Month: February 2011

1. Peter van Inwagen maintains, quite rightly, that "One of the most important divisions between 'continental' and 'analytic' philosophy has to do with the nature of being." (Ontology, Identity, and Modality, Cambridge UP 1981, p. 4) Analysts favor a 'thin' conception while  Continentals favor a 'thick' one. Although van Inwagen's claim is essentially correct, there are broadly analytic philosophers such as myself and Barry Miller who defend a 'thick' conception. In any case, let's set aside the (unprofitable) question of the difference between the two schools the better to focus on the substantive question of the nature of being or existence.

 2. I sometimes refer to the thin conception as the 'Fressellian' conception. 'Fressell' is a cute amalgam of the names 'Frege' and 'Russell.' We can add Quine to the mix and speak of the deflationary account of being (existence) of Frege, Russell, and Quine. This is without a doubt the dominant 20th century analytic approach to existence. (Neo-Meinongians such as Hector-Neri Castaneda and Panayot   Butchvarov suggested a theory of existence in terms of consubstantiation (HNC) and material identity (PB) but these ideas found little resonance.)

So what is the thin conception? "The thin conception of being is this: the concept of being is closely allied with the concept of number: to say that there are Xs is to say that the number of Xs is 1 or more — and to say nothing more profound, nothing more interesting, nothing more." (p. 4) Connoisseurs of this arcana will recognize it as pure Frege:

     . . . existence is analogous to number. Affirmation of existence is
     in fact nothing but denial of the number nought. (Gottlob Frege,
     Foundations of Arithmetic, 65e)

'Cats exist,' then, says that the number of cats is one or more. Equivalently, it says that the concept cat has one or more instances.  Existence, as Frege puts it, is "a property of concepts." It is the property of being instantiated. Since individuals, by definition, cannot be instantiated, it follows that existence cannot be predicated of individuals. This has repercussions for some versions of the ontological argument: "Because existence is a property of concepts, the ontological argument for the existence of God breaks down."  (Frege, 65e)

3. That, in a nutshell, is the 'thin' or deflationary conception of being or existence. Existence is instantiation.  Variations on this theme are Russell's asseveration that existence is a property of propositional functions, and Quine's claim that existence is what existential quantification expresses. Van Inwagen says the following in defense of the thin conception:

     . . . it is possible to distinguish between the being and the
     nature of a thing — any thing; anything — and that the thick
     conception of being is founded on the mistake of transferring what
     belongs properly to the nature of a chair — or of a human being or
     of a universal or of God — to the being of the chair. To endorse
     the thick conception of being is, in fact, to make . . . the very
     mistake of which Kant accused Descartes: the mistake of treating
     being as a 'real predicate.' (pp. 4-5)

What van Inwagen is saying is that, for any x, one can distinguish between the existence of x and the nature of x, but that there is nothing one can say about the existence or being of x beyond what Frege and Co. have said. In particular, one cannot say that individuals of one sort exist in a different way than individuals of a different sort. The thin conception, in other words, allows no room for a plurality of modes of being: God, a chair, a number, a human being, a rattle snake, and a rock all are in the same sense and in the same way (mode).  But it would be better to say that on the thin conception there are no modes of existence than to say that there is exactly one mode common to all.  One cannot make a tripartite distinction among nature, existence, and mode of existence, but only a bipartite distinction between nature and existence. 

If this is right, then Heidegger is wrong: he famously distinguishes among several modes of Being (Seinsweisen) in Being and Time, most prominently among them: Existenz, the Being of those beings that we are; Zuhandenheit, the Being of tools, and Vorhandenheit, the Being of things of nature. J-P Sartre's distinction of being in-itself and being for-itself also falls if there can be no modes of being.

Indeed, much of classical metaphysics from Plato to Bradley bites the dust without a doctrine of modes of being. We have recently observed, for example, how the Thomist theory of intentionality requires a distinction between two modes of being, esse intentionale and esse naturale.  Roughly, a form that exists in a tree, say, with esse naturale also exists in a mind that knows the tree with esse intentionale.

To take another example, how are we to make sense of Aristotle's distinction between primary   substances and their accidents if there are no modes of being? Substances exist in themselves while accidents exist in another, namely, in substances. These are distinct modes of being. Substances and accidents both exist, but they exist in different ways. To take yet another example, for Aquinas, essence and existence are diverse in creatures but not in God. This is a difference in mode of being. God  exists a se, while creatures exist ab alio. God exists from himself  while creatures exist from another, namely, God.  Many other examples could be given.

4. Van Inwagen  uses 'mistake' twice in the above quotation. Having made a hard-and-fast distiction between the existence of a thing and its nature, van Inwagen  proclaims it to be a mistake to think that there are ways of existing. Having decided that existence is devoid of content, he asserts that it is a mistake to import any content into it. Well sure!  — but that blatantly begs the question. 

One should be very skeptical when one philosopher accuses another of making a 'mistake' given how easily the tables can be turned.  For a defender of the thick conception could just as easily accuse   Fressellians of making a mistake, the mistake of confusing general existence and singular existence.  

Compare 'Philosophers exist' and 'Socrates exists.' The former makes a claim of general existence or instantiation: it is plausibly construed as expressing the instantiation of the concept philosopher, as saying that the number of philosophers is one or more. But if this is all there is to existence, if existence if just a concept's being instantiated, then existence cannot be predicated of individuals, and 'Socrates exists' becomes meaningless. This is a conclusion Frege and Russell both explicitly draw. But obviously 'Socrates exists' is not  meaningless. We can and do predicate existence of individuals. When I say 'I exist,' I predicate existence of myself. If Frege's view were correct, then not only would the ontological argument "break down," the Cartesian cogito would also "break down." So there has to be something wrong with the Fresselian analysis.

There are many complicated issues here which I discuss in A Paradigm Theory of Existence (Kluwer, 2002), but at the moment I am suggesting that there is something superficial and unphilosophical about taxing the thick conception with 'mistakes' — the mistakes of importing content into being and of thinking that being can be predicated of individuals — when the thin conception can just as easily be accused of resting on 'mistakes.' Dealing as we are with two radically opposed approaches to being, it is is very strange to think  that either could rest on simple 'mistakes.' "How stupid of me not to notice that existence cannot be predicated of individuals! What was I thinking?"

Note also that if a first-level concept is instantiated, then it is instantiated by an individual, and indeed by one that exists — assuming you do not want to go the route of Meinong. So we are brought right back to singular existence, the existence of individuals. How then can existence be identified with the instantiation of concepts?

And once you see that existence does belong to individuals, contra the Fressellians, the way is clear to ask how an individual is related to its existence and to distinguish between different ways of existing.

5. Now what exactly is that 'mistake' that van Inwagen accuses the modes-of-being theorists of making?   It is the mistake of transferring what properly belongs to the  nature of an F to the existence of an F.  (See quotation above.) Compare a felt pain (of the sort caused by a stubbing of a bare toe on a large rock) and a rock.  The esse of the pain is its percipi.  But the esse of the rock, pace the good bishop,  is not.  So I say: the mode of being of the pain is different from the mode of being of the rock.  Van Inwagen would have to say that I illicitly transferred what properly belongs to the nature of a particular pain to its existence.  But I fail to see how it is part of the nature or qualitative character of that pain that its esse be percipi.  A pleasure quale has a totally different nature and yet its mode of being is the same. 

If any mistakes are being made here, they are being made by van Inwagen.  There is first of all the mistake of confusing general existence (existence as instantiation) with singular existence.  You could call this the mistake of failing to grasp that the Frege-Russell-Quine theory of existence is untenable.  There is also the mistake of thinking that the two putative mistakes he mentions  in the passage quoted are the same mistake.  If it is a mistake to think that existence belongs to individuals, then surely that is a different mistake from the mistake of thinking that there are modes of existence.  For one could hold that existence belongs to individuals without holding that there are different modes of singular existence.

But talk of  'mistakes' in philosophy is best avoided except in a few really clear cases which are usually of a logical sort.