Identity and Individuation – Page 3

Does Classical Theism Logically Require Haecceitism?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I conclude that classical theism does not entail haecceitism. One can be such a theist without accepting haecceities. This is a good thing since there are no haecceity properties!

London Ed on Geach on Intentional Identity

I am happy to see that Ed is back to blogging. It have reproduced his latest entry and added some comments.

………………..

Peter Geach (“Intentional Identity.” Journal of Philosophy 64, 627-32, reprinted in Logic Matters. Oxford: Blackwell, 1972) argues that the following sentence can be true even if there are no witches, yet can only be true if Hob and Nob are, as it were, thinking of the same witch.

Hob thinks that a witch has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow.

But how it could be true? If we read it in the opaque way of reading indirect speech clauses then each that-clause must stand on its own syntactically, but there is no way of interpreting the pronoun ‘she’ as a bound variable. The two thoughts add up, as it were, to ‘for some x, x has blighted Bob’s mare, and x killed Cob’s sow. But we can’t split them up into two separate thoughts, because of the second part of the conjunction. I.e. the following is not well-formed.

* Hob thinks that for some x, x has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether x killed Cob’s sow.

On the other hand, if we render the original sentence in the transparent way, we have to presume the existence of a real witch, i.e. some witch such that Hob thinks that she has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow. Neither of these are satisfactory. I don’t propose any answer yet, but I will start by noticing that the same problem attaches to saying what sentences say, rather than what people think.

(1) A witch has blighted Bob’s mare.
(2) She killed Cob’s sow.
(3) Sentence (1) says that a witch has blighted Bob’s mare.
(4) Sentence (2) says that she (or the witch) has blighted Bob’s mare.

Clearly sentences (3) and (4) are true, even though sentences (1) and (2) are false. Yet the problem is exactly the same as the problem involving different thoughts. Thus we have simplified the problem. We don’t have to worry about explaining thoughts in different minds, but only how we express the meaning of different sentences. Meanings are a little easier than thoughts.

……………………………..

Ed maintains that the problem of intentional identity can be put as a problem concerning what sentences say rather than as a problem concerning what people think. Ed thinks that this reformulation renders the problem simpler and more tractable. But here I object.

Strictly speaking, sentences don't say anything; people say things using sentences. For (1) to express a thought or proposition, it must be assertively uttered by a definite person in definite circumstances. What's more, the assertive utterance has to be thoughtful, i.e., made by a thinker who intends to express a proposition by his assertive utterance of (1). So we are brought right back to people and their thoughts. We have turned in a circle. (Out of respect for Ed, I will not comment on the 'diameter' of the circle.)

To exfoliate or unwrap what I just wrote:

a. Strictly speaking. In philosophy we must speak and write strictly and avoid the sorts of shorthand expression that are perfectly acceptable in ordinary discourse. Philosophy is not ordinary discourse. It is (in part) an attempt to understand ordinary discourse, its logic, its ontological commitments, and its connections with thought.

b. Utterance. To utter a sentence is to produce a token of it consisting of sounds or phonemes. If x is a token of y, then y is a type. So (1) above represents a sentence-type. What your eyes see is of course a token of that type, a token that deputizes for the type, which you cannot see with your eyes. The token you see is of course not an utterance, but an inscription consisting of visible marks. To utter a sentence is only one way of tokening it. To token is to produce a token in some medium.

c. Assertive utterance. Not every tokening is assertive. If I write or say 'Cats are animals' in English class to illustrate, say, noun-verb agreement, I have not asserted that cats are animals. Assertion is a speech act. I can utter a sentence without asserting anything even if the sentence is grammatically declarative.

d. Circumstances. There are many people in the world who rejoice under the nickname 'Bob.' A context of utterance, or, more broadly, a context of tokening is required to know which Bob is being referred to when (1) is assertively uttered.

e. Thoughtful. To say something I cannot merely mechanically produce a token of a sentence even if the sentence upon being heard by a hearer conveys a proposition or thought to the hearer. Voice synthesizers never say anything, even when they produce such sentence tokens as 'Your prescription is ready at Walgreen's pharmacy at the corner of Fifth and Vermouth.' Saying involves a person or thinker's intention to express a thought or proposition.

As for solving Geach's puzzle, I have nothing to propose with confidence. But how would Ed counter the following suggestion? Ed tells us that, "if we render the original sentence in the transparent way, we have to presume the existence of a real witch, i.e. some witch such that Hob thinks that she has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow."

Ed is assuming that the particular quantifier is an existential quantifier. He is assuming that 'Some witch is such that _______' is logically equivalent to 'There exists a witch such that ________.' The assumption is entirely plausible. But it could be rejected by a Meinongian. If 'a witch' picks out a nonexistent item from the realm of Aussersein, then what would be wrong with a transparent reading of the original sentence? If there are nonexistent items, then one can quantify over them using quantifiers that are objectual (as opposed to substitutional) but not existentially loaded.

Might Geach's puzzle dissolve on a Meinongian approach? Is there any literature on this?

Is Anything Real Self-Identical?

I am sometimes tempted by the following line of thought. But I am also deeply suspicious of it.

Are the 'laws of thought' 'laws of reality' as well? Since such laws are necessities of thought, the question can also be put by asking whether or not the necessities of thought are also necessities of being. It is surely not self-evident that principles that govern how we must think if we are to make sense to ourselves and to others must also apply to mind-independent reality. One cannot invoke self-evidence since such philosophers as Nagarjuna and Hegel and Nietzsche have denied (in different ways) that the laws of thought apply to the real.

Consider, for example, the Law of Identity:

Id. Necessarily, for any x, x = x.

(Id) seems harmless enough and indisputable. Everything, absolutely everything, is identical to itself, and this doesn't just happen to be the case. But what does 'x' range over? Thought-accusatives? Or reals? Or both? What I single out in an act of mind, as so singled out, cannot be thought of as self-diverse. No object of thought, qua object of thought, is self-diverse. And no object of thought, as such, is both F and not F at the same time, in the same respect, and in the same sense. So there is no question but that Identity and Non-Contradiction apply to objects of thought, and are aptly described as laws of thought. (Excluded Middle is trickier and so I leave it to one side.) What's more, these laws of thought hold for all possible finite, discursive, ectypal intellects. Thus what we have here is a transcendental principle, at least, not one grounded in the contingent empirical psychology or physiology of the type of animals we happen to be. Transcendentalism maybe, but no psychologism or physiologism!

But do Identity and Non-Contradiction apply to 'reals,' i.e., to entities whose existence is independent of their being objects of thought? Are these transcendental principles also ontological principles? Is the necessity of such principles as (Id) grounded in the transcendental structure of the finite intellect, or in being itself? Are the principles merely transcendental or are they also transcendent? (It goes without saying that I am using these 't' words in the Kantian way.)

The answer is not obvious.

Consider a pile of leaves. If I refer to something using the phrase, 'that pile of leaves,' I thereby refer to one self-identical pile; as so referred to, the pile cannot be self-diverse. But is the pile self-identical in itself (apart from my referring to it, whether in thought or in overt speech)?

In itself, in its full concrete extramental reality, the pile is not self-identical in that it is composed of many numerically different leaves, and has many different properties. In itself, the pile is both one and many. As both one and many, it is both self-identical and self-diverse. It is self-identical in that it is one pile; it is self-diverse in that this one pile is composed of many numerically different parts and has many different properties. Since the parts and properties are diverse from each other, and these parts and properties make up the pile, the pile is just as much self-diverse as it is self-identical. The pile is of course not a pure diversity; it is a diversity that constitutes one thing. So, in concrete reality, the pile of leaves is both self-identical and self-diverse.

If you insist that the pile's being self-identical excludes its being self-diverse, then you are abstracting from its having many parts and properties. So abstracting, you are no longer viewing the pile as it is in concrete mind-independent reality, but considering it as an object of thought merely. You are simply leaving out of consideration its plurality of parts and of properties. For the pile to be self-identical in a manner to exclude self-diversity, the pile would have to be simple as opposed to complex. But it is not simple in that it has many parts and many properties.

The upshot is that the pile of leaves, in concrete reality, is both one and many and therefore both self-identical and self-diverse. But this is a contradiction. Or is the contradiction merely apparent? Now the time-honored way to defuse a contradiction is by making a distinction.

One will be tempted to say that the respect in which the pile is self-identical is distinct from the respect in which it is self-diverse. The pile is self-identical in that it is one pile; the pile is self-diverse in that it has many parts and properties. No doubt.

But 'it has many parts and properties' already contains a contradiction. For what does 'it' refer to? 'It' refers to the pile which does not have parts and properties, but is its parts and properties. The pile is not something distinct from its parts and properties. The pile is a unity in and through a diversity of parts and properties. As such, the pile is both self-identical and self-diverse.

What the above reasoning suggests is that such 'laws of thought' as Identity and Non-Contradiction do not apply to extramental reality. No partite thing, such as a pile of leaves, is self-identical in a manner to exclude self-diversity. Such things are as self-diverse as they are self-identical. So partite things are self-contradictory.

From here we can proceed in two ways.

The contradictoriness of partite entities can be taken to argue their relative unreality. For nothing that truly exists can be self-contradictory. This is the way of F. H. Bradley. One takes the laws of thought as criterial for what is ultimately real, shows that partite entities are not up to this exacting standard, and concludes that partite entities belong to Appearance.

The other way takes the lack of fit between logic and reality as reflecting poorly on logic: partite entities are taken to be fully real, and logic as a falsification. One can find this theme in Nietzsche and in Hegel.

Guilt and Identity

Can I assuage my feelings of guilt over a long past misdeed by telling myself that I was a different person then? Not very well. I was different all right, but not numerically.

One could try to soften strict numerical identity of a person over time by adopting a bundle theory of diachronic personal identity. (Roughly, a person at a time is a bundle of mental data; a person over time is a bundle of these bundles.) But even if such a theory were otherwise in the clear it is difficult to square such a theory with what appears to be a non-negotiable datum: I and no one else did such-and-such 30, 40, 50 years ago; I am the source of that misdeed; I could have, and should have, done otherwise. We convict ourselves in memory knowing that the one who remembers is strictly the same as the one who did the deed.

The mystery of the self!

Lecturer on Personal Identity Denied Honorarium

The members of the philosophy department were so convinced by the lecturer's case against personal identity that they refused to pay him his honorarium on the ground that the potential recipient could not be the same person as the lecturer. This from a piece by Stanley Hauerwas:

It is by no means clear to me that I am the same person who wrote Hannah's Child. Although philosophically I have a stronger sense of personal identity than Daniel Dennett, who after having given a lecture to a department of philosophy on personal identity, was not given his honorarium. The department refused to give him his honorarium because, given Dennett's arguments about personal identity, or lack thereof, the department was not confident that the person who had delivered the lecture would be the same person who would receive the honorarium.

That has to be a joke, right? It sounds like the sort of tall tale that Dennett would tell.

My understanding of character, which at least promises more continuity in our lives than Dennett thinks he can claim, does not let me assume that I am the same person who wrote Hannah's Child. I cannot be confident I am the same person because the person who wrote Hannah's Child no doubt was changed by having done so. While I'm unable to state what I learned by writing the book, I can at least acknowledge that I must have been changed by having done so.

Hauerwas is confusing numerical and qualitative identity. Yes, you have been changed by writing your book. No doubt about it. Does it follow that you are a numerically different person than the one who wrote the book? Of course not. What follows is merely that you are qualitatively different, different in respect of some properties or qualities.

Perhaps there is no strict diachronic personal identity. This cannot be demonstrated, however, from the trivial observation that people change property-wise over time. For that is consistent with strict diachronic identity.

Being is Said in Many Ways: On the Uses of ‘Is’

Chad reports:

In the opening pages of More Kinds of Being: A Further Study of Individuation, Identity, and the Logic of Sortal Terms (Blackwell, 2009), E. J. Lowe distinguishes five uses of ‘is’ as a copula: 1. The ‘is’ of attribution, as in ‘Socrates is wise’ and ‘Grass is green’.2. The ‘is’ of identity, as in ‘Napoleon is Bonaparte’ and ‘Water is H2O’.3. The ‘is’ of instantiation, as in ‘Mars is a planet’ and ‘A horse is a mammal’.4. The ‘is’ of constitution, as in ‘This ring is gold’ and ‘A human body is a collection of cells’.5. The ‘is’ of existence, as in ‘The Dodo is no more’.He says some may be reducible to others, and that one or two must be primitive. I thought this was a helpful spread.

That is indeed helpful, but here are some comments and questions.

1. First of all, I would be surprised if Lowe referred to the five uses as five uses of 'is' as a copula. The 'is' of existence is not a copula because it doesn't couple. There is no copulation, grammatical or logical, in 'God is.' The 'is' of existence does not pick out any sort of two-termed relation such as identity, instantiation, or constitution. Calling the 'is' of identity a copula is a bit of a stretch, and I don't think most philosophers would.

2. Is there a veritative use of 'is'? 'It is so.' 'It is the case that Frege died in 1925.' One could say, though it is not idiomatic: 'Obama's being president is.' One would be expressing that the state of affairs obtains or that the corresponding proposition is true. So it looks as if there is a veritative use of 'is.'

3. Reducibility of one use to another does not show that they are not distinct uses. Perhaps the veritative use can be reduced to what Lowe calls the attributive use. Attributions of truth, however, imply that truth is a property. Frege famously argued that truth cannot be a property. That is a messy separate can of worms.

4. There are also tensed and tenseless uses of 'is.' 'Obama is president' versus '7 + 5 is 12.' With respect to the latter, it would be a bad joke, one reminiscent of Yogi Berra, were I to ask,"You mean now?" Yogi Berra was once asked the time. He said,"You mean now?"

'Hume is an empiricist' can be used both in a tensed way and an untensed way. If I say that Hume is an empiricist what I say is true despite the present nonexistence of Hume. 'Grass is green,' however, is never used in a tensed way, though one can imagine circumstances in which it could.

5. One and the same tokening of 'is' can do more than one job. Is the 'is' in 'Max is black' as used by me in the presence of my cat Max the 'is' of predication merely? I don't think so. It also expresses existence. But this requires argument:

1. 'Max is black' and 'Black Max exists' are intertranslatable.
2. Intertranslatable sentences have the same sense.
Therefore
3. 'Max is black' and 'Black Max exists' express the very same (Fregean) sense.
Therefore
4. Both sentences express both predication and existence: a property is predicated of something that cannot have properties unless it exists.
Therefore
5. The 'is' in 'Max is black' has a double function: it expresses both predication and existence.

Note that both sentences include a sign for the predicative tie. The sign is 'is' in the first sentence and in the second sentence the sign is the immediate concatenation of 'black' and 'Max' in that order. This shows that to refer to logical (as opposed to grammatical) copulation does not require a separate stand-alone sign. 'Black Max exists' expresses both existence via the sign 'exsts' and predication via the immeditae concatenation of 'black' and 'Max' in that order in the context of the sentence in question.

A Question About Predication and Identity

Chad M. sent me a paper of his in which he illustrates the distinction between the 'is' of predication and the 'is' of identity using the following examples:

1. Joseph Ratzinger is [the] Pope

and

2. Water is H₂O

where the first sentence is proposed as an example of a predication and the second as an identity sentence. If I were to explain the distinction, I would use these examples:

3. Joseph Ratzinger is German

and (for consistency of subject matter)

4. Joseph Ratzinger is Pope Benedict XVI.

(2) and (4) are clearly sentences expressing strict, numerical, identity. Identity is an equivalence relation: reflexive, symmetrical, transitive. It is also governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals: if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y, and vice versa. By these four tests, the 'is' in (4) is the 'is' of identity. The 'is' in (3) expresses a different relation. Frege would say that it is the relation of falling under: the object JR falls under the concept German. That relation fails each of the four tests. It is not reflexive, not symmetrical, etc.

Now my problem is that I don't find (1) to be a clear example of a predication in the way that (3) is a clear example.

Although 'The Pope' is a definite description, not a name (Kripkean rigid designator), (1) could be construed as asserting an identity, albeit a contingent identity, between the object picked out by 'JR' and the object picked out by 'the Pope.' After all, the sentence passes the four tests, at least if we confine ourselves to the present time and the actual world. The relation is reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive. For example, if JR is the Pope, and the Pope is the vicar of Christ, then JR is the vicar of Christ. Furthermore, whatever is true of JR now is also true of the Pope now, and vice versa. So the indiscernibility test is satisfied as well.

Why not then say that (1) expresses contingent identity and that the 'is' is an 'is' of identity, not of predication? The fact that one could maintain this, with some show of plausibility, indicates that Chad's example is not a clear one. That is my only point, actually.

I grant that the notion of contingent identity can be questioned. How could x and y just happen to be identical? For Kripke, identity is governed by the Necessity of Identity: if x = y, then necessarily x = y. This has the interesting implication that if it is so much as possible that x and y are distinct, then x and y are distinct. (Shades of the ontological argument!)

But there are philosophers who propose to speak of contingent sameness relations. Hector Castaneda is one. So I am merely asking Chad why he uses the puzzling and provocative (1) as illustrative of the 'is' of predication.

There is a labyrinth of deep questions lurking below the surface, questions relevant to Chad's real concern, namely the coherence of the Trinity doctrine and its (in)coherence with the doctrine of divine simplicity.

Does the Notion of a Bare Particular Make Sense Only in Constituent Ontology?

The Dispute

In an earlier entry that addressed Lukas Novak's argument against bare particulars I said the following:

The notion of a bare particular makes sense only in the context of a constituent ontology according to which ordinary particulars, 'thick particulars' in the jargon of Armstrong, have ontological constituents or metaphysical parts.

[. . .]

LN suggests that the intuitions behind the theory of bare particulars are rooted in Frege's mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive distinction between concepts and objects. "Once this distinction has been made, it is very hard to see how there might be a genuine case of logical de re necessity." (115) The sentence quoted is true, but as I said above, the notion of a bare particular makes no sense except in the context of a constituent ontology. Frege's, however, is not a constituent ontology like Bergmann's but what Bergmann calls a function ontology. (See G. Bergmann, Realism, p. 7. Wolterstorff's constituent versus relation ontology distinction is already in Bergmann as the distinct between complex and function ontologies.) So I deny that part of the motivation for the positing of bare particulars is an antecedent acceptance of Frege's concept-object distinction. I agree that if one accepts that distinction, then logical or rather metaphysical de re necessity goes by the boards. But the Fregean distinction is not part of the motivation or argumentation for bare particulars.

My claim that bare particulars are at home only in constituent ontology raised the eyebrows of commenter John and of LN, who writes:

I cannot see why the notion of a bare particular should make sense only in a constituent ontology. A bare particular is a particular which has none of its non-trivial properties de re necessarily. This notion is quite intelligible, irrespectively of the way we go on to explain the relation of "having" between the particular and the property, whether we employ a constituent or functional or some other approach (of course, saying that it is intelligible is not saying that it is consistent!). If Bill agrees that once one makes the sharp Fregean distinction between concepts and objects then there is a strong motivation against conceding any de re necessity, then he should also agree that making this distinction provides a strong motivation for claiming the bareness of all particulars.

Resolving the Dispute

I believe that this is a merely a terminological dispute concerning the use of 'bare particular.' I am a terminological conservative who favors using words and phrases strictly and with close attention to their historical provenience. To enshrine this preference as a methodological principle:

MP: To avoid confusion and merely verbal disputes, never use a word or phrase that already has an established use in a new way! Coin a new word or phrase and explain how you will be using it.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, the phrase 'bare particular' enters philosophy first in the writings of Gustav Bergmann. So we must attend to his writings if we are concerned to use this phrase correctly. Now in the terminology of Wolterstorff, Bergmann is a constituent ontologist as opposed to a relational ontologist. In Bergmann's own terms, he is a "complex" as opposed to a "function" ontologist, Frege being the chief representative for him of the latter style of ontology.

"In complex ontologies, as I shall call them, some entities are constituents of others." (Realism, p. 7) "In function ontologies, as I shall call them, some entities are, as one says, 'coordinated' to some others, without any connotation whatsoever of the one being 'in' the other, being either a constituent or a part or a component of it." (Ibid.)

Bergmann, then, is a constituent or complex ontologist and his introduction of bare particulars (BPs) is within this context. BPs are introduced to solve "the problem of individuation." A better name for this problem is 'problem of differentiation.' After all, the problem is not to specify what it is that makes an individual an individual as oppose to a member of some other category; the problem is to specify what it is that makes two individuals (or two entities of any category) two and not one.

How does the problem of individuation/differentiation arise? Well, suppose you have already decided that "some entities are constituents of others." For example, you have already decided that ordinary particulars (OPs) have, in addition to their spatial parts, special ontological parts and that among these parts are the OP's properties. Properties for Bergmann are universals. Now suppose you have two qualitatively indiscernible round red spots. They are the same in respect of every universal 'in' them and yet they are two, not one. What is the ontological ground of the numerical difference?

On Bergmann's way of thinking, one needs an entity to do the job of individuation/differentiation. Enter bare particulars. And pay close attention to how Bergmann describes them:

A bare particular is a mere individuator. Structurally, that is its only job. It does nothing else. In this respect it is like Aristotle's matter, or, perhaps more closely, like Thomas' materia signata. Only, it is a thing. (Realism, p. 24, emphasis added)

Bare particulars, then, have but one explanatory job: to ground or account for numerical difference. They are the Bergmannian answer to the question about the principium individuationis. But please note that the positing of such individuators/differentiators would make no sense at all if one held to a style of ontology according to which round red spots just differ without any need for a ground of numerical difference. For a relational ontologist, OPs have no internal ontological structure: they are ontological simples , not ontological complexes. Here is Peter and here is Paul. They just differ. They don't differ on account of some internal differentiator. Peter and Paul have properties, but these are in no sense parts of them, but entities external to them to which they are related by an exemplification relation that spans the chasm separating the concrete from the abstract. And because OPs do not have properties as parts, there is no need to posit some additional ontological factor to account for numerical difference.

I think I have made it quite clear that if we use 'bare particular' strictly and in accordance with the phrases' provenience, then it simply makes no sense to speak of bare particulars outside the context of constituent ontology.

Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, I am not the king of all philosophers and I lack both the authority and the brute power to enforce the above methodological imperative. So I can't force otber philosophers to use 'bare particular' correctly, or to put it less tendentiously: in accordance with Bergmann's usage. But I can issue the humble request that other philosophers not confuse the strict use of the phrase with their preferred usages, and that they tell us exactly how they are using the phrase.

Novak's usage is different than mine. He tell us that "A bare particular is a particular which has none of its non-trivial properties de re necessarily." On this usage my cat would count as a bare particular if one held the view that there are no non-trivial essential properties, that all non-trivial properties are accidental. But for Bergmann a cat is not a bare particular. It — or to be precise, a cat at a time — is a complex one of whose constituents is a bare particular. My cat Max is a Fregean object (Gegenstand) but surely no Fregean object is a Bergmannian bare particular. For objects and concepts do not form complexes in the way BPs and universals form complexes for Bergmann.

On a Fregean analysis, the propositional function denoted by '___ is a cat' has the value True for Max as argument. On a Bergmannian analysis, 'Max is a cat' picks out a fact or state of affairs. But there are no facts in Frege's ontology.

To conclude: if we use 'bare particular' strictly and in accordance with Bergmann's usage, one cannot speak of bare particulars except in constituent ontology.

Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change

In an earlier entry I sketched the difference between constituent ontology (C-ontology) and relational ontology (R-ontology) and outlined an argument against R-ontology. I concluded that post with the claim that C-ontology also faces serious objections. One of them could be called the 'argument from change.'

The Argument from Change

Suppose avocado A, which was unripe a week ago is ripe today. This is an example of alterational (as opposed to existential) change. The avocado has become different. But it has also remained the same. It is different in respect of ripeness but it is one and the same avocado that was unripe and is now ripe.

Alterational change is neither destruction nor duplication. The ripening of an avocado does not cause it to cease to exist. The ripening of an avocado is not the ceasing to exist of one particular (the unripe avocado) followed by the coming into existence of a numerically distinct avocado (the ripe one).

It is also clear that one cannot speak of change if there are two avocados, A and B, indiscernible except in respect of ripeness/unripeness, such that A is unripe at time t while B is ripe at time t* (t*> t). If my avocado is unripe at t while yours is ripe at t*, that circumstance does not constitute a change. Alteration requires that one and the same thing have incompatible properties at different times. This is necessary for alteration; whether it is sufficient is a further question.

That there is alterational change is a datum. That it requires that one and the same thing persist over an interval of time during which it has incompatible properties follows from elementary 'exegesis' or 'unpacking' of the datum.

The question before us is whether any C-ontology can do justice to the datum and its exegesis.

All C-ontologists are committed to what Michael J. Loux calls "Constituent Essentialism." ("What is Constituent Ontology?" Novak et al. eds., p. 52) It is the C-ontological analog of mereological essentialism. We can put it like this:

Constituent Essentialism: A thing has each of its ontological parts necessarily. This implies that a thing cannot gain or lose an ontological part without ceasing to be same thing.

Mereological Essentialism: A thing has each of its commonsense parts necessarily. This implies that a thing cannot gain or lose a commonsense part without ceasing to be the same thing.

To illustrate, suppose an ordinary particular (OP) is a bundle of compresent universals. The universals are the ontological parts of the OP as a whole. The first of the two principles entails that ordinary particulars cannot change. For (alterational) change is change in respect of properties under preservation of numerical diachronic identity. But preservation of identity is not possible on Constituent Essentialism. The simple bundle-of-universals theory appears incompatible with the fact of change.

I agree with Loux that Constituent Essentialism is a "framework principle" (p. 52) of C-ontology. It cannot be abandoned without abandoning C-ontology. And of course the fact of change and what it entails (persistence of the same thing over time) cannot be denied. So the 'argument from change' does seem to score against primitive versions of the bundle-of-universals theory.

Can the Objection Be Met?

The foregoing objection can perhaps be met met by sophisticating the bundle theory and adopting a bundle-bundle theory. Call this BBT. Accordingly, a thing that persists over time such as an avocado is a diachronic bundle of synchronic or momentary bundles. The theory has two stages.

First, there is the construction of momentary bundles from universals. Thus my avocado at a time is a bundle of universals. Then there is the construction of a diachronic bundle from these synchronic bundles. The momentary bundles have universals as constituents while the diachronic bundles do not have universals as constituents, but individuals. This is because a bundle of universals at a time is an individual. At both stages the bundling is contingent: the properties are contingently bundled to form momentary bundles and these resulting bundles are contingently bundled to form the persisting thing.

Accordingly, the unripe avocado is numerically the same as the ripe avocado in virtue of the fact that the earlier momentary bundles which have unripeness as a constituent are ontological parts
of the same diachronic whole as the later momentary bundles which have ripeness as a constituent.

A sophisticated bundle theory does not, therefore, claim that a persisting thing is a bundle of properties; the claim is that a persisting thing is a bundle of individuals which are themselves bundles of properties. This disposes of the objection from change at least as formulated above.

There are of course a number of other objections that need to be considered — in separate posts. But on the problem of change C-ontology looks to be in better shape than Loux makes it out to be.

I should add that I am not defending the bundle-bundle theory. In my Existence book I take a different C-ontological tack.

Bare Particulars and Lukáš Novák’s Argument Against Them

In his contribution to the book I am reviewing, Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Ontos Verlag, 2012), Lukáš Novák mounts an Aristotelian argument against bare particulars. In this entry I will try to understand his argument. I will hereafter refer to Professor Novák as 'LN' to avoid the trouble of having to paste in the diacriticals that his Czech name requires.

As I see it, the overall structure of LN's argument is an instance of modus tollens:

1. If some particulars are bare, then all particulars are bare.
2. It is not the case that all particulars are bare.
Therefore
3. No particulars are bare.

On the Very Idea of a Bare Particular

'Bare particular' is a technical term in philosophy the provenance of which is the work of Gustav Bergmann. (D. M. Armstrong flies a similar idea under the flag 'thin particular.') Being a terminus technicus, the term does not wear its meaning on its sleeve. It does not refer to particulars that lack properties; there are none. It refers to particulars that lack natures or nontrivial essential properties. (Being self-identical is an example of a trivial essential property; being human of a nontrivial essential property.) Bare particulars differ among themselves solo numero: they are not intrinsically or essentially different, but only numerically different. Or you could say that they are barely different. Leibniz with his identitas indiscernibilium would not have approved.

The notion of a bare particular makes sense only in the context of a constituent ontology according to which ordinary particulars, 'thick particulars' in the jargon of Armstrong, have ontological constituents or metaphysical parts. Consider two qualitatively indiscernible round red spots. There are two of them and thay share all their features. What is the ontological ground of the sameness of features? The sameness of the universals 'in' each spot. What grounds the numerical difference? What makes them two and not one? Each has a different bare particular among its ontological constituents. BPs, accordingly, are individuators/differentiators. On this sort of ontological analysis an ordinary particular is a whole of ontological parts including universals and a bare particular. But of course the particulars exemplify the universals, so a tertium quid is needed, a nexus of exemplification to tie the bare particular to the universals.

The main point, however, is that there is nothing in the nature of a bare particular to dictate which universals it exemplifies: BPs don't have natures. Thus any BP is 'promiscuously combinable' with any first-order universal. On this Bergmannian ontological scheme it is not ruled out that Socrates might have been an octopus or a valve-lifter in a '57 Chevy. The other side of the coin is that there is no DE RE metaphysical necessity that Socrates be human. Of course, there is the DE DICTO metaphysical impossibility, grounded in the respective properties, that an octopus be human. But it is natural to want to say more, namely that it is DE RE metaphysically impossible that Socrates be an octopus. But then the problem is: how can a particular qua particular 'contradict' any property? Being an octopus 'contradicts' (is metaphysically inconsistent with) being a man. But how can a particular be such as to disallow its exemplification of some properties? (116)

Thus I agree with LN that if there are bare particulars, then there are no DE RE metaphysical necessities pertaining to ordinary particulars, and vice versa. This is why LN, an Aristotelian, needs to be able to refute the very notion of a bare particular.

LN's Argument for premise (2) in the Master Argument Above

LN draws our attention to the phenomenon of accidental change. A rock goes from being cold to being hot. Peter goes from being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras to being knowledgeable about it. These are accidental changes: one and the same particular has different properties at different times. Now a necessary condition of accidental change is that one and the same subject have different properties at different times. But is it a sufficent condition? Suppose Peter is F at time t and not F at time t* (t* later than t). Suppose that F-ness is a universal. It follows that Peter goes from exemplifying the universal F-ness at t to not exemplifying it at t*. That is: he stands in the exemplification relation to F-ness at t, but ceases so to stand to t*. But there has to be more to the change than this. For, as LN points out, the change is in Peter. It is intrinsic to him and cannot consist merely in a change in a relation to a universal. Thus it seems to LN that, even if there are universals and particulars, we need another category of entity to account for accidental change, a category that that I will call that of property-exemplifications. Thus Peter's being cold at t is a property-exemplification and so is Peter's not being cold at t*. Peter's change in respect of temperature involves Peter as the diachronically persisting substratum of the change, the universal coldness, and two property-exemplifications, Peter's being cold at t and Peter's being not cold at t*.

These property-exemplifications, however, are particulars, not universals even though each has a universal as a constituent. This is a special case of what Armstrong calls the Victory of Particularity: the result of a particular exemplifying a universal is a particular. Moreover, these items have natures or essences: it is essential to Peter's being cold that it have coldness as a constituent. (This is analogous to mereological essentialism.) Hence property- exemplifications are particulars, but not bare particulars. Therefore, (2) is true: It is not the case that all particulars are bare.

I find LN's argument for (2) persuasive. The argument in outline:

4. There are property-exemplifications
5. Property-exemplifications are particulars
6. Property-exemplifications have natures
7. Whatever has a nature is not bare
Therefore
2. It is not the case that all particulars are bare.

Premise (1) in the Master Argument

LN has shown that not all particulars are bare. But why should we think that (1) is true, that if some particulars are bare, then all are? It could be that simple particulars are bare while complex particulars, such as property-exemplifications, are not bare. If that is so, then showing that no complex particular is bare would not amount to showing that no particular is bare.

The Master Argument, then, though valid, is not sound, or at at least it is not obviously sound: we have been given no good reason to accept (1).

Property-exemplifications, Tropes, and Accidents

But in all fairness to LN I should point out that he speaks of tropes and accidents, not of property-exemplifications. I used the latter expression because 'trope' strikes me as out of place. Tropes are simples. Peter's being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras at t, however, is a complex, and LN says as much on p. 117 top. So the entity designated by the italicized phrase is not a trope, strictly speaking. 'Trope' is a terminus technicus whose meaning in this ontological context was first given to it by Donald C. Williams.

Well, is the designatum of the italicized phrase an accident? Can an accident of a substance have that very subtance as one of its ontological constituents? I should think not. But Peter's being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras at t has Peter as one of its constituents. So I should think that it is not an accident of Peter.

I conclude that either I am failing to understand LN's argument or that he has been insufficiently clear in expounding it.

A Final Quibble

LN suggests that the intuitions behind the theory of bare particulars are rooted in Frege's mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive distinction between concepts and objects. "Once this distinction has been made, it is very hard to see how there might be a genuine case of logical de re necessity." (115) The sentence quoted is true, but as I said above, the notion of a bare particular makes no sense except in the context of a constituent ontology. Frege's, however, is not a constituent ontology like Bergmann's but what Bergmann calls a function ontology. (See G. Bergmann, Realism, p. 7. Wolterstorff's constituent versus relation ontology distinction is already in Bergmann as the distinct between complex and function ontologies.) So I deny that part of the motivation for the positing of bare particulars is an antecedent acceptance of Frege's concept-object distinction. I agree that if one accepts that distinction, then logical or rather metaphyscal de re necessity goes by the boards. But the Fregean distinction is not part of the motivation or argumentation for bare particulars.

Just what considerations motivate the positing of bare particulars would be a good topic for a separate post.

Stanislav Sousedik’s “Towards a Thomistic Theory of Predication”

Enough of politics, back to some hard-core technical philosophy. If nothing else, the latter offers exquisite escapist pleasures not unlike those of chess. Of course I don't believe that technical philosophy is escapist; my point is a conditional one: if it is, its pleasures suffice to justify it as a form of recuperation from this all-too-oppressive world of 'reality.' It's what I call a 'fall-back position.'

I have been commissioned to review the collection of which the above-captioned article is a part. The collection is entitled Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic (Ontos Verlag 2012) and includes contributions by Peter van Inwagen, Michael Loux, E. J. Lowe, and several others. My review article will address such topics as predication, truth-makers, bare particulars, and the advantages and liabilities of constituent ontology. I plan a series of posts in which I dig deep into some of the articles in this impressive collection.

Stanislav Sousedik argues for an "identity theory of predication" according to which a predicative sentence such as 'Peter is a man' expresses an identity of some sort between the referent of the subject 'Peter' and the referent of the predicate 'man.' Now to someone schooled in modern predicate logic (MPL) such an identity theory will appear wrongheaded from the outset. For we learned at Uncle Gottlob's knee to distinguish between the 'is' of identity ('Peter is Peter') and the 'is' of predication ('Peter is a man').

But let's give the Thomist theory a chance. Sousedik, who is well aware of Frege's distinction, presents an argument for the identity in some sense of subject and predicate. He begins by making the point that in the declarative 'Peter is a man' and the vocative 'Peter, come here!' the individual spoken about is (or can be) the same as the individual addressed. But common terms such as 'man' can also be used to address a person. Instead of saying, 'Peter, come here!' one can say 'Man, come here!' And so we get an argument that I will put as follows:

1. Both 'Peter' and 'man' can be used to refer to the same individual. Therefore

2. A common term can be used to refer to an individual. But

3. Common terms also refer to traits of individuals. Therefore

4. The traits must be identical in some sense to the individuals. E.g., the referent of 'Peter' must be in some sense identical to the referent of 'man.'

But in what sense are they identical? Where Frege distinguishes between predication and identity, Sousedik distinguishes between weak and strong identity. 'Peter is Peter' expresses strong identity while 'Peter is a man' expresses weak identity. "Strong identity is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive, weak identity has none of these formal properties." (254) It thus appears that strong identity is the same as what modern analytic philosophers call (numerical) identity. It is clear that 'Peter is a man' cannot be taken to express strong identity. But what is weak identity?

S. is a constituent ontologist. He holds that ordinary substances such as Peter have what he calls "metaphysical parts." Whereas Peter's left leg is a physical part of him, his traits are metaphysical parts of him. Thus the referents of the common terms 'man,' 'animal,' living thing,' etc. are all metaphysical parts of Peter. Clearly, these are different traits of Peter. But are they really distinct in Peter? S. says that they are not: they are really identical in Peter and only "virtually distinct" in him. The phrase is defined as follows.

(Def. 1) Between x, y there is a virtual distinction iff (i) x, y are really identical; (ii) x can become an object of some cognitive act Φ without y being the object of the same act Φ . . . . (251)

For example, humanity and animality in Peter are really identical but virtually distinct in that humanity can be the intentional object of a cognitive act without animality being the object of the same act. I can focus my mental glance so to speak on Peter's humanity while leaving out of consideration his animality even though he is essentially both a man and an animal and even though animality is included within humanity.

The idea, then, is that Peter has metaphysical parts (MPs) and that these items are really identical in Peter but virtually distinct, where the virtual distinctness of any two MPs is tied to the possibility of one of them being the object of a cognitive act without the other being the object of the same act.

Is S. suggesting that virtual distinctness is wholly mind generated? I don't think so. For he speaks of a potential distinction of MPs in concrete reality, a distinction that becomes actual when the understanding grasps them as distinct. (253) And so I take the possibility mentioned in clause (ii) of the above definition to be grounded not only in the mind's power to objectify and abstract but also in a real potentiality in the MPs in substances like Peter.

One might be tempted to think of weak identity as a part-whole relation. Thus one might be tempted to say that 'Peter' refers to Peter and 'man' to a property taken in the abstract that is predicable not only of Peter but of other human beings as well. 'Peter is a man' would then say that this abstract property is a metaphysical part of Peter. But this is not Sousedik's or any Thomist's view. For S. is committed to the idea that "Every empirical individual and every part or trait of it is particular." (251) It follows that no metaphysical part of any concrete individual is a universal. Hence no MP is an abstract property. So weak identity is not a part-whole relation.

What is it then?

First of all, weak identity is a relation that connects a concrete individual such as Peter to a property taken abstractly. But in what sense is Peter identical to humanity taken abstractly? In this sense: the humanity-in-Peter and the humanity-in-the-mind have a common constituent, namely, humanity taken absolutely as common nature or natura absoluta or natura secundum se. (254) What makes weak identity identity is the common constituent shared by the really existing humanity in Peter and the intentionally existing humanity in the mind of a person who judges that Peter is human.

So if we ask in what sense the referent of 'Peter' is identical to the referent of 'man,' the answer is that they are identical in virtue of the fact that Peter has a proper metaphysical part that shares a constituent with the objective concept referred to by 'man.' Sousedik calls this common constituent the "absolute subject." In our example, it is human nature taken absolutely in abstraction from its real existence in Peter and from its merely intentional existence in the mind.

Critical Observations

I am deeply sympathetic to Sousedik's constituent-ontological approach, his view that existence is a first-level 'property,' and the related view that there are modes of existence. (253) But one of the difficulties I have with S.'s identity theory of predication is that it relies on common natures, and I find it difficult to make sense of them as I already spelled out in a previous post. Common natures are neither one nor many, neither universal nor particular. Humanity is many in things but one in the mind. Hence taken absolutely it is neither one nor many. It is this absolute feature that allows it be the common constituent in humanity-in-Peter and humanity-in-the-mind. And as we just saw, without this common constituent there can be no talk of an identity between Peter and humanity. The (weak) identity 'rides on' the common constituent, the natura absoluta. Likewise, humanity is particular in particular human beings but universal in the mind (and only in the mind). Hence taken absolutely it is neither particular nor universal.

But it also follows that the common nature is, in itself and taken absolutely, neither really existent nor intentionally existent. It enjoys neither esse naturale (esse reale) nor esse intentionale. Consequently it has no being (existence) at all. This is not to say that it is nonexistent. It is to say that it is jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein to borrow a phrase from Alexius von Meinong, "beyond being and nonbeing."

The difficulty is to understand how there could be a plurality of distinct items that are neither universal nor particular, neither one nor many, neither existent nor nonexistent. Note that there has to be a plurality of them: humanity taken absolutely is distinct from animality taken absolutely, etc. And what is the nature of this distinctness? It cannot be mind-generated. This is because common natures are logically and ontologically prior to mind and matter as that which mediates between them. They are not virtually distinct. Are they then really distinct? That can't be right either since they lack esse reale.

And how can these common or absolute natures fail to be, each of them, one, as opposed to neither one nor many? The theory posits a plurality of items distinct among themselves. But if each is an item, then each is one. An item that is neither one nor many is no item at all.

There is also this consideration. Why are common natures more acceptable than really existent universals as constituents of ordinary particulars such as Peter? The Thomists allow universals only if they have merely intentional existence, existence 'in' or rather for a mind. "Intentional existence belongs to entities which exist only in dependence upon the fact that they are objects of our understanding." (253) They insist that, as S. puts it, "Every empirical individual and every part or trait of it is particular." (251) S. calls the latter an observation, but it is not really a datum, but a bit of theory. It is a datum that 'man' is predicable of many different individuals. And it is a datum that Peter is the subject of plenty of essential predicates other than 'man.' But it is not a clear datum that Peter is particular 'all the way through.' That smacks of a theory or a proto-theory, not that it is not eminently reasonable.

One might 'assay' (to use G. Bergmann's term) an ordinary particular as a complex consisting of a thin or 'bare' particular instantiating universals. This has its own difficulties, of course, but why should a theory that posits common natures be preferrable to one that doesn't but posits really existent universals instead? Either way problems will arise.

The main problem in a nutshell is that it is incoherent to maintain that some items are such that they have no being whatsoever. 'Some items are such that they have no being whatsoever' is not a formal-logical contradiction, pace van Inwagen, but it is incoherent nonetheless. Or so it seems to me.

More on my Non-Identity With My Living Body

Maximilian J. Nightingale writes:

You laid out this syllogism in a recent post:

My living body will become a dead body;
I will never become a dead body;
therefore, I am not identical to a living body.

It seems to me that if "becoming" means the same thing in both the first and the second premises, then one must say that both Bill and his living body will become a dead body, or that neither will. It seems that where a living body used to be, a dead body will begin to be. So also, it seems that where Bill used to be, a dead body will begin to be.

I don't see that the reader has refuted the argument. Yes, 'becomes' means the same in both premises.

Now the first premise is true: It is clear that one day my living body will undergo a radical change and become a dead body: the same body that today is alive will on a future date no longer have the property of being alive but will instead have the property of being dead. (I am assuming some 'normal' way of dying, as opposed to being instantaneously annihilated in a nuclear blast. More on this in a moment.) This is an alterational change: one and the same body will exist at different times in different states, first alive, then dead. So it is not the case, as the reader claims, that "where a living body used to be, a dead body will begin to be." That would be an existential change, not an alterational one. It is not the case that a dead body will begin to be; one and the same body will go from being alive to being dead.

The second premise is also true. When my body dies, I will cease to exist; but when my body dies it won't cease to exist: it will continue to exist for a while as a corpse. This is an existential change in me, not an alterational change: I will cease to exist. It is not the case that I will change in respect of the property of being alive.

Therefore, I cannot be identical to my living body. 'Will no longer exist' is true of me, but not true of my body.

"But what if you are annihilated in an explosion so that there is no corpse?" At this point the argument takes a modal turn. Even if my body does not continue to exist after I cease to exist, it could; but it is not possible that I continue to exist after I cease to exist. So again we have a difference in properties and non-identity.

I have been assuming mortalism, the doctrine that I cease to exist when my body dies. If mortalism is false, and I exist even after the death of my body, then a fortiori I am not identical to my living body.

Am I a Body or Do I Have a Body?

In his latest and last book, Mortality, Christopher Hitchens writes, "I don't have a body, I am a body." (86) He goes on to observe that he has "consciously and regularly acted as if this was [sic] not true." It is a curious fact that mortalists are among the worst abusers of the fleshly vehicle. But that is not my theme.

Is a person just his body? The meditation is best conducted in the first person: Am I just my body? Am I identical to my body? Am I one and the same with my body, where body includes brain? Am I such that, whatever is true of my body is true of me, and vice versa? Let's start with some 'Moorean facts,' some undeniable platitudes.

1. I am not now identical to a dead body, a corpse. There is, no doubt, a dead body in my future, one with my name on it. But that lifeless object won't be me. I will never become a corpse. I will never be buried or cremated. I am not now and never will be identical to a dead body. For when the corpse with my name on it comes to exist, I will have ceased to exist; and when I cease to exist, it will still exist. This property difference via the Indiscernibility of Identicals entails the non-identity of me and 'my' corpse.

'My' corpse is the corpse that will come into existence when I cease to exist, or, if mortalism is false, when I am separated from my body. Strictly speaking, no corpse is my corpse: hence the scare quotes around 'my.' But I can speak strictly of my body: my body is the body that is either identical to me, or is related to me in some 'looser' way.

2. I am obviously not identical to a dead body. And I have just argued that I will never become identical to a dead body. Am I then identical to a living body? Not if the following syllogism is sound: My living body will become a dead body; I will never become a dead body; therefore, I am not identical to a living body.

This argument assumes that if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y, and vice versa. Little is self-evident, but surely this principle is self-evident. There is something true of my living body that is not true of me, namely 'will become a dead body.' Therefore, I am not identical to a living body. And since the only living body I could be identical to if I were identical to a living body would be my living body, I am not identical to my living body. Of course, I have a living body in some to-be-explored sense of 'have'; the point is that I am not identical to it.

3. Consider now the following rather more plausible identity claim: I am (identically) a self-conscious animal. Let's unpack this. I am a living human animal that says 'I' and means it; I am a thinker of I-thoughts, an example of which is the thought *I am just a self-conscious animal.* I am self-aware: aware of myself as an object, both as a physical object, a body, through the five outer senses, and as psychological object, a mind, through inner sense or introspection. Both my body and my mind are objects for me as subject. As such a self-aware animal, I am aware of being different from my body. In some sense I must be different from my body (and my mind) if they are my objects. 'My objects' means 'objects for me as subject.'

Now if you were paying attention you noticed that I made an inferential move the validity of which demands scrutiny. I moved from

a. I am aware of being different from my body

b. I am different from my body.

The materialist is bound to resist this inference. He will ask how we know that the awareness mentioned in (a) is veridical. Only if it is, is the inference valid. He will suggest that it is possible that I have an non-veridical, an illusory, awareness of being different from my body. I can't credit that suggestion, however. It cannot be an illusion that I am different from anything I take as object of awareness including my brain or any part of my brain. That is a primary and indubitable givenness. Awareness is by its very nature awareness of something: it implies a difference between that which is aware, the subject of awareness, and the object of awareness. Without that difference there could be no awareness of anything. If the self-aware subject were identical to that object which is its animal body, then the subject would not be aware of the body.

4. Will you say that the body is aware of itself? Then I will ask you which part of the body is the subject of awareness. Is it the brain, or a proper part of the brain? When I am aware of my weight or the cut on my arm, is it the brain or some proper part of the brain that is aware of these things? This makes no sense. My brain is no more the subject of awareness than my glasses are. My glasses don't see the wound; I see the wound by the instrumentality of the glasses. Similarly, my brain doesn't see the wound; I see the wound by the instrumentality of the brain (and the visual cortex, and the optic nerves, and the glasses, etc.) The fact that my visual awareness is causally dependent on my having a functioning brain does not show that my brain or any part of it is the subject of awareness. I am not identical to my brain or to any bodily thing.

5. Who or what asks the question: Am I identical to this body here? Does the body ask this question? Some proper part of the body such as the brain? Some proper part of this proper part? How could anything physical ask a question?

"Look, there are are certain physical objects that ask themselves whether they are identical to the physical objects they are, and entertain the (illusory) thought that they might not be identical to the physical objects they are."

This little materialist speech is absurd by my lights since no physical object — as we are given to understand 'physical object' by physics — could do such a thing. If you insist that some physical objects can, then you have inflated 'physical' so that it no longer contrasts with 'mental.'

So with all due respect to the late Mr Hitchens, brilliant talker about ideas whose depth he never plumbed, I think there are very good reasons to deny that one is identically one's body.

Further questions: If I am not identical to any physical thing, can it be inferred that I am identical to some spiritual thing? If I am not identical to my body or any part thereof, do I then have a body, and what exactly does that mean?

The Aporetics of Existence and Self-Identity

Andrew B. made some powerful objections to a recent existence post. His remarks suggest the following argument:

Argument A

1. Existence is self-identity
2. My existence is contingent: (∃x)(x = I) & Poss ~(∃x) (x = I)
Therefore
3. My self-identity is contingent: I = I & Poss ~ (I = I)

Argument A may be supplemented by the following consideration. Since I am contingent, there are possible worlds in which I do not exist. Not being in those worlds, I cannot have properties in them, including the property of self-identity. So it is not the case that I am necessarily self-identical; I am self-identical only in those worlds in which I exist, which is to say: I am contingently self-identical. I am self-identical in some but not all worlds.

The argument can be rationally resisted.

Consider a possible world w in which I do not exist. In w, the proposition expressed by an utterance by me of 'I am not self-identical' is true. But if it is true in w, then the proposition exists in w. Now if the proposition exists in w, then so do its constituents. On a Russellian view of propositions, I am one of the proposition's constituents. So for the proposition *I am not self-identical* to be true in w, I must exist in w. But if I exist in w, then of course I am self-identical in w, and the proposition is false in w. But the same goes for every world in which I do not exist. It follows that I am self-identical in every world and I exist in every world.

Of course, one needn't take a Russellian line on propositions. One could take a Fregean view according to which propositions about me do not have me as a constituent but an abstract representative of me, a sense or mode of presentation. But the first-person singular pronoun 'I' has the peculiarity that it cannot be replaced salva significatione by any description; so even if there is an abstract representative of me in the Fregean proposition expressed by my utterance of 'I am not self-identical,' there still has to be a referent of the representative external to the proposition. So I have to exist in w for the proposition *I am not self-identical* to be true in w. But if I exist in w then I am self-identical in w. This in turn implies that the proposition is not true.

The cognoscenti will appreciate that what I have been doing in a rough and dirty way is reproducing some of the thoughts in Timothy Williamson's paper Necessary Existents. I am doing so to show that Argument A is not convincing. Making use of materials from Williamson's paper, we can 'throw Argument A into reverse':

Argument B

1. Existence is self-identity
~3. My self-identity is necessary: Nec (I = I)
Therefore
~2. My existence is necessary.

In point of validity, there is nothing to choose between A and B: both are valid. And both, I submit, have counterintuitive conclusions. It seems to me that the arguments cancel each other out. So I propose that we think very skeptically about the common premise that existence is self-identity, and the Quinean thin theory that commits us to it.

The Problem of First-Person identity Sentences

0. Am I identical to my (living) body, or to the objectively specifiable person who rejoices under the name 'BV'? Earlier I resoundingly denied this identity, in (rare) agreement with London Ed, but admitted that argument is needed. This post begins the argument. We start with the problem of first-person identity sentences.

1. 'I am I' and 'BV is BV' are logical truths. They have the logical form a = a. They are not particularly puzzling. But 'I am BV' presents a puzzle, one reminiscent of Frege's puzzle concerning informative identity statements. 'I am BV' is not true as a matter of logic, any more than it is true as a matter of logic that the morning star is the evening star. And yet it is presumably true that I am BV where 'am' expresses strict numerical identity. It is not as if 'I' and 'BV' refer to two different entities. Or at least this is not a view we ought to begin by assuming. The proper procedure is to see if we can make sense of 'I am BV' construed as an identity statement. Dualism comes later if it comes at all.

2. Here is a theory. When I say 'I am BV' I am referring to one and the same thing in two different ways, just as, when I say 'The morning star is the evening star' I am referring to one and the same thing (the planet Venus) in two different ways. Expressions have sense and they have reference. Difference of sense is compatible with sameness of reference. The difference in sense of 'morning star' and 'evening star' explains why the identity statement composed of them is informative; the sameness of reference explains the identity statement's truth.

In Frege's famous example, the common referent is the planet Venus. What is the common referent of 'I' and 'BV'? Presumably the common referent is the publicly identifiable person BV. But when BV designates himself by means of the thought or utterance of 'I, he designates BV under the aspect, or via the sense, expressed by 'I,' a semantically irreducible sense that cannot be captured by any expression not containing 'I.'

Here then we seem to have a solution to our problem. In general, one can refer to the same thing in different ways, via different modes of presentation (Darstellungsweisen, in Frege's German). So apply that to the special case of the self. What I refer to when I say 'I' is the same entity that I refer to when I say 'BV' and the same entity that Peter refers to when he says 'BV.' It is just that I refer to the same thing in different ways, a first-person way and third-person way. There is no need to suppose that 'I and 'BV' have numerically distinct referents. There is no need to deny the numerical identity of me and BV. Unfortunately, this Fregean solution is a pseudo-solution. I have two arguments. I'll give one today.

3. Consider the sentence 'I am this body here' uttered by the speaker while pointing to his body. If, in this sentence, 'I' refers to this body here (the body of the speaker), albeit via a Fregean sense distinct from that of 'this body here,' then the sense of 'I,' whatever it might be, must be the sense of a physical thing inasmuch as it must be the mode of presentation of a physical thing. Note that the 'of' in the italicized phrases is a genitivus objectivus. Somehow this 'I'-sense must determine a reference to a physical thing, this body here. But that it is the sense of a physical thing is no part of the sense of 'I.' We understand fully the sense of this term without understanding it to be the sense of a physical thing, a sense that presents or mediates reference to a physical thing. Indeed, considerations adduced by Anscombe and Castaneda show that the 'I'-sense cannot be the sense of a physical thing. For if the sense of 'I' cannot be captured by 'this body here,' then a fortiori it cannot be captured by any other expression designating a physical thing.

The analogy with the morning star/evening star case breaks down. One cannot use 'morning star' and 'evening star' with understanding unless one understands that they refer to physical things, if they refer at all. It is understood a priori that these terms designate physical things if they designate at all; the only question is whether they designate the same physical thing. But one can use the first-person singular pronoun with understanding without knowing whether or not it refers to a physical thing.

In other words, there is nothing in the sense of 'I' to exclude the possibility that it refer to a nonphysical thing, a res cogitans, for example. Descartes' use of 'ego' to refer to a thinking substance did not violate the semantic rules for the use of this term. What's more, if 'I' is a referring term and refers via a Fregean sense, then that sense cannot be the sense of a physical thing.

So that's my first argument against the Fregean approach to the problem of first-person identity sentences. The argument rests on the assumption that 'I' is a referring term. That assumption has been denied by Wittgenstein, and more rigorously, by Anscombe. That denial deserves a separate post. And in that post we ought to rehearse the reasons why 'I' cannot be replaced salva significatione by any such word or phase as 'the person who is now speaking.'