Author: Bill Vallicella

Being as the Apotheosis of the Copula: Frege’s Eliminativism in his Dialogue with Pünjer on Existence

Some time before 1884, Gottlob Frege had a discussion about existence with the Protestant theologian Bernard Pünjer (1850-1885). A record of the dialogue was found in Frege's Nachlass, and an English translation is available in Gottlob Frege: Posthumous Writings, eds. Hans Hermes et al., University of Chicago Press, 1979. Herewith, some critical commentary on part of the dialogue.

1. We have often discussed  'thin' or deflationary approaches to Being or existence. On a thin approach, existence is not a metaphysical or ontological topic, but a merely logical one. Consider the general   existential, 'Cats exist.' For Frege, the content of such a general existential does not lie in 'exist' but "in the form of the particular judgment." (63) Frege uses the good old 19th century term 'judgment' (Urteil) but the point could also be put, with minor adjustments, in terms of  indicative sentences, statements, and propositions. Particular judgments are the I- and O-judgments of the Square of Opposition: those of the form Some S is P and Some S is not P.

Frege's contention, then, is that the content of affirmative general existentials lies in the logical form: Some S is P. But how do we put 'Cats exist' into this form? We need a concept superordinate to the   concept cat, say, the concept mammal. We can then write, 'Some mammals are cats.' If we acquiesce in the natural anti-Meinongian presupposition that there are no nonexistent items, then 'Cats exist' is true if and only if  'Some mammals are cats' is true.

This translation illustrates what Frege means when he says that the content of affirmative general existentials does not lie in 'exist'  but in the [logical] form of the particular judgment. The logical form is Some S is P, which is just a bit of syntax, whence we are to conclude that 'exists' is bare of semantic content, whether sense or reference, and merely functions as a stylistic variant of 'Some ___ is    —.'

Those who take a deflationary tack, therefore, can be dubbed someists.  We who resist deflation can then be called existentialists.

By showing that 'exist(s)' and cognates are eliminable, Frege thinks he has eliminated those hoary metaphysical subjects Being or existence which fascinate Thomists, Heideggerians, and such other 'thicks' as your humble correspondent.

2. But does Frege's schedule of elimination really work? We saw how 'Cats exist' can be rendered as 'Some mammals are cats.' But what about 'Mammals exist'? This in turn needs elimination. Assuming that the domain of quantification is a domain of existents, this can be translated salva veritate as 'Some animals are mammals.' And so on up the tree of Porphyry, or, if you deem that to be barking up the  wrong tree, then supply some other scheme of classification. 'Animals exist' becomes 'Some living things are animals.' 'Living things exist'  becomes 'Some bodies are living things.' 'Bodies exist' gets translated as 'Some substances are bodies.'

Clearly, we either now or very soon must call a halt to the ascent by resting in "a concept superordinate to all concepts." (p. 63) Superordinate to all concepts except itself, of course. And what concept might that be? Such a concept must have maximal extension and so will have minimal intension. It will be devoid of all content,  abstracting as it does from all differences. Frege suggests 'something identical with itself' as the maximally superordinate concept. 'There are men' and 'Men exist' thus get rendered as 'Something identical  with itself is a man.' (63)

3. In ordinary language, the role of maximally superordinate concept, a "concept without content," (63) is played by an hypostatization of the copula. In 'The sea is blue' the content of the predicate lies in   'blue': 'is' is contentless. But from the copulative 'is'  we form a quasi-concept — 'being' — without content since its  extension is unlimited. This makes it possible to say: men = men  that have being; 'There are men' is the same as 'Some men are' or 'Something that has being is a man.' Thus here the real content of  what is predicated does not lie in 'has being' but in the form of  the particular judgment. Faced with an impasse, language has simply created the word 'being' in order to enable the form of the particular judgment to be employed. When philosophers speak of  'absolute being,' that is really an apotheosis of the copula. (64)

This is an excellent statement of the thin or deflationary or eliminativist line: there is in reality no such 'thing' as Being or existence. Being (as a metaphysical topic) is a result of an illicit reification or hypostatization of the copula, an apotheosis (deification) of the copula.

4. Now why can't I accept this? We saw that to eliminate existence in all cases and make it disappear into the logical form Some S is P we must ascend a classificatory tree at the apex of which is a concept or "quasi-concept" unlimited in extension and empty in intension. This is the concept a being, an existent, something self-identical. Using this concept we can translate salva veritate every sentence of the form Fs exist into a sentence of the form Some being is an F. The availability of such translations seems to strip 'exist(s)' and cognates of all semantic content.

The problem with this was appreciated by Aristotle long ago when he argued that Being is not a summum genus, a highest genus, or a genus generallisimum, a most general genus. (See Metaphysics 998b22 and   Posterior Analytics 92b14). Being, as that which makes beings be, does not abstract from the differences among beings. But a concept  superordinate to every quidditative concept, which is what the concept a being and the concept something self-identical are, does abstract from the differences among beings. To put it another way, Being, as that which constitutes beings as beings, is not superordinate to every  quidditative concept since it belongs to a different order entirely, the non-quidditative order of existence. The Being of a being is its thatness, not its whatness.

The mistake that Frege makes is to think that Being is a highest quidditative determination, a highest what-determination. The concept a being, ens, is such a concept, but this concept is not Being, esse.

In sum: Frege's elimination of existential judgments by translation into copulative judgments works only if Being (esse, das Sein) is a maximally abstract quidditative concept, the concept a being (ens, das  Seiende). But this is precisely what Being is not. Ergo, etc.

‘X is the New Y’

We could call 'X is the new Y' a sentential template of laziness.  Are you sick of it yet?    (Snowclone has been introduced as a terminus technicus for the genus of which 'X is the new Y' is a species.)  If not, try these on for size:

1. Casey Anthony is the new O. J. Simpson.
2. Obama is the new Carter.
3. Yellow is the new green. (From an article urging the recycling of human urine.)
4. Michelle Bachmann is the new Sarah Palin. (The latest object of leftist sexism.)
5. Fifty is the new forty. 
6. Blue is the new pink. (Blue-staters are lefties.)
7. Blue is the new red. (Blue-staters are crypto-commies.)
8. Asians are the new Jews. 
9. Radical Muslims are the new Communists. (If Communism was the main threat to civilization in the 20th century, then radical Islam is the main threat in the 21st century.)
10. Gold is the new cash.
11. God is the new devil. 
12. Black is the new chrome. (As in the latest Harley-Davidson models.)
13. Flourescent is the new incandescent.
14. Romney is the new McCain. (A wishy-washy go-along-to-get-along Republican.)
15. Anthony Weiner is the new Eliot Spitzer. 
16. English is the new Latin. (The international language of scholarship and science.)   

Were the Greatest Philosophers Theists or Atheists?

To answer the title question, we must first answer the logically prior question as to who the greatest philosophers were. But this presupposes an answer to the equally vexing question of who counts as  a philosopher. Heidegger published two fat volumes on Nietzsche, but dismissed Kierkegaard as a mere "religious writer." Others will go him one better, dismissing both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche — and Heidegger as well. Was Aquinas a philosopher?  Or was he merely a brilliant man who used philosophical tools to shore up beliefs of an extraphilosophical provenience, beliefs that he wouldn't have abandoned even if he hadn't able to find philosophical justifications for them?

Note also that the question as to who counts as a gen-u-ine philosopher presupposes an answer to the hairy and hoary question as to what philosophy is. 

In any case, here is my ranking of the philosophers that made it onto a BBC shortlist from a few years ago. The ranking is mine; the list is from the BBC.

1. Plato (c. 429-347 BC)
2. Aristotle (384-322 BC)
3. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274)
4. René Descartes (1596-1650)
5. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
6. Socrates (c. 470-399 BC)
7. Benedictus de Spinoza  (1632-1677)
8. David Hume (1711-1776)
9. Epicurus (341-270 BC)
10. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
11. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
12. Arthur  Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
13. Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
14. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
15. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
16. Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970)
17. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
18. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
19. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
20.  Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994)

Here are my criteria in order of importance:

1. Truth of the philosopher's conclusions
2. Belief in reason's power to discover some of the ultimate truth
3. Rigor of argumentation
4. Appreciation of the limits of reason
5. Depth and centrality of the problems addressed
6. Breadth and systematicity of vision
7. Originality
8. Long-term influence

The first seven philosophers on my list are great philosophers, the rest are important but not great. Kierkegaard, for example, though original and influential, and (too) appreciative of the limits of reason falls short on the other criteria.

It goes without saying that my ordering of the philosophers, my criteria, and their ordering are highly subjective. They reflect my interests, my biases, and my own philosophical conclusions. For example, my primary interest in a philosopher is not in his literary merit. If that is your primary interest, then you will probably rank Kierkegaard and Nietzsche ahead of Kant. Indeed, if you do not, then you have very poor taste!

You will notice that I am biased toward the rationalists. Thus all the philosophers I call great are either rationalists, or like Aristotle and Kant, have a strong rationalist side to their thinking. And when I   list truth as my numero uno criterion, it is clear that that is truth as I take it to be.

On the score of truth,  Nietzsche really falls short. For not only is there little if any philosophical truth in his writings, the poor soul denies the very existence of truth.

When one studies the first seven on the list, one actually learns something about the world. But when one reads Nietzsche and (later) Wittgenstein, one learns highly original and fascinating opinions that have little or no chance of being true. One learns from them, and from some others on the list, how NOT to do philosophy. But that too is something worth knowing! So they have their place and their use.

Now to our question whether the greatest philosophers were theists or atheists. The greatest philosophers on my list are Plato, Aristotle,  Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Socrates, and Spinoza. All of these are theists  of one sort or another.  But even if Spinoza is excluded, that leaves six out of seven. And if you argue that Aristotle's Prime Mover is not God in any serious sense, then I've still got five out of seven.

If you say I rigged my list so that theists come out on top, I will deny the charge and argue that I used independent criteria (listed above). But if you disagree my assessment, I will consider it par for the course.

C. J. F. Williams’ Analysis of ‘I Might Not Have Existed’

There are clear cases in which 'exist(s)' functions as a second-level predicate, a predicate of properties or concepts or propositional functions or cognate items, and not as a predicate of individuals. The   affirmative general existential 'Horses exist,' for example, is best understood as making an instantiation claim: 'The concept horse is instantiated.' Accordingly, the sentence does not predicate existence of individual horses; it predicates instantiation of the concept horse.

This sort of analysis is well-nigh mandatory in the case of negative general existentials such as 'Flying horses do not exist.' Here we have a true sentence that cannot possibly be about flying horses for the simple reason that there aren't any. (One can make a Meinongian move here, but if possible we should try to get by without doing so.) On a reasonable parsing,  'Flying horses do not exist'  is about the concept flying horse, and says of this concept that it has no instances.

But what about singular existentials? Negative singular existentials like 'Pegasus does not exist' pose no problem. We may analyze it as, 'It is not the case that there exists an x such that x is the winged   horse of Greek mythology.' Or we can take a page from Quine and say that nothing pegasizes. What we have done in effect is to treat the singular term 'Pegasus' as a predicate and read the sentence as a   denial that this predicate applies to anything.

Problems arise, however, with affirmative singular existentials such as 'I exist' and with sentences like 'I might not have existed' which  are naturally read as presupposing the meaningfulness of 'I exist' and thus of uses of 'exists' as a first-level predicate. Thus, 'I might not have existed' is construable in terms of the operator 'It might not have been the case that ____' operating upon 'I exist.'

C.J.F. Williams, following in the footsteps of Frege, maintains the draconian thesis that all meaningful uses of 'exist(s)' are second-level. He must therefore supply an analysis of the true sentence 'I might not have existed' that does not require the meaningfulness of 'I exist.' His suggestion is that

     . . . my assertion that I might not have existed is the assertion
     that there is some property . . . essential to me, which I alone
     possess, and which might never have been uniquely instantiated . .
     (What is Existence?, Oxford 1981, p. 104)

Williams is suggesting that for each individual x there is a property H such that (i) H is essential to x in the sense that x cannot exist  except as instantiating H; and (ii) H, if instantiated, is instantiated by exactly one individual. Accordingly, to say that x  might not have existed is to say that H might not have been instantiated. And to say that x exists is to say that H is instantiated.

This analysis will work only if the right properties are available. What is needed are essentially individuating properties. Suppose Ed is the fastest marathoner. Being the fastest marathoner distinguishes Ed from everything  else, but it does not individuate him since it is not bound up with Ed's identity that he be the fastest marathoner. Ed can be Ed without being the fastest marathoner. So Ed's existence cannot be equivalent to, let alone idenctical with, the instantiation of the property of being the fastest marathoner since this is an accidental property of anything that possesses it, whereas the existence of an individual must be essential to it. After all, without existence a thing is nothing at all! 

On the other hand, Ed's existence is not equivalent to his instantiation of any old essential property such as being human since numerous individuals possess the property whereas the existence of an individual is unique to it.

What is needed is a property that Ed alone has and that Ed alone has in every possible world in which he exists. Such a property will be essentially individuating: it will individuate Ed in every possible world in which Ed exists, one of these being the actual world.

Williams suggests the property of having sprung from sperm cell S and ovum O. Presumably Ed could not have existed without this origin, and anything possessing this origin is Ed. The idea, then, is that the   existence of Ed is the instantiation of this property.

The property in question, however, is one that Michael Loux would call 'impure': it makes essential reference to an individual or individuals, in this case to S and O. Since S and O each exist, the   question arises as to how their existence is to be analyzed.

For an analysis like that of Williams to work, what is needed is a  property that does not refer to or presuppose any existing individual,  a property that somehow captures the haecceity of Ed but without presupposing the existence of an individual. If there were such a haecceity property H, then one could say that Ed's existence just is H's being instantiated.

But as I argue in tedious detail in A Paradigm Theory of Existence and in this post such haecceity properties are creatures of darkness. That is one of  the reasons I reject Frege-style theories of existence.

Existence, real pound-the-table existence, belongs to individuals.  The attempt to 'kick it upstairs' and make it a property of properties or concepts or propositional functions is completely wrongheaded, pace such luminaries as Frege, Russell, and their epigoni.

Alan Dershowitz on the Casey Anthony Trial

Here it is in toto with my comments in blue.

"This case [is] about seeking justice for Caylee . . . ." So argued the prosecutor in the Casey Anthony murder case. He was wrong, and the jury understood that.

A criminal trial is never about seeking justice for the victim. If it were, there could be only one verdict: guilty. That's because only one person is on trial in a criminal case, and if that one person is acquitted, then by definition there can be no justice for the victim in that trial.

Dershowitz is making an important point, but I wonder if his formulation isn't untenably extreme.  The important point is that a criminal trial can issue in the correct result whether or not justice is achieved for the victim.  If the correct result is an acquittal, then of course there is no justice for the victim in that trial.  But if the correct result is a conviction, then there is justice for the victim in that trial.  So why does D. say that a criminal trial is NEVER about seeking justice for the victim?  It seems to me that what he should say is that a criminal trial is not first and foremost about seeking justice for the victim, but about making sure that the defendant is not wrongly convicted.  Surely D. does  not want to suggest that criminal proceedings have nothing to do with justice.

The glory of our system of justice is the (defeasible) presumption of innocence:  the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty.  This puts the burden of proof in a criminal trial where it belongs, on the state.  The prosecution must prove that the defendant is guilty; the defense is under no obligation to prove that the defendant is innocent.  In a criminal proceeding all the defense has to do is raise a reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the accused.

This is not well- or widely-understood.  Did you see The O'Reilly Factor last night?  The sweet Laura Ingram, who has been to law school, couldn't get through to the pugnacious and pig-headed O'Reilly.  He seemed not to understand the bit about presumption of innocence and burden of proof, nor did he seem to appreciate that the probative bar in a criminal trial is set very high:  the accused must be shown to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and not merely by a preponderance of the evidence.

A criminal trial is neither a whodunit nor a multiple choice test. It is not even a criminal investigation to determine who among various possible suspects might be responsible for a terrible tragedy. In a murder trial, the state, with all of its power, accuses an individual of being the perpetrator of a dastardly act against a victim. The state must prove that accusation by admissible evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt.

Yes indeed.

Even if it is "likely" or "probable" that a defendant committed the murder, he must be acquitted, because neither likely nor probable satisfies the daunting standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Accordingly, a legally proper result—acquittal in such a case—may not be the same as a morally just result. In such a case, justice has not been done to the victim, but the law has prevailed.

This is basically right, but it should be pointed out that 'reasonable doubt' is a vague phrase. It would seem that at some point the probability that the defendant committed the murder would be so great that it becomes unreasonable to doubt that the defendant did it. Or is Dershowitz claiming that certainty is required for a legally proper conviction?

Ask yourself whether the following scenario would raise a reasonable doubt.  Jones is charged with murder.  His defense is that he has an identical twin brother who was kidnapped at birth but has recently surfaced in order to pin the murder on Jones.  No one is able to cast doubt on Jones' story: the defendant's parents are dead, the birth records were lost or stolen, etc.  There are credible eye witnesses that testify under oath that they saw Jones do the dastardly deed. But what they saw, of course, is consistent with the identical twin's having committed the crime. (Example adapted from James Cargile, "On the Burden of Proof," Philosophy, January 1997, p. 77)

 This scenario shows, I think, that it is not certain that Jones did the foul deed.  But ought this defense raise a reasonable doubt?  I would say no.  It is just too far-fetched and improbable.  So certainty cannot be required for a conviction.  If so, then probability would seem to be relevant, contrary to what Dershowitz claims.

For thousands of years, Western society has insisted that it is better for 10 guilty defendants to go free than for one innocent defendant to be wrongly convicted. This daunting standard finds its roots in the biblical story of Abraham's argument with God about the sinners of Sodom.

Abraham admonishes God for planning to sweep away the innocent along with the guilty and asks Him whether it would be right to condemn the sinners of Sodom if there were 10 or more righteous people among them. God agrees and reassures Abraham that he would spare the city if there were 10 righteous. From this compelling account, the legal standard has emerged.

That is an important point that those who wish to suppress every vestige of our Judeo-Christian heritage ought to think about.

That is why a criminal trial is not a search for truth. Scientists search for truth. Philosophers search for morality. A criminal trial searches for only one result: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Again, this strikes me as an extreme way of putting an otherwise excellent point.  Does the good professor mean to suggest that there is no search for truth in a criminal trial?  And does he really want to suggest that proof and truth have no relation one to the other?  Does he think that proof beyond a reasonable doubt does not make it more likely than not that truth has been reached?

A civil trial, on the other hand, seeks justice for the victim. In such a case, the victim sues the alleged perpetrator and need only prove liability by a preponderance of the evidence. In other words, if it is more likely than not that a defendant was the killer, he is found liable, though he cannot be found guilty on that lesser standard.

dershowitz

AP

That is why it was perfectly rational, though difficult for many to understand, for a civil jury to have found O.J. Simpson liable to his alleged victim, after a criminal jury had found him not guilty of his murder. It is certainly possible that if the estate of Caylee Anthony were to sue Casey Anthony civilly, a Florida jury might find liability.

Exactly right.

Casey Anthony was not found innocent of her daughter's murder, as many commentators seem to believe. She was found "not guilty." And therein lies much of the misunderstanding about the Anthony verdict.

True, she was found 'not guilty.'  That is the correct terminology.  And to be found not guilty is not the same as to be innocent.  The misunderstanding of some commentators is to think that being found not guilty is an affirmation of the defendant's innocence.  The finding of 'not guilty,' however, is nothing more than the judgment that the evidence for conviction was insufficient, that the defendant was not proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  That is of course consistent with the defendant having committed the crime with which she is charged.

This misunderstanding is exacerbated by the pervasiveness of TV shows about criminal cases. On television and in the movies, crimes are always solved. Nothing is left uncertain. By the end, the viewer knows whodunit. In real life, on the other hand, many murders remain unsolved, and even some that are "solved" to the satisfaction of the police and prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to result in a conviction. The Scottish verdict "not proven" reflects this reality more accurately than its American counterpart, "not guilty."

'Not proven' is actually a better and more accurate phrase. 

Because many American murder cases, such as the Casey Anthony trial, are shown on television, they sometimes appear to the public as if they were reality television shows. There is great disappointment, therefore, when the result is a verdict of not guilty. On the old Perry Mason show, the fictional defense lawyer would not only get his client acquitted but he would prove who actually committed the murder. Not so in real life.

The verdict in the Casey Anthony case reflected the lack of forensic evidence and heavy reliance on circumstantial inferences. There was no evidence of a cause of death, the time of death, or the circumstances surrounding the actual death of this young girl. There was sufficient circumstantial evidence from which the jury could have inferred homicide. But a reasonable jury could also have rejected that conclusion, as this jury apparently did. There are hundreds of defendants now in prison, some even on death row, based on less persuasive evidence than was presented in this case.

Juries are not computers. They are composed of human beings who evaluate evidence differently. The prosecutors in this case did the best they could with the evidence they had, though I believe they made a serious mistake in charging Casey Anthony with capital murder and introducing questionable evidence, such as that relating to the "smell of death" inside the trunk of Casey Anthony's car.

The defense also made mistakes, particularly by accusing Ms. Anthony's father of sexually abusing her. Although they leveled this unfounded accusation in an effort to explain why Casey had lied, it sounded like the kind of abuse excuse offered to justify a crime of violence. But a criminal trial is not about who is the better lawyer. It is about the evidence, and the evidence in this case left a reasonable doubt in the mind of all of the jurors. The system worked.

In Debt We Trust

I saw the documentary In Debt We Trust on TV on one of the lefty channels.  Trailer here. It is a typical leftist treatment of the problem of indebtedness, but interesting  nonetheless. One of the people interviewed states that "Society preaches the gospel of shopping." That is the sort of nonsense one  expects to hear from libs and lefties. First of all, there is no such thing as society. To think otherwise is to commit the fallacy of hypostatization.  So if the sentence means anything, it means that  certain people, advertisers primarily, urge people to consume recklessly. No doubt about it. But libs and lefties ignore the main  thing, namely, the individual's ability to resist the siren song of the advertisers. If you are in debt, it is not 'society's' fault; it is your fault. Your ignorance of simple arithmetic and personal finance, and your refusal to control yourself are your responsibility.

Do I 'give a pass' to the predatory credit card companies, the subprime mortage scammers, and the payday loan sharks? No, but if it  weren't for your weakness of will and financial stupidity they wouldn't be able to get a handle on you. Don't blame others, blame  yourself.

In Matters Political is Temperament Destiny?

Before one is a conservative or a liberal ideologically, one is a conservative or a liberal temperamentally, or by disposition. Or at least this is a thesis with which I am seriously toying, to put it oxymoronically. The idea is that temperament is a major if not the main determinant of political commitments. First comes the disposition, then come the theoretical articulation, the arguments, and the examination and refutation of the arguments of adversaries. Conservatism and liberalism are bred in the bone before they are born in the brain.

If this is so, it helps explain the bitter and intractable nature of political disagreement, the hatreds that politics excites, the visceral oppositions thinly veiled under a mask of mock civility, the mutual repugnance that goes so deep as to be unlikely to be ascribable to mere differences in thinking. For how does one argue against another's temperament or disposition or sensibility? I can't argue you out of an innate disposition any more than I can argue you out of being yourself; and if your theoretical framework is little more than a reflection at the level of ideas of an ineradicable temperamental bias, then my arguments cannot be expected to have much influence. A certain skepticism about the role and reach of reason in human affairs may well be the Oakeshottian upshot.

In Seder Masochism, James Wolcott speaks of Dennis Prager's "usual oozing piety," thereby  betraying the leftist temperament with its scorn for piety and such cognate virtues as reverence and gratitude.  This is a bit of evidence that political alignments are a matter of sensibility first of all.  Or do you think you could 'reach' a fellow  like Wolcott with arguments?  Do you think you could convince him that piety, within limits, is good and not something that oozes like pus? I would have thought that if anything oozes like pus it would be the dreck that emanates from Wolcott and his ilk.