Category: Existence

Van Inwagen contra Meinong on Having Being and Lacking Being

There is a passage in Peter van Inwagen's "Existence, Ontological Commitment, and Fictional Entities," (in Existence: Essays in Ontology, CUP, 2014, p. 98, emphasis added), in which he expresses his incomprehension of what the Meinongian means by 'has being' and 'lacks being': 

. . . the Meinongian must mean something different by 'has being' and 'lacks being' from what I mean by these phrases. But what does he mean by them? I do not know. I say 'x has being' means '~(y) ~y = x'; the Meinongian denies this. Apparently, he takes 'has being' to be a primitive, an indefinable term, whereas I think that 'has being' can be defined in terms of  'all' and 'not'. (And I take definability in terms of 'all' and 'not' to be important, because I am sure that the Meinongian means exactly what I do by 'all' and 'not' — and thus he understands what I mean by 'has being' and is therefore an authority on the question whether he and I mean the same.) And there the matter must rest.  The Meinongian believes that 'has being' has a meaning that cannot be explained in terms of unrestricted universal quantification and negation. 

Before I begin, let me say that I don't think van Inwagen is on this occasion feigning incomprehension as some philosophers are wont to do: I believe he really has no idea what 'has being' and cognate expressions could mean if they don't mean what he thinks they mean.

No one articulates and defends the thin theory of existence/being better than Peter van Inwagen who is arguably  'king' of the thin theorists.  The essence of the thin theory is that

1. x exists =df ~(y)~(y=x).

Driving the tilde though the right-hand expression, left to right, yields the logically equivalent

1*. x exists =df (∃y)(y = x)

which may be easier for you to wrap your head around.  In something closer to  English

1**.  x exists =df x is identical to something.

The thin theory is 'thin' because it reduces existence to a purely logical notion definable in terms of the purely logical notions of unrestricted universal quantification, negation, and identity.  What is existence?  On the thin theory existence is just identity-with-something.  (Not some one thing, of course, but something or other.) Characteristically Meinongian, however, is the thesis of Aussersein which could be put as follows:

M. Some items have no being.

Now suppose two things that van Inwagen supposes.  Suppose that (i) there is exactly one sense of 'exists'/'is' and that (ii) this one sense is supplied in its entirety by (1) and its equivalents.  Then (M) in conjunction with the two suppositions entails

C. Some items are not identical to anything.

But (C) is self-contradictory since it implies that some item is such that it is not identical to itself, i.e. '(∃x)~(x = x).'

Here we have the reason for van Inwagen's sincere incomprehension of what the Meinongian means by 'has being.'  He cannot understand it because it seems to him to be self-contradictory.  But it is important to note that (M) by itself is not logically contradictory.  It is contradictory only in conjunction with van Inwagen's conviction that 'x has being' means '~(y) ~(y = x).'

In other words, if you ASSUME the thin theory, then the characteristic Meinongian thesis (M) issues in a logical contradiction. But why assume the thin theory?  Are we rationally obliged to accept it?

I don't accept the thin theory, but I am not a Meinongian either. (Barry Miller is another who is neither a thin theorist nor a Meinongian.)  'Thin or Meinongian' is a false alternative by my lights.  I am not a Meinongian because I do not believe that existence is a classificatory principle that partitions a logically prior domain of ontologically neutral items into the existing items and the nonexisting items.  I hold that everything exists, which, by obversion, implies that nothing does not exist.  So I reject (M).

I reject the thin theory not because some things don't exist, but because there is more to the existence of what exists than identity-with-something.  And what more is that?  To put it bluntly: the more is the sheer extra-logical and extra-linguistic existence of the thing, its being there (in a non-locative sense of course).  The 'more' is its not being nothing. (If you protest that to not be nothing is just to be something, where 'something' is just a bit of logical syntax, then I will explain that there are two senses of 'nothing' that need distinguishing.)  Things exist, and they exist beyond language and logic. 

Can I argue for this?  It is not clear that one needs to argue the point since it is, to me at least, self-evident.  But I can argue for it anyway.

If for x to exist is (identically) for x to be identical to some y, this leaves open the question:  does y exist or not?  You will say that y exists.  (If you say that y does not exist, then you break the link between existence and identity-with-something.)  So you say that y exists.  But then your thin theory amounts to saying that the existence of x reduces to its identity with something that exists.  My response will be that you have moved in an explanatory circle, one whose diameter is embarrassingly short.  Your task was to explain what it is for something to exist, and you answer by saying that to exist is to be identical to something that exists.  This response is no good, however, since it leaves unexplained what it is for something to exist!  You have helped yourself to the very thing you need to explain.

It is the extra-logical and extra-linguistic existence of things that grounds our ability to quantify over them.  Given that things exist, and that everything exists, we have no need for an existence predicate: we can rid ourselves of the existence predicate 'E' by defining 'E' in terms of '(∃y)(y = x).'  But note that the definiens contains nothing but logical syntax.  What this means is that one is presupposing the extra-logical existence of items in the domain of quantification.  You can rid yourself of the existence predicate if you like, but you cannot thereby rid yourself of the first-level existence of the items over which you are quantifying.

Here is another way of seeing the point.  Bertrand Russell held that existence is a propositional function's being sometimes true.  Let the propositional function be (what is expressed by) 'x is a dog.'  That function is sometimes true (in Russell's idiosyncratic phraseology) if the  free variable 'x' has a substituend that turns the propositional function or open sentence into a true closed sentence.  So consider 'Fido,' the name of an existing dog and 'Cerberus.'  How do I know that substituting  'Fido' for 'x' results in a true sentence while substituting 'Cerberus' does not? Obviously, I  must have recourse to a more fundamental notion of existence than the one that Russell defines.  I must know that Fido exists while Cerberus does not.  Clearly, existence in the fundamental sense is the existence that belongs to individuals, and not existence as a propositional function's being sometimes true.

Now if you understand the above, then you will be able to understand why, in van Inwagen's words, "The Meinongian believes that 'has being' has a meaning that cannot be explained in terms of unrestricted universal quantification and negation."  The thin theory entails that there is no difference in reality between x and existing x.  But for Meinong there is a difference: it is the difference between Sosein and Sein.  While I don't think that there can be a Sosein that floats free of Sein. I maintain that there is a distinction in reality between a thing (nature, essence, Sosein, suchness) and existence.  

If van Inwagen thinks that he has shown that Meinong's doctrine entails a formal-logical contradiction, he is fooling himself.  Despite his fancy footwork and technical rigmarole, all van Inwagen succeeds in doing is begging the question against Meinong.        

Defending Barry Miller Against Herman Philipse, Part I: Existence as a First-Level Property

In his Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews  review of Elmar J. Kremer's Analysis of Existing: Barry Miller's Approach to God, Herman Philipse presents the following sketch of  Miller's cosmological  argument  a contingentia mundi for the existence of God:

1. Existence is a real first-level accidental property of contingent individuals.

2. Concrete contingent individuals are distinct from their existence.

3. This distinction implies a paradox, unless:

4. All existing concrete contingent individuals are caused to exist by a necessarily existing and therefore uncaused individual that is identical with its existence, and this is God.

5. At least one concrete contingent individual exists, e.g., the dog Fido, or the universe.

6. Hence, God exists (from 1-5).

Philipse is unimpressed with the argument.  He rejects (1) as well as (2)-(4).  In this entry I will confine myself to a discussion of Philipse's rejection of (1), and indeed to just one of his arguments against (1).  

It is obvious that Miller's cosmological argument cannot get off the ground unless existence is a property of  contingent individuals in some defensible sense of 'property.'  This is what Philipse appears to deny.  He appears to endorse the Frege-Russell view according to which 'exist(s)' is always only a second-level predicate and never an admissible first-level predicate, where a first-level or first-order predicate is one that  stands for a property that is meaningfully attributable to concrete individuals.   On the Frege-Russell view, then,  existence is not a first-level property, but a property of properties, Fregean concepts, Russellian propositional functions or some cognate item.   But this dogma of analysis — as I call it –  (i) flies in the face of the linguistic data and (ii) brings with it troubles of its own. (See my "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, eds. Novotny and Novak, Routledge 2014, pp. 45-75)

That we predicate existence of concrete individuals seems as obvious as anything.  That we do so is a datum that ought to be  presumed innocent until proven guilty of incoherence or contradiction.  We predicate existence of individuals using proper names, demonstratives, pronouns, and pure indexicals as in 'Socrates exists,' 'This exists,'  'She exists,' and 'I exist.'   'Socrates' is a proper name. 'This' is a demonstrative.  'She' is a pronoun. 'I' is a pure indexical.  Many of these first-level predications of existence are true.  And if true, or false, then meaningful.  This is evidence that 'exist(s)'  functions as a meaningful first-level predicate in singular sentences such as 'Scollay Square no longer exists' and 'Copley Square still exists.'   The linguistic data suggest that 'exist(s)' has a use as a meaningful first-level predicate in the the way that 'numerous' has no use  as a meaningful first-level predicate. 

(Bertrand Russell made a brave but unsuccessful attempt at assimilating existence to numerousness by arguing that, just as it would be the fallacy of division to argue that Socrates is numerous from the premises that he is a philosopher and that philosophers are numerous, it would also be the fallacy of division to argue that Socrates exists from the premises that he is a philosopher and that philosophers exist. Following Frege, he held that 'exist(s)' is never an admissible first-level predicate.)

Consider the Cartesian cogito ergo sum.   It terminates in the proposition, sum, I am, I exist. The proposition is true, hence meaningful. First-level predications of existence would thus appear to be meaningful.  When I think the thought that I exist, I attribute to myself the property of existence. This is prima facie evidence that existence is a property of individuals in a suitably broad sense of 'property.'  Of course, when I say of a thing that it exists, I am not adding to its description or to the list of its quidditative determinations. So existence is not a property of individuals in that sense.  The following is a non sequitur:

Existence is not a quidditative property of individuals.

Therefore

Existence is not a property of individuals at all, but a property of properties, the property of being instantiated.

It doesn't follow, because existence might be a non-quidditative property of individuals.  The premise is obvious and contested by no one; but one cannot leap straightaway from it to the Fressellian doctrine which removes existence from individuals entirely and installs it at the level of concepts/properties/propositional functions.  

It is well known, however, that certain puzzles arise if we treat 'exist(s)' as a genuine first-level or first-order predicate.  And so a defender of (1) needs to be able to rebut the arguments against the view that 'exist(s)' is a genuine first-level predicate and existence a genuine first-level property.  Philipse claims that  if even one of these arguments contra is sound, then (1) cannot be sustained. 

Let us consider a famous argument from Kant who is widely regarded as having anticipated Frege.  Philipse writes,

Finally, does Miller succeed in refuting the Kantian argument to the effect that existence is not a real property? According to this argument, it is always possible to assert of one and the same entity (described by a list of its properties) both that it exists and that it does not exist. It follows from this plausible premise that existence cannot be a property (Critique of Pure Reason, A600/B628). Miller answers by stipulating that although existence is a real first-order property of concrete individuals, it differs from all other properties in two respects. First, existence does not add anything to what the individual is, and second, it does not add anything to an antecedent reality (p. 38). In my view, however, this stipulation amounts to changing the ordinary meaning of the term 'property', so that Miller's reply to Kant commits a fallacy of ambiguity. I conclude that Miller does not succeed in establishing that existence is a real accidental first-level property of concrete individuals.

This response is a total misunderstanding.  Kant does not show that existence cannot be a property; what he shows, if he shows anything, is that it cannot be a real property where a real property is a determining property, and where "a determining predicate [property in contemporary jargon] is a predicate [property] which is added to the concept of the subject and enlarges it." (A598 B626) 

Let the concept be cat. This relatively indeterminate concept can be further determined and made more specific by adding  real or determining properties to it such as male, short-haired, black, five-years-old, and so on.  Kant's point is that existence is not a property that could be added to this, or any, concept to further determine it.  Existence is not a determining property. And in that sense it is not a real property.  To predicate it of an individual leaves its whatness (quidditas) unaltered. Existence is not a quidditative determination.

Suppose the process of determination were taken to the max such that our cat concept becomes fully determinate in the sense that if anything in reality were to instantiate it, exactly one individual would instantiate it.  The concept would then be so specific as to be individuating. But it would not follow that anything in reality does instantiate it.  And if anything in reality were to instantiate it, then that individual would be quidditatively indistinguishable from the concept.  The concept and its object, it there is one, would coincide quidditatively. (A599 B627)  This is why Kant says that "the actual contains no more than the merely possible." The concept expresses the mere possibility of a corresponding object; whether there is a corresponding object, however, is an extra-conceptual matter.   

You can see how this puts paid to the Cartesian ontological argument "from mere concepts." No doubt the concept of God is the concept of a being possessing all perfections. But even if existence is a perfection ( a great-making property in Plantinga's lingo) in God, existence is not contained in any concept we can wrap our heads around, and so cannot be analytically extracted from any such concept.  Hence we cannot prove the existence of God by sheer analysis of the God concept. No concept in he mind of a discursive, ectypal intellect, not even the concept of God,  is such that by sheer analysis of its content one could prove the existence of a corresponding object.  

The point that Philipse misses is that Kant's claim that existence is not a real, i.e., determining property of individuals is consistent with Miller's claim that existence is a real, i.e., non-Cambridge property of individuals. Philipse mistakenly thinks that if existence is not a determining property of an individual, then it is not a property of an individual.  That is the same non sequitur as was exposed above.  If existence is not a quidditative property of individuals, it does not follow that that it is not a property of individuals, but a property of properties.

Kant's argument does not refute Miller's (1) above.

Do You Disappear When You Die? Comments on Yourgrau

Here, by Palle Yourgrau. Comments by BV in blue.  HT: Vlastimil Vohanka.

Many philosophers seem to think you simply 'disappear' when you die, 'erased' from the framework of reality as one would rub out a drawing on the blackboard. I think it would be a serious mistake to think this way. Time maga­zine had it right when it represented the death of bin Laden, hence his 'nonexistence,' with a picture of him on the cover, crossed out with a big X. If you’re lecturing on the capture and killing of bin Laden, you might draw a picture of him on the blackboard, and then conclude your lecture by drawing, as Time did, a big X across that drawing. That would be the right thing to do. The wrong thing to do would be to simply erase the drawing, to rub it out. A blank blackboard does not represent the death of bin Laden. On the contrary, it represents nothing. Bin Laden, on dying, did not become nothing, just as he did not come from nothing. (Ex nihilo, nihil fit.)

Let us assume that a (human) person is just an animated human body and that there is no Platonic soul or Cartesian res cogitans or anything relevantly similar of an immaterial nature that continues to exist after bodily death.  Let us assume that at death all of a person's mental and spiritual functions cease. The issue is whether a person, upon dying, becomes nothing. To make the question totally clear, assume that the person's corpse has been fully cremated. Is a person after death and cremation nothing at all? I am with Yourgrau part of the way: Bin Laden is not now nothing. One simple consideration is this: bin Laden is an object of veridical memories and the subject of many true propositions.  So he can't be nothing.  The wholly past is actual, not merely possible; factual, not fictional; real, not imaginary. Those are datanic claims, it seems to me, or very near datanic. They lay claim to being Moorean facts beyond reasonable dispute.

If presentism in the philosophy of time is the claim that all and only temporally present items exist, then presentism is false. The dead rise up to mock those who would restrict the ontological inventory to what exists at present.  At Halloween and at every season.

What about Yourgrau's claim that bin Laden did not come from nothing?  That is true if all it means is that prior to his conception there were two gametes that had to join to produce his zygotic self. In simpler terms, bin Laden did not come from nothing because he had material causes and they were not nothing. (Nor was the copulation of his parents nothing.)  But it is false if it means that, prior to bin Laden's conception, that very individual, bin Laden, was something real, and not nothing. 

The following temporal asymmetry strongly recommends itself: what no longer exists is not nothing; but what does not yet exist is nothing. It seems quite clear that we do refer successfully to wholly past individuals and events such as bin Laden and his being killed.  It is rather less clear how anyone, including God, could refer to bin Laden, that very individual qua individual, before his conception.  See A Most Remarkable Prophecy for some reasons.

But let's not worry at the moment about future individuals, if any; let's focus on past individuals, and, in particular, the human dead, about whom we all  have a lively interest.

Just this, however, seems to have escaped many, if not most philosophers who’ve written about the metaphysics of death. Shelly Kagan, for example, writes in his popular study Death that “nonexistence is nonexistence. It’s no kind of con­dition or state that I am in at all [after I’ve died]." Kagan seems to believe that when you’ve died and ceased to exist, there’s “no one left” to be in any sort of state or con­dition. There’s no one left even to be in the state of nonex­istence, to have the property of nonexistence. He seems to subscribe to W.V. Quine’s doctrine that “in our common- sense usage of ‘exist’, that [bin Laden] doesn’t exist, means simply that there is no such entity at all.” If there’s no such entity, ob­viously, there’s no such entity to occupy the state of nonexist­ence, to have the property of nonexistence.

As I said, this is a widely held view among philosophers of death. To choose another prominent example, consider what Francis Kamm writes in Morality, Mortality: “Life can sometimes be worse for a person than the alternative of nonexistence, even though nonexistence is not a better state of being.” For Kamm, nonexistence is never a better state of being than is exist­ence because for her, apparently, nonexistence is not a state of being at all.

Kamm and Kagan, however, are mistaken. What they say is true not of Socrates but of the tooth fairy. The tooth fairy is indeed not in a state of nonexistence for the simple reason that there is no such person as the tooth fairy. By con­trast, there is such a person as Socrates. Nathan Salmon, in “What Is Existence?” puts the matter succinctly: “‘Kripke exists’ is true whereas ‘Napoleon exists’ is false. Kripke has existence. Napoleon has nonexistence.”

When you die and cease to exist, you aren’t 'erased', you aren’t 'rubbed out', nor do you turn into a different kind of being. You forfeit your existence, not your essence. Death affects that you are, not what you are. Thus, assuming, for the sake of argument, that persons are concrete objects and that that is part of their essence, when Socrates died he didn’t cease being concrete. He went from being an existent concrete object to being a nonexistent concrete object. And the same is true, analogously, of an inorganic concrete ob­ject like a rock. This will no doubt sound paradoxical (not to say, downright crazy) to many people. Surely, what’s not there can’t be concrete! After all, if something’s concrete, you can trip over it in the dark, whereas there’s no need to worry about tripping over the nonexistent. True enough, if we’re speaking about an actual, an existent concrete object. But here we’re speaking of concrete objects that have ceased to exist— i.e. that have lost their existence, but not their es­sence. (Indeed, what would it mean for something to lose its essence? What would make it that very thing that had lost it?

The moral, then, is this: Concreteness should not be con­fused with actuality.

What Yourgrau is proposing is a Meinongian or quasi-Meinongian theory of wholly past individuals such as Socrates.  Socrates, unlike the Tooth Fairy, is real, not imaginary or fictional or mythical. But Socrates does not exist.  His present nonexistence, though, does not entail his being nothing at all. He is something: a nonexistent essence. Yourgrau, by contrast is an existent essence. But Yourgrau too will die, and when he does, he will become a nonexistent essence and join the company of Socrates and all the other concrete nonexistent individual essences.  To get a sense of what is meant by 'individual essence' here, consider any concrete thing that exists such as the table in front of you and 'peel away' (in thought) its existence.  'Peel away' the thing's Dasein.  What's left over is the thing's quiddity or whatness or Sosein or individual essence.  But don't confuse this individual essence with an abstract property such as a Plantingian haecceity. It is not a property of the thing, but the thing itself 'minus' its existence. And it is not abstract, but concrete.  The distinction between (individual) essence and existence, while made by the mind, has a foundation in things, a basis in reality.  We are in the vicinity of the distinctio realis of the Thomists.  But as I read Yourgrau, he is pushing further in a Meinongian direction.  If I understand Thomas, an essence cannot be without existence; what Yourgrau is envisaging, however, are individual essences that are without existence. This is tantamount to Meinong's Independence of Sosein from Sein.

So you've got your existent essences and your nonexistent essences.  When you die, you don't disappear or cease to be; you remain as a nonexistent essence.  You don't remain in existence as a nonexistent essence; that would be contradictory. So what Yourgrau might be saying is that you remain in being as a nonexistent essence.  Accordingly, essences ARE but only some of them EXIST. Indications are that Yourgrau holds that existent essences are all and only the temporally present ones. That would make him a kind of presentist.  He would avoid my anti-presentist objection above by saying that, while the dead do not exist, they are.  Or he could go full Meinongian and say that a dead person is an essence or Sosein that has no Sein whatsoever.  This is Meinong's famous doctrine of Aussersein according to which nonexistent objects are jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein. Accordingly, when I remember my dead mother and say things about her, she is the beingless object of my veridical memories and the beingless subject of my statements. 

Here is one place where I would insert the blade of critique. It is difficult to understand how there could be items that have no being whatsoever but are yet mind-independent.  My dead mother is irremovably resident in the past no matter what anyone says or thinks about her, and whether anyone thinks about her at all.Her fate, and yours too, dear reader, will be to enter oblivion, and sooner than you think. But to be forever and wholly forgotten is not to be nothing. She will forever be something. But how can anything be something if it has no being at all?

But Yourgrau needn't go all the way with Meinong. He could say that the dead, while they they do not exist, yet ARE.

A difference between me and Yourgrau is that I would say that the dead (and all wholly past items) are actual, not merely possible. Yourgrau does not say this since for him, to exist is to be actual.  But then what is the modal status of the dead? Here the critical blade comes out again. 

If, when a thing ceases to exist, it ceases to be actual, what modal status does it acquire? 'Actual' is a modal word; it is a member of the (alethic) modal family including 'possible,' 'merely possible,' 'impossible,' 'necessary,' 'contingent,' and 'noncontingent.'  So when Socrates ceased to exist,  did he become merely possible? No. Past individuals are not merely possible individuals. They actually were. 

Since Yourgrau accepts concrete individual essences, he might say the following. Before Socrates was conceived, he WAS as a merely possible individual, an essence without existence.  When he came into existence, he became actual: his essence was actualized. When he ceased to exist, he ceased to be actual and became — what? An impossible individual essence? (If nothing can have two beginnings of existence, and our man has had one, then it is impossible that he exist and be actual again.)  There are nasty questions here.  For example, how can the modal status of an item change over time?  More later. It's Saturday night. Time to punch the clock, pour myself a drink, and tune in Judge Jeannine.

This difficulty of speaking coherently of the dead is by no means confined to philosophers of death, nor, indeed, to philosophers of any stripe. It’s especially noticeable in book dedications, where authors simply cannot bring themselves to refer to the dead, themselves, substituting instead refer­ence to the memory of the dead. When you think about it, however, this is absurd. Unlike the dead, our memories of the dead are alive and well, and in any case, are a poor substitute for the loved ones being honored in the dedications. It’s your mother who taught you to love music, not your memories of your mother, your father who first took you to a poetry reading, not your memories of your father, and so on. What could be more different from a dead parent than a living memory? The nonexistence of the dead should make us more attuned to what’s real, not less. For the dead relative is every bit as real as, though less existent than, the living memory. “Never . . . think of a thing or being we love but have not actually before our eyes,” Simone Weil wrote in Gravity and Grace, “without reflecting that perhaps this thing has been destroyed, or this person is dead. May our sense of reality not be dissolved by this thought but made more intense. . . . Love needs reality”

This is an extract from the book 'Death and Nonexistence' by Palle Yourgrau (Oxford University Press, August 2019).

Yourgrau makes some excellent and true points here.  The dead are real.  When I remember my dead mother I remember her, not my memory of her.  But his Meinongian or quasi-Meinongian theory raises some difficult questions.  

Yourgrau palle

“Only the Present Exists”

The above title gives the gist of presentism in the philosophy of time. It is an answer to Quine's ontological inventory question: What is there?  What, by category, should we count as existent?  The presentist answer is that only (temporally) present items exist: wholly past and wholly future items do not exist.  Among these items are times, events, processes, individual substances, property-instantiations.  

'Only the present exists' is doubly ambiguous. 

FIRST AMBIGUITY

It is first of all ambiguous as between a tautology and a substantive thesis. It depends on how one construes 'exists.'  Is it present-tensed?  Then we get a tautology:

TAUT:  Only the present exists at present.

Presentists, however, are not in the business of retailing tautologies. They are out to advance a substantive and therefore non-tautological claim about what exists.  But to do this, their characteristic thesis cannot sport a present-tensed use of 'exists.'  So they have to say something like this:

SUBS: Only the present exists simpliciter.

But what does 'simpliciter' mean?  One might take it to mean 'tenseless.' Thus

SUBS*: Only the present exists tenselessly.

That is not a tautology. One might reasonably object that (SUBS*) is false on the ground that there are (tenselessly) wholly past and wholly future items such as Julius Caesar, his assassination, and my death.  That is what the so-called 'eternalists' maintain: 

E: Past, present, and future items all exist tenselessly.

All existents are on a par in point of existence. All are equally real.  Boethius exists just as robustly (or as anemically) as I do.  It is just that he exists in the past.  Now most eternalists are B-theorists.  They accept the B-theory of time. And so they would say that 'past,' 'present,' and 'future' can and must be cashed out relationally in terms of the B-relations: earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with.  Boethius exists in the past in that he tenselessly exists at times earlier than some reference time such as the time of my writing this sentence.  He exists just as I do, but elsewhen.  London is elsewhere relative to here, where I flourish, but is no less real than where I flourish.  Gloomier, no doubt, but no less real.

The main thing for 'present' purposes is that presentism and eternalism are both substantive claims. Neither is a tautology and neither is a contradiction.  Note also that if 'exists' in 'Past, present, and future items all exist' is read present-tensedly, then the sentence just mentioned would be a contradiction. We also note that to formulate either presentism or eternalism we must invoke a tenseless sense of 'exists.' 

SECOND AMBIGUITY

Now we notice that 'Only the present exists' is also ambiguous as between

SPM: Only this present exists: there is (tenselessly) exactly one time, the present, at which everything (tenselessly) exists.

and 

PP:  Only the present present exists: there are (tenselessly) many times, and every time t is such that everything that exists exists (tenselessly) at t.

The first view is Solipsism of the Present Moment.  This is a lunatic view, although it seems logically possible. It amounts to saying that everything that ever existed and everything that ever will exist exists now. Imagine that the entire universe, together with fossils, monuments, memories, and dusty books just now sprang into existence, lasts a while, and then collapses into non-being.

Presentism as usually understood affirms something like (PP), which implies that there are past presents, a present present, and future presents.  The idea is that, at any given time, whether past, present, or future, all that exists is what exists at that time. If reality is the totality of what exists, (PP) implies that reality is always changing. (PP) implies that reality is 'dynamic' whereas (E) implies that it is static.

(PP) strikes me as problematic. (PP) implies that there are (tenselessly) many different times. But there cannot be (tenselessly) many times if at each time there is only what exists at that time. For if at each time there is only what exists at that time, then at each time there are no times other than that time.  Is there a formulation of presentism that is consistent with its own truth?  I suspect that there isn't.

Presentism is at present very popular among philosophers.  I am wondering why.  Some distinguished writers actually say that it is common sense. What?  The proverbial man on the street has no opinion on any of these questions.

Feser on Vallicella on Feser on the Truth-Maker Objection to Presentism

I argued in my first critical installment that Edward Feser in his stimulating new book, Aristotle's Revenge, does not appreciate the force of the truth-maker objection to presentism in the philosophy of time. Ed's response to me is here. I thank Ed for his response. Herewith, my counter-response.

So, as I say, I don’t think the “truthmaker objection” is very impressive or interesting.  Bill disagrees.  He asks us to consider the following propositions:

(1) There are contingent past-tensed truths.

(2) Past-tensed truths are true at present.

(3) Truth-Maker Principle: contingent truths need truth-makers.

(4) Presentism: Only (temporally) present items exist.

The problem, Bill says, is that “the limbs of this aporetic tetrad, although individually plausible, appear to be collectively inconsistent.”

But I would deny that there is any inconsistency.  There is a presently existing fact that serves as the truthmaker for past-tensed truths such as the truth that Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March – namely, the fact that Caesar really was assassinated on the Ides of March.  To be sure, Caesar no longer exists and his assassination is no longer taking place.  But the fact that he was assassinated on the Ides of March still exists.  

I take it that Ed accepts all four of the above propositions as stated. So far, agreement. We also agree that 'Julius Caesar was assassinated' is past-tensed, true, presently true, contingently true, needs a truth-maker, and has a truth-maker. But whereas I take the fearsome foursome to be collectively logically inconsistent, in that any three of the propositions, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining proposition,  Ed finds no logical inconsistency whatsoever. Hence he finds the truth-maker objection to presentism to be neither impressive nor interesting.

The nub of the disagreement is precisely this: Ed thinks that the fact that Caesar was assassinated suffices as truth-maker for 'Caesar was assassinated' even if presentism is true. That is precisely what I deny. If by 'fact that,' Ed means 'true proposition that,' then I say that Ed is confusing a truth-bearer with a truth-maker.  But I hesitate to tax him with such an elementary blunder. So I will take him to be saying that the truth-maker of 'Caesar was assassinated' is the fact of Caesar's having been assassinated.  This is a concrete state of affairs, the subject constituent of which is Caesar himself. This state of affairs cannot exist unless Caesar himself exists.  Now Feser grants the obvious point that Caesar no longer exists.  That is is a datum that no reasonable person can deny. It follows that the truth-making state of affairs no longer exists either. 

On presentism, however, what no longer exists does not exist at all.  Presentism is not the tautological thesis that only the present exists at present.  Everybody agrees about that. So-called 'eternalists' in the philosophy of time will cheerfully admit that only present items exist at present. But they will go on to say that wholly past and wholly future items exist as well, and just as robustly as present items. It is just that they exist elsewhen, analogously as Los Angeles, although elsewhere relative to Phoenix, exists just as robustly (or as anemically) as Phoenix.

It is important to be clear about this. Presentism is a hard-core, substantive,  metaphysical thesis, in the same metaphysical boat with the various anti-presentisms, e.g, the misnamed 'eternalism.'   Presentism is not logically true or trivially true; it is not common sense, nor is it 'fallout' from ordinary language.  Speaking with the vulgar I say things like, 'The Berlin Wall no longer exists.' I am using ordinary English to record a well-known historical fact. Saying this, however, I do not thereby commit myself to the controversial metaphysical claim that wholly past items are nothing at all and that present items alone exist, are real, or have being. The Berlin sentence and its innumerable colleagues are neutral with respect to the issues that divide presentists and eternalists.

Presentism is the controversial metaphysical claim that only the (temporally) present exists, period. Or at least that is the gist of it, pending various definitional refinements. On presentism, then, Caesar does not exist at all. If so, there is nothing to ground the truth that Caesar was assassinated. We don't even need to bring in truth-making facts or states of affairs.  It suffices to observe that, on presentism, wholly past individuals such as Caesar do not exist.  One should now be able to see that the grounding problem represented by (1)-(4) is up and running.  

It is a datum that 'Caesar was assassinated' (or the proposition expressed by an assertive utterance of the sentence) is a contingent, past-tensed truth. It is also a datum that this truth is true now.  Now my datum might be your theory. But since Feser will grant both of these datanic points, I need say nothing more here in their defense. Given the datanic points, and given that the problem is soluble, one must either accept the truth-maker principle and reject presentism, or accept presentism and reject the truth-maker principle. And this is what most philosophers of time do. Trenton Merricks, for example, does the latter. (Truth and Ontology, Oxford, 2007)  Back to Feser:

To get an inconsistency, Bill would have to add to the list some further claim like:

(5) Only facts about what does exist (as opposed to facts about what used to exist) can serve as truthmakers.

But that would simply beg the question against the presentist.  And of course the presentist would say: “There will be no inconsistency if you get rid of (5).  ‘Problem’ solved!”

Not at all. There is no need to add a proposition to the tetrad to generate inconsistency. It is of course understood by almost all truth-maker theorists that only existing truth-makers can do the truth-making job.  There are few if any Meinongian truth-maker theorists.  Few if any will maintain, for example, that 'There are golden mountains' is made true by Meinong's nonexistent golden mountain. That being well-understood, it must also be understood that truth-maker theorists do not hold that only presently existing items can serve as truth-makers.  They don't build presentism into truth-maker theory. What they hold is that some, if not all, truths need (existing) truth makers.  Truth-maker theory is neutral on the question that divides presentists from eternalists. Now the past-tensed  'Caesar existed' is true.  It cannot just be true: there must be something 'in the world,' something external to the sentential representation, that grounds its truth. But what might that be on presentism?  If only present items exist, then Caesar does not exist. And if Caesar does not exist, then there is nothing that could serve as the truth-maker of 'Caesar existed.'

One ought to conclude that the quartet of propositions supra is collectively inconsistent. If the tetrad is not a full-on aporia, an insolubilium, then either one must reject presentism or one must reject the truth-maker principle.

The Temporal Neutrality of Truth-Maker Theory and Whether I Beg the Question

I do not assume that only presently existing items can serve as truth-makers.  What I assume is that only existing items can serve as truth-makers.  To appreciate this, consider timeless entities.  God, classically conceived, is an example: he is not omnitemporal, but eternal. He doesn't exist in time at every time, but 'outside of' time.  Now consider the proposition that God, so conceived, exists.  What makes it true, if true? Well, God. It follows that a truth-maker needn't be temporally present, or in time at all, to do its job.  Or consider so-called 'abstract' objects such as the number 7. It is true that 7 exists.  What makes this truth true? The number 7! So again a truth-maker needn't be temporally present, or in time at all, to serve as a truth-maker. But it must exist. 

Truth-maker theory, as such, takes no stand on either of the following two questions: Does everything that exists exist in time? Does everything that exists in time exist at the present time?

I therefore plead innocent to Ed's charge that I beg the question. Consider 'Caesar existed.' I don't assume that this past-tensed truth needs a presently existing truth-maker to be true.  I assume merely that it needs an existing truth-maker to be true. It is not that I beg the question; it is rather that Feser fails to appreciate the consequences of his own theory. He fails to appreciate that, on presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all.  It is because Caesar does not exist at all that I say that 'Caesar existed' lacks a truth-maker on presentism. It is not because he doesn't exist at present. Of course he doesn't exist at present!

Feser's Dilemma

It seems to me that Ed is uncomfortably perched on the horns of a dilemma. Either the truth-maker of a past-tensed truth is fact that or it is a fact of.  But it cannot be a fact that, for such an item is just a true proposition, and no proposition can be its own truth-maker. For example, the fact that (the true proposition that) Caesar was assassinated cannot be what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated. On the other horn, the truth-maker of 'Caesar was assassinated' can be a fact of, i.e., a concrete state of affairs, but on presentism this fact does not exist. For on presentism, Caesar, who does not now exist, does not exist at all. Hence the fact of does not exist  either, for its existence depends on the existence of its constituents, one of which is the roman emperor in question.

I suggests that Ed does not see the dilemma because he equivocates on 'fact.'  That should be clear from his talk, above, of "facts about."  He wants to say that "facts about" are truth-makers. but no truth-making fact is about it constituents. A "fact about" can only be a proposition.  It is a fact about Caesar and Brutus that the latter stabbed the former (Et tu, Brute?), But that "fact about" is just a true proposition that needs a truth-maker. The gen-u-ine truth-maker, however, is not about anything.  For example, the truth-maker of 'I am seated' is a concrete fact-of that has as one of its constituents the 200 lb sweating animal who wears my clothes. This truth-making fact is not about me; it contains me.

Michael Dummett sees the problem with presentism very clearly:

. . . the thesis that only the present is real denies any truth-value to statements about the past or the future; for, if it were correct, there would be nothing in virtue of which a statement of either type could be true or false, whereas a proposition can be true only if there is something in virtue of which it is true. We must attribute some form of reality either to the past, or to the future, or both.  (Truth and the Past, Columbia UP, 2004, p. 74.)

Feser again:

The point I was trying to make, in any event, is that past objects and events were real (unlike fictional objects and events, which never were).  That fact is what serves as the truthmaker for statements about past objects and events.  Statements about present objects and events have as their truthmakers a different sort of fact, viz. facts about objects and events that are real.  

Ed and I will agree that Caesar's assassination is an actual past event: it is not something that merely could have happened way back when but didn't, nor is it a fictional event of the sort that one finds in historical novels. Ed is committed to saying that this event was real.  But if so, then it is true now that Caesar was assassinated. What makes it true?  Feser's answer is that the fact that Caesar was assassinated is what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated.  But this is not a satisfactory answer since it merely repeats the datum. It is given that Caesar was assassinated. The problem is to explain what makes this true given the truth of presentism.

It is obvious that the true proposition that Caesar was assassinated cannot be what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated. That would be to confuse a truth-maker with a truth-bearer. The truth-maker cannot be an item in the 'representational order'; it must be something in the 'real order' of concrete spatiotemporal particulars.  The truth-maker must be either Caesar himself, battle scars and all, or a concrete state of affairs that has him as a constituent. But if presentism is true, then there is no such man. And if Caesar does not exist, then no concrete state of affairs involving him exists.  But now I am starting to repeat myself.

Bill also writes:

I conclude that Feser hasn't appreciated the depth of the grounding problem. 'Caesar was assassinated' needs an existing truth-maker. But on presentism, neither Caesar nor his being assassinated exists. It is not just that these two items don't exist now; on presentism, they don't exist at all. What then makes the past-tensed sentence true?  This is the question that Feser hasn't satisfactorily answered.

End quote.  In fact I have answered it.  Yes, “Caesar was assassinated” needs an existing truthmaker.  And that truthmaker is not Caesar or his assassination (neither of which exist anymore) but the fact that he was assassinated (which does still exist – after all, it is as much a fact now as it was yesterday, and will remain a fact tomorrow).  To this Bill objects that “obviously this won't do [because] the past-tensed truth cannot serve as [its] own truth-maker.”  But again, this conflates facts with propositions, and these should not be conflated. 

Ed's response is a very strange one. I am suggesting that Ed might be conflating truth-makers with truth-bearers, truth-making facts with propositions.  He says he is not. Fine. But since I explicitly made the distinction, he cannot reasonably accuse me of conflating truth-making facts with propositions.  In any case, it definitely seems to me that Ed is succumbing to the conflation in question, as I have explained above.

Are My Objections Sound Only if I Have a Correct Alternative Theory?

This is a fascinating metaphilosophical question. Ed again:

One further point.  Even if the defender of the “truthmaker objection” could get around the criticisms I have been raising, the objection nevertheless will succeed only if some alternative to presentism is correct.  And as I argue in Aristotle’s Revenge, none of the alternatives is correct.  So it will not suffice for the critic merely to try to raise problems for the presentist’s understanding of truth-making.  He will also have to defend some non-presentist understanding of truth-making, which will require responding to the objections I’ve raised against the rivals to presentism.

In particular, the critic presupposes that we have a clear idea of what it would be for past objects and events and future objects and events to be no less real than the present is, and thus a clear idea of what it would be for such things to be truthmakers.  But I claim that that is an illusion.  The eternalist view is in fact not well-defined.  It is a tissue of confusions that presupposes errors such as a tendency to characterize time in terms that intelligibly apply only to space, and to mistake mathematical abstractions for concrete realities.  Indeed, on the Aristotelian view of time that I defend in the book, the approaches to the subject commonly taken by various contemporary writers are in several respects wrongheaded.  Again, what I say about the truthmaker objection must be read in light of the larger discussion of time in Aristotle’s Revenge.

I deny what Feser asserts in the second sentence of the quotation immediately above. The assertion seems to trade on a confusion of possible theories and extant theories. Even if there is no tenable extant competitor to Feser's version of presentism — which is of course only one of several different versions — it does not follow that there is no possible tenable competitor theory.  That is one concern. Another is more radical. 

It may be that all of the extant theories in the philosophy of time are untenable and open to powerful objections. In particular, I am not an 'eternalist' and I am very sensitive to the problems it faces. To mention one, it seems that eternalism needs an understanding of tenseless existence and tenseless property-possession that I suspect is unintelligible. Could all the extant theories be false? Why not? They might all, on deep analysis, turn out be logical contraries of each other.

An even more radical thought: It may be that all possible theories (all theories that it is possible for us to formulate)  in the philosophy of time are untenable and rationally insupportable in  the end  in such a way as definitively to give the palm to one of theories over all the others.

But even apart from the two radical proposals just bruited, it is not entirely clear why, if the objections I have raised are sound, I would have to consider Feser's (putative) refutations of the other theories.  If my objections are in fact sound, then I can stop right there.  In any case, I did in installment three of my ongoing critique consider Feser's notion that the truth-makers of past-tensed truths all exist at present.  By the way, it is not clear to me how this notion (causal trace theory) is supposed to cohere with what Feser says elsewhere in his section on time. How does it cohere with what we discussed above?  It is one thing to say that the truth-maker of 'Caesar was assassinated' is the fact that C. was assassinated, and quite another to say that the truth-maker exists in the present in the form of present effects of C.'s past existence.  

Time to punch the clock!

Presentism and Existence-Entailing Relations: A Problem and Feser’s Solution

The is is the second installment in my critique of Edward Feser's defense of presentism in his latest book, Aristotle's Revenge.  Here is Part I of the critique.

…………………………………….

It is plausibly maintained that all relations are existence-entailing. To illustrate from the dyadic case: if R relates a and b, then both a and b exist.   A relation cannot hold unless the things between which or among which it holds all exist.  A weaker, and hence even more plausible, claim is that all relations are existence-symmetric: if R relates a and b, then either both relata exist or both do not exist. Both the stronger and the weaker claims rule out the possibility of a relation that relates an existent and a nonexistent. So if Cerberus is eating my cat, then Cerberus exists. And if I am thinking about Cerberus, then, given that Cerberus does not exist, my thinking does not relate me to Cerberus.  This implies that  intentionality is not a relation, strictly speaking, though it is, as Franz Brentano says, relation-like (ein Relativliches).

But if presentism is true, and only temporally present items exist, then no relation connects a present with a non-present item, whether a wholly past item or a wholly future one. This seems hard to accept for the following reason.

I ate lunch  an hour ago. So the event of my eating (E) is earlier than the event of my typing (T). How can it be true that E bears the earlier than relation to T, and T bears the later than relation to E, unless both E and T exist? But E is non-present. If presentism is true, then E does not exist.  It's not just that E does not exist now, which is trivially true, but that E does not exist at all. And if E does not exist at all,  then E does not stand in the earlier than relation to T which does exist, and not merely in the present-tensed sense of 'exists,' but in the sense in which E does not exist.   If, on the other hand, there are events that exist but are non-present, then presentism is false.

The principle that all genuine relations are existence-symmetric seems inconsistent with presentism.  Now which of these two principles is more reasonably believed?  I should think it is the first.

How might the presentist respond? Since E does not exist on his view, while T does, and E is earlier than T, he must either (A) deny that all relations are existence-symmetric, or (B) deny that earlier than is a relation. He must either allow the possibility of genuine relations that connect nonexistents and existents, or deny that T stands in a temporal relation to E.

To  fully savor the problem we  cast it in the mold of an aporetic tetrad:

1. All genuine relations are either existence-entailing or existence-symmetric.

2. Earlier than is a genuine relation.

3. Presentism: only temporally present items exist.

4. Some events are earlier than others.

Each limb of the tetrad is exceedingly plausible.  But they cannot all be true:  any three, taken together, entail the negation of the remaining limb.  For example, the first three entail the negation of the fourth.  To solve the problem, we must reject one of the limbs.  Now (4) cannot be rejected because it is a datum.

Will you deny (1) and say that there are relations that are neither existence-entailing nor existence-symmetric?  I find this hard to swallow because of the following argument.  (a) Nothing can have properties unless it exists.  Therefore (b) nothing can have relational properties unless it exists. (c) Every relation gives rise to relational properties:  if Rab, then a has the property of standing in R to b, and b has the property of standing in R to a.  Therefore, (d) if R relates a and b, then both a and b exist.

Will you deny (2) and say that earlier than is not a genuine relation?  What else could it be?

Will you deny presentism and say that that both present and non-present items exist?  Since it is obvious that present and non-present items cannot exist in the present-tense sense of 'exists,'  the suggestion has to be that present and non-present (past or future) items exist in a tenseless sense of 'exist.'  But what exactly does this mean? 'Eternalism' is also problematic and I am not endorsing it. 

The problem is genuine, but there appears to be no good solution, no solution that does not involve its own difficulties.

But if there is a solution it would have to be by rejecting presentism since it is the least credible of the four propositions above.

Feser's Response

Feser maintains that objections to presentism along the foregoing lines rest on the assumption that "for a relation to hold between two things, they both have to exist now." (301) But this is not the operative assumption. The operative assumption is simply that for an n-adic relation to hold between or among n relata, all the relata have to exist, period. They have to exist simpliciter; they don't have to exist now.  The eternalist can easily satisfy the demand by saying that events E and T exist simpliciter despite E's being earlier than T.  Whatever problems eternalism has, it has this going for it: it can explain how a past event can stand in a relation to a present event.  

It is important to bear in mind that the presentist too must make use of the notion of existence simpliciter.  The thesis of presentism is not the logical truth that whatever exists (present-tense) exists now.  It is the thesis that whatever exists simpliciter exists now.  Equivalently: only present items exist simpliciter.  From this it follows that wholly past items such as the event of my having eaten lunch do not exist simpliciter. But then the objection is up and running.

I conclude that Feser has not defused the objection to presentism from trans-temporal relations.

 

Existence Simpliciter

Here is London Ed, recently returned from his African sojourn, raising some good questions anent my entry, A Critique of Edward Feser's Defense of Presentism, Part I:

>> the presentist idea is not adequately captured by saying that wholly past items no longer exist, since all who understand English will agree to that. The presentist idea is that wholly past items do not exist at all.

But what does ‘exist at all’ mean?

BV: That's part of the problem and part of the fun. You are not saying anything metaphysical when you say that Boston's Scollay Square no longer exists. You are simply pointing out an historical fact.  You are not committing yourself to presentism or any version of anti-presentism such as 'eternalism' (a howling misnomer if you want my opinion).  You are not 'committing metaphysics' if I may coin a phrase. Committing metaphysics, the presentist is saying that Scollay Square does not exist at all: it is NOTHING because it is wholly past.  That is surely not obvious or commonsensical or the view of the man in the street.

To see that, consider that Scollay Square is, as we speak, the intentional object of veridical memories, and the subject of true predications, e.g., 'Scollay Square attracted many a horny young sailor on shore leave.'  How then could it be NOTHING?  It seems obviously to be SOMETHING, indeed something wholly determinate and wholly actual despite being wholly past. If you say the famous square exists tenselessly at times earlier than the present time (the time simultaneous with my writing), then you uphold its existence but open yourself up to questions about what exactly tenseless existence is, questions that are as easy to formulate as they are hard (or impossible) to answer satisfactorily. Cashing out 'exists at all' in terms of 'exists tenselessly ' is the main way of explaining it. 

>> it does not exist, period

Same question. What do ‘period’ and ‘at all’ add?

BV:   'Period,' 'full stop,' 'at all,' simpliciter, sans phrase — I am using these as stylistic variants of one another. See above response.

>> But note carefully that the second formulation is accurate only if 'exists' is not read as present-tensed, in which case the formulation is tautological, but as 'exists simpliciter,' in which case it is not.

So what does simpliciter add?

BV: See the first response.

>> What exactly it means to 'exist at all' or to 'exist 'simpliciter' is part of the problem of formulating a coherent version of presentism that can withstand close scrutiny. For present purposes we will assume that we understand well enough what these phrases mean.

Yes to the first sentence, no to the second (speaking for myself, perhaps others understand).

BV:  But surely, Ed, you understand more or less and well enough to have this discussion. Or are you feigning incomprehension? Or petering out (insider jargon that alludes to Peter van Inwagen's habit of saying that he doesn't understand something.)  I will assume that you are not feigning or petering, but doing what analytic philosophers do, namely, demanding CLARITY.  Fine. But can't you see that there is a difference between holding that the wholly past is nothing at all and holding that the wholly past is not nothing at all?  This is the great problem of the reality of the past.  My view is that it is a genuine problem, not a pseudo-problem, but that it is insoluble by us. I don't mean that one cannot give a solution to it. I mean that one cannot give a finally satisfactory solution to it.  That makes me a solubility skeptic about this problem.

>> As Feser himself says, on presentism, "there are no past events,"

OK, but there clearly were past events. I wonder if the whole problem rests on an equivocation. We read "there are no past events" as "there were no past events" which has the whiff of paradox and mystery. I caught myself in that equivocation exactly as I was reading it, followed by a double take. Well of course there are no past events, because they have passed over. But there were such things.

Of course you are well aware of that, and we have been on opposite sides of the question for many years. You feel there is some non-trivial sense in which "there are no past events" can be true. I fail to grasp that sense.

BV: You think the following are both obvious: (a) There were past events, and (b) There are no past events.   I will grant you that (a) is practically self-evident although not perfectly obvious.  Could not the universe have started up right at the beginning of the present with dusty books, etc, as Russell once suggested? Is that not a logical possibility? I can't take that seriously as a real possibility because it implies that there were no past presents — which seems to commit us to the Solipsism of the Present Moment.  

But I disagree with you about (b).  You think (b) is obvious.  In one sense it is.  It is obvious if 'there are' is in the present tense.   For then you are saying, trivially, that there are now no (wholly) past events. But in another sense (b) is not obvious, although it might be either false or incoherent. Distinguished philosophers have maintained that there are tenselessly events that are past in the sense that they are earlier than present events, where the A-determination (McTaggart) 'present'' is cashed out B-theoretically.

Is there some non-trivial sense in which 'there are no past events' could be true?  You say that if there is such a sense, you cannot grasp it. I say that there is such a sense and that I can grasp it.  

I can grasp it because I can grasp what the (unqualified) presentist is saying. He is saying that when a temporal item such as an event loses the A-determination presentness, it becomes nothing at all. It is annihilated.  I can understand that because I can understand how it might not be annihilated. It would not be annihilated if (i) there are no irreducible A-determinations, where such a determination is irreducible if irreducible  to a B-relation, or (ii) there are irreducible A-determinations but they have no bearing on the tenseless existence of events and other temporal items.

Alles klar?

Gotta meet a man for lunch. 

Scollay Square novel

Presentism: A Bit of Discussion with Dale Tuggy

Tuggy iconThe topic of presentism in the philosophy of time came up during Dale Tuggy's visit last weekend.  Dale anounced that he's a presentist.  So I pressed him a bit. I had him consider some such grammatically past-tensed truth as 'JFK was assassinated.' This sentence is contingently true and indeed contingently true at present.  Although the sentence is about a wholly past event, the sentence is now true. Using tensed language, we speak truly when we say that it IS true that Kennedy WAS assassinated.  What I have just set forth is a Chisholmian pre-analytic datum or a Moorean fact, a given that cannot be reasonably controverted.

I then brought up the need for truth-makers for at least some truths.  (I am not a truth-maker maximalist.) Consider ' I am seated' said by BV now as he sits in front of his computer. The sentence is (or expresses) a contingent truth.  Now would it be at all plausible to say that this sentence is just true?  Define a brute truth as a contingent truth that is just true, i.e., true, but not in virtue of anything external to the truth. The question is then: Is it plausible that 'I am seated' or the proposition it expresses be a brute truth?

I say that that is implausible in the extreme. There has to be something external  to the truth-bearer that plays a role in its being true and this something cannot be anyone's say-so. At a bare minimum, the subject term 'I' must refer to something extra-linguistic, and we know what that has to be: the 200 lb animal that wears my clothes.  So at a bare minimum, the sentence, to be true, must be about something, something that exists, and indeed exists extra-mentally and extra-linguistically.

Without bringing in truth-making facts or states of affairs, I have said enough to refute the notion that 'I am seated' could be a brute truth.  So far so good.

Now if 'I am seated' needs a truth-maker (in a very broad sense of the term), then presumably 'Kennedy was assassinated' does as well.  It can no more be  a brute truth than 'I am seated' could be a brute truth. 

Dale balked at this, claiming that the Kennedy sentence is a brute truth. It is easy to see his reason for saying it. The reason is presentism.

Roughly, presentism is the view that only temporally present items (times, events, individuals, property-instantiations, etc.) exist, full stop.  Whatever exists, exists now, where the first occurrence of 'exists' cannot be present-tensed — that way lies tautology and triviality — but must be in some sense be tenseless. 

It is not at all clear that presentism can be given a formulation that is at once both precise and coherent. What I have just said is very rough and I have papered over some nasty difficulties. But I think I have conveyed what the presentist is trying to say.  He is out to restrict the totality of what (tenselessly) exists to what presently exists.  An 'eternalist' — the going term but a howling misnomer — by contrast resists the restriction, holding as he does that the totality of what (tenselessly) exists includes past, present, and future items.  

Now if presentism is true, then JFK does not exist at all. It is not just that he does not exist now — that's trivial — but that he does not exist period. Well then, how can 'Kennedy was assassinated' be true?  There is nothing in existence to serve as truth-maker.  Neither Kennedy nor the event of  his being assassinated exist.  There is nothing for that sentence to be about. For on presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all.

The truth-maker principle and presentism come into conflict.  Tuggy's 'solution' is to deny that past-tensed truths need truth-makers and hold that they are brute truths. The problem may be cast in the mold of an aporetic tetrad:

1) There are contingent past-tensed truths.

2) Past-tensed truths are true at present.

3) Truth-Maker Principle: contingent affirmative truths need existing truth-makers.

4) Presentism: Only present items exist.

The limbs of the tetrad are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent.  It's a nasty problem. Which proposition will you deny?

Some will deny (1) by holding that all past-tensed truths are either false or without truth-value. Good luck with that!

Some will deny (2). Also a non-starter.

Some will deny or revise (3) by maintaining that past-tensed truths are brute truths. This is Tuggy's line.  Very hard to swallow!

Some will deny (4).  This might be the best solution, but it too has its drawbacks which I can't go into now.

It may be that the problem is insoluble in the sense that, no matter which solution you offer, that solution will give rise to puzzles as bad or worse than the original puzzle.  I am tempted to say something along these lines.  But then I am aporetically inclined.

But for now my purpose is merely to induce in Tuggy some skepticism about presentism.   One ought to be skeptical of it since it conflicts with the truth-maker principle which in my minimalist formulation is exceedingly plausible, more plausible, I would say, than presentism, about which there are serious doubts that it is susceptible of a coherent formulation.

And please note that if one rejects presentism one is not thereby forced to embrace eternalism. While they cannot both be true, they can both be false.

On Ceasing to Exist: An Aporetic Tetrad

John F. Kennedy ceased to exist in November of 1963.  (Assume no immortality of the soul.) But when a thing ceases to exist, it does not cease to be an object of reference or a subject of predicates. If this were not the case, then it would not be true to say of JFK that he is dead. But it is true, and indeed true now, that JFK is dead.  Equivalently, 'dead' is now true of JFK.  But this is puzzling: How can a predicate be true of a thing if the thing does not exist?  After a thing ceases to exist it is no longer around to support any predicates. What no longer exists, does not still exist: it does not exist.

I am of the metaphilosophical opinion  that the canonical form of a philosophical problem is the aporetic polyad. Here is our puzzle rigorously set forth as an aporetic tetrad:

1) Datum: There are  predicates that are true of things that no longer exist, e.g., 'dead' and 'famous' and 'fondly remembered' are true of JFK.

2) Veritas sequitur esse: If a predicate is true of an item x, then x exists.

3) Presentism: For any x, x exists iff x is temporally present.

4) The Dead: For any x, if x is dead, then x is temporally non-present.

The limbs of the tetrad are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent.  To solve the tetrad, then, we must reject one of the propositions. It can't be (1) since (1) is a datum. And it can't be (4) since it, on the mortalist assumption, is obviously true. (To avoid the mortalist assumption, change the example to an inanimate object.) Of course, if an animal dies, its corpse typically remains present for a time; but an animal and its corpse are not the same. An animal can die; a corpse cannot die because a corpse was never alive.

One cannot plausibly reject (2) either. To reject (2) is to maintain that a predicate can be true of a thing whether or not the thing exists. This is highly counter-intuitive, to put it mildly.  Suppose it is true that Peter smokes.  Then 'smokes' is true of Peter.  It follows that Peter exists.  It seems we should say the same about Kennedy. It is true that Kennedy is dead. So 'dead' is true of Kennedy, whence it follows that Kennedy exists. Of course, he does not exist at present. But if he didn't exist at all, then it could not be true that Kennedy is dead, famous, veridically remembered, and so on.  Kennedy must in some sense exist if he is to be the object of successful reference and the subject of true predications.

There remains the Anti-Presentist Solution.  Deny (3) by maintaining that it is not only present items that exist. One way of doing this by embracing so-called eternalism, the view that past, present, and future items all exist tenselessly.

But what is it for a temporal item, an item in time, to exist tenselessly?  The number 7 and the proposition 7 is prime exist 'outside of time.'  They exist timelessly.  If the number and the proposition are indeed timeless or atemporal items, then it it makes clear sense to say that 7 tenselessly exists and that 7 is prime both tenseless exists and is tenselessly true.  But it is not clear what it could mean to say that an item in time such as JFK exists tenselessly or is tenselessly dead or famous, etc.

The tenseless existence of a temporal item is not timeless existence. Nor is tenseless existence the same as  omnitemporal/sempiternal existence: Kennedy does not exist at all times.  He existed in time for a short interval of time.  So what is it for a temporal item to exist tenselessly?  Try this:

X exists tenselessly iff X either existed or exists (present tense) or will exist.

But this doesn't help. The disjunction on the right-hand side of the biconditional, with 'Kennedy' substituted for 'X' is true only because the past-tensed 'Kennedy existed' is true. We still have no idea  what it is for a temporal item to exist or have properties tenselessly.  Presumably, 'Kennedy exists tenselessly' says more than what the tensed disjunction says. But what is this more?

Interim Conclusion.  If we can't find a way to make sense of tenseless existence, then we won't be able to reject (3) and we will be stuck with our quartet of inconsistent plausibilities.  More later.

A New and Improved Argument for the Necessity of Something

Previous versions were long-winded.  Herewith, an approach to the lapidary.

1) If nothing exists, then something exists.
2) If something exists, then something exists.
3) Either nothing exists or something exists.
Therefore
4) Necessarily, something exists.

The argument is valid. The second two premises are tautologies. The conclusion is interesting, to put it mildly: it is equivalent to the proposition that it is impossible that there be nothing at all.  But why accept (1)?

Argument for (1)

5) If p, then the proposition expressed by 'p' is true.
Therefore
6) If nothing exists, then nothing exists is true.
7) The consequent of (6) commits us to the existence of at least one proposition.
Therefore
1) If nothing exists, then something exists.

Surely (5) is unproblematic, being one half of the disquotational schema,

DS. P iff the proposition expressed by 'p' is true.

For example, snow is white if and only if snow is white is true. The semantic ascent on the right-hand side of the biconditional involves the application of the predicate 'true' to a proposition. So it is not the case that the left and right hand sides of the biconditional say the same thing or express the same proposition. The LHS says that snow is white; the RHS says something different, namely, that the proposition expressed by 'snow is white' is true. The RHS has an ontological commitment that the LHS does not have: the RHS commits us to a proposition. Since the RHS is true, the proposition exists. (Cf. Colin McGinn, Logical Properties, Oxford UP 2000, 92-93. I am taking from McGinn only the insight that the LHS and RHS of (DS) do not say the same thing.)

But what about the inference from (5) to (6)? Can it be questioned? Yes, if we are willing to countenance counterexamples to (5) and thereby call into question Bivalence, the semantic principle that every proposition is either true or false, but not both. I'll pursue this in a later post. If, however, one accepts Bivalence and its syntactic counterpart, Excluded Middle, then it looks as if I've got me a rigorous a priori argument for the necessity of something and the impossibility of there being nothing at all.

If Nothing Exists, is it True that Nothing Exists? Well Yes, but Then . . .

Here is a puzzle for London Ed and anyone else who finds it interesting. It is very simple, an aporetic dyad.

To warm up, note that if snow is white, then it is true that snow is white.  This seems quite unexceptionable, a nice, solid, datanic starting point. It generalizes, of course: for any proposition p, if p, then it is true that p.  Now the connection between antecedent and consequent is so tight that we are loathe to say that it just happens to hold.  It holds of necessity.  So here is the first limb of our aporetic dyad:

a) Necessarily, for any p, if p, then it is true that p.

Equivalently: there is no possible world in which both p and it is not true that p.  For example, there is no possible world in which both 7 + 5 = 12 and it is not true that 7 + 5 = 12.

Intuitively, though, there might have been nothing at all.  Is it not possible that nothing exists? Things exist, of course. But might it not be that everything that exists exists contingently? If so, then there might never have existed anything. Our second limb, then, is this:

b) Possibly, nothing exists.

Equivalently: There is at least one possible world in which nothing exists.

Both limbs of the dyad are plausible, but they can't both be true.  To see this, substitute 'nothing exists' for 'p' in (a) and drop the universal quantifier and the modal operator. This yields:

c) If nothing exists, then it is true that nothing exists.

But (c) can't be true in every world given (b).  For if (c) is true, then something does exist, namely, the truth (true proposition) that nothing exists. But (c) is true in every world given (a).

Therefore (a) and (b) cannot both be true: the dyad is logically inconsistent.

So something has to give, assuming we are not willing to accept that the dyad is an aporia in the strict sense, a conceptual impasse that stops the discursive intellect dead in its tracks.  A-poria: no way.  Do we reject (a) or do we reject (b)? If a solution is possible, then I am inclined to reject (b).

But then I must affirm its negation:

d) Necessarily, something (or other) exists.

(Note that if it is necessary that something exist, it does not follow that some one thing necessarily exists. If there is no possible world in which nothing exists, it does not follow that there is some one thing that exists in every world.)

Yikes! Have I just proven by a priori reasoning the necessary existence of something or other outside the mind?  Of course, I have not proven the necessary existence of God; I may have proven only the necessary existence of those abstract objects called propositions.

(Father Parmenides, with open arms, welcomes home his prodigal son?)

Existence and Exemplification: Some Problems

 For Francesco Orilia

1) 'Cats exist' is an example of an affirmative general existential sentence. 'Max exists' is an example of an affirmative singular existential sentence. 'Max' names a cat of my acquaintance.  The problem that concerns me is whether there is an adequate analysis that does justice to both types of existential sentence, one that preserves the contingency of both and their semantic connection. 

2) 'Cats exist' is contingently true. Its negation is possible. 'Cats do not exist' could have been true.  There is no metaphysical (broadly logical) necessity that there be cats. The same holds for negative general existentials. 'Gryphons do not exist' is contingently true, which implies that its negation, 'Gryphons exist,' could have been true. 

3) The surface grammar of 'Cats exist' suggests that it is about cats and predicates existence of them. This surface construal has long been recognized as problematic. For example, is the sentence about all cats or some cats?  Presumably all. But 'All cats exist' cannot accommodate the contingency of 'Cats exist.' The latter is contingent if and only if its negation is possible. Now the negation of 'All cats exist' is 'Some cats do not exist' which is not possible, but self-contradictory.  To be explicit, it is self-contradictory on the extremely plausible anti-Meinongian  assumption that there are no nonexistent objects.  Plausible or not, I assume it here.  Everything exists.

4) How must we construe 'Cats exist' so that it and its negation both come out contingent? The contingency is easily captured if we take 'Cats exist' to predicate instantiation or exemplification of the concept cat or the property of being a cat. Accordingly, 'Cats exist' is not about cats at all, but about the property of being a cat and predicates of this first-level property the second-level property of being exemplified or having one or more instances.  'Cats exist' expresses the (true, but possibly false) proposition that felinity is exemplified and 'Cats do not exist' expresses the (false, but possibly true) proposition that felinity is not exemplified.  If existence is exemplification, we seem to get what we want: a meaningful contrast between existence and nonexistence that accommodates the contingency of contingent general existentials, whether affirmative or negative.

The exemplification account of existence also provides a neat solution to the ancient problem of negative existentials. Given that 'Unicorns do not exist' is true, the sentence cannot be about unicorns. What then is it about? It is about the concept unicorn and predicates of this concept the property of having no instances.  The theory is easily extended to cover singular negative existentials if we think of proper names in a Russellian way as definite descriptions in disguise as opposed to thinking of them in a Kripkean way as rigid designators. Charitably understood, when an atheist denies the existence of God, he is not presupposing God's existence; he is denying that the divine attributes are jointly instantiated.  He is denying that the concept God is exemplified.

This approach to existence could be called 'Fressellian.'  It is essentially the tack that Frege and Russell take if we lump them together and ignore certain differences between the two logicians.  For both of these luminaries, existence is a property of concepts/properties only, and cannot be predicated meaningfully of objects or individuals. As Saul Kripke explains, 

To deny that it [existence] is a first-level concept is to deny that there is a meaningful existence predicate that can apply to objects or particulars.  One cannot, according to Frege and Russell, say of an object that it exists or not because, so they argued, everything exists: how can one then divide up the objects in the world into those which exist and those which don't? (Reference and Existence: The John Locke Lectures, Oxford UP, 2013, p. 6)

At the level of individuals there is no meaningful contrast between existence and non-existence because, pace Meinong, everything exists.  At the level of individuals, existence is not classificatory: it does not divide items into the existents and the nonexistents, the entities and the nonentities.  But when existence is 'kicked upstairs' and construed as exemplification, it becomes classificatory: it divides first-level properties into those that have instances and those that do not.

Russell goes so far as to liken existence to numerousness. Men are numerous, and Socrates is a man;  it does not follow, however, that Socrates is numerous. To think otherwise would be to embrace the fallacy of division. In this case, what can be predicated of the class cannot be predicated of its members. Similarly, men exist, and Socrates is a man; it does not follow, however, that Socrates exists. Not only does it not follow, it is meaningless to say of Socrates that he exists or that he does not exist. Or so maintains Russell. For if existence is exemplification, then of course individuals or objects such as Socrates can neither  exist nor not exist because they can neither be exemplified nor the opposite. If existence is exemplification, then it would be something like a Rylean category mistake to think of objects or individuals as either existing or not existing.

Characteristic of the Fressellian approach is the radical separation of existence from  individuals.  Well-motivated as it is, it leads to trouble.

If existence = exemplification, and thus a property of properties only, then there is no such 'property' as singular existence. A highly counter-intuitive result!  For if a first-level concept/property is exemplified, then it is exemplified by at least one individual.  How could that individual not exist?  If it didn't exist it would either be nothing at all, or it would be a Meinongian nonexistent item, an option we have already excluded. (If there are no nonexistent items, then everything exists, including all individuals.) Suppose the concept cat is exemplified by Max. How could Max fail to exist?  If exemplification is a relation, then, for the relation to hold, both relata must exist, the property and the individual.The attempt to reduce existence to exemplification fails.  For we are left with the singular existence of  the individuals that exemplify first-level properties.

At this point one might object that the existence of Max just is the being-exemplified of the concept cat.  But this can't be right.  For one thing, the concept could be exemplified even if Max does not exemplify it.  'Cats exist' does not entail 'Max exists.' Therefore, the existence of Max cannot be identified with the being-exemplified of  the concept cat. Even if it makes sense to say that the existence of a property is its being exemplified, which I rather doubt, it makes no sense to say that the existence  of Max, that very cat, is the being-exemplified of the concept cat.  This is also clear from the fact that  Manny, Mungo, and Maya are also cats, and their singular existence is different from that of Max. Each individual has its own existence, and each differs from every other one in its existence.  The concept cat, however, cannot serve to individuate/differentiate  the various individuals falling under the concept.  If the existence of Max = the being-exemplified  of  the concept cat, then there could only be one cat and Manny, Mungo,and Maya would be out in the cold.

In sum, if cat is exemplified, then cats exist, and if cats exist, then cat is exemplified.  This is necessarily true but it remains on the plane of general existence. Cats cannot exist, however,  unless one or more individual cats exist, and the singular existence of these individuals cannot be the exemplification of the property of being a cat.  One cannot therefore identify existence with exemplification; the most one can do is identify general existence with exemplification.

5) At this point one might try an eliminativist move and deny that there is singular existence.  This is what the Fressellian approach implies. For Frege and Russell, first-level predications of existence are meaningless: '___exist(s)' is not an admissible first-level predicate. But this flies in  the face of what seems obvious, namely, that sentences like 'Max exists' are true, and are true as predicating existence of the referents of their subject terms.  But if true, then meaningful.  Something similar holds for 'Max does not exist' when embedded in such sentences as 'Possibly, Max does not exist' and 'It will be the case that Max does not exist.'  The embedded sentences are meaningful.  Existence can be meaningfully affirmed and denied of individuals. 

Whether or not we say that existence is a property of individuals in any usual sense of 'property,' it is a datum that existence belongs to individuals in a way that would be impossible if existence is exemplification. (How existence belongs to individuals is a difficult question. I propose an answer in my book, A Paradigm Theory of Existence, Kluwer 2002.)  For again, it makes no sense to say of an individual that it is exemplified. Only concepts, properties, and cognate items can be exemplified.  If existence reduces to exemplification, then no individual exists.

6) So we have a problem. We seem driven by cogent argumentation to identify existence with the second-level property of exemplification.  We seem driven in this direction by the need to maintain the contingency of such sentences as 'Cats exist' (true but possibly false) and 'Cats do not exist' (false, but possibly true), and the related need to explain how true negative existentials are possible. But the exemplification approach breaks the connection between general and singular existentials.  Both affirm existence. We cannot rest content with a theory that consigns singular existentials such as 'Max exists' to meaninglessness.  'Max exists' is nothing like 'Max is numerous,' pace Russell.

Max exists, but he might not have. He is a contingent being.  We need to find a way to accommodate the contingency of contingent existents, and with it, the contrast between existence and (possible) nonexistence at the level of individuals.  And somehow we have to do this without reaching for Meinongian nonexistent individuals. 

7) At this juncture I will be told that  'x exists' may be defined in terms of '(Ǝy)(x = y).'  But this move only generates further problems. One of them is that this definition cannot be meaningfully formulated  if 'exists' is an inadmissible first-level predicate.   Kripke spots the problem.  He  points out (Reference and Existence, p. 37) that the Frege-Russell logical apparatus seems to allow for a definition of 'x exists' in terms of

 (Ǝy)(x = y).

Kripke then remarks that "it is hard for me to see that they [Frege and Russell] can consistently maintain that existence is only a second-level concept (in the Fregean terminology) and does not apply to individuals." (37)  Kripke's point is that on the above definition 'exists' is an admissible first-level predicate contra the official 'Fressellian' doctrine according to which 'exists' is never an admissible first-level predicate.

This is a serious problem. If existence is exemplification, then individuals do not exist. But if everything exists, then individuals do exist. To avoid the contradiction we must distinguish two senses of 'exist(s),' the general and the singular.  Accordingly, general existence is exemplification and is not predicable of individuals while singular existence is. 

But even if we relax the Fressellian stricture and admit 'exists' as a first-level predicate we still face serious problems. One of them is that 'exist(s)' becomes equivocal across general and singular existentials. Another is that singular existence cannot be identity with something (or other).   The idea is that Max exists just in case he is identical to something.  Since the only thing to which Max could be identical is himself, that is equivalent to saying that Max exists if and only if he is self-identical.  No doubt this is true, but it doesn't sanction the reduction of (singular) existence to self-identity.  It cannot be that Max exists in virtue of being identical to something, for that would imply that his possible nonexistence = his possible diversity from everything. But if he is possibly diverse from everything, then he possible diverse from himself, i.e., possibly self-diverse.  But it is impossible that he, or anything, be self-diverse. Therefore, it cannot be the case that the existence of Max reduces to his self-identity.

Furthermore, if for Max to exist is for Max to be self-identical, then, given that everything is essentially self-identical, it follows that Max essentially exists and so cannot cease to exist once he exists, which is absurd. If you tell me that Max is self-identical only as long as he exists, then, on the theory under discussion, that amounts to saying that Max is self-identical only as long as he is self-identical, which is a tautology.  You  are in effect admitting that the existence of  a thing is not its identity with something. We ought to conclude that singular existence cannot be reduced to self-identity.

8) The only solution I can see to the problem of accounting for singular existence within the exemplification account is by way of haecceity properties. 'Haecceity' is from the Latin haecceitas, thisness. An haecceity property, then, is a property that captures the very thisness of an individual. These properties, though supposedly distinct from the things that exemplify them, are as singular as they are.  If there are such properties, then we can give a unitary exemplification account of both general and singular existentials that preserves their contingency and also explains the semantic connection between the two types of existential. It would then be possible to say that 'exist(s)' is univocal across general and singular existentials.  We could then say that general existentials express the exemplification of multiply exemplifiable properties while singular existential express the exemplification of haecceity properties. Now to the details.

We assume  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 exists in only some worlds and only at some times in the worlds in which he exists. Haecceity properties have various uses. I'll mention just the one of present interest.

Suppose I need to analyze 'Socrates might not have existed.' I start with the rewrite, 'Possibly, Socrates does not exist' which features a modal operator operating upon an unmodalized proposition. But 'Socrates does not exist,' being a negative existential proposition, gives rise to an ancient puzzle dating back to Plato. How is reference to the nonexistent possible? The sentence 'Socrates does not exist' is apparently about Socrates, but how so given that he does not exist? If the meaning of 'Socrates' is the name's referent, and nothing can be a referent of a term unless it exists, then Socrates must exist if he is to have nonexistence predicated of him. But the whole point of the sentence is to say that our man does not exist. How can one say of a thing that it does not exist without presupposing that it exists? Haecceities provide a solution. We can understand 'Socrates does not exist' to be about Socrateity rather than about Socrates, and to predicate of Socrateity the property of being exemplified. Recall that Socrateity, unlike Socrates, exists at every time and in every world. So this property, unlike Socrates, is always and necessarily available. Accordingly, we analyze 'Possibly, Socrates does not exist' as 'Possibly, Socrateity is not exemplified.' Socrates' possible nonexistence boils down to Socrateity's possible non-exemplification. It is a nice, elegant solution to the puzzle –assuming that there are haecceity properties.  There are reasons to be skeptical.

9) One of the stumbling blocks for me is the strange notion that the thisness of an individual could exist even if the individual whose thisness it is does not exist. Consider the time before Socrates existed. During that time, Socrateity existed. But what content could that property have during that time (or in those possible worlds) in which Socrates does not exist? Socrateity is identity-with-Socrates. Presumably, then, the property has two constituents: identity, a property had by everything, and Socrates. Now if Socrates is a constituent of identity-with-Socrates, then it seems quite obvious that Socrateity can exist only at those times and in those worlds at which Socrates exists. Socrateity would then be like Socrates' singleton, the set consisting of Socrates and Socrates alone: {Socrates}. Clearly, this set cannot exist unless Socrates exists. It is ontologically dependent on him. The same would be true of identity-with-Socrates if Socrates were a constituent of this property.

If, on the other hand, Socrates is not a constituent of Socrateity, then what gives identity-with-Socrates the individuating content that distinguishes it from identity-with-Plato and identity-with-Pegasus? Consider a possible world W in which Socrates, Plato, and Vulcan (the planet) do not exist. In W, their haecceities exist since haecceities ex hypothesi exist in every world. What distinguishes these haecceities in W? Nothing that I can see. The only things that could distinguish them would be Socrates, Plato, and Vulcan; but these individuals do not exist in W. It might be said that haecceity properties are simple: identity-with-Socrates is not compounded of identity and Socrates, or of anything else. Different haecceities just differ and they have the content they do in an unanalyzable way. But on this suggestion haecceities seem wholly ungraspable or inconceivable or ineffable, and this militates against thinking of them as properties. I have no problem with the notion of a property that only one thing has, nor do I have a problem with a property that only one thing can have; but a property that I cannot grasp or understand or conceive or bring before my mind — such an item does not count as a property in my book. It would be more like a bare particular and inherit mutatis mutandis the unintelligibility of bare particulars.

Haecceities must be nonqualitative.  Consider a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are all the mutiply exemplifiable properties a thing has in the actual world. Such a property would individuate its possessor in the actual world: it would be a property that its possessor and only its possessor would have in the actual world. Such a property is graspable in that I can grasp its components (say, being barefooted, being snubnosed, being married, etc.) and I can grasp its construction inasmuch as I understand property conjunction. But the only way I can grasp Socrateity is by grasping is as a compound of identity and Socrates — which it cannot be for reasons given above.

Note that Socrateity is not equivalent to the big conjunctive property just mentioned. Take the conjunction of all of Socrates' properties in the actual world and call it K. In the actual world, Socrates has K. But there are possible worlds in which he exists but does not exemplify K. And there are possible worlds in which K is exemplified by someone distinct from him. So Socrateity and K are logically nonequivalent. What we need, then, if we are to construct a qualitative thisness or haecceity of Socrates is a monstrous disjunctive property D[soc] the disjuncts of which are all the K's Socrates has in all the possible worlds in which he exists. This monstrous disjunction of conjunctions is graspable, not in person so to speak, but via our grasp of the operations of conjunction and disjunction and in virtue of the fact that each component property is graspable. But D[soc] is not identical to Socrateity. The former is a qualitative thisness whereas the latter is a nonqualitative thisness. Unless the Identity of Indiscernibles is true, these two thisnesses are nonequivalent. And there are good reasons to think that the Identity of Indiscernibles is not true.  (Max Black's iron spheres, etc.) So D[Soc] is not identical to Socrateity. 

To compress my main point about haecceities  into one sentence: identity-with-Socrates is graspable only as a compound of identity and Socrates; but then this property cannot exist unexemplified. Hence haecceity properties as defined above do not exist.

10) Suppose now that, despite the above argumentation, there are haecceity properties.  It will then be necessarily true both that Socrates exists iff Socrateity is exemplified, and that Socrates is contingent iff Socrateity is contingently exemplified.  But a Euthyphro-type question arises. Does Socrates exist because Socrateity is exemplified, or the other way around?  The latter: Socrateity is exemplified because Socrates exists.  We therefore move in an explanatory circle if we try to account for the existence of an individual in terms of the exemplification of the individual's haecceity.

As for contingency, Socrateity is contingently exemplified because Socrates contingently exists, and not the other way around.

11) I conclude that the exemplification account of existence is untenable. This does not imply that some other view is tenable. For it may be that every view that it is possible for us to formulate is untenable.

If God Cannot Cause Himself, How Can He Know Himself?

This from a reader:

If we say God cannot create himself since this implies a contradiction (God existing prior to himself to act on himself), how can we say God does anything with regard to himself?

For instance, we say God knows himself. But how is this possible, seeing as God would need to first exist, in order to know himself? Knowledge is a relation in the mind to what is outside it. If I "know" a thing, I have the thing, the thing that is not me, in my mind. But if there is only simply God, how does he "have" himself in his mind?

An interesting question worth thinking about.

I grant that God cannot create himself. For if he creates himself then he causes himself to exist, and nothing can cause itself to exist. For a thing cannot enter into a causal relation unless it exists. So if God causes himself to exist, then his existence is logically, if not temporally, prior to his existence. And that, we agree, is impossible.

The main point is that the existence of a thing cannot be logically prior to its existence. (And if it cannot be logically prior, then it cannot be temporally prior either.) But the existence of a knower not only can but must be logically prior to its self-knowledge.  I cannot know myself unless I exist, but I can exist without knowing myself. In the finite case, then, it is clear that existence is logically prior to self-knowledge, and indeed other-knowledge as well.

God knowsNow God is omniscient and exists in all possible worlds.  So there is no possible situation in which he does not know himself or fails to know everything there is to know about himself. If we think of God as omnitemporal as opposed to eternal, then at every moment he enjoys full self-knowledge. At every moment, his existence and self-knowledge are simultaneous. But this is not a problem since there is no problem with God's existence being logically prior to his self-knowledge even if the former is not temporally prior to the latter.  We get the same result if God is eternal.

In sum, God's existence cannot be logically prior to God's existence as it would have to be if God creates himself. But God's existence can be logically prior to God's self-knowledge.

There is a second problem that the reader conflates with one I just discussed.   If God alone exists, how can God know himself if "Knowledge is a relation in the mind to what is outside it"?  This problem is solved by denying the assumption. Self-knowledge is NOT a relation to what is outside the mind.  I feel good right now, and I know it. The object of my knowledge is an internal state. God's self-knowledge can be said to be analogous to finite self-knowledge. 

Half-Way Fregeanism About Existence: Questions for Van Inwagen

 In section 53 of The Foundations of Arithmetic, Gottlob Frege famously maintains that

. . . existence is analogous to number.  Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number nought.  Because existence is a property of concepts the ontological argument for the existence of God breaks down. (65)

Frege is here advancing a double-barreled thesis that splits into two sub-theses.

ST1. Existence is analogous to number.

ST2. Existence is a property (Eigenschaft) of concepts and not of objects.

FregeIn the background is the sharp distinction between property (Eigenschaft) and mark (Merkmal).  Three-sided is a mark of the concept triangle, but not a property of this concept; being instantiated is a property of this concept but not a mark of it.  The Cartesian-Kantian ontological argument "from mere concepts" (aus lauter Begriffen), according to Frege, runs aground because existence cannot be a mark of any concept, but only a property of some concepts.  And so one cannot validly argue from the concept of God to the existence of God.

Existence as a property of concepts is the property of being instantiated.  We can therefore call the Fregean account of existence an instantiation account.  A concept is instantiated just in case it has one or more instances.  So on a Fregean reading, 'Cats exist' says that the concept cat is instantiated.  This seems to imply, and was taken by Frege and Russell to imply that 'Cats exist' is not about cats, but about a non-cat, a concept or propositional function, and what it says about this concept or propositional function is not that it (singularly) exists, but that it is instantiated!  (Frege: "has something falling under it"; Russell: "is sometimes true.") A whiff of paradox? Or more than just a whiff?

The paradox, in brief, is that 'Cats exist' which one might naively take to be about cats, is in reality about a non-cat, a concept or propositional function. 

Accordingly, as Russell in effect states, 'Cats exist' is in the same logical boat with 'Cats are numerous.' Now Mungojerrie is a cat; but no one will infer that Mungojerrie is numerous. That would be the fallacy of division. On the Fressellian view, one who infers that Mungojerrie exists commits the same fallacy.  'Exist(s)' is not an admissible first-level predicate.

My concern in this entry is the logical relation between the above two sub-theses.  Does the first entail the second or are they logically independent?  There is a clear sense in which (ST1) is true. 

Necessarily, if horses exist, then the number of horses is not zero, and vice versa.  So 'Horses exist' is logically equivalent to 'The number of horses is not zero.'  This is wholly unproblematic for those of us who agree that there are no Meinongian nonexistent objects.  But note that, in general, equivalences, even logical equivalences, do not sanction reductions or identifications.  So it remains an open question whether one can take the further step of reducing existence to instantiation, or of identifying existence with instantiation, or even of eliminating existence in favor of instantiation. Equivalence, reduction, elimination: those are all different.  But I make this point only to move on.

(ST1), then, is unproblematically true if understood as expressing the following logical equivalence: 'Necessarily Fs exist iff the number of Fs is not zero.'  My question is whether (ST1) entails (ST2).  Peter van Inwagen in effect denies the entailment by denying that the 'the number of . . . is not zero' is a predicate of concepts:

I would say that, on a given occasion of its use, it predicates of certain things that they number more than zero.  Thus, if one says, 'The number of horses is not zero,' one predicates of horses that they number more than zero.  'The number of . . . is not zero' is thus what some philosophers have called a 'variably polyadic' predicate.  But so are many predicates that can hardly be regarded as predicates of concepts.  The predicates 'are ungulates' and 'have an interesting evolutionary history,' for example, are variably polyadic predicates.  When one says, 'Horses are ungulates' or 'Horses have an interesting evolutionary history' one is obviously making a statement about horses and not about the concept horse.  ("Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment," pp. 483-484)

Van Inwagen 2It is this passage that I am having a hard time understanding.   It is of course clear what van Inwagen is trying to show, namely, that the Fregean sub-theses are logically independent and that one can affirm the first without being committed to the second.  One can hold that existence is denial of the number zero without  holding that existence is a property of concepts.  One can go half-way with Frege without going  all the way.

But I am having trouble with the claim that the predicate 'the number of . . . is not zero' is  'variably polyadic' and the examples van Inwagen employs.  'Robbed a bank together' is an example of a variably polyadic predicate.  It is polyadic because it expresses a relation, that of robbing,  and it is variably polyadic because it expresses a family of relations having different numbers of arguments.  For example, Bonnie and Clyde robbed a bank together, but so did Ma Barker and her two boys, Patti Hearst and three members of the ill-starred Symbionese Liberation Army, and so on.  (Example from Chris Swoyer and Francesco Orilia.) 

Now when I say that the number of horses is not zero, what am I talking about? It is plausible to say that I am talking about horses, not about the concept horse. (Recall the whiff of paradox, supra.)  What I don't understand are van Inwagen's examples of variably polyadic predicates.  Consider 'are ungulates.'  If an ungulate is just a mammal with hooves, then I fail to see how 'are ungulates' is polyadic, let alone variably polyadic.  I do understand that some hooved animals have one hoof per foot, some two hooves per foot, and so on, which implies variability in the number of hooves that hooved animals have. What I don't understand is the polyadicity. It seems to me that 'Are hooved mammals' is monadic.

The other example is 'Horses have an interesting evolutionary history.'  This sentence is clearly not about the concept horse. But it is not about any individual horse either.  Consider Harry the horse.  Harry has a history.  He was born in a certain place, grew up, was bought and sold, etc. and then died at a certain age.  He went through all sorts of changes.  But Harry didn't evolve, and so he had no evolutionary history.  No individual evolves; populations evolve:

Evolutionary change is based on changes in the genetic makeup of populations over time. Populations, not individual organisms, evolve. Changes in an individual over the course of its lifetime may be developmental(e.g., a male bird growing more colorful plumage as it reaches sexual maturity) or may be caused by how the environment affects an organism (e.g., a bird losing feathers because it is infected with many parasites); however, these shifts are not caused by changes in its genes. While it would be handy if there were a way for environmental changes to cause adaptive changes in our genes — who wouldn't want a gene for malaria resistance to come along with a vacation to Mozambique? — evolution just doesn't work that way. New gene variants (i.e., alleles) are produced by random mutation, and over the course of many generations, natural selection may favor advantageous variants, causing them to become more common in the population.

'Horses have an interesting evolutionary history,' then, is neither about the concept horse nor about any individual horse.  The predicate in this sentence appears to be non-distributive or collective.  It is like the predicate in 'Horses have been domesticated for millenia.'  That is certainly not about the concept horse.  No concept can be ridden or made to carry a load.  But it is also not about any individual horse.  Not even the Methuselah of horses, whoever he might be, has been around for millenia.

As I understand it,  predicate F is distributive just in case it is analytic that whenever some things are F, then each is F.  Thus a distributive predicate is one the very meaning of which dictates that if it applies to some things, then it applies to each of them.  'Blue' is an example.  If some things are blue, then each of them is blue.

If a predicate is not distributive, then it is non-distributive (collective).  If some Occupy-X nimrods or Antifa thugs have the building surrounded, it does not follow that each such nimrod or thug has the building surrounded.  If some students moved a grand piano into my living room, it does not follow that each student did.  If bald eagles are becoming extinct, it does not follow that each bald eagle is becoming extinct.  Individual animals die, but no individual animal ever becomes extinct. If the students come from many different countries, it does not follow that each comes from many different countries.  If horses have an interesting evolutionary history, it does not follow that each horse has an interesting evolutionary history.

My problem is that I don't understand why van Inwagen gives the 'Horses have an interesting evolutionary history' example — which is a collective predication — when he is committed to saying that each horse exists.  His view , I take it, is that 'exist(s)' is a first-level distributive predicate.  'Has an interesting evolutionary history,' however, is a first-level non-distributive predicate.  Or is it PvI's view that 'exist(s)' is a first-level non-distributive predicate?

Either I don't understand van Inwagen's position due to some defect in me, or it is incoherent.  I incline toward the latter.  He is trying to show that (ST1) does not entail (ST2).  He does this by giving examples of predicates that are first-level, i.e., apply to objects, but are variably polyadic as he claims 'the number of . . . is not zero' is variably polyadic.  But the only clear example he gives is a predicate that is non-distributive, namely 'has an interesting evolutionary history.'  'Horses exist,' however, cannot be non-distributive.  If some horses exist, then each of them exists.  And if each of them exists, then 'exists' is monadic, not polyadic, let alone variably polyadic.