Category: Existence

Divine Simplicity and Whether Existence is a First-Level Property

A London reader, Rob Hoveman, kindly sent me Howard Robinson's "Can We Make Sense of the Idea that God's Existence is Identical to His Essence" (in Reason, Faith and History: Philosophical Essays for Paul Helm, ed. M. W. F. Stone, Ashgate 2008, pp. 127-143).  This post will comment on the gist of section 4 of Robinson's article, entitled 'Existence is Not a Property.'

One major implication of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) is that in God essence and existence are the same.  My Stanford Encyclopedia article on DDS will fill you in on some of the details.  A number of objections can be brought against DDS.  Here only one will be considered, namely, the objection that existence cannot be a first-level property, a property of individuals.

The objection might go like this.  If in God, an individual, essence and existence are identical, then existence must be a first-level property of God.  But existence cannot be a first-level property.  Therefore, essence and existence cannot be identical in God.

This objection is only as good as the Fregean theory according to which existence is a property of concepts only.  Without explaining why distinguished thinkers have been persuaded of its truth, let me give just one reason why it cannot be right.  The theory says that existence is the property of being instantiated. An affirmative general existential such as  'Horses exist,' then, does not predicate existence of individual horses; it predicates instantiation of the concept horse.  And a negative general existential such as  'Mermaids do not exist'  does not predicate anything of individual mermaids — after all, there aren't any — it denies that the concept mermaid has any instances.

To see what is wrong with the theory, note first that instantiation is a relation, a dyadic asymmetrical relation.  We can of course speak of the property of being instantiated but only so long as it is understood that this is a relational property, one parasitic upon the relation of instantiation.  Therefore, if a first-level concept C is instantiated, then there is some individual x such that  x instantiates C.  It would be nonsense to say that C is instantiated while adding that there is nothing that instantiates it.  That would be like saying that Tom is married but there is no one to whom he is married.  Just as 'Tom is married' is elliptical for 'Tom is married to someone,' 'C is instantiated' is elliptiucal for 'C is instaniated by some individual.'

Now either x exists or it does not. 

Suppose it does not.  Then we have instantiation without existence.  If so, then existence cannot be instantiation.   For example, let C be the concept winged horse and let x be Pegasus.  The latter instantiates the former since Pegasus is a winged horse.   But Pegasus does not exist.  So existence cannot be the second-level property of instantiation if we allow nonexistent objects to serve as instances of concepts. 

Now suppose that x exists.  Then the theory is circular: it presupposes and does not eliminate first-level existence. The concept blogging philosopher is instantiated by me, but only because I possess first-level existence.  One cannot coherently maintain that my existence consists in my instantiating that concept or any concept for the simple reason that (first-level) existence is what makes it possible for me to instantiate any concept in the first place.

If what we are after is a  metaphysical theory of what it is for an individual to exist, then Frege's theory in  all its variants (the Russellian variant, the Quinean variant, . . .)  is wholly untenable.  I demonstrate this in painful detail in A Paradigm Theory of Existence, Kluwer, 2002, Chapter 4.  Robinson, p. 133, is on to the problem, and makes the following intriguing suggestion: "But there is a way of taking the second order analysis which is not incompatible with regarding 'exists' as a first order predicate, and that can be approached by treating existence as a monadic property of concepts." (133)

The idea is that, rather than being a relational property of concepts, as on the Fregean theory, existence is a nonrelational property of concepts.  If this could be made to work, it would defuse the circularity objection I just sketched.  For the objection exploits the fact that instantiation is a dyadic  relation. 

But if existence is to be construed as a monadic (nonrelational) property of concepts, then concepts cannot be understood as Frege understands them.  For Frege, concepts are functions and no function is an ontological constituent of its value for a given argument or an ontological constituent of any argument.  For example, the propositional function expressed by the the predicate '___is wise' has True as its value for Socrates as argument.  But this function is not a constituent of the True.  Nor is it a constituent of Socrates.  And for Frege there are no truthmaking concrete states of affairs having ontological constituents.

For Robinson's suggestion to have a chance, concepts must be understood as ontological constituents of individuals like Socrates.  Accordingly,

Existence is not simply a property of the individual, in the ordinary sense; it is more a metaphysical component of it, along with form or essence. So the monadic property of the concept — its instantiation — is the same as the existence of the individual. (134)

Essence and existence are thus ontological constituents or metaphysical components of contingent individuals.  This is definitely an improvement over the Fregean view inasmuch as it preserves the strong intuition, or rather datum,  that existence belongs to individuals.  But this Thomistic view has its own problems.  It is difficult to understand how existence could be a proper part of an existing thing as the Thomistic analysis implies.   After all, it is the whole of Socrates that exists, Socrates together with all his spatial parts, temporal parts (if any), and ontological 'parts.'    As pertaining to the whole of the existing thing, its existence cannot be identified with one part to the exclusion of others.  For this  reason, in my book I took the line that the existence of an individual is not one of its constituents, but the unity of all its constituents.

The Dead and the Nonexistent: Meinong Contra Epicurus

Are there nonexistent objects in the sense in which Meinong thought there are? One reason to think so  derives from the problem of reference to the dead. The problem can be displayed as an aporetic tetrad:

1. A dead person no longer exists.
2. What no longer exists does not exist at all. 
3. What does not exist at all cannot be referred to or enter as a constituent into a state of affairs.
4. Some dead persons can be referred to and can enter as constituents into states of affairs.  (For example, 'John Lennon' in 'John Lennon is dead' refers to John Lennon, who  is a constituent of the state of affairs, John Lennon's being dead.)

Despite the plausibility of each member, the above quartet is logically inconsistent.  The first three propositions entail the negation of the fourth.  Indeed, any three entail the negation of the remaining one.  Now (1) and (4) count as data due to their obviousness.  They are 'datanic' as opposed to 'theoretical' like the other two.  Therefore, to relieve the logical tension we must either reject (2) or reject (3).

To reject (2) is to reject Presentism according to which only temporally present items exist.  One could hold that both past and present items (tenselessly) exist, or that past, present, and future items (tenselessly) exist.  Such anti-presentist theories break the two-way link between existence and temporal presentness: what is temporally present exists, but what exists need not be temporally present.

But another option is to reject (3).   One could adopt the view of Alexius von Meinong according to which there are items that stand jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, "beyond being and nonbeing."  These items have no being whatsoever.  Meinong's examples include the golden mountain (a possible object) and the round square (an impossible object).  His doctrine was misunderstood by Russell and generations of those influenced by him.  The doctrine is not that nonexistent objects have a mode of being weaker than existence, but that they have no being whatsoever. And yet they are not nothing! They are not nothing inasmuch as we can refer to them and predicate properties of them.  They are definite items of thought possessing Sosein but no Sein, but are not mere accusatives of thought.  A strange view, admittedly, and I do not accept it.  (See my A Paradigm Theory of Existence, Kluwer 2002, pp. 38-42.)  But distinguished philosophers have and do: Butchvarov, Castaneda, T. Parsons, Routley/Sylvan, et al.)

So Meinongianism is a theoretical option.  The Meinongian line gives us a way to answer Epicurus.  For Epicurus death is not an evil because when we are, death is not, and when death is, we are not.  The point is that at no time is there a subject possessing the property of  being dead.  When I am alive, I am not dead.  And when I am dead, I do not exist.  It is not just that when I am dead I no longer presently exist, but that I do not exist at all.  (Presentism seems part and parcel of the Epicurean position.)  And because I do not exist at all when I am dead, I cannot have properties.   (Anti-Meinongianism  is also part and parcel of the Epicurean position: existence is a necessary condition of property-possession.)  But then I cannot, when dead, have the property of being dead, in which case there is no state of affairs of my being dead. And that gives us a deep ontological reason for denying  that death is an evil:  if there is no state of affairs of my being dead, then there is nothing to possess the property of being evil.  (Note that it is not the property of being dead that is evil, or me the individual, but the putative state of affairs of my being dead.)

As I read Epicurus, his position on death, namely, that being dead  is not an evil for the one who is dead,  requires both Presentism and Anti-Meinongianism.   If that is right, then one can answer Epicurus either by rejecting Presentism or by accepting Meinongianism.

Anti-Presentism breaks the two-way link between existence and temporal presentness, while Meinongianism breaks the two-way link between existence and property-possession.  The anti-presentist faces the challenge of giving a coherent account of tenseless existence, while the Meinongian owes us an explanation of how there can be items which actually have properties while having no being whatsoever.  Epicureanism maintains both links  but flies in the face of the powerful intuition that death is an evil.

A good solution eludes us.  And so once  again we end up in good old Platonic fashion up against the wall of an aporia.

Being Dead and Being Nonexistent, or: How to Cease to Exist without Dying

In general, being dead and being nonexistent are not the same 'property' for an obvious reason: only that which was once alive can properly be said to be dead, and not everything was once alive.  Nevertheless, it might be thought that, for living things, to be is to be alive, and not to be is to be dead.  But I think this Aristotelian view can be shown to be mistaken.

1. A human person cannot become dead except by dying.

2. But a human person can become nonexistent without dying in at least four ways. 

2a. The first way is by entering into irreversible coma.  Given that consciousness is an essential attribute of persons, a person who enters into irreversible coma ceases to exist.  But the person's body remains alive.  Therefore, a human person can cease to exist without dying. 

2b. The second way is by fission.  Suppose one human person A enters a Person Splitter and exits two physically and behaviorally and psychologically indiscernible persons, B and C.  B is not C.  So A is not B and A is not C.  What happened to A?  A ceased to exist.  But A didn't die.  Far from the life in A ceasing, the life in A doubled!  So human person A became nonexistent without dying.

2c.  The third way is by fusion.  Two dudes enter the Person Splicer from the east and exit to the west one dude.  The entrants have ceased to exist without dying.

2d.  The fourth way is theological.  Everything other than God depends on God for its very existence at every moment of its existence.  If God were to 'pull the plug' ontologically speaking on the entire universe of contingent beings, then at that instant all human persons would cease to exist without dying.  They would not suffer the process or the event of dying  but would enter nonexistence nonetheless.  Because they had not died, they could not be properly said to be dead.

Therefore, pace the Peripatetic,

3.  Being dead and being nonexistent are not the same  — not even for living things.

(Time consumed in composing this post: 40 minutes. )

The Evil of Death and the Rationality of Fearing It

Is death an evil?  Even if it is an evil to the people other than me who love me, or in some way profit from my life, is it an evil to me?  A few days ago, defying Philip Larkin, I took the Epicurean position that death cannot be an evil for me and so it cannot be rational for me to fear my being dead: any fear of death is a result of muddled thinking, something the philosopher cannot tolerate, however things may stand with the poet.  But I was a bit quick in that post and none of this is all that clear. A re-think is in order.  Death remains, after millenia, the muse of philosophy.

My earlier reasoning was along the following Epicurean-Lucretian lines.  (Obviously, I am not engaged in a project of exegesis; what exactly these gentlemen meant is not my concern.  I'll leave scholarship to the scholars and history to the historians.)  

1. Either bodily death is the annihilation of the self or it is not.
2. If death is annihilation, then after the moment of dying there is no self in existence, either conscious or unconscious, to have or lack anything.
3. If there is no self after death, then no evil can befall the self post mortem.
4. If no evil can befall the self post mortem, then it is not rational to fear post mortem evils.
5. If, on the other hand, death is not annihilation, then one cannot rationally fear the state of nonbeing for the simple reason that one will not be in that 'state.'
Therefore
6. It is not rational to fear being dead.

The argument is valid, but are the premises true?  (1) is an instance of the the Law of Excluded Middle. (2) seems obviously true: if bodily death is annihilation of the self, then (i) the self ceases to exist at the moment of death, and (ii) what does not exist cannot have or lack anything, whether properties or relations or experiences or parts or possessions.  (ii) is not perfectly obvious because I have heard it argued that after death one continues as a Meinongian nonexistent object — a bizarre notion that I reject, but that deserves a separate post for its exfoliation and critique. 

Premise (3), however, seems vulnerable to counterexample.  Suppose the executor of a will ignores the decedent's wishes.  He wanted his loot to go to Catholic Charities, but the executor, just having read Bukowski, plays it on the horses at Santa Anita.  Intuitively, that amounts to a wrong to the decedent.  The decedent suffers (in the sense of undergoes) an evil despite not suffering (in the sense of experiencing) an evil.  And this despite the fact, assuming it to be one, that the decedent no longer exists. But if so, then (3) is false.  It seems that a person who no longer exists can be the subject of wrongs and harms no less than a person who now exists.  Additional examples like this are easily constructed.

But not only can dead persons have bad things done to them, they can also be deprived of good things. Suppose a 20 year old with a bright future dies suddenly in a car crash.  In most though not all cases of this sort the decedent is deprived of a great deal of positive intrinsic value he would have enjoyed had he not met an untimely end.  Or at least that is what we are strongly inclined to say.  Few would argue that in cases like this there is no loss to the person who dies.  Being dead at a young age is an evil, and indeed an evil for the person who dies,  even though the person who dies cannot experience the evil of being dead because he no longer exists.

So we need to make a distinction between evils that befall a person and are experienceable by the person they befall, and evils that befall a person that are not experienceable by the person they befall.  This distinction gives us the resources to resist the Epicurean-Lucretian thesis that death is not an evil for the one who dies.  We can grant to Epicurus & Co. that the evil of being dead cannot be experienced as evil without granting that being dead is not an evil.  We can grant to Epicurus et al. that, on the assumption that death is annihilation, being dead cannot be experienced and so cannot be rationally feared; but refuse to grant to them that dying and being dead are not great evils.

In this way, premise (3) of the above argument can be resisted.  Unfortunately, what I have just said in support of the rejection of (3) introduces its own puzzles.  Here is one.

My death at time t is supposed to deprive me of the positive intrinsic value that I would have enjoyed had I lived beyond t.   Thus I am a subject of an evil at times at which I do not exist.  This is puzzling.  When I exist I am of course not subject to the evil of death. But when I do not exist I am not anything, and so how can I be subject to goods or evils?  How can my being dead be an evil for me if I don't exist at the times at which I am supposed to be the subject of the evil?

We will have to think about this some more.

John Deck’s Contrast Argument Against the Philosophy of Being

John N. Deck is a highly interesting, if obscure, figure in the neo-Scholasticism of the 20th century. I first took note of him in 1989, ten years after his death, when his article "Metaphysics or Logic?" appeared in New Scholasticism (vol. LXIII, no. 2, Spring 1989, pp. 229-240.) Thanks to the labors of Tony Flood we now have a better picture of the man and his work. The case of Deck may well prove to be a partial confirmation of Nietzsche's "Some men are born posthumously."

Total Dependence and Essence/Existence Composition

Anthony Flood has done metaphysicians a service by making available John N. Deck’s excellent, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Language of Total Dependence. This is an essay that Anthony Kenny, no slouch of a philosopher, saw fit to include in his anthology, Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (University of Notre Dame Press, 1976).

Mr. Flood finds Deck’s argument to be "unanswerable" to such an extent that it broke the hold of Thomism on him. Although I am not a Thomist, I believe I can show that Deck’s argument is not compelling.

This essay divides into two parts. In the first, I state what I take to be Deck’s argument; in the second, I show how it can be answered from the position worked out in my A Paradigm Theory of Existence: Onto-Theology Vindicated (Kluwer Philosophical Studies Series #89, 2002).

Deck’s Argument Entdeckt

Continue reading “Total Dependence and Essence/Existence Composition”

Four-Dimensionalism to the Rescue?

Let us return to that impressive product of porcine ingenuity, Brick House.  Brick House, whose completion by the Wise Pig occurred on Friday, is composed entirely of the 10,000 Tuesday Bricks.  I grant that there is a sum, call it 'Brick Sum,' that is the classical mereological sum of the Tuesday Bricks.  Brick Sum is 'generated' — if you care to put it that way — by Unrestricted Composition, the classical axiom which states that "Whenever there are some things, then there exists a fusion [sum] of those things." (D. Lewis, Parts of Classes, p. 74)  I also grant that Brick Sum is unique by Uniqueness of Composition according to which "It never happens that the same things have two different fusions [sums]." (Ibid.)  But I deny Lewis' Composition as Identity.  Accordingly, Brick Sum cannot be identical to the Tuesday Bricks.   After all, it is one while they are many.

Now the question I am debating with commenter John is whether Brick House is identical to Brick Sum.  This ought not be confused with the question whether Brick House is identical to the Tuesday Bricks.  This second question has an easy negative answer inasmuch as the former is one while the latter are many.  Clearly, one thing cannot be many things.

The question, then, is whether Brick House is identical to Brick Sum.  Here is a reason to think that they are not identical.  Brick Sum exists regardless of the arrangement of its parts: they can be scattered throughout the land; they can be piled up in one place; they can be moving away from each other; they can be arranged to form a wall, or a corral, or a house, or whatever.  All of this without prejudice to the existence and the identity of Brick Sum.  Now suppose Hezbollah Wolf, a 'porcicide' bomber, enters Brick House and blows it and himself up at time t on Friday evening. At time t* later than t, Brick Sum still exists while Brick House does not.  This shows that they cannot be identical; for if they were identical, then the destruction of Brick House would be the destruction of Brick Sum. 

This argument, however, rests on an assumption, namely, that Brick Sum exists both at t and at t*.   This won't be true if Four Dimensionalism is true.  If bricks and houses are occurrents rather than continuants, if they are composed of temporal parts, then we cannot say, strictly and philosophically, that Brick Sum at t still exists at t*.  And if we cannot say this, then the above argument fails.

But all is not lost since there remains a modal consideration.  Brick House and Brick Sum both exist at time t in the actual world.  But there are plenty of possible worlds in which, at t, the latter exists but not the former.  Thus it might have been the case at t that the bricks were arranged corral-wise rather than house-wise.  So Brick Sum has a property that Brick House lacks, namely, the modal property of being such that its parts could have been arranged in non-house-wise fashion.  Therefore, by the Indiscernibility of Identicals, Brick House is not identical to Brick Sum.

So even if the historical discernibility argument fails on Four Dimensionalism, the modal discernibility argument seems to work even assuming Four Dimensionalism.

Please note that my thesis is not that Brick House is a sum that violates Uniqueness of Composition, but that Brick House is not a classical mereological sum.    If Brick House were a sum, then it would be Brick Sum.  But I have just argued that it cannot be Brick Sum.  So it cannot identified with any classical sum.  It is a whole of parts all right, but an unmereological whole.  What does that mean?  It means that it is a whole that cannot be adequately understood using only the resources of classical mereology.

 

Existence, Elimination,and Changing the Subject

This is the fourth in a series on the metaphilosophical problem of sorting out the differences and similarities of analysis, identification, reduction, elimination, and cognate notions.  Parts I, II, III.  This post features existence, a topic I find endlessly fascinating and inexhaustibly rich.

Consider the position of a philosopher I will call Gottbert Fressell.  (A little known fact about him is that in his spare time he writes pro-capitalist novels under the pseudonym 'Randlob Ruge.') Fressell intends a reductionist line about existence.   He maintains that

1. There is (the property of) existence, but what this property is is the property of being instantiated.

This is a reductionist line because our philosopher admits that while there is existence, it can be reductively identified with something better understood, namely, the second-level property of being instantiated.  But I say that despite Fressell's intentions, his position is in truth an eliminativist one.  Thus I maintain that (1) collapses willy-nilly into

2.  There is no (property of) existence.

So if Fressell understood the implications of what he is saying, he would come out of the closet and forthrightly declare himself an existence denier, a denier that there is any such 'property' as existence.  And if he understood his position he would plead 'guilty' to the charge of having changed the subject.

The subject is existence, that in virtue of which me, you, and the moon exist, are, have Being, are not nothing — however you want to put it.  Existence is what Russell has (speaking tenselessly) but his celestial teapot lacks.  The subject is singular existence, the existence of non-instantiable items, the existence of that which I prove when I enact the Cogito.   But what Fressell does is change the subject to what could be called general existence, which is just the being-instantiated of first-level properties.

Note the difference between 'Mungojerrie exists' and 'Cats exist.'  The latter, but not the former, can be reasonably understood as predicating a second-level property (the property of beng instantiated) of a first-level property, the property of being a cat.  Thus 'Cats exist' is analyzable as 'The property of being a cat has instances.'  But 'Mungojerrie exists' cannot be analyzed as 'The property of being identical to Mungojerrie is instantiated' because there is no such haecceity property.  But even if there were, the analysis would fail due to circularity.  If you want to explain what it is for individual a to exist, you move in an explanatory circle of embarrassingly short diameter if you say that the existence of a is a's instantiation of a-ness: a's existence is logically prior to its instantiation of any property. 

If you say that general existence is instantiation, then I have no quarrel with you.  But 'general existence' is a misleading expression with which we can easily dispense by using in its stead 'the property of being instantiated.'  General existence, if you  insist on the phrase, presupposes singular existence.  And because 'general existence' is dispensable, we don't need the qualifier 'singular': existence just is singular existence. If, having understood all of this, you insist that existence is instantiation, then I say you are an eliminativist about existence who has changed the subject from existence to instantiation.

Exercise for the reader:  find more examples of changing the subject in philosophy.  Replacing truth with warranted assertibility would be an example, as would replacing knowledge by what passes for knowledge in a given society (a move some sociologists of knowledge make).

 

Mereological Innocence and Composition as Identity

DavidLewis This is the third in a series.  Part I, Part II.  What follows is a 10th example of eliminativist/reductivist ambiguity.

One of the axioms of mereology is Unrestricted Composition.  Here is David Lewis' formulation (Parts of Classes, Basil Blackwell 1991, p. 74):

Unrestricted Composition: Whenever there are some things, then there exists a fusion of those things.

A fusion is a mereological sum, so I'll use 'sum.'  The axiom assures us that, for example, if there are some cats, then there exists a sum of those cats.  The cats are many but the sum is one.  So it is not unreasonable to think that if there are five cats that compose the sum, the sum is a sixth thing.  One could argue as follows:  (a) The sum is distinct from each of the cats.  (b)There are five cats, each of which exists, and by UC the sum also exists.  Therefore, (c) at least six things exist.

But consider this example, adapted from Donald Baxter.  You proceed with six bottles of beer to the supermarket 'six items or fewer' checkout line.  The attendant protests your use of the line on the ground that you have seven items: six bottles of beer plus one mereological sum.  This would be an outrage, of course.  The example suggests that the argument to (c) above has gone wrong.

Lewis avoids the mistake — assuming it is one — by pleading that "Mereology is ontologically innocent." (PC 81)  That means that a commitment to a cat-sum is not a further commitment over and above the commitment to the cats that compose the sum.  The cat-sum just is the cats, and they are it.  This is the thesis of Composition as Identity.  The xs compose the y by being identical to the y.  As Lewis says,

Take them together or take them separately, the cats are the same portion of Reality either way.  Commit yourself to their existence all together or one at a time, it's the same commitment either way.  If you draw up an inventory of Reality according to your scheme of things, it would be double counting to list the cats and also list their fusion.  In general, if you are already committed to some things, you incur no further commitment when you affirm the existence of their fusion. (PC 81-82)

I'm sorry, but this doesn't make much sense.  Glance back at Unrestricted Composition.  It is not a tautology.  It does not say that whenever there are some things, then there are some things.  It says that whenever there are some things, then there exists a fusion or sum of those things.  Now if the sum of the xs is just the xs, then UC is a tautology.  But  if UC is not a tautology, then Composition as Identity is false.  How can Unrestricted Composition and Composition as Identity both be true?

The problem is already present at the purely syntactic level.  'Y is identical to the xs' is unproblematic if the xs are identical to one another.  For then the open sentence collapses into 'y is identical to x.'  But if the xs are distinct from each other, then 'y is identical to the xs' is syntactically malformed.  How can one thing be identical to many things?  If one thing is identical to many things, then it is not one thing but many things.  A contradiction ensues: the one thing is one thing and not one thing because it is many things.  The gaps in the predicate '. . . is identical to ____' must either be both filled with singular terms or both filled with plural terms.

And now we come back to our main theme, eliminativist/reductivist ambiguity.  Lewis wants to say that there is the sum of the xs (by Unrestricted Composition) but that the the sum of the xs is identical to the xs.  So he seems to be making a reductionist claim: sums reduce to their members.  But I say the thesis is unstable and topples over into eliminativism:  there are no mereological sums.  For if the sum is just its members, then all that exists is the members so that the sum does not exist!

Van Inwagen on the Ship of Theseus

Van Inwagen Peter van Inwagen's Material Beings (Cornell UP, 1990) is a very strange book, but he is a brilliant man, so one can expect to learn something from it. A central claim is that artifacts such as tables and chairs and ships do not exist. One can appreciate  that if there are no ships then the ancient puzzle about identity known as the Ship of Theseus has a very quick (dis)solution. 

The Ship of Theseus is a puzzle about diachronic artifact identity. Here is one version. You have a ship, or a rowboat, or any object, composed entirely of wooden planks. You remove one of the planks and replace it with an aluminum plank of the same size. The wooden plank is placed in a warehouse. After this minor replacement, you have a ship and indeed numerically the same ship as the one you started with. It is not a numerically different ship. Now replace a second wooden plank with an aluminum plank, and place the second wooden plank in the warehouse. Again, the numerical identity of the original ship has been preserved. Continue the replacement process until all of the wooden planks have been replaced with aluminum planks. You now have a wholly aluminum ship that is presumably numerically identical to the original wholly wooden ship despite the fact that none of the original matter is to be found in the aluminum ship. After all, the aluminum ship 'grew out of' the original wooden ship by minor changes each of which is identity-preserving.

Now take the wooden planks from the warehouse and assemble them in the form of a ship and in such a way that the planks bear the same relations to one another as the planks in the original wooden ship bore to one another. You now have two ships, a wooden one and an aluminum one. The question is: which of these ships is identical to the original wooden one?

Suppose the two ships collide on the high seas, and suppose the captain of the original ship had taken a solemn vow to go down with his ship. Where does his duty lie? With the wooden ship or with the aluminum one? Is the original ship identical to the resultant aluminum ship? One will be tempted to say 'yes' since the aluminum ship 'grew out' of the original wooden ship by minor transformations each of which was identity-preserving. Or is the original ship identical to the wooden ship that resulted from the re-assembly of the wooden planks? After all, it consists of the original matter arranged in the original way. Since the resultant wooden and aluminum ships are numerically distinct, they cannot both be identical to the original ship.

Van Inwagen makes short work of the puzzle: "There are no ships, and hence there are no puzzles about the identities of ships." (128) One way van Inwagen supports this bizarre solution is by re-telling the story in language that does not make even apparent reference to ships. Here is his retelling:

Once upon a time, there were certain planks that were arranged shipwise. Call then the First Planks. . . . One of the First Planks was removed from the others and placed in a field. Then it was replaced by a new plank; that is, a carpenter caused the new plank and the remaining First Planks to be arranged shipwise, and in just such a way that the new plank was in contact with the same planks that the removed planks had been in contact with, and at exactly the same points. Call the planks that were then arranged shipwise the Second Planks. A plank that was both one of the First Planks and one of the Second Planks was removed from the others and placed in the field and replaced (according to the procedure laid down above), with the consequence that certain planks, the Third Planks, were arranged shipwise. Then a plank that was one of the First Planks and one of the Second Planks and one of the Third Planks . . . . This process was repeated till all the First Planks were in the field. Then the First Planks were caused to be arranged shipwise, and in just such a way that each of them was in contact with the same planks it had been in contact with when the First Planks had last been arranged shipwise, and was in contact with them at just the same points. (128-129)

If I understand what van Inwagen is claiming here, it is that there is nothing in the standard telling of the story, a version of which I presented above, that is not captured in his re-telling. But since there is no mention of any ships in the re-telling, no puzzle about ship-identity can arise. Perhaps van Inwagen's point could be put by saying that the puzzle about identity is an 'artifact' of a certain way of talking that can be paraphased away. Instead of talking about ships, we can talk about shipwise arrangements of planks. The planks do not then compose a ship, he thinks, and so there is no whole of which they are proper parts, and consequently no question about how this whole maintains its diachronic identity under replacement of its parts.

What are we to say about van Inwagen's dissolution of the puzzle? What I find dubious is van Inwagen's claim that ". . . at no time do two or more of these planks compose anything, and no plank is a proper part of anything." (129) This strikes me as plainly false. If the First Planks are arranged shipwise, then there is a distinction beween the First Planks and their shipwise arrangement. The latter is the whole ship and the former are its proper parts. So how can van Inwagen claim that the planks do not compose a ship? Van Inwagen seems to think that if the planks were parts of a whole, and there were n planks, then the whole would be an n + 1 th entity. Rejecting this extreme, he goes to the other extreme: there is no whole of parts. If there were ships, they would be wholes of parts, but there are no artifactual wholes of parts, so there are no ships. The idea seems to be that when we build an artifact like a ship we are not causing something new to come into existence; we are merely re-arranging what already exists. If so, then although a ship's planks exist, the ship does not exist. Consider what van Inwagen says on p. 35:

If I bring two cubes into contact so that the face of one is conterminous with the face of the other, have I thereby brought into existence a solid that is twice as long as it is wide? Or have I merely rearranged the furniture of the earth without adding to it?

Van Inwagen seems to be saying that when it comes to artifacts, there is only rearrangement, no 'addition to existence.' As a general thesis, this strikes me as false. A ship is more than its planks, and van Inwagen seems to concede as much with his talk of a shipwise arrangement of planks; but this shipwise arrangement brings something new into being, namely, a thing that has causal powers that its constituents do not have. For example, a boat made of metal planks properly arranged will float, while the planks themselves will not float.

Thinking About Nothing

Suppose I try to think the counterfactual state of affairs of there being nothing, nothing at all.  Can I succeed in thinking pure nothingness?  Is this thought thinkable?  And if it is, does it show that it is possible that there be nothing at all?  If yes, then (i) it is contingent that anything exists, and (ii) everything that exists exists contingently, which implies that both of the following are false:

1. Necessarily, something exists.  Nec(Ex)(x exists)

2. Something necessarily exists.   (Ex)Nec(x exists). 

(1) and (2) are not the same proposition: (2) entails (1) but not conversely.

Phylogenetically, this topic goes back to Parmenides of Elea.  Ontogenetically, it goes back to what was probably my first philosophical thought when I was about eight or so years old.  (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny!)  I had been taught that God created everything distinct from himself.  One day, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling,  I thought: "Well, suppose God never created anything.  Then only God would exist.  And if God didn't exist, then there would be nothing at all."  At this my head began to swim and I felt a strange wonder that I cannot quite recapture, although the memory remains strong 50 years later.  The unutterably strange thought that there might never have been anything at all — is this thought truly thinkable or does it cancel itself in the very attempt to think it?

My earlier meditation was to the effect that the thought cancels itself by issuing in contradiction.  (And so I concluded that necessarily there is something, an interesting metaphysical result arrived at by pure thought.) To put it as simply as possible, and avoiding the patois of 'possible worlds': If there were nothing, then it would be a fact that there is nothing.  And so there would be something, namely, that very fact.  After all, that fact has a definite content and can't be nothing.  But this is not quite convincing because, on the other hand, if there were truly nothing, then there wouldn't be this fact either. 

On the one hand, nothingness is the determinate 'state' of there being nothing at all.  Determinate, because it excludes there being something.  (Spinoza: Omnis determinatio est negatio.) On the other hand, nothingness is the nonbeing of absolutely everything, including this putative 'state.'  That is about as pithy a formulation of the puzzle as I can come up with.

Here is a puzzle of a similar structure.  If there were no truths, then it would be true that there are no truths, which implies that there is at least one truth.  The thought that there are no truths refutes itself.  Hence, necessarily, there is at least one truth.  On the other hand, if there 'truly' were no truths, then there would be no truth that there are no truths.  We cannot deny that there are truths without presupposing that there are truths; but this does not prove the necessity of truths apart from us.  Or so the objection goes.

How can we decide between these two plausible lines of argumentation? 

But let me put it a third way so we get the full flavor of the problem.  This is the way things are: Things exist. If nothing else, these very thoughts about being and nonbeing exist.  If nothing existed, would that then be the way things are?  If yes, then there is something, namely, the way things are.  Or should we say that, if nothing existed, then there would be no way things are, no truth, no maximal state of affairs?  In that case, no determinate 'possibility' would be actual were nothing to exist.

The last sentence may provide a clue to solving the problem.  If no determinate possibility would be actual were nothing to exist, then the thought of there being nothing at all lacks determinate content.  It follows that the thought that there is nothing at all is unthinkable.  We may say, 'There might have been nothing at all,' but we can attach no definite thought to those words.  So talking, we literally don't know what we are talking about.  We are merely mouthing words.  Because it is unthinkable that there be nothing at all, it is impossible, and so it is necessary that there be something.

Parmenides vindicatus est.

My conclusion is equivalent to the thesis that there is no such 'thing' as indeterminate nonbeing.  Nonbeing is determinate:  it is always and necessarily the nonbeing of something.  For example, the nonbeing of Pierre, the nonbeing of the cafe, the nonbeing of Paris  . . . the nonbeing of the Earth . . . the nonbeing of the physical universe . . . the nonbeing of everything that exists.  Nonbeing, accordingly, is defined by its exclusion of what exists. 

The nonbeing of everything that exists is not on an ontological par with everything that exists.  The former is parasitic on the latter, as precisely the nonbeing of the latter. Being and Nothing are not equal but opposite:  Nothing is derivative from Being as the negation of Being.  Hegel got off on the wrong foot at the beginning of his Wissenschaft der Logik.  And Heidegger, who also maintained that Being and Nothing are the same — though in a different sense than that intended by Hegel — was also out to lunch, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor.

If this is right, then nonbeing is not a source out of which what is comes or came.  Accordingly, a sentence like 'The cosmos emerged from the womb of nonbeing,' whatever poetic value it might have, is literally meaningless:  there is no nonbeing from which anything can emerge.

Being is. Nonbeing is not. 

From the Mailbag: Faith and Modality

An astute reader e-mails, 

First, sometime ago I recommended John Bishop's Believing by Faith: An Essay in the Epistemology
and  Ethics of Religious Belief . If you have yet to read the book, I would recommend his new article
on Faith in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. You may be particularly interested in
sections 7-10.
 
Second, I do not know a great deal about possible worlds semantics, and am taking a great risk of embarrassing myself in questioning your  argument that "Necessarily, something exists" – but I think
that I will take a stab at it!
 
I am assuming that "Necessarily something exists" = "In at least one possible world, at least one
thing exists." Is this correct?
 
No.  The first sentence is equivalent to 'In every possible world, at least one thing exists.'  In other words, there is no possible world that is empty: every world has at least one item in it.  But this is consistent with there being no one item that exists in every possible world.  Suppose every being is contingent, where a contingent being is one that exists in some but not all possible worlds.  Then there would be no one being that exists in all worlds, and 'Necessarily something exists' would be made true by the fact that each world has something or other in it.  But if there is a necessary being (defined as a being that exists in all worlds), then of course the sentence in question is also true.
 
1. Does not your argument depend upon the assumption of 'modal realism' – that all possible worlds
actually exist, a highly questionable assumption?
 
No, because I am using the 'possible worlds' language only as a façon de parler, a graphic and intuitive way of representing modal relationships which I find helpful.  (Unfortunately, most of my readers are completely 'thrown' by it!) In other words, I could have stated the argument without mentioning possible worlds.  Here is a partial schedule of intertranslation, where 'world' is short for 'broadly logically possible world':
 
X is a necessary being =df X exists in all worlds
X is a contingent being =df X exists in some but not all  worlds
X is an impossible being =df X exists in no world
X is an actual being =df X exists in the actual world
(Note that if x is contingent, it doesn't follow that x is actual, nor conversely)
X is a possible being =df X exists in some world
X is essentially F =df X instantiates F-ness in every world in which X exists.
X is accidentally F =df X instantiates F-ness in some but not all worlds in which X exists
X is necessarily F =df X instantiates F-ness in every world in which X exists, and X exists in every world.
(Example: God is necessarily, not just essentially, omnipotent.)
Proposition p is necessarily true =df p is true in all worlds
P is contingently true =df p is true in some but not all worlds
And so on.
 
Now isn't that neat? The modal notions are explicated in terms of the familiar quantifiers of predicate logic.  The schema facilitates modal reasoning.  For example, if x is necessary, does it follow that x is possible?  Yes, because if x exists in all worlds, then it exists in some worlds. If x is possible, does it follow that x is contingent?  No, because if x exists in some worlds, that leaves it open that it exists in all worlds.  If x is noncontingent, does it follow that x is necessary?  No, because if it is not the case that x exists in some but not all worlds, it does not follow that x exists in all worlds:  x might exist in no world.
 
You characterize modal  realism  as the doctrine that "all possible worlds actually exist."  No philosopher maintains that every world is absolutely actual.  There is only one possible world that is absolutely actual: all the rest are merely possible.  Now there is a philosopher, David K. Lewis, who maintains that there is a plurality of worlds, all on an ontological par, and thus all equally real; but he denies that there is such a property as absolute actuality.  For him each world is actual at itself, but no world is actual simpliciter or absolutely.  I reject Lewis's view which could be called extreme modal realism.  Almost everyone rejects it.  Lewis's idea, which is both brilliant and crazy at the same time, is that modality can be reduced to purely extensional terms via definitions like the ones I gave above.  But few follow him in that.  The above definitions do not allow one to eliminate modality by quantifying over worlds, because the worlds in question are possible, and 'possible' is a modal term.
 
So, to answer what I take to be your question, my argument does not presuppose extreme modal realism.  In fact, it does not require that we take any stand at all on what exactly possible worlds are.  But I do presuppose realism to this extent:  I asssume that modality is not merely epistemic. Thus the possibility that I be sleeping now instead of blogging is a 'real possibility' in that it is subsists independently of what I or anyone know or believe.  It is not possible merely in the epistemic sense of 'possible for all I know,' but possible independently of what I know.
 
2. Does not your use of 'exists' in premises 4 and 5 treat it as, or assume that it can be used as,  a
'real predicate'  rather than merely a 'grammatical predicate' (B. Russell) – again a questionable if
not false assumption?
 
I discuss this is various articles and in my 2002 book A Paradigm Theory of Existence.  I argue, among other things, that Russell's theory of existence, which is closely related to Frege's, is a complete nonstarter, wrong from the ground up.  There is something on Russell's theory in Paul Edwards' Heidegger's Confusions: A Two-Fold Ripoff. 
 
In 'possible worlds' lingo, we say things like this:  There are possible worlds in which Socrates exists but is not the teacher of Plato. Now of course those worlds are all merely possible because we know (or reasonably believe) that in the actual world Socrates is the teacher of Plato.  So what does it mean to say that Socrates exists in those worlds?  Let W be a merely possible world.  To say that x exists in W is to say that, had W been actual, x would have existed.  A merely possible world in which Socrates is not the teacher of Plato is a world which is such that, had it been actual, then Socrates would have existed without being the teacher of Plato.
 
My correspondent continues with several more questions/objections which I don't understand.  In any case the above gives us plenty to discuss.

Could There Have Been Just Nothing At All?

10_nichts No doubt, things exist. At least I exist, and that suffices to show that something exists. But could it have been the case that nothing ever existed? Actually, there is something; but is it possible that there have been nothing? Or is it rather the case that necessarily there is something? Is it not only actually the case that there is something, but also necessarily the case that there is something? I will argue that there could not have been nothing and that therefore necessarily there is something. (Image credit.)

My thesis, then, is that necessarily, something (at least one thing) exists.  I am using 'thing' as broadly as possible, to cover anything at all, of whatever category.  If I am right, then it is impossible that there have been nothing at all.  The type of modality in question is what is called 'broadly logical' or 'metaphysical.'

Note that Necessarily something exists does not entail Something necessarily exists.  I am not asserting the second proposition, but only the first.  The second says more than the first.  In the patois of possible worlds, the second says that there is some one thing that exists in every possible world, whereas the first says only that every possible world is such that there is something or other  in it.  The first proposition is consistent with the proposition that every being is contingent, while the second is not. So the first and second propositions are logically distinct and the first does not entail the second.  I am asserting only the first.

What I will be arguing, then, is not that there is a necessary being, some one being that exists in all possible worlds, but that every world has something or other in it: every possible circumstance or
situation is one in which something or other exists. That is, there is no possible world in which there is nothing at all.

You can think of merely possible worlds as maximal or total ways things might have been, and you can think of the actual world as the total way things are. My thesis is that there is no way things might have been such that nothing at all exists.  But if you are uncomfortable with the jargon of possible worlds, I can translate out of it and say, simply, that it is impossible that there have been, or be, nothing at all.  As a matter of metaphysical necessity, there must be something or other!

The content of my thesis now having been made clear, I  proceed to give a reductio ad absurdum argument for thinking it true.

1. Let S = Something exists and N = Nothing exists, and assume for reductio that N is possibly true.
2. If N is possibly true, then S, which is true, and known to be true, is only contingently true.
Therefore
3. There are possible worlds in which S is false and possible worlds in which S is true. ( From 2, by definition of 'contingently true')
4. In the worlds in which S is true, something exists. (Because if 'Something exists' is true, then something exists.)
5. In the worlds in which S is false, it is also the case that something exists, namely, S. (For an item cannot have a property unless it exists, and so S cannot have the property of being false unless S exists)
6. Every proposition is either true, or if not true, then false. (Bivalence)

Therefore
7. Every world has something in it, hence there is no world in which nothing exists.
Therefore
8. N is not possibly true, and necessarily something exists.

If you disagree with my conclusion, then you must either show that one or more premises are either false or not reasonably maintained, or that one or more inferences are invalid, of that  the argument rests on one or more dubious presuppositions.

Modality and Existence

Steven Nemes, who may prove to be my nemesis, e-mails:

I'm enjoying your book so far. I'm starting the constructive half of it now, and am going to reread the chapter "The Ground of the Contingent Existent" after a quick skim over it recently. I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but upon hearing some of the theories of existence you cover in the book, the thought in my head is "Man, this obviously can't be right. How could anyone think this?" But the philosophers in question are much smarter than me, so maybe my surprise at their theories is improper.

I have a question now regarding possible worlds, what is true-in-W, etc.

You make the point in your book that it is the fact that my existence is contingent that makes it true in some worlds that I exist and false in others. And it is the necessary existence of the Paradigm that would make it true in every possible world that he exists, rather than vice versa. This all seems very correct to me, but I am wondering about its consequences.

As I recall, my thought was along the following lines.  The biconditionals

N. x is a necessary being iff x exists in all metaphysically possible worlds

C. x is a contingent being iff x exists in some but not all possible worlds

are neutral with respect to reductions of the RHS to the LHS or vice versa.  So we can legitimately ask:  Is a necessary being necessary because it exists in all worlds, or does it exist in all worlds because it is necessary?  And:  Is a contingent being contingent because it exists in only some worlds, or does it exist in only some worlds because it is contingent?  My answer was that existence in all/some worlds is grounded in, and explained by, the different ways of existing of the Paradigm and what depends on it.

It seems the principle, then, is that what is possible depends upon what is actual, depends upon the potentialities that exist in what is actual, etc. Would you agree to this?

That's the next step, but my principle was merely that possible worlds talk is a very useful façon de parler, a graphic manner of speaking that allows us to picture modal relations in extensional terms  using the machinery of quantification, but that necessity and contingency of existence cannot consist in, or be constituted by, existence in all/some worlds.

But I do take the next step, though I didn't work it out in the book.  The Paradigm is the numero uno necessary existent and as such the ground of all actualities other than itself, but also the ground of all possibilities.  Mere possibilities, after all, are not nothing, and so have some ontological status shy of actuality.  So I had the not entirely original thought that mere possibilities could be identified with powers of the Paradigm.

Are there bad consequences of this, however? It seems like there is nothing actual sufficient to ground the truth of a typical counterfactual of creaturely freedom about nonexistent agents, like "If Bill the Bald Bostonian were offered the chance, he'd freely agree to murder the Yankees star pitcher". Does that mean it isn't true in any possible world? Can there be any truths about nonexistent agents and their free actions at all, assuming the only kind of free action is libertarian-free action? Can their be any truths in other possible worlds about what existent agents would freely do?

Underlying your question is whether there could be nonexistent but possible individuals.  The conclusion I came to in the book was that all mere possibilities are general in nature, hence not involving specific individuals.  Before Socrates came into existence there was no merely possible Socrates, though there was the possibility of there existing a snub-nosed sage, married to a shrewish wife, who was given to moments of abstraction when he communed with his daimon, etc.  To get a feel for the issue here, imagine someone prophesying the coming of Socrates, master dialectician, fearless questioner of powerful men, who ran afoul of them, got sentenced to death, etc.  Imagine the prophet being asked, after Socrates is on the scene, whether the Socrates in existence is the one he prophesied, or a numerically different one.  My claim is that this question makes no sense.  Before Socrates came into existence, there was no individual Socrates.

I was pushed into this view by my arguments against haecceity properties and also by my vew that existence is not a property added to a pre-formed fully individuated essence, but the unity of an individual's constitutents.  Accordingly, existence individuates so that there is no individuation apart from existence, hence no merely possible individuals.

Misgivings About Deflationary Theories of Truth

1. From my survey of the literature, there are four main types of truth theory being discussed: substantive theories, nihilist (for want of a better label) theories, deflationary theories, and identity theories.  Let me say just a little about the first two main types and then move on to deflationism. The Commenter (William Woking) will be sure to disagree with me about deflationism, which is good: by abrasion the pearl (of wisdom) is formed. Or as I read on a T-shirt at a road race recently: No pressure, no diamonds.

2. Substantive theories maintain that truth is (i) a metaphysically substantive item, presumably a property or relation, (ii) susceptible of non-trivial analysis or explication. Correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories count as substantive theories.  Such theories purport to analyze truth in terms of other, presumably more basic, terms such as a relation of correspondence or adequation to 'reality' or to facts as in Veritas est adequatio intellectus ad rem.  Or in terms of coherence of truth-bearers (beliefs, propositions, etc.) among themselves.  Or in terms of conduciveness to human flourishing as in William James' "the true is the good by way of belief."    Or in terms of broadly epistemic notions such as rational acceptability or warranted asseribility as in the Putnamian-Peircean 'Truth is rational acceptability at the ideal limit of inquiry.'

The latter is not a good proposal for reasons I won't go into now, but it illustrates the project of giving a substantive theory of truth.  One tries to analyze truth in more basic terms.  One tries to give an informative, noncircular answer to the  question, What is truth?  The sunbstantive approach is in the Granbd Tradition deriving from Plato wherein one asks What is X? for many values of 'X.'

The substantive approach to truth can be summed up in three propositions:

A. The facts about truth are not exhausted by the substitution-instances of the equivalence schemata 'p' is true iff p and *p* is true iff p.

B.  There is a substantive property of truth common to all and only truths.

C.  This substantive property is analyzable.

3. The 'nihilist' as he is known in the truth literature rejects substantive theories, not because they are substantive, but because they are theories.  He may grant that truth is a deep, substantial, metaphysically loaded, ontologically thick, topic.  But he denies that one can have a theory about it, that one can account for it in more basic terms: truth is just too basic to be explained in more fundamental terms.  The nihilist accepts (A) and (B) above but denies (C).

4.  The deflationist, like the nihilist, rejects substantive theories of truth.  The difference is that the deflationist holds that an account of truth is possible albeit in very 'thin' terms, while the nihilist denies that any account is possible thick or thin:  truth is too basic to be accountable.  Nihilism allows truth to be a thick (metaphysical) topic.  Deflationism disallows this.  Deflationists deny (A), (B), and (C).

5.  The deflationist makes a big deal out of certain perfectly obvious equivalences and he tries to squeeze a lot of anti-metaphysical mileage out of them.  Here are two examples, one involving a declarative sentence, the other involving a proposition.  Note that asterisks around a sentence, or around a placeholder for a sentence, form a name of the proposition expressed by the sentence. 

E1. 'Grass is green' is true iff grass is green.

E2. *Grass is green* is true iff grass is green.

Note that such biconditionals express logical, not material, equivalences:  they are not just true but true across all metaphysically (broadly logically) possible worlds.  With respect to such biconditionals, there is no possible situation in which the RHS is true and the LHS false, or vice versa.  If asked for the ground of this necessity, I would say it resides in the mere logic of the truth predicate.  Saying this, I do not concede that there is nothing more to truth than the merely syntactic role played by 'true ' in equivalences like the above.

Now let us assume something which, though false, will simplify our discussion.  Let us assume that there is no other type of use of the truth predicate other than the uses illustrated in logical equivalences like the foregoing.  (Thus I am proposing that we ignore such uses as the one illustrated by 'Everything Percy says is true.') 

The deflationist thesis can now be formulated as follows:  There is nothing more to truth  than what is expressed by such truisms as the foregoing equivalences.  Thus there is no metaphysically substantive property of truth that the LHS predicates of 'Grass is green' or of *Grass is green.*  The content on both sides is exactly the same: 'is true' adds no new content.  'Is true' plays a merely syntactic role.  In terms of Quine's disquotationalism (which is a version of the deflationary approach), 'is true' is merely a device of disquotation.  'Is true' has no semantic dimension: it neither expresses a substantive property, nor does it refer to anything.  Truth drops out as a topic of philosophical inquiry.  There is no such property susceptible of informative explication in terms of correspondence, coherence, rational acceptability, or whatnot.  The question What is truth? gets answered by saying that there is no such 'thing' as truth: there are truths, and every such truth reduces via the equivalence schema to a sentence or proposition in which the truth predicate does not appear.  Accordingly, there is nothing all truths have in common in virtue of which they are truths.  There is only a multiplicity of disparate truths.  But even this says too much since each 'truth' reduces to a sentence or proposition in which 'true' does not appear.

6. Now for my misgivings about deflationism.  But first three preliminary points.

a. Equivalence is symmetrical (commutative); if p is equivalent to q, then q is equivalent to p.  But explanation is asymmetrical: if p explains q, then q does not explain p.  From ' p iff q' one cannot infer 'p because q' or 'q because p.' 'p iff q' is consistent with both.   Connected with the asymmetry of explanation is that equivalences do not sanction reductions.  Triangularity and trilaterality are logically equivalent properties, but it doesn't follow that either reduces to the other.

b. If two items are equivalent, then both are propositions or sentences.  There cannot be equivalence between a sentence or proposition and something that is neither. 

c. To define equivalence we need to recur to truth.  To say that p, q are logically equivalent is to say that there is no possible situation in which p is true and q false, or q true, and p false.

Now what is the deflationist saying? His thesis is negative: there is nothing to truth except what is captured in the the equivalence schemata and their substitution-instances. Consider

E. *p* is true iff p.

First Misgiving:  The truth of the biconditional is not in question.  But equivalences don't sanction reductions. From (E) one cannot infer that the LHS reduces to the RHS, or vice versa.  But the deflationist is saying that the LHS reduces to, and is explained by, the RHS.  But what is his justification for saying this?  Why not the other way around?  Why not say that p because *p* is true?

Second Misgiving:  For an equivalence to hold, both sides must be true (or false).  Suppose both sides are true.  Then, although the predicate 'true' does not appear on the RHS, the RHS must be true.  So, far from dispensing with truth, the equivalence schemata and their instances presuppose it!

You don't get it, do you?  Let me try an analogy with existence.  A deflationist about existence might offer this equivalence schema:

F. Fs exist iff something is an F.   (E.g., 'Cats exist iff something is a cat.')

Squeezing this triviality hard, our deflationist announces that 'exist' plays a merely syntactic role and that there is no substantive property of existence.  But is it not obvious that if something is an F, then that thing must exist?  Are you quantifying over a domain of nonexistents?  If yes, then the equivalence fails.  But if you are quantifying over a domain of existents, then the existence of those existents is being presupposed.  So, even though 'exist' does not occur on the RHS of (F), existence is along for the ride.  Same with (E).  Even though 'true' does not occur on the RHS of (E), truth is along for the ride.  In both cases, existence and truth in meaty substantive senses are being presupposed.

Third Misgiving.  'Grass is green' and 'It is true that grass is green' have exactly the same content. That is perfectly obvious and denied by no one.  'Is true' adds no new content.  But how is it supposed to follow that truth is not a substantive property?  What follows is that truth is not a content property.  How do our deflationist pals get from 'Truth is not a content property' to 'Truth is not a substantive property'?  Isn't it obvious that truth refers us outside the content of the proposition or sentence?

Compare existence.  A thing and the same thing existing have exactly the same quidditative content.  The fastest runner and the existing fastest runner are numerically the same individual. Does it follow that existence is not a property?  No, what follows it that existence is not a quidditative property.  Same with truth.  There is no difference in content between p and true p.  But it makes a world of difference whether p is true or false just as it makes a world of difference whether an individual exists or not.

Fourth Misgiving.  If p and q are equivalent, then both are propositions.  The instances of (E) therefore do not get us outside the 'circle of  propositions.'  But isn't it obvious that whether or not a sentence or a proposition or a belief (or any truthbearer) is true or false depends on matters external to the truthbearer?