Month: August 2021

Why I Reject Individual Concepts

This entry was first posted on 24 July 2011. Time for a repost with minor modifications. I find that I still reject individual concepts. Surprise!

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Consider the sentences 'Caissa is a cat' and 'Every cat is an animal.'  Edward the Nominalist made two  claims in an earlier comment thread that stuck in my Fregean craw:

1) The relation between 'Caissa' and 'cat' is the same as the relation between 'cat' and 'animal'.

2) The relation between *Caissa* and *cat* is the same as the relation between *cat* and *animal.*

Single quotes are being used in the usual way to draw attention to the expression enclosed within them.  Asterisks are being used to draw attention to the concept expressed by the linguistic item enclosed within them.  I take it that we agree that concepts are mental in nature in the sense that, were there no minds, there would be no concepts. 

Affirming (2), Edward commits himself to individual or singular concepts.  I deny that there are individual concepts and so I reject (2).  Rejecting (2), I take the side of the Fregeans against the traditional formal logicians (TFL-ers) who think that singular propositions can be analyzed as general.  Thus 'Caissa is a cat' gets analyzed by the TFL-ers  as 'Every Caissa is a cat.'

To discuss this profitably we need to agree on the following definition of 'individual concept':

D1. C is an individual concept of x =df x is an instance of C, and it is not possible that there be a y distinct from x such that y is an instance of C.

So if there is an individual concept of my cat Caissa, then Caissa instantiates this concept and nothing distinct from Caissa does or could instantiate it. We can therefore say that individual concepts, if there are any, 'capture' or  'grasp' or 'make present to the mind' the very haecceity (non-qualitative thisness) of the individuals of which they are the individual concepts.

We can also speak of individual concepts as singular concepts and contrast them with general concepts.  *Cat* is a general concept.  What makes it general is not that it has many instances, although it dos have many instances, but that it can have many (two or more) instances.  General concepts are thus multiply instantiable. 

The concept C1 expressed by 'the fattest cat that ever lived and ever will live' is also general.  For, supposing that Oscar instantiates this concept, it is possible that some other feline instantiate it.  Thus C1 does not capture the haecceity of Oscar or of any cat.   C1 is general, not singular.  C1 is multiply instantiable in the sense that it can have two or more instances, though not in the same possible world or at the same time. 

And so from the fact that a concept applies to exactly one thing if it applies to anything, one cannot validly infer that it is an individual or singular concept.  Such a concept must capture the very identity or non-qualitative thisness of the thing of which it is a concept.  This is an important point.  To push further I introduce a definition and a lemma.

D2. C is a pure concept =df C involves no specific individual and can be grasped without reference to any specific individual.

Thus 'green,' 'green door,' 'bigger than a barn,' 'self-identical,'  and 'married to someone' all express pure concepts.  'Taller than the Washington Monument,' 'married to Heidegger,' and 'identical to Heidegger' express impure concepts, if they express concepts at all. 

Lemma 1: No individual concept is a pure concept.

Proof.  By (D1), if C is an individual concept of x, then it is not possible that there be a y distinct from x such that y instantiates C.  But every pure concept, no matter how specific, even unto maximal specificity, is possibly such as to have two or more instances.  Therefore, no individual concept is a pure concept.  

Consider the famous Max Black example of two iron spheres alike in all monadic and relational respects.  A pure concept of either, no matter how specific, would also be a pure concept of the other.  And so the non-qualitative haecceity of neither would be captured by that pure concept.

Lemma 2.  No individual concept is an impure concept.

Proof.  An individual  concept is either pure or impure.  If C is impure, then by (D2) it must involve an individual.  And if C is an individual concept it must involve the very individual of which it is the individual concept. But individuum ineffabile est: no individual can be grasped precisely as an individual.  But that is precisely what one would have to be able to do to have an impure concept of an individual.  Therefore, no individual concept is an impure concept.

Putting the lemmata together, it follows that an individual concept cannot be either pure or impure.  But it must be one or the other.  So there are no individual concepts. Q. E. D.!

Indiscernible

Mark Sainsbury on Intentional Relations

Following A. N. Prior, Sainsbury sets up the problem of intentionality as follows:

We are faced with a paradox: some intentional states are relational and some are not. But all intentional states are the same kind of thing, and things of the same kind are either all relational or all non-relational.  (Intentional Relations, 327)

Cast in the mold of an aporetic triad:

1) Some intentional states are relational and some are not.

2) All intentional states are the same kind of thing.

3) Things of the same kind are either all relational or all non-relational.

These propositions are individually plausible but jointly inconsistent. Sainsbury solves the problem by rejecting (1).  He maintains that all intentional states are relational.  Whether I am thinking about Obama, who exists, or about Pegasus, who does not exist, a relation is involved.  In both cases, the relation connects the subject or his mental state to a representation. The representation, in turn, either represents something that exists 'in the world' or it does not.  In the first case, there is me, my intentional or object-directed mental state, the concept OBAMA, and the man himself in the external world.  In the second case, there is me, my intentional or object-directed mental state, the concept PEGASUS, and that's it: there is nothing in reality that the Pegasus representation represents.  

Sainsbury is not saying that when I think about Obama, I am thinking about a representation. Plainly, I am thinking about a man, and a man is not a representation in a mind.  While Sainsbury advocates a representationalist theory of mind (RTM), he essays to steer clear of ". . . a disastrous turn that a representationalist view may take: instead of saying that the intentional states are about what their representations are about, the fatal temptation for British Empiricist thinkers (and others) is to regard the intentional states as about the representations (“ideas”) themselves." (330)  On Sainsbury's RTM,

For representationalists, all intentional states, including perceptual states, are relational, but the representations are not the “objects” of the states in the sense of what the states are about. Rather, the representations are what bring represented objects “before the mind”. Analogously, we see by using our eyes, but we do not see our eyes. Using our eyes does not make our vision indirect. (330)

This implies that representations are not representatives or stand-ins or epistemic deputies or cognitive intermediaries interposed between mind and world. They are not like pictures. A picture of Obama is an object of vision just as Obama himself is.  But Sainsburian representations "neither react appropriately with light nor emit odiferous molecules." (330)  Pictures of Obama and Obama in the flesh do both. Representations are in the mind but not before the mind. They are "exercised" in intentional states without being the objects of such states:

Intentional states are not normally about the representations they exercise. The representation is not the state’s “object”, as that is often used. Rather, the state’s object is whatever, if anything, the representation refers to, or is about. The notion of “aboutness” needed to make this true is itself intensional: a representation may be about Pegasus, and a thought about Pegasus involves a representation about him. (338)

Sainsbury's solution to the problem codified in the above inconsistent triad involves two steps. The first is to reject (1) and hold that all intentional states are relational.  They are genuine relations, not merely relation-like. The second step is to import relationality into the mind: every intentional state is a relational state that connects two intramental existing items, one being the intentional state itself, the other being the representation, whether it be a truth-evaluable representation, which S. calls a thought, or a non-truth-evaluable representation, which S. calls a concept.  

It is easy to see that one could take the first step without taking the second. One could hold that all intentional states are relations but that these relations tie intentional states to mind-transcendent items, whether existent, like Obama, or nonexistent, like Pegasus. But this is the way of Meinong or quasi-Meinong, not the way of Sainsbury. He argues in the paper in question against Meinong for reasons I will not go into here.

In sum, intentional states are relations, but they are neither relations to mental objects nor are they relations to extramental objects.  They are relations to representations which are neither.  A mental object is (or can be) both in the mind and before the mind.  And extramental object is (or can be) before the mind but not in the mind. A Sainsburian representation is in the mind but not before the mind (except in cases of reflection as when I reflect on the concept OBAMA as opposed to thinking about him directly).

The article ends as follows:

Metaphysical relationality is the fundamental feature of intentional states, the nature they all share. In the original puzzle, it was claimed that Raoul’s thinking about Pegasus is not relational, since there is no such thing as Pegasus, whereas his thinking about Obama is relational, since there is such a thing as Obama. But in both cases the claims are made true by Raoul being in a two-place relational state, involving a Pegasus-representation in one case and an Obama representation in the other. The metaphysical underpinning of thinking about Pegasus is just as relational as his thinking about Obama. For the Pegasus case, that is not because there really is such a nonexistent object as Pegasus, but because the truth-making state is a relational one, holding between Raoul and, in the typical case, the concept PEGASUS. For the Obama case, the state is relational in the relevant way not because there is such an object as Obama, but because the truth-making state is a relational one, holding between Raoul and, in the typical case, the concept OBAMA.

CRITIQUE

Does this solve our problem? I don't see that it does.  First of all, we are left with the problem of the intentionality of representations. What makes an Obama representation about Obama?  Sainsbury's solution to the Prior puzzle is to reject the first limb of the aporetic triad by maintaining that ALL intentional states are relational.  But since these relations are all intramental we are left with the problem of external reference.  We are left with no account of the of-ness or aboutness of representations.  We need an account not only of noetic intentionality but of noematic intentionality as well, to press some Husserlian jargon into service.

Second, it is not clear from this article what exactly representations are. We are told that "representations are what bring represented objects 'before the mind'." How exactly?  Talk of the "exercise" of representations suggests that they are dispositions.  Is the concept OBAMA in Raoul his being disposed to identify exactly one thing as Obama?  But how could an occurrent episode of thinking-of be accounted for dispositionally? Besides, the concept OBAMA would have to be a haecceity-concept and I have more than once pointed out the difficulties with such a posit.

 

Gluttony: Another Sign of Decline

So what can we teach the Muslim world?  How to be gluttons?

Another sign of decline is the proliferation of food shows, The U. S. of Bacon being one of them.  A big fat 'foody' roams the land in quest of diners and dives that put bacon into everything.  As something of a trencherman back in the day, I understand the lure of the table.  But I am repelled by the spiritual vacuity of those who wax ecstatic over some greasy piece of crud  they have just eaten, or speak of some edible item as 'to die for.'

It is natural for a beast to be bestial, but not for a man.  He must degrade and denature himself, and that only a spiritual being can do.  Freely degrading himself, he becomes like a beast thereby proving that he is — more than a beast.

Soul Food

People are generally aware of the importance of good nutrition, physical exercise and all things health-related. They understand that what they put into their bodies affects their physical health.  Underappreciated is a truth just as if not more important: that what one puts into one's mind affects one's mental and spiritual health. The soul has its foods and its poisons just as the body does. This   simple truth, known for centuries, goes unheeded while liberals fall all over each other climbing aboard the various environmental and health bandwagons. 

Second-hand smoke the danger of which is negligible much exercises our leftist pals while the soul-destroying toxicity of the mass 'entertainment' media concerns them not at all.

Why are those so concerned with physical toxins so tolerant of cultural toxins? This is another example of what I call misplaced moral enthusiasm. You worry about global warming and side stream smoke when you give no thought to the soul, its foods, and its poisons?

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Dave Bagwill comments:

I'm sure you're acquainted with Lewis' take:
 
"C. S. Lewis sets the scene in Mere Christianity: The theater lights dim, the band begins to play softly and sensuously as a man enters from stage left carrying a silver tray which is covered by a white cloth. He walks to the middle of the stage and begins dancing lewdly before setting the tray with the white cloth on a table. He whirls his hands over his head and then moves slowly and deliberately as he slides the cover off the silver tray. In the middle of the tray is a pork chop. 

“Would not you think that something has gone wrong in that culture about food?” He asked.

Of course, his seventy-year-old vision has come true in America today. From the Food Channel to “Chopped,” we are strangely twisted and out of control with our love for food."

https://www.crosswalk.com/church/pastors-or-leadership/ask-roger/7-reasons-we-struggle-with-gluttony.html

Saturday Night at the Oldies: An Alternative Dylan Top Ten

As promised last week. 

Baby Let Me Follow You Down, 1962. From Bob's first album. Lord almighty it is good to hear this again. Dylan played better guitar and harmonic in the early days.  The surging, full-throated harp beats the sometimes-annoying tweets and toots of his later harmonic playing.  Dylan opens by telling us that he learned this song from Rick [Eric] von Schmidt when he met him one day in "the green pastures of Harvard University." Was he thinking of Woody Guthrie's Pastures of Plenty, 1944? Dylan's effort  apparently derives from von Schmidt's Baby Let Me Lay it on You. 

Here is a real gem of a find: Bob Dylan Jamming with Eric von Schmidt, May, 1964.  Eric von Schmidt, Envy the Thief. Back to the Dylan top ten.

Blowin' in the Wind. From the Freewheelin' album, Bob's second. His best civil rights anthem. Topical but allusive.

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. Also from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.  Said to have been written during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. I remember it like it was yesterday.  Joan Baez's transcendently beautiful cover. Forgive me if I gush a bit. I'm enjoying a Saturday night cocktail: Tequila + Aperol. Straight up.

Positively Fourth Street. The ultimate put-down song.

With God on Our Side. From the third album.

Spanish Harlem Incident. Fourth album, We'll make do with the Byrds' cover. Not that it isn't good.

Its All Over Now, Baby Blue. Fifth album, probably my favorite.  This one goes out to Charaine H., and our bittersweet relationship.

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who's rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it's all over now, baby blue.

It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding. Going to a Dylan concert in those days was like going to church. Absolute silence except for the man on stage standing alone singing his own songs and accompanying himself on guitar and harp. We hung on every word.

It Take a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry. From Dylan's 6th album, Highway 61 Revisited.

I Want You. Blonde on Blonde, Dylan's 7th.

All Along the Watchtower, John Wesley Harding.

Are the Dead Subject to Harm?

Suppose the executrix of my will fails to disburse the funds I have earmarked for the local food bank after my death and instead heads for Las Vegas with the loot. Has she harmed me? Stolen my money? Violated my wishes?

Substack latest.

I can't eat a no-longer-existent sandwich or kick a no-longer-existent ball. How then can she harm a no-longer-existent man?  

Validity and Anaphora

The following argument appears valid:

Some deity is called 'Zeus.'
Zeus is wise.
Therefore, some deity called 'Zeus' is wise. (D. E. Buckner, Reference and Identity, 118)

Now if an argument is valid, it is valid in virtue of its logical form.  What is the logical form of the above argument? The following argument-form, Buckner correctly states, is invalid:

Ex Fx
Ga
Ex (Fx & Gx)

So if the form just depicted is the only available form of the original argument, then the validity of the argument cannot be simply a matter of logical form. And this is what Buckner concludes: "It is clearly the anaphoric connection between the premisses that makes the argument valid, but no such connection exists in the formalized version of the argument. "(119)

Buckner seems to be arguing as follows:

a) The original argument is valid. 

b) The only form it could possibly have is the one depicted above.

c) The argument-form depicted is plainly invalid.

Therefore

d) The validity of the original argument cannot be due to its logical form, but must be due to the anaphoric connection between its premises.

I do not find this argument rationally compelling. (b) is rejectable.  I suggest that the original argument is an enthymeme the logical form of which is the following:

1) For some x, x is called 'a.'
2) For any x, if x is called 'a,' then x =a.
3) a is G.
Therefore
4) For some x, (x is called 'a' and x is G).

Would Naturalism Make Life Easier?

Substack latest, for popular consumption, sans technical minutiae.

Do I imagine that what I serve up at Substack will improve the world? I am none too sanguine about that, but if it brings a bit of light into a few heads, then it is worth doing. Perhaps it will distract you from your silly distractions and ignite a few questions. It is never too late to get serious. But it is later than you think, and the Reaper Man is sharpening his scythe as we speak. 

Who is Caius?

Robert Paul Wolff here replies with wit and lefty snark to a charming request by one Pamela N., a personal assistant, who wants to know who Immanuel Kant is referring to when he writes, "Caius is a man; man is mortal; therefore, Caius is mortal."  Pamela confesses,

I will admit, I have not read Kant's works. I have, however, spent the last couple of hours combing through post after post after post about this particular quote from the book and cannot find a single soul who would say who they think Caius is.

In reading these many posts, I have come to the conclusion that Kant is probably referring to Pope Caius as he has been venerated by the Catholic Church as a Saint. Given that title, and the fact that Saint's [sic] are given to [sic] a quasi-immortal status [sic], I have ascertained that this is who Kant is most likely referring to. My question for you is, do you think that my assumption is correct? or do you have a deeper insight into who he is referring to?

Clarity and Agreement

Agreement on matters of moment, religious, political, and philosophical, seems out of reach. But we may be able to reach clarity about our respective positions on the issues that divide us.  That's what I used to think.  I used to think that clarity is attainable even if agreement is not.  But now I think that things are worse than I thought.

For the attaining of clarity requires agreement on what the issues are: we have to agree on the identity of the issues  and how they are to be formulated. Do we agree on the issues and questions? Do we agree about what we are asking when we ask whether God exists? Or whether there are rights? Or whether the USA is systemically racist? Or whether there is climate change? The depth of disagreement may be such that we cannot attain clarity.  It may be that neither agreement nor clarity  are attainable goals. Philosophers often disagree about what they are disagreeing about. I need to adduce  further examples.

Agreed then both wrong