Category: Aporetics

The Existential versus the Merely Theoretical: Some Responses to a Reader

A young Brazilian reader, Vini, refers to an article of mine, Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove? and asks me some questions about it. He is clearly one of those whose interest in philosophy is deeply existential and not merely theoretical or academic.  ‘Existential’ has several meanings both inside and outside of philosophy.  I am using it roughly in the way it is used by such so-called existentialists as Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Marcel, early Sartre, and many others.  For such as these, philosophy is not an academic game. It is not about solving intellectual puzzles, or about achieving a merely theoretical, and thus impersonal view of the world that abstracts from the lived life of the individual truth-seeker who seeks a truth  that is subjectively appropriable and personally transformative. On an existential understanding of philosophy’s task and goal it cannot be science given that science aims at a wholly  impersonal, or third-personal, or objective view of things, as if Being could be wholly objectified.  Being cannot be wholly objectified  because, in Jaspersian terms, Being is das Umgreifende, the Encompassing, which includes both subject and objects  

Now either you understand what I am driving at with these sketchy remarks or you don’t. If what I have just written doesn’t resonate with you, if you have no idea what I am getting at, then you are wasting your time reading my work. For everything I write, no matter how tediously technical or politically polemical, is oriented toward One Thing, the achieving of my  individual, personal, intellectual-cum-spiritual salvation, even if such salvation requires the dissolution of the ego or separative self and its absorption into the eternal Atman or a Buddhist or Christian equivalent or near-equivalent thereof. Sounds paradoxical doesn’t it?  How could the salvation of the self require the dissolution of the self? But paradox, contradiction, absurdity and mystery are endemic to our predicament and must be addressed by the philosopher who knows what he is about and is serious about penetrating to the truth of our predicament.  Science, by contrast, seeks to banish mystery.

Again, you either catch my drift or you don’t.  Young Vini, I suspect, does. He comes across as vexed and tormented by questions that to the superficial are merely academic puzzles.  What he has written strikes me as a cri de coeur, and so I feel I ought to be of what little assistance I can be.  My years of Sturm und Drang lie 50 years in the past, but their animating spirit remains for me tutelary, guarding and guiding, daimonic in the Socratic sense.   

Vini writes,

4) On your post “Retorsion Revisited: How Far Does it Reach and What Does it Prove?”, you said: “3.  I exist.  The thought that I do not exist is unthinkable salva veritate.  Only I can think this thought, and my thinking of the thought falsifies its content, and this is so even if ‘I’ picks out merely a momentary self.  (I am not committed by this to a substantial self.)  So we have performative inconsistency.  Unfortunately, this does not show that I exist apart from my thinking.” So, I must ask: do you think that the self is a substance, or have you changed your mind? This got me a little bit confused, since I may have missed the context.

BV:  I think you have missed the context. What I am asking in the post is whether retorsion/retortion is a philosophical procedure or tool that can secure metaphysical results.  I wrote:

To be a successful metaphysical tool, a retorsive argument must establish the target proposition as true unconditionally and not merely on condition that there exist contingent beings like us who occasionally and contingently engage in such intellectual operations as affirmation and denial.    Otherwise, it would have no metaphysical significance, but merely a transcendental one.  (‘Transcendental’ is here being used in roughly the Kantian way.)

I am not addressing the question whether the self is a substance as opposed to a bundle of experiences. The point I am making is that retorsion does not establish the existence of the self on either conception.  The argument I gave commits me neither to a substantial self nor to a momentary self.  When you ask whether I changed my mind, you are assuming that in my “Chariot” article and the other posts directed against the Pali Buddhist ‘no self’ doctrine I am affirming a substance view of the self. But please note that if propositions P, Q are logically contradictory (i.e., cannot both be true and cannot both be false), and I show that the arguments for P are not rationally coercive, it does not follow that (a) I must find the arguments for Q rationally coercive, or (b) that I accept Q.  After all, the problem may be insoluble by us. In the anti-Buddhist articles and entries I was showing that there are good reasons for rejecting the Buddhist anatta/anatman doctrine. A good reason needn’t be rationally coercive or rationally compelling or philosophically dispositive. (I am using these phrases interchangeably.)

To take a different example, if I reject every version of presentism in the philosophy of time, it does not follow that I must accept some version of anti-presentism.

5) I think this question is one of the most important ones: Can I really rest assured that the self does exist, and it is like a Substance? To be completely honest with you, Bill, one thing that this whole 6-year experience showed me is that I know nothing or almost nothing about the world. I never thought in my life that we could even doubt about the reality of things such as the self. Back in the day, this shocked me. I was (and still somehow am) very afraid of things that I don’t know, like “what if there is a hidden argument that I don’t know,” “what if they are right,” and so on. I’m 27 years old, and I got a lot of things wrong in my life — but this is one I don’t want to be wrong about. You know, there are a lot of things with an intellect far, far superior to mine, such as Butchvarov, Husserl, and so on, that you are well aware of, that may have found arguments that I couldn’t even imagine in my lifetime. But, at the same time, I think that philosophy, above all else, can give definitive and satisfactory answers to life. It’s not an empirical science ‘guessing game,’ where things can flip from right to wrong in the bat of an eye (like, if someone got something wrong, he will be wrong no matter what, and that’s what I think about Buddhists, Harris and Co. on these matters). But, at the same time, I have this insecurity of getting things wrong, of something that might not be “sufficient” to show what I want to understand (in that case, the self), since I know so little of philosophy. So how could I rest assured that, no matter the hard work, they will be wrong? The self can’t be a guessing game. I think that there must be a way to establish the truth of this, regardless of the endless discussions that philosophers may have in the future (if he’s right, he’s right; if wrong, he’s wrong). I’m very afraid of being wrong, getting something wrong, and that there is an “unknown argument” that may tumble down what I think is right, but, at the same time, if I had all these dialectical worries since 2019, how could I possibly not exist (as a Substance)? I’m confused, since I also lend more value to what others said rather than my own experience… I don’t know how to think this through. Can you share your thoughts about this? A word of experience from someone who saw a lot more in life than I ever had would be very comforting to hear, especially from a philosopher. Even though your motto is “study everything, join nothing,” I really think that you can have a definitive answer on that matter. 

In all of that, sorry for the gigantic, torah-like email. I tried my best to express my worries as quickly as possible and tell you all of them in one shot. As I said, I really hope God touches your heart to help me with these questions. I really, really hope you could spare or find some time to answer me this. Even though for some people these questions are trivial, for me, I think they are life-changing and something that we live up to. I know I sound a little bit platonic (maybe I am), but I think the same centelha [scintilla, see here]of philosophy that resides in you will find and understand the questions in mine. 

May God bless you, Bill.

BV:  There are different types of philosopher. In another place in your Torah-like e-mail, you say you like Ed Feser’s work.  Ed is an ultra-competent expositor and defender of the metaphysics underpinning traditional Roman Catholicism. For him the ultimate truth, which is a salvific truth, is housed in the (trad) RCC.  He believes that he found the Answer there, his Answer, but also the Answer, the Answer for everyone whether they accept it or not.   I classify him as a dogmatic affirmer. The polar opposite is the dogmatic denier. I am neither. I am a critical inquirer in the Socratic tradition. Feser thinks the existence of God can be proven.  I deny that the existence of God can be proven, but I also deny that the existence of God can be disproven.  What holds for God, holds for the soul, and all the rest of our highest concerns.

You want to know (with objective certainty) whether the self is a substance that persists, numerically self-same over time, an immaterial substance, capable of existing whether or not it is embodied.  This burning desire to know is what distinguishes the true philosopher from the academic hacks and functionaries who dominate our universities. Many of them are clever, and some are brilliant, but they suffer from existentielle Bodenlosigkeit (Karl Jaspers).   Their work is a game, a job, a way of filling their bellies. It does not well up from their Existenz.  Their real lives are elsewhere.  They don’t live for philosophy, but from it, and they would drop it like a hot potato if they could no longer fill their bellies from it. The great Augustine said he wanted to know, more than anything else, two things:, God and the soul: deum et animam scire cupio.  So, Vini, you and I are in good company.

So are God and the soul (immaterial substantial self) real or not?  Can we KNOW the answer to that question? You say it can’t be a guessing game. You are right about that.  It can’t be a matter of flipping a coin or making a guess. That way of talking trivializes the question, as does, I am afraid, Pascal’s talk of a wager.  The great Pascal betrays the depth and seriousness of his thought with talk like that, though one understands how a great mathematician and contributor to probability theory would think like that.  Be that as it may.

It’s not a guessing game, but nonetheless in the end you must decide what you will believe and how you will live. There are no objective certainties and no knock-down proofs  in this life with respect to the Big Questions and the Ultimate Objects.  Genuine knowledge in these precincts is unattainable by us here below. Our cognitive architecture is not up to the task. Our reason is weak and merely discursive. And the noetic consequences of sin may have to be factored in.

“I have found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith,” wrote Kant in the preface to the 2nd edition of his Critique of Pure Reason. The great Kant was on the right track. Reason is dialectical in his sense and simply not up to the task of laying bare the nature of the ultimate.

You say, “I think that there must be a way to establish the truth of this.” That is precisely what I deny assuming by ‘establish’ you mean conclusively prove.  Reasoned belief is as far as we can go. Th  dogmatic affirmers, driven by overpowering doxastic security needs, fool themselves when they pass off arguments that are objectively inconclusive as proofs. I am not saying that they are intellectually dishonest; I am saying that they are in the grip of an overpowering need to be secure in their beliefs.

But more on this later, if you like. I welcome your objections, Vini.  Please respond here on this blog, the latest version of Maverick Philosopher. If you do so you will have the honor of being the first to anoint my combox with comments.

The Concept of Standoff in Philosophy

Substack latest.

A second example:

3. God by his very nature as divine is a concrete being who exists of metaphysical necessity.

4. Nothing concrete could exist of metaphysical necessity.

By ‘concrete’ I mean causally active/passive. The God in question is not a causally inert abstract object like a number or a set-theoretical set. Clearly, (3) and (4) form a contradictory pair and so cannot both be true. And yet one can argue plausibly for each.

This is not the place for detailed arguments, but in support of (3) there are the standard Anselmian considerations. God is ens perfectissimum; nothing perfect could be modally contingent; ergo, etc. God is “that than which no greater can be conceived”; if God were a merely contingent being, then a greater could be conceived; ergo, etc.

In support of (4), there is the difficulty of understanding how any concrete individual could exist necessarily. For such a being, possibility suffices for actuality: if God is possible, then he is actual. But this possibility is not mere possibility; it is the possibility of an actual being. (God is at no time or in any possible world merely possible, if he is possible at all.) The divine possibility — if it is a possibility at all and not an impossibility — is a possibility that is fully actualized. Possibility and actuality in God are one and the same in reality even though they remain notionally distinct for us. (In classical jargon, God is pure act, actus purus.) Equivalently, essence and existence in God are one and the same in reality even if they must remain notionally distinct for our discursive/dianoetic intellects. It is God’s nature to exist. God is an existing essence in virtue of his very essence. God’s existence is in no way subsequent to his essence, not temporally, of course, but also not logically or ontologically. So it is not quite right to say, as many do, that God’s nature entails his existence; God’s nature is his existence, and his existence is his nature.

If you think this through very carefully, you will realize that the ground of the divine necessity is the divine simplicity. It is because God is an ontologically simple being that he is a necessary being. If you deny that God is simple but affirm that he is necessary, then I will challenge you to state what makes him necessary as opposed to impossible. If you say that God is necessary in virtue of existing in all possible worlds, then I will point out that that gets us nowhere: it is simply an extensional way of saying that God is necessary. You have also faied to distinguish God from such ‘garden variety’ necessary beings as numbers and sets.

Divine simplicity implies no real distinctions in God, and thus no real distinction between essence and existence. It is the identity of essence and existence in God that is the root, source, ground of the divine necessity. The problem is that we, with our discursive intellects, cannot understand how this could be. Anything we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as nonexistent. (Hume) The discursive intellect cannot grasp the possibility of a simple being, and so it cannot grasp the possibility of a necessary concretum. Here then we have the makings of an argument that, in reality, every concretum is contingent, which is equivalent to the negation of (4).

So if one philosopher urges (3) and his interlocutor (4), and neither can convince the other, then the two are in a standoff.

Now you may quibble with my examples, but there are fifty more I could give (and you hope I won’t).

The Aporetics of Primary Substance

I am nothing if not self-critical. And so a partial retraction may be in order.  In A Problem for Hylomorphic Dualism in the Philosophy of Mind, I opened with:

1) A primary substance (a substance hereafter) is a concrete individual.  A man, a horse, a tree, a statue are stock examples of substances.  A substance in this technical sense is not to be confused with stuff or material. Substances are individuals in that they have properties but are not themselves properties.  Properties are predicable; substances are not. Substances are concrete in that they are causally active/passive. 

What I wrote is not obviously wrong as a summary of what Aristotle means by ‘primary substance,’ (πρότη οὐσία) and I could cite  Aristotle commentators who have maintained something similar. But it is not obviously right either. Although it comports well with what we find in the Categories, it does not agree with what we read in the later Metaphysics, and in particular, Metaphysics VII (Zeta).  For in the latter work, Aristotle maintains the surprising thesis that each primary substance is identical with its essence. (VII.6) This is what Aristotle seems to be saying at 1031b18-20 and at 1034a4-6 in Metaphysics Z.  In the first of these passages we find, “each thing-itself [auto hekaston] and its essence are one and the same . . . .” In the latter place, we read, “in the case of things that are said in respect of themselves and  primary, X and the essence of X are the same and one . . . .” (Montgomery Furth tr.)

Why is this surprising?

Well, if following the Categories we take Socrates to be a clear example of a primary substance, and if a primary substance is identical to its essence (substantial form), then it is difficult to see how Socrates could be a hylomorphic compound, which he surely is, if not according to the Categories, then according to the Metaphysics.  After all, a composite composed of two complementary but non-identical elements cannot be identical to either. The following is quite obviously an inconsistent triad:

1) Socrates is a matter-form composite, a hylomorphic compound, a unity of two complementary but non-identical ‘principles’ (archai) or ontological factors, matter and form, neither of which can exist actually (as opposed to potentially) without the other.  That is: no actual parcel of matter can exist without having some substantial form or other, and (contra Plato), no substantial form of a material thing can exist without material embodiment.

2) Socrates is a primary substance.

3) Every primary substance is identical to a substantial form (essence, eidos).

These propositions are collectively inconsistent: any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one. The triad above is known in the trade as an antilogism, and to each antilogism, there are three corresponding valid syllogisms.  

Syllogism A is an argument from (1) and (2) to the negation of (3).  Syllogism B is an argument from (2) and (3) to the negation of (1). Syllogism C is an argument from (3) and (1) to the negation of (2).  Each of these syllogisms is valid, but only one is sound.  Which one? That is the problem.

The problem can also be framed as follows. The limbs of the antilogism cannot all be true. So which limb of the antilogism (inconsistent triad)  should we reject?  Aristotle cannot abandon (1), for that would be to abandon hylomorphism. And he cannot abandon (3) given the textual evidence cited above.  So it seems that (2) has to go. Or rather, (2) has to go if we assume that the Metaphysics is an advance over the Categories and represents Aristotle’s mature position.

The rejection of (2), however, would appear to send us from the frying pan into the fire. If Socrates is not a primary substance, what would be? But before explaining this incendiary transition, let us first try to understand what motivates Aristotle’s surprising identification of primary substances with substantial forms at Metaphysics VII.6.

Why does Aristotle identify primary substances with substantial forms?

We begin by reminding ourselves that Aristotle’s inquiry into primary substance is a quest for the ultimately real, the ontologically basic, that upon which the reality of everything else depends. For Aristotle, ontology is ousiology, the search for the primary ousiai or substances or primary beings.  He never doubts that there are primary beings (basic entities or basic existents) upon which all else is ontologically dependent. And so he never countenances the possibility that the solution to any of the aporiai he sets forth could be solved by denying either the existence of substances or their plurality.  Being is many, not one, and the many beings are fundamentally real in that they are the supports of their properties and remain self-same over time.  In contemporary analytic jargon they persist by enduring not by perduring.

That there is a real plurality of primary substances is thus a fundamental presupposition of Aristotle’s ousiological ontology. The  existence of primary substances/beings, as a presupposition of ontological inquiry, is thus not a matter for inquiry. What is a matter for inquiry is the question: Which items are the items that satisfy the requirements of primary substance? That there are primary substances the Stagirite takes for granted; what they are is up for grabs.* Hence it cannot be simply assumed that concrete individuals such as a man, a horse, a tree, or a statue are primary substances despite the intuitive appeal of this notion and the support it finds in the Categories.  This is something to be investigated. 

Now there are  three main candidates for the office of primary substance. The three candidates are matter, form, and the hylomorphic compound, the composite of matter and form.

So either Socrates, who stands in here for any primary substance, is identical to matter, or he is identical to form, or he is identical to a matter-form (hylomorphic) composite.  Now he can’t be identical to matter as  Jonathan Lear explains:

. . . matter cannot be primary substance, for it is not something definite, nor is it intelligible, nor is it ontologically independent. As Aristotle puts it, matter is not a ‘this something.’ [tode ti] His point is not that matter is not a particular, but that matter is not an ontologically definite, independent entity. (Aristotle: The Desire to Understand, Cambridge UP, 1988, 271)

That sounds right. Primary substances are ontologically basic existents upon which all else depends for its being. An ontologically basic existent must be something definite (horismenos) that is both intelligible (understandable) and ontologically independent (choristos).  A smile, for example, is intelligible, and it is definite, but is not ontologically independent and thus not a substance. A smile cannot exist in itself, but only in another, namely, in a face.  You could say that the being of a smile is parasitic upon the being of a face.  You can have a face without a smile, but not a smile without a face. 

Lear is arguing on Aristotle’s behalf:  (i) Primary substances must be ontologically independent and definite; (ii) matter is neither ontologically independent nor definite; ergo, (iii) matter is not primary substance. So far, so good.  

You might object that the matter of Socrates and the matter of Plato are definite. But what defines or delimits these parcels of matter are Socrates and Plato, respectively, or rather what I will call their ‘wide essences’ or ‘wide quiddities’ by which I mean the conjunction of essential and accidental determinations appertinent to each: these parcels are  two because Socrates and Plato are two, and not the other way around.  

Lear, then, is right: matter cannot be primary substance.

Surprisingly, however, Socrates cannot be identical to a hylomorphic composite either. For “a composite is ontologically posterior to its form and matter.” (Lear, 277) Nothing counts as a primary substance, however, unless it is ontologically prior to everything else.  Thus Lear is arguing:

4) Nothing is a primary substance unless it is ontologically independent, ‘separate’ (choristos).

5) Every hylomorphic compound or material composite is ontologically posterior to, and thus ontologically dependent on, its components, matter and form. 

Therefore

6) No hylomorphic composite is a primary substance.

There is no way around this argument, as far as I can see. Therefore, of the three candidates, matter, form, and the hylomorphic compound, Aristotle concludes that substantial form is primary substance. (Note that accidental forms such as Socrates’s snubnosedness cannot be primary substance because of their lack of ontological independence.) But what is substantial form? Substantial form is essence where essence is ‘the what it is’ (to ti esti, τὸτί ἐστι)  of the thing, a calque of which is the Latin quidditas, whatness, quiddity.

Aristotle’s conclusion, then, in Metaphysics Zeta, is that, “each primary substance is identical with its essence.” (Lear, 279) Essence is what the mind comprehends, or at least apprehends. Essences are made for the mind, and the mind for essences. In this way the intelligibility requirement is satisfied. Matter as such is unintelligible, and hylomorphic compounds are intelligible only in their formal aspects.   Essences are the ontological correlates of definitions. A good definition ‘captures’ an essence in words. Thus ‘Man is a rational animal,’ while defining the term ‘man,’ points the mind beyond the word on the linguistic plane to to the essence on the ontological plane. These last sentences are my gloss on Lear’s gloss on Aristotle.

From the Frying Pan into the Fire

Aristotle is telling us that Socrates is identical to his essence or substantial form. This identification satisfies the  intelligibility requirement. Recall, however, that there are two requirements that need to be satisfied for anything to count as a primary being or basic entity.  Intelligibility is not enough. The other is that the item must be ontologically independent (choristos).  But independent is precisely what Aristotelian forms are not. For Plato, forms are ontologically independent of the phenomenal particulars that may or may not embody them here below. Plato’s Forms exist whether or not they are embodied or exemplified.  Not so for Aristotle who, figuratively speaking, brings the forms from their heavenly place (topos ouranios) down to earth. An Aristotelian substantial form of a material thing cannot exist without being embodied, ‘enmattered.’ On a hylomorphic assay of concrete individuals (a rock, a tree, a cat, a man, a statue), matter and form are  two complementary but non-identical components neither of which can exist without the other.

Aristotle appears to have painted himself into a corner.  He assumes, reasonably enough given what our outer senses reveal, that the world we encounter consists of a plurality of basic entities or primary substances.  

Relatedly, how is it logically possible for all of the following propositions to be true given what Aristotle appears to be maintaining in Metaphysics Z?

4) Socrates and Plato are numerically different human primary substances.

2) A primary substance is (identically) an essence or substantial form.

5) Socrates and Plato have the same substantial form or essence, where the essence is the ontological correlate of the  definiens of the definition that applies to them both univocally, namely, ‘A human being is a rational animal.’

I’ll end with a suggestion: Platonism lives on in Aristotle inasmuch as the substantial form is the primary substance, and not the concrete material particular.  The difference between the two titans of Greek philosophy is less than you thought. It is sometimes said that every philosopher is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. My suggestion implies that this is not so. It is rather that every philosopher qua philosopher, if he is the real deal, is a Platonist. Plato dominates his best student. If so, A. N. Whitehead vindicatus est:  all of philosophy is but a series of footnotes to Plato, the ‘divine’ Plato as I sometimes call him.  Or as our very own Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Plato is philosophy and philosophy Plato.”

My claim about the dominance of Plato is obviously tendentious.  But if a man cannot be tendentious in the pages of his own weblog, where can he be tendentious?

For commentary on Raphael’s painting see my Substack entry, A Battle of Titans.

_______________________

*Aristotle takes it for granted that there is a plurality of primary substances. Is that self-evident? Put the question to Spinoza, and he would say that there is exactly one primary substance, deus sive natura, and that what Aristotle takes to be primary substances are mere modes of God or nature.   What would Plato say? Well he certainly would not say that Socrates and his toga are primary substances; they are merely phenomenal particulars, and insofar forth insubstantial, a blend of being and nonbeing.  He would give the palm to the eide, which are many, and beyond them to the Good, which is one.

Aristotle also takes it for granted that there are primary substances. Is that self-evident? Not to the exponents of the Madhyamika system. See T. R. V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism.

The Riddle of Evil and the Pyrrhonian ‘Don’t Care’

Substack latest on the aporetics of evil.  

Today I preach upon a text from Karl Jaspers wherein he comments on St. Augustine (Plato and Augustine, ed. Arendt, tr. Mannheim, Harcourt 1962, p. 110):

In interminable discussions, men have tried to sharpen and clarify this contradiction: on the one hand, evil is a mere clouding of the good, a shadow, a deficiency; on the other hand, it is an enormously effective power. But no one has succeeded in resolving it.

The problem is genuine, the problem is humanly important, and yet it gives every indication of being intractable. Jaspers is right: no one has ever solved it. To sharpen the contradiction:

1) Evil is privatio boni: nothing independently real, but a mere lack of good, parasitic upon the good. It has no positive entitative status.

2) Evil is not a mere lack of good, but an enormously effective power in its own right. It has a positive entitative status.

A tough nut to crack, an aporetic dyad, each limb of which makes a very serious claim on our attention. And yet the limbs cannot both be true. Philosophy is its problems, and when a problem is expressed as an aporetic polyad, then I say it is in canonical form.

Read it all.

Mind-Body Dualism in Aquinas and Descartes: How Do They Differ?

Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, views the soul as the form of the body. Anima forma corporis. Roughly, soul is to body as form is to matter. So to understand the soul-body relation, we must first understand the form-matter relation.  Henry Veatch points out that "Matter and form are not beings so much as they are principles of being." (Henry B. Veatch, "To Gustav Bergmann: A Humble Petition and Advice" in M. S. Gram and E. D. Klemke, eds. The Ontological Turn: Studies in the Philosophy of Gustav Bergmann , University of Iowa Press, 1974, pp. 65-85, p. 80)  'Principles' in this scholastic usage are not  propositions.  They are ontological factors (as I would put it) invoked in the analysis of primary substances, but they are not themselves primary substances. They cannot exist on their own.  Let me explain.

The Man in the Mirror and Belief De Se

The following can happen.  You see yourself but without self-recognition.  You see yourself, but not as yourself.  Suppose you walk into a room which, unbeknownst to you, has a mirror covering the far wall.  You are slightly alarmed to see a wild-haired man with his fly open approaching you.  You are looking at yourself but you don't know it.  (The lighting is bad, you've had a few drinks . . . .) You think to yourself

1) That man's fly is open!

but not

2)  My fly is open!

Now these thoughts or propositions are different.  For one thing, they have different behavioral consequences.  I can believe the first without taking action with respect to my fly, or any fly.  But if I believe the second I will most assuredly button my fly.  A second point is that one cannot validly infer (2) from (1). That is because (2) says more than (1). For (2) says that BV's fly is open AND that I am BV.  When I refer to myself using 'BV' I refer to myself in the third person using an abbreviation (or a name) that both I and others can use. When I refer to myself using 'I,' I refer to myself in the first person using a word that only I can use to refer to myself.

So  (1) and (2) are different propositions.  I can believe the first without believing the second.  But how can this be given the plain fact that 'that man' and 'BV' refer to the same man?  The demonstrative phrase and the proper name have the same referent. Both propositions predicate the same property of the same subject.  So what makes them different propositions?

If propositions are Russellian, then BV, all 170 lbs of him, is a constituent of both propositions, which implies that these propositions are one and the same. But the propositions are distinct as has already be shown. So they must be Fregean.  BV himself cannot be a constituent of such a proposition: he needs a surrogate entity, a Fregean sense, to stand in for him in the proposition and to represent him.  (Note that this sense is both a representative of BV and a representation of BV.)  

As noted, (2) analyzes into a conjunction of 

3) BV's fly is open

and

4) I am BV.

Here is the point at which I am flummoxed and reach an impasse.  (4) says more than

5) BV is BV.

(5) is a miserable tautology. It is a logical truth, true in virtue of its logical form. Its negation is a contradiction. (4) is in some sense 'informative,' 'synthetic.' It smacks of a certain 'contingency': might I not have inhabited a numerically different body? Might not my epistemic access to the world have been mediated by a different body and brain?  

(5) differs in cognitive value (Erkenntniswert) from (4). But I am at a loss to say what this I-sense is. It has to be a sense, an abstract item of sorts, but what is it? What is the sense of this sense?  It appears utterly ineffable. The sense of 'I' when deployed by BV is unique to him: it somehow captures his ipseity and haecceity which are of course 'incommunicable,' as a scholastic might say, to anyone else.  

How eff the ineffable?  Hegel: there is no ineffable to eff. Tractarian Wittgenstein: Es gibt allerdings das Unaussprechliche. 'There is, however, the inexpressible."

An Exchange Relevant to the Problem of Dirty Hands

From Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons."

  • William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
  • Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
  • William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
  • Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

But what if giving evildoers the benefit of law leads to the permanent ascendancy of evil and the destruction of all civilization? You say that can't happen? How do you know that? Because God wouldn't allow it? How do you know that God exists? You don't know that; you believe it.  Belief is not knowledge even if supported by reasons.  Can you prove that the Good must triumph in the end?  No you can't. I myself believe that the Good must triumph is the end.  But this is  matter of faith, not knowledge.

Of course, you might just say: Fiat iustitia, pereat mundus! "Let there be justice though the world perish!" But what would be the good of abstract justice if we were all to perish? The administration of justice via the rule of law in general and laws in particular is for the sake of human flourishing, and not the other way around.  The law exists for us; we don't exist for the law. The same goes for government without which there could be no equitable administration of justice.  Government exists for the benefit of the people; the people don't exist for the benefit of government and those who control it.

Welcome to political aporetics! 

To put the aporia as sharply as possible, the following are individually plausible but mutually inconsistent:

A. Moral reasons for action ought to be dominant: they trump every other reason for action such as 'reasons of state.'

B. Some actions are absolutely morally wrong, intrinsically wrong, morally impermissible always and everywhere, regardless of situation, context, circumstances, consequences.

C. Among absolutely morally wrong actions, there are some that are (non-morally) permissible, and indeed  (non-morally) necessary: they must be done in a situation in which refusing to act would lead to worse consequences such as the destruction of one's nation or culture.

It is easy to see that this triad is inconsistent.  The limbs cannot all be true.  (B) and (C) could both be true if one allowed moral reasons to be trumped by non-moral reasons.  But that is precisely what (A), quite plausibly, rules out.  

The threesome, then, is logically inconsistent. And yet each limb makes a strong claim on our acceptance. To solve the problem one of the limbs must be rejected.  Which one? 

Back to Kant! The Aporetics of Appearance

Ed Buckner writes and I respond in blue:

1) The expression “this table” refers to something, i.e. has a referent.

BV: Yes.

2) What it refers to is extended in space and persists through time.

BV: No doubt. (1) and (2) are 'datanic claims' in my terminology. They simply must be accommodated by any theory worth its salt.

A Kantian will sum up (1) and (2) by saying that 'this table' refers to something empirically real. 'Empirically' means via the senses. To say that the table is empirically real is to say that it exists independently of any particular perceiver such as Ed and his mental states, and is given via the outer senses (sight, touch, etc.).  It follows, of course, that the table is not an object of inner sense. For if it were an object of inner sense, it could not be in space. Ed's perceivings, which he can become aware of by inner sense, are in time, but not in space. Because the table is in space, it is not in Ed's mind, i.e., it is not one of his mental states.

3) Kant claims that a thing in itself is not extended in space and does not persist through time.

BV: Kant does indeed say that, but what does it mean? On one interpretation, what Kant means by the above claim is that a thing such as a table, when considered as a thing in itself, and thus not as it appears to us under the epistemic conditions under which alone it can appear to us, is not extended in space and does not appear in time.

On this interpretation, promoted by such noted Kant scholars as Gerold Prauss and Henry Allison, there are not two tables, a phenomenal table and a noumenal table; there is one table considered in two ways. Phenomena and things in themselves are not two types of thing, but two different ways of considering the same things. It is not as if, 'behind' the phenomenal table, there is a 'table in itself': there is only one table  viewed either from the human (finite) point of view or from the absolute point of view of an intellectus archetypus.

One advantage of this interpretation is that it allows the accommodation of  Kant's repeated insistent claim that he is not a Berkeleyan idealist. For Berkeley, spatial things such as tables are in the mind. For Kant, they are not in the mind, for the following reason. What is in the mind is accessible to inner sense, but not to outer sense. Tables and such, however, are accessible only to outer sense. So tables and spatial things generally are not in the mind. They are in space outside the mind.  It must be understood, of course, that for Kant space is a mere a priori form of our sensibility, and thus one of the epistemic conditions above mentioned.

4) Therefore what “this table” refers to is not a thing in  itself.

BV: The validity of the inference is questionable. On the above interpretation, what "this table" refers to is not a thing as it would be when considered apart from the epistemic conditions under which alone it can appear to us. It refers to a thing under the epistemic conditions under which alone it can appear to us. It could therefore be said that what "this table" refers to is indeed that table itself, albeit under the epistemic conditions under which alone it can appear to us.  These conditions include space and time, the a priori conditions of our sensibility (Sinnlichkeit), and the categories, the a priori forms of our understanding (Verstand).

I cannot fault these. In which case, what does “this table” refer to, for a Kantian?

BV: "This table," in line with the above interpretation, refers to a table under the epistemic conditions (space, time, and categories) under which alone it can appear to us. It thus refers to a phenomenon or appearance (Erscheinung). But this phenomenon is not a private mental content of a particular perceiver.  It is an intersubjectively accessible thing, the table in our example.  

So, from a Kantian point of view, 'this table' refers to a table which to employ a signature Kantian phrase, is "empirically real but transcendentally ideal." 

Pace Ed Buckner, and other English commentators, Kant is not a Berkeleyan idealist. This is not to say that that Kant's transcendental idealism is in the the clear. It remains problematic for reasons we cannot go into now.

On ‘Materialize’ and Materialism

 

Mind no matter

It is interesting that 'materialize' is often used in ordinary English as an intransitive verb to mean: come to be real.  "Rain clouds materialized on the horizon." "The Hezbollah counterattack never materialized." A thing or state of affairs is real if and only if it exists independently of (finite) mind. To be real is to exist outside the mind and outside its causes. The last two sentences may need some tweaking and some commentary, but let's move on to the question of the relation of materiality and existence.  Is the following true?

1) Necessarily, for any x, x exists iff x is a material thing.

(1) formulates a version of materialism: everything that exists is a material thing, and everything that is material exists. If true, (1) necessarily true. We surely don't want to say that (1) just happens to be true. The type of necessity? Not analytic and not narrowly logical. And of course not nomological: (1) is not a law of nature given that the laws of nature are logically contingent.  (1), if true, formulates a law of metaphysics. So I'll say it is metaphysically necessary. 

Are there counterexamples to (1)? Are there existing things that are not material? Are there material things that do not exist?

Wanted are nice clean  counterexamples that are not as questionable as (1) itself. I want to refute (1) if I can. Bear in mind that 'refute' is a verb of success. So angels won't do. How about numbers? Numbers are more credible than angels; numbers presumably exist; numbers are so-called 'abstract' objects outside of space and time and thus not material.  Hartry Field and other nominalists, however, will argue with some plausibility that numbers and other abstracta either do not exist or that there is no good reason to posit them.  Field wrote a book entitled Science Without Numbers.  (And of course he was not proposing that one could do physics without mathematics.) 

What is left by way of counterexamples to (1) if we exclude spiritual substances (God, gods, angels, demons, unembodied and disembodied souls) and so-called abstract objects (numbers, mathematical sets, Fregean-Bolzanian propositions, Chisholmian-Plantingian states of affairs, etc.)? 

Well, consider my present occurrent visual awareness of my lamp.  (Better yet: you consider your present occurrent awareness of anything .) This awareness of the lamp (genitivus obiectivus) is not the lamp; it exists, and it cannot be material in nature. The awareness is not a state of my body or brain, even if correlated with some such state. If it were a state of my body or brain, it would be material which is precisely what it cannot be. Why not? Because the awareness is an intentional or object-directed state and no material/physical state can exhibit intentionality.

This is as clean a counterexample as I can muster.  The awareness of material things is not itself a material thing. Less clean, but still a contender, is the subject of (genitivus subiectivus) the object-directed state , the mind, ego, self that is in the state.  If there is a self along the lines of a Cartesian res cogitans that is aware of a lamp when BV is aware of his lamp, then that self exists but is not material.

Have these considerations refuted (1)?  You tell me. What I will say is that they make the rejection of (1) reasonable.

The other class of putative counterexamples to (1) are items that are material but do not exist.  Unicorns and flying horses come to mind. Suppose that there are four categories of entity  item:  (i) immaterial minds, (ii) occurrent and dispositional states of minds, whether intentional or non-intentional; (iii) so-called 'abstract' objects; (iv) material things.  Where do such Meinongian nonentities as unicorns belong?  Obviously they belong in the fourth category.  They are material things even though they don't exist!

Has this second set of considerations refuted (1)? You tell me. 

Nominalism Presupposes What it Denies

What makes a pair of shoes a pair and not just two physical artifacts? Nominalist answer: nothing in reality. Our resident nominalist tells us that it is our use of 'a pair' that imports a unity, conventional and linguistic in nature, a unity that does not exist in reality apart from our conventional importation. We are being told that out there in the world there are no ones-in-many, let alone any ones-over-many. If that is  right, then there are no sets. For a set is a one-over-many in this sense: it is one item distinct from its many members. (Let's not worry about the null set, which has no members and unit-sets or singletons which have exactly one member each. Here lies yet another rich source of aporiai, but one problem at a time.) 

If there are no sets, then there are neither finite sets nor infinite sets. There are just pluralities, and all grouping, collecting, subsuming under common rubrics, unifying, etc. is done in language by language-users. What I will try to show is that if you think carefully about all of this you will have to make distinctions that are inconsistent with nominalism. 

My aim is purely negative: to show that the nominalism of the resident nominalist is untenable. If you have read a good amount of what I have written you will recall that I am a solubility skeptic, which in this instance means that I am not endorsing any realist solution of the problem. I am not pushing an opposing theory. 

I will start with some data that I find 'Moorean,' i.e., rationally indisputable and pre-theoretical.  (Unfortunately, one man's datum is another man's theory.) The phrase 'a pair' has a sense that remains the same over time and space, a sense that is the same for all competent speakers of English whether here or abroad. The same holds for ein Paar in German, and similarly for all languages. The sense or meaning of an expression, whether word, phrase, sentence, etc. must be distinguished from the expression.  An expression is something physical and thus sensible. The sensible is that which is able to be sensed via one of our senses.  I hear the sound that conveys to me the meaning of 'cat,' say, or I see the marks on paper. Hearing and seeing are outer senses that somehow inform us or, more cautiously, purport to inform us of the existence and properties of physical or material things that exist whether or not we perceive them. But I don't hear or see the meaning conveyed to me by your utterance of  a sentence such 'The cats are asleep.' The sentence, being a physical particular, is sensible; the meaning is intelligible. That's just Latin for understandable. I hear the words you speak, and if all goes well, I understand their meaning or sense, thereby understanding the proposition you intend to convey to me, namely, that the cats are asleep. Note that while one can trip over sleeping cats, one cannot trip over that the cats are asleep.

There are two distinctions implicit in the above that need to be set forth clearly.  I argue that neither is compatible with nominalism

A. The distinction between the sense/meaning of a linguistic expression and the expression. Why must we make this distinction? (a) Because the same sense can be expressed at different times by the same person using the same expression. (b) Because the same sense can be expressed at the same and at different times by different people using the same expression. (c) Because the same sense can be expressed in different languages using different expressions by the same and different people at the same and at different times. For example the following sentences express, or rather can be used to express, the same sense (meaning, proposition):

The cat is black.
Il gatto è nero. 
Die Katze ist schwarz.
Kedi siyah.
Kočka je černá.

So the sense of a word or phrase or sentence is a one-in-many in that each tokening of the word or phrase expresses numerically the same sense.  A tokening, by definition, is the production of a token, in this case, a linguistic token.  One way a speaker can produce such a token is by uttering the word or phrase in question. Another way is by writing the word or phrase down on a piece of paper. (There are numerous other ways as well.)  This production of tokens therefore presupposes a further distinction:

B. The distinction between linguistic types and linguistic tokens. In the following array, how many words are there?

cat
cat
cat

Three or one? Is the same word depicted three times? Or are there three words? Either answer is as good as the other but they contradict each other. So we need to make a distinction: there are three tokens of the same type. We are forced by elementary exegesis of the data to make the type-token distinction.  If you don't make it, then you will not be able to answer my simple question: three words or one?

You see (using the optical transducers in your head, and not by any visio intellectualis) the three tokens. And note that the tokens you now see are not the tokens I saw when I wrote this entry. Those were different tokens of the same type, tokens which, at the time of your reading are wholly past. Linguistic tokens are in time, and in space, which is not obviously the case for linguistic types. I said: not obviously the case, not: obviously not the case.   You see the three tokens, but do you see the type of which they are the tokens? If you do, then you have powers I lack. And yet the tokens are tokens of a type. No type, no tokens. So types exist. How will our nominalist accommodate them? He cannot reduce types to sets of tokens since he eschews sets. No sets, no sets of linguistic tokens. Linguistic types are multiply instantiable. That makes them universals. But no nominalist accepts universals.  Nominalists hold that everything is a particular.  I grant that the rejection of sets and the rejection of universals are different rejections. But if one rejects sets because they are abstract objects, one ought also to reject universals for the same reason.

Now glance back at the first array. What we have there are five different sentence tokens from five different languages.  Each is both token – and type-distinct from the other four. 

To conclude, I present our nominalist with two challenges. The first is to give a nominalist account of linguistic types without either reducing them to sets or treating them as ones-in-many or ones-over-many. The second challenge is to explain the distinction between the sense or meaning of an expression, which is not physical/material and the expression which is.

Suppose he responds to the second challenge by embracing conceptualism according to which  meanings are mental.  Conceptualism is concept-nominalism, as D. M. Armstrong has maintained. My counterargument would be that the meaning/sense expressed by a tokening of 'The cats are asleep'  is objectively either true or false, and thus either true or false for all of us, not just for the speaker. Sentential meanings are not private mental contents.  Fregean Gedanken, for example, are not dependent for their existence or truth-value on languages or language-users.  

 

On Potential and Actual Infinity, and a Puzzle

Consider the natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, . . . n, n +1, . . . ).  If these numbers form a set, call it N, then N will of course be actually infinite.  This because a set in the sense of set theory is a single, definite object, a one-over-many, distinct from each of its members and from all of them.  N must be actually infinite because there is no greatest natural number, and because N contains all the natural numbers. 

It is worth noting that 'actually infinite set' is a pleonastic expression. It suffices to say 'infinite set.'  This is because the phrase 'potentially infinite set' is nonsense. It is nonsense (conceptually incoherent) because a set is a definite object whose definiteness derives from its having exactly the members it has.  A set cannot gain or lose members, and a set cannot have a membership other than the membership it actually has. Add a member to a set and the result is a numerically different set. In the case of the natural numbers, if they form a set, then that set will be an actually infinite set with a definite transfinite cardinality. Georg Cantor refers to that cardinality as aleph-zero or aleph-nought.

I grant, however, that it is not obvious that the natural numbers form a set.  Suppose they don't.  Then the natural number series, though infinite, will be merely potentially infinite.  What 'potentially infinite' means here is that one can go on adding endlessly without ever reaching an upper bound of the series.  No matter how large the number counted up to, one can add 1 to reach a still higher number. The numbers are thus created by the counting, not labeled by the counting.  The numbers are not 'out there' in Plato's topos ouranios waiting to be counted; they are created by the counting.  In that sense, their infinity is merely potential.  But if the naturals are an actual infinity, then  they are not created but labeled.

Moving now from arithmetic to geometry, consider a line segment in a plane.  One can bisect it, i.e., divide or cut it into two smaller segments of equal length.  Thus the segment AB whose end points are A and B splits into the congruent sub-segments AC and CB, where C is the point of bisection. The operation of bisection is indefinitely ('infinitely') iterable in principle.  The term 'in principle' needs a bit of commentary. 

SalamiSuppose I am slicing a salami using a state-of-the-art meat slicer. I cannot go on slicing thinner and thinner indefinitely.  The operation of bisecting a salami is not indefinitely iterable in principle.  The operation is iterable only up to a point, and this for the reason that a slice must have a certain minimal thickness T such that if the slice were thinner than T it would no longer be a slice.   But if we consider the space the salami occupies — assuming that space is something like a container that can be occupied — then  a longitudinal (non-transversal) line segment running from one end of the salami to the other is bisectable indefinitely in principle.

For each bisecting of a line segment, there is a point of bisection. The question can now be put as follows: Are these points of bisection only potentially infinite, or are they actually infinite?  

A Puzzle

I want to say that from the mere fact that the operation of bisecting a line segment is indefinitely ('infinitely') iterable in principle, it does not follow that the line segment is composed of an actual infinity of points. That is, it is logically consistent to maintain all three of the following:  (i) one can always make  another cut; (ii) the number of actual cuts will always be finite; and that therefore (iii) the number of points in a line will always be finite, and therefore 'infinite' only in the sense that there is no finite cardinal n such that n is the upper bound of the number of cuts. 

At this 'point,' however, I fall into perplexity which, according to Plato, is the characteristic state of the philosopher. If one can always make another cut, then the number of possible cuts cannot be finite. For if the number of possible cuts is finite, then it can longer be said that the line segment has a potentially infinite number of points of bisection.  It seems that a potential infinity of actual cuts logically requires an actual infinity of possible cuts.

But then actual infinity, kicked out the front door, returns through the back door.

I have just posed a problem for those who are friends of the potentially infinite but foes of the actual infinite. How might they respond?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Problem of Mirror Images

In an e-mail, a correspondent poses a problem that I will put in my own way. 

BV is alone in a room facing a standard, functioning mirror and he is looking at a man, the man in the mirror.  Call that man MM.  So in this situation, BV is looking at MM.  The question is this. Is BV numerically the same as MM? Or is BV numerically different from MM?

Surely it would be absurd to claim that there are two men in the room, the one facing the mirror and the one in (or behind) the mirror. The sensible thing to say is that MM is a mere image of a man, not a man.  And of course it is the image of BV, not of any other man. Accordingly, when BV looks into the mirror, he sees himself via a mirror image. Now most people will stop right here and go on to something else. But philosophers are a strange breed of cat.  They sense something below the mundane surface and want to bring it into the light.  

Suppose BV points in the direction of the mirror and exclaims, "That's me! Look how beat-to-hell I've become!" But if MM is a mere image of a man, and not a man, then BV is not pointing at himself, the man BV, but at a mere image.   This suggests, contrary to the point made in the immediately preceding paragraph, that there is a man in the mirror and that he is identical to BV! In the situation described, we seem to have good reason to affirm both of the following propositions despite their collective inconsistency:

1) BV is pointing at an image, not a man. (Because there is only one man in the room.)

2) BV is pointing at a man. (Because BV is pointing at himself, and BV is a man.)

This has got to be a pseudo-problem, right?  Well then, dissolve it!

A Variant Puzzle

Perhaps the following variant of the puzzle is clearer. BV holds up his right hand  and looks at it in the mirror. With the index finger of his left hand BV points to the hand in the mirror and says, "That is a beautiful hand!" With that same index finger he then points to the hand he is holding up and says the same thing. Pointing as he is in two different directions, BV is pointing at two different things, each of which is a hand.  But then BV has two left hands and one right hand, for a total of three hands — which is absurd. Why two left hands? Because the hand in the mirror is a left hand being the incongruent counterpart of the right hand BV is holding up.

Incongruent counterparts are discussed by Kant in no less than four places, twice in his pre-Critical writings and twice after 1781. More on this later.

Trope Troubles: An Exercise in Aporetics

Elliot C. asked me about tropes. What follows is a re-post from 30 March 2016, slightly emended, which stands up well under current scrutiny.  Perhaps Elliot will find the time to tell me whether he finds it clear and convincing and whether it answers his questions.

…………………………..

A reader  has been much exercised of late by trope theory and other questions in ontology.  He has been sharing his enthusiasm with me.   He espies 

. . . an apparent antinomy at the heart of trope theory. On the one hand, tropes are logically prior to objects. But on the other hand, objects (or, more precisely, the trope-bundles constituting objects) are logically prior to tropes, because without objects tropes have nowhere to be – without objects (or the trope-bundles constituting objects) tropes cannot be. Moreover, as has I hope been shown, a trope cannot be in (or constitute) any object or trope-bundle other than that in which it already is.

How might a trope theorist plausibly respond to this?  Can she? [My use of the feminine third-person singular pronoun does not signal my nonexistent political correctness, but is an anticipatory reference to Anna-Sofia Maurin whom I will discuss below.  'Anna-Sofia'! What a beautiful name, so aptronymic. Nomen est omen.)

What are tropes?

It is a 'Moorean fact,' a pre-analytic datum, that things have properties.  This is a pre-philosophical observation.  In making it we are not yet doing philosophy.  If things have properties, then there are properties.  This is a related pre-philosophical observation.  We begin  to do philosophy when we ask: given that there are properties, what exactly are they?  What is their nature?  How are we to understand them?  This is not the question, what properties are there, but the question, what are properties?  The philosophical question, then, is not whether there are properties, nor is it the question what properties there are, but the question what properties are.

On trope theory, properties are assayed not as universals but as particulars: the redness of a tomato is as particular, as unrepeatable, as the tomato. Thus a tomato is red, not in virtue of exemplifying a universal, but by having a redness trope as one of its constituents (on the standard  bundle version of trope theory) or by being a substratum in which a redness trope inheres (on a nonstandard theory championed by C. B. Martin which I will not further discuss). A trope is a simple entity in that there is no distinction between it and the property it ‘has.’ 'Has' and cognates are words of ordinary English: they do not commit us to ontological theories of what the having consists in.  So don't confuse 'a has F-ness' with 'a instantiates F-ness.'  Instantiation is a term of art, a terminus technicus in ontology.  Or at least that is what it is in my book.  More on instantiation in a moment.

Thus a redness trope is red, but it is not red by instantiating redness, or by having redness as a constituent, but by being (a bit of) redness. So a trope is what it has. It has redness by being identical to (a bit of) redness.

It is therefore inaccurate to speak of tropes as property instances.  A trope is not a property instance on one clear understanding of the latter.  First-order instantiation is a dyadic asymmetrical relation: if a instantiates F-ness, then it is not the case that F-ness instantiates a.  (Higher order instantiation is not asymmetrical but  nonsymmetrical.  Exercise for the reader: prove it!)  Suppose the instantiation relation connects the individual Socrates here below to the universal wisdom in the realm of platonica.  Then a further item comes into consideration, namely, the wisdom of Socrates. This is a property instance.  It is a particular, an unrepeatable, since it is the wisdom of Socrates and of no one else. This distinguishes it from the universal, wisdom, which is repeated in each wise individual.  On the other side, the wisdom of Socrates is distinct from Socrates since there is more to Socrates that his being wise.  There is his being snub-nosed, etc.  Now why do I maintain that a trope is not a property instance? Two arguments. 

Tropes are simple, not complex.  (See Maurin, here.)  They are not further analyzable.  Property instances, however, are complex, not simple.   'The F-ness of a'  –  'the wisdom of Socrates,' e.g. — picks out a complex item that is analyzable into F-ness, a, and the referent of 'of.'  Therefore, tropes are not property instances.

A second, related,  argument.  Tropes are in no way proposition-like.  Property instances are proposition-like as can be gathered from the phrases we use to refer to them.  Ergo, tropes are not property instances. 

One can see from this that tropes on standard trope theory, as ably presented by Maurin in her Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry, are very strange items, so strange indeed that one can wonder whether they are coherently conceivable at all by minds of our discursive constitution.  Here is one problem.

How could anything be both predicable and impredicable?

Properties are predicable items.  So if tropes are properties, then tropes are predicable items.  If the redness of my tomato, call it 'Tom,'  is a trope, then this trope is predicable of Tom. Suppose I assertively utter a token of 'Tom is red.'  On one way of parsing this we have a subject term 'Tom' and a predicate term '___ is red.'  Thus the parsing: Tom/is red.  But then the trope would appear to have a proposition-like structure, the structure of what Russell calls a propositional function.  Clearly, '___ is red' does not pick out a proposition, but it does pick out something proposition-like and thus something complex.  But now we have trouble since tropes are supposed to be simple.  Expressed as an aporetic triad or antilogism:

a. Tropes are simple.
b. Tropes are predicable.
c.  Predicable items are complex.

The limbs of the antilogism are each of them rationally supportable, but they cannot all be true. Individually plausible, collectively inconsistent. The conjunction of any two limbs entails the negation of the remaining one.  Thus the conjunction of (b) and (c) entails ~(a).

We might try to get around this difficulty by parsing 'Tom is red' differently, as: Tom/is/red.  On this scheme, 'Tom' and 'red' are both names.  'Tom' names a concrete particular whereas 'red' names an abstract particular.  ('Abstract' is here being used in the classical, not the Quinean, sense.)   As Maurin relates, D. C. Williams, who introduced the term 'trope' in its present usage back in the '50s, thinks of the designators of tropes as akin to names and demonstratives, not as definite descriptions. But then it becomes difficult to see how tropes could be predicable entities. 

A tomato is not a predicable entity.  One cannot predicate a tomato of anything.  The same goes for the parts of a tomato; the seeds, e.g., are not predicable of anything.  Now if a tomato is a bundle of tropes, then it is a whole of ontological parts, these latter being tropes.  If we think of the tomato as a (full-fledged) substance, then the tropes constituting it are "junior substances." (See D. M. Armstrong, 1989, 115) But now the problem is: how can one and the same item — a trope –  be both a substance and a property, both an object and a concept (in Fregean jargon), both impredicable and predicable?  Expressed as an aporetic dyad or antinomy:

d. Tropes are predicable items.
e. Tropes are not predicable items.

Maurin seems to think that the limbs of the dyad can both be true:  ". . . tropes are by their nature such that they can be adequately categorized both as a kind of property and as a kind of substance."  If the limbs can both be true, then they are not contradictory despite appearances.

How can we defuse the apparent contradiction in the d-e dyad?  Consider again Tom and the redness trope R.  To say that R is predicable of Tom  is to say that Tom is a trope bundle having R as an ontological (proper) part.  To say that R is impredicable or  a substance is to say that R is capable of independent existence.  Recall that Armstrong plausibly defines a substance as anything logically capable of independent existence.

It looks as if we have just rid ourselves of the contradiction.  The sense in which tropes are predicable is not the sense in which they are impredicable.  They are predicable as constituents of trope bundles; they are impredicable in themselves. Equivalently, tropes are properties when they are compresent with sufficiently many other tropes to form trope bundles (concrete particulars); but they are substances in themselves apart from trope bundles as the 'building blocks' out of which such bundles are (logically or rather ontologically) constructed.

Which came first: the whole or the parts?

But wait!  This solution appears to have all the advantages of jumping from the frying pan into the fire.   For now we bang up against the above Antinomy, or something like it, to wit:

f. Tropes as substances, as ontological building blocks, are logically prior to concrete particulars.
g. Tropes as properties, as predicable items, are not logically prior to concrete particulars.

This looks like an aporia in the strict and narrow sense: an insoluble problem.  The limbs cannot both be true.  And yet each is an entailment of standard (bundle) trope theory.  If tropes are the "alphabet of being" in a phrase from Williams, then they are logically prior to what they spell out.  But if tropes are unrepeatable properties, properties as particulars, then a trope cannot exist except as a proper ontological part of a trope bundle, the very one of which it is a part.  For if a trope were not tied to the very bundle of which it is a part, it would be a universal, perhaps only an immanent universal, but a universal all the same. 

Furthermore, what makes a trope abstract in the classical (as opposed to Quinean) sense of the term is that it is abstracted from a concretum.  But then the concretum comes first, ontologically speaking, and (g) is true.

Interim conclusion: Trope theory, pace Anna-Sofia Maurin, is incoherent. But of course we have only scratched the surface. 

Pictured below, left-to-right:  Anna-Sofia Maurin, your humble correspondent, Arianna Betti, Jan Willem Wieland. Geneva, Switzerland, December 2008.  It was a cold night.

Maurin, Vallicella, Betti, et al.

Related articles
Armstrong, Quine, Universals, Abstract Objects, and Naturalism
Peter van Inwagen, "A Theory of Properties," Exposition and Critique
Atheism and Ontological Simplicity: A Retraction and a Repair
God and Mann: Divine Simplicity and Property-Instances
God, Simplicity, and Tropes
Tropes as Truth-Makers? Or Do We Need Facts?
In a Philosophical Conversation, Three's a Crowd

 

The Analysis of Qualia

London Ed sends the following for our rumination and delectation:

       This is not mine (Lycan's). But it is tricky:

1) Bertie is experiencing a green thing.

2) Suppose that there is no physical green thing outside Bertie’s head. But

3) There is no physical green thing inside Bertie’s head either.

4) If it is physical, the green thing is either outside Bertie’s head or inside it. Thus,

5) The green thing is not physical. [1,2,3,4] Thus,

6) Bertie’s experience contains a nonphysical thing. [1,5] Thus,

7) Bertie’s experience is not, or not entirely, physical. [6]

The argument seem to presuppose an act-object analysis of experiencing. Accordingly, there is the experiencing and there is that which is experienced, a green item, a green quale.  If the quale is not physical, then the experiencing is not, or is not entirely, physical.   The argument goes through. But then the experiencing cannot be a brain process (which I think is what Bill Lycan would want to maintain).

On an adverbial analysis of experiencing, however, it may be possible to uphold the view that experiencings are brain processes.   Accordingly, my sensing a green quale is my sensing green-ly. Thus there is no green object that appears: 'green' functions here not as an adjective that modifies a noun, but as an adverb that modifies the present progressive form of the verb 'to experience.'

The main problem with the adverbial analysis is that it gets the phenomenology wrong. If I see a green item, I see something that is green.  I do not see a green sensing or a sensing-greenly. This is so even if the green something I see does not exist! Ed will baulk here given that he upholds the dubious thin theory of existence. But surely I do not see a sensing-greenly, whatever that might mean. And that is the second problem. The locution 'sense-greenly' just makes no sense, unless it is replaceable salva significatione with 'sense something green.' The point is that 'sense-greenly' has no independent or irreducible sense. Since it does not, the adverbial theory is a non-starter.

'She ate quiche' makes sense, and so does 'She ate quickly.' But she ate-quiche-ly' means nothing unless it is a weird way of saying 'She ate quiche.'

Once again we seem to have landed in an aporetic 'pickle.'