Existence – Page 15 – Maverick Philosopher

Nominalism and Being

Today I preach on an old text of long-time commenter and sparring partner, London Ed:

Nominalism is the doctrine that we should not multiply entities according to the multiplicity of terms. I.e., we shouldn't automatically assume that there is a thing corresponding to every term. Das Seiende is a term, so we shouldnât automatically assume there is a thing corresponding to it. Further arguments are needed to show that there is or there isnât. A classic nominalist strategy is to rewrite the sentence in such a way that the term disappears.

My first concern is whether this definition of 'nominalism' is perhaps too broad, so broad that it pulls in almost all of us. Does anyone think that every term has a referent? Don't we all hold that there can be no automatic assumption that every occurrence of a term in a stretch of discourse picks out an entity? For example, one would be hard pressed to find a philosopher who holds that 'nothing' in

1. Nothing is in the drawer

refers to something. (Carnapian slanders aside, Heidegger does not maintain this, but this is a separate topic about which I have written a long unpublished paper.) Following Ed's excellent advice, the
apparently referential 'nothing' can be paraphrased away:

2. It is not the case that there is something in the drawer.

This then goes into quasi-canonical notation as

2*. ~(Ex)(x is in the drawer).

In (2*) the tilde and the particular quantifier are syncategorematic elements. On the face of it, then, there is no call to be anything other than a nominalist about 'nothing,' using 'nominalism' as per the
suggestion above.

Whether there is call to be a nominalist about 'being' is another matter. Before proceeding to it, consider the following example:

3. Peter and Paul are blond

which could be parsed as

3*. Peter is blond and Paul is blond.

Now I rather doubt that anyone maintains that every word in (3*) — or rather every word in a tokening of this sentence-type whether via utterance or inscription or some other mode of encoding — has an entity corresponding to it. This suggests a taxonomy of nominalisms:

Mad-Dog Nominalism: No word has an existing referent, not even 'Peter' and 'Paul.' (I write 'existing referent' to disallow Meinongian objects as referents. The waters are muddy enough without bringing Meinong into the picture — please pardon the mixed metaphor.)

Extreme Nominalism: The only words that have existing referents are names like 'Peter' and Paul'; nothing in reality corresponds to such predicates as 'blond.' And a fortiori nothing corresponds to copulae and logically connective words like 'and' and 'or.'

Nominalism Proper: Particulars (unrepeatables) alone exist: there are no universals (repeatables). This view allows that something in reality corresponds to predicates such as 'blond.' It is just that what this predicate denotes is not a universal but a particular, a trope say, or an Aristotelian accident.

Methodological Nominalism: This is just Ed's suggestion that we not assume that for each word there is a corresponding entity.

I hope no one is crazy enough to be a mad-dog nominalist, and that everyone is sane enough to be a methodological nominalist. The two middle positions, however, are subject to reasonable controversy. What I am calling Extreme Nominalism has little to recommend it, but I think Nominalism Proper is quite a reasonable position. There has to be something extralinguistic (and extramenal) corresponding to the predicate in 'Peter is blond,' but it is not obvious that it must be a universal.

Now let's think about whether we should be nominalists with respect to words like das Seiende, that-which-is, the existent, beings, and the like. Heidegger has been known to say such things as Das Seiende ist, or

4. That-which-is is. (Beings are.)

Now is there anything in reality corrresponding to 'that-which-is' and 'beings'? Well of course: absolutely everything comes under 'that-which-is.' There is nothing that is named by 'Nothing.' And if I met nobody on the trail, that is not to say that I met someone named 'Nobody.' But absolutely everything falls under 'a being,' 'an existent,' ein Seiendes, das Seiende.

So I see no reason to have any nominalist scruples about the latter expressions. I don't see any problem with forming the substantive das Seiende from the present participle seiend. But you will be forgiven if you balk at the transformation of the infinitive sein into the the substantive das Sein and take the latter to refer to Majuscule Being.

On Infinitely Regressive Explanations of the Universe’s Existence

We’ve never chatted. I’m Tom Belt, a friend of Alan Rhoda. I believe you know Alan.

Yes, in fact I was thinking about him just the other day in connection with his espousal of presentism.

I’ve always appreciated being challenged when I drop by your blog. I’m wondering if you’d be willing to help me understand something.

I'll do my best.

I’ve been exploring Hartshorne’s Modal/Ontological Argument with a friend, Jeff. Basically Jeff wants to agree that some manner of ‘necessity’ needs to be posited in order to explain the existence of the universe. So he agrees that CH's "Something exists" entails "Something exists necessarily." But he then argues that both ‘an infinite regress of created beings’ and ‘a single, necessary being’ equally fit the bill. Both are equally possible and both have the same explanatory value. So his point is, “Look, parsimony is the only thing that gets us a single, necessary being; there's no obvious metaphysical advantage that a necessary being has over an infinite regress of created beings. Either might be the case, and parsimony is all we have to adjudicate the choice between them.” But something seems wrong here.

There is indeed something wrong here.

But first let's lay out Jeff's suggestion — or a plausible candidate for that office — a bit more clearly. To make things hard on the theist we begin by assuming that the universe has an actually infinite past. Hence it always existed. Let us also assume that the each total state of the universe at a time is (deterministically) caused to exist by an earlier such state of the universe. A third assumption is that the universe is nothing over and above the sum of its states. The third assumption implies that if each state has a causal explanation in terms of earlier states (in accordance with the laws of nature), then all of the states have an explanation, in which case the universe itself has a causal explanation. This in turn implies that there is no need to posit anything external to the universe, such as God, to explain why the universe exists. The idea, then, is that the universe exists because it causes itself to exist in that later states are caused to exist by earlier states, there being no earliest, uncaused, state. We thereby explain why the universe exists via an infinite regress of universe-immanent causes thereby obviating the need for a transcendent cause.

If this could be made to work, then we would have a nice neat self-contained universe whose existence was not a brute fact but also not dependent on anything external to the universe.

The five or so assumptions behind this reasoning can all be questioned. But even if they are all true, the argument is still no good for a fairly obvious reason. The whole collection of states, despite its being beginningless and endless, is contingent: it might not have existed at all. The fact that U always existed, if it is a fact, does not entail that U must exist. If I want to know why this universe of ours exists as opposed to there being some other universe or no universe at all, it does no good to tell me that it always existed. For what I want to know it why it exists AT ALL. I am not asking about its temporal duration but about its very existence. Why it exists at all is a legitimate question since there is no necessity that there be a universe in the first place.

So Jeff is wrong when he says that both a single necessary being and and infinitely regressive series of contingent causes "have the same explanatory value." The latter has no explanatory value at all. And this for the reason that it is contingent.

I mentioned to him Hartshorne’s point that the only conceivable way to posit the non-existence of a necessary being is to hold such a being’s existence to be impossible. A necessary being can only exist or not exist necessarily. So I told him he’s free to say “I can’t figure out which is in fact the case, an infinite regress of contingent beings or a single necessary being,” but that once he settles upon the latter for reasons of parsimony, what this moves amounts to is settling for the necessity of one option over the impossibility of the other, since the (modal) possibility of an infinite regress of contingent beings entails the impossibility of a single necessary being. But he’s not buying.

First of all, considerations of parsimony come into play only when we are comparing two theories which are both explanatorily adequate. In that case Occam's Razor enjoins us to give the nod to the more parsimonious of the two. After all, the stricture is not against 'multiplying entities' tout court, but against mutiplyng entities beyond necessity, i.e., in excess of what is needed for purposes of adequate explanation. But in the situation before us, Jeff's theory is not explanatorily adequate. It completely fails as an explantion of why there is a universe rather no universe or some other universe.

If the universe has an explanation then it must be in terms of a noncontingent explainer. As you appreciate, if such an entity exists, then it is necessary, and if it does not, then it is impossible. But the rest of your reasoning is dubious which is why your friend is not buying it. The point you need to insist on is that Jeff is not offering an adequate alternative explanation. He falsely assumes that the collection of contingent beings is a necessary being. It is not. It is as contingent as its members.

That aside, it doesn’t seem to me that an infinite regress of instances seeking [needing?] explanation really is conceivable EVEN IF actual infinities per se are conceivable. A necessary being may be temporally eternal. That’s one thing. But an infinite regress of contingent beings, each created by the previous? I don’t see how such a regress is conceivable, or how it embodies the necessity Jeff agrees has to be posited in order to explain the existence of the world. Surely if every member in an infinite regress is contingent, then the regress is contingent and the whole thing in need of the same explanation any particular member needs, no? We can’t reify the regress per se and attribute necessity to IT while positing the contingency of every member.

Right. That's exactly the point I made above. But surely such a regress is conceivable in the manner I explained above. Just don't use the world 'create' because that muddies the waters.

Lastly, wouldn’t it be the case in such a regress that every member god would HAVE to create something, so that no one of them could be free to not create at all? That seems to follow. If any member in the regress is free to not create at all, and every member is created, then any member might not have been created at all (which is just to say each is contingent). But that is to posit the contingency of the regress and thus abandon its explanatory value. No? Yes?

I agree. Jeff's suggestion is much stronger if he thinks of the regress as one of ordinary empirical causes in tandem with the assumption that causation is not probabilistic but deterministic. But if he is talking about a regress of free gods, then an added dimension of contingency comes in via the libertarian free will of these gods.

Am I nuts? Personally I think an infinite regress of created/contingent beings is impossible.

You are not 'nuts.' You are basically right. But it is not clear that an infinite regress of contingent beings is impossible. Why should it be impossible? There are benign infinite regresses. What you want to say is that an infinite regress of contingent beings cannot do any explanatory work re: the question, Why does the universe exist?

So far, then, Tom 1, Jeff 0.

Rock, Reality, Ed Abbey, and the Attraction of the Incoherent

There is no denying the charm, the attractive power, of incoherent ideas. They appeal to adolescents of all ages. Edward "Cactus Ed" Abbey writes, "I sometimes think that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and that only rock is real." Well, Cactus Ed, is this thought of yours an illusion too?

Cactus Ed's thought is a conjunction of three sub-thoughts: man is a dream; his thoughts are illusory; only rock is real. If our thoughts are illusory, then each of these sub-thoughts is illusory too, and Abbey's
clever formulation refutes itself. But this won't stop Abbey or his admirers from finding it attractive. Man, and especially the literary type, is a perverse animal. He will believe anything and say anything, no matter how false. He will assert himself even unto incoherence. He will not be instructed.

Thus if I were to run this little argument past Cactus Ed and his admirers they would most likely snort derisively and call me a logic-chopper. Their misology would make it impossible for them to take it seriously. You see, literary types are too often not interested in truth, but in literary effect, when it should be self-evident that truth is a higher value than literary effect. But it is more complicated than this. Abbey is trying to have it both ways at once: he wants to say something true, but he doesn't want to bother satisfying the preconditions for his saying something true, one such precondition being that the proposition asserted not entail its own negation.

Continue reading “Rock, Reality, Ed Abbey, and the Attraction of the Incoherent”

Negative Existentials and the Causal Theory of Reference: Notes on Donnellan

Causal theories of reference strike me as hopeless. Let's see how they fare with the problem of negative existentials.

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, can be 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 move into Meinong's jungle here, but there are good reasons for not going there.) On a reasonable parsing it is about the concept flying horse, and says of this concept that it has no instances.

The same analysis works for negative singular existentials like 'Pegasus does not exist.' Pace Meinong, everything exists. So, given the truth of 'Pegasus does not exist,' 'Pegasus' cannot be taken as naming Pegasus. Since 'Pegasus' has meaning, contributing as it does to the meaning of the true sentence, 'Pegasus does not exist,' and since 'Pegasus' lacks a referent, a natural conclusion to draw is that the meaning of 'Pegasus' is not exhausted by its reference: it has a sense whether or not it has a referent. So, along Russellian lines, we may analyze 'Pegasus does not exist' 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.

In this way the paradox attaching to singular negative existentials is removed. But the Russell-Quine analysis is based on the assumption that names are definite descriptions in disguise (Russell) or else transformable into predicates (Quine). But how does one deal with the problem of negative existentials if one denies the Russell-Quine approach to proper names, holding instead that they refer directly to their nominata, and not via the sense of a definite description or Searlean disjunction of definite descriptions?

Keith Donnellan tackles this problem in "Speaking of Nothing" (reprinted in S. P. Schwarz, ed., Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds, Cornell UP, 1977, pp. 216-244).

Consider 'Santa Claus does not exist.' What does a child come to learn when he learns this truth? He does not learn, as a Russellian would have it, that nothing in reality answers to (satisfies) a certain
description; what he learns is that the historical chain leading back from his use of 'Santa Claus' ends in a 'block':

     When the historical explanation of the use of a name (with the
     intention to refer) ends in this way with events that preclude any
     referent being identified, I will call it a "block" in the history.
     In this [Santa Claus] example, the block is the introduction of the
     name into the child's speech via a fiction told to him as reality
     by his parents. (237)

Having defined 'block,' Donnellan supplies a rule for negative existence statements, a rule which he says does not purport to supply the meaning of negative existentials but their truth-conditions:

     If N is a proper name that has been used in predicative statements
     with the intention to refer to some individual, then 'N does not
     exist' is true if and only if the history of those uses ends in a
     block. (239)

'God' would appear to satisfy the antecedent of this conditional, so Donnellan's theory implies that 'God does not exist' is true if and only if the history of the uses of 'God' ends in a block.

There is something wrong with this theory. If 'God does not exist' is true, then we may ask: what makes it true? What is the truthmaker of this truth? The most natural answer is that extralinguistic reality makes it true, more precisely, the fact that reality contains nothing that could be referred to as God. There is nothing linguistic about this truthmaker. Of course, if 'God does not exist' is true, then 'God' does not refer to anything, and if 'God' does not refer to anything then the sentence 'God does not exist' is true. But the wholly nonlinguistic fact of God's nonexistence is not identical to the partially linguistic fact of 'God''s not referring to anything. Why not? Consider the following modal argument:

   1. God's nonexistence, if it obtains, obtains in every possible world.
   2. The fact of 'God''s not referring to anything obtains in only some
   possible worlds. (Because the English language exists in only some
   worlds.)
   Therefore
   3. The two facts are distinct.

The argument just given assumes in its initial premise Anselm's Insight: if God exists, then he necessarily exists, and if he does not, then he is impossible. But I don't need this assumption. I can
argue as follows:

   5. God's nonexistence, if it obtains, obtains in some possible worlds.
   6. Among these possible worlds, some are worlds in which English does
   not exist.
   Therefore
   7. There is at least one world in which neither God nor the English
   language exists, which implies that God's nonexistence in that world
   cannot have as truthmaker any fact involving the name 'God.'

Let me put it another way. If 'God does not exist' is true, then the same fact can be expressed in German: 'Gott existiert nicht.' This is one fact expressible in two different languages. But the fact of
'God''s not referring to anything is a different fact from the fact of 'Gott''s not referring to anything. The facts are different because they involve different word-types. Therefore, neither fact can be
identical to the fact of God's nonexistence.

Since the two facts are different, the wholly nonlinguistic fact of God's nonexistence cannot have as a truth-condition the partially linguistic fact of the history of uses of 'God' ending in a block, contrary to what Donnellan says. If one assertively utters 'God does not exist,' and if what one says is true, then extralingustic reality must be a certain way: it must be godless. This godlessness of reality, if it indeed obtains, cannot be tied to the existence of any contingent language like English.

Note that the descriptivist need not fall into Donnellan's trap. When he assertively utters 'God does not exist' he says in effect that all or most of the properties associated with the use of 'God' — such
properties as omniscience, etc. — are not instantiated: nothing in extralinguistic reality has them. Since these properties can be viewed as having an objective, extralinguistic existence, the descriptivist needn't tie the existence/nonexistence of God to the existence of any contingent language.

Butchvarov: Objects, Entities, and Transcendental Idealism

This entry extends and clarifies my post, Blackman Versus Butchvarov: Objects, Entities, and Modes of Existence.

Preliminaries

For Butchvarov, all consciousness is intentional. (There are no non-intentional consciousnesses.) And all intentionality is conscious intentionality. (There is no "physical intentionality" to use George Molnar's term.) So, for Butchvarov, 'consciousness' and 'intentionality' are equivalent terms. Consciousness, by its very nature, is consciousness of something, where the 'of' is an objective genitive.

Continue reading “Butchvarov: Objects, Entities, and Transcendental Idealism”

Does Classical Theism Require Haecceitism?

Haecceitism is the doctrine that there are haecceities. But what is an haecceity?

Suppose we take on board for the space of this post the assumptions that (i) properties are abstract objects, that (ii) they can exist unexemplified, and that (iii) they are necessary beings. We may then define the subclass of haecceity properties as follows.

A haecceity is a property H of x such that: (i) H is essential to x; (ii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in the actual world; (iii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in any metaphysically possible world.

So if there is a property of Socrates that is his haecceity, then there is a property that individuates him, and indeed individuates him across all times and worlds at which he exists: it is a property that he must have, that nothing distinct from him has, and that nothing distinct from him could have. Call this property Socrateity. Being abstract and necessary, Socrateity is obviously distinct from Socrates, who is concrete and contingent. Socrateity exists in every world, but is exemplified (instantiated) in only some worlds. What's more, Socrateity exists at every time in every world that is temporally qualified, whereas Socrates exist in only some worlds and only at some times in the worlds in which he exists.

Now suppose you are a classical theist. Must you accept haecceitism (as defined above) in virtue of being a classical thesist? I answer in the negative. Franklin Mason answers in the affirmative. In a comment on an earlier post, Mason gives this intriguing argument into which I have interpolated numerals for ease of reference.

[1] When God created the world, he knew precisely which individuals he would get. Thus [2] he didn't need to have those very individuals in front of him to know which ones they were. Thus [3] there must be a way to individuate all possible individuals that in no way depends upon their actual existence. [4] Such a thing is by definition a haecceity. Thus [5] there are haecceities.

I don't anticipate any disagreement with Mason as to what an haecceity is. We are both operating with the Plantingian notion. We disagree, however, on (i) whether there are any haecceities and (ii) whether classical theism is committed to them. In this post I focus on (ii). In particular, I will explain why I do not find Mason's argument compelling.

My reservations concern premise [1]. There is a sense in which it is true that when God created Socrates, he knew which individual he would get. But there is also a sense in which it is not true. So we need to make a distinction. We may suppose, given the divine omniscience, that before God created Socrates he had before his mind a completely determinate description, down to the very last detail, of the individual he was about to bring into existence. In this sense, God knew precisely which individual he would get before bringing said individual into existence. Now either this description is pure or it is impure.

A pure description is one that includes no proper names, demonstratives or other indexicals, or references to singular properties. Otherwise the description is impure. Thus 'snubnosed, rationalist philosopher married to Xanthippe' is an impure description because it includes the proper name 'Xanthippe.' 'Snubnosed, rationalist, married philosopher,' by contrast, is pure. (And this despite the fact that 'married' is a relational predicate.) Pure descriptions are qualitative in that they include no references to specific individuals. Impure descriptions are nonqualitative in that they do include references to specific individuals.

Now if God has before his mind a complete pure description of the individual he wills to create then it could apply to precisely one individual after creation without being restricted to any precise one. (Cf. Barry Miller, "Future Individuals and Haecceitism," Review of Metaphysics 45, September 1991, p. 14) This is a subtle distinction but an important one. It is possible that Socrates have an indiscernible twin. So the complete description 'snubnosed, rationalist philosopher, etc.' could apply to precisely one individual without applying to Socrates. This is because his indiscernible twin would satisfy it just as well as he does. The description would then apply to precisely one individual without being restricted to any precise one. So there is a clear sense, pace Mason, in which God, prior to creation, would not know which individual he would get. Prior to creation, God knows that there will be an individual satisfying a complete description. But until the individual comes into existence, he won't know which individual this will be.

Creation is not the bestowal of existence upon a a pre-existent, fully-formed, wholly determinate essence. It is not the actualization of a wholly determinate mere possible. There is no individual essence or haecceity prior to creation. Creation is the creation ex nihilo of a a new individual. God creates out of nothing, not out of pre-existent individual essences or pre-existent mere possibles. Thus the very individuality of the individual first comes into being in the creative act. Socrates' individuality and haecceity do not antedate (whether temporally or logically) his actual existence.

Mason would have to be able rationally to exclude this view of creation, and this view of the relation of existence and individuality, for his argument to be compelling. As it is, he seems merely to assume that they are false.

Could God, before creation, have before his mind a complete impure description, one that made reference to the specific individual that was to result from the creative act? No, and this for the simple reason that before the creative act that individual would not exist. And therein lies the absurdity of Plantingian haecceities. The property of identity-with-Socrates is a nonqualitative haecceity that make essential reference to Socrates. Surely it is absurd to suppose that that this 'property' exists at times and in possible worlds at which Socrates does not exist. To put it another way, it is absurd to suppose that this 'property' could antedate (whether temporally or logically) the existence of Socrates.

We are now in a position to see why Mason's argument is not compelling. If [1] is true, then [2] doesn't follow from it. And if [2] follows from [1], then [1] is false. Thus [1] conflates two distinct propositions:

1a. When God created the world, he knew precisely which pure complete descriptions would be satisfied.

1b. When God created the world, he knew precisely which individuals would exist.

(1a) is true, but it does not entail

2. God didn't need to have those very individuals in front of him to know which ones they were.

(1b) entails (2), but (1b) is false.

I conclude that classical theism does not entail haecceitism. One can be such a theist without accepting haecceities.

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.

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.

How Does One Know that There Are Contingent Beings?

When I was writing my book on existence I was troubled by the question as to how one knows that there are contingent beings. For I took it as given that there are, just as I took it as given that things exist. But one philosopher's datum is another's theory, and I was hoping to begin my metaphysical ascent from indubitable starting points. So it bugged me: how do I know that this coffee cup is a contingent being? Given that it exists, how do I know that it exists contingently? I satisfied my scruples by telling myself that I was writing about the metaphysics of existence and that concerns with its epistemology could be reserved for a later effort. What exactly is the problem? Let's begin with a couple of definitions:

D1. X is contingent =_df possibly (x exists) & possibly (x does not exist).

The possibility at issue is non-epistemic and broadly logical. And note that the definiens of (D1) is not to be confused with 'possibly (x exists & x does not exist)' which is necessarily false.

D2. X contingently exists =_df x exists & possibly (x does not exist).

Note that to say that x exists contingently is not to say that x depends for its existence on something else; it is merely to say that x exists and that there is no broadly logical (metaphysical) necessity that x exist. Suppose exactly one thing exists, an iron sphere. Intuitively, the sphere is contingent despite there being nothing on which it depends for its existence. For though it exists, it might not have.

Note also that to say that x exists contingently is not to say that x is actual at some times and not actual at other times. (Even if everything that contingently exists exists at some times but not at all times, the contingency of what contingently exists does not consist in its existing at some but not all times.) If one said that contingency is existence at some but not all times, then one would have to say that x exists necessarily just in case x exists at all times. Something that exists at all times, however, could well be contingent in a clear sense of this term, namely, possibly nonexistent. For example, suppose the physical universe always existed and always will exist. It doesn't follow that it necessarily exists (is impossibly nonexistent). It would remain a contingent fact that it exists at all in the D2 sense. And then there that are items that are not in time at all: numbers, Fregean propositions, and other 'abstracta.' They exist necessarily without being temporally qualified. Their necessity is not their existence at all times.

For example, my coffee cup exists now — how I know this is a separate epistemological question that I here ignore — but is possibly such that it does not exist now, where 'now' picks out the same time. But how do I know that the cup is now possibly nonexistent? That's my problem.

This is a variant of the problem of modal knowledge. (See Notes on Van Inwagen on Modal Epistemology.) The cup is full, but it might not have been. It is full of coffee, but it might have been full of whisky. It is two inches from the ashtray, but it might have been three inches from it. It exists now but it might not have existed now. It has existed for 20 years; it might never have existed at all. And so on. I can see that the cup is full, and I can taste that it contains coffee and not whisky. But I cannot see or taste what doesn't exist (assuming that 'see' is being used as a verb of success), and the cup's being empty or the cup's containing whisky are non-obtaining states of affairs. Thus there seems to be nothing for my modal knowledge to 'grab onto.'

If I know that the cup exists contingently, then I know that it is possibly nonexistent. But how do I know the latter?

"You know it from your ability to conceive, without contradiction, of the cup's nonexistence." This is not a good answer. First of all, conceivability (without contradiction) does not entail possibility. Example here. Does the conceivability of p raise the probability of p's being possible? This is a strange notion. Discussion here.

If conceivability neither entails nor probabilifies possibility, then my question returns in full force: how does one know, of any being, that it is a contingent being?

"Well, you know from experience that things like coffee cups come into existence and pass out of existence. If you know that, then you know that such things do not exist of metaphysical necessity. For what exists of metaphysical necessity exists at all times, if it exists in time at all, and your coffee cup, which exists in time, does not exist at all times. Now what does not exist of metaphysical necessity is metaphysically contingent. Therefore, you know that coffee cups and such are contingent existents."

This argument may do the trick. To test it, I will set it forth as rigorously as possible. To save keystrokes I omit universal quantifiers.

1. If x is a material thing, and x does not exist at all times, then x is not a necessary being (one whose nonexistence is broadly-logically impossible).
2. If x is not a necessary being, then x is either a contingent being or an impossible being.
Therefore
3. If x is a material thing, and x does not exist at all times, then x is either a contingent being or an impossible being.
4. My coffee cup is a material thing and it does not exist at all times.
Therefore
5. My cup is either a contingent being or an impossible being.
6. If x exists, then x is not impossible.
7. My cup exists.
Therefore
8. My cup is a contingent being.
9. I know that (8) because I know each of the premises, and (8) follows from the premises.

The inferences are all valid, and the only premise that might be questioned is (1). To refute (1) one needs an example of a material being that does not exist at all times that is a necessary being. But I can't think of an example.

The argument just given seems to be a rigorous proof that there is at least one contingent (possibly nonexistent) existent. But does it show that this existent is possibly nonexistent at each time at which it exists? (The latter is the question I posed above.)

Would it make sense to say that my cup, though not a necessary being, is necessarily existent at each time at which it exists? If that makes sense, then my cup is contingent in that it might not have existed at all, but not contingent in the sense that at each time at which it exists it is possibly nonexistent. Are these two propositions consistent:

a. x is contingent in that it might not have existed at all

and

b. x is not contingent in the sense of being possibly nonexistent at each time at which it exists?

If (a) and (b) are consistent, then it appears that I have not proven that my cup is contingent in the sense of being possibly nonexistent at each time at which it exists. For then the above argument shows merely that the cup is contingent in that it might not have existed at all.

The Rabbit of Real Existence and the Empty Hat of Mere Logic

Consider again this curious piece of reasoning:

1. For any x, x = x. Ergo:
2. a = a. Ergo:
3. (Ex)(x = a). Ergo:
4. a exists.

This reasoning is curious because it seems to show that one can deduce the real existence of an individual a from a purely formal principle of logic, the Law of Identity. And yet we know that this cannot be done. We know that the rabbit of real existence cannot be pulled from the empty hat of mere logic. Since the argument cannot be sound, it must be possible to say where it goes wrong. (It is a strange fact of philosophical experience that arguments that almost all philosophers reject nevertheless inspire the wildest controversy when it comes to the proper diagnosis of the error. Think of the arguments of Zeno, Anselm, and McTaggart.)

The move from (1) to (2) appears to be by Universal Instantiation. One will be forgiven for thinking that if everything is self-identical, then a is self-identical. But I say that right here is a (or the) mistake. To move from (1) to (2), the variable 'x' must be replaced by the substituend 'a' which is a constant. Now there are exactly three possibilities:

Either 'a' refers to something that exists, or 'a' refers to something that does not exist or 'a' does not refer at all. On the third possibility it would be impossible validly to move from (2) to (3) by Existential Generalization. The same goes for the second possibility: if 'a' refers to a Meinongian nonexistent object, then one could apply existentially-neutral Particular Generalization to (2), but not Existential Generalization. This leaves the first alternative. But if 'a' refers to something that exists, then right at this point real existence has been smuggled into the argument.

I hope the point is painfully obvious. One cannot move from (1) to (2) by logic alone: one needs an extralogical assumption, namely, that 'a' designates something that exists. To put it another way, one must assume that the domain of quantification is not only nonempty but inhabited by existing individuals. After all, (1) is true for every domain, empty or not. (1) lacks Existential Import. The truth of (1) is consistent with there being no individuals at all.

Let's now consider Peter's supposed counterexample to the principle that if p entails q and p is necessary, then q is also necessary. He thinks that the above argument shows that there are cases in which necessary propositions entail contingent ones. Thus he thinks that the conjunction of (1) and (2) entails (3), but that (3) is contingent.

Well, I agree that if we are quantifying over a domain the members of which are contingent individuals, then (3) is contingent. But surely the conjunction of (1) and (2) is also contingent. For the conjunction of a necessary and a contingent proposition is a contingent proposition. Now of course (1) is necessary. But (2), despite appearances, is contingent. For if 'a' designates a contingent individual, then it designates an individual that exists in some but not all worlds, and in those worlds in which a does not not exist it is not true that a = a.

In the worlds in which a exists, a is essentially a. But a is not necessarily a because there are worlds in which a does not exist.

What accounts for the illusion that if (1) is necessary, then (2) must also be necessary? Could it be the tendency to forget that while 'x' is a variable, 'a' is an arbitrary constant?

Deducing John McCain from the Principle of Identity

What, if anything, is wrong with the following argument:

   1. (x)(x = x) (Principle of Identity)
   Therefore
   2. John McCain = John McCain (From 1 by Universal Instantiation)
   Therefore
   3. (Ex)(x = John McCain) (From 2 by Existential Generalization)
   Therefore
   4. John McCain exists. (From 3 by translation into ordinary idiom)

The initial premise states that everything is identical to itself, that nothing is self-diverse. Surely this is a necessary truth, one true no matter what, or in the jargon of possible worlds: true in every (broadly logically) possible world.

(2) follows from (1) by the intuitively clear inference rule of Universal Istantiation. Surely, if everything is self-identical, then John McCain is self-identical. The inferential move from (2) to (3) is also quite obvious: if McCain is self-identical, then something is identical to McCain. But (3) is just a complicated way of saying that John McCain exists. So we get the surprising result that the existence of John McCain is validly deducible from an a priori knowable necessary truth of logic!

You understand, of course, that the argument is not about John McCain: it is about any nameable entity. Supposedly, Wilhelm Traugott Krug (1770-1842) once demanded of Hegel that he deduce Herr Krug's pen. If we name that pen 'Skip,' we can then put that name in the place of 'John McCain' and run the argument as before.

There is one premise and three inferences. Does anyone have the chutzpah to deny the premise? Will anyone make bold to question inference rules U.I. and E.G.? And yet surely something has gone wrong. Intuitively, the existence of a contingent being such as McCain cannot be deduced from an a priori knowable necessary truth of logic. For that matter, the existence of a necessary being such as God cannot be deduced from an a priori knowable necessary truth of logic. Surely nothing concrete, not even God, is such that its existence can be derived from the Law of Identity.

So what we have above is an ontological argument gone wild whereby the rabbit of real existence is pulled from the empty hat of mere logic!

St. Bonaventura said that if God is God, then God exists. If such reasoning does not work in the case of God, then a fortiori it does not work in the case of McCain or Herr Krug's pen.

Note that (1) is necessarily true. (It doesn't just happen to be the case that each thing is self-identical.) If (2) follows immediately from (1), (2) is also necessarily true. And if (2) is necessarily true, then (3) is necessarily true. And the same holds for (4). But surely it is not the case that, necessarily, John McCain exists. He cannot be shown to exist by the above reasoning, and he certainly cannot be shown to necessarily exist by it.

So what went wrong? By my count there are three essentially equivalent ways of diagnosing the misstep.

A. One idea is that the argument leaves the rails in the transition from (3) to (4). All that (3) says is that something is identical to John McCain. But from (3) it does not follow that John McCain exists. For the something in question might be a nonexistent something. After all, if something is identical to Vulcan, you won't conclude that Vulcan exists. To move validly from (3) to (4), one needs the auxiliary premise:

3.5 The domain of quantification is a domain of existents only.

Without (3.5), John McCain might be a Meinongian nonexistent object. If he were, then everything would be logically in order up to (3). But to get from (3) to (4) one must assume that one is quantifying over existents only.

But then a point I have been hammering away at all my philosophical life is once again thrown into relief: The misnamed 'existential' quantifier, pace Quine, does not express existence, it presupposes existence!

B. Or one might argue that the move from (1) to (2) is invalid. Although (1) is necessarily true, (2) is not necessarily true, but contingently true: it is not true in possible worlds in which McCain does not exist. There are such worlds since he is a contingent being. To move validly from (1) to (2) a supplementary premise is needed:

1.5 'John McCain' refers to something that exists.

(1.5) is true in some but not all worlds. With this supplementary premise on board, the argument is sound. It also loses the 'rabbit-out-of-the-hat' quality. The original argument appeared to be deducing McCain from a logical axiom. But now we see that the argument made explicit does no such thing. It deduces the existence of McCain from a logical axiom plus a contingent premise which is indeed equivalent to the conclusion.

C. Finally, one might locate the error in the move from (2) to (3). No doubt McCain = McCain, and no doubt one can infer therefrom that something is identical to McCain. But this inferential move is not existential generalization, if we are to speak accurately and nontendentiously, but particular generalization. On this diagnosis, the mistake is to think that the particular quantifier has anything to do with existence. It does not. It does not express existence, pace Quine, it expresses the logical quantity someness.

In sum, one cannot deduce the actual existence of a contingent being from a truth of logic alone. One needs existential 'input.' It follows that there has to be more to existence than someness, more than what the 'existential' quantifier expresses. The thin conception of existence, therefore, cannot be right.

Now let me apply these results to what Peter Lupu has lately been arguing. Here he argues:

(i) (x)(x=x);

(ii) a=a, for any arbitrarily chosen object a; (from (i))

(iii) (Ex)(x=a); (from (ii) by existential generalization);

Now, (i) is necessary, but (iii) is contingent. Yet (i) entails (iii) via (ii), which is also necessary. So I simply do not see how the principle (1*) which you and Jan seem to accept applies in modal logics that include quantification plus identity.

Peter thinks he has a counterexample to the principle that if p entails q, and p is necessary, then q is also necessary. For he thinks that *(x)( x = x)*, which is necessary, entails *(Ex)(x = a)*, which is contingent.

But surely if *a = a* is necessary, i.e. true in all worlds, then *(Ex)(x = a)* is necessary as well.

The mistake in Peter's reasoning comes in with the move from *Necessarily, (x) (x = x)* to *Necessarily, a = a*. For surely it is false that in every possible world, a = a. After all, there are worlds in which a does not exist, and an individual cannot have a property in a world in which it doesn't exist. One must distinguish between essential and necessary self-identity. Every individual is essentially (as opposed to accidentally) self-identical: no individual can exist without being self-identical. But only some individuals are necessarily self-identical, i.e, self-identical in every world. Socrates, for example, is essentially but not necessarily self-identical: he is self-identical in every world in which he exists (but, being contingent, he doesn't exist in every world). By contrast, God is both essentially and necessarily self-identical: he is self-identical in every world, period (because he is a necessary being).

Ayn Rand on “Existence Exists”

Whether one calls it a renaissance or a recrudescence, Rand is on a roll. The Randian resurgence doesn't please David Bentley Hart whose First Things attack piece contains the following:

And, really, what can one say about Objectivism? It isn’t so much a philosophy as what someone who has never actually encountered philosophy imagines a philosophy might look like: good hard axiomatic absolutes, a bluff attitude of intellectual superiority, lots of simple atomic premises supposedly immune to doubt, immense and inflexible conclusions, and plenty of assertions about what is “rational” or “objective” or “real.” Oh, and of course an imposing brand name ending with an “-ism.” Rand was so eerily ignorant of all the interesting problems of ontology, epistemology, or logic that she believed she could construct an irrefutable system around a collection of simple maxims like “existence is identity” and “consciousness is identification,” all gathered from the damp fenlands between vacuous tautology and catastrophic category error.

Pleonasm and bombast aside, "Maxims . . . gathered from the damp fenlands of vacuous tautology and catastrophic category error" is on the mark. I will illustrate with the famous Randianism, "Existence exists."

1. There are at least two sensible ways of construing 'Existence exists.' (a) That in virtue of which existing things exist itself exists. For example, if one thought of existence as a property of existing things, and one were a realist about properties, then it would make sense for that person to say that existence exists. He would mean by it that the property of existence exists. (b) Existing things exist. Instead of taking 'existence' as denoting that in virtue of which existing things exist, one could take it as a term that applies to whatever exists. Accordingly, existence is whatever exists. To say that existence exists would then mean that existing things exist, or whatever exists exists. But then the dictum would be a tautology. Of course existing things exist, what else would they be 'doing'? Breathing things breath. Running things run. Whatever is in orbit is in orbit.

2. From Rand's texts it is clear that she intends neither the (a) nor the (b) construal. What she is trying to say is something non-tautological: that the things that exist exist and have the attributes they have independently of us. Here we read, "The primacy of existence (of reality) is the axiom that existence exists, i.e., that the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that things are what they are, that they possess a specific nature, an identity." Rand is advancing a version of metaphysical realism. Existence EXISTS! (Pound the lectern, stamp the foot, flare the nostrils.) In other words, the things that exist — yonder mountain, the setting sun — EXIST! where that means that they are real in sublime independence of our thinking and doing and talking, and indeed of any being's thinking and doing. The problem, of course, is that Rand chooses to express herself in an inept and idiosyncratic way using the ambiguous sentence, 'Existence exists.' A careful writer does not package non-tautological claims in sentences the form of which is tautological.

That whatever exists exists independently of any consciousness, including a divine consciousness if there is one, is a substantive metaphysical claim, as can be seen from the fact that it rules out every form of idealism. 'Existing things exist,' however, is a barefaced tautology that rules out nothing.

3. But the problem is not merely infelicity of expression. Even though Rand wants to advance a substantive non-tautological thesis, a thesis of metaphysical realism, she thinks she can accomplish this by either inferring it from or conflating it with the Law of Identity. The law states that for any x, x = x. As Rand puts it, "A =A." Well of course. There is nothing controversial here. But Rand thinks that one can straightaway move to a substantive thesis that is controversial, namely, metaphysical realism according to which things exist and have the natures they have independently of any consciousness. My point is not that metaphysical realism is false; my point is that denying it is not equivalent to denying the Law of Identity. The problem is that Rand packs a hell of a lot into the the law in question, a lot of stuff that doesn't belong there. She puts the following in the mouth of Galt:

To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of nonexistence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, the man who was—no matter what his errors —the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.

[. . .]

Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders’ attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A. The purpose of those who taught you to evade it, was to make you forget that Man is Man.

So the disasters of the 20th century originated in the evasion by people like Hitler and Stalin of the fact that A is A! This is just silly. How can the disasters of the 2oth century be laid at the door step of a miserable tautology? Suppose we grant that everything that exists is self-identical and that everything that is self-identical exists. (The first half of the assertion is uncontroversial, but the second half is not and will be contested by followers of Alexius von Meionong.) But suppose we grant it. I myself believe it is true. By what process of reasoning does one arrive at such substantive Randian claims as that (1) Whatever exists exists independently of any consciousness and (2) There is nothing antecedent to existence, nothing apart from it—and no alternative to it?

The denials of these two propositions are consistent with the Law of Identity and Rand's explication of existence in terms of this law. So the propositions cannot be validly inferred from the law.

Note finally that if there is no alternative to existence, then it is necessarily the case that something exists. For to say that there is no alternative to existence is to say that it is impossible that there be nothing at all. But 'to exist = to be self-identical' is consistent with each thing's existence being contingent, and the whole lot of them being contingent. Therefore, one cannot validly infer 'There is no alternative to existence' from 'To exist = to be self-identical.'

From this we see how slovenly the Randian/Peikoffian 'reasoning' is. The game they play is the following. They advance substantive metaphysical claims in the guise of tautologies. The self-evidence of the latter they illicitly ascribe to the former. This allows them to pass off their sayings as axioms that every rational person must accept. If you patiently expose their confusions as I just did, they resort to invective and name-calling.

“I Swear, If You Existed, I’d Divorce You.”

If the recipient of this insult had been a philosophy professor instead of a mere history professor, he might have responded as follows. "Darling, by the Existence Symmetry of Relations, if a relation R holds, then either all of its relata exist or none of them do. Now one cannot divorce a person to whom one is not married. So you and I stand in the marital relation. It follows that if I don't exist, then you don't either."

Blackman Versus Butchvarov: Objects, Entities, and Modes of Existence

(UPDATE: 23 March. Butchvarov sent me some comments via e-mail the main ones of which I insert in the text in red.)

This post assumes familiarity with Panayot Butchvarov's "protometaphysics," as he calls it. But I will begin by sketching the distinction between objects and entities. Then I will present an objection that occurred to me and Larry Lee Blackman independently. That will be followed by a response that Butchvarov could make to the objection. Finally, I will try to show that Blackman's objection, despite his disclaimers, commits him to a doctrine of modes of existence, but that this is not the bad thing he thinks it is. This post ties in with our earlier explorations of the modes-of-existence doctrine which is dogmatically denied by a majority of analytic philosophers. (These earlier posts are collected in the Existence category.) There is also an obvious tie-in with earlier posts on Intentionality.

I. Entities and Objects

Entities exist while objects may or may not exist. Some objects exist and some do not. When one imagines Santa Claus or hallucinates a pink rat, an object appears, an object that doesn’t exist. When one perceives his hand, an object appears too, one that exists. The difference between an object that exists and one that does not is explicated by Butchvarov in terms of indefinite identifiability: An object exists if and only if it is indefinitely identifiable with other objects. The domain of objects is logically prior to the domain of entities. The application of the concepts of identity and existence to the domain of objects results in a "conceptual transition" from the domain of objects to the domain of entities or existents. (BQB 39) The concepts of identity and existence sort objects into the existent and the nonexistent. Identity and existence are therefore classificatory concepts. Of the two concepts, identity is the more basic since existence is explicable in terms of it. The identity in question is material as opposed to formal identity, the kind affirmed in true, informative identity statements like 'The morning star is the evening star.' But although identity and existence are genuine concepts, they are only concepts: there is nothing in the world that corresponds to them.

Butchvarov’s Meinongian commitment to nonexistent objects is a direct consequence of his Sartrean view of consciousness as exhausting itself in its objects. For on this view consciousness harbors no representations or other intermediary contents that could serve as surrogate objects when we think about what does not exist. Imagination of a mermaid is not consciousness of a mental image or other content of consciousness but precisely consciousness of a mermaid. Consciousness of a mermaid is just as outer-directed and revelatory of a material item as consciousness of a dolphin. But mermaids do not exist. Therefore, some objects do not exist. To take intentionality at phenomenological face-value, as Butchvarov does, is to accept nonexistent objects. Phenomenologically, consciousness is just the revealing of objects, only some of which are indefinitely identifiable. (THIS SECTION STATES MY VIEWS BETTER THAN I HAVE EVER DONE MYSELF!)

II. An Objection

There is a strong temptation to suppose that if there are nonexistent objects, as Meinongians maintain, then they must have some ontological status despite their not existing. After all, they are not nothing. And so one might suppose that they must have the status of merely intentional objects. By 'merely intentional object' I mean an accusative of consciousness that does not exist in reality but does exist as, and only as, an accusative of consciousness. (We will have to ask whether one who accepts merely intentional objects must also accept modes of existence.) (I AM UNEASY ABOUT YOUR USE OF ‘ACCUSATIVE.’ IT IS A GRAMMATICAL TERM. WHAT YOU MEAN BY IT IS ‘OBJECT,’ BUT THEN YOUR PHRASE “MERELY INTENTIONAL OBJECTS” JUST MEANS “OBJECTS THAT DO NOT EXIST BUT SOMEONE IS CONSCIOUS OF THEM.) But for Butchvarov, the class of nonexistent objects does not have the same extension as that of merely intentional objects. For he tells us that there is "no contradiction in supposing that there are objects that are not perceived, or imagined, or thought by anyone." (BQB 62, quoted in Larry Lee Blackman, "Mind as Intentionality Alone," Metaphysica, vol. 3, no. 2 December 2002,p. 45) If there are such nonexistent objects, then of course it cannot be true that x is a nonexistent object iff x is a merely intentional object.

Furthermore, what I am calling merely intentional objects are mind-dependent: they exist as, and only as, accusatives of mind. No mind, no merely intentional objects. But Butchvarov's nonexistent objects are neither mind-dependent nor mind-independent, whether logically or causally. Only what exists is either mind-dependent or mind-independent. It follows that none of his nonexistent objects are what I am calling merely intentional objects.

Blackman's worry, and mine too, is expressed by Blackman when he writes, "He [Butchvarov] denies that nonexistent objects are mind-dependent, but in an obvious sense they are, since, in a world without minds, there would be no perceivings of golden mountains, no imaginings of centaurs, etc." (Blackman, 55) Now Butchvarov denies on phenomenological grounds that there are individual mental subjects and mental acts as well. So Butchvarov might respond that of course there are no imaginings of centaurs, if imaginings are mental acts. So we need to put Blackman's objection more precisely. The objection needn't presuppose that there are individual minds or mental acts. The essence of the objection is that in a world without mind (consciousness) there are no perceptual or imaginal objects. (THIS IS AMBIGUOUS, THOUGH THE FAULT IS MINE BECAUSE I USE ‘PERCEPTUAL’ AND ‘IMAGINAL’ FOR THE NONRELATIONAL PROPERTIES IN QUESTION. BUT THEY ARE EXPLICITLY INTENDED TO EXCLUDE REFERENCE TO A CONSCIOUSNESS.) Denying as he does that there are minds and mental acts, Butchvarov must deny that imagining, perceiving, remembering, etc. are types of mental acts or properties of mental acts. Act-differences are displaced onto the object as monadic (nonrelational) properties of objects. Thus it is a nonrelational, and hence intrinsic, property of centaurs that they are imaginal objects. This being understood, Blackman's objection can be put by saying that in a world without consciousness there would be no perceptual or imaginal or memorial objects, and that therefore, in a world without consciousness, there would be no such nonexistent objects. Blackman is of course assuming that there could be a world without consciousness. If Butchvarov were to claim that there could not be, then his theory of objects would have idealism as a consequence.

The problem can be set forth as an aporetic triad:

1. Only what exists is either mind-dependent or mind-independent. (MY POINT IS THAT CAUSAL RELATIONS HOLD ONLY BETWEEN EXISTENT OBJECTS. IF THERE IS AN EXISTENT SUCH AS MIND, THEN DEPENDENCE ON IT WOULD BE SUCH A RELATION.)

2. There are objects that do not exist.
3. Both the distinction between objects and entities, and the related distinction between existent and nonexistent objects, are mind-involving in the sense that in a world without mind these distinctions would not obtain. (THE TERM ‘MIND’ HERE IS AMBIGUOUS. IF IT MEANS ‘CONSCIOUSNESS’ THEN MIND IS NOT THE SORT OF THING ON WHICH ANYTHING CAN DEPEND OR NOT DEPEND.)

The limbs of this triad are individually plausible but jointly inconsistent. For example, (1) and (2) taken together entail the negation of (3). Indeed, any two limbs, taken together, entail the negation of the remaining one. Since Butch is committed to both (1) and (2), he will solve the problem by denying (3). Unfortunately, (3) is at least as plausible as (1) and (2). Blackman, if I have understood him, will go further and say that (3) is more plausible than (1). Accordingly, Blackman will solve the problem by denying (1).

There is of course the possibility that the inconsistent triad is a genuine aporia, a conceptual impasse, and thus insoluble on the plane of the discursive intellect, which of course is where philosophy must operate. I can't prove that it is a genuine aporia, but all three limbs, though jointly inconsistent, make a strong claim on our acceptance. It is therefore not unreasonable to hold that we have no rational ground to prefer the rejection of one limb rather than another. Of course, there is no way to stop people from being dogmatic. Thus some will quickly reject (2) while ignoring the phenomenological and dialectical considerations Butch adduces in support of it.

My point, then is that Butchvarov's position, which requires the acceptance of (1) and (2), and the rejection of (3), is not compelling and is rationally rejectable.

III. A Possible Butchvarov Response

Suppose we reject (1) as I am inclined to do. We would then be maintaining that an item can be mind-dependent without existing in reality. ('Exist' when used without qualification just means 'exist in reality.') An imagined centaur would then exist-in consciousness without existing in reality. And so we would have to distinguish between two distinct modes of existence, existence simpliciter (existence in reality) and intentional existence (existence in consciousness as a mere intentional object). A scholastic philosopher would speak of esse reale and esse intentionale. At this point Butch would probably object by saying that talk of modes of existence involves an intolerable equivocation on 'exists.' If one adheres strictly to the univocity of 'exists' and cognates, then one cannot sensibly speak of modes of existence (as opposed to categories of existent). So one can imagine Butchvarov arguing: (a) To reject (1) is to embrace a doctrine of modes of existence which entails the thesis that 'exist(s)' is equivocal. (b) But this equivocity thesis is unacceptable. So (c) (1) ought to be accepted. (d) Given the phenomenological evidence for nonexistent objects, (3) ought to be rejected. On the equivocity of 'exist(s)' see the work by the Butchvarov student, Dennis E. Bradford, The Concept of Existence: A Study of Nonexistent Particulars (University Press of America, 1980), pp. 37 ff.

IV. Blackman's Attempt to Avoid Equivocity

Blackman agrees with me that in a world without mind there are no nonexistent objects. But Blackman doesn't agree with me that holding this commits him to modes of existence: ". . . to assert that gargoyles exist as the objects of our awarenesses is not to employ the term 'exists' equivocally, as Butchvarov might allege." (Blackman, 55) Why not?

To say that gargoyles exist as the objects of my imaginings and that penguins exist as the the objects of my (veridical) perceptions is no more to use the term 'exists' equivocally than it is to to claim that the word 'exists' is used equivocally in the locutions, 'I exist as a father' and 'I exist as a husband.' In neither case are we supposing different 'modes' of existence. (Ibid.)

The comparison is faulty. I grant that there is no equivocation on 'exists' as between 'I exist as a father' and 'I exist as a husband.' The first is equivalent to 'I exist and I am a father' while the second is equivalent to 'I exist and I am a husband.' No equivocation! But then 'Gargoyles exist as the objects of my imaginings' is equivalent to 'Gargoyles exist and gargoyles are objects of my imaginings' and 'Penguins exist as the objects of my (veridical) perceptions' is equivalent to 'Penguins exist and penguins are the objects of my (veridical) perceptions.' Here there is equivocation! From this one can see that the comparison is flawed. For while it is true that penguins exist and are the objects of my (veridical) perceptions, it is false that gargoyles exist and are the objects of my imaginings when 'exists' is employed univocally. Penguins exist but gargoyles do not.

Blackman is trying to have it both ways: he is trying avoid the doctrine of modes of existence (modes of being) while maintaining that nonexistent objects are mind-dependent. But this is impossible. If nonexistent objects are mind-dependent, then they must exist in some way or mode. This is because ontological dependence/independence obtains only between items that have some mode of existence. An item that has no being or existence whatsoever cannot be said to be independent or dependent on mind or on anything else. This is the core insight embodied in (1). On the other hand, if there are no modes of being or existence, then nonexistent objects cannot be said to be mind-dependent.

Although Blackman is on very solid ground in claiming that nonexistent objects are mind-dependent, he falls into incoherence because of his adherence to the analytic dogma that there cannot be modes of existence. Further proof of the incoherence is in evidence when Blackman states that "We might say that nonexistent objects, like the existent ones, belong to something larger called 'reality,' but the claim that nonexistent objects are in a sense 'real' is innocuous, as long as it understood that their 'reality' consists merely in their being the (strictly mental) intentions of certain awarenesses. (55-56) It seems to me that the first independent clause in this sentence contradicts the second. If reality is common to existent and nonexistent objects, then surely the reality of an object (whether existent or nonexistent) cannot consist in its being the strictly mental intention (i.e., intentum, intentional object) of certain awarenesses.

I claim that the widespread analytic view that there cannot be modes of existence is but a dogma. In earlier posts collected in the Existence category I try to show that typical arguments against the doctrine fail and that there is a way between the horns of univocity and sheer equivocity of the river bank/financial bank sort (which I grant is intolerable). If I am right about this, the insights of both Blackman and Butchvarov can be accommodated. Blackman is right to insist that nonexistent objects are mind-dependent. And Butchvarov is right to think that only what exists can stand in relations of dependence or independence. But Butchvarov is wrong to think that only what exists in reality exists. What exists in the mode of esse intentionale also exists but not in reality, only in consciousness.

Is the Difference Between a Fact and Its Constituents a Brute Difference?

Note to Steven Nemes: Tell me if you find this totally clear, and if not, point out what is unclear. Tell me whether you accept my overall argument.

The day before yesterday in conversation Steven Nemes presented a challenge I am not sure I can meet. I have maintained (in my book, in published articles, and in these pages) that the difference between a fact and its constituents cannot be a brute difference and must therefore have a ground or explanation. But what exactly is my reasoning?

Consider a simple atomic fact of the form, a's being F. This fact has two primary constituents, the individual a, and the monadic property F-ness, which a possesses contingently. But surely there is more to the fact than these two primary constituents, and for at least two reasons. I'll mention just one, which I consider decisive: the constituents can exist without the fact existing. The individual and the property could each exist without the former exemplifying the second. This is so even if we assume that there are no propertyless individuals and no unexemplified properties. Consider a world W which includes the facts Ga and Fb. In W, a is propertied and F-ness is exemplified; hence there is no bar to saying that both exist in W. But Fa does not exist in W. So a fact is more than its primary constituents because they can exist without it existing.

A fact is not its constituents, but those constituents unified in a particular way. Now if you try to secure fact-unity by introducing one or more secondary constituents such an exemplification relation, then you will ignite Bradley's regress. For if the constituents include a, F-ness, and EX, then you still have the problem of their unity since the three can exist without constituting a fact.

So I take it as established that a fact is more than its constituents and therefore different from its constituents. A fact is different from any one of its constituents, and also from all of them taken collectively, as a mereological sum, say. The question is: What is the ontological ground of the difference? What is it that makes them different? That they are different is plain. I want to know what makes them different. It won't do to say that one is a fact while the other is not since that simply underscores that they are different. I'm on the hunt for a difference-maker.

To feel the force of the question consider what makes two different sets different. If S1 and S2 are different sets, then it is reasonable to ask what makes them different, and one would presumably not accept the answer that they are just different, that the difference is a brute difference. Let S1 be my singleton and S2 the set consisting of me and Nemes. It would not do to say that they are just different. We need a difference-maker. In this case it is easy to specify: Nemes. He is what makes S1 different from S2. Both sets contain me, but only one contains him. Generalizing, we can say that for sets at least,

DM. No difference without a difference-maker.

So I could argue that the difference between a fact and (the sum of) its constituents cannot be a brute difference because (i) there is no difference without a difference-maker and (ii) facts, sets, and sums, being complexes, are relevantly similar. (I needn't hold that the numerical difference of two simples needs a difference-maker.) But why accept (DM) in full generality as applying to all types of wholes and parts? Perhaps the principle, while applying to sets, does not apply to facts and their constituents. How do I answer the person who argues that the difference is brute, a factum brutum, and that therefore (DM), taken in full generality, is false? As we say in the trade, one man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens.

Can I show that there is a logical contradiction in maintaining that facts and their constituents just differ? That was my strategy in the book on existence. The strategy is to argue that without an external ground of unity — an external unifer — one lands in a contradiction, or rather cannot avoid a contradiction. That the unifier, if there is one, must be external as opposed to internal is established by showing that otherwise a vicious infinite regress ensues of the Bradley-type. I cover this ground in my book and in articles in mind-numbing detail; I cannot go over it again here. But I will refer the reader to my 2010 Dialectica article which discusses a fascinating proposal according to which unity is constituted by an internal infinite, but nonvicious, regress. But for now I assume that the unifier, if there is one, must be external. If there is one, then the difference between a fact and its constituents cannot be brute. But why must there be a unifier?

Consider this aporetic triad:

1. Facts exist.
2. A fact is its constituents taken collectively.
3. A fact is not its constituents taken collectively.

What I want to argue is that facts exist, but that they are contradictory structures in the absence of an external unifier that removes the contradiction. Since Nemes agrees with me about (1), I assume it for present purposes. (The justification is via the truth-maker argument).

Note that (2) and (3) are logical contradictories, and yet each exerts a strong claim on our acceptance. I have already argued for (3). But (2) is also exceedingly plausible. For if you analyze a fact, what will you uncover? Its constituents and nothing besides. The unity of the constituents whereby it is a fact as opposed to a nonfact like a mereological sum eludes analysis. The unity cannot be isolated or located within the fact. For to locate it within the fact you would have to find it as one of the constituents. And that you cannot do.

Note also that unity is not perceivable or in any way empirically detectable. Consider a simple Bergmann-style or 'Iowa' example, a red round spot. The redness and the roundness are perceivable, and the spot is perceivable. But the spot's being red and round is not perceivable. The existence of a fact is the unity of its constituents. So what I am claiming is equivalent to claiming that existence is not perceivable, which seems right: existence is not an empirical feature like redness and roundness.

So when we consider a fact by itself, there seems to be nothing more to it than its constituents.

Each limb of the triad has a strong claim on our acceptance, but they cannot all be true as formulated. The contradiction can be removed if we ascend to a higher point of view and posit an external unifier. What does that mean?

Well, suppose there is a unifier U external to the fact and thus not identifiable with one or more of its primary or secondary constituents. Suppose U brings together the constituents in the fact-making way. U would then be the sought-for ground of the fact's unity. The difference between a fact and its constituents could then be explained by saying that the difference is due to U's 'activity': U operates on the constituents to produce the fact. Our original triad can then be replaced by the following all of whose limbs can be true:

1. Facts exist
2*. A fact, considered analytically, is its constituents taken collectively.
3. A fact is not its constituents taken collectively.

This triad is consistent. The limbs can all be true. And I think we have excellent reason to say that each IS true. The truthmaker argument vouches for (1). (2*) looks to be true by definition. The argumentation I gave for (3) above strikes me as well-night irresistible.

But if you accept the limbs of the modified triad, then you must accept that there is something external to facts which functions as their unifier. Difficult questions about what U is and about whether U is unique and the same for all facts remain; but that U exists is 'fallout' from the modified triad. For if each limb is true, then a fact's being more than its constituents can be accounted for only by appeal to an external unifier.

But how exactly does this show that the difference between a fact and its constituents is not a brute difference? The move from the original to the modified triad is motivated by the laudable desire to avoid contradiction. So my argument boils down to this: If the difference is brute, then we get a logical contradiction. So the difference is not brute.

But it all depends on whether or not there are facts. If facts can be reasonably denied, then my reasoning to a unifer can be reasonably rejected. But that's a whole other can of worms: the truthmaker argument.

Analytically considered, a fact is just its constituents. But holistically considered it is not. Unity eludes analysis, and yet without unities there would be nothing to analyze! Analytic understanding operates under the aegis of two distinctions: whole/part, and complex/simple. Analysis generates insight by reducing wholes to their parts, and complex parts to simpler and simpler parts, and possibly right down to ultimate simples (assuming that complexity does not extend 'all the way down.') But analysis is a onesided epistemic procedure. For again, without unities there would be nothing to analyze. To understand the being-unified of a unity therefore requires that we ascend to a point of view external to the unity under analysis.