Month: January 2010

The Aporetics of Reference to Past Individuals

'Ocham' responds: 

You say "Although Caesar no longer exists, he did exist, and so it is reasonable to take 'Caesar' as having a referent. " It would be correct to say that the proper name 'Caesar' *had* a referent. But does it *have* a referent? If it has (present tense) a referent, then there is a relation:

refers('Caesar', Caesar)

between the word and *something*. And if we accept that a *something* has to be an existing thing, we have the paradox that Caesar does not exist, but that 'Caesar' refers to *something*, and so he does exist after all.

The medievals were more conscious of this paradox because they were before Einstein. After Einstein, we have this sense that things that existed in the past are in some sense still existing, because time is a dimension of space, and because everything in space exists. So we don't see the problem of the referent of 'Caesar' in the way we see a problem with the referent of 'Zeus'.

I tend to side with the medievals. Einstein gives us no philosophical justification for the view that things do not *change* over time, which includes a change from existing to not existing. And if the referent of a proper name may cease to exist through being corrupted, how is it that a semantic relation can still exist between the name (which admittedly still exists) and the referent (which doesn't)?

This is an excellent objection and it shows that what I said is far from self-evident. The problem may be set forth as an aporetic triad:

1.  Reference is a relation that presupposes the existence of its relata.

2.  There is reference to past individuals.

3.  Presentism: The present alone exists; past and future items do not exist.

The limbs of this triad cannot all be true.  The conjunction of (1) and (2) entails the negation of (3).  The conjunction of (1) and (3) entails the negation of (2).  And the conjunction of  (2) and (3) entails the negation of (1). 

The triad is interesting because each of its limbs has a strong claim on our acceptance.  And yet they cannot all be true.  To solve the problem one must reject one of the limbs.  But which one?  It seems to me that (2) is the least rejectable of the three.  Surely we do refer to past individuals using proper names.  Boston's Scollay Square no longer exists.  But I nonetheless refer to it when I say 'My father visited Scollay Square while on shore leave during WWII.'  I should think that 'Scollay Square' is just as referential as 'Harvard Square.'  Since (2) is the most datanic of the three limbs, it is the least rejectable.  This leaves (1) and (2). 

One could reject (1) by maintaining that reference is a relation that presupposes the existence or the having existed of its relata.  Or one could reject (3) by adopting a B-theoryof time according to which past, present, and future items all enjoy tenseless existence.  Neither of these solutions is without difficulty.

Balık baştan kokar

Balık baştan kokar is Turkish for "The fish stinks from the head."  Quite apropos of the Obama administration the corruption, incompetence, and stupidity of which boggles the mind. He's done everything wrong.  But there is hope: Obama's fiscal irresponsibility and liberty-destroying socialist malfeasance has suffered a massive rebuke in, of all places, the People's Republic of Taxachusetts. Here are the precinct-by-precinct statistics of Brown's win over Coakley in the Bay State.  (Perhaps it should be called the Pay State.)  The results for Cambridge precinct show a whopping 84% for Coakley (DEM) and a paltry 15% for Brown (GOP).  No surprise there, of course.  You know what Cambridge is home to.

Continue reading “Balık baştan kokar”

Still More on Alienans Constructions

Our old friend 'Ocham' writes:

I read your discussion of 'alienans' with interest. It is another of those interesting words (like 'inexistence') that look as though it comes from scholastic philosophy, but apparently doesn't. I use my Latin site searcher  in cases of doubt – this analyses texts of specific writers and periods. None of the great scholastic writers, not even so late a one as Suarez, use the term in this sense – indeed they hardly use it at all. They did use the term 'deminuens' in a very similar context. From the Scotus I am currently busy with:

Et sic potest concedi quod Caesar non est homo vivus, sed mortuus; et quod mortuum illo modo non deminuit ab homine, nec infert non-hominem. (And so it can be conceded that Caesar is not a living man, but dead; and that being ‘dead’ in this way does not take away from ‘man’, nor imply [that Caesar is] a non-man).

The context is the question whether 'Caesar is a man' is true or false. Scotus thinks it is true. Simon of Faversham says it is false. Roger Bacon, rather like Gareth Evans and the modern direct referentialists, think it has no truth value at all. (" ‘Caesar is Caesar’ signifies nothing… nor is it a proposition nor does it signify either what is true or false, because the whole ‘statement’ does not signify because of one or two parts that do not signify"). Note the appeal to the Fregean idea of compositionality here – the meaning of the whole is determined by the meaning of its parts. If one or more parts are meaningless, so is the whole.

Bacon's view was rightly derided by his contemporaries in Oxford and Paris.

I learned about alienans adjectives from Barry Miller who I believe borrowed the terminology from Peter Geach.  From which writers Geach got the term I don't know.  An interesting question is whether 'dead' in 'Caesar is a dead man' is an alienans adjective as I have explained this term in the post linked to above.  Clearly, artificial leather is not leather.  So 'artificial' in this context is alienans.  And if so-and-so is the alleged assailant, it does not follow that he is the assailant.  So 'alleged' in this context is alienans.  Is a dead man a man?  Although it is not so clear, I am inclined to say that a dead man is a man in agreement with Scotus.

I am also inclined to agree with Scotus that 'Caesar is a man' is true.  Although Caesar no longer exists, he did exist, and so it is reasonable to take 'Caesar' as having a referent.  (Once referential, always referential.) It is not like 'Pegasus.'  There was an individual, Caesar, but there is no individual, Pegasus.  'Pegasus' has sense but no referent.  Furthermore, Caesar's having died did not remove him from the class of men.  A dead man is a man. (I grant that this is not obvious.) Simon of Faversham, I take it, thinks the sentence false because he thinks a dead man is not a man.  Ths is not obviously wrong. 

As for Bacon's view, it sounds crazy, a piece of wildly revisionary philosophy of language.  Of course, 'Caesar is a man' has a truth-value!  And this, even if we say that 'Caesar' lacks a referent.  For whether or not it has a referent it has a sense.  What exactly did those Medieval dudes mean by 'signify'?  Were they riding roughshod over Frege's Sinn/Bedeutung distinction — to put it anachronistically?

So I agree with 'Ocham' that Bacon's view was rightly derided.

 

Another Example of a Vicious Infinite Regress: Philosophical Investigations, Sec. 239

I am collecting examples of infinite regress arguments in philosophy. See the category Infinite Regress Arguments.  Here is one that is suggested by section 239 of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. When I hear the word 'red,' how do I know which color is being referred to?  The following answer might be given:  'Red' refers to the color of the mental image that hearing the word elicits.  But then the question arises once again:  How do I know that the color of the mental image is the color to which 'red' refers?  Do I need a criterion for that as well?  If I do, then I am embarked upon an infinite regress, one that is vicious.

Why is it vicious?  Most of us know which color 'red' refers to.  But how do we know it?  To ask how we know this is to request an epistemological (and therefore a philosophical) explanation.  But if the explanation is that 'red' refers to the color of the mental image that hearing the word elicits, then, although we have answered the initial question, we have  answered it in a way that allows the posing of a second question of the same form as the first.  And so on.

Conceivability, Possibility, Self, and Body

A reader sent me the following argument which he considers a good one:

1. It is conceivable that I exist without my present body (or any part of it).
2. Therefore, it is possible that I exist without my present body (or any part of it).
3. Therefore, I have a property P that my body does not, namely, being such that possibly, I exist when my body (or any part of it) doesn't.
4. Therefore, I am not my body (or any part of it).

The argument as it stands is enthymematic.  The inferential move from (3) to (4) requires an auxiliary premise, one which is easily supplied.  It is the contrapositive of the Identity of Indiscernibles, and so we can call it the Discernibility of the Diverse, to wit: If two things differ in respect of a property, then they are numerically diverse (not numerically identical).  That is a rough formulation, but it is good enough for present purposes.  With the assistance of DD, the move from (3) to (4) is unproblematic.

I should think the move from (2) to (3) is also unproblematic.  The inference from (1) to (2), however, puzzles me and troubles me.  I accept the conclusion: I cannot for the life of me see how I could be strictly and numerically identical to my body or any part of it.  So I would like the above argument, or a reasonable facsimile, to be valid. But I stumble over the move from (1) to (2).  To validate this inference we need some such principle as

CEP. For any proposition p, conceivably p entails possibly p.

CEP is what I want to discuss.  The possibility in question is not epistemic but real, and is that species of real possibility called broadly logical or metaphysical.  Now here is a reason why I have doubts about CEP.  I accept that there is an Absolute.  Now any decent Absolute (the One of Plotinus is a good candidate as is the God of Aquinas) will be a necessary being, one whose possibility entails its actuality.  An Absolute, then, cannot not exist if it exists: it either exists in every possible world or in no world.  To prove that an Absolute exists all I need is the premise, Possibly an Absolute exists.  I may think to infer this proposition from Conceivably an Absolute exists, by way of CEP.  Unfortunately, it seems I can just as easily conceive of the nonexistence of a an Absolute.  To paraphrase Hume, whatever I can conceive as existent I can just as easily conceive as nonexistent.  We can call that Hume's Existence Principle:

HEP.  Everything (concrete) is such that its nonexistence is conceivable.

If HEP is true, then every being is contingent.  But if CEP is true, then at least one being is noncontingent.  This shows that either CEP is false or HEP is false.  Since I am strongly inclined to accept HEP, I have doubts about CEP.

Clearly, much depends on what we mean by 'conceivable.'  Trading Latin for Anglo-Saxon, to be conceivable is to be thinkable.  But since there is a sense in which logical contradictions are thinkable, we must add: thinkable without broadly logical contradiction.  By whom?  The average schmuck?  Or the ideally penetrative intellect?  If an ideally penetrative intellect examines a proposition and detects no broadly logical contradiction, then there will be no gap between conceivability in this sense and possibility.  But our intellects are not ideally penetrative.  Suppose a person reads and understands Zorn's Lemma, reads and understands the Axiom of Choice, and then is asked whether it is possible that the first  be true and the second false.  He examines the conjunction of Zorn's Lemma with the negation of the Axiom of Choice and discerns no contradiction.  So he concludes that it is possible that the Lemma be true and the Axiom false.  He would be wrong since the two are provably equivalent.  This shows, I think, that for intellects like ours one cannot in general validly infer possibility from conceivability.

Returning to our opening argument, I would say that it is plausible and renders dualism rationally acceptable.  But it doesn't  establish dualism.  For the move from (1) to (2) is questionable.

What is to stop a materialist from running the argument in reverse?  He denies the conclusion and then denies (2).    If you insist that your non-identity with your body is conceivable and therefore possible, he tells you that it only seems so to you, and that seeming is not being. Or else he rejects CEP

 

Three Senses of ‘Fact’

Facts Ed Feser has a very useful post which clears up some unfortunately common confusions with respect to talk about facts and opinions.  I agree with what he says but would like to add a nuance.  Feser distinguishes two senses of 'fact,' one metaphysical (I prefer the term 'ontological') the other epistemological:

Fact (1): an objective state of affairs
Fact (2): a state of affairs known via conclusive arguments, airtight evidence, etc.
 
I suggest that we distinguish within the metaphysical Fact(1) between facts-that, which are true propositions, and facts-of, which are worldly states of affairs that function as the truth-makers of true propositions.  If I say that table salt is NaCl, what I say is a fact in the epistemological sense of being something known to be the case, but it is also a fact in two further senses.  Uttering 'Table salt is NaCl' I express a true proposition.  (I take a Fregean line on propositions: they are the senses of context-free declarative sentences.) Clearly, the proposition expressed by my utterance is true whether or not anyone knows it.  So this is an ontological use of 'fact.'  But it is arguable that (contingent) propositions, which are truth-bearers, have need of truth-makers.  Truth-makers are plausibly taken to be worldly (concrete) states of affairs.  (Not to be confused with the abstract states of affairs of Chisholm and Plantinga.)  Thus the proposition expressed by 'Table salt is NaCl' is made-true by the concrete state of affairs, the fact-of, table salt's being sodium chloride.
 
One way to see the difference between a proposition, a truth-bearer,  and its truth-maker is by noting that Tom himself, all 200 lbs of him, is not a constituent of the Fregean proposition expressed by 'Tom is tired,' whereas Tom himself is a constituent of the fact-of Tom' s being tired.  More fundamentally, if you have realist intuitions, it should seem self-evident that a true proposition cannot just be true; it is in need of an ontological ground of its truth.  It is true that my desk is littered with books, but this truth (true proposition) doesn''t hang in the air so to speak, it is grounded in a truth-making fact involving concrete books and a desk.
 
Many, many questions can be raised about truth-bearers, truth-makers, and so on, but all that comes later.  For now, the point is merely to sketch a prima facie three-fold distinction that one ought to be aware of even if, later down the theoretical road one decides that facts-that can be identified with facts-of, or that a conflation of  facts in the epistemological sense with facts-that can be justified, or whatever.  Such theoretical identifications and conflations presuppose for their very sense such preliminary prima facie distinctions as I have just made.

I Get a Rise Out of Aristotle

Michael Gilleland, the Laudator Temporis Acti, in his part-time capacity as 'channel' of Aristotle, submits this delightful missive:

Freud on Illusion, Delusion, Error, and Religion

Freud-1 I found the discussion in the thread appended to Is There a 'No God' Delusion?  very stimulating and useful.  My man Peter is the 'rock' upon which good discussions are built.  (I shall expatiate later on the sense in which Lupu is also a 'wolf.') The thread got me thinking about what exactly a delusion is.  It is important that I have an explicit theory of this inasmuch as I routinely tag leftist beliefs as delusional. 

If belief is our genus, the task is to demarcate the delusional from the illusory species and both species from beliefs in general.  In this context, and as a matter of terminology, a delusion is a delusional belief, and an illusion is an illusory belief.  (I won't consider the questions whether there are illusions or delusions that do not belong to the genus belief.)  Let us push forward by way of commentary on some claims in Sigmund Freud's The Future of an Illusion (tr. Strachey, Norton, 1961).

1. Freud distinguishes between illusions and errors. (p.30) Eine Illusion ist nicht dasselbe wie ein Irrtum . . . .  There are errors that are not illusions and there are illusions that are not errors.  Given that our genus is belief, an error is an erroneous or mistaken belief. So now we have three species of belief to contend with: the erroneous, the illusory, and the delusional.  "Aristotle's belief that vermin are developed out of dung . . . was an error." (30)  But "it was an illusion of Columbus's that he had discovered a new sea-route to the Indies." (30)  What's the difference?  The difference is that illusions are wish-driven while errors are not.  "What is characteristic of illusions is that they are derived from human wishes." (31)  Für die Illusion bleibt charakteristisch die Ableitung aus menschlichen Wünschen . . .

2. Every erroneous belief is false, but no erroneous  belief is derived from human wishes. Every illusory belief is derived from human wishes, and may be either true or false.  So if a belief is illusory one cannot infer that it is false.  It may be false or it may be true.  By 'false' Freud means "in contradiction to reality." (31)  Suppose that a middle-class girl cherishes the belief that a prince will come and marry her.  And suppose the unlikely occurs: a prince does come and marry her.  The belief is an illusion despite the fact that it is true, i.e., in agreement with reality.  The belief is illusory because its formation and maintenance have their origin in her intense wish.  The example is Freud's.

3.  The difference between an illusory belief and a delusional belief is that, while both are wish-driven, every delusional belief is false whereas some illusory beliefs are true and others false.  "In the case of delusions we emphasize as essential their being in contradiction with reality." (31)  An der Wahnidee heben wir als wesentlich den Widerspruch gegen die Wirklichkeit hervor, die Illusion muß nicht notwendig falsch, d. h. unrealisierbar oder im Widerspruch mit der Realität sein. To sum up:

Errors:  All of them false, none of them wish-driven.

Delusions:  All of them false, all of them wish-driven.

Illusions:  Some of them false, some of them true, all of them wish-driven.

4.  Now that we understand what an illusion is, we are in a position to understand Freud's central claim about religious ideas and doctrines:  "they are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind." (30) ". . . all of them are illusions and insusceptible of proof." (31)  Sie sind sämtlich Illusionen, unbeweisbar, . . .. 

To say of a belief that it is an illusion is to say something about its psychological genesis or origin: it arises as the fulfillment of a wish.  It is not to say anything about the belief's truth-value (Wahrheitswert).  So even if some religious doctrines were susceptible of proof, they would still be illusions.  For again, what makes a belief an illusion is its stemming from a wish.  Since Freud admits that there are true illusions,  he must also admit at least the possibility of there being some provably true illusions.  It could therefore turn out that the belief that God exists is both demonstrably true and an illusion.

But although this follows from what Freud says, he does not explicitly say it.  Indeed, he says something that seems inconsistent with it.  After telling us that "the truth-value of religious doctrines does not lie within the scope of the present inquiry," he goes on to say that "It is enough for us that we have recognized them as being, in their psychological nature, illusions.  But we do not have to conceal the fact that this discovery also strongly influences our attitude to the question which must appear to many to be the most important of all." (33)  That question, of course, is the question  of truth or falsity.

So the good Doktor appears to be waffling and perhaps teetering on the brink of the genetic fallacy.  On the one hand he tells us that a belief's being an illusion does not entail that it is false.  He himself gives an example of a true illusion.  On the other hand, from what I have just quoted him as saying it follows that showing that a belief arose in a certain way, in satisfaction of certain psychological needs or wishes, can be used to cast doubt on its truth.  But the latter is the genetic fallacy.  If a third-grader comes to believe the truths of the multiplication table solely on the strength of her teacher's say-so, this fact has no tendency to show that the beliefs formed in this way are false.

Jabez Clapp: A ‘Philosopher’ of the Superstitions

The mountains attract misfits, oddballs, outcasts, outlaws, questers of various stripes, and even a few 'philosophers.'  Here is the story of one of them, one of many who found his way into the mountains but never found his way out.  He who marches to the beat of a different drummer, in the famous phrase of Henry David Thoreau, runs certain risks.  He may march himself right into Kingdom Come.  But the very same Thoreau also observed that a man sits as many risks as he runs.

Which risks to sit and which to run is for the individual to decide.  There is  no algorithm.

Richard Peck, Seeker of Lost Gold

Superstition mtn Living as I do in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains, I am familiar with the legends and lore of the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. And out on the trails or around town I sometimes run into those characters called Dutchman Hunters. One I came close to meeting was Richard Peck, but by the time I found out about his passion from his wife, Joan, he had passed away. Sadly enough, Joan unexpectedly died recently.

Joan had me and my wife over for dinner on Easter Sunday a few years years ago, and my journal (vol. XXI, pp. 34-35, 28 March 2005) reports the following:

Joan's dead husband Rick was a true believer in the Dutchman mine, and thought he knew where it was: in the vicinity of Weaver's Needle, and accessible via the Terrapin trail. A few days before he died he wanted Joan to accompany his pal Bruce, an unbeliever, to a digging operation which Bruce, a man who knows something about mining, did not perform. Rick to Joan, "I want you to be there when he digs up the gold."