Maverick Philosopher

Pluralities

To what does the plural referring expression, 'the cats in my house,' refer? Not to plurality, but to a plurality. A plurality is one item, not many items. It is one item with many members. 'The guitars in my house' refers to a numerically different plurality. It too refers to one item with many members.  It follows that a plurality cannot be identical to its members.  For if it were there would be no 'it.'

I am not saying that a plurality is a mathematical set. I am saying that a plurality is not just its members.  I am rejecting Composition as Identity. If the Londonistas do not agree with the Phoenician on this one, then I fear that there is little point to further discussion. We are at the non-negotiable.  We are at bedrock and "my spade is turned." 

Nominalism Presupposes What it Denies

What makes a pair of shoes a pair and not just two physical artifacts? Nominalist answer: nothing in reality. Our resident nominalist tells us that it is our use of 'a pair' that imports a unity, conventional and linguistic in nature, a unity that does not exist in reality apart from our conventional importation. We are being told that out there in the world there are no ones-in-many, let alone any ones-over-many. If that is  right, then there are no sets. For a set is a one-over-many in this sense: it is one item distinct from its many members. (Let's not worry about the null set, which has no members and unit-sets or singletons which have exactly one member each. Here lies yet another rich source of aporiai, but one problem at a time.) 

If there are no sets, then there are neither finite sets nor infinite sets. There are just pluralities, and all grouping, collecting, subsuming under common rubrics, unifying, etc. is done in language by language-users. What I will try to show is that if you think carefully about all of this you will have to make distinctions that are inconsistent with nominalism. 

My aim is purely negative: to show that the nominalism of the resident nominalist is untenable. If you have read a good amount of what I have written you will recall that I am a solubility skeptic, which in this instance means that I am not endorsing any realist solution of the problem. I am not pushing an opposing theory. 

I will start with some data that I find 'Moorean,' i.e., rationally indisputable and pre-theoretical.  (Unfortunately, one man's datum is another man's theory.) The phrase 'a pair' has a sense that remains the same over time and space, a sense that is the same for all competent speakers of English whether here or abroad. The same holds for ein Paar in German, and similarly for all languages. The sense or meaning of an expression, whether word, phrase, sentence, etc. must be distinguished from the expression.  An expression is something physical and thus sensible. The sensible is that which is able to be sensed via one of our senses.  I hear the sound that conveys to me the meaning of 'cat,' say, or I see the marks on paper. Hearing and seeing are outer senses that somehow inform us or, more cautiously, purport to inform us of the existence and properties of physical or material things that exist whether or not we perceive them. But I don't hear or see the meaning conveyed to me by your utterance of  a sentence such 'The cats are asleep.' The sentence, being a physical particular, is sensible; the meaning is intelligible. That's just Latin for understandable. I hear the words you speak, and if all goes well, I understand their meaning or sense, thereby understanding the proposition you intend to convey to me, namely, that the cats are asleep. Note that while one can trip over sleeping cats, one cannot trip over that the cats are asleep.

There are two distinctions implicit in the above that need to be set forth clearly.  I argue that neither is compatible with nominalism

A. The distinction between the sense/meaning of a linguistic expression and the expression. Why must we make this distinction? (a) Because the same sense can be expressed at different times by the same person using the same expression. (b) Because the same sense can be expressed at the same and at different times by different people using the same expression. (c) Because the same sense can be expressed in different languages using different expressions by the same and different people at the same and at different times. For example the following sentences express, or rather can be used to express, the same sense (meaning, proposition):

The cat is black.
Il gatto è nero. 
Die Katze ist schwarz.
Kedi siyah.
Kočka je černá.

So the sense of a word or phrase or sentence is a one-in-many in that each tokening of the word or phrase expresses numerically the same sense.  A tokening, by definition, is the production of a token, in this case, a linguistic token.  One way a speaker can produce such a token is by uttering the word or phrase in question. Another way is by writing the word or phrase down on a piece of paper. (There are numerous other ways as well.)  This production of tokens therefore presupposes a further distinction:

B. The distinction between linguistic types and linguistic tokens. In the following array, how many words are there?

cat
cat
cat

Three or one? Is the same word depicted three times? Or are there three words? Either answer is as good as the other but they contradict each other. So we need to make a distinction: there are three tokens of the same type. We are forced by elementary exegesis of the data to make the type-token distinction.  If you don't make it, then you will not be able to answer my simple question: three words or one?

You see (using the optical transducers in your head, and not by any visio intellectualis) the three tokens. And note that the tokens you now see are not the tokens I saw when I wrote this entry. Those were different tokens of the same type, tokens which, at the time of your reading are wholly past. Linguistic tokens are in time, and in space, which is not obviously the case for linguistic types. I said: not obviously the case, not: obviously not the case.   You see the three tokens, but do you see the type of which they are the tokens? If you do, then you have powers I lack. And yet the tokens are tokens of a type. No type, no tokens. So types exist. How will our nominalist accommodate them? He cannot reduce types to sets of tokens since he eschews sets. No sets, no sets of linguistic tokens. Linguistic types are multiply instantiable. That makes them universals. But no nominalist accepts universals.  Nominalists hold that everything is a particular.  I grant that the rejection of sets and the rejection of universals are different rejections. But if one rejects sets because they are abstract objects, one ought also to reject universals for the same reason.

Now glance back at the first array. What we have there are five different sentence tokens from five different languages.  Each is both token - and type-distinct from the other four. 

To conclude, I present our nominalist with two challenges. The first is to give a nominalist account of linguistic types without either reducing them to sets or treating them as ones-in-many or ones-over-many. The second challenge is to explain the distinction between the sense or meaning of an expression, which is not physical/material and the expression which is.

Suppose he responds to the second challenge by embracing conceptualism according to which  meanings are mental.  Conceptualism is concept-nominalism, as D. M. Armstrong has maintained. My counterargument would be that the meaning/sense expressed by a tokening of 'The cats are asleep'  is objectively either true or false, and thus either true or false for all of us, not just for the speaker. Sentential meanings are not private mental contents.  Fregean Gedanken, for example, are not dependent for their existence or truth-value on languages or language-users.  

 

Questions about Pronouns, Sex, and 'Wokism'

Elliot Crozat writes, 

During my visit, one of our conversation topics was pronoun usage. If I recall, on one of the hikes, you gave the example "He who hesitates is lost” and asked about the function of ‘He.’ You then said that this pronoun seems to function as a universal quantifier such that, for any x, if x hesitates, then x is lost. I agree. Our agreement suggests that pronouns can function logically in ways that differ from their merely grammatical appearance.

BV: Right. Although 'he' and 'she' are classified grammatically as pronouns, their logical function in examples like the one I gave is not pronominal, but quantificational. Pronouns typically have noun antecedents, but 'he' in 'He who hesitates is lost' has no antecedent. It functions like a bound variable. I can imagine a Yogi Berra type joke. I say to Berra, "He who hesitates is lost," and he replies, "You mean Joe Biden?" (Here is a real Yogi Berra joke. Someone asked Berra what time it is. He replied, "You mean now?")

I spoke today with a friend, a philosopher, who is under some pressure from his employer to use the ‘preferred pronouns’ of colleagues and others even if such 'pronouns' don't align with the biological sex of the 'preferrers.' For various reasons concerning clarity and accuracy of language, freedom of speech and thought, and ideological disagreement, my friend is concerned about how to navigate this progressivist current in a responsible manner. We discussed some ideas.

Here’s one. Suppose a biological male, Mark, desires and requests to be referred to as ‘she.’ Suppose also that, generally speaking, all pronouns that are indexicals (i.e., demonstratives) refer to their respective persons or objects as they objectively are. Smith, a colleague of Mark, attempts to refer to Mark as ‘she.’ It would seem, then, that ‘she’ fails to refer – or that Mark fails to refer via ‘she’ – and thus ‘she’ is a useless and confusing bit of language. Smith’s use of ‘she’ is unhelpful on this account.

BV: I will first make the minor point that an indexical is not the same as a demonstrative. Every demonstrative is an indexical, but not conversely. Suppose I am standing before the deli counter. Having temporarily forgotten that the name of what I want is 'prosciutto,' I say to the deli man, "I'd like some of that." My use of the demonstrative 'that' must be accompanied by a demonstration if I am to succeed in conveying my request. I have to point to the meat I want. But I don't have to point to myself when I utter the indexical 'I' in 'I'd like some of that." 'I' is not a demonstrative. 

A second minor point is that 'I' sometimes functions as a bound variable.  Suppose that in explaining intentionality to a student, I say, "I cannot think without thinking of something." I have not made an autobiographical remark. The proposition I am attempting to convey to the student is that, for any person x, if x thinks, then x thinks of something. 

Grammatical pronouns can function pronominally, indexically, and quantificationally.  Here is a sentence featuring a pronoun functioning pronominally and which therefore has  an antecedent:

Peter always calls before he visits.

In this sentence, 'Peter' is the antecedent of the third-person singular pronoun 'he.'  It is worth noting that an antecedent needn't come before the term for which it is the antecedent:

After he got home, Peter poured himself a drink.

In this sentence 'Peter' is the antecedent of 'he' despite occurring after 'he' in the order of reading.  The antecedency is therefore referential rather than temporal.  In both of these cases, the reference of 'he' is supplied by the antecedent.  The burden of reference is borne by the antecedent.  So there is a clear sense in which the reference of 'he' in both cases is not direct, but mediated by the antecedent. (And if the reference of the antecedent is mediated by a Frege-style sense or Sinn, then we have a double mediation.)  The antecedent is referentially prior to the pronoun for which it is the antecedent.  But suppose I point to Peter and say

He smokes cigarettes.

This is an indexical use of 'he.'  Part of what makes it an indexical use is that its reference depends on the non-linguistic context of utterance: I utter a token of 'he' while pointing at Peter, or nodding in his direction.  The sentence need not be situated in a linguistic context.  Another part of what makes 'he' in the example an indexical is that it refers directly, not just in the sense that the reference is not routed through a description or sense associated with the use of the pronoun that fixes the reference to Peter and nothing else, but also in that there is no need for an antecedent to secure the reference.  Now suppose I say

I smoke cigars.

This use of 'I' is clearly indexical, although it is  purely indexical (David Kaplan) inasmuch as there is no need for a demonstration:  I don't need to point to myself when I say 'I smoke cigars.'  And like the immediately preceding example, there is no need for an antecedent to nail down the reference of 'I.'  Not every pronoun needs an antecedent to do a referential job.

In fact, it seems that no expression, used indexically, has or could have an antecedent.  Hector-Neri Castaneda puts it like this:

Whether in oratio recta or in oratio obliqua, (genuine) indicators have no antecedents. ("Indicators and Quasi-Indicators" reprinted in The Phenomeno-Logic of the I, p. 67)

 For a quantificational use of a grammatical pronoun, consider

He who hesitates is lost.

Clearly, 'he' does not function here pronominally -- there is no antecedent -- nor does it function indexically.  It functions like the bound variable in

For any person x, if x hesitates, then x is lost.

But is this token ‘she’ a pronoun in appearance only? It seems to function in some ways like a proper name (perhaps a sobriquet or a tag of sorts) of one who has undergone a name change. On this view, the token ‘she’ wouldn’t function as a rigid designator, since there are possible worlds in which Mark doesn’t use ‘she.’ But the token seems to work as a name or tag for Mark in relevant circumstances.

BV: I would say that 'she' has a sense which requires that any human being  successfully referred to by its use is a biological female. I am inclined to say that if you try to refer to a biological male as 'she,' then the reference won't be successful. But this is none too clear.  

Consider the example of Cassius Clay, who underwent a change in the way he viewed himself and hence selected a new name to reflect his subjective change of ‘self-identification.’ As a matter of respect for Clay as a person, others began to call him by his new name ‘Ali.’

Is the Clay-Ali scenario relevantly similar to the situation of Mark, who in this world subjectively identifies as female despite being biologically male and having formerly identified as male? Suppose Smith speaks about Mark by saying “She went to the market.” Does Smith refer successfully to Mark in virtue of using “she” as something like a proper name rather than a pronoun?

BV: One can change one's religion but one cannot change one's sex. That's an important difference. I myself find it very easy to identify with women, but surely it is impossible for me to identify as a woman if that means:  apperceive or interpret myself or alter my physicality or raiment in such a way as to bring it about that I become a woman. I can no more identify as a woman than I can identify as a cat or a carrot. Of course, I can pretend to be a woman and even successfully pass myself off as one.  (Cf. the movies "Tootsie" and "Mrs. Doubtfire" which you no doubt have seen.) But a man in drag remains a man, even if he is in what I call  'super-drag' where this includes surgical mutilation and augmentation of the body, hormone replacement 'therapy,' etc.  And the sexual frisson/excitation that a man might feel when putting on panties and bra is male frisson is it not? And thus further proof that he remains a man even if he has had his genitalia lopped off and a vagina fashioned from his former penis? 

I am inclined to say that a literal sex change operation is an impossibility. No animal can change its sex or have its sex changed.

Here is a proof from the metaphysics of time. Tell me what you think of it. Every adult woman was a girl. Every adult male was a boy.  The past is unalterable. (Not even God  can restore a virgin.) Now it is possible for a man to become a woman only if it is possible for a man to have been a girl. But that is impossible because it is impossible to alter the past.  Therefore, it is impossible for a man to become a woman no matter how he is altered, even chromosomally. The nature of time rules it out.

Here is another thought. You can change your religion or your political affiliation, but not your race or your sex.  These non-negotiable facts are extra-linguistic. Now with the exception of mere Millian tags, the senses of words determines their reference and not the other way around. I suggested above that one cannot successfully refer to a biological male using 'she.' And this for the reason that 'she' has a sense that is sexually restrictive, assuming that it is being used to refer to sexually-polarized animals such as human beings as opposed to ships and flags as in "She's a grand old flag; she's a high-flying flag . . . ." So is the extra-linguistic fact I mentioned partially determining the sense of 'she'? That's what I am puzzling over at the moment. But I am just 'shootin' from the hip here and perhaps what I have written is not sufficiently clear to permit evaluation.  

If the proper name account doesn’t succeed, perhaps ‘she’ has a non-indexical use. Some pronouns have non-indexical applications. David Braun lists three types of pronoun use: indexical(demonstrative), bound variable, andunbound anaphoric. See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/indexicals/#IndNonIndUsePro

Perhaps ‘she’ has a bound variable use, such as: “Every male who subjectively identifies as a female believes she will be better off doing so.” Or maybe ‘she’ has an unbound anaphoric use, such as: “Mark was late to work today. She was caught in traffic.”

These non-indexical accounts seem strained to me, and hence I’m thinking the proper name account might be better. Or maybe there is still another account that best explains what is happening in these linguistically-odd situations. Maybe all efforts to refer to Mark as 'she' fail to refer.

I’d like to hear what you have to say on this issue, since you’ve thought deeply about pronouns and about the philosophy of language. I’d be glad to give you a call this weekend to chat, if you're free. Or we can discuss via email. 

BV: I have time for one more comment. 'Mark was late for work because she was caught in traffic.' If I heard that I would ask, "Who was the female in question and what did her getting caught in traffic have to do with Mark's being late for work?"

Your philosopher friend should politely tell his employer that his preferred pronouns are those of standard English and that, while he is willing to tolerate the linguistic innovations of others, he expects toleration in return. If his tolerance is met with intolerance, then he should politely remind the intolerant about who has the guns.

Are the Names on Grave Stones Proper Names?

You will reflexively answer in the affirmative. But the names on grave stones are proper names for only so long as the memories of survivors are extant to supply reference-fixing context. With the passing of the survivors the names revert to commonality. After a while the dead may as well lie in a common grave. 

No matter how unusual the name, every so-called proper name either actually has, or could have had, more than one bearer. A name that has more than one bearer is surely not proper, but common.  Thus so-called proper names are not properly so-called.  If a name  has exactly one bearer  in actuality, but could have had more than one, then it does not designate either one.  

Names are rigid designators in Kripke's sense.

What lies below the stone is not Patrick J. McNally, but a Patrick J. McNally.  And not even this; rather, the bodily remains of a Patrick J. McNally.  The person has fled or else no longer exists.

I Know My Limits

I know my limits, but I also know that I have limits that I don't know.   Complete self-knowledge would require both knowledge of my known limits and knowledge of my unknown limits. Complete self-knowledge, therefore, is impossible. 

(Note how 'I' is used above.  It is not being used as the first-person singular pronoun. It is being used as a universal quantifier. As above used, 'I' does not have an antecedent; it has substituends (linguistic items) and values (non-linguistic items). The above use of 'I' is a legitimate use, not a misuse.)

The Fearful are Easy to Control

Is the sheep your totemic animal? A sheep in a mask? A dose of Emerson may help if it is not too late.

"He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay "Courage")

(I note that the pronoun as it functions in the quoted line has neither an antecedent nor a gender. So while grammatically it is a masculine pronoun, logically it is neither.) 

Ernst Mach and the Shabby Pedagogue: On Belief De Se

1. In The Analysis of Sensations (Dover, 1959, p. 4, n. 1) Ernst Mach (1838-1916) offers the following anecdote:

     Not long ago, after a trying railway journey by night, when I was
     very tired, I got into an omnibus, just as another man appeared at
     the other end. 'What a shabby pedagogue that is, that has just
     entered,' thought I. It was myself; opposite me hung a large
     mirror. The physiognomy of my class, accordingly, was better known
     to me than my own.

When Mach got on the bus he saw himself, but not as himself. His first thought was one expressible by 'The man who just boarded is a shabby pedagogue.' 'The man who just boarded' referred to Mach. Only later did Mach realize that he was referring to himself, a thought that he might have expressed by saying, 'I am a shabby pedagogue.'

Clearly, the thought expressed by 'The man who just boarded is shabby' is distinct from the thought expressed by 'I am shabby.' After all, Mach had the first thought but not the second.  So they can't be the same thought.  And this despite the fact that the very same property is ascribed to the very same person by both sentences. The second thought is the content of a belief de se.  Such a belief is a belief about oneself as oneself.

One can have a belief about oneself without having a belief about oneself as oneself.

The difference emerges even more clearly if we alter the example slightly. Suppose Mach sees that the man who has just got on the bus has his fly open. He thinks to himself: The man who has just boarded has his fly open, a thought that leads to no action on Mach's part. But from the thought, I have my fly open, behavioral consequences ensue: Mach buttons his fly. Since the two thoughts have different behavioral consequences, they cannot be the same thought, despite the fact that they attribute the very same property to the very same person.

But if they attribute the same property to the same person, what exactly is the difference between the two thoughts?

Linguistically, the difference is that between a definite description ('the man who just boarded') and the first-person singular pronoun 'I.'   Since the referent (Frege's Bedeutung) is the same in both cases, namely Mach, one will be tempted to say that the difference is a difference in sense (Frege's Sinn) or mode of presentation (Frege's Darstellungsweise). Mach refers to himself in two different ways, a third-person objective way via a definite description, and a first-person subjective way via the first-person singular pronoun.

If this is right, then although there are two different thoughts or propositions, one indexical and the other non-indexical, it might seem  that there need only be one fact in the world to serve as truth-maker for both, the fact of Mach's being shabby.  This is a non-indexical fact.  It might seem that reality is exhausted by non-indexical facts, and that there are no such indexical or perspectival facts as those expressed by 'I am shabby' or 'I am BV' or 'I am the man who just got on the bus.' Accordingly, indexicality is merely a subjective addition, a projection: it belongs to the world as it appears to us, not to the world as it is in itself, in reality.  On this approach, when BV says or thinks 'I,' he refers to BV  in the first-person way with the result that BV appears to BV under the guise of 'I'; but in reality there is no fact corresponding to 'I am BV.'

2. But is this right? There are billions of people in the world and one of them is me. Which one?  BV! But if the view sketched above is correct, then it is not an objective fact that one of these people is me. That BV exists is an objective fact, but not that BV is me.  BV has two ways of referring to himself but there is only one underlying objective fact.  Geoffrey Maddell strenuously disagrees:

     If I am to see the world in a certain way, then the fact that the
     world seen in this way is apprehended as such by me cannot be part
     of the content of that apprehension. If I impose a subjective grid
     on the world, then it is objectively the case that I do so. To put
     it bluntly, it is an objective fact about the world that one of the
     billions of people in it is me. Mind and Materialism, 1988, p.
     119.)

Maddell's point is that the first-person point of view is irreducibly real: it itself cannot be a subjective addition supplied from the first-person point of view. It makes sense to say that secondary qualities are projections, but it makes no sense to say that the first-person point of view is a projection. That which first makes possible subjective additions cannot itself be a subjective addition. That which is at the root of the very distinction between the for-us and the in-itself cannot be merely for-us. (Maddell might not approve of this last sentence of mine. It sounds a little 'Continental.')

Consider the phenomenal redness of a stop sign. It makes sense to say that this secondary quality does not belong to the sign itself in reality, but is instead a property the sign has only in relation to a   perceiver. In this sense, secondary qualities are subjective. But to say that subjectivity itself, first-person perspectivity itself, is a subjective projection is unintelligible. It cannot belong to mere   appearance, but must exist in reality. As Madell puts it, "Indexical  thought cannot be analysed as a certain 'mode of presentation', for the fact that reality is presented to me in some particular way cannot be part of the way in which it is presented." (p. 120)

3. Trouble for materialism. According to materialism, reality is exhausted by non-indexical physical facts. But we have just seen that  indexical thoughts are underpinned by indexical facts such as the fact of BV's being me. These facts are irreducibly real, but not physically real. Therefore, materialism is false: reality is not exhausted by  non-indexical physical facts.

Romantic Postscript

That most mysterious of all pronouns, the first-person singular, is the key, or one of them, to  the riddle of the universe. 

More on Pronouns: Reply to Claude Boisson

Claude Boisson writes, and I respond in blue:

From a strictly linguistic point of view, this:

1) In the flow of discourse “pronouns” may indeed have anaphoric use, and sometimes cataphoric use (the “antecedent” being then what we should call a postcedent).

Thus they are rightly called *pro*-nouns, or rather *pro*-noun phrases, given that they usually point to a NP in the left context, sometimes in the right context (After he had conquered Gaul, Julius Caesar marched on Rome).

 

This use is internal to speech. 

I have made these points myself though in different terms.  If we think of antecedency referentially as opposed to temporally/spatially, then the antecedent of 'he' in your example is 'Julius Caesar' despite the pronoun's appearing before/to the left  of 'Julius Caesar.'  Perhaps we could define the antecedent of a pronoun that has one, whenever/wherever it appears in a stretch of discourse, as the word or phrase that bears the burden of objective reference that the pronoun merely borrows. 

 

For example, 'When he arrived at the bar, Tom Lush ordered a double Manhattan.' The antecedent (as I use the term) of the pronoun 'he' is the proper name 'Tom Lush.' While both the name and the pronoun refer objectively, i.e., extra-linguistically, the pronoun also 'refers back' or rather in this case 'refers forward' -- horizontally if you will -- to the name. But both words refer 'vertically' to the extra-linguistic domain (the 'world' in one sense of this polyvalent word); it is just that the objective reference of the pronoun is parasitic upon the objective reference of the name. By itself, the pronoun achieves no objective reference. It is the antecedent that gives the pronoun a reference and a particular, singular, extra-linguistic referent  That is how I see it. 

 

My long-time sparring partner, Edward Buckner, sees things differently. For him all reference is intra-linguistic. That makes him a linguistic idealist by my lights. See this post of mine in which I discuss a bit of Buckner's theory. 

 

I agree that the reference of the pronoun in your example, Claude, is intra-linguistic or "internal to speech" and writing too. But only in part. It also exhibits extra-linguistic reference. I would say that the extra-linguistic reference of a pronoun in cases like the one you cite is parasitic upon the reference of its antecedent: it borrows the extra-linguistic reference of the antecedent, whereas the reference of the antecedent -- 'Julius Caesar' in your example -- is unborrowed.

 

Is there purely intra-linguistic reference? I should think so. Consider the following sentence from a piece of pure fiction:  'Tom's wife left him.'  The antecedent of  the pronoun 'him' is Tom.'  This back reference is purely intra-linguistic.  It is plausible to maintain  that the only reference exhibited by 'him' is back reference, and that 'him' does not pick up the extra-linguistic reference of 'Tom,' there being no such reference to pick up.  Then we would have case of purely intra-linguistic reference.

 

There is also the point I made in my earlier post, namely, that in 'He who hesitates is lost,' 'he' has no antecedent/postcedent and is therefore not functioning as a pronoun, assuming that a pronoun is 'pro' a noun or name. I dubbed this use 'quantificational.' The pronoun 'he' can be removed. paraphrased away, without any loss of meaning. Thus: for any x, if hesitates, then x is lost. The variable 'x' bound by the universal quantifier does not refer to anything or anyone.  (Or should we say, with W. V. Quine, that the bound variable refers with "studied ambiguity"?)

 

Elizabeth Anscombe in her important paper, "The First Person," (in Mind and Language, ed. Guttenplan, Oxford UP, 1975, p. 53) makes a closely related point when she tells us that "a singular pronoun may even be a variable (as in 'If anyone says that, he is a fool') -- and hence not any kind of singular designation of an object."  Surely she is right. This is especially clear from the fact that there might be no person who says the foolish thing. A pronoun that functions as a quantifier in a given context is not functioning pronominally.

 

2) But so-called “pronouns” also have a quite different use, a deictic use. They then point to entities in the environment, and outside discourse, speech.

 

When you say “I”, you don’t need to take the trouble of referring to yourself as “William F. Vallicella” or “the person who is now talking”. This is a pro-Vallicella. When I say “I”, “I” is a pro-Boisson. It is a pro-X, with X ranging over human beings, gods, and even animals, plants or things in fairy tales, fables, “myths”…

 

I basically agree. I would put the point by saying that, in addition to strictly pronominal and quantificational uses, grammatical pronouns also have indexical uses. Suppose I point to Peter and say

He smokes cigarettes.

This is an indexical use of 'he.'  Part of what makes it an indexical use is that its reference depends on the context of utterance: I utter a token of 'he' while pointing at Peter, or nodding in his direction.  Another part of what makes it an indexical is that it refers directly, not just in the sense that the reference is not routed through a description or sense associated with the use of the pronoun, but also in that there is no need for an antecedent to secure the reference.  Now suppose I say

I smoke cigars.

This use of 'I' is clearly indexical, although it is a purely indexical (D. Kaplan) inasmuch as there is no need for a demonstration:  I don't need to point to myself when I say 'I smoke cigars.'  And like the immediately preceding example, there is no need for an antecedent to nail down the reference of 'I.'  Not every pronoun needs an antecedent to do a referential job.

In fact, it seems that no indexical expression, used indexically, has or could have an antecedent.  Hector-Neri Castaneda puts it like this:

Whether in oratio recta or in oratio obliqua, (genuine) indicators have no antecedents. ("Indicators and Quasi-Indicators" reprinted in The Phenomeno-Logic of the I, p. 67)

 

3) As far as I am aware, and notably, the same entities economically serve both ends in (all?) languages. But I may very well be mistaken. It would be interesting if there were a language with two sets of words, one for personal ana/cata-phora, and one for personal deixis. Surely some linguists must have asked that question before. What can a philosopher make of this?

 

It is not clear to me what you are now suggesting, Claude.  The semantics of the first-person singular pronoun, used indexically, is extremely tricky.  This entry is already too long, and so I will end with a question. Suppose that WFV assertively utters a token of 'I smoke cigars.'  One might naturally think that the I-sentence can be replaced, not only salva veritate, but also salva significatione, with 'WFV smokes cigars.'  Now it is clear that both sentences have the same truth-conditions. But do they have the same sense?  To take a simpler example, the following two sentences have the same truth-conditions:

I am WFV (asserted by WFV)

and

WFV is (identical to) WFV.

But do they have the same sense?  Hint: if anyone other than WFV makes the first assertion, he lies.  But everyone who makes the second assertion tells the truth.

A Pronoun Puzzle: "He who hesitates is lost"

Grammatically, 'he' is a pronoun. Pronouns have antecedents. What is the antecedent of 'he' in the folk saying supra? It does not have one. 

A Yogi Berra type joke is in the offing. We're hiking. We must go forward; we can't go back. But the path forward is perilous and requires a bold step over an abysmal chasm. I say, "He who hesitates is lost!" My hiking partner, a smartass, replies, "You mean Biden?"

My witticism is modelled on a genuine Yogi Berra joke. You are asked what time it is and you reply, "You mean now?"

'He' in the folk saying is grammatically a pronoun, but it does not function logically as one. How then does it function?

I say it functions as a universal quantifier. Not like a universal quantifier, but as one. Thus:

For any x, if x hesitates, then x is lost.

This strikes me as clear as day. Rather less clear is the role of the first-person singular pronoun in 'I think, therefore I am.'  Does 'I' in this context have an antecedent, and if it does, what or who is the antecedent?   Anythng you say will land you in the aporetic frying pan. Or so I could argue.

Later.

Token, Type, Proposition: Write-Up of Some of Yesterday's Dialog

I am enjoying the pleasure of a three-day visit  from Dr. Elliot Crozat who drove out yesterday from San Diego.  The following expands upon one of the topics we discussed yesterday.

How many sentences immediately below, two or one?

Snow is white

Snow is white.

Both answers are plausible, and indeed equally plausible; but they can't both be right. There can't be both two sentences and one sentence. The obvious way to solve the problem is by distinguishing between token and type. We say: there are two tokens of the same type. One type, two tokens. That's a good proximate solution but not a good ultimate one. It is a stop-gap solution.

For the solution gives rise to problems of its own. And these may be expected to be as bad as, or worse than, the original one. We made a distinction between sentence-token and sentence-type to avoid contradiction.   But what is a sentence-type and how is it related to its tokens?  You see the tokens above but you do not see the type. The tokens are in space and bear spatial relations to each other and to other things.  The type is not in space. It is obvious that the tokens came into being and will pass out of being. But that is not obviously the case with respect to sentence-types. Such types are arguably a species of platonica. The tokens exist contingently, but this is presumably not the case with respect to  their type. The tokens are temporal items, but it doesn't follow that the type is. If the concrete is the causally active/passive, then the tokens  are concrete whereas the type is not and is therefore abstract in the Quinean though not the traditional sense.   If there are both abstracta and concreta, are both sorts of entity in time? Or only the abstracta?

Now consider:

    Snow is white

    Schnee ist weiss.

Here we have two different sentence-tokens of two different linguistic types.  It is reasonable to maintain that such types are necessarily tied to their respective languages, English and German, in the sense that, were the languages not to exist, then neither would the types exist.  But 'surely' human languages are contingent in their existence. If so, then the linguistic types are contingent in their existence, in contradiction to the strong tendency to view them as platonica, and thus as necessary beings.

Puzzles are erupting like weeds in Spring. I can't hope to catalog them all in one entry. 

But let's throw a couple more into the mix.  The two sentences lately displayed, the one in English, the other in German, express the same proposition or thought (Gedanke in Frege's lingo). Or at least they express the same proposition when assertively uttered or otherwise tokened by a speaker/writer competent in the language in question, a speaker/writer with the appropriate expressive intentions.

We now have token, type, and proposition to understand in their interrelatedness. It is obviously not enough to make distinctions; one must go on to inquire as to how the items distinguished gear into one another, fit together, are 'related.' To avoid this task would be unphilosophical.

One more set of questions. How do we become aware of types and propositions? We see with our eyes the sentence tokens on the page or we hear them with our ears when spoken. But we have no sense-acquaintance with abstracta. Do we 'see' them with the 'eye of the mind'? And how does that 'eye' hook up with the 'eye of the head'?

This ties in with another topic Elliot and I discussed yesterday evening: the difference between the literal and the metaphorical.   Is talk of the 'eye of the mind' and of visio intellectualis metaphorical or is it literal? What does it mean to be literal? Is the literal the same as the physical? And what is the difference between metaphorical talk and analogical talk? Can food literally be healthy? Or is food healthy only metaphorically or figuratively? Some dead meat is good food. But no dead animal or its flesh is healthy. For an animal, being alive is a necessary condition of its being healthy.

Are analogical statements about God literally true?  

 

Truthmaker Maximalism Questioned

 0) What David Armstrong calls truthmaker maximalism is the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker.  Although I find the basic truthmaker intuition well-nigh irresistible, I have difficulty with the notion that every truth has a truthmaker.  Thus I question truthmaker maximalism (TM). Alan Rhoda has recently come out in favor of TM in a penetrating weblog entry. After sketching my position, I will try to pinpoint my disagreement with  Rhoda.

1) Compare *Peter is tired* and *Every cygnet is a swan.*  I will argue that truths  like the first need truthmakers while truths like the second do not.  A declarative sentence enclosed in asterisks names the primary truthbearer expressed by the sentence when assertively uttered or, more generally, assertively tokened.  A truthbearer is anything appropriately characterizable as either true or false when 'true' and 'false' are used in their sentential as opposed to their ontic senses. ('True friend' and 'false teeth' feature ontic senses of 'true' and 'false'.) Candidate truthbearers include assertively tokened sentences in the indicative mood, statements, asseverations, judgments, Fregean Gedanken, Bolzanian Saetze an sich and more. By definition, a truth is a true truthbearer, whatever  truthbearers are taken to be.) 

2) Intuitively, *Peter is tired,* being contingently true, both due to its dependence on the existence of Peter, and on Peter's accidentally possessing the property of being tired, is in need of something external to it that 'makes' it true or determines it to be true, or serves as the ontological ground of its truth.  (An ontological ground is not the same as an empirical cause.) *Peter is tired* can't just be true. This is because its truth-value depends on the way the world is. It needs a truthmaker external to it. By 'external to it,' I don't just mean that the truthmaker of a truth must be distinct from it:  this condition is satisfied by a distinct proposition (or other type of truthbearer) that entails *Peter is tired.* Entailment, however, is not truthmaking: entailment connects propositions to propositions; truthmaking connects extra-propositional entities (states of affairs for Armstrong) to propositions. What I mean when I say that a contingent truth needs something external to it to 'make' it true is that the truthmaker must be both distinct from the truthbearer and not, like the truthbearer, a 'representational entity' where the latter term covers such items as assertively uttered sentences, judgments, Fregean thoughts/propositions (the senses of context-free sentences in the indicative mood), and whatever else counts as a truthbearer.  In other words, a truthmaker of a contingent atomic truth such as *Peter is tired* must be outside the sphere of representations: it must be extralinguistic, extramental, and extra-propositional.  Thus the truthmakers of propositions like *Peter is tired* cannot belong to the category of propositions.  The ontological ground of  a contingent proposition's being true cannot be an entity within the sphere of propositions.  

3)  The truthmaker of *Peter is tired* cannot be a proposition; but it also cannot be utterly unlike a proposition.  Consider Peter himself, that very concrete individual.  It is clear that he could not be the truthmaker of *Peter is tired.*  Granted, if Peter were not to exist, then the proposition in question could not be true.  There are no truths about what does not exist. But although Peter or Peter's existence is a necessary condition of the truth of  every true proposition about him, that very individual, it is not the case that Peter or Peter's existence is a sufficient condition of the truth of contingent propositions about him if these propositions are predications such as *Peter is tired.*   (I am open to the suggestion that Peter himself suffices for the truth of *Peter exists.*) That Peter by himself cannot be the truthmaker of contingent predications about him can be proven or at least argued as follows. 

Argument from Necessitation.  Assume for reductio that Peter by himself can serve as truthmaker of contingent predications about him. Now, by truthmaker necessitarianism, whatever truthmakers are, they broadly logically  necessitate the truth of their corresponding truthbearers.  So if X is the truthmaker of *Peter is tired at t,* then there is no possible world in which X exists and *Peter is tired at t* is not true.  But there are plenty of worlds in which Peter exists but *Peter is tired at t* is not true.  So Peter by himself cannot be the truthmaker of *Peter is tired at t.*

Argument from Selection.  Consider any two true affirmative atomic contingent monadic propositions about Peter such as *Peter is tired at t* and *Peter is hungry at t.*  If Peter by himself can serve as the truthmaker of one, then he can serve as the truthmaker of the other.  But they obviously require numerically different truthmakers.  So Peter is the truthmaker of neither of them.  Although different truths can have the same truthmaker, this is not the case when both truths are atomic, even if both are about the same individual.  The truthmakers of such atomic propositions as that Peter is a philosopher and that Peter is a violinist must be distinct and they must match up with, or select, their truthbearers.  To do this, the truthmakers must have an internal structure isomorphic to the structure of the truthbearers.  In other words, the truthmakers must be proposition-like despite their not being propositions.  Extra-propositional but proposition-like!  What may look like a 'bug' is a 'feature' of truthmaker theory. It follows that Peter by himself cannot be the truthmaker of atomic contingent propositions about him.

4)  If Peter by himself cannot serve as truthmaker of the accidental predication  *Peter is F,* then neither can F-ness by itself.  The same goes for the set {Peter, F-ness}, the mereological sum (Peter + F-ness) and the ordered pair [Peter, F-ness].  For what is needed in addition to Peter and F-ness is a link in the truthmaker that corresponds to the copulative link in the proposition.  After all, not every possible world in which both Peter and F-ness exists is a world in which Peter is F.  There could be a world in which Peter exists and F-ness exists (by being instantiated by Paul) but in which Peter does not instantiate F-ness.  I am assuming that F-ness is a universal, but not that F-ness is a transcendent universal (one that can exist uninstantiated).  This is why concrete states of affairs are plausible candidates for the office of truthmaker, as in middle-period Armstrong.

5)  But even if one balks at the admission of concrete states of affairs or facts, one will have to admit that Peter himself -- assuming that this concrete individual is not assayed as a state of affair but as an individual -- cannot be the truthmaker of contingent propositions of the form *Peter is F.*  Some will say that tropes can serve as truthmakers.  Fine, but they too have a proposition-like structure.  If the trope Peter's-tiredness-at-t is the truthmaker of *Peter is tired at t,* then it is made true by an entity that has a proposition-like structure, a structure isomorphic to, and mirroring, the structure of the truthbearer.

6)  It seems to me that I have just definitively established that the truthmakers of accidental atomic predications like 'Peter is a philosopher' cannot be concrete individuals lacking a proposition-like structure.  I have also made it clear that we should not confuse the principle that there are no truths about nonexistent objects with the truthmaker principle.  We can call the first principle veritas sequitur esse (truth follows being).  What it says is that a truth cannot be true unless there are one or more items it is about.  Thus VSE requires that if Milo kicked Philo, this is true only if both Milo and Philo exist or have some mode of being other than existence. The truthmaker principle (TMP) goes beyond this in requiring the instantiation of the dyadic relation ---kicks___ by Milo and Philo, in that order.

7)  Consider now the analytic proposition *Every cygnet is a swan.*  As analytic, it is true solely in virtue of the meanings of 'cygnet' and 'swan.'  It is true ex vi terminorum.  Its truth is not contingent on the existence of any cygnets. Why does it need a truthmaker? It certainly does not need anything external to it to make it true. The concept cygnet includes the concept swan, so that, by sheer analysis of the subject concept, one can arrive at the truth in question.  That's why we call it, following Kant,  'analytic.'  Clearly, nothing external to an analytic proposition is required to make it true.  It follows that it cannot have a truthmaker.  Or rather it follows if  a truthmaker of a first-order truthbearer is an entity that is external to the truthbearer and resident in the realm of reality beyond the sphere of representations broadly construed.

Does this not decisively refute truthmaker maximalism?  There are plenty of analytic truths, but none of them has or can have a truthmaker.  For if you say that an analytic truth needs a truthmaker, then you are saying that it needs something external to it to 'synthesize,' to bring together, subject and predicate concepts. But analytic truths are precisely not synthetic in that (Kantian) sense.  But I hear an objection coming.

8) "*Every cygnet is a swan* does have a truthmaker, namely, the fact that cygnet includes swan."  This is a confused response.  There would not be a analytic truthbearer at all if cygnet did not include swan.  The very existence of the proposition *Every cygnet is a swan* requires that the first concept include the second.  So there is no need of an ontological ground of the truth of this proposition. One could of course say that in the analytic case the truthbearer is its own truthmaker.  But it is better to say that in the analytic case there cannot be a truthmaker as 'truthmaker' was defined in #2 above. 

9) Here is where Alan Rhoda will disagree:

Some philosophers say that truthmaking is asymmetric rather than anti-symmetric, but that is a mistake. Asymmetry disallows the possibility of self-grounding truthbearers. Anti-symmetry allows for that possibility. And this is something we should allow, because conceptually necessary propositions (e.g., all triangles have three sides) are their own truthmakers. If the proposition exists—whether it exists [as] a Platonic object, an idea in God’s mind, or something else—its very existence supplies a parcel of reality sufficient to explain and ground its own truth.

10) For me, truthmaking is an asymmetric relation whereas for Alan it is an antisymmetric relation. Thus I am maintaining that, for any x, y, if x makes-true y, then it is not the case that y makes-true x.  This implies that no truthbearer is its own truthmaker or truth-ground. It implies that in no case is the truthmaker of a truth (a true truthbearer) that very truth. It implies that the truthmaker of a truth is in every case 'external' to that truth in the manner explained above.

Now a relation R is said to be antisymmetric just in case: for any x, y, if x stands in R to to y, and y stands in R to x, then x = y.  The antisymmetry of 'makes-true' allows for cases in which a proposition (or other truthbearer) is its own truthmaker. Thus Every cygnet is a swan is its truthbearer that is its own truthmaker.  This is Alan's position.

11) Here is a consideration in favor of my position. Truthmakers play an explanatory role. Now explanation is asymmetric: if x explains y, then it is not the case that y explains x.  This holds for causal explanation, but also for metaphysical explanation or metaphysical grounding.  It is the existence of Milo that metaphysically grounds the truth of Milo exists. And not the other way around. No one -- I hope! -- will say that that the truth of  Philo's belief that Milo exists is what makes it the case that Milo exists or that Shlomo's sincere assertive utterance of 'Milo is sleeping' is what makes it the case that Milo is sleeping.

Now if truthmakers play an explanatory role, and metaphysical explanation is asymmetric, then no truthbearer is its own truthmaker.  So in the case of analytic or conceptually necessary truths, we should say that they do not have and do not need truthmakers.  To maintain this is to reject truthmaker maximalism.

It is worth noting that my position is consistent with saying that  a truthbearer (whether a Platonic proposition, a divine thought, whatever) can serve as a truthmaker for a different truthbearer.  The Platonic proposition expressed by '7 is prime,' for example, makes-true the general Platonic proposition that there are Platonic propositions.

Your move, Alan.

 0) What David Armstrong calls truthmaker maximalism is the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker.  Although I find the basic truthmaker intuition well-nigh irresistible, I have difficulty with the notion that every truth has a truthmaker.  Thus I question truthmaker maximalism (TM). Alan Rhoda has recently come out in favor of TM in a penetrating weblog entry. After sketching my position, I will try to pinpoint my disagreement with  Rhoda.

1) Compare *Peter is tired* and *Every cygnet is a swan.*  I will argue that truths  like the first need truthmakers while truths like the second do not.  A declarative sentence enclosed in asterisks names the primary truthbearer expressed by the sentence when assertively uttered or, more generally, assertively tokened.  A truthbearer is anything appropriately characterizable as either true or false when 'true' and 'false' are used in their sentential as opposed to their ontic senses. ('True friend' and 'false teeth' feature ontic senses of 'true' and 'false'.) Candidate truthbearers include assertively tokened sentences in the indicative mood, statements, asseverations, judgments, Fregean Gedanken, Bolzanian Saetze an sich and more. By definition, a truth is a true truthbearer, whatever  truthbearers are taken to be.) 

2) Intuitively, *Peter is tired,* being contingently true, both due to its dependence on the existence of Peter, and on Peter's accidentally possessing the property of being tired, is in need of something external to it that 'makes' it true or determines it to be true, or serves as the ontological ground of its truth.  (An ontological ground is not the same as an empirical cause.) *Peter is tired* can't just be true. This is because its truth-value depends on the way the world is. It needs a truthmaker external to it. By 'external to it,' I don't just mean that the truthmaker of a truth must be distinct from it:  this condition is satisfied by a distinct proposition (or other type of truthbearer) that entails *Peter is tired.* Entailment, however, is not truthmaking: entailment connects propositions to propositions; truthmaking connects extra-propositional entities (states of affairs for Armstrong) to propositions. What I mean when I say that a contingent truth needs something external to it to 'make' it true is that the truthmaker must be both distinct from the truthbearer and not, like the truthbearer, a 'representational entity' where the latter term covers such items as assertively uttered sentences, judgments, Fregean thoughts/propositions (the senses of context-free sentences in the indicative mood), and whatever else counts as a truthbearer.  In other words, a truthmaker of a contingent atomic truth such as *Peter is tired* must be outside the sphere of representations: it must be extralinguistic, extramental, and extra-propositional.  Thus the truthmakers of propositions like *Peter is tired* cannot belong to the category of propositions.  The ontological ground of  a contingent proposition's being true cannot be an entity within the sphere of propositions.  

3)  The truthmaker of *Peter is tired* cannot be a proposition; but it also cannot be utterly unlike a proposition.  Consider Peter himself, that very concrete individual.  It is clear that he could not be the truthmaker of *Peter is tired.*  Granted, if Peter were not to exist, then the proposition in question could not be true.  There are no truths about what does not exist. But although Peter or Peter's existence is a necessary condition of the truth of  every true proposition about him, that very individual, it is not the case that Peter or Peter's existence is a sufficient condition of the truth of contingent propositions about him if these propositions are predications such as *Peter is tired.*   (I am open to the suggestion that Peter himself suffices for the truth of *Peter exists.*) That Peter by himself cannot be the truthmaker of contingent predications about him can be proven or at least argued as follows. 

Argument from Necessitation.  Assume for reductio that Peter by himself can serve as truthmaker of contingent predications about him. Now, by truthmaker necessitarianism, whatever truthmakers are, they broadly logically  necessitate the truth of their corresponding truthbearers.  So if X is the truthmaker of *Peter is tired at t,* then there is no possible world in which X exists and *Peter is tired at t* is not true.  But there are plenty of worlds in which Peter exists but *Peter is tired at t* is not true.  So Peter by himself cannot be the truthmaker of *Peter is tired at t.*

Argument from Selection.  Consider any two true affirmative atomic contingent monadic propositions about Peter such as *Peter is tired at t* and *Peter is hungry at t.*  If Peter by himself can serve as the truthmaker of one, then he can serve as the truthmaker of the other.  But they obviously require numerically different truthmakers.  So Peter is the truthmaker of neither of them.  Although different truths can have the same truthmaker, this is not the case when both truths are atomic, even if both are about the same individual.  The truthmakers of such atomic propositions as that Peter is a philosopher and that Peter is a violinist must be distinct and they must match up with, or select, their truthbearers.  To do this, the truthmakers must have an internal structure isomorphic to the structure of the truthbearers.  In other words, the truthmakers must be proposition-like despite their not being propositions.  Extra-propositional but proposition-like!  What may look like a 'bug' is a 'feature' of truthmaker theory. It follows that Peter by himself cannot be the truthmaker of atomic contingent propositions about him.

4)  If Peter by himself cannot serve as truthmaker of the accidental predication  *Peter is F,* then neither can F-ness by itself.  The same goes for the set {Peter, F-ness}, the mereological sum (Peter + F-ness) and the ordered pair [Peter, F-ness].  For what is needed in addition to Peter and F-ness is a link in the truthmaker that corresponds to the copulative link in the proposition.  After all, not every possible world in which both Peter and F-ness exists is a world in which Peter is F.  There could be a world in which Peter exists and F-ness exists (by being instantiated by Paul) but in which Peter does not instantiate F-ness.  I am assuming that F-ness is a universal, but not that F-ness is a transcendent universal (one that can exist uninstantiated).  This is why concrete states of affairs are plausible candidates for the office of truthmaker, as in middle-period Armstrong.

5)  But even if one balks at the admission of concrete states of affairs or facts, one will have to admit that Peter himself -- assuming that this concrete individual is not assayed as a state of affair but as an individual -- cannot be the truthmaker of contingent propositions of the form *Peter is F.*  Some will say that tropes can serve as truthmakers.  Fine, but they too have a proposition-like structure.  If the trope Peter's-tiredness-at-t is the truthmaker of *Peter is tired at t,* then it is made true by an entity that has a proposition-like structure, a structure isomorphic to, and mirroring, the structure of the truthbearer.

6)  It seems to me that I have just definitively established that the truthmakers of accidental atomic predications like 'Peter is a philosopher' cannot be concrete individuals lacking a proposition-like structure.  I have also made it clear that we should not confuse the principle that there are no truths about nonexistent objects with the truthmaker principle.  We can call the first principle veritas sequitur esse (truth follows being).  What it says is that a truth cannot be true unless there are one or more items it is about.  Thus VSE requires that if Milo kicked Philo, this is true only if both Milo and Philo exist or have some mode of being other than existence. The truthmaker principle (TMP) goes beyond this in requiring the instantiation of the dyadic relation ---kicks___ by Milo and Philo, in that order.

7)  Consider now the analytic proposition *Every cygnet is a swan.*  As analytic, it is true solely in virtue of the meanings of 'cygnet' and 'swan.'  It is true ex vi terminorum.  Its truth is not contingent on the existence of any cygnets. Why does it need a truthmaker? It certainly does not need anything external to it to make it true. The concept cygnet includes the concept swan, so that, by sheer analysis of the subject concept, one can arrive at the truth in question.  That's why we call it, following Kant,  'analytic.'  Clearly, nothing external to an analytic proposition is required to make it true.  It follows that it cannot have a truthmaker.  Or rather it follows if  a truthmaker of a first-order truthbearer is an entity that is external to the truthbearer and resident in the realm of reality beyond the sphere of representations broadly construed.

Does this not decisively refute truthmaker maximalism?  There are plenty of analytic truths, but none of them has or can have a truthmaker.  For if you say that an analytic truth needs a truthmaker, then you are saying that it needs something external to it to 'synthesize,' to bring together, subject and predicate concepts. But analytic truths are precisely not synthetic in that (Kantian) sense.  But I hear an objection coming.

8) "*Every cygnet is a swan* does have a truthmaker, namely, the fact that cygnet includes swan."  This is a confused response.  There would not be a analytic truthbearer at all if cygnet did not include swan.  The very existence of the proposition *Every cygnet is a swan* requires that the first concept include the second.  So there is no need of an ontological ground of the truth of this proposition. One could of course say that in the analytic case the truthbearer is its own truthmaker.  But it is better to say that in the analytic case there cannot be a truthmaker as 'truthmaker' was defined in #2 above. 

9) Here is where Alan Rhoda will disagree:

Some philosophers say that truthmaking is asymmetric rather than anti-symmetric, but that is a mistake. Asymmetry disallows the possibility of self-grounding truthbearers. Anti-symmetry allows for that possibility. And this is something we should allow, because conceptually necessary propositions (e.g., all triangles have three sides) are their own truthmakers. If the proposition exists—whether it exists [as] a Platonic object, an idea in God’s mind, or something else—its very existence supplies a parcel of reality sufficient to explain and ground its own truth.

10) For me, truthmaking is an asymmetric relation whereas for Alan it is an antisymmetric relation. Thus I am maintaining that, for any x, y, if x makes-true y, then it is not the case that y makes-true x.  This implies that no truthbearer is its own truthmaker or truth-ground. It implies that in no case is the truthmaker of a truth (a true truthbearer) that very truth. It implies that the truthmaker of a truth is in every case 'external' to that truth in the manner explained above.

Now a relation R is said to be antisymmetric just in case: for any x, y, if x stands in R to to y, and y stands in R to x, then x = y.  The antisymmetry of 'makes-true' allows for cases in which a proposition (or other truthbearer) is its own truthmaker. Thus Every cygnet is a swan is its truthbearer that is its own truthmaker.  This is Alan's position.

11) Here is a consideration in favor of my position. Truthmakers play an explanatory role. Now explanation is asymmetric: if x explains y, then it is not the case that y explains x.  This holds for causal explanation, but also for metaphysical explanation or metaphysical grounding.  It is the existence of Milo that metaphysically grounds the truth of Milo exists. And not the other way around. No one -- I hope! -- will say that that the truth of  Philo's belief that Milo exists is what makes it the case that Milo exists or that Shlomo's sincere assertive utterance of 'Milo is sleeping' is what makes it the case that Milo is sleeping.

Now if truthmakers play an explanatory role, and metaphysical explanation is asymmetric, then no truthbearer is its own truthmaker.  So in the case of analytic or conceptually necessary truths, we should say that they do not have and do not need truthmakers.  To maintain this is to reject truthmaker maximalism.

It is worth noting that my position is consistent with saying that  a truthbearer (whether a Platonic proposition, a divine thought, whatever) can serve as a truthmaker for a different truthbearer.  The Platonic proposition expressed by '7 is prime,' for example, makes-true the general Platonic proposition that there are Platonic propositions.

Your move, Alan.

Can a Sentence be Named?

One thing we do with words is make assertions, as when I assert that snow is white. I use those words, but I can also talk about them, refer to them, mention them. You are all familiar with the use-mention distinction. 'Boston' is disyllabic, but no city is. 

One way to mention an expression is by enclosing the words in single quotation marks, thus: 'Snow is white.' One can then go on to say things about that sentence, for example, that it is true, that it is in the indicative mood, that it consists of three words, that it is in the present tense, and so on.  But a puzzle is soon upon us. Try this aporetic triad on for size:

1) No name is either true or false.

2) 'Snow is white' is the name of a sentence.

3) 'Snow is white' is true.

The propositions are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true. Which will you reject? 

The Third Way of the Ostrich

  In a comment, the Ostrich writes,

Some early analytic types, including Russell, tried to analyse proper names as disguised descriptions, but Kripke put a lid on that. Thus, on what Devitt calls the Semantic Presupposition, namely that there are no other possible candidates for a name’s meaning other than a descriptive meaning, or the bearer of the name itself, the mainstream analytic position is that the meaning of a proper name is the bearer of the name. The target of Reference and Identity is the Semantic Presupposition.

So far, so good. I agree that with respect to proper names, demonstratives, and indexicals, both description theories and direct reference theories fail.  So it makes sense to investigate whether the Semantic Presupposition is a false alternative. But the Third Way of the Ostrich raises questions of its own and they incline me to think that it too leads to an impasse and is in the end No Way, a-poria.  

Consider the proper name, 'Moses.' It does not refer to the expression 'the man who led the Israelites out of Egypt.'  It refers to a man, not an expression. (9) Thus "'Moses' refers to a man" is true. But what makes it true?  One might think that it is true in virtue of a relation that connects the name to a particular man, and thus to something extra-linguistic. But the Ostrich denies that there is an "external reference relation" that relates the name to something extra-linguistic.  (9)  What makes true the reference statement -- "'Moses' refers to a man" -- is "an internal relation between the reference statement and some textual or uttered antecedent." (9) It is not clear what this means since it is not clear how the reference statement can have an antecedent. I know what the antecedent of a pronoun is, but what is the antecedent of a sentence or statement?  I also know that a statement can be the antecedent of a term.  For example, "Snow is white.  This everyone agrees to."  In this example, the demonstrative 'this' has a statement as an antecedent. What I don't understand is how a statement can have an antecedent. But let that pass.

It is clear what the Ostrich wants to say:  there is reference but all reference is intra-linguistic.  That contrasts with what I am inclined to say, namely, that while some reference is intra-linguistic, not all reference is.  The reference of 'he' is parasitic on the reference of 'Tom' in 'Tom enjoyed the massage he received' and so there is a sense in which the reference of 'he' is intra-linguistic; but 'Tom,' if it refers at all, refers extra-linguistically. In which precise sense is the reference of 'he' in our sample sentence intra-linguistic? Surely the pronoun 'he' does not refer to the name 'Tom'; the pronoun refers to the same item to which 'Tom' refers. So to say that the reference of 'he' is intra-linguistic is just to say that it picks up the reference of its antecedent and would not refer otherwise.  Pronoun and noun are co-referential which is to say that they refer to the same item if they refer to anything. But the burden of objective reference is shouldered by the noun, not the pronoun.  Or so say I.

The Ostrich's idea here is that "the semantic value of a proper name consists SOLELY in its anaphoric co-reference with its antecedents in a chain of co-referring terms . . . ." (8, my emphasis)*  Interpreting, one could say that reference is constituted by co-reference which is always an intra-linguistic matter.  This would seem to issue in an objectionable linguistic idealism.

'Asmodeus,' we are told, refers to Asmodeus, so the name refers to something. It refers to a demon, not an expression, similarly as 'Moses' refers to a man, not an expression.   But from the fact that 'Asmodeus' refers to something it does not follow that something exists which is the referent of 'Asmodeus.' (10)  That is surely true. But it is also true that from the fact that 'Asmodeus' refers to something it does not follow that nothing exists which is the referent of 'Asmodeus.'  So the referent of 'Asmodeus' may or may not exist.  

I now put the question to the Ostrich: what is it for the referent to exist? We are assuming that there is no such demon as Asmodeus.  And yet 'Asmodeus' refers to something.   There is a difference between referring to something that does not exist and not referring to anything. Now the Ostrich told us that 'Asmodeus' refers to something.  But then something is such that it does not exist, and we are in Meinongian precincts -- which is precisely where an ostrich will not stray if he can help it.

So the Ostrich cannot mean that 'Asmodeus' refers to something that does not exist; he must mean that 'Asmodeus'  is an empty/vacuous name, i.e., one that does not refer at all, one without a referent. Again, there is a plain difference between a term's having a non-existing referent and a term's  having no referent at all.   

The trouble with saying that 'Asmodeus' is an empty name, however, is that it conflicts with his theory according to which "the semantic value of a proper name consists SOLELY in its anaphoric co-reference with its antecedents in a chain of co-referring terms . . . ." (8, my emphasis)* There is a conflict with the theory because 'Asmodeus' is a member of a chain of co-referring terms, which implies that 'Asmodeus' has a semantic value, an object, an object which exists simply in virtue of being an object.  So Asmodeus exists after all.

The demon cannot both exist and not exist.  One might say that that the demon does not exist in reality (outside language) but that it does exist in a language-immanent, 'internal' way as an object constituted by "its anaphoric co-reference with its antecedents in a chain of co-referring terms . . . ." But if the demon does not exist in reality, then Moses does, in which case the reference statement -- "'Moses' refers to a man" -- must have an external reference relation as part of its truth maker.

If that is denied and reference is intra-linguistic only, then how account for the difference between the existent Moses and the nonexistent Asmodeus? After all, both names belong to chains of co-referring terms.  Each name belongs to a narrative.

Is our Ostrich a POMO bird in the end?

 

__________________________

*I suspect that the Ostrich is using 'semantic value' in the way Gareth Evans uses it, namely, as equivalent to Frege's Bedeutung. Accordingly, the semantic value of  a proper name is an object, that of a concept-word (Begriffswort) is a function, and that of a sentence (Satz) is a truth value (Wahrheitswert).

Could Scollay Square be a Meinongian Nonexistent Object?

Bill, newly arrived in Boston,  believes falsely that Scollay Square exists and he wants to visit it. Bill asks Kathleen where it is. Kathleen tells him truly that it no longer exists, and Bill believes her. Both use 'Scollay Square' to refer to the same thing, a physical place, one that does not exist. To exist is to exist in reality.  'In reality' means outside the mind; it does not mean in the physical world.  

So both Bill and Kathleen use 'Scollay Square' to refer to a physical place that does not exist. The two are not using (tokens of) 'Scollay Square' to refer to Fregean senses or to any similar abstract/ideal item.* Scollay Square is not such an item.  It is concrete, i.e., causally active/passive.  After all, it was demolished. 

Now it could be that reference is routed through sense as Frege maintained. Perhaps there is no road to Bedeutung except through Sinn. Whether or not that is so, when Bill and Kathleen think and talk about Scollay Square, they are not thinking and talking about an abstract object that mediates reference, whether it be thinking reference or linguistic reference.  They are thinking and talking about a concrete, physical thing that does not exist.

 

We also note that Bill and Kathleen are not thinking or talking about anything immanent to consciousness such as a mental content or a mental act. They are referring to a transcendent physical thing that does not exist.  Scollay Square is not in the head or in the mind; if it were, it would exist! If memory serves, it was the illustrious Kasimir Twardowski who first made this point, leastways, the first in the post-Brentano discussion. 

Therefore, some transcendent physical things do not exist. Copley Square is an example of a transcendent physical thing that does exist.

But you don't buy it do you? Explain why. (I don't buy it either.)

_______________

*Anglosophers use 'abstract'; Eurosophers sometimes use 'ideal.' Same difference (as a redneck student of mine used to say.)

Some Questions about Thinking, Relations, and Relational Expressions

Bill, you said by email earlier that the sentence “Jake is thinking of Zeus” would be true if Jake was indeed thinking of Zeus.

BV: That's what I said, although I would put 'is' where you have 'was.' Is what I said  a shocking thing to say?

I have questions for you about the terms ‘obtains’ and ‘satisfies’.

(1) If “Jake is thinking of Zeus” is true, and assuming there is no such thing as Zeus, then does the relation “– is thinking of –” obtain? According to what you said earlier, a relation cannot obtain if any its relata do not exist. But we normally think of a relation obtaining precisely in the case where the sentence which asserts the relation is true. What do you think?

BV: We cannot assume that thinking-of  is a relation if every relation is such that its obtaining entails the existence of all its relata.   For in the case of Jake and Zeus only one of the relata exists, and it's not Zeus. And yet it is true that Jake is thinking of Zeus. I conclude that the sentence 'Jake is thinking of Zeus,' although grammatically relational, does not express a relational proposition.  The sentence needs a truth-preserving analysis that does not commit one to the existence of nonexistent things.  

Here are two different candidate analysantia. 'Jake is thinking Zeus-ly.' 'Jake is a Zeus-entertainer.' Neither of these sentences is grammatically relational, and both seem to preserve the truth of the analysandum without commitment to nonexistent things. I do not endorse either analysans.

(2) Is the relational expression “– is thinking of –” satisfied when “Jake is thinking of Zeus” is true? For example, is it satisfied by the two things Jake and Zeus respectively? If not, why not?

BV: No. Why not? Because Zeus does not exist. 

Untangling Plato's Beard

I was asked by a commenter what motivates the thin theory of existence.  One motivation is 

. . . the old Platonic riddle of nonbeing. Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor. (Willard Van Orman Quine, "On What There Is" in From a Logical Point of View, Harper Torchbook ed., 1963, pp. 1-2)

As I see it, here is how the paradox arises.

1) 'Pegasus does not exist' is true. Therefore:

2) The sentence in question has meaning. (Only meaningful sentences have a truth value.) 

3) If a sentence has meaning, then so do its (sentential and sub-sentential) parts. (Compositionality of meaning.) Therefore:

4) 'Pegasus' has meaning. Therefore:

5) Something is such that 'Pegasus' refers to it. ('Pegasus' is a proper name, and the meaning of a proper name is its referent, that to which it refers.) Therefore:

6) 'Pegasus' refers to something that exists. (Everything exists; there are no nonexistent objects; one cannot refer to what does not exist for it is not there to be referred to.) Therefore:

7) Pegasus must exist for it to be true that Pegasus does not exist.  Paradox!

None of the first four propositions is plausibly denied. To avoid the conclusion, we must deny either (5) or (6) and the assumptions that generate them. Now Quine is no Meinongian/Wymanian. Quine advocates a Russellian solution which amounts to rejecting (5) by rejecting the assumption that the meaning of a proper name is exhausted by its reference.  For Russell, ordinary proper names are definite descriptions in disguise. This allows them to have meaning or sense without reference.   Thus 'Pegasus' is elliptical for 'the winged horse of Greek mythology.'  This allows the following contextual paraphrase of 'Pegasus does not exist':

It is not the case that there exists an x such x is the winged horse of Greek mythology

which is free of paradox. What the paraphrase says is that the definite description which gives the sense of 'Pegasus' is not satisfied. Equivalently, it says that the concept winged horse of Greek mythology is not instantiated.   Thus the original sentence, which appeared to be about something that does not exist but which, if it existed, would be an animal, is really about about a description or concept which does exist and which is assuredly not an animal.

It is a brilliant solution, prima vista. It works for negative general existentials as well. 'Unicorns do not exist,' despite its surface grammar, cannot be about unicorns -- after all, there aren't any -- it is about the concept unicorn and predicates of it the property of not being instantiated.  Extending the analysis to affirmative general existentials, we can say that 'Horses exist,' for example, is not about horses -- after all, which horses would it be about? -- it is about the concept horse and predicates of it the property of being instantiated.  

What about singular affirmative existentials such as 'Harry exists'?  Quine maintains that, in a pinch, one can turn a name into a verb and say, with truth, 'Nothing pegasizes' thereby avoiding both Plato's Beard and Meinong's Jungle so as to enjoy, clean-shaven, the desert landscape bathed in lambent light.  So what's to stop us from saying 'Something Harry-sizes'?  (Quite a bit, actually, but I won't go into that in this post, having beaten it to death in numerous other entries. Briefly, there are no haecceity-concepts: there is no such concept Harry-ness that (i) can exist uninstantiated; (ii) if instantiated is instantiated by Harry and Harry alone in the actual world; (iii) is not instantiated by anything distinct from Harry in any possible world.)

Let us now pause to appreciate what the Russellian (or rather 'Fressellian') approach accomplishes in the eyes of its advocates. It untangles Plato's Beard. It avoids Meinong's jungle. It preserves the existence-nonexistence contrast by situating it at the second level, that of descriptions, concepts, propositional functions, properties, as the contrast between satisfaction-nonsatisfaction (for descriptions), instantiation-noninstantiation (for concepts and properties), and having a value-not having a value for propositional functions, or as Russell puts it, being sometimes true or the opposite.

What's more, it diagnoses the failure of certain versions of the ontological argument. Descartes' Meditation Five version has it that God exists because God has all perfections and existence is a perfection. But if Frege and Russell are right, existence is not even a property of God let alone a perfection of him inasmuch as '. . .exist(s)' has no legitimate use as a first-level predicate and can be be properly deployed only as a second-level predicate. (God is an individual.)

Last, but not least, the Fressellian analysis consigns entire libraries of school metaphysics to he flames, the books in which drone on endlessly about Being and Existence and the distinctio realis, and the analogia entis, and ipsum esse subsistens, ad nauseam.  Swept aside are all the hoary and endlessly protracted debates about the relation of essence and existence in individuals: is it a real distinction, and what could that mean? Is it a formal distinction, and what could that mean? Etc. On the Frege-Russell approach there simply is no existence of individuals.

And now you know why the thin theory is called 'thin.' It could also be called 'shallow' in that it eliminates existence as a deep and mysterious topic.  The thin theory disposes of existence as a metaphysical topic, reducing it to a merely logical topic.  As Quine famously says in an essay other than the one cited above, "Existence is what existential quantification expresses."  Thus 'Cats exist' says no more and no less than 'For some x, x is a cat.'  You will note that the analysans makes no mention of existence. It features only the word 'cat' and some logical machinery. Existence drops out as a metaphysical topic.

Of course, I don't accept the thin theory; but as you can see, I appreciate what motivates it in the minds of its adherents.

Lukáš Novák on Reference to What is Not

What follows is a re-do of an entry that first saw the light of the blogosphere on the 4th of July, 2014. The draft Lukáš Novák (on my left in the photo) sent me back then for my comments has since appeared in print in Maimonides on God and Duns Scotus on Logic and Metaphysics  (Volume 12: Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics) eds.  Gyula Klima and Alexander W. Hall, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp. 155-188.  I note that our old sparring partner Edward Buckner has an article in this volume, "On the Authenticity of Scotus's Logical Works," pp. 55-84.

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

Our Czech friend Lukáš Novák sent me a paper in which, drawing upon John Duns Scotus, he rejects the following principle of reference:

(PR) It is impossible to refer to that which is not.

In this entry I will first pull some quotations from Novak's paper and then raise some questions about the view that he seems to be endorsing.

I. Novak's Scotistic View

Novak writes,

Scotus’ position can be simply characterized as a consistent rejection of the PR . . . . According to Scotus, the objects of any intentional relations . . . simply are not required to have any ontological status whatsoever, or, as Scotus puts it, any esse verum. The “being” expressed by the predicates exploited by Francis, like “to be known” (esse cognitum), “to be intelligible” (esse intelligibile), “to be an image of a paradigm” (esse exemplatum), “to be represented” (esse repraesentatum) and the like, is not real or true in any way, irrespectively of whether the relation involved concerns God or man.

[. . .]

It is not necessary to assume any esse essentiae in objects of knowledge: instead, Scotus speaks of “esse deminutum” here, but he points out emphatically that this “diminished being” is being only “secundum quid”, i.e., in an improper, qualified sense – this is the point of Scotus’ famous criticism of Henry of Ghent laid out in the unique question of dist. 36 of the first book of his Ordinatio. If you look for some real being in the object of intellection that it should have precisely in virtue of being such an object, there is none to be found. The only real being to be found here is the real being of the intellection, to which the esse deminutum of the intellected object is reduced.

[. . .]

In other words: if we were to make something like an inventory of reality, we should not list any objects having mere esse deminutum. By speaking about objects in intelligible being we do not take on any ontological commitment (to use the Quinean language) over and above the commitment to the existence of the intellections directed to these objects.

[. . .]

And now the crucial point: it is precisely this intelligibility, imparted to the objects by the divine intellect, what [that] makes human conceiving of the same objects possible, irrespectively of whether they have any real being or not:

[. . .]

In other words: the most fundamental reason why the PR is false is, according to Scotus, the fact that a sufficient condition of the human capacity to refer to something is the intelligibility of that something. This intelligibility, however, is bestowed on things in virtue of their being conceived, prior to creation, by the absolute divine intellect. This divine conceiving, however, neither produces nor presupposes any genuine being in the objects; for it is a universal truth that cognition is an immanent operation, one whose effect remains wholly in its subject (and so does not really affect its object) – in this elementary point divine cognition is not different. Accordingly, objects need not have any being whatsoever in order to be capable of being referred to. (p. 181, emphases added)

II. Some Questions and Comments

As a matter of Moorean fact we do at least seem to refer both in thought and in speech to nonexistent objects and to say things about them, true and false.   The celebrated goldner Berg discussed by Bernard Bolzano, Kasimir Twardowski, Alexius von Meinong et al. is a stock  example. Suppose that I am thinking about the golden mountain (GM). Since I cannot think without thinking of something, when I am thinking of or about the GM, I am thinking of something.  But thinking is not like eating. Necessarily, if I eat something, that thing exists.   I cannot eat a nonexistent comestible. Eating takes an existing object; thinking, however, needn't take an existing object. But it must take an object. So it is quite natural to say that in the case before us, the act of thinking is directed to a nonexistent object.

That some objects do not exist (or have any mode of being at all) would seem to following directly from the intentionality or object-directedness of consciousness.  My act of thinking about the GM (or about Frodo, to use Novak's example), being intentional is directed to, intends, an object that is not part of the act, but transcendent of it.  It follows straightaway that some objects of thinking and linguistic reference have no being. So far, it seems that Dr. Novak is right: we must reject (P) according to which it is impossible to refer to that which is not.

But of course this is puzzling. An object that has no being is nothing. How then can I be thinking about something that is nothing? And if what I am thinking about is nothing at all, then how is my thinking of Frodo different from my thinking of the GM?  Acts are individuated by their objects; if the objects are nothing, then they do not differ and cannot serve to individuate the acts trained upon them. What's more, if the GM is nothing at all, then it has no properties; but it does have properties, ergo, etc.  So we have an aporetic dyad that needs solving:

a) The GM is something (because every thinking is a thinking of something, and I am thinking of the GM.)

b) The GM is nothing (because there are no mountains of gold in reality outside my mind, nor, for that matter, inside my mind).

 

If I understand Novak, he wants a theory that satisfies the following desiderata or criteria of adequacy:

D1. Metaphysical possibilism is to be avoided.  We cannot maintain that the merely possible has any sort of being.  (Novak distinguishes metaphysical possibilism and actualism from semantic possibilism and actualism. Cf. p. 185) 

D2. Actualist ersatzism is to be avoided.  We cannot maintain that there are actual items such as Plantingian haecceity properties  that stand in for mere possibilia.

D3. The phenomenological fact that intentionality is relational and not quasi-relational (etwas Relativliches) as in Brentano is to be respected and somehow accommodated.  No adverbial theories!

D4. Eliminativism about intentionality/reference is to be avoided.  Intentionality is real!

D5. Nominalist reductionism according to which reference is a merely intralinguistic phenomenon is to be avoided.  When I refer to something, whether existent or nonexistent, I am getting outside of language!  

Novak does not list these desiderata; I am imputing them to him.  He can tell me if my imputation is unjust.  In any case, I accept (D1)-(D5): an adequate theory must satisfy these demands.  Now how does Novak's theory satisfy them?

Well, he brings God into the picture. Some will immediately cry deus ex machina! But I think Novak can plausibly rebut this charge.  If God is brought on the stage in an ad hoc manner to get us out of a philosophical jam, then a deus ex machina objection has bite.  But Novak and his master Scotus have independent reasons for positing God. See p. 185. And see my substantial post on deus-ex-machina objections in philosophy, here.  Suppose we have already proven, or at least given good reasons for, the existence of God.  Then he can be put to work.  Or, as my esteemed and fondly remembered teacher J. N. Findlay once said, "God has his uses."

So how does Novak's solution work? 

It is sufficient for x to be an object of thought or reference by us that it be intelligible. This intelligibility derives from the divine intellect who, prior to creation, conceives of such items as the golden mountain.  But this conceiving does not impart to them any real being.  Nor does it presuppose that they have any real being.  In themselves, they have no being at all.  God's conceiving of nonexistent objects is a wholly immanent operation the effect of which remains wholly within the subject of the operation, namely, the divine mind. The intelligibility is not projected onto items external to the divine intellect.   And yet the nonexistent objects acquire intelligibility.  It is this intelligibility that makes it possible for us finite minds to think the nonexistent without it being the case that nonexistent objects have any being at all.

This is the theory, assuming I have understood it.  And it does seem to satisfy the desiderata (D1)-(D5) with the possible exception of (D3).  But here is one concern. We are being told that the intelligibility of the GM, for example, is due to a  wholly immanent operation on God's part. That is: no act of divine intellection is directed outward toward a transcendent object even if said object is beingless. But if the divine production of the intelligibility of the GM, say, is wholly immanent then this can only mean that the production proceeds by God's conceiving-GM-ly.  But this amounts to adverbialism and a denial of the relationality of intentionality, which Novak is otherwise committed to. Cf. the "pre-philosophical datum" mentioned on p. 186 according to which "we all know that we can refer to non-existing things" such as Frodo Baggins, and yet "we all know that they are not there."  Frodo, after all, is purely fictional item "made up" by Tolkien.   Talk of reference whether it be thinking reference or reference expressed verbally implies relationality: I am related to what I refer to.  But talk of wholly immanent operations of cognition and conception sits none too well with the relational talk of reference.

So my question for Novak is: Did Scotus anticipate the adverbialism of Roderick Chisholm, et al.? Is Scotus an adverbialist?

Here is a second concern of mine.  We are told that:

. . . it is a universal truth that cognition is an immanent operation, one whose effect remains wholly in its subject (and so does not really affect its object) – in this elementary point divine cognition is not different. Accordingly, objects need not have any being whatsoever in order to be capable of being referred to.

This implies that both divine and creaturely cognition and conceiving are wholly immanent operations. So what is going on when I think of, or refer to, the GM? It seem that I too would have to be conceiving-GM-ly. But then the objections to adverbialism would kick in.

Here is a third concern not unrelated to the second. The Scotistic-Novakian theory seems to imply that when I think about the golden mountain I am thinking about an operation wholly immanent to the divine intellect.  But that is not what I seem to be thinking about.  (And how would I gain access to God's mind?) It falls afoul of the phenomenology of intentionality. What I seem to be thinking about has  very few properties (being golden, being a mountain) and perhaps their analytic entailments, and no hidden properties such as the property of being identical to an operation wholly immanent to the divine intellect.  An intentional object that does not exist has precisely, all and only, the properties it is intended as having.

Connected with this third concern is the suspicion that on Novak's Scotistic theory the act-object distinction is eliminated, a distinction that is otherwise essential to his approach.  He wants to deny that merely intentional objects have any being of their own.  So he identifies them with divine conceivings.  But this falls afoul of a point insisted on by Twardowski.  

My merely imagined table does not exist in reality, 'outside' my mind.  But it also does not exist 'in' my mind as identical to the act of imagining it or as a proper part of the act of imagining it, or as any sort of mental content, as Twardowski clearly saw.  Otherwise, (i) the merely imagined table would have the nature of an experience, which it does not have, and (ii) it would exist in reality, when it doesn't, and (iii) it would have properties that cannot be properties of mental acts or contents such as the property of being spatially extended.

My point could be put like this.  The typical merely intentional, hence nonexistent, object such as the golden mountain does not have the nature of an experience or mental act; it is an object of such an act.  But if merely intentional objects are divine conceivings, then they have the nature of an experience. Ergo, etc.  Novak's theory appears to fall into 'divine psychologism.'   

Secure Epistemic Foundations, Language, and Reality

This from Grigory Aleksin:

I have been doing some reading and thinking, and there are a few things that I cannot quite get my head around. I was wondering whether you could help me, or point me in the direction of some work on the issue. My somewhat naive task has been to try and find the most foundational and basic pieces of knowledge that are required by any worldview. 

It seems to me there are at least two things that are in some sense foundational:

(1) Something exists

(2) There are correct and incorrect inferences

(1) seems to follow from what is meant by a 'thing' and what is meant by 'exists'. However this is only the case, if there are correct and incorrect inferences. Therefore, (2) is in some sense prior to (1). Hopefully that makes sense.

BV: It does indeed make sense. But I would approach the quest for secure foundations more radically.  How do I know (with objective certainty) that something exists? I know this because I know that I exist.   'Something exists' follows immediately from 'I exist.'  To say that one proposition follows from another is to say that the inference from the other to the one is correct.  The correctness of the inference preserves not only the truth of the premise but also its objective certainty.  I agree that your (2) is in some sense prior to (1); it is a presupposition of the inferential move from 

(0) I exist

to

(1) Something exists.

My problem arises when I consider that both (1) and (2) are not actually part of reality: both are sentences or linguistic expressions.

BV: Here you have to be careful. Surely a sentence token is a part of reality, even if you restrict reality to the spatio-temporal. The truth that something exists is not the same as its linguistic expression via the visible string, 'Something exists.' That same truth (true proposition, true thought) can also be expressed by a tokening of the German sentence 'Etwas existiert' and in numerous other ways. This suffices to show that the proposition expressed is not the same as the material vehicle of its expression. And already in Plato there is the insight that, while one can see or hear a sentence token, the eyes and the ears are not the organs whereby one grasps the thought expressed by marks on paper or sounds in the air.

So we need to make some distinctions: sentence type, sentence token, proposition/thought (what Frege calls der Gedanke). And this is just for starters.

And should we restrict reality to the spatio-temporal-causal? Are not ideal/abstract objects also real?  The sign '7' is not the same as the number 7. A numeral is not a number. I can see the numeral, but not the number. I can see seven cats, but not the (mathematical) set having precisely those cats as members. I can see the inscription '7 is prime' but not the proposition expressed on an occasion of use by a person who produces a token of that linguistic type.  The ideal/abstract objects just mentioned arguably belong to reality just as much as cats and rocks. 

Thus I have come to consider the role of language. The issue is that language is just a way of mapping reality, and as such is disconnected from it. This raises the question of what 'truth' is, since on one hand we know that there are objective truths, yet truths are only expressed [only by] using language. My question is, then: how can the analysis of language be used to answer philosophical questions? I know that linguistic analysis plays a central role in analytic philosophy, but I cannot help by having [but have] doubts or suspicions that something is wrong. As you see, I cannot fully express what it is that causes me such a headache, but it stems from a suspicion with respect to the use and limits of language, and thus philosophical inquiry. 

BV: We do distinguish between WORDS and WORLD, between language and reality. But this facile distinction, reflected upon, sires a number of puzzles.  My cat Max is black. So I write, 'Max is black.'  The proper name 'Max' maps onto Max. These are obviously distinct:  'Max' is monosyllabic, but no animal is monosyllabic.  So far, so good. But what about the predicate 'black'?  Does it have a referent in reality in the way that 'Max' has a referent in reality?  It is not obvious that it does.  And if it does, what is the nature of this referent?  If it doesn't, what work does the predicate do? And then there is the little word 'is,' the copula in the sentence.  Does it have a referent? Does it map onto something in reality the way 'Max' does? And what might that be?  The transcendental unity of apperception?  Being?  If you say 'nothing,' then what work does the copula do?

One can see from this how questionable is the claim "that language is just a way of mapping reality . . . ."  We don't want to say that for each discrete term there is a one-to-one mapping to an extralinguistic item.  That would be a mad-dog realism.  (What do 'and' and 'or' and 'not' refer to?) Nominalism is also problematic if you hold that only names refer extralinguistically.  And you have really gone off the deep end if you hold that all reference is intralinguistic.

Here is another ancient puzzle.  A sentence is not a list. 'Max is black' is not a mere list of its terms. There is such a list, but it cannot 'attract a truth-value.' That is a philosopher's way of saying that a list cannot be either true or false. But a sentence in the indicative mood is either true or false. Therefore, a sentence in the indicative mood is not a list.  Such a sentence has a peculiar unity that makes it apt to be either true or false. But how are we to understand that unity without igniting Bradley's regress?

And then there is the question of the truth-bearer or truth-vehicle. You write above as if sentences qua linguistic expressions are truth-bearers.  But that can't be right. How could physical marks on paper be either true or false? 

My question is, then: how can the analysis of language be used to answer philosophical questions?

It is not clear what you are asking. You say that there are objective truths. That's right. Your problem seems to be that you do not see how this comports with the fact that truths are expressed only by using language.  The source of your puzzlement may be your false assumption that sentence qua linguistic expressions are the primary vehicles of the truth-values.

Combox open.

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.

It Is What It Is

Maybe not. It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is.  (If you are old enough to get the joke, you are old.)

Seriously, though, the above-captioned saying is seeing quite a lot of use lately, or it was ten years ago.   It is a sort of present-tensed Que sera, sera.  Things are the way they are.  Don't kick against the pricks.  Acceptance and resignation are the appropriate attitudes.

From a philosophy-of-language point of view, what is interesting is the use of a tautological form of words to express a non-tautological proposition.  What the words mean is not what the speaker means in uttering the words.  Sentence meaning and speaker's meaning come apart.  The speaker does not literally mean that things are what they are -- for what the hell else could they be?  Not what they are?  What the speaker means is that (certain) things can't be changed and so must be accepted with resignation.  Your dead-end job for example.  'It is what it is.'

There are many examples of the use of tautological sentences to express non-tautological propositions.  'What will be, will be' is an example, as is 'Beer is beer.'  When Ayn Rand proclaimed that Existence exists! she did not mean to assert the tautological proposition that each existing thing exists; she was ineptly employing a tautological sentence to express a non-tautological and not uncontroversial thesis of metaphysical realism according to which what exists exists independently of any mind, finite or infinite.

'What will be will be' is tautologically true and thus necessarily true.  What the sentence is typically used to express, however, is the non-tautological, and arguably false, fatalistic proposition that what will be, will necessarily be, that it cannot be otherwise.  So not only do sentence meaning and speaker's meaning come apart in this case; a modal fallacy is lurking in the background as well, the ancient fallacy of confusing the necessitas consequentiae with the necessitas consequentis.

Related: 

Necessitas Consequentiae versus Necessitas Consequentis

More on Tautologies that Ain't: 'He's his Father's Son'

In Vino Veritas

Literally, "in wine, (there is) truth."  But the sentence does not bear its meaning on its semantic sleeve. What the familiar Latin saying is used to express, by those who use it correctly, is the thought that a person under the influence of alcohol is less likely to dissemble and more likely to speak his mind and perhaps reveal something that he would not have revealed if sober. 

Linguistic meaning, though not reducible to use, cannot be adequately understood apart from use. 

Intentionality for Third-World Entities?

Commenter John and I are having a very productive discussion about intentionality.  I thank him for helping me clarify my thoughts about this fascinating topic.  I begin with some points on which (I think) John and I agree.

a) There is a 'third world' or third realm and it is the realm of abstracta.   (I promise: no jokes about Frege's Third Reich. But I can't promise not to speak of Original Sinn and Original Sinn-ers.) Fregean senses, whether propositional or sub-propositional, are abstracta, but not all abstracta are reference-mediating senses. John and I are operating with a provisional tripartite or tri-categorial ontology comprising the mental, the physical, and the abstract.

b) There are instances of intrinsic intentionality. Neither of us is an eliminativist about intentionality in the manner, say, of Alexander Rosenberg. (See Could Intentionality be an Illusion?)

c) There is no intentionality without intrinsic or original intentionality: it cannot be that all intentionality is derivative or a matter of ascription, pace Daniel Dennett.  (See Original and Derived Intentionality, Circles, and Regresses.)

d) Nothing physical qua physical is intrinsically intentional, although some physical items are derivatively intentional.  (Combine this true proposition with the false proposition that all mental states are physical, and you have an unsound but valid argument for the eliminativist conclusion that there is no intrinsic intentionality.)

Agreement on the foregoing points leaves open the question whether there could be intrinsically intentional abstract items.  I tend to think that there are no intrinsically intentional abstract items.  John's position, assuming I understand it, is that some abstract items are intrinsically intentional, and that some  intrinsically intentional items are not abstract, mental states being examples of the latter.

The bare bones of the debate between John and I may be set forth as an aporetic triad:

1) Fregean senses are intrinsically intentional items. 

2) Only conscious items are intrinsically intentional.

3) Fregean senses are not conscious. 

It is easy to see that this threesome is not logically consistent: the propositions cannot all be true. John and I assume that the Law of Non-Contradiction holds across the board: we are not dialetheists.  So something has to give. Which limb of the triad should we reject?  (3) is not in dispute and presumably will be accepted by all: no abstract item is conscious, and senses are abstract.  'Abstract' was defined in earlier entries, and John and I agree on its meaning. The dispute concerns (1) and (2). I reject (1) while accepting the other two propositions; John rejects (2) while accepting the other two propositions.

I argue from the conjunction of (2) and (3) to the negation of (1), while John argues from the conjunction of (1) and (3) to the negation of (2).

My rejection of (1) entails that there are no Fregean senses (Sinne).  This is because Fregean senses, by definition, are intrinsically intentional. It follows that they are essentially intrinsically intentional. So if they can't be intrinsically intentional, then they can't exist. Why are senses essentially intrinsically intentional?  Well, as platonica, senses are necessarily existent: they exist in all metaphysically possible worlds. It follows that they exist in worlds in which there are no finite minds.* Now a sense, by definition, is a mode of presentation (Darstellungsweise) of its object.  It mediates between minds and things.  Reference, whether thinking reference or linguistic reference, is routed though sense. The (re)presentational power of a sense is essential to it, and it has this power even in worlds in which there are no words to express the sense, no things to be presented by  the sense, and no minds to refer to things via senses.  For example, consider a possible world W in which there are no languages, no minds, and no planet Venus. In W the sense that 'Phosphorus' -- 'Morning Star,' Morgenstern -- expresses in our world exists (because it exists in every world) and has its (re)presentational power there in W. Thus its intentionality is intrinsic to it and does not depend on any relations to words or to things or to minds.  It (re)presents non-linguistically and non-mentally and without the need for physical embodiment.

I think it follows that there is no distinction in reality -- although there is one notionally -- between the power of a Fregean sense to represent and its exercise of this power.  There is, in other words, no distinction in reality between the power of a sense to represent and its actually representing.  I say this because the existence of what an intrinsically intentional item is of or about has no effect whatsoever on the aboutness of the item.  Suppose I am thinking about the Washington monument, but that while I am thinking about it, it ceases to exist. That change in objective reality in no way affects the aboutness of the intentional state.  Thus the power of an intrinsically intentional item to represent does not need an external, objectively real, 'trigger' to actualize the power.  The extramental existence of the Washington monument is not  a necessary condition of the aboutness of my thinking about it.  The content and aboutness of my thinking is exactly the same whether or not the monument exists 'outside the mind.' The same goes for senses. The sense of 'Phosphorus' presents Venus whether or not Venus exists. And the content of the sense is exactly the same whether or not Venus exists.

There is an important difference, however, between an intrinsically intentional mental state and a Fregean sense.   The occurrent mental state or 'act' -- in the terminology of Twardowksi, Husserl, et al. -- is the state of a mind. It is the act of a subject, the cogitatio of an ego, where the last three occurrences of 'of' all express the genitivus subjectivus.  This is essentially, not accidentally, the case.  There has to be an ego behind the cogitatio for the cogitatio to be a cogitatio of a cogitatum.  But there needn't be an ego 'behind' the sense for the sense to be a sense of or about a thing. If a Fregean sense mediates a reference between a mind and a thing, it is not essential to the mediation that there be a mind 'behind' the sense.

Here then is an argument against Fregean senses:

4) Every instance of intrinsic intentionality has both a subject and an object.
5) Some instances of reference-mediation by a sense do not have both a subject and an object.
Therefore
6) Some instances of reference-mediation by a sense are not instances of intrinsic intentionality.

When I reject the proposition that Fregean senses are intrinsically intentional items, I thereby reject the very existence of Fregean senses. I am not maintaining that Fregean senses exist but are derivatively intentional items.  I do hold, however, that there are derivatively intentional items, maps for example.  Maps get their meaning and aboutness from us original Sinn-ers. A map is not about a chunk of terrain just in virtue of the map's physical and geometrical properties. Consider the contour lines on a topographical map. The closer together, the steeper the terrain. But that closer together should mean steeper is a meaning assigned by the community of map-makers and map-users. This meaning is not intrinsic to the map qua physical object. Closer together might have meant anything, e.g., that the likelihood of falling into an abandoned mine shaft is greater.

So some things derive their referential and semantic properties from other things.  That is also true of language. Words and phrases don't mean anything in and of themselves. Mind is king: no minds, no meaning. I subscribe to the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic. 

John and I agree that Fregean senses, whether propositional or sub-propositional, are explanatory posits.  They are not 'datanic' as I like to say. Thus it is a pre-analytic or pre-theoretical datum that the sentences 'The sky is blue' and Der Himmel ist blau 'say the same thing' or can by used to say the same thing. But that this same thing is a Fregean proposition goes beyond the given and enters the explanatory realm.  One forsakes phenomenology for dialectics. Now what am I claiming exactly? That there is no need for these posits, that to posit senses is to 'multiply entities beyond necessity in violation of Occam's Razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem?  Or am I saying something stronger, namely, that there cannot be any such items as Fregean senses? I believe my view is the latter, and not merely the former.  If senses cannot exist, then they cannot be reasonably posited either.  

John's view, I take it, is that both Fregean senses and some conscious items are intrinsically intentional or object-directed. He is not maintaining that only third-world entities (abstracta) are intrinsically intentional. By contrast, I maintain that only second-world entities (mental items, both minds and some of their occurrent states) are intrinsically intentional.

I assume that John intends 'intrinsically intentional' to be taken univocally and not analogically.  Thus he is not saying that Fregean senses are of or about first-world items in a manner that is analogous to the way second-world items are of or about first-world items.    

Fregean senses are intrinsically intentional, necessarily existent, abstract entities.  By its very nature a sense presents or represents something apart from itself, something that may or may not exist. It is a natural, not conventional, sign.  

Do I have a compelling argument against Fregean senses?  Above I mentioned the following argument:

2) Only conscious items are intrinsically intentional.

3) Fregean senses are not conscious. Therefore:

1) It is not the case that Fregean senses are intrinsically intentional.

But this argument appears to beg the question at (2).  Why can't there be intrinsically intentional items that are not conscious?  If there can be intentionality below the level of conscious mind in the form of dispositionality -- see Intentionality, Potentiality, and Dispositionality -- why con't there be intentionality above the level of conscious mind in platonica?

Nevertheless, there seems to me something incoherent about Fregean senses. They actually represent even in worlds in which there is nothing to represent and no one to whom to represent.  Consider again the sense of 'Phosphorus.'  It exists in every world including worlds in which Venus does not exist and no mind exists. In those worlds, the sense in question actually represents but does not represent anything to anyone.  It is therefore a non-representing representation, and thus an impossibility.

_____________________

*A finite mind is the kind of mind that needs such intermediary items as Fregean senses or Husserlian noemata to mediate its reference (both thinking reference and linguistic reference) to things that it cannot get completely before its mind in all their parts, properties, and relations. An archetypal intellect such as the divine mind can get at the whole of the thing 'in one blow.'  As an infinite mind it has an infinite grasp of the infinitely-propertied thing.  An infinite mind has no need of senses. The existence of senses therefore reflects the finitude of our minds.  That the reflections of this finitude should be installed in Plato's heavenly place (topos ouranos) seems strange.  It looks to be an illict hypostatization. But this thought needs a further post for its adequate deployment.

Excluded Middle, Bivalence, and Disquotation

LEM: For every  p, p v ~p.

BV: Every proposition is either true or false.

These principles are obviously not identical.  Excluded Middle is syntactic principle, a law of logic, whereas Bivalence is a semantic principle. The first says nothing about truth or falsity. The second does. (See Michael Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas, Harvard UP, 2nd ed. , 1980, p. xix; Paul Horwich, Truth, Oxford UP, 2nd ed., 1998, p. 79) Though not identical they might nonetheless be logically equivalent.  Two propositions are logically equivalent iff each entails the other.  Entailment is the necessitation of material implication. Can it be shown that (LEM) and (BV)  entail each other? Let's see.

The logical equivalence of the two principles can be demonstrated if we assume the disquotational schema:

DS: p is true iff p.

For example, snow is white is true iff snow is white. Or, if you insist, 'snow is white' is true iff snow is white. In the latter forrmulation, which does not involve reference to propositions, the truth predicate  -- 'is true' -- is merely a device of disquotation or of semantic descent. On either formulation, 'is true' adds no sentential/propositional content:  the sentential/propositional content is the same on both sides of the biconditional.  The content of my assertion is exactly the same whether I assert that snow is white or I assert that snow is white is true.  But if (DS) is granted, then so is:

DS-F: p is false iff ~p.

For example, snow is white is false iff ~(snow is white).    

Now if the disquotational schemata exhaust what it is to be true and what it is to be false, then (LEM) and (BV) are logically equivalent.

Given (DS) and (DS-F), we can rewrite (LEM) as

LEM-T: For every p, p is true v p is false.

Now (LEM-T) is simply a restatement of (BV). The principles are therefore logically equivalent given the disquotational schemata. 

But this works only if falsehood can be adequately explained in terms of the merely logical operation of negation.  This will NOT work if negation can only be explained in terms of falsehood.  For then we would enter  an explanatory circle of embarrassingly short diameter. 

Ask yourself: when is one proposition the negation of another? The negation of p is the proposition that is true iff p is false and false iff p is true.  To explain the logico-syntactic notion of negation we have to reach for the semantic notions of truth and falsehood.  But then falsehood cannot be exhaustively understood or reduced to negation.

It is telling that to explain negation and the other logical connectives we use TRUTH tables.  Such explanation is satisfactory.  But it would not be if the redundancy or disappearance or disquotational schemata gave the whole meaning of 'true' and 'false.'  (The point is made by M. Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas, p. 7)

I take this explanatory circle to show that there is more to truth and falsehood than is captured in the above disquotational schemata.

Conclusion: if one's reason for accepting the logical equivalence of (LEM) and (BV) is (DS) then that is a bad reason.

Are there counterexamples to (DS)?  It seems to fail right-to-left if 'Sherlock Holmes is a detective' is plugged in for 'p' on the RHS of (DS).  Arguably, Holmes is a detective, but it is not true that Holmes is a detective.  For it to be true that Holmes is a detective, 'Holmes' would have to refer to something that exists.  But this requirement is not satisfied in the case of purely fictional items.  I am assuming that veritas sequitur esse, that truth 'follows' or supervenes upon being (existence):

VSE:  There are no true predications about what does not exist.

Since Holmes does not exist, 'Holmes is a detective' appears to express a proposition that is neither true nor false. Likewise for its negation, 'Holmes is not a detective.'  (LEM) is not violated since either Holmes is a detective or Holmes is not a detective. But (BV) is violated since the two Holmes propositions are neither true nor false.

It is worth noting that from 'Only propositions have truth-values' one cannot validly infer 'All propositions have truth-values.'  

Do Fire Alarms Make Assertions?

The Opponent writes,

The alarm means 'there is a fire in the building'. An assertion has taken place, that there is a fire. But it is triggered by a sensor in the building. So asserting is not just something people do.

This is a loose way of talking quite in order in ordinary life, but false if taken literally and strictly. I have no objection to people in ordinary life saying things like, 'The fire alarm is telling us that there's a fire in the building.'  But people don't talk like that. You tell me, "There's a fire!" I ask, "How do you know?" You reply, "The fire alarm went off." You DON"T say, "The fire alarm told me so,"or "The fire alarm made an assertion to that effect." You COULD say, "A fireman told me so."

But let's not get hung up in Ordinary Language analysis. The 1950s are long gone.

My claim is that a mechanical contraption cannot make an assertion any more than a 'sensor' can sense anything.  Thermostats don't feel heat and smoke detectors do not smell smoke.  Oscilloscopes do not detect sine waves; an engineer detects  a sine wave by the instrumentality of the oscilloscope. Neither my dipstick nor the oil on my dipstick asserts that there is sufficient oil in the crankcase; I infer that there is from the oil I observe on the dipstick. Inferring, like asserting, is something people do.

All meaning traces back ultimately to Original Meaners, Original Sinn-ers. Am I being too clever for clarity?

A green light means proceed.  A red light means stop.  But how did those signals come to acquire their conventional meanings? From us, from minds whose intentionality is original, not derived.    Surely you don't believe that green, or a green light, intrinsically means that one may proceed.

Let us see if the Opponent and I can find some common ground. I concede that there is a clear sense in which the sounding of a fire alarm means that there is a fire in the building. But this meaning is an instance of derivative, as opposed to original, intentionality. The intentionality derives from us. The sounding of the alarm means what it means only because we have assigned it that meaning.  Its intentionality or meaning is thus not intrinsic to it. After all, a fire alarm could be constructed for deaf people that emits a smell instead of a sound, perhaps the awful smell of burnt hair.  Obviously, such a smell is not intrinsically significative of anything.

So: if the Opponent concedes that the intentionality of a fire alarm is merely derivative, then we have agreement. If he holds that it is original, then the disagreement continues.

There is a similar pattern with sentences and propositions. I will allow you to say that a sentence is true or false in a secondary or derivative sense so long as you admit that it is propositions that are the primary truth-bearers.  Do we have a deal?  A declarative sentence is true in virtue of expressing a true proposition.

Atomic Sentences and Syncategorematic Elements

The Ostrich tells me that Frege has no copula. That's not wrong, but there is a nuance that muddies the waters. Suppose Al is fat. The symbolization as Fa suggests the absence of a copula and thus the absence of a syncategorematic element. There appears to be only two categorematic elements, a and F. Well, let's see.

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

According to Fred Sommers (The Logic of Natural Language, Oxford UP, 1982, 166), ". . . one way of saying what an atomic sentence is is to say that it is the kind of sentence that contains only categorematic expressions." Earlier in the same book, Sommers says this:

In Frege, the distinction between subjects and predicates is not due to any difference of syncategorematic elements since the basic subject-predicate propositions are devoid of such elements.  In Frege, the difference between subject and predicate is a primitive difference between two kinds of categorematic expressions. (p. 17)

Examples of categorematic (non-logical) expressions are 'Socrates' and 'mammal.'  Examples of syncategorematic (logical) expressions are 'not,' 'every,' and  'and.'  As 'syn' suggests, the latter expressions are not semantic stand-alones, but have their meaning only together with categorematic expressions.  Sommers puts it this way: "Categorematic expressions apply to things and states of affairs; syncategorematic expressions do not." (164) 

At first I found it perfectly obvious that atomic sentences have only categorematic elements, but now I have doubts.  Consider the atomic sentence  'Al is fat.' It is symbolized thusly: Fa.  'F' is a predicate expression the reference (Bedeutung) of which is a Fregean concept (Begriff) while 'a' is a subject-expression or name the reference of which is a Fregean object (Gegenstand).  Both expressions are categorematic or 'non-logical.'  Neither is syncategorematic.  And there are supposed to be no syncategorematic elements in the sentence:  there is just 'F' and 'a.'

But wait a minute!  What about the immediate juxtaposition of 'F' and 'a' in that order? That juxtaposition is not nothing.  It conveys something.  It conveys that the referent of 'a' falls under the referent of 'F'.  It conveys that the object a instantiates the concept F. I suggest that the juxtaposition of the two signs is a syncategorematic element.  If this is right, then it is false that atomic sentences lack all syncategorematic elements.

Of course, there is no special sign for the immediate juxtaposition of 'F' and 'a' in 'Fa.'  So I grant that there is no syncategorematic element if such an element must have its own separate and isolable sign. But there is no need for a separate sign; the immediate juxtaposition does the trick.  The syncategorematic element is precisely the juxtaposition.

Please note that if there were no syncategorematic element in 'Fa' there would not be any sentence at all.  A sentence is not a list.  The sentence 'Fa' is not the list 'F, a.'  A (declarative) sentence expresses a thought (Gedanke) which is its sense (Sinn).  And it has a reference (Bedeutung), namely a truth value (Wahrheitswert).  No list of words (or of anything else) expresses a thought or has a truth value.  So a sentence is not a list of its constituent words.  A sentence depends on its constituent words, but it is more than them.  It is their unity. 

We here touch upon the ancient problem of the unity of the proposition first descried by the immortal Plato.

So I say there must be a syncategorematic element in 'Fa' if it is to be a sentence.  There is need of a copulative element to tie together subject and predicate.  It follows that, pace Sommers, it is false that atomic sentences are devoid of syntagorematic elements.

Note what I am NOT saying.  I am not saying that the copulative element in a sentence must be a separate sign such as 'is.'  There is no need for the copulative  'is.'  In standard English we say 'The sea is blue' not 'The sea blue.' But in Turkish one can say Deniz mavi and it is correct and intelligible.  My point is not that we need the copulative 'is' as a separate sign but that we need a copulative element which, though it does not refer to anything, yet ties together subject and predicate.  There must be some feature of the atomic sentence that functions as the copulative element, if not immediate juxtaposition then something else such as a font difference or color difference.

At his point I will be reminded that Frege's concepts (Begriffe) are unsaturated (ungesaettigt).  They are 'gappy' or incomplete unlike objects.  The incompleteness of concepts is reflected in the incompleteness of predicate expressions.  Thus '. . . is fat' has a gap in it, a gap fit to accept a name such as 'Al' which has no gap.  We can thus say that for Frege the copula is imported into the predicate.  It might be thought that the gappiness of concepts and predicate expressions obviates the need for a copulative element in the sentence and in the corresponding Thought (Gedanke) or proposition.

But this would be a mistake.  For even if predicate expressions and concepts are unsaturated, there is still a difference between a list and a sentence.  The unsaturatedness of a concept merely means that it combines with an object without the need of a tertium quid.  (If there were a third thing, then Bradley's regress would be up and running.)  But to express that a concept is in fact instantiated by an object requires more than a listing of a concept-word (Begriffswort) and a name.  There is need of a syncategorematical element in the sentence.

So I conclude that if there are any atomic sentences, then they cannot contain only categorematic expressions.

The Ostrich tells me that Frege has no copula. That's not wrong, but there is a nuance that muddies the waters. Suppose Al is fat. The symbolization as Fa suggests the absence of a copula and thus the absence of a syncategorematic element. There appears to be only two categorematic elements, a and F. Well, let's see.

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

According to Fred Sommers (The Logic of Natural Language, Oxford UP, 1982, 166), ". . . one way of saying what an atomic sentence is is to say that it is the kind of sentence that contains only categorematic expressions." Earlier in the same book, Sommers says this:

In Frege, the distinction between subjects and predicates is not due to any difference of syncategorematic elements since the basic subject-predicate propositions are devoid of such elements.  In Frege, the difference between subject and predicate is a primitive difference between two kinds of categorematic expressions. (p. 17)

Examples of categorematic (non-logical) expressions are 'Socrates' and 'mammal.'  Examples of syncategorematic (logical) expressions are 'not,' 'every,' and  'and.'  As 'syn' suggests, the latter expressions are not semantic stand-alones, but have their meaning only together with categorematic expressions.  Sommers puts it this way: "Categorematic expressions apply to things and states of affairs; syncategorematic expressions do not." (164) 

At first I found it perfectly obvious that atomic sentences have only categorematic elements, but now I have doubts.  Consider the atomic sentence  'Al is fat.' It is symbolized thusly: Fa.  'F' is a predicate expression the reference (Bedeutung) of which is a Fregean concept (Begriff) while 'a' is a subject-expression or name the reference of which is a Fregean object (Gegenstand).  Both expressions are categorematic or 'non-logical.'  Neither is syncategorematic.  And there are supposed to be no syncategorematic elements in the sentence:  there is just 'F' and 'a.'

But wait a minute!  What about the immediate juxtaposition of 'F' and 'a' in that order? That juxtaposition is not nothing.  It conveys something.  It conveys that the referent of 'a' falls under the referent of 'F'.  It conveys that the object a instantiates the concept F. I suggest that the juxtaposition of the two signs is a syncategorematic element.  If this is right, then it is false that atomic sentences lack all syncategorematic elements.

Of course, there is no special sign for the immediate juxtaposition of 'F' and 'a' in 'Fa.'  So I grant that there is no syncategorematic element if such an element must have its own separate and isolable sign. But there is no need for a separate sign; the immediate juxtaposition does the trick.  The syncategorematic element is precisely the juxtaposition.

Please note that if there were no syncategorematic element in 'Fa' there would not be any sentence at all.  A sentence is not a list.  The sentence 'Fa' is not the list 'F, a.'  A (declarative) sentence expresses a thought (Gedanke) which is its sense (Sinn).  And it has a reference (Bedeutung), namely a truth value (Wahrheitswert).  No list of words (or of anything else) expresses a thought or has a truth value.  So a sentence is not a list of its constituent words.  A sentence depends on its constituent words, but it is more than them.  It is their unity. 

We here touch upon the ancient problem of the unity of the proposition first descried by the immortal Plato.

So I say there must be a syncategorematic element in 'Fa' if it is to be a sentence.  There is need of a copulative element to tie together subject and predicate.  It follows that, pace Sommers, it is false that atomic sentences are devoid of syntagorematic elements.

Note what I am NOT saying.  I am not saying that the copulative element in a sentence must be a separate sign such as 'is.'  There is no need for the copulative  'is.'  In standard English we say 'The sea is blue' not 'The sea blue.' But in Turkish one can say Deniz mavi and it is correct and intelligible.  My point is not that we need the copulative 'is' as a separate sign but that we need a copulative element which, though it does not refer to anything, yet ties together subject and predicate.  There must be some feature of the atomic sentence that functions as the copulative element, if not immediate juxtaposition then something else such as a font difference or color difference.

At his point I will be reminded that Frege's concepts (Begriffe) are unsaturated (ungesaettigt).  They are 'gappy' or incomplete unlike objects.  The incompleteness of concepts is reflected in the incompleteness of predicate expressions.  Thus '. . . is fat' has a gap in it, a gap fit to accept a name such as 'Al' which has no gap.  We can thus say that for Frege the copula is imported into the predicate.  It might be thought that the gappiness of concepts and predicate expressions obviates the need for a copulative element in the sentence and in the corresponding Thought (Gedanke) or proposition.

But this would be a mistake.  For even if predicate expressions and concepts are unsaturated, there is still a difference between a list and a sentence.  The unsaturatedness of a concept merely means that it combines with an object without the need of a tertium quid.  (If there were a third thing, then Bradley's regress would be up and running.)  But to express that a concept is in fact instantiated by an object requires more than a listing of a concept-word (Begriffswort) and a name.  There is need of a syncategorematical element in the sentence.

So I conclude that if there are any atomic sentences, then they cannot contain only categorematic expressions.

Implication and Presupposition

Dave Bagwill asks:

To be more clear: Do all propositions imply an ontology? Is 'imply' strong enough to bear the weight of 'assertion'? Or is 'imply' basically an equivalent of 'presuppose'?

Still not clear enough. Dave. Not even the third question is clear since you didn't specify the  sense of 'imply.'  But the third question is clear enough to warrant a brief answer, which is: No. Consider the following which is an intuitively clear example of a proposition resting on a presupposition:

Tom regrets lying to his wife.

Necessarily, if Tom regrets lying to his wife, then Tom has lied to his wife. The antecedent implies (in the sense of 'entails') the consequent. (I have defined 'entails' on many occasions.) But note that it is also true that, necessarily, if Tom does not regret lying to his wife, then Tom has lied to his wife.

This yields a criterion of one type of presupposition. A proposition p presupposes a proposition q just in case both p and its negation ~p entail q. One could also say that an entailment of a proposition p is a presupposition of p if and only if p's presupposition survives the negation of p.  (If the preceding sentence does not make sense to you, forget it, and focus on the one preceding it.) Consider now:

Tom is drunk.

Necessarily, if Tom is drunk, then someone is drunk. But it is not the case that, necessarily, if Tom is not drunk, then someone is drunk.

So by the criterion lately enunciated, the 'survival of negation' criterion to give it a name, 'Tom is drunk,' while it implies (entails) that someone is drunk, does not presuppose that someone is drunk.

Therefore, to answer Dave's question, 'imply' (in the sense of 'entails') is not equivalent to 'presuppose.'

Alles klar?  Vielleicht nicht!

One could conceivably balk, or baulk in the case of the Bad Ostrich, as follows: It is not clear, or it is false, that if Tom does not regret lying to his wife, then Tom has lied to his wife.  The Ostrich could say, "Tom does not regret lying because he didn't lie in the first place."

As you can see, the topic of presupposition is a murky one, and part of the murkiness is due to the fact that presupposition is at the interface of the semantic and pragmatic, and it is not clear how they gear into each other, if you will excuse the mixed metaphors.

More on Assertion and Presupposition

I continue to worry this technical bone, which is not a mere technicality, inasmuch as the topic of presupposition opens out upon some very Big Questions indeed. Anyway, back to work. I thank Ed Buckner for getting me going on this.

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

It should be obvious that one does not assert everything that the content of one's assertion entails.  If I assert that Venus is a planet, I do not thereby assert that either Venus is a planet or Putin is a former KGB agent, even though the content of my assertion entails the disjunctive proposition.  The content of an assertion is a proposition, and for any proposition p, p entails p v q.

A more interesting, and more difficult, question is whether one asserts any proposition that the content of one's assertion entails (apart from the proposition that is the content of the assertion).

Suppose you ask who won the 10K Turkey Trot and  I assert that Tony won the race.  Do I thereby also assert that he competed in it?  That he competed in it is entailed by the fact that he won. And it is entailed in a stronger sense that the sense in which Venus is a planet entails Venus is a planet or Putin is a former KGB agent.   For there is a semantic connection between winning and competing, but no semantic connection in the Venus-Putin case. You could say that it is analytically impossible that Tony win without competing: what makes it true that there is no possible world in which Tony wins but does not compete is the semantic connection between winning and competing.

Still, I want to say that Tony's competing is presupposed but not asserted when I assert that he won the race.  Necessarily, anything red is colored.  But when I assert that Tom the tomato is red, I do not thereby assert that it is colored, although of course I presuppose that it is colored. Note the word 'thereby.' It is no doubt possible for me to assert that Tom is colored, a 'vegetable of color' if you will, but that is a different assertion.

Go back to Tony the runner. That Tony did not cheat by taking a short cut is analytically entailed by the fact that he won. (To win a foot race it does not suffice to be the first to cross the finish line. Remember Rosie Ruiz of Boston Marathon 1980 notoriety?)  Will you say that when I assert that Tony won the race I also thereby assert that he did not cheat by taking a shortcut? I would say No. For that would be an unbearably counter-intuitive thing to say. I presuppose, but do not assert, that Tony did not cheat by taking a shortcut

You can see how this series of questions can be extended. One can cheat  by  getting a head start or by jumping in at mid-course, which is what Rosie Ruiz did at Boston. You can cheat by hiring a a world-class doppelgaenger, by wearing special shoes . . . .

Note also that if Tony won, it follows that he either won or didn't win. Will you say that when I assert that Tony won the race I am also thereby asserting that he either won it or didn't?  When I assert that Tony won, I am not asserting the Law of Excluded Middle (LEM). At most, LEM is a presupposition of my assertion, and of every assertion.

If Tony won, then it was possible that he win.  For everything actual is possible. But when I assert that Tony won, I presuppose, but do not assert, that it was possible at the time of the race that Tony win.

I am toying with a strong thesis:

When an agent A makes an assertion by uttering or otherwise tokening a sentence s (which is typically, but needn't be, in the indicative mood), the content of the assertion is exactly the (Fregean) proposition explicitly expressed by the tokening of s and no other proposition.  Propositions other than the content proposition that are entailed by the content proposition are at most presuppositions of the assertion.

Why hold this view? Well, it seems to me that what I assert on any occasion is precisely what I intend to assert on that occasion and nothing else.  When I make an assertion I translate into overt speech a belief that I have. The content/accusative of the belief is a Fregean proposition and there is nothing in that proposition that is not open to my mind at the time I express my belief.

 

 

Did Kepler Die in Misery?

Either he did or he didn't. Suppose I say that he did, and you say that he didn't. We both presuppose, inter alia, that there was a man named 'Kepler.'  Now that proposition that we both presuppose, although entailed both by Kepler died in misery and Kepler did not die in misery is no part of what I assert when I assert that Kepler died in misery.

Why not?

Well, to proceed by reductio, if what I assert when I assert that Kepler died in misery is that (there was a man named 'Kepler' & he died in misery), then what you assert when you contradict  me is that (either there was no man named 'Kepler' or that he did not die in misery). But the latter is not what you assert, and the former is not what I assert.  That is because we take it for granted that there was a man who rejoiced under the name 'Johannes Kepler.'

What I assert is that Kepler died in misery, and what you assert is that Kepler did not die in misery.  But we both presuppose that there was a man named 'Kepler.'  The proposition that we both presuppose, while entailed by what we each assert, is not part of what we each assert.

That, I take it, is Frege's famous argument in Ueber Sinn und Bedeutung.

It seems pretty good to me.

Assertion and Presupposition: An Argument for a Distinction

1) Someone, such as Sophomore Sam, who asserts that there are no truths does not assert that there are truths.

And yet

2) That there are no truths entails that there is at least one truth.  (Why? Because it is impossible for the first proposition to be true and the second false.)

Therefore

3) If someone S asserts that p, and p entails q, it does not follow that S asserts that q.  (Assertion is not closed under entailment.)

4) Although Sam does not ASSERT that there is at least one truth when he assertively utters the sentence 'There are no truths,' he is in some relation to the proposition that there is at least one truth. I will say that he PRESUPPOSES it.

Therefore

5) There is a distinction we need to make and it is reasonably labelled the distinction between ASSERTING a proposition and PRESUPPOSING  a proposition.  An act of asserting can carry a presupposition that is not asserted.  Sam's act of asserting that there are no truths presupposes but does not assert that there is at least one truth.

If you don't accept this argument, tell me which premise(s) you reject and why.

Is Assertion Closed Under Entailment? Assertion and Presupposition

Suppose a person asserts that p. Suppose also that p entails q. Does it follow that the person asserting that p thereby asserts that q?  If so, and if p and q are any propositions you like, then assertion is closed under entailment.  If assertion is not closed under entailment, then there will be examples in which a person asserts that p, p entails q, but the person does not assert that q.

By 'entailment' I understand a relation between propositions. P entails q iff it is impossible for p to be true, and q false. By 'assertion' I mean a speech act, an act of asserting, a concrete, datable, linguistic performance, not a proposition.  By 'the content of an assertion' I mean the proposition expressed  when a person makes an assertion. A proposition is not the same as a sentence. 'The war has come to an end' is a sentence in English. 'Der Krieg hat zu Ende gekommen' is a sentence in German.  The sentences are different, both at the type level and at the token level. And yet they can both be used to express one and the same thought. That same thought is the proposition.  By 'thought' here I do not mean an occurrent episode of thinking, but the accusative (direct object) of such an act of thinking. You could also call it a 'content' although that term is ambiguous for reasons I won't go into now.

Preliminaries aside, back to our question.

That James no longer works for Amazon has among its entailments that James worked for Amazon, that someone named 'James' worked for Amazon, and that someone no longer works for Amazon.

Now suppose I assert that James no longer works for Amazon.  Do I thereby assert that James worked for Amazon?  I say No.

Here is a more striking example. Sophomore Sam asserts that there are no truths.  The content of his act of assertion, namely, the proposition that there are no truths, entails that the content of his assertion is not true.  But surely the latter is no part of what Sam asserts. 

So assertion is not closed under entailment.

Suppose that Tom asserts that he is glad that Trump beat Hillary.  The content of the assertion entails that Trump beat Hillary. But that Trump beat Hillary is not what Tom asserts.  We can say that Tom's act of assertion presupposes that Trump beat Hillary.  But neither Tom nor his act of assertion is a proposition. So if Tom's act of assertion presupposes that Trump beat Hillary, then presupposition is not a relation between propositions, but a relation between a non-proposition (a person or his speech act) and a proposition.

On the other hand, that Tom is glad that Trump beat Hillary entails that Trump beat Hillary. This is a relation between propositions and it makes some sense to say that the first presupposes the second.

This raises a question. Is presupposition primarily something that people do, or is it primarily a relation between propositions?

A Weird 'Fregean' Ontological Argument

London Ed asks:

Which step of the argument below do you disagree with?

a) If a sentence containing a proper name is meaningful, then the proper name is meaningful, i.e. it designates.

This is a standard assumption about compositionality.

BV: I have a  problem right here. I accept the compositionality of meaning. But a proper name can have meaning without designating anything.  As I see it, meaning splits into sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung).  And I don't see any need to distinguish between reference and designation. So there can be a proper name that has meaning (sense) without designating anything. 'Vulcan' (the planet) is an example.   Here is another:

'Kepler died in misery.'  The sentence is meaningful; hence, by compositionality, 'Kepler' is meaningful.  Now assume that presentism is true and that only present items exist. Then Kepler does not exist.  (Of course he does not exist now; the presentist implication is that he does not exist at all.)  If Kepler does not exist at all, then he cannot now be referred to or designated.  But when I now assertively utter 'Kepler died in misery,' I assert a proposition that is true now and is therefore meaningful now. It follows that the meaning of 'Kepler' is not exhausted by its designatum.  'Kepler' is not a mere Millian tag.  There may be Millian tags, but ordinary proper names are not such. 

Now London Ed is, I think, a presentist. If so, he ought to be open to the above argument.

b) If the proper name does not designate, the sentence containing it is not meaningful (contraposition).

BV: That is the case only if the meaning of a name = its referent, the thing designated.  That cannot be. Consider 'Vulcan does not exist.' It's true, hence meaningful. So 'Vulcan' has a meaning, by compositionality. If so, and if meaning = referent, then 'Vulcan' does not have meaning. Contradiction. Ergo, a proper name can have meaning without designating anything.  Negative existentials are a real problem for Millian theories of names.

c) If ‘God does not exist’ is true, then ‘God’ does not designate.

BV: No doubt.

d) If ‘God does not exist’ is true, then ‘God does not exist’ is meaningless.

BV: That is the case only on the assumption that the meaning of a name is exhausted by its reference, i.e., that the meaning of a name just is its designatum.  The assumption is false.

e) ‘God does not exist’ is not meaningless. (it is something debated over many centuries, no firm conclusion so far)

BV: That's right!

f) ‘God does not exist’ is meaningful, but not true (d and e above)

BV: That follows, but (d) is false.

g) ‘God does exist’ is true (excluded middle)

 BV: Valid move, but again (d) is false. So argument unsound.

h) Therefore God exists (disquotation)

BV: Valid inference, but again unsound.

A Christological and Mariological Query That Leads into the Philosophy of Language

Theme music: What If God Was One of Us  (just a slob like one of us)?

My favorite Oregonian luthier, Dave Bagwill, checks in:

Karl White wrote in your post of 12-6-18: "If Jesus is a person of the Godhead then it must hold that his essence is immutable and above contingent change, particularly in response to human actions." In what way COULD "Jesus"  be a 'person of the Godhead'? If I understand the classic narrative correctly, Mary, his mother, was a virgin who was made pregnant by the "overshadowing" of the Holy Spirit. So: there was an egg! A contingent egg,  with DNA. And something fertilized it, supernaturally.

That's right. On the classical narrative, Jesus was born of a virgin without a natural father. The fertilization of the ovum in Mary was by a supernatural, miraculous, process.  So while Jesus came into the world the way the rest of us poor schleps do, inter faeces et urinam nascimur, born between feces and urine, the pregnancy that eventuated in his birth was caused by the third person of the Trinity acting supernaturally upon natural material, namely the contingent ovum in contingent Mary, who is of course a creature who wouldn't have existed at all if nothing material had been created.

That was the moment of Jesus' conception. An eternal, pre-existent entity named 'Jesus' could not have existed before that conception, unless of course Mary's DNA contribution was of no account -  but in that case, we were not given 'the man Jesus Christ, made in every way like his brothers so that He might be merciful and faithful as High Priest'. Heb. 2.27. Also see 1 Tim. 2.5,6. Because - to be made like us 'in every way' either means just that, or it doesn't.  He was made in every way like us. If Mary made a DNA contribution at the moment of conception, then her son  'the man Jesus Christ ' did not pre-exist. Am I at all thinking clearly here?

Yes, Dave, you are thinking quite clearly, and I agree with you. But there are some nuances that give rise to questions that lead us into the philosophy of language and  metaphysics.

 

You and I take 'Jesus' to refer to a particular man, a composite of human soul and human body, born of a woman at a particular place at a particular time.  And I take it that we understand 'born' to imply that an entity that is born first comes into existence when it is born and did not exist before it was born.  To be born, then, is not for an immaterial Platonic soul-substance to acquire a material body, but for a soul-body composite to come into existence.  On this 'Aristotelian' conception of being born,  nothing that is born pre-existed its being born.  Being born is not an alterational (accidental) change, a change in an already-existing substratum/subject of change, but an existential (substantial) change, whereby something first comes into existence.

 

But couldn't someone who accepts the Chalcedonian one person-two natures view say that 'Jesus' refers to the Son, the second  person of the Trinity? In the earlier thread, Fr. Kirby says, "The man Jesus is a person of the Godhead, if we understand 'the man Jesus' to be denominative rather than descriptive."  I take it that a denominative term is one whose reference is not determined by the descriptive content, if any, that the term bears or suggests. Such a term refers directly as opposed to a descriptive term that refers via a description that an entity must satisfy in order to count as the referent of that term.  If we take 'the man Jesus'  to be denominative, then 'man' plays no role in determining the term's reference. The reference can succeed even if the referent is not a man.  (And of course the Son, taken in himself and apart from the Incarnation, is not a man, i.e., does not have a human nature, but only a divine nature.) If so, then the following identities hold and hold necessarily:

The Son = the man Jesus.

The Son = Jesus. 

It then follows that Jesus or the man Jesus is a person of the Godhead.  To clarify this further we need to dip into the philosophy of language.

 

How does 'Jesus' refer? Does it refer via a description that the name abbreviates, or does it refer directly?  Suppose by 'Jesus' we mean the Jewish carpenter born in Bethlehem to the virgin Mary by the agency of the Holy Spirit. The italicized phrase is what Russell calls a definite description, and his thesis about ordinary proper names is that they are definite descriptions in disguise. On this theory, 'Jesus' refers to whomever satisfies the description we associate with the name.  It follows that the referent of the name must have the properties mentioned in the description.  For example, 'Jesus' cannot refer to anything that was not born of a woman. Now the second person of the Trinity, necessary, co-eternal with the Father, etc., was not born of a woman, or born at all,  nor was he from all eternity a carpenter, etc. Recall how I explained 'born' above: an entity that is born first comes into existence when it is born and did not exist before it was born. If this is what is meant by 'born,' then the Son (second person of the Trinity, Word, Logos) cannot be born. But then how are we to understand the Incarnation?  The idea, of course, is that God the Son came into the material world by being born of a virginal human female.  But how is this possible if nothing that is born pre-exists its being born?

 

We seem faced with an aporetic triad:

Jesus was born;

The Son of God was not born;

Jesus is the Son of God.

What's the solution? There is no problem if two different senses of 'born' are in play. I suppose I will be told that the Son is born in the following sense: the pre-existent Son which has prior to the Incarnation a divine nature only, acquires at the Incarnation a human nature in addition to the divine nature.  Thus there is one person (suppositum, hypostasis), and that person is the second person of the Trinity, God the Son who, before the Incarnation has exactly one nature, the divine nature, and after the Incarnation exactly two natures, one divine the other human.  Being born, for the Son, is then an alterational change in the Son: the pre-existent Son acquires a second nature.

 

The trouble with this answer is that it implies that Jesus is not "made in every way like his brothers." He is born in a different way.  He is born in a Platonic or rather quasi-Platonic way whereas we are born in the 'Aristotelian' way.  Dave and I did not exist before we were born/conceived.  Jesus did exist before he was born/conceived assuming that 'Jesus' is used denominatively as opposed to descriptively.  When we were born/conceived, we didn't acquire something that we lacked before, human nature; we were nothing at all before.  But when Jesus was born he acquired something he did not have before, human nature.

 

My interim conclusion is that it is deeply problematic to take 'Jesus' as referring to God the Son. Insofar forth, Dave is vindicated against Karl. Jesus is no member of the Godhead.

Literal and Figurative

Suppose I am giving an argument while leading a hike. The guy directly behind me says, "I'm not following you." The sentence is ambiguous. In one sense -- call it the first -- it is plainly false; in the other sense -- call it the second -- it could be true. If the hiker behind me is not joking or lying, he is stating that he doesn't understand my argument, or see how the premises support the conclusion.

Obviously, we have here two different uses of 'follow.'

My question is: Is the second use literal or figurative?

Cast your vote for one of the four candidates below:

A. Both uses are literal.
B. Both uses are figurative.
C. The first is literal, the second is figurative.
D. The first is figurative, the second is literal.

(The same problem arises with respect to my use of 'see' above. Literal or figurative? If I see or don't see how a conclusion follows from premises, is that a literal or a figurative use of 'see'?)

See my Facebook page for the votes.

Of 'Shit' and 'S**t,' Type and Token

How many words immediately below, two or one?

cat

cat.

Both answers are plausible, and indeed equally plausible; but they can't both be right. There can't be both two words and one word. The obvious way to solve the problem is by distinguishing between token and type. We say: there are two tokens of the same type. One type, two tokens. That's a good proximate solution but not, if I am right, a good ultimate one. But that's a long story for another time.

Some write 's**t' to avoid writing 'shit.' Aren't they two tokens of the same word type? How then can one token be offensive and the other not? Or one more offensive than the other?

Here is a dilemma for your delectation:

Either we have two tokens of the same type or we don't. If the former, then both are offensive, and nothing is gained in point of politeness by writing 's**t' instead of 'shit.'

If, on the other hand, the inscriptions are not two tokens of the same type, then 's**t' cannot substitute for 'shit' in a manner that conveys the same meaning that 'shit' conveys to the English speaker.

We seem to have sunk into some really deep shit/s**t!

(Crossposted at my FB page where I expect some discussion to erupt.)

Millianism and Presentism: An Aporetic Pentad

A Millian about proper names holds that the meaning of a proper name is exhausted by its referent. Thus the meaning of 'Socrates' is Socrates.  The meaning just is the denotatum. Fregean sense and reasonable facsimiles thereof  play no role in reference. If so, vacuous names, names without denotata, are meaningless.

Presentism, roughly, is the claim that present items alone exist. This implies that no past or future items exist in the sense of 'exists' that the presentist shares with the eternalist who maintains that past, present, and future individuals all exist.  What exactly this sense is is a nut we will leave for later cracking. 

Now Socrates is a wholly past individual: he existed, but he does presently exist. It follows on presentism that Socrates does not exist at all. The point is not the tautology that Socrates, who is wholly past, does not exist at present. The point is that our man does not exist, period: he is now nothing at all.  

We now have the makings of an aporetic pentad:

1) 'Socrates' has meaning. (Moorean fact)

2) The meaning of a proper name is its referent.  (Millian thesis)

3) If a name refers to x, then x exists.  (Plausible assumption)

4) 'Socrates' refers to a wholly past individual. (Moorean fact)

5) There are no past individuals. (Presentism)

It is easy to see that the pentad is logically inconsistent: the limbs cannot all be true. Which should we reject?

Only three of the propositions are candidates for rejection: (2), (3), (5).   Of these three, (3) is the least rejectable, (5) is the second least rejectable, and (2) the most rejectable.

So I solve the pentad by rejecting the Millian thesis about proper names.

You might budge me from my position if you can give me a powerful argument for the Millian thesis.

Here, then, we have an 'aporetic' polyad that is not a genuine aporia. It is soluble and I just solved it.

The Recalcitrant Ostrich will probably disagree.

Does the Validity of an Argument Depend on the Order of its Premises?

Suppose you have a valid argument. Can you render the argument invalid by changing the display order of the premises?

I should think never. The Dark Ostrich, however, offers the following putative counterexample. He says he got it from Sainsbury; I should like to see a reference.  And if there is a literature on this, I should like to see a bibliography.

(A) Some Greek is called ‘Mark’, Mark is an evangelist, therefore some Greek is an evangelist. (VALID)

(B) Mark is an evangelist, some Greek is called ‘Mark’, therefore some Greek is an evangelist. (NOT VALID)

(A) is valid and (B) is not. But this is not evidence that premise order affects validity. For while the sentences are the same, the premises of the two arguments are not the same.  Made explicit, (A) becomes

(A*) Some Greek is called 'Mark', this same individual called 'Mark is an evangelist, therefore some Greek is an evangelist.

Clearly, (A*) and (B) have different premises. So it is not the different order of the premises in (B) that causes it to be invalid.

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.

Proper Names

The Ostrich maintains:

1. Proper names have a (context dependent) sense. Context dependent, because ‘Mars’ can mean the god, or the planet, depending on context.

BV: Agreed.

2. The object itself cannot be part of the sense, although the mainstream view is that it is.

BV: What is being called the mainstream view, I take it, is the direct reference view according to which the semantics of a proper name is exhausted by its reference.  That is, there is nothing more to the meaning of a proper name than its referent. There is not, in addition to the referent, a (reference-mediating) sense that the name has whether or not it has a referent.  This implies that an empty (vacuous) name has no meaning.

The formulation of (2) leaves something to be desired. If we distinguish sense from reference/referent, as we must, then it is trivially true that the object, the planet Mars say, cannot be part of the sense. What's more, (2) misrepresents the mainstream view. No direct reference theorist holds that proper names have reference-mediating senses. No such theorist can be maintaining that the object itself is part of a reference-mediating sense. So (2) might be read like this:

2*. The object itself cannot be part of the MEANING of the name, although the mainstream view is that it is.

The trouble with (2*) is that it is false. Surely Mars is part of the MEANING of 'Mars' inasmuch as Mars is the referent of 'Mars.' 

The Ostrich's argument seems to perish at this point of an equivocation on 'sense' as between 'sense' in the sense of Frege's  Sinn and MEANING where the latter embraces both Sinn und Bedeutung, both sense and reference in Fregean jargon.

3. Nor can the sense signify some property, or collection of properties. Not a collection, for the reasons Kripke has cogently argued. Not a single ‘haecceity’, for the reasons you have argued.

BV: Right, if you mean sense as opposed to reference/referent. 

4. The only remaining candidate (in my view) is that a proper name acquires its meaning via anaphora (i.e. ‘back reference’). In all cases. 

BV: What do you mean by 'meaning'?  Do you mean sense as opposed to reference/referent?  My verdict is that your argument is still too murky to be evaluated. 

Use and Mention

You should never use 'progressives' without sneer quotes because 'progressives' are destructive leftists who confuse change with progress.

The offensive term is mentioned in the first independent clause, and then used in the second, albeit in an altered sense.  When I write that 'progressives' are destructive, mendacious, devoid of common sense, and so on, I am talking about a certain bunch of malcontents; I am not talking about a word.

Related articles

Harry Binswanger on Why Language Matters

What is Ed's Puzzle?

This just in from London:

             A man called ‘Socrates’ is running and Socrates is debating. 

Clearly if anyone verifies ‘a man called ‘Socrates’, and if ‘a man who is debating’ verifies that same person, then the conjunction appears to be true. And any number of men can be called ‘Socrates’, and be running and debating. But there’s the puzzle. The sense, the meaning, the semantics of ‘Socrates’ seems simply to ensure sameness of reference, or rather sameness of predication. ‘Is running’ and ‘is debating’ must be true of the same individual. But then the sense of the name is the same, whoever the sentences are verified of. Which paradoxically contradicts the classical theory of proper names, namely that a proper name cannot apply to different individuals in the same sense. Mill, A System of Logic:

Thus man is capable of being truly affirmed of John, George, Mary, and other persons without assignable limit; and it is affirmed of all of them in the same sense; for the word man expresses certain qualities, and when we predicate it of those persons, we assert that they all possess those qualities. But John is only capable of being truly affirmed of one single person, at least in the same sense. For, though there are many persons who bear that name, it is not conferred upon them to indicate any qualities, or any thing which belongs to them in common; and can not be said to be affirmed of them in any sense at all, consequently not in the same sense.

BV:  More puzzling than Ed's puzzle is the puzzle of what Ed's puzzle is supposed to be.  Call the latter 'the meta-puzzle.' I will try to solve it.

It is a datum that there are many men and animals who rejoice under the name 'Socrates.' When we philosophers invoke the name in philosophical contexts, we refer to the famous teacher of Plato. But there is also Socrates Jones, the rather less distinguished fellow who failed to get tenure at Whatsamatta U. There is also  Socrates of Scranton, the resident bullshitter at the famous coffee house Insufficient Grounds. And so on.

In short, there are many men who bear the name 'Socrates.'  Consider any one of them. Any one of them could verify (make true) the conjunctive proposition:

A man called ‘Socrates’ is running and Socrates is debating.

But then 'Socrates' in the second conjunct of the conjunctive proposition would appear not to refer to a particular person such as Socrates Jones in contradistinction from Socrates of Scranton, Socrates the teacher of Plato, etc.  The name refers to any one person who verifies or make true both halves of the conjunction.  This suggests to Ed, assuming I understand him,  that the semantic function of 'Socrates' in the second conjunct is exhausted by its anaphoric or back-referential function. If so, the semantic function of 'Socrates' is wholly intralinguistic.

But let's not worry now about Ed's positive theory. Let's just ruminate over the puzzle he takes as (part of the) motivation for his positive theory.  We can set it forth as an aporetic dyad:

A. A proper name cannot apply to different individuals in the same sense. (J. S. Mill)

B. A proper name can apply to different individuals in the same sense.

The limbs of the dyad are logical contradictories. And yet both limbs are very plausible.

Mill's point is that once we fix on a uniform usage of 'Socrates' to refer to one single thing such as the famous Greek philosopher who taught Plato, then that name in that sense cannot be used to refer to anything else.  Pretty obvious, eh? Otherwise there would be no proper names.  What makes a proper name proper is precisely that it cannot have more than one bearer.

Ed's point is that a proper name can apply to different individuals in the very same sense in that the 'Socrates' used in the second conjunct has the very same sense as the 'Socrates' mentioned in the first conjunct.

At this point Ed must tell me whether I have finally grasped his puzzle and thereby solved the meta-puzzle as to what his puzzle is.

If he returns an affirmative answer to this question, then we can proceed. If and only if.

Related articles

On the Reference of Proper Names

What's in a pronoun?

Maverick Philosopher: The Function-Argument Schema in the Analysis of Propositions, Part II

A Reference Puzzle

Ed submits the following:

Suppose I am looking at a crowd of people and cry ‘there is a man in the crowd!’. Well very likely, and clearly I have some man in mind. But the predicate ‘is a man in the crowd’ is not just true of him, but of every man in the crowd. So what I have said is true of each of the men, at least in one sense of ‘true of’. 

Yet on the other hand. I go on to say ‘he is wearing a red scarf’. And suppose three men are wearing red scarves. So what I say is true of just three men, but still more than one. Finally I say ‘the man is carrying a poster of Che’, and suppose only one red scarved man is carrying such a poster. So it is now clear who I am talking about. But wasn’t I talking about the same man all along? So in another sense of ‘true of’, my initial statement ‘there is a man in the crowd’ was true of just one man, namely the one in the red scarf, carrying the Che poster.

Difficult. It is this sort of consideration that led Sommers (and Brandom and Chastain and probably others) to suppose that some existentially quantified sentences ‘refer’. Geach disagreed, he had a famous and very bitter dispute with Sommers in the TLS, although I haven’t been able to find this.

You see a man in a crowd, wearing a red scarf, and carrying a poster of Che. You don't see some man or other, but a definite man, one and the same man singled out in a series of visual perceptions.  You exclaim, 'There is a man in the crowd' and your utterance is true. Not only is it true, it records (part of) the content of your perception.

The problem, I take, it is to find a way to avoid the following contradiction: 'There is a man in the crowd' is about any man in the crowd and yet it is about exactly one man. (We are assuming that there is more than one man in the crowd.) 

Perhaps something like the distinction between speaker's reference and semantic reference will help. I say to you: 'The man in the corner with champagne in his glass is the new dean.' I have managed to refer, successfully, to a particular man and draw your attention to him. Moreover, I have supplied you with a bit of correct information about him. And yet there is no man in the corner with champagne in his glass. For what there is in his glass is acqua minerale.

The reference has failed, and yet the reference has succeeded. Contradiction. Solution? The distinction just mentioned. The definite description 'The man in the corner with champagne is his glass' lacks a semantic referent which is to say: the definite description considered apart from the speaker and his intentions does not refer to anything since nothing satisfies it. But the description does have a speaker's (and a hearer's) referent.

Similarly, we can say that the existentially general sentence 'There is a man in the crowd,' considered by itself apart from the perceptual situation in which the speaker visually singles out a man with a red scarf holding a Che poster, is not about any particular man such as Manny Manischewitz. For it could just as well be about Kasimir Bonch-Osmolovsky or Giacomo Giacopuzzi.  (All three gentlemen are in the crowd.) Absent this abstraction from the perceptual situation, however, the existentially general sentence is about the one definite man in the red scarf, etc. 

On the Reference of Proper Names

London Ed writes and I respond in blue:

Still thinking about how to frame the main argument, so please help me out here. 

               There is a woman called ‘Clinton’. Clinton is a politician. 

I claim there is a semantic connection between the name ‘Clinton’ that is used in the second sentence, but mentioned in the first sentence. It is this connection which licenses the inference to ‘some woman is a politician’.  My central claim is that this exhausts the semantics of the proper name. The function of the name is simply to connect the second sentence to the first.

 My question is, what arguments best support my claim. Some ideas.

(1) It’s just obvious that ‘Clinton’ refers back to the first sentence. The meaning of the two sentences is unchanged whether we write ‘he’ or ‘the man’. But since ‘he’ is just a pronoun, whose only function is to back-refer, it follows that ‘Clinton’ here is no primary reference.

BV: Your second example, then, is this:

There is a man named 'Clinton.' He is a politician.

And so 'Clinton' in the second sentence of the first example is merely a device of back reference.  Is that what you are maintaining?

We agree, of course, that 'he' is a pronoun the antecedent of which is 'Clinton.'  And so 'he' refers back to 'Clinton.'  Back reference is a word-word relation. The antecedent of a pronoun is a word, not the (extralinguistic) thing to which the word refers, assuming it refers to something.  What I deny is that 'he' in this context merely back refers.  I maintain that it also refers to Bill Clinton, a chunk of extralinguistic reality, where 'refers' picks out a word-WORLD relation.

Back reference is an intralinguistic relation; reference is an extralinguistic relation.  The reference of 'he' piggybacks on the reference of 'Clinton.' It picks up the reference of 'Clinton.'

But it is more complicated than this. For there is reference, not back reference, within a language.  For example,

" 'Red' " refers to 'red.'

There is nothing to stop us from naming words. This is a case of intralinguistic reference, not back reference.  Therefore, one cannot identify intralinguistic reference with back reference. All back reference is intralinguistic, but not all intralinguistic reference is back reference. A fortiori, one cannot identify extralinguistic reference with back reference.

It is also worth noting that 'back' in 'back reference' is an alienans adjective.

It is not clear what your thesis is. Are you an eliminativist about extralinguistic reference? That is, do you deny that proper names refer extralinguistically? Or perhaps you are an identitarian. Perhaps you hold that there is extralinguistic reference of proper names but that it reduces to back reference. (Some say that there are mental states all right, but that what they are are brain states. This is an identitarian, not an eliminativist, position. Notionally they are different even if it can be shown that identitarianism collapses of necessity into eliminativism.)

Or perhaps you maintain neither of these theses.  I'd guess you are an eliminativist from your opening statement.  I take it that you accept that there is a real world of concrete things external to language. If language 'hooks on' to these things, then presumably not via proper names. How then? Via bound variables in the Quinean way?  Or do you hold that language does not hook on to language-external things at all?

I suggest that you will never gain a hearing for your ideas unless you can answer convincingly questions such as the foregoing.

For most of us it is a datum that there is extralinguistic reference to existing concrete things in space and time.  We take it as given that in the paradigm cases reference is a word-world relation.  The theoretical problems, then, are to understand how reference is possible and how it is achieved. But you seem to be denying the datum: you seem to be denying that there is extralinguistic reference, or at least, extralinguistic reference via proper names. 

 

The Function-Argument Schema in the Analysis of Propositions, Part II

A second installment from the Ostrich of London. 

Another difficulty with the function-argument theory is staring us in the face, but generally unappreciated for what it is. As Geach says, the theory presupposes an absolute category-difference between names and predicables, which comes out in the choice of ‘fount’ [font] for the schematic letters corresponding to name and predicable. For example ‘Fa’, where the upper case ‘F’ represents the predicable, as Geach calls it, and lower case ‘a’ the name. As a direct result, there is only one negation of the proposition, i.e. ‘~Fa’, where the tilde negates whatever is expressed by ‘Fa’. But ‘F’ is a function mapping the referent of ‘a’ onto the True or the False, so ‘~Fa’ says that a does not map onto the True. The object a is there all right, but maps to a different truth-value. Thus ‘Fa’ implies ExFx, ‘~Fa’ implies Ex~Fx, and excluded middle (Fa or ~Fa) implies that something, i.e. a, does or does not satisfy F. The function-argument account has the bizarre consequence that the name always has a referent, which either does or does not satisfy the predicable. There is no room for the name not being satisfied. Indeed, the whole point of the function theory is to distinguish the idea of satisfaction, which only applies to predicables, from reference, which is a feature of proper names only. As Frege points out here:

The word 'common name' is confusing .. for it makes it look as though the common name stood under the same, or much the same relation to the objects that fall under the concept as the proper name does to a single object. Nothing could be more false! In this case it must, of course, appear as though a common name that belongs to an empty concept were as illegitimate as a proper name that designates [bezeichnet] nothing.

The scholastic two-term account, by contrast, allows for the non-satisfaction of the proper name. ‘Frodo is a hobbit’ is true if and only if something satisfies both ‘hobbit’ and ‘Frodo’. It is essential to Aristotle’s theory of the syllogism, as Geach notes, that the middle term (the one which appears in both premisses) can be subject in one premiss, predicate in another. The notion of ‘satisfaction’ or ‘supposition’ applies to both subject and predicate, even if the subject is a proper name like ‘Frodo’. Thus the negation of ‘Frodo is a hobbit’ can be true in two ways. Either some individual satisfies ‘Frodo’ but does not satisfy ‘hobbit’. We express this in English by so-called predicate negation ‘Frodo is not a hobbit’, where the negative is placed after the copula. Or no individual satisfies ‘Frodo’, which we can express by placing the negation before the whole proposition, ‘it is not the case that Frodo is a hobbit’. So the scholastic theory neatly accounts for empty proper names. Not so for the function-argument theory, a difficulty which was recognised early on. Frege developed a complex and (in my view) ultimately incoherent theory of sense and reference. Russell thought that proper names were really disguised descriptions, which is actually a nod to the scholastic theory.

Of course there is a separate problem for the two term theory, of making sense of a proper name not being ‘satisfied’. What concept is expressed by the proper name that is satisfied or not satisfied, and which continues to exist as a concept even if the individual ceases to exist? Bill and I have discussed this many times, probably too many times for his liking.

BV: What is particularly interesting here is the claim that Russell's theory of proper names is a nod to to the scholastic theory.  This sounds right, although we need to bear in mind that Russell's description theory is a theory of ordinary proper names. Russell also allows for logically proper names, which are not definite descriptions in disguise.  The Ostrich rightly points out that that for Frege there there is an absolute categorial difference between names and predicables.  I add that this is the linguistic mirror of the absolute categorial difference in Frege between objects and concepts (functions). No object is a concept, and no concept is an object.  No object can be predicated, and no concept can be named. This leads directly to the Paradox of the Horse:  The concept horse is not a concept. Why not? Because 'the concept horse' is a name, and whatever you name is an object. 

This is paradoxical and disturbing because it imports ineffability into concepts and thus into logic. If concepts cannot be named and objectified, then they are not wholly graspable.  This is connected with the murky notion of the unsaturatedness of concepts. The idea is not that concepts cannot exist uninstantiated; the idea is that concepts have a 'gappy' nature that allows them to combine with objects without the need for a tertium quid to tie them together.   Alles klar?

Now it seems to me that Russell maintains the absolute categorial difference between logically proper names and predicates/predicables. ('Predicable' is a Geachian term and it would be nice to hear how the Ostrich defines it.) Correct me if I am wrong, but this presupposition of an absolute categorial difference between logically proper names and predicates/predicables is a presupposition of all standard modern logic.  It is 1-1 with the assumption that there are atomic propositions.

Here is one problem.  On the Russellian and presumably also on the scholastic theory, an ordinary proper name stands to its nominatum in the same relation as a predicate to the items that satisfy it.  Call this relation 'satisfaction.'  Socrates satisfies 'Socrates' just as he and Plato et al. satisfy 'philosopher.' Now if an item satisfies a term, then it instantiates the concept expressed by the term. But what is the concept that 'Socrates' expresses?  One candidate is: the unique x such that x is the teacher of Plato. Another is: the greatest philosopher who published nothing. 

Notice, however, that on this approach singularity goes right out the window. 'Socrates' is a singular term. But 'the greatest philosopher who published nothing' is a general term despite the fact that the latter term, if satisfied, can be satisfied by only one individual in the world that happens to be actual. It is general because it is satisfied by different individuals in different possible worlds. Without prejudice to his identity, Socrates might not have been the greatest philosopher to publish nothing.  He might not have been a philosopher at all. So a description theory of names cannot do justice to the haecceity of Socrates. What makes Socrates precisely this individual cannot be some feature accidental to him. Surely the identity of an individual is essential to it.

If we try to frame a concept that captures Socrates' haecceity, we hit a brick wall.  Concepts are effable; an individual's haeceity or thisness is ineffable.  Aristotle says it somewhere, though not in Latin: Individuum ineffabile est.  The individual as such is ineffable. There is no science of the particular qua particular.  There is no conceptual understanding of the particular qua particular because the only concepts we can grasp are general in the broad way I am using 'general.'  And of course all understanding is conceptual involving as it does the subsumption of particular under concepts.

Some will try the following move.  They will say that 'Socrates' expresses the concept, Socrateity, the concept of being Socrates, or being identical to Socrates. But this haecceity concept is a pseudo-concept.  For we had to bring in the non-concept Socrates to give it content.

There are no haecceity concepts. As the Ostrich appreciates, this causes trouble for the scholastic two-name theory of predication according to which 'Socrates' and 'wise' are both names, and the naming relation is that of satisfaction.  It makes sense to say that the concept wise person is uninstantiated. But it makes no sense to say that the concept Frodoity is uninstantiated for the simple reason that there cannot be any such concept.

It looks like we are at an impasse. We get into serious trouble if we go the Fregean route and hold that names and predicates/predicables are radically disjoint and that the naming/referring relation is toto caelo different from the satisfaction relation.  But if we regress to the scholastic two-name theory, then we have a problem with empty names. 

Related articles

The Function-Argument Schema in the Analysis of Propositions

The Function-Argument Schema in the Analysis of Propositions

The Ostrich of London sends the following to which I add some comments in blue.

Vallicella: ‘One of Frege's great innovations was to employ the function-argument schema of mathematics in the analysis of propositions’.  

Peter Geach (‘History of the Corruptions of Logic’, in Logic Matters 1972, 44-61) thinks it actually originated with Aristotle, who suggests (Perihermenias 16b6) that a sentence is composed of a noun (ὄνομα) and a verb (ῥῆμα), and the verb is a sign of something predicated of something else. According to Geach, Aristotle dropped this name-predicate theory of the proposition later in the Analytics, an epic disaster ‘comparable only to the fall of Adam’, so that logic had to wait more than two thousand years before the ‘restitution of genuine logic’ ushered in by Frege and Russell. By ‘genuine logic’ he means modern predicate logic, which splits a simple proposition into two parts, a function expression, roughly corresponding to a verb, and an argument expression, roughly corresponding to a noun. ‘To Frege we owe it that modern logicians almost universally accept an absolute category-difference between names and predicables; this comes out graphically in the choice of letters from different founts [fonts] of type for the schematic letters of variables answering to these two categories’.

The Fregean theory of the proposition has never seemed coherent to me. Frege began his studies (Jena and Göttinge, 1869–74) as a mathematician. Mathematicians naturally think in terms of ‘functions’ expressing a relation between one number and another. Thus

            f(3)  =  9

where ‘3’ designates the argument or input to the function, corresponding to Aristotle’s ὄνομα, ‘f()’ the function, here y=x², corresponding to Aristotle’s ῥῆμα, and ‘9’ the value of the function. The problem is the last part. There is nothing in the linguistic form of the proposition which corresponds to the value in the linguistic form of the mathematical function. It is invisible. Now Frege thinks that every propositional function or ‘concept’ maps the argument to one of two values, either the True or the False. OK, but this is a mapping which, unlike the mathematical mapping, cannot be expressed in language. We can of course write

            ___ is wise(Socrates) = TRUE

but then we have to ask whether that equality is true or false, i.e. whether the function ‘is_wise(--) = TRUE’ itself maps Socrates onto the true or the false. The nature of the value (the ‘truth value’) always eludes us. There is a sort of veil beyond which we cannot reach, as though language were a dark film over the surface of the still water, obscuring our view of the Deep.

BV: First a quibble. There is no need for the copula 'is' in the last formula since, for Frege, concepts (which are functions) are 'unsaturated' (ungesaettigt) or incomplete.  What exactly this means, of course, is  a separate problem.  The following suffices:

___wise(Socrates) = TRUE.

The line segment '___' represents the gappiness or unsaturatedness of the concept expressed by the concept-word (Begriffswort).

Quibbling aside, the Ostrich makes two correct interrelated points, the first negative, the second positive.

The first is that while 'f(3) = 9' displays the value of the function for the argument 3, namely 9, a sentence that expresses a (contingent) proposition does NOT display its truth-value. The truth-value remains invisible. I would add that this is so whether I am staring at a physical sententional inscription or whether I am contemplating a proposition with the eye of the mind.  The truth or falsity of a contingent proposition is external to it.  No doubt, 'Al is fat' is true iff Al is fat.' But this leaves open the question whether Al is fat.  After all the biconditional is true whether or not our man is, in fact, obese.

The second point is that there has to be something external to a contingent proposition (such as the one expressed by 'Socrates is wise') that is involved in its being true, but this 'thing,' -- for Frege the truth-value -- is ineffable.  Its nature eludes us as the Ostrich correctly states.  I used the somewhat vague phrase 'involved in its being true' to cover two possibilities. One is the Fregean idea that declarative sentences have both sense and reference and that the referent (Bedeutung) of a whole declarative sentence is a truth-value.  The other idea, which makes a lot more sense to me, is that a sentence such as 'Socrates is wise' has a referent, but the referent is a truth-making fact or state of affairs, the fact of Socrates' being wise.

Now both of these approaches have their difficulties.  But they have something sound in common, namely, the idea that there has to be something external to the contingent declarative sentence/proposition involved in its being true rather than false.  There has to be more to a true proposition than its sense.  It has to correspond to reality.  But what does this correspondence really come to? Therein lies a major difficulty.  

How will the Ostrich solve it? My impression is that he eliminates the difficulty by eliminating reference to the extralinguistic entirely. 

Related articles

Maverick Philosopher: God, Truth, Reality Denial: A Response to Some Questions

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.

Lukáš Novák on Use and Mention

From a comment in a now fast-receding earlier thread:

An editor trying to impose a clear use-mention distinction on authors soon realises that most certainly words can be both used and mentioned, and that it is not inherently wrong. BTW, the Scholastics believed that in the case of the so-called material supposition it is regularly the case: cf. "man is a noun" (note the lack of quotes around "man"); and the apparatus of material supposition cannot be always equivalently "translated" into the "quoting" convention.

There are also some interesting cases involving quotes:

- Nietzsche said that "God is dead".

Here the phrase "God is dead" is both used to complete the sentence, and mentioned as that what Nietzsche literally said.

Scare quotes:

- I cannot wait to hear and refute Peter's "arguments".

"Arguments" is both used to refer disparagingly to what Peter presents as arguments, and mentioned as the word Peter actually uses.

To be clear, the issue is not whether words can be both used and mentioned, but whether some words can be both used and mentioned in the same sentence or clause or phrase.  The answer, I think, is yes. The challenge is to find crystal-clear examples.

When I am quoting an actual person's words, I use double quotation marks. These are genuine quotation marks. When I am not quoting, but mentioning a word, phrase, clause, or sentence, I use single 'quotation' marks as in:

'Boston' is disyllabic.

Please note that the indentation, as just performed, serves a mentioning function but without the messiness of additional 'quotation' marks.

Besides quoting and mentioning there is also sneering/scaring. For sneering/scaring I use single 'quotation' marks as in

There is nothing liberal about contemporary 'liberals.'

and

I use single 'quotation' marks to show that a word is being misused or analogically extended.

You can begin to see from this what a punctilious pedant and language Nazi I am.  There are other niceties and puzzles relating to all of this, but let's proceed to Dr. Novak's examples, starting with the last one. This is a very interesting case, but it doesn't seem to me to be a totally clear example of a word being both used and mentioned. Simplify the example:

Peter's 'arguments' are fallacious.

No doubt, 'arguments' is being used in this sentence. Or rather, " 'arguments' " is being used in this sentence. But I don't see that it is being mentioned. The inverted commas signal that the word is being used in an extended or improper way to refer to something that really ought not be called an argument. An extended use is not a mention. 

Novak's second example is:

Nietzsche said that "God is dead."

But this is not a good English sentence, and so does not constitute a clear example. One must write either

(a) Nietzsche said that God is dead

or

(b) Nietzsche said, "God is dead."

In (a), 'that God is dead' is being used to refer to the content of Nietzsche's assertion, while in (b) the sentence Nietzsche wrote is mentioned.

 

Novak's first example is:

Man is a noun. 

I'm sorry, but that is just false. 'Man' is a noun, not man. 'Man' is monosyllabic, but no man is monosyllabic.  'Man' is a word, but no man is a word.

Finally, an example that seems to work:

Big Bill Broonzy was so-called because of his size.

Clearly the name is being used to refer to a black bluesman. But that he was called 'Big Bill Broonzy' because of his size is also conveyed by the sentence. The name is therefore both used and (implicitly) mentioned in the same sentence. 

Logical Form, Equivocation, and Propositions

Ed Buckner wants to re-fight old battles. I'm game. The following post of his, reproduced verbatim, just appeared at Dale Tuggy's site:

The concept of logical form is essential to any discussion of identity, and hence to any discussion of the Trinity. Here is a puzzle I have been discussing with the famous Bill Vallicella for many years.

(Argument 1) ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Cicero is a Roman’

(Argument 2) ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’

My puzzle [is] that the first argument is clearly not valid if the first ‘Cicero’ means the Roman, the second the American town, yet the argument seems to instantiate a valid form. Bill objects that if there is equivocation, then the argument really has the form ‘a is F, therefore b is F’, which fails to instantiate a valid form.

I then ask what is the form of. Clearly not of the sentences, since the sentences do not include the meaning or the proposition. Is it the form of the proposition expressed by the sentences? But then we have the problem of the second argument, where both ‘Cicero’ and ‘Tully’ mean the same man. Then the man is contained in both propositions, and if the form is of the proposition, the argument has the true form ‘a is F, so a is F’, which is valid. But I think no one would agree that the second argument is valid.

So logical form does not belong to the sentences, nor to the propositions expressed by them. So what is it the form of?

My answer is that the logical form of the argument is the form of the Fregean propositions expressed by the sentences that make up the argument. Let me explain.

I agree with Ed that logical form is not the form of an array of sentence-tokens. It is rather the form of an array of propositions expressed by the sentences. (To be painfully precise: it is the form of an array of propositions expressed by the assertive utterance, and thus the tokening, of a series of sentence-types by a speaker or thinker on a given occasion. A sentence-token buried in a book does not express anything by itself!)

To solve Ed's puzzle we need to distinguish three views of propositions: the Aristotelian, the Fregean, and the Russellian. This would be a good topic for an extended post. Here I will be brief.  Brevity is the soul of blog.

An Aristotelian proposition is an assertively uttered meaningful sentence in the indicative mood that expresses a complete thought.  What makes such a proposition 'Aristotelian' as opposed to 'Platonic' is that the meaning of the sentence is not something that can subsist on its own apart from the assertive tokening of the sentence.  The meaning of the sentence depends on its being expressed, whether in overt speech or in thought, by someone. If there were no minds there would be no Aristotelian propositions. And if there were no languages there would be no Aristotelian propositions. In this sense, Aristotelian propositions are linguistic entities.

In brief: An Aristotelian proposition is just a declarative sentence in use together with its dependent sense or meaning. Suppose I write a declarative sentence on a piece of paper. The Aristotelian proposition is not the string of physical marks on the paper, nor it is the producing of the marks; it is the marks as produced by a minded organism on a particular occasion together with the meaning those marks embody.

A Fregean proposition is a nonlinguistic entity that subsists independently of minds and language. It is the sense (Sinn) of a declarative sentence from which indexical elements have been extruded. For example, 'I am blogging'  does not express a Fregean proposition because of the indexical 'I' and because of the present tense of the verb phrase.  But 'BV blogs at 10:50 AM PST on 4 September 2017' expresses a Fregean proposition.

Fregean senses are extralinguistic and extramental 'abstract' or 'Platonic' items.  They are not in time or space even when the objects they are about are in time and space. This is what makes Fregean propositions 'Platonic' rather than 'Aristotelian.' Fregean propositions are the primary truth-bearers; the sentences that express them are derivatively true or false.

A Russellian proposition is a blurry, hybrid entity that combines some of the features of a Fregean truth-bearer and some of the features of a truth-maker. A Russellian proposition does not reside at the level of sense (Sinn) but at the level of reference (Bedeutung).  It is out there in the (natural) world. It is what some of us call a fact or 'concrete fact' (as in my existence book) and others a state of affairs.  

Now consider a singular sentence such as 'Ed is happy.'  For present purposes, the crucial difference between a Fregean proposition and a Russellian proposition is that, on the Fregean view, the subject constituent of Ed is happy is not Ed himself with skin and hair, but an abstract surrogate that represents him in the Fregean proposition, whereas in the Russellian proposition Ed himself is a constituent of the proposition!

We needn't consider why so many distinguished philosophers have opted for this (monstrous) view.  But this is the view that seems to have Ed in its grip and that powers his puzzle above.

If we take the relatively saner (but nonetheless problematic) view that propositions are Fregean in nature, then the puzzle is easily solved.

Ed asks: What is the logical form the form of?  He maintains, rightly, that it cannot be the form of an array of sentences. So it must be the form of an array of propositions. Right again. But then he falls into puzzlement: 

. . . ‘Cicero’ and ‘Tully’ mean the same man. Then the man is contained in both propositions, and if the form is of the proposition, the argument has the true form ‘a is F, so a is F’, which is valid.

The puzzlement disappears if we reject the Russsellian theory of propositions. A man cannot be contained in a proposition. and so it cannot be the same man in both propositions.

‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’ is plainly invalid. Its form is: Rc, ergo Rt, which is an invalid form. If we adopt  either an Aristotelian or a Fregean view of propositions we will not be tempted to think otherwise.

‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Cicero is a Roman’ is plainly valid. ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’ is plainly invalid. The logical forms are different! If, on a Russellian theory of propositions, the forms are the same, then so much the worse for a Russellian theory of propositions!

A Question about Use and Mention

Here is a curious sentence suggested to me by London Ed:

1) The last word in this sentence refers to cats.

(1) is part of a larger puzzle the discussion which we leave for later. 

My question is this: Can a word be both used and mentioned in the same sentence?  It would seem so. (1) is no doubt an unusual sentence. But it is grammatical, makes sense, and is true.  

It seems that the last word in (1)  is being both used and mentioned. (Assume someone is uttering a token of (1).) The last word in the sentence is 'cats' and 'cats' refers to cats.  So the last word in (1) is being used. But it is also being mentioned. It is mentioned by 'the last word in this sentence.'

So it seems that one and the same word can be both used and mentioned in one and the same sentence.

What say you, London Ed?

Names on Grave Stones

The names on grave stones are proper names for a time, while the memories of survivors provide reference-fixing context. But with the passing of the survivors the names revert to commonality. After a while the dead may as well lie in a common grave. 

What lies below the stone is not Patrick J. McNally, but a Patrick J. McNally.  And not even this; rather, the bodily remains of a Patrick J. McNally.  The person has fled or no longer exists.

Against Ostrich Nominalism

As magnificent a subject as philosophy is, grappling as it does with the ultimate concerns of human existence, and thus surpassing in nobility any other human pursuit, it is also miserable in that nothing goes uncontested, and nothing ever gets established to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners.  (This is true of other disciplines as well, but in philosophy it is true in excelsis.) Suppose I say, as I have in various places:

That things have properties and stand in relations I take to be a plain Moorean fact beyond the reach of reasonable controversy. After all, my cat is black and he is sleeping next to my blue coffee cup.  ‘Black’ picks out a property, an extralinguistic feature of my cat.

Is that obvious?  Not to some.  Not to the ornery and recalcitrant critter known as the ostrich nominalist.  My cat, Max Black, is black.  That, surely, is a Moorean fact. Now consider the following biconditional and consider whether it too is a Moorean fact:

1. Max is black iff Max has the property of being black.

As I see it, there are three main ways of construing a biconditional such as (1):

A.  Ostrich Nominalism.  The right-hand side (RHS) says exactly what the left-hand side (LHS) says, but in a verbose and high-falutin' and dispensable way.  Thus the use of 'property' on the RHS does not commit one ontologically to properties beyond predicates.  (By definition, predicates are linguistic items while properties are extralinguistic and extramental.)  Predication is primitive and in need of no philosophical explanation.  On this approach, (1) is trivially true.  One needn't posit properties, and in consequence one needn't worry about the nature of property-possession. (Is Max related to his blackness, or does Max have his blackness quasi-mereologically  by having it as an ontological constituent of him?)

B. Ostrich Realism.  The RHS commits one ontologically to properties, but in no sense does the RHS serve to ground or explain the LHS.  On this approach, (1) is false if there are no properties.  For the ostrich realist, (1) is true, indeed necessarily true, but it is not the case that the LHS is true because the RHS is true.  Such notions as metaphysical grounding and philosophical explanation are foreign to the ostrich realist, but not in virtue of his being a realist, but  in virtue of his being an ostrich.

C. Non-Ostrich Realism.  On this approach, the RHS both commits one to properties, but also proffers a metaphysical ground of the truth of the LHS: the LHS is true because (ontologically or metaphysically speaking)  the concrete particular Max has the property of being black, and not vice versa.

Note 1: Explanation is asymmetrical; biconditionality is symmetrical.

Note 2: Properties needn't be universals.  They might be (abstract) particulars (unrepeatables) such as the tropes of D. C. Williams and Keith Campbell.  Properties must, however, be extralinguistic and extramental,  by definition.

Note 3: Property-possession needn't be understood in terms of instantiation or exemplification or Fregean 'falling-under'; it might be construed quasi-mereologically as constituency: a thing has a property by having it as a proper ontological part.

Against Ostrich Nominalism

On (A) there are neither properties, nor do properties enter into any explanation of predication.  Predication is primitive and in need of no explanation.  In virtue of what does 'black' correctly apply to Max? In virtue of nothing.  It just applies to him and does so correctly.  Max is black, but there is no feature of reality that explains why 'black' is true of Max, or why 'Max is black' is true.  It is just true!  There is nothing in reality that serves as the ontological ground of this contingent truth.  Nothing 'makes' it true.  There are no truth-makers and no need for any.

I find ostrich nominalism preposterous.  'Black' is true of Max, 'white' is not, but there is no feature of reality, nothing in or at or about Max that explains why the one predicate is true of him and the other is not!?  This is not really an argument but more an expression of incomprehension or incredulity, an autobiographical comment, if you will.  I may just be petering out, pace Professor van Inwagen.

Can I do better than peter?  'Black' is a predicate of English.  Schwarz is a predicate of German.  If there are no properties,  then Max is black relative to English, schwarz relative to German, noir relative to French, and no one color.  But this is absurd.  Max is not three different colors, but one color, the color we use 'black' to pick out, and the Germans use schwarz to pick out. When Karl, Pierre, and I look at Max we see the same color.  So there is one color we both see -- which would not be the case if there were no properties beyond predicates.  It is not as if I see the color black while Karl sees the color schwarz.  We see the same color.  And we see it at the cat.  This is not a visio intellectualis whereby we peer into some Platonic topos ouranos.  Therefore, there is something in, at, or about the cat, something extralinguistic, that grounds the correctness of the application of the predicate to the cat.

A related argument.  I say, 'Max is black.'  Karl says, Max ist schwarz.  'Is' and ist are token-distinct and type-distinct words of different languages.  If there is nothing in reality (no relation whether of instantiation or of constituency, non-relational tie, Bergmannian nexus, etc.) that the copula picks out, then it is only relative to German that Max ist schwarz, and only relative to English that Max is black.  But this is absurd.  There are not two different facts here but one.  Max is the same color for Karl and me, and his being black is the same fact for Karl and me.

Finally, 'Max is black' is true.  Is it true ex vi terminorum?  Of course not.  It is contingently true.  Is it just contingently true?  Of course not.  It is true because of the way extralinguistic reality is arranged. It is modally contingent, but also contingent upon the way the world is.  There's this cat that exists whether or not any language exists, and it is black whether or not any language exists.

Therefore, I say that for a predicate to be contingently true of an individual, (i) there must be individuals independently of language; (ii) there must be properties independently of language; and there must be facts or truth-making states of affairs independently of language.  Otherwise, you end up with (i) total linguistic idealism, which is absurd; or (ii) linguistic idealism about properties which is absurd; or (iii) a chaos, a world of disconnected particulars and properties.

The above is a shoot-from-the hip, bloggity-blog exposition of ideas that can be put more rigorously, but it seems to to me to show that ostrich nominalism and ostrich realism for that matter are untenable -- and this despite the fact that a positive theory invoking facts has its own very serious problems.

Metaphilosophical Coda: If a theory has insurmountable problems, these problems are not removed by the fact that every other theory has problems.  For it might be that no theory is tenable,while the problem itself is genuine.