accidental change is that one and the same subject have different properties at different times.  But is it a sufficent condition?  Suppose Peter is F at time t and not F at time t* (t* later than t).  Suppose that F-ness is a universal.  It follows that Peter goes from exemplifying the universal F-ness at t to not exemplifying it at t*.  That is: he stands in the exemplification relation to F-ness at t, but ceases so to stand to t*.  But there has to be more to the change than this.  For, as LN points out, the change is in Peter.  It is intrinsic to him and cannot consist merely in a change in a relation to a universal.  Thus it seems to LN that, even if there are universals and particulars, we need another category of entity to account for accidental change, a category that that I will call that of property-exemplifications.  Thus Peter's being cold at t is a property-exemplification and so is Peter's not being cold at t*.  Peter's change in respect of temperature involves Peter as the diachronically persisting substratum of the change, the universal coldness, and two property-exemplifications, Peter's being cold at t and Peter's being not cold at t*.

These property-exemplifications, however, are particulars, not universals even though each has a universal as a constituent.  This is a special case of what Armstrong calls the Victory of Particularity: the result of a particular exemplifying a universal is  a particular.   Moreover, these items have natures or essences: it is essential to Peter's being cold that it have coldness as a constituent.  (This is analogous to mereological essentialism.) Hence property- exemplifications are particulars, but not bare particulars.  Therefore, (2) is true: It is not the case that all particulars are bare. 

I find LN's argument for (2) persuasive.  The argument in outline:

4. There are property-exemplifications
5. Property-exemplifications are particulars
6. Property-exemplifications have natures
7. Whatever has a nature is not bare
Therefore
2. It is not the case that all particulars are bare.

Premise (1) in the Master Argument

LN has shown that not all particulars are bare.  But why should we think that (1) is true, that if some particulars are bare, then all are?   It could be that simple particulars are bare while complex particulars, such as property-exemplifications,  are not bare.  If that is so, then showing that no complex particular is bare would  not amount to showing that no particular is bare.

The Master Argument, then, though valid, is not sound, or at at least it is not obviously sound: we have been given no good reason to accept (1).

Property-exemplifications, Tropes, and Accidents

But in all fairness to LN I should point out that he speaks of tropes and accidents, not of property-exemplifications.  I used the latter expression because 'trope' strikes me as  out of place.  Tropes are simples.  Peter's being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras at t, however, is a complex, and LN says as much on p. 117 top.    So the entity designated by the italicized phrase is not a trope, strictly speaking.  'Trope' is a terminus technicus whose meaning in this ontological context was first given to it by Donald C. Williams.  

Well, is the designatum of the italicized phrase an accident?  Can an accident of a substance have that very subtance as one of  its ontological constituents?  I should think not.  But Peter's being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras at t has Peter as one of its constituents.  So I should think that it is not an accident of Peter.

I conclude that either I am failing to understand LN's argument or that he has been insufficiently clear in expounding it.

A Final Quibble

LN suggests that the intuitions behind the theory of bare particulars are rooted in Frege's mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive distinction between concepts and objects. "Once this distinction has been made, it is very hard to see how there might be a genuine case of logical de re necessity." (115) The sentence quoted is true,  but as I said above, the notion of a bare particular makes no sense except in the context of a constituent ontology.   Frege's, however, is not a constituent ontology like Bergmann's but what Bergmann calls a function ontology.  (See G. Bergmann, Realism, p. 7.  Wolterstorff's constituent versus relation ontology distinction is already in Bergmann as the distinct between complex and function ontologies.)  So I deny that part of the motivation for  the positing of bare particulars is an antecedent acceptance of Frege's concept-object distinction.  I agree that if one accepts that distinction, then logical or rather metaphyscal de re necessity goes by the boards.  But the Fregean distinction is not part of the motivation or argumentation for bare particulars. 

Just what considerations motivate the positing of bare particulars would be a good topic for a separate post. 

Stanislav Sousedik's "Towards a Thomistic Theory of Predication"

Enough of politics, back to some hard-core technical philosophy.  If nothing else, the latter offers exquisite escapist pleasures not unlike those of chess. Of course I don't believe that technical philosophy is escapist; my point is a conditional one: if it is, its pleasures suffice to justify it as a form of recuperation from  this all-too-oppressive world of 'reality.'  It's what I call a 'fall-back position.'

I have been commissioned to review the collection of which the above-captioned article is a part.  The collection is entitled Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Ontos Verlag 2012) and includes contributions by Peter van Inwagen, Michael Loux, E. J. Lowe, and several others.  My review article will address such topics as predication, truth-makers, bare particulars, and the advantages and liabilities of constituent ontology.  I plan a series of posts in which I dig deep into some of the articles in this impressive collection.

Stanislav Sousedik argues for an "identity theory of predication" according to which a predicative sentence such as 'Peter is a man' expresses an identity of some sort between the referent of the subject 'Peter' and the referent of the predicate 'man.'  Now to someone schooled in modern predicate logic (MPL) such an identity  theory will appear wrongheaded from the outset.  For we learned at Uncle Gottlob's knee to distinguish between the 'is' of identity ('Peter is Peter') and the 'is' of predication ('Peter is a man').

But let's give the Thomist theory a chance.  Sousedik, who is well aware of Frege's distinction, presents an argument for the identity in some sense of subject and predicate.  He begins by making the point that in the declarative 'Peter is a man' and the vocative 'Peter, come here!' the individual spoken about is (or can be) the same as the individual addressed.  But common terms such as 'man' can also be used to address a person.  Instead of saying,  'Peter, come here!' one can say 'Man, come here!'  And so we get an argument that I will put as follows:

1. Both 'Peter' and 'man' can be used to refer to the same individual. Therefore

2. A common term can be used to refer to an individual.  But

3. Common terms also refer to traits of individuals.  Therefore

4. The traits must be identical in some sense to the individuals.  E.g., the referent of 'Peter' must be in some sense identical to the referent of 'man.'

But in what sense are they identical?  Where Frege distinguishes between predication and identity, Sousedik distinguishes between weak and strong identity. 'Peter is Peter' expresses strong identity while 'Peter is a man' expresses weak identity.  "Strong identity is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive, weak identity has none of these formal properties." (254)  It thus appears that strong identity is the same as what modern analytic philosophers call (numerical) identity.  It is clear that 'Peter is a man' cannot be taken to express strong identity. But what is weak identity?

S. is a constituent ontologist.  He holds that ordinary substances such as Peter have what he calls "metaphysical parts."  Whereas Peter's left leg is a physical part of him, his traits are metaphysical parts of him.  Thus the referents of the common terms 'man,' 'animal,' living thing,' etc. are all metaphysical parts of Peter.  Clearly, these are different traits of Peter.  But are they really distinct in Peter?  S. says that they are not: they are really identical in Peter and only "virtually distinct" in him.  The phrase is defined as follows.

(Def. 1)  Between x, y there is a virtual  distinction iff (i) x, y are really identical; (ii) x can become an object of some cognitive act Φ without y being the object  of the same act Φ . . . . (251)

For example, humanity and animality in Peter are really identical but virtually distinct in that humanity can be the intentional object of a cognitive act without animality being the object of the same act.  I can focus my mental glance so to speak on Peter's humanity while leaving out of consideration his animality even though he is essentially both a man and an animal and even though animality is included within humanity. 

The idea, then, is that Peter has metaphysical parts (MPs) and that these items are really identical in Peter but virtually distinct, where the virtual distinctness of any two MPs is tied to the possibility of one of them being the object of a cognitive act without the other being the object of the same act.

Is S. suggesting that virtual distinctness is wholly mind generated?   I don't think so.  For he speaks of a potential distinction of MPs in concrete reality, a distinction that becomes actual when the understanding grasps them as distinct.  (253) And so I take the possibility mentioned in clause (ii) of the above definition to be grounded not only in the mind's power to objectify and abstract but also in a real potentiality in the MPs in substances like Peter.

One might be tempted to think of weak identity as a part-whole relation.  Thus one might be tempted to say that 'Peter' refers to Peter and 'man' to a property taken in the abstract that is predicable not only of Peter but of other human beings as well.  'Peter is a man' would then say that this abstract property is a metaphysical part of Peter.  But this is not Sousedik's or any Thomist's view.  For S. is committed to the idea that "Every empirical individual and every part or trait of it is particular." (251)  It follows that no metaphysical part of any concrete individual is a universal.  Hence no MP is an abstract property.  So weak identity is not a part-whole relation.

What is it then?

First of all, weak identity is a relation that connects a concrete individual such as Peter to a property taken abstractly.  But in what sense is Peter identical to humanity taken abstractly?   In this sense:  the humanity-in-Peter and the humanity-in-the-mind have a common constituent, namely, humanity taken absolutely as common nature or natura absoluta or natura secundum se.  (254)  What makes weak identity identity is the common constituent shared by the really existing humanity in Peter and the intentionally existing  humanity in the mind of a person who judges that Peter is human.

So if we ask in what sense the referent of 'Peter' is identical to the referent of 'man,' the answer is that they are identical in virtue of the fact that Peter has a proper metaphysical part that shares a constituent with the objective concept referred to by 'man.'  Sousedik calls this common constituent the "absolute subject."  In our example, it is human nature taken absolutely in abstraction from its real existence in Peter and from its merely intentional existence in the mind.

Critical Observations

I am deeply sympathetic to Sousedik's constituent-ontological approach, his view that existence is a first-level 'property,' and the related view that there are modes of existence. (253)  But one of the difficulties I  have with S.'s  identity theory of predication is that it relies on common natures, and I find it difficult to make sense of them as I already spelled out in a previous post.    Common natures are neither one nor many, neither universal nor particular.  Humanity is many in things but one in the mind.  Hence taken absolutely it is neither one nor many.  It is this absolute feature that allows it be the common constituent in humanity-in-Peter and humanity-in-the-mind.  And as we just saw, without this common constituent there can be no talk of an identity between Peter and humanity.  The (weak) identity 'rides on' the common constituent, the natura absoluta.  Likewise, humanity is particular in particular human beings but universal in the mind (and only in the mind).  Hence taken absolutely it is neither particular nor universal. 

But it also follows that the common nature is, in itself and taken absolutely, neither really existent nor intentionally existent.  It enjoys neither esse naturale (esse reale) nor esse intentionale.  Consequently it has no being (existence) at all. This is not to say that it is nonexistent.  It is to say that it is jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein to borrow a phrase from Alexius von Meinong, "beyond being and nonbeing." 

The difficulty is to understand how there could be a plurality of distinct items that are neither universal nor particular, neither one nor many, neither existent nor nonexistent.  Note that there has to be a plurality of them: humanity taken absolutely is distinct from animality taken absolutely, etc.  And what is the nature of this distinctness?  It cannot be mind-generated.  This is because common natures are logically and ontologically prior to mind and matter as that which mediates between them. They are not virtually distinct.  Are they then really distinct?  That can't be right either since they lack esse reale.

And how can these common or absolute natures fail to be, each of them, one, as opposed to neither one nor many?  The theory posits a plurality of items distinct among themselves.  But if each is an item, then each is one.  An item that is neither one nor many is no item at all.

There is also this consideration.  Why are common natures more acceptable than really existent universals as constituents of ordinary particulars such as Peter?    The Thomists allow universals only if they have merely intentional existence, existence 'in' or rather for a mind.  "Intentional existence belongs to entities which exist only in dependence upon the fact that they are objects of our understanding." (253)  They insist that, as S. puts it,  "Every empirical individual and every part or trait of it is particular." (251)  S. calls the latter an observation, but it is not really a datum, but a bit of theory.  It is a datum that 'man' is predicable of many different individuals.  And it is a datum that Peter is the subject of plenty of essential predicates other than 'man.'  But it is not a clear datum that Peter is particular 'all the way through.'  That smacks of a theory or a proto-theory, not that it is not eminently reasonable.

One might 'assay' (to use G. Bergmann's term) an ordinary particular as a complex consisting of a thin or 'bare'  particular instantiating universals.  This has its own difficulties, of course, but why should a theory that posits common natures be preferrable to one that doesn't but posits really existent universals instead?  Either way problems will arise.

The main problem in a nutshell is that it is incoherent to maintain that some items are such that they have no being whatsoever.  'Some items are such that they have no being whatsoever' is not a formal-logical contradiction, pace van Inwagen, but it is incoherent nonetheless.  Or so it seems to me. 

More on my Non-Identity With My Living Body

Maximilian J. Nightingale writes:

You laid out this syllogism in a recent post:

My living body will  become a dead body; 
I will never become a dead body;
therefore, I am  not identical to a living body.

It seems to me that if "becoming" means the same thing in both the first and the second premises, then one must say that both Bill and his living body will become a dead body, or that neither will.  It seems that where a living body used to be, a dead body will begin to be.  So also, it seems that where Bill used to be, a dead body will begin to be.

I don't see that the reader has refuted the argument.  Yes, 'becomes' means the same in both premises. 

Now the first premise is true:   It is clear that one day my living body will undergo a radical change and become a dead body: the same body that today is alive will on a future date no longer have the property of being alive but will instead have the property of being dead.  (I am assuming some 'normal' way of dying, as opposed to being instantaneously annihilated in a nuclear blast.  More on this in a moment.)  This is an alterational change: one and the same body will exist at different times in different states, first alive, then dead.  So it is not the case, as the reader claims, that "where a living body used to be, a dead body will begin to be."  That would be an existential change, not an alterational one.  It is not the case that a dead body will begin to be; one and the same body will go from being alive to being dead.

The second premise is also true.  When my body dies, I will cease to exist; but when my body dies it won't cease to exist: it will continue to exist for a while as a corpse.  This is an existential change in me, not an alterational change:  I will cease to exist.  It is not the case that I will change in respect of the property of being alive.

Therefore, I cannot be identical to my living body.  'Will no longer exist' is true of me, but not true of my body. 

"But what if you are annihilated in an explosion so that there is no corpse?"  At this point the argument takes a modal turn.  Even if my body does not continue to exist after I cease to exist, it could;  but it is not possible that I continue to exist after I cease to exist.  So again we have a difference in properties and non-identity.

I have been assuming mortalism, the doctrine that I cease to exist when my body dies.  If mortalism is false, and I exist even after the death of my body, then a fortiori I am not identical to my living body.

Am I a Body or Do I Have a Body?

In his latest and last book, Mortality, Christopher Hitchens writes, "I don't have a body, I am a body." (86) He goes on to observe that he has "consciously and regularly acted as if this was [sic] not true."  It is a curious fact that mortalists are among the worst abusers of the fleshly vehicle.  But that is not my theme.

Is a person just his body?  The meditation is best conducted in the first person: Am I just my body?  Am I identical to my body?  Am I one and the same with my body, where body includes brain?  Am I such that, whatever is true of my body is true of me, and vice versa? Let's start with some 'Moorean facts,' some undeniable platitudes.

1. I am not now identical to a dead body, a corpse.  There is, no doubt, a dead body in my future, one with my name on it.  But that lifeless object won't be me.  I will never become a corpse.  I will never be buried or cremated.  I am not now and never will be identical to a dead body.  For when the corpse with my name on it  comes to exist, I will have ceased to exist; and when I cease to exist, it will still exist.  This property difference via the Indiscernibility of Identicals entails the non-identity of me and 'my' corpse. 

'My' corpse is the corpse that will come into existence when I cease to exist, or, if mortalism is false, when I am separated from my body.  Strictly speaking, no corpse is my corpse: hence the scare quotes around 'my.'  But I can speak strictly of my body: my body is the body that is either identical  to me, or is related to me in some 'looser' way. 

2.  I am obviously not identical to a dead body.  And I have just argued that I will never become identical to a dead body.  Am I  then identical to a  living body?  Not if the following syllogism is sound: My living body will become a dead body;  I will never become a dead body; therefore, I am not identical to a living body. 

This argument assumes that if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y, and vice versa.  Little is self-evident, but surely this principle is self-evident.  There is something true of my living body that is not true of me, namely 'will become a dead body.'  Therefore, I am not identical to a living body.  And since the only living body I could be identical to if I were identical to a living body would be my living body, I am not identical to my living body.  Of course, I have a living body in some to-be-explored sense of 'have'; the point is that I am not identical to it.

3. Consider now the following rather more plausible identity claim:  I am (identically) a self-conscious animal.  Let's unpack this.  I am a living human animal that says 'I' and means it; I am a thinker of I-thoughts, an example of which is the thought *I am just a self-conscious animal.*  I am self-aware: aware of myself as an object, both as a physical object, a body, through the five outer senses, and as psychological object, a mind, through inner sense or introspection.  Both my body and my mind are objects for me as subject.  As such a self-aware animal, I am aware of being different from my body.  In some sense I must be different from my body (and my mind) if  they are my objects.  'My objects' means 'objects for me as subject.'

Now if you were paying attention you noticed that I made an inferential move the validity of which demands scrutiny.  I moved from

a. I am aware of being different from my body

to

b. I am different from my body.

The materialist is bound to resist this inference.  He will ask how we know that the awareness mentioned in (a) is veridical.  Only if it is, is the inference valid.  He will suggest that it is possible that I have an non-veridical, an illusory, awareness of being different from my body.  I can't credit that suggestion, however.  It cannot be an illusion that I am different from anything I take as object of awareness including my brain or any part of my brain.  That is a primary and indubitable givenness. Awareness is by its very nature awareness of something: it implies a difference between that which is aware, the subject of awareness, and the object of awareness.  Without that difference there could be no awareness of anything.  If the self-aware subject were identical to that object which  is its animal body, then the subject would not be aware of the body. 

4.  Will you say that the body is aware of itself? Then I will ask you which part of the body is the subject of awareness.  Is it the brain, or a proper part of the brain?  When I am aware of my weight or the cut on my arm, is it the brain or some proper part of the brain that is aware of these things?  This makes no sense.  My brain is no more the subject of awareness than my glasses are.  My glasses don't see the wound; I see the wound by the instrumentality of the glasses.  Similarly, my brain doesn't see the wound; I see the wound by the instrumentality of the brain (and the visual cortex, and the optic nerves, and the glasses, etc.)  The fact that my visual awareness is causally dependent on my having a functioning brain does not show that my brain or any part of it is the subject of awareness.  I am not identical to my brain or to any bodily thing.

5.   Who or what asks the question:  Am I identical to this body here?  Does the body ask this question?  Some proper part of the body such as the brain?  Some proper part of this proper part?  How could anything physical ask a question?

"Look, there are are certain physical objects that ask themselves whether they are identical to the physical objects they are, and entertain the (illusory) thought that they might not be identical to the physical objects they are."

This little materialist speech is absurd by my lights since no physical object -- as we are given to understand 'physical object' by physics -- could do such a thing.   If you insist that some physical objects can, then you have inflated 'physical' so that it no longer contrasts with 'mental.' 

So with all due respect to the late Mr Hitchens, brilliant talker about ideas whose depth he never plumbed, I think there are very good reasons to deny that one is identically one's body.

Further questions:  If I am not identical to any physical thing, can it be inferred that I am identical to some spiritual thing?  If I am not identical to my body or any part thereof, do I then have a body, and what exactly does that mean? 

The Aporetics of Existence and Self-Identity

Andrew B. made some powerful objections to a recent existence post.  His remarks suggest the following argument:

Argument A

1. Existence is self-identity
2. My existence is contingent:  (∃x)(x = I) & Poss ~(∃x) (x = I)
Therefore
3. My self-identity is contingent:  I = I & Poss ~ (I = I)

Argument A may be supplemented by the following consideration.  Since I am contingent, there are possible worlds in which I do not exist.  Not being in those worlds, I cannot have properties in them, including the property of self-identity. So it is not the case that I am necessarily self-identical; I am self-identical only in those worlds in which I exist, which is to say: I am contingently self-identical.  I am self-identical in some but not all worlds.

The argument can be rationally resisted. 

Consider a possible world w in which I do not exist.  In w, the proposition expressed by an utterance by me of 'I am not self-identical' is true.  But if it is true in w, then the proposition exists in w.  Now if the proposition exists in w, then so do its constituents.  On a Russellian view of propositions, I am one of the proposition's  constituents.  So for the proposition  *I am not self-identical* to be true in w, I must exist in w.  But if I exist in w, then of course I am self-identical in w, and the proposition is false in w.  But the same goes for every world in which I do not exist.  It follows that I am self-identical in every world and I exist in every world.

Of course, one needn't take a Russellian line on propositions.  One could take a Fregean view according to which propositions about me do not have me as a constituent but an abstract representative of me, a sense or mode of presentation.  But the first-person singular pronoun 'I' has the peculiarity that it cannot be replaced salva significatione by any description; so even if there is an abstract representative of me in the Fregean proposition expressed by my utterance of  'I am not self-identical,' there still has to be a referent of the representative external to the proposition.  So I have to exist in w for the proposition *I am not self-identical* to be true in w.  But if I exist in w then I am self-identical in w.  This in turn implies that the proposition is not true.  

The cognoscenti will appreciate that what I have been doing in a rough and dirty way is reproducing some of the thoughts in Timothy Williamson's paper Necessary Existents.  I am doing so to show that Argument A is not convincing.  Making use of materials from Williamson's paper, we can 'throw Argument A into reverse':

Argument B

1. Existence is self-identity
~3. My self-identity is necessary: Nec (I = I)
Therefore
~2. My existence is necessary.

In point of validity, there is nothing to choose between A and B: both are valid.  And both, I submit, have counterintuitive conclusions.  It seems to me that the arguments cancel each other out.  So I propose that we think very skeptically about the common premise that existence is self-identity, and the Quinean thin theory that commits us to it. 

The Problem of First-Person identity Sentences

0. Am I identical to my (living) body, or to the objectively specifiable person who rejoices under the name 'BV'?  Earlier I resoundingly denied this identity, in (rare) agreement with London Ed, but admitted that argument is needed.  This post begins the argument.  We start with the problem of first-person identity sentences.

1. 'I am I' and 'BV is BV' are logical truths.  They have the logical form a = a. They are not particularly puzzling.  But 'I am BV' presents a puzzle, one reminiscent of Frege's puzzle concerning informative identity statements.  'I am BV' is not true as a matter of logic, any more than it is true as a matter of logic that the morning star is the evening star. And yet it is  presumably true that I am BV where 'am' expresses strict numerical identity. It is not as if 'I' and 'BV' refer to two different entities.  Or at least this is not a view we ought to begin by assuming.  The proper procedure is to see if we can make sense of 'I am BV' construed as an identity statement.  Dualism comes later if it comes at all.

2. Here is a theory.  When I say 'I am BV' I am referring to one and the same thing in two different ways, just as, when I say 'The morning star is the evening star' I am referring to  one and the same thing (the planet Venus) in two different ways.  Expressions have sense and they have reference.  Difference of sense is compatible with sameness of reference.  The difference in sense of 'morning star' and 'evening star' explains why the identity statement composed of them is informative; the sameness of reference explains the identity statement's truth.

In Frege's famous example, the common referent is the planet Venus.  What is the common referent of 'I' and 'BV'?  Presumably the common referent is the publicly identifiable person BV.  But when BV designates himself by means of the thought or utterance of 'I,  he designates BV under the aspect, or via the sense, expressed by 'I,' a semantically irreducible sense that cannot be captured by any expression not containing 'I.'

Here then we seem to have a solution to our problem.  In general, one can refer to the same thing in different ways, via different modes of presentation (Darstellungsweisen, in Frege's German).  So apply that to the special case of the self.  What I refer to when I say 'I' is the same entity that I refer to when I say 'BV' and the same entity that Peter refers to when he says 'BV.'   It is just that I refer to the same thing in different ways, a first-person way and third-person way.  There is no need to suppose that 'I and 'BV' have numerically distinct referents.   There is no need to deny the numerical identity of me and BV. Unfortunately, this Fregean solution is a pseudo-solution.  I have two arguments.  I'll give one today.

3. Consider the sentence 'I am this body here' uttered by the speaker while pointing to his body.  If, in this sentence, 'I' refers to this body here (the body of the speaker), albeit via a Fregean sense distinct from that of 'this body here,' then the sense of 'I,' whatever it might be, must be the sense of a physical thing inasmuch as it must be the mode of presentation of a physical thing.  Note that the 'of' in the italicized phrases is a genitivus objectivus.  Somehow this 'I'-sense must determine a reference to a physical thing, this body here.  But that it is the sense of a physical thing is no part of the sense of 'I.'  We understand fully the sense of this term without understanding it to be the sense of a physical thing, a sense that presents or mediates reference to a physical thing.  Indeed, considerations adduced by Anscombe and Castaneda show that the 'I'-sense cannot be the sense of a physical thing.  For if the sense of 'I' cannot be captured by 'this body here,' then a fortiori it cannot be captured by any other expression designating a physical thing.

The analogy with the morning star/evening star case breaks down.  One cannot use 'morning star' and 'evening star' with understanding unless one understands that they refer to physical things, if they refer at all.  It is understood a priori that these terms designate physical things if they designate at all; the only question is whether they designate the same physical thing.  But one can use the first-person singular pronoun with understanding without knowing whether or not it refers to a physical thing.

In other words,  there is nothing in the sense of 'I' to exclude the possibility that it refer to a nonphysical thing, a res cogitans, for example.  Descartes' use of 'ego' to refer to a thinking substance did not violate the semantic rules for the use of this term.  What's more, if 'I' is a referring term and refers via a Fregean sense, then that sense cannot be the sense of a physical thing.

So that's my first argument against the Fregean approach to the problem of first-person identity sentences.  The argument rests on the assumption that 'I' is a referring term.  That assumption has been denied by Wittgenstein, and more rigorously, by Anscombe.  That denial deserves a separate post.  And in that post we ought to rehearse the reasons why 'I' cannot be replaced salva significatione by any such word or phase as 'the person who is now speaking.' 

Singular Concepts and Singular Negative Existentials

London Ed seems to be suggesting that we need irreducibly singular concepts (properties, propositional functions) if we are properly to analyze grammatically singular negative existence statements such as

1. Vulcan does not exist.

But why do we need to take 'Vulcan' to express a singular concept or haecceity property?  Why isn't the following an adequate analysis:

1A. The concept Small, intra-Mercurial planet whose existence explains the peculiarities of Mercury's orbit is not instantiated.

Note that the concept picked out by the italicized phrase is general not singular.  It is general even though only one individual instantiates it if any does.  The fact that different individuals instantiate it at different possible worlds suffices to make the concept general, not irreducibly singular.

Reduction, Elimination, and Material Composition

Yesterday I wrote,  "And yet if particular a reduces to particular b, then a is nothing other than b, and is therefore identical to b." This was part of an argument that reduction collapses into elimination.  A reader objects: "I am not sure that this is an accurate definition of reduction." 

He gives an argument having to do with material composition.  I'll put the argument in my own way, so as to strengthen it and make it even more of a challenge for me.

1. Whether or not minds are physically reducible, physical reductionism is surely true of some things, statues for example.  A statue is reducible to the matter that composes it, a hunk of bronze, say.  No one is a statue-hunk dualist.  It is not as if there are two things in the same place, the statue and the hunk of bronze.  Nor is anyone an eliminativist when it comes to statues.There are such things, but what they are is just hunks of matter. We avoid both dualism and eliminativism by adopting reductionism.

2. But surely the matter of the statue might have been configured or worked in some other way to make a different statue or a non-statue.  Before the sculptor went to work on it, the hunk of bronze was just a hunk, and after it became a statue it could have reverted  back to being a mere hunk if it were melted down.

Therefore

3. The statue and the hunk differ property-wise:  the hunk, but not the statue, has the property of existing at times at which the statue does not exist.  And at every time at which both hunk and statue exist, the hunk, but not the statue, has the modal property of being possibly such as to be a non-statue. 

Therefore

4. By the indiscernibility of Identicals, statue and hunk are not identical.

Therefore

5. The statue is reducible to its constituent matter but not identical to it. (By 1, 4)

Therefore

6.  It is not the case that if particular a reduces to particular b, then a is identical to b.

This is an impressive argument, but I don't see that it shows that one can have reduction without identity of the reduced to the reducer.  I take the argument as further evidence of the incoherence of the notion of the reduction of one particular to another.  The first premise, though plausible, is not obviously true. What's more, it seems inconsistent with the second premise.  I have argued many times before that in cases like these, statue and lump, fist and hand, brick house and bricks, the thing and its matter differ property-wise and so cannot be identical.  They are both temporally and modally discernible.  If fist and hand cannot be numerically identical, then they must be numerically distinct.  When I take my hand and make a fist of it, the hand does not cease to exist, but something new comes into existence, a fist.  Hand and fist, as long as both exist, are two numerically different things occupying exactly the same spatiotemporal position.  Admittedly, that sounds strange.  Nevertheless, I claim here is just as much reason to be a hand-fist dualist as there is to be a fist-to-hand reductionist.

One could also be an eliminativist.  Amazingly, Peter van Inwagen -- no slouch of a philosopher; you don't get a chair if you slouch -- is an eliminativist about artifacts such as the house built by the Wise Pig.  See here. 

Perhaps I can drive the reductionist onto the horns of a dilemma.  Either fist and hand are identical or they are not.  They cannot  be identical because they differ property-wise.  If two things are not numerically identical, however, then they are numerically different.  But if fist and hand are numerically different, then the fist does not reduce to the hand.

So I persist in my view that reduction is an incoherent notion.  There is no viable via media between dualism and eliminativism.  

The 'Is' of Identity and the 'Is' of Predication

Bill Clinton may have brought the matter to national attention, but philosophers have long appreciated that much can ride on what the meaning of 'is' is. 

Edward of London has a very good post in which he raises the question whether the standard analytic distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication is but fallout from an antecedent decision to adhere to an absolute distinction between names and predicates.  If the distinction is absolute, as Frege and his epigoni maintain, then names cannot occur in predicate position, and a distinction between the two uses of 'is' is the consequence.  But what if no such absolute distinction is made?  Could one then dispense with the standard analytic distinction?  Or are there reasons independent of Frege's function-argument analysis of propositions for upholding the distinction between the two uses of 'is'?

To illustrate the putative distinction, consider

1. George Orwell is Eric Blair

and

2. George Orwell is famous.

Both sentences feature a token of 'is.'  Now ask yourself: is 'is' functioning in the same way in both sentences? The standard analytic line is that 'is' functions differently in the two sentences.  In (1) it expresses identity; in (2) it expresses predication. Identity, among other features, is symmetrical; predication is not.  That suffices to distinguish the two uses of 'is.'  'Famous' is predicable of Orwell, but Orwell is not predicable of  'famous.'  But if Blair is Orwell, then Orwell is Blair.

Now it is clear, I think, that if one begins with the absolute name-predicate distinction, then the other distinction is also required. For if  'Eric Blair' in (1) cannot be construed as a predicate, then surely the 'is' in (1) does not express predication.  The question I am raising, however, is whether the distinction between the two uses of 'is' arises ONLY IF  one distinguishes absolutely and categorially between names and predicates.

Fred Sommers seems to think so.  Referencing the example 'The morning star is Venus,' Sommers  writes, "Clearly it is only after one has adopted the syntax that prohibits the predication of proper names that one is forced to read 'a is b' dyadically and to see in it a sign of identity." (The Logic of Natural Language, Oxford 1982, p. 121, emphasis added)  The contemporary reader will of course wonder how else 'a is b' could be read if it is not read as expressing a dyadic relation between a and b.  How the devil could the 'is' in 'a is b' be read as a copula?

This is what throws me about the scholastic stuff peddled by Ed and others.  In 'Orwell is famous' they seem to be wanting to say that 'Orwell' and 'famous' refer to the same thing.  But what could that mean? 

First of all, 'Orwell' and 'famous' do not have the same extension: there are many famous people, but only  one Orwell.  But even if Orwell were the only famous person, Orwell would not be identical to the only famous person.  Necessarily, Orwell is Orwell; but it is not the case that, necessarily, Orwell is the only famous person, even if it is true that Orwell is the only famous person, which he  isn't.

If you tell me that only 'Orwell' has a referent, but not 'famous,' then I will reply that that is nominalism for the crazy house.  Do you really want to say or imply that Orwell is famous because in English we apply the predicate 'famous' to him?  That's ass-backwards or bass-ackwards, one.  We correctly apply 'famous' to him because he is, in reality, famous.  (That his fame is a social fact doesn't  make it language-dependent.)  Do you really want to say or imply that, were we speaking German, Orwell would not be famous but beruehmt?  'Famous' is a word of English while beruehmt is its German equivalent.  The property, however, belongs to neither language.  If you say there are no properties, only predicates, then that smacks of the loony bin.

Suppose 'Orwell' refers to the concrete individual Orwell, and 'famous' refers to the property, being-famous.  Then you get for your trouble a different set of difficulties.  I don't deny them!  But these difficulties do not show that the scholastic view is in the clear.

This pattern repeats itself throughout philosophy.  I believe I have shown that materialism about the mind faces insuperable objections, and that only those in the grip of naturalist ideology could fail to feel their force.   But it won't do any good to say that substance dualism also faces insuperable objections.  For it could be that both are false/incoherent.  In fact, it could be that every theory proposed (and proposable by us) in solution of  every philosophical problem is false/incoherent. 

Accidental Sameness and its Logical Properties

I should thank Richard Hennessey for motivating me to address a topic I haven't until these last few days discussed in these pages, namely, that of accidental sameness.  Let us adopt for the time being a broadly Aristotelian ontology with its standard nomenclature of substance and accident, act and potency, form and matter, etc.  Within such a framework, how can we account for an accidental predication such as 'Socrates is seated'? 

In particular, what is expressed by 'is' in a sentence like this?  Hennessey seems to maintain that it expresses an identity which holds, if the sentence is true, between the referent of the subject term 'Socrates' and the referent of the predicate term  'seated.'  Here is what Hennessey says:

Let us take the proposition “Socrates is sitting” or the strictly equivalent “Socrates is a sitting being.” The referent of the subject term here is the sitting Socrates and that of the predicate term is one and the same sitting Socrates. Similarly, the referent of the subject term of “Plato is sitting” is the sitting Plato and that of its predicate term is one and the same sitting Plato. Here, once again, only if the referent of the “Socrates” and that of the “sitting” of “Socrates is sitting” are identical can it be true that Socrates is actually the one sitting. And, only if the referent of the “Plato” and that of the “sitting” of “Plato is sitting” are identical can it be true that Plato is actually the one sitting.

Hennessey is making two moves in this passage.  The first is the replacement of 'Socrates is seated' with 'Socrates is a seated being.' (I am using 'seated' instead of 'sitting' for idiosyncratic stylistic reasons;  the logic and ontology of the situation should not be affected.) I grant that the original sentence and its replacement are logically equivalent.  Hence I have no objection to the first move.

The second move is to construe the 'is' of the replacement sentence as expressing identity.  Together with this move goes Hennessey's  claim that ONLY in this way can the truth of the sentence be insured.  This claim is false for reasons given earlier, but this is not my present concern.  My concern at present is the second move by itself.  Can the 'is' of the replacement sentence be construed as expressing identity?

The answer to this is in the negative if by 'identity' is meant strict identity.  Strict identity, symbolized by '=,'  is an equivalence relation: it is reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive.  It is furthermore governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals (If a = b, then everything true of a is true of b and vice versa) and the Necessity of Identity (If a = b, then necessarily a = b).  Now if the referent of 'Socrates' and the referent of 'seated' are strictly identical, then this is necessarily so, true in every possible world in which Socrates exists, in which case our sentence cannot be contingently true as it obviously is.  Socrates is seated only at some of the times at which he exists, not at all such times.  And at any time at which he is seated he is possibly such as not to be seated at that time.  (The modality in question is broadly logical.)

So if Hennessey wants to construe the 'is' as expressing a type of sameness, it cannot be that sameness which is strict identity.  An option which is clearly open to him as an Aristotelian is to construe the 'is' as expressing accidental sameness.  But what is that?

It is a dyadic relation that connects one substance and one accidental compound.  (Thus by definition it never connects two substances or two compounds.)  An accidental compound is a particular, not a universal.  It is a hylomorphic compound the matter of which is a substance and the form of which an accident inhering in that substance.  It is admittedly a somewhat 'kooky' object, to borrow an epithet from Gareth Mathews.  An example is seated-Socrates.  Socrates is a substance.  His seatedness is an accident inhering in him.  The two together form an accidental compound which can be denoted by 'seated-Socrates' or by 'Socrates + seatedness.'  Seated-Socrates is neither a substance nor an accident, but a transcategorial hybrid composed of one substance and one accident, but only if the accident inheres in the substance. (An accidental compund is therefore not a mereological sum of a substance and any old accident.)

The compound is not a substance because it cannot exist on its own, but it is parasitic upon its parent substance, in our example, Socrates. It is also not a substance because it is not subject to alterational change.  Change for an accidental compound is existential change, either coming into being or passing out of being.  When Socrates sits down, seated-Socrates comes into being, and when he stands up it passes out of being.  An accidental compound is not an accident because it is not related to its parent substance by inherence, but by accidental sameness.  A key difference is that inherence is an asymmetrical relation, while accidental sameness is symmetrical.

Hennessey can say the following: 'Socrates is seated' expresses the accidental sameness of Socrates with the accidental compound, seated-Socrates.  He needs to posit two objects, not one: a substance and an accidental compound.  If he holds that the referent of 'Socrates' and the referent of 'seated' are strictly identical, then the accidentality of the predication cannot be accommodated, and all predications become essential. That was my initial objection to Hennessey's view before I figured out a way to salvage it. 

What are the logical properties of the accidental sameness relation?  Like strict identity, it is symmetrical.  This should be obvious.  If Socrates is accidentally the same as seated-Socrates, then the latter is accidentally the same as the former.  The inherence relation, by contrast, is asymmetrical: if A inheres in S, then S does not inhere in A. This is one of the differences between the accidental sameness relation and the inherence relation. 

Accidental sameness is irreflexive.  This can be proven as follows:

1. No substance is an accidental compound.
2. If a is accidentally the same as b, then either a is a subtance and b a compound, or vice versa.
Therefore
3. No object, whether substance or compound, is accidentally the same as itself.

It can also be proven that accidental sameness is intransitive.  Thus, if a is accidentally the same as b, and b accidentally the same as c, it follows that a is not accidentally the same as c.  Suppose a is a substance.  Then b is a compound.  But if b is a compound, then c is a substance, with the result that a substance is accidentally the same as a substance, which violates the definition of accidental sameness.  On the other hand, if a is a compound, then b is a substance, which makes c a compound, with the result that a  compound is accidentally the same as a compound, which also violates the definition.  So accidental sameness is intransitive.

Clearly, there is accidental sameness only if there are accidental compounds.  But are there any of the latter?  Consider a fist.  A fist is not strictly identical to the hand whose fist it is. (They have different persistence conditions.) But a fist is not strictly different from the hand whose fist it is.  But surely there are fists, and surely what we have in a situation like this is not two individuals in the same place.  So it is reasonable to maintain that a fist is an accidental compound which is accidentally the same as the hand whose fist it is.

Still, there is something 'kooky' about accidental compounds.  So I'll end with a challenge to Hennessey, enemy of universals.  Why are accidental compounds less 'kooky' than universals, whether immanent or transcendent? 

Accidental Sameness: Defending Hennessey Against My Objection

Yesterday I made an objection to Richard Hennessey's neo-Aristotelian theory of accidental predication.  But this morning I realized that he has one or more plausible responses.  By the way, this post has, besides its philosophical purpose, a metaphilosophical one.  I will be adding support to my claim lately bruited that philosophy -- the genuine article -- is not a matter of debate, as I define both 'philosophy' and 'debate.'  For have you ever been to a debate in which debater A, having made an objection to something debater B has said, says, "Wait a minute!  I just realized that you have one or more plausible ways of turning aside my objection.  The first is . . . ."?

1. 'Socrates is seated' is an example of an accidental predication.  For surely it is no part of Socrates' essence or nature that he be seated.  There is no broadly logical necessity that  he be seated at any time at which he is seated, and there are plenty of times at which he is not seated.  'Socrates is seated' contrasts with the essential predication 'Socrates is human.'  Socrates is human at every time at which he exists and at every world at which he exists.

2. Hennessey's theory is that ". . . only if the referent of the 'Socrates' and that of the 'sitting' of 'Socrates is sitting' are identical can it be true that Socrates is actually the one sitting."  The idea seems to be that accidental predications can be understood as identity statements.  Thus 'Socrates is seated' goes over into (what is claimed to be) the logically equivalent  'Socrates is (identical to) seated-Socrates.'  Accordingly, our sample sentence is construed, not as predicating a property of Socrates, a property he instantiates, but as affiming the identity of Socrates with the referent of 'seated-Socrates.'

3.  But what is the referent of 'seated-Socrates'?  If the referent is identical to the referent of 'Socrates,' namely Socrates, then my objection kicks in:  how can the predication be contingently true, as it obviously is, given that it affirms the identity of Socrates with himself?  Socrates is essentially Socrates but only accidentally seated.

4. Perhaps Hennessey could respond to this objection by saying that 'Socrates' and 'Socrates-seated' do not refer to the same item: they refer to different items which are, nonetheless, contingently identical.  This would involve distinguishing between necessary identity and contingent identity where both are equivalence relations (reflexive, symmetrical, transitive) but only the former satisfies in addition the Indiscernibility of Identicals (InId) and the Necessity of Identity (NI).  It is obvious that if a and b are contingently identical, but distinct, then these items must be discernible in which case InId fails.  It is also obvious that NI must fail for contingent identity.

5. Closer to Aristotle is a view described by Michael C. Rea in "Sameness Without Identity: An Aristotelian Solution to the Problem of Material Constitution" in Form and Matter, ed. Oderberg, Blackwell 1999, pp. 103-115.  I will now paraphrase and interpret from Rea's text, pp. 105-107.  And I won't worry about how the view I am about to sketch differs -- if it does differ -- from the view sketched in #4.

When Socrates sits down, seated-Socrates comes into existence. When he stands up or adopts some other nonseated posture, seated-Socrates passes out of existence.  This 'kooky' or 'queer' object is presumably a particular, not a universal, though it is not a substance.  It is an accidental unity whose existence is parasitic upon the existence of its parent substance, Socrates.   It cannot exist without the parent substance, but the latter can exist without it.  The relation is like that of a fist to a hand made into a fist.  The fist cannot exist without the hand, but the hand can exist without being made into a fist.Though seated-Socrates is not a substance it is like a substance in that it is a hylomorphic compound: it has Socrates as its matter and seatedness as its form.  As long as Socrates and seated-Socrates exist, the relation between them is accidental sameness, a relation weaker than strict identity. 

Accidental sameness is not strict identity presumably because  the former is not governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals.  Clearly, Socrates and seated-Socrates do not share all properties despite their sameness.  They differ temporally and modally. Socrates exists at times at which seated-Socrates does not exist (though not conversely).  And it is possible that Socrates exist without seated-Socrates existing (though not conversely). 

Are Socrates and seated-Socrates numerically the same?  They count as one and so they are one in number though not one in being.   So says Aristotle according to Rea.  After all, if Socrates and Alcibiades are seated at table we count two philosophers not four.  We don't count: Socrates, seated-Socrates, Alcibiades, seated-Alcibiades.

But I will leave it to Hennessey to develop this further.  It looks as if this is the direction in which he must move if his theory is to meet my objection.

What about essential predication?  Is there a distinction between Socrates and human-Socrates?  These two cannot be accidentally the same.  They must be strictly identical. If 'Socrates is human' is parsed as 'Socrates is identical to human-Socrates' then how does the latter differ from 'Socrates is Socrates'?  The sense of 'Socrates is human' differs from the sense of 'Socrates is Socrates.'  How account for that?  'Socrates is Socrates' is a formal-logical truth, trivial and uninformative.  'Socrates is human' is not a formal-logical truth; it is informative. 

'Leibniz's Law': A Useless Expression

Pedant and quibbler that I am, it annoys me when I hear professional philosophers use the phrase 'Leibniz's Law.'  My reason is that it is used by said philosophers in three mutually incompatible ways.  That makes it a junk phrase, a wastebasket expression, one to be avoided.  Some use it as Dale Tuggy does, here, to refer to the Indiscernibility of Identicals, a principle than which no more luminous can be conceived.  (Roughly, if a = b, then whatever is true of a is true of b, and vice versa.)  Fred Sommers, referencing Benson Mates, also uses it in this way.  (See The Logic of Natural Language,  p. 127)

Others, such as the distinguished Australian philosopher Peter Forrest, use it to refer to the Identity of Indiscernibles, a principle rather less luminous to the intellect and, in my humble opinion, false.  (Roughly, if whatever is true of a is true of b and vice versa, then a = b.)  And there are those who use it as to refer to the conjunction  of the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Identity of Indiscernibles.

So 'Leibniz's Law' has no standardly accepted usage and is insofar forth useless.  And unnecessary.  You mean 'Indiscernibility of Identicals'?  Then say that.  If you mean its converse, say that. Ditto for their conjunction.

There is also the problem of using a great philosopher's name to label a principle that the philosopher may not even have held.  Analytic philosophers are notorious for being lousy historians.  Not all of them, of course, but the run-of-the-mill.  If Sommers is right, Leibniz was a traditional logician who did not think of identity as a relation as Frege and Russell do.  (p. 127) Accordingly, 'a = b' as this formula is understood in modern predicate logic does not occur in Leibniz.

 

The Problem of Individuation: Genuine or Pseudo?

1. The ontological problem of individuation is actually two problems.  One is the problem of what makes two or more numerically different individuals numerically different.  What grounds numerical difference?  The other is the problem of what makes an individual an individual as opposed to a member of some other category of entity.  What grounds individuality?  If the first question is about the differentiator (the ground of numerical difference), the second is about the individuator (the ground of  individuality). 

The two questions are often conflated, but as you can see, they are different.  The conflation is aided and abetted by the fact that on some theories the entity posited to do the differentiating job also does the individuating job.  For example, in Gustav Bergmann's ontology, bare particulars are both differentiators and individuators.  But if I both load the truck and drive the truck it doesn't follow that loading and driving are the same job.  So we cannot just assume that what does the differentiating job will also do the individuating job.  I won't say anything at the moment about the details of Hector-Neri Castaneda's ontology, but in it, the individuator is not a differentiator.

Therefore, 'problem of individuation' is a bit of a misnomer.  A better phrase would be 'problem(s) of individuation/differentiation.'  Having said that, I revert to the stock phrase.

Note also that we are talking ontology here, not epistemology.  'Individuate' can be used in an epistemological way to mean: 'single out,' 'pick out,' 'make an identifying reference to,' etc.  Suppose I single out x as the only item that has properties P, Q, R . . . .  It doesn't follow that having exactly those properties is what makes x an individual or makes x numerically different from y.  It could be like this: concrete particulars a and b are told apart by their difference is properties, but that makes them numerically different is that each has a numerically different bare particular, or a different nonqualitative thisness, where this is not understood to be a bare particular.

2. Before going any deeper into this we ought to ask whether our two problems are genuine. 

Taking the first one first, why is there any need for a differentiator?  If S and P are numerically distinct concrete particulars, why not just take that as a brute fact?  Brute facts need no explaining.  That's what their bruteness consists in. 

A constituent ontologist might answer as follows.  Concrete particulars have ontological consituents, among them, their properties.  Properties are universals.  It is possible that two particulars share all their properties.  Since they are not different due to a difference in properties, there must a further ontological factor that accounts for their difference.

This sketch of an answer won't cut any ice with a certain nominalist of our acquaintance.  He will presumably deny both that concrete particulars have ontological constituents, and that there are any universals.  He may even go so far as to claim that the very idea of an ontological constituent is senseless.  He will take our first question as a pseudo-question that rests on false assumptions.

Our nominalist will say something similar about the first question.  'Only if one starts with the assumption that individuals have ontological constituents, that among these are properties,  and that these are universals,  will one have the problem of explaining why the individual is an individual and not a collection or conjunction of universals.  The assumptions are false, so the problem is pseudo.'

Future Individuals and Haecceities

According to a wisecrack of Schopenhauer, the medievals employed only three examples: Socrates, Plato, and an ass.  In keeping with this hoary if not 'asinine' tradition, I too in my capacity as humble footnoter to Plato shall employ Socrates as my example.  To point out the obvious: he stands in for any concrete individual whatsoever, animate or inanimate.

I have been arguing (drawing on the work of the late Barry Miller with whom I was privileged to have enjoyed a lengthy correspondence) that before Socrates came to be there was no such property as identity-with-Socrates.  The astute Franklin Mason objects:

If there is no such thing as Socrates' identity before he came to be, it would seem that there's no such thing as his identity after he ceases to be. If we need the man Socrates if we are to speak about him, then we can't do so either before or after he exists. But clearly we can now speak of Socrates though he is long since dead. Thus we don't need the man to speak of the man, and so whatever reason we had to deny the existence of haecceities that predate the things to which they attach collapses.

Socrates came to exist in 470 B.C.  So we can say:

1. It is now the case that Socrates did exist.

From this it follows that

2. It was the case (e.g. in 470 B.C.) that Socrates does exist.

Mason seems to think that from (2) one can also validly infer

3. It was the case (e.g.. in 472 B.C.) that Socrates will exist.

But if I am right, the second inference fails.  For if I am right, before Socrates came to exist, not only was there no Socrates, there was no singular or  de re possibility of Socrates' existing.  At most there was the general possibility that someone come to have the properties that Socrates subsequently had. 

To appreciate that the inference from (2) is invalid, consider a parallel argument.  Suppose I promise Tom that I will buy him a book for his birthday.  On the morning of his birthday I spy a first-edition copy of On the Road in a book store and I buy it.  Once the purchase has been made we can say:

1*. It is now the case that a copy of OTR was selected for Tom.

From this it follows that

2*. It was the case that a copy of OTR is selected for Tom.

But until I bought the book on the morning of Tom's birthday I had no idea what I would buy.  So before I bought the book no one was entitled to say

3*. It was the case that a copy of OTR will be selected for Tom.

The most one would be entitled to say is

4. It was the case that a book will be selected for Tom.

Just as (3*) does not follow from (2*), (3) does not follow from (2).

Only present and past actual individuals are genuine individuals.  Future 'individuals,' not having yet come into existence, are not genuine individuals.

REFERENCE: Barry Miller, "Future Individuals and Haecceitism," Review of Metaphysics 45 (September 1991), 3-28, esp. 10-11.

Does Classical Theism Require Haecceitism?

Haecceitism is the doctrine that there are haecceities. But what is an haecceity? 

Suppose we take on board for the space of this post the assumptions that (i) properties are abstract objects, that (ii) they can exist unexemplified, and that (iii) they are necessary beings. We may then define the subclass of haecceity properties as follows.

A haecceity is a property H of x such that: (i) H is essential to x; (ii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in the actual world; (iii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in any metaphysically possible world.

So if there is a property of Socrates that is his haecceity, then there is a property that individuates him, and indeed individuates him across all times and worlds at which he exists: it is a property that he must have, that nothing distinct from him has, and that nothing distinct from him could have. Call this property Socrateity. Being abstract and necessary, Socrateity is obviously distinct from Socrates, who is concrete and contingent. Socrateity exists in every world, but is exemplified (instantiated) in only some worlds. What's more, Socrateity exists at every time in every world that is temporally qualified, whereas Socrates exist in only some worlds and only at some times in the worlds in which he exists.

Now suppose you are a classical theist.  Must you accept haecceitism (as defined above) in virtue of being a classical thesist?  I answer in the negative.  Franklin Mason answers in the affirmative.  In a comment on an earlier post, Mason gives this intriguing argument into which I have interpolated numerals for ease of reference.

[1] When God created the world, he knew precisely which individuals he would get.  Thus [2] he didn't need to have those very individuals in front of him to know which ones they were.  Thus [3] there must be a way to individuate all possible individuals that in no way depends upon their actual existence. [4] Such a thing is by definition a haecceity. Thus [5] there are haecceities.

I don't anticipate any disagreement with Mason as to what an haecceity is.  We are both operating with the Plantingian notion.  We disagree, however, on (i) whether there are any haecceities and (ii) whether classical theism is committed to them. In this post I focus on (ii).  In particular, I will explain why I do not find Mason's argument compelling.

My reservations concern premise [1].  There is a sense in which it is true that when God created Socrates, he knew which individual he would get.  But there is also a sense in which it is not true.  So we need to make a distinction.  We may suppose, given the divine omniscience, that before God created Socrates he had before his mind a completely determinate description, down to the very last detail, of the individual he was about to bring into existence.  In this sense, God knew precisely which individual he would get before bringing said individual into existence.  Now either this description is pure or it is impure.

A pure description is one that includes no proper names, demonstratives or other indexicals, or references to singular properties.  Otherwise the description is impure.  Thus 'snubnosed, rationalist philosopher married to Xanthippe' is an impure description because it includes the proper name 'Xanthippe.'  'Snubnosed, rationalist, married  philosopher,' by contrast, is pure.  (And this despite the fact that 'married' is a relational predicate.)  Pure descriptions are qualitative in that they include no references to specific individuals.  Impure descriptions are nonqualitative in that they do include references to specific individuals.

Now if God has before his mind a complete pure description of the individual he wills to create then it could apply to precisely one individual after creation without being restricted to any precise one.  (Cf. Barry Miller, "Future Individuals and Haecceitism," Review of Metaphysics 45, September 1991, p. 14)  This is a subtle distinction but an important one.  It is possible that Socrates have an indiscernible twin.  So the complete description 'snubnosed, rationalist philosopher, etc.' could apply to precisely one individual without applying to Socrates.  This is because his indiscernible twin would satisfy it just as well as he does.  The description would then apply to precisely one individual without being restricted to any precise one.  So there is a clear sense, pace Mason, in which  God, prior to creation, would not know which individual he would get.  Prior to creation, God knows that there will be an individual satisfying a complete description.  But until the individual comes into existence, he won't know which individual this will be.

Creation is not the bestowal of existence upon a a pre-existent, fully-formed, wholly determinate essence.  It is not the actualization of a wholly determinate mere possible.  There is no individual essence or haecceity prior to creation.  Creation is the creation ex nihilo of a a new individual.  God creates out of nothing, not out of pre-existent individual essences or pre-existent mere possibles.  Thus the very individuality of the individual first comes into being in the creative act.  Socrates' individuality and haecceity do not antedate (whether temporally or logically) his actual existence.

Mason would have to be able rationally to exclude this view of creation, and this view of the relation of existence and individuality, for his argument to be compelling.  As it is, he seems merely to assume that they are false.

Could God, before creation, have before his mind a complete impure description, one that made reference to the specific individual that was to result from the creative act?  No, and this for the simple reason that before the creative act that individual would not exist.  And therein lies the absurdity of Plantingian haecceities.  The property of identity-with-Socrates  is a nonqualitative haecceity that make essential reference to Socrates.  Surely it is absurd to suppose that that this 'property' exists at times and in possible worlds at which Socrates does not exist.  To put it another way, it is absurd to suppose that this 'property' could antedate (whether temporally or logically) the existence of Socrates.

We are now in a position to see why Mason's argument is not compelling.  If [1] is true, then [2] doesn't follow from it.  And if [2] follows from [1], then [1] is false.  Thus [1] conflates two distinct propositions:

1a.  When God created the world, he knew precisely which pure complete descriptions would be satisfied.

1b.  When God created the world, he knew precisely which individuals would exist.

(1a) is true, but it does not entail

2.  God didn't need to have those very individuals in front of him to know which ones they were.

(1b) entails (2), but (1b) is false.

I conclude that classical theism does not entail haecceitism.  One can be such a theist without accepting haecceities.

C. J. F. Williams' Analysis of 'I Might Not Have Existed'

There are clear cases in which 'exist(s)' functions as a second-level predicate, a predicate of properties or concepts or propositional functions or cognate items, and not as a predicate of individuals. The   affirmative general existential 'Horses exist,' for example, is best understood as making an instantiation claim: 'The concept horse is instantiated.' Accordingly, the sentence does not predicate existence of individual horses; it predicates instantiation of the concept horse.

This sort of analysis is well-nigh mandatory in the case of negative general existentials such as 'Flying horses do not exist.' Here we have a true sentence that cannot possibly be about flying horses for the simple reason that there aren't any. (One can make a Meinongian move here, but if possible we should try to get by without doing so.) On a reasonable parsing,  'Flying horses do not exist'  is about the concept flying horse, and says of this concept that it has no instances.

But what about singular existentials? Negative singular existentials like 'Pegasus does not exist' pose no problem. We may analyze it as, 'It is not the case that there exists an x such that x is the winged   horse of Greek mythology.' Or we can take a page from Quine and say that nothing pegasizes. What we have done in effect is to treat the singular term 'Pegasus' as a predicate and read the sentence as a   denial that this predicate applies to anything.

Problems arise, however, with affirmative singular existentials such as 'I exist' and with sentences like 'I might not have existed' which  are naturally read as presupposing the meaningfulness of 'I exist' and thus of uses of 'exists' as a first-level predicate. Thus, 'I might not have existed' is construable in terms of the operator 'It might not have been the case that ____' operating upon 'I exist.'

C.J.F. Williams, following in the footsteps of Frege, maintains the draconian thesis that all meaningful uses of 'exist(s)' are second-level. He must therefore supply an analysis of the true sentence 'I might not have existed' that does not require the meaningfulness of 'I exist.' His suggestion is that

     . . . my assertion that I might not have existed is the assertion
     that there is some property . . . essential to me, which I alone
     possess, and which might never have been uniquely instantiated . .
     (What is Existence?, Oxford 1981, p. 104)

Williams is suggesting that for each individual x there is a property H such that (i) H is essential to x in the sense that x cannot exist  except as instantiating H; and (ii) H, if instantiated, is instantiated by exactly one individual. Accordingly, to say that x  might not have existed is to say that H might not have been instantiated. And to say that x exists is to say that H is instantiated.

This analysis will work only if the right properties are available. What is needed are essentially individuating properties. Suppose Ed is the fastest marathoner. Being the fastest marathoner distinguishes Ed from everything  else, but it does not individuate him since it is not bound up with Ed's identity that he be the fastest marathoner. Ed can be Ed without being the fastest marathoner. So Ed's existence cannot be equivalent to, let alone idenctical with, the instantiation of the property of being the fastest marathoner since this is an accidental property of anything that possesses it, whereas the existence of an individual must be essential to it. After all, without existence a thing is nothing at all! 

On the other hand, Ed's existence is not equivalent to his instantiation of any old essential property such as being human since numerous individuals possess the property whereas the existence of an individual is unique to it.

What is needed is a property that Ed alone has and that Ed alone has in every possible world in which he exists. Such a property will be essentially individuating: it will individuate Ed in every possible world in which Ed exists, one of these being the actual world.

Williams suggests the property of having sprung from sperm cell S and ovum O. Presumably Ed could not have existed without this origin, and anything possessing this origin is Ed. The idea, then, is that the   existence of Ed is the instantiation of this property.

The property in question, however, is one that Michael Loux would call 'impure': it makes essential reference to an individual or individuals, in this case to S and O. Since S and O each exist, the   question arises as to how their existence is to be analyzed.

For an analysis like that of Williams to work, what is needed is a  property that does not refer to or presuppose any existing individual,  a property that somehow captures the haecceity of Ed but without presupposing the existence of an individual. If there were such a haecceity property H, then one could say that Ed's existence just is H's being instantiated.

But as I argue in tedious detail in A Paradigm Theory of Existence and in this post such haecceity properties are creatures of darkness. That is one of  the reasons I reject Frege-style theories of existence.

Existence, real pound-the-table existence, belongs to individuals.  The attempt to 'kick it upstairs' and make it a property of properties or concepts or propositional functions is completely wrongheaded, pace such luminaries as Frege, Russell, and their epigoni.