January 2019 – Page 3 – Maverick Philosopher

Apologia Pro Vita Mea: A Reply to a Friendly Critic

Vito Caiati responds to yesterday's Could it be like this?

In yesterday's post, you write, “So I say: if you have the aptitude and the stamina, you live best by seeking the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters with your whole heart and mind and soul, with everything else you do subordinate to that quest and in service of it, and you keep up that quest until the hour of death, always a little out of breath, with no comfortable lounging in any dogmatic edifice, whether atheist, theist, or agnostic.”

The "always a little out of breath" bit gives my statement of a personal credo a perhaps excessively romantic and needlessly literary accent. But the questing life is the highest life for me, and not just for me. That I sincerely believe. I will add, however, that integral to an examined life is a critical examination of whether the highest life is indeed the examined life. So I am aware of the danger of erecting a dogmatic edifice of my own.

While I appreciate the intellectual and spiritual sentiment that underlies this assertion, I am troubled by two things: First, the fact, which you have acknowledged in the past, that only a minute portion of humanity possesses either the “aptitude” or “stamina” to engage in [the search for] “the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters.” That this is the case is beyond dispute, but why should it be so?

It is indeed beyond dispute and is further evidence that the human condition is a predicament, and a nasty one, a predicament to which there may be no good solution.

I find the question very troubling. Historical demographers estimate that between 80 and 100 billion human beings have lived and died since the origin of our species. The figure is staggering, but as staggering is the fact that all have met their ends in complete ignorance of ultimate truth.

But we don't know that, Vito. It is after all possible that when Thomas Aquinas had the mystical experience that put an end to his writing, he veridically experienced the ultimate truth and enjoyed an earthly foretaste of the Beatific Vision. And if the angelic doctor's amanuensis, Reginald, never had any such experience but believed what the master taught, and if what he taught was true, then Reginald too was in contact with the ultimate truth, not in propria persona, but "through a glass darkly," that glass being faith. And the same holds for all the millions of Christians, not to mention adherents of other religions, throughout the ages who have believed without verifying glimpses into the Unseen and also without being able to give good reasons for their belief. It may have been that all these folks were in contact with ultimate truth even if they can't be said to have known such truth in a manner to satisfy exacting modern requirements on knowledge.

Disease, hunger, violence, physical or mental infirmity, and indigence have precluded even the notion of such a search for most. The lack of a philosophical or religious inclination has precluded it for almost all of the rest. Thus, a gross and general ignorance of final matters has been and remains the lot of mankind. Something is profoundly wrong here, and the conviction that a few might have the means and inclination to diverge from the norm is, at best disquieting, and at word [worst?], questionable.

So even if an ultimate, saving truth could be discovered by a proper search, circumstances and personal inadequacy have prevented and will prevent the vast majority from ever finding it on their own. Something is indeed "profoundly wrong here." But of course this is just one more goad to the seeker's seeking.

Second, the search, whether it has taken a religious or philosophic form, has endured for thousands of years and produced no definite or even probable answers, so why continue to engage in it? The assumption appears to be that if pursued with the right attitude, sufficient dedication, and intellectual honesty, it will yield something of this “ultimate truth.” But is it not the case that all the evidence weighs against this belief?

The problem is not that no definite answers have been produced, but that there are too many of them, they contradict one another on key points, and that this is good reason to be skeptical of any particular answer. To add to the trouble, what I just said will be denied by many intelligent and sincere philosophers. They will insist that their worldview is either true or more likely to be true than any other, and that the plethora of mutually incompatible worldviews is no decent argument to the contrary. But this too is just part of the predicament we are in, a predicament that the spiritually sensitive find intolerable and seek a way out of.

I am not saying that one is not entitled to devote oneself to this search, but I do not understand the conviction that it a worthwhile pursuit. All sorts of scientific questions remain unresolved, some for hundreds of years, but in approaching them, we are encouraged by the signs of small progress that have been made. We have no such intellectual incentives in the matters of which you speak. Now, I understand that we have not been able to reach any sort of agreement on a host of other matters, from politics to morals, but in such cases, we at least understand the rough givens with which we are dealing. Of “the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters,” we lack such an understanding. This is hardly encouraging.

This is the nub of the matter. I said in effect that the best life for a human being is a life whose dominant purpose is the search for the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters. (By the way, this search does not exclude politics and morality which rest on controversial philosophical assumptions.) And of course I mean a truth that one existentially appropriates (makes one's own) and lives. There are several ways of objecting to my thesis. Some will claim to have the truth already, and see no point is seeking what one possesses. There are the dogmatic atheists for whom God and the soul are no longer issues. There are the dogmatic theists who have an answer for everything. There are the dogmatic agnostics who are quite convinced that nothing can be known or even reasonably believed about ultimates (God, the soul, the meaning of human existence) and who think bothering one's head over these questions is simply foolish and might even drive one crazy such that the best way to live is to focus on the easily accessible foreground objects in the Cave and to make friends with finitude, accepting whatever mundane satisfactions come along until death puts an end to it all.

Vito may be flirting with the agnostic camp. He wonders how what we may as well call The Quest could be "a worthwhile pursuit." One of his arguments is that very few are in a position to pursue the Quest. The other is that the Quest, although pursued by the best and the brightest since time immemorial, has arrived at no solid result acceptable to all thinking people.

To the first point, I would say that the value of the Quest does not depend on how many are in a position to pursue it. To the second point, I would say that no serious quester give up the Quest for the reason Vito cites. The Quest is his vocation; he is called to it even if he cannot explain who or what is calling him. He finds deep satisfaction in the searching and the momentary glimpses of insight, and his satisfaction is reinforced by his conviction that the paltry objects pursued by the many are relatively worthless. He sees the vanity, the emptiness, of the world that most find most solidly real. Name and fame, property and pelf, are to him bagatelles. The Quest is his spiritual practice and it is satisfying to the quester even when there is no tangible outcome. He likes to pray, meditate, study, reason, think, write. This is all underpinned by a faith that there will be a favorable outcome, if not here, then Elsewhere.

Another Round on (Semantic) Presupposition: An Inconsistent Pentad

Ed writes,

p = *Socrates has just stopped talking*

q = *Socrates was talking just now*

1. p presupposes q

2. If p presupposes q, then (p or not-p) entails q

3. It is necessary that p or not-p

4. It is necessary that q

5. It is not necessary that Socrates was talking just now

We agree with (1) in some sense. In (2), we try to sharpen that sense, i.e. of ‘presupposition’. (3) is a logical truth. So is (4): if the antecedent is necessary, so is the consequent. (5) is obviously true (unless we hold the necessity of the past, but the example could be changed with the same problematic result).

My feeling is that we are not being sharp enough about ‘presupposition’. What exactly is it?

……………………………………………..

The above propositions are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true. But there is a philosophical problem only if all of the propositions are plausible. (2), however, is not at all plausible and seems to reflect a blunder on Ed' s part. The idea behind semantic presupposition is that if p presupposes q, then both p and its negation entail q. What Ed should have written is

2* If p presupposes q, and p is true, then p entails q, and if p is false, then not-p entails q.

For example, if I stop talking at time t, then my stopping entails my talking immediately before t; if I keep talking at t, then that also entails my talking immediately before t. The proposition presupposed is the same whether I stop talking or keep talking.

Clearly (2) and (2*) are different propositions. So I solve the pentad by rejecting (2) and its consequences.

If Nothing Exists, is it True that Nothing Exists? Well Yes, but Then . . .

Here is a puzzle for London Ed and anyone else who finds it interesting. It is very simple, an aporetic dyad.

To warm up, note that if snow is white, then it is true that snow is white. This seems quite unexceptionable, a nice, solid, datanic starting point. It generalizes, of course: for any proposition p, if p, then it is true that p. Now the connection between antecedent and consequent is so tight that we are loathe to say that it just happens to hold. It holds of necessity. So here is the first limb of our aporetic dyad:

a) Necessarily, for any p, if p, then it is true that p.

Equivalently: there is no possible world in which both p and it is not true that p. For example, there is no possible world in which both 7 + 5 = 12 and it is not true that 7 + 5 = 12.

Intuitively, though, there might have been nothing at all. Is it not possible that nothing exists? Things exist, of course. But might it not be that everything that exists exists contingently? If so, then there might never have existed anything. Our second limb, then, is this:

b) Possibly, nothing exists.

Equivalently: There is at least one possible world in which nothing exists.

Both limbs of the dyad are plausible, but they can't both be true. To see this, substitute 'nothing exists' for 'p' in (a) and drop the universal quantifier and the modal operator. This yields:

c) If nothing exists, then it is true that nothing exists.

But (c) can't be true in every world given (b). For if (c) is true, then something does exist, namely, the truth (true proposition) that nothing exists. But (c) is true in every world given (a).

Therefore (a) and (b) cannot both be true: the dyad is logically inconsistent.

So something has to give, assuming we are not willing to accept that the dyad is an aporia in the strict sense, a conceptual impasse that stops the discursive intellect dead in its tracks. A-poria: no way. Do we reject (a) or do we reject (b)? If a solution is possible, then I am inclined to reject (b).

But then I must affirm its negation:

d) Necessarily, something (or other) exists.

(Note that if it is necessary that something exist, it does not follow that some one thing necessarily exists. If there is no possible world in which nothing exists, it does not follow that there is some one thing that exists in every world.)

Yikes! Have I just proven by a priori reasoning the necessary existence of something or other outside the mind? Of course, I have not proven the necessary existence of God; I may have proven only the necessary existence of those abstract objects called propositions.

(Father Parmenides, with open arms, welcomes home his prodigal son?)

Could it be like this?

I find the following scenario exceedingly strange. We die and become nothing and no question gets answered. Could it be like this? It is epistemically possible, possible for all we know. All we know is damned little. But then what would have been the point of the evolution of animals that pose unanswerable questions? No point! Human life would then be like a joke, but a joke without a teller.

We can't know that the above scenario is true, and we can't know that it is false. So in the end you must decide what you will believe and how you will live. There is no theoretical resolution of the problem; the resolution must be personal, pragmatic, and existential. So I say: if you have the aptitude and the stamina, you live best by seeking the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters with your whole heart and mind and soul, with everything else you do subordinate to that quest and in service of it, and you keep up that quest until the hour of death, always a little out of breath, with no comfortable lounging in any dogmatic edifice, whether atheist, theist, or agnostic.

You meet death with faith, hope, and love. Faith that in some way we cannot now understand we will continue to exist as persons; hope that this is the case and that our present predicament will open out onto something marvellous and finally satisfactory; love for everybody and everything that brought us to this point. You don't want death to find you cursing and snarling, doubting and despairing, let alone sunk in evil-doing.

But to meet death in that salutary way, you must live now as if the above is true. So you can't live like Anthony Bourdain who lived for food and the pleasures of the flesh ("The body is not a temple but an amusement park.") He hanged himself last year as if to say: there is no life beyond this brief material life and its paltry pleasures; so when they run out, you ought to as well. Was he quite sure that there is nothing beyond this mortal predicament? Is that not an astonishing form of dogmatism, the equal of the dogmatism of those who claim to have precise information about the afterlife, its rewards and punishments, and who gets which?

The Body: Temple or Amusement Park?

Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone

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?