The alarm means 'there is a fire in the building'. An assertion has taken place, that there is a fire. But it is triggered by a sensor in the building. So asserting is not just something people do.
This is a loose way of talking quite in order in ordinary life, but false if taken literally and strictly. I have no objection to people in ordinary life saying things like, 'The fire alarm is telling us that there's a fire in the building.' But people don't talk like that. You tell me, "There's a fire!" I ask, "How do you know?" You reply, "The fire alarm went off." You DON"T say, "The fire alarm told me so,"or "The fire alarm made an assertion to that effect." You COULD say, "A fireman told me so."
But let's not get hung up in Ordinary Language analysis. The 1950s are long gone.
My claim is that a mechanical contraption cannot make an assertion any more than a 'sensor' can sense anything. Thermostats don't feel heat and smoke detectors do not smell smoke. Oscilloscopes do not detect sine waves; an engineer detects a sine wave by the instrumentality of the oscilloscope. Neither my dipstick nor the oil on my dipstick asserts that there is sufficient oil in the crankcase; I infer that there is from the oil I observe on the dipstick. Inferring, like asserting, is something people do.
All meaning traces back ultimately to Original Meaners, Original Sinn-ers. Am I being too clever for clarity?
A green light means proceed. A red light means stop. But how did those signals come to acquire their conventional meanings? From us, from minds whose intentionality is original, not derived. Surely you don't believe that green, or a green light, intrinsically means that one may proceed.
Let us see if the Opponent and I can find some common ground. I concede that there is a clear sense in which the sounding of a fire alarm means that there is a fire in the building. But this meaning is an instance of derivative, as opposed to original, intentionality. The intentionality derives from us. The sounding of the alarm means what it means only because we have assigned it that meaning. Its intentionality or meaning is thus not intrinsic to it. After all, a fire alarm could be constructed for deaf people that emits a smell instead of a sound, perhaps the awful smell of burnt hair. Obviously, such a smell is not intrinsically significative of anything.
So: if the Opponent concedes that the intentionality of a fire alarm is merely derivative, then we have agreement. If he holds that it is original, then the disagreement continues.
There is a similar pattern with sentences and propositions. I will allow you to say that a sentence is true or false in a secondary or derivative sense so long as you admit that it is propositions that are the primary truth-bearers. Do we have a deal? A declarative sentence is true in virtue of expressing a true proposition.
The problem can be set forth in a nice neat way as an aporetic triad:
1) Consciousness is real; it is not an illusion.
2) Consciousness is wholly natural, a material process in the brain.
3) It is impossible that conscious states, whether object-directed or merely qualitative, be material in nature.
It is easy to see that the members of this triad are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true. Any two of the propositions, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining proposition.
And yet each limb of the triad has brilliant defenders and brilliant opponents. So not only is consciousness itself a mighty goad to inquiry; the wild diversity of opinions about it is as well. (The second goad is an instance of what I call the Moorean motive for doing philosophy: G. E. Moore did not get his problems from the world, but from the strange and mutually contradictory things philosophers said about the world, e.g., that time is unreal (McTaggart) or that nothing is really related (Bradley).)
The above problem is soluble if a compelling case can be made for the rejection of one of the limbs. But which one? Eliminativists reject (1); dualists of all types, and not just substance dualists, reject (2); materialists reject (3).
I agree with Strawson that eliminativism has zero credibility. (1) is self-evident and the attempts to deny it are easily convicted of incoherence. So no solution is to be had by rejecting (1).
As for (2), it is overwhelmingly credible to most at the present time. We live in a secular age. 'Surely' — the secularist will assure us — there is nothing concrete that is supernatural. God and the soul are just comforting fictions from a bygone era. The natural exhausts the real. Materialism about the mind is just logical fallout from naturalism. If all that (concretely) exists is space-time and its contents, then the same goes for minds and their states.
Strawson, accepting both (1) and (2) must reject (3). But the arguments against (3), one of which I will sketch below, are formidable. The upshot of these arguments is that it is unintelligible how either qualia or intentional states of consciousness could be wholly material in nature. Suppose I told you that there is a man who is both fully human and fully divine. You would say that that makes no sense, is unintelligible, and is impossible for that very reason. Well, it is no less unintelligible that a felt sensation such as my present blogger's euphoria be identical to a state of my brain.
What could a materialist such as Strawson say in response? He has to make a mysterian move.
He could say that our understanding of matter at present does not allow us to understand how conscious experience could be wholly material in nature, but that it is nevertheless wholly material in nature! Some matter is sentient and some matter thinks. My euphoria is literally inside my skull and so are my thoughts about Boston.
(Compare the orthodox Chalcedonian incarnationalist who says that the man Jesus of Nazareth is identical to the Second Person of the Trinity. Put him under dialectical pressure and he might say, "Look it is true! We know it by divine revelation. And what is true is true whether or not we can understand how it is possible that it be true. It must remain a mystery to us here below.)
Or a materialist mysterian can say that our understanding of matter will never allow us to understand how conscious experience could be wholly material in nature. Either way, conscious experience, whether intentional or non-intentional, is wholly material in nature, and falls entirely within the subject-matter of physics, whether a future physics achievable by us, or a physics which, though not achievable by us, is perhaps achievable by organisms of a different constitution who study us.
If I understand Galen Strawson's view, it is the first. Conscious experience is fully real but wholly material in nature despite the fact that on current physics we cannot account for its reality: we cannot understand how it is possible for qualia and thoughts to be wholly material. Here is a characteristic passage from Strawson:
Serious materialists have to be outright realists about the experiential. So they are obliged to hold that experiential phenomena just are physical phenomena, although current physics cannot account for them. As an acting materialist, I accept this, and assume that experiential phenomena are "based in" or "realized in" the brain (to stick to the human case). But this assumption does not solve any problems for materialists. Instead it obliges them to admit ignorance of the nature of the physical, to admit that they don't have a fully adequate idea of what the physical is, and hence of what the brain is. ("The Experiential and the Non-Experiential" in Warner and Szubka, p. 77)
Strawson and I agree on two important points. One is that what he calls experiential phenomena are as real as anything and cannot be eliminated or reduced to anything non-experiential. Dennett denied! The other is that there is no accounting for experiential items in terms of current physics.
I disagree on whether his mysterian solution is a genuine solution to the problem. What he is saying is that, given the obvious reality of conscious states, and given the truth of naturalism, experiential phenomena must be material in nature, and that this is so whether or not we are able to understand how it could be so. At present we cannot understand how it could be so. It is at present a mystery. But the mystery will dissipate when we have a better understanding of matter.
This strikes me as bluster.
An experiential item such as a twinge of pain or a rush of elation is essentially subjective; it is something whose appearing just is its reality. For qualia, esse = percipi. If I am told that someday items like this will be exhaustively understood from a third-person point of view as objects of physics, I have no idea what this means. The notion strikes me as absurd. We are being told in effect that what is essentially subjective will one day be exhaustively understood as both essentially subjective and wholly objective. And that makes no sense. If you tell me that understanding in physics need not be objectifying understanding, I don't know what that means either.
As Strawson clearly appreciates, one cannot reduce a twinge of pain to a pattern of neuron firings, for such a reduction eliminates the what-it-is-like-ness of the experience. And so he inflates the concept of the physical to cover both the physical and the mental. But by doing this he drains the physical of definite meaning. His materialism is a vacuous materialism. We no longer have any idea of what 'physical' means if it no longer contrasts with 'mental.'
If we are told that sensations and thoughts are wholly material, we have a definite proposition only if 'material' contrasts with 'mental.' But if we are told that sensations and thoughts are material, but that matter in reality has mental properties and powers, then I say you are talking nonsense. You are creating grammatically correct sentences that do not express a coherent thought.
Besides, if some matter in reality senses and thinks, surely some matter doesn't; hence we are back to dualism.
Why is Strawson's mysterianism any better than Dennett's eliminativism? Both are materialists. And both are keenly aware of the problem that qualia pose. This is known in the trade as the 'hard problem.' (What? The other problems in the vicinity are easy?) The eliminativist simply denies the troublesome data. Qualia don't exist! They are illusory! The mysterian materialist cannot bring himself to say something so manifestly silly. But, unwilling to question his materialism, he says something that is not much better. He tells us that qualia are real, and wholly material, but we don't understand how because we don't know enough about matter. But this 'theological' solution is also worthless because no definite proposition is being advanced.
Strawson frankly confesses, "I am by faith a materialist." (p. 69) Given this faith, experiential items, precisely as experiential, must be wholly material in nature. This faith engenders the hope that future science will unlock the secret. Strawson must pin his hope on future science because of his clear recognition that experiential items are incomprehensible in terms of current physics.
But what do the theological virtues of faith and hope have to do with sober inquiry? It doesn't strike me as particularly intellectually honest to insist that materialism just has to be true and to uphold it by widening the concept of the physical to embrace what is mental. It would be more honest just to admit that the problem of consciousness is insoluble.
And that is my 'solution.' The problem is real, but insoluble by us.
Strawson's latest banging on his mysterian materialist drum is to be found in The Consciousness Deniers in The New York Review of Books.
Question: Is it my brain that feels and thinks when I feel and think?
Argument A. Meat can't think. My brain is meat. Therefore, what thinks in me when I think is not my brain.
A in Reverse: What thinks in me when I think is my brain. My brain is meat. Therefore, meat can think.
The proponent of A needn't deny that we are meatheads. Of course we are. We are literally meat (and bone) all the way through. His point is that the res cogitans, that in us which thinks, cannot be a hunk of meat.
Both arguments are valid, but only one is sound. The decision comes down to the initial premises of the two arguments. Is there a rational way of deciding between these premises?
A materialist might argue as follows. Although we cannot at present understand how a hunk of living meat could feel and think, what is actual is possible regardless of our ability or inability to explain how it is possible. The powers of certain configurations of matter could remain hidden for a long time from our best science, or even remain hidden forever. What else would be doing the thinking and feeling in us if not our brains? What else could the mind be but the living and functioning brain well-supplied with oxygen-rich blood? The fact that we cannot understand how the brain could be a semantic engine, an engine productive of and sensitive to meanings, is not a conclusive reason for thinking that it is not a semantic engine.
It is worth noting that the reverent gushing of the neuro-scientistic types over the incredible complexity of the brain does absolutely nothing to reduce the unintelligibility of the notion that it is brains or parts of brains that are the subjects of intentional and qualitative mental states. For it is unintelligible how ramping up complexity could trigger a metabasis eis allo genos. Are you telling me that meat that means is just meat that is more complex than ordinary meat? You might as well say that the leap from unmeaning meat to meaning meat is a miracle. Some speak of 'emergence.' But that word merely papers over the difficulty, labeling the problem without solving it. You may as well say, as in the cartoon, "And then a miracle occurs." But then it's Game Over for the materialist.
Our materialist would do better to insist that unintelligibility to us does not entail impossibility. Our inability to explain how X is possible does not entail that X is not possible.
My response would be that while unintelligibility does not entail impossibility, it is excellent evidence of it. If you tell me that a certain configuration of neurons is intrinsically object-directed, directed to an object that may or may not exist without prejudice to the object-directedness, then you are saying something unintelligible. It is as if you said that .5 volts intrinsically represents 1 and .7 volts intrinsically represents 0. That's nonsense. Or it as if you said that a pile of rocks intrinsically indicates the direction of the trial. (See The Philosophizing Hiker: The Derivative Intentionality of Trail Markers.)
No rock pile has intrinsic meaning or intrinsic representational power. And the same goes for any material item or configuration of material items no matter how complex. No such system has intrinsic meaning; any meaning it has is derived. The meaning is derived either from an intelligent being who ascribes meaning to the material system, or from an intelligent being whose purposes are embodied in the material system, or both.
Thus I am rejecting the view that meaning could inhere in material systems apart from relations to minds that are intrinsically intentional, minds who are original Sinn-ers, if you will, original mean-ers. We are all of us Sinn-ers, every man Jack of us, original Sinn-ers, but our Sinn-ing is not mortal or venial but vital. Intrinsic, underived intentionality is our very lifeblood as spiritual beings.
So if the materialist says that the brain means, intends, represents, thinks, etc., then I say that makes no sense given what we understand the brain to be. The brain is a material system and the physical, chemical, electrical, and biological properties it and its parts have cannot be meaningfully predicated of mental states. One cannot speak intelligibly of a voltage drop across a mental state any more than can one speak intelligibly of the intentionality of synapses or of their point of view or of what it is like to be one.
Of course, the materialist can pin his hope on a future science that understands the brain in different terms, terms that could be sensibly attached to mental phenomena. But this is nothing more than an empty gesturing towards a 'possibility' that cannot be described except in the vaguest terms. It is nothing but faith, hope, and hand-waving.
There is also the dogmatism of the materialist who insists that the subject of thinking must be the functioning brain. How does he know that? He doesn't. He believes it strongly is all.
So I give the palm to Argument A: Meat can't think. My brain is meat. Therefore, what thinks in me when I think is not my brain.
I do not absolutely foreclose on the abstract possibility that there be thinking meat. For I grant that unintelligibility to us is not invincible proof of impossibility. But when I compare that vaguely described abstract possibility with the present certainty that matter as we know it cannot think due to the very unintelligibility of the idea, then the present certainty wins over the abstract possibility and over the faith and hope of the materialist.
If you need to pin your hopes on something, pin them on the possibility that you are more than meat.
Reader P. J. offers us for delectation and analysis the following quotation from Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God:
[Brother Lawrence] was eighteen at the time, and still in the world. He told me that it had all happened one winter day, as he was looking at a barren tree. Although the tree's leaves were indeed gone, he knew that they would soon reappear, followed by blossoms and then fruit. This gave him a profound impression of God's providence and power which never left him. Brother Lawrence still maintains that his impression detached him entirely from the world and gave him such a great love for God that it hasn't changed in all of the forty years he has been walking with Him.
P. J. comments that
. . . nature is sometimes said to serve as a 'signpost' to God's existence, without the need for auxiliary premises such as the complexity of things, the orderly patterns of substances as described by the laws of nature, the intelligibility of the world, and so on and on. It is almost as if — at least for Br. Lawrence — nature, just by being there, served to point toward God in a primitive or non-inferential way. Nature, for him, pointed not simply to God's existence, but to a more positive account of God as the providential orderer of nature.
I admit that I don't know where to take this idea, or how far it can be taken, but it strikes me as an interesting topic to research in natural theology: the way(s) in which nature, without the aid of auxiliary premises, can point to God's existence, and to a more content-rich account of the divine attributes.
I agree that the question is interesting and important. Perhaps we can formulate it as the question whether nature can be taken as a natural sign of the existence of God, and certain features of nature as natural signs of certain of the divine attributes. I will consider here only the first question. Whether nature as a whole can be taken as a natural sign of the existence of God will depend on what we understand by 'natural sign.' Suppose we adopt Laird Addis' definition:
An entity is a natural sign if by its very nature, it represents some other entity or would-be entity, that is , if it is an intrinsically intentional entity. (Natural Signs: A Theory of Intentionality, Temple UP, 1989, p. 29)
I don't doubt that there are intrinsically intentional entities, thoughts (acts of thinking) being an example. Intrinsic intentionality is to be understood by contrast with derived intentionality. The intentionality or aboutness of a map, for example, is derivative, not intrinsic. A map is not about a chunk of terrain just in virtue of the map's intrinsic properties such as physical and geometrical properties. Suppose a neutron bomb wipes out all minded organisms. Maps and chunks of terrain remain. Do the maps in this scenario map anything, mean anything? No. This is because there are no minds to give the maps meaning.
Consider the contour lines on a topographical map. The closer together, the steeper the terrain. But that closer together should mean steeper is a meaning assigned and agreed upon by the community of map-makers and map-users. This meaning is not intrinsic to the map qua physical object. Closer together might have meant anything, e.g., that the likelihood of falling into an abandoned mine shaft is greater. The intentionality of the map and its features (contour lines, colors, etc.) is derivative from the intrinsic intentionality of minds.
So our question becomes this: Could nature be a natural sign in virtue of being intrinsically intentional? I don't think so. Nature can be taken or interpretedor read as pointing to God, but that would be a case of derivative intentionality: we would then be assigning to nature the property of pointing to God. But there is nothing intrinsic to nature that makes it point to God.
But of course one might mean something else by 'natural sign.' Fresh bear scat on a trail is a natural sign that a bear has been by recently. A natural sign in this sense is a bit of the natural world, or a modification of the natural world, that typically has a natural cause and that by its presence 'refers' us to this cause. The scat is the scat of a bear, but this 'of' is not the 'of' of intentionality. Similarly with the tracks of a mountain lion. They are typically caused by a mountain lion but they are not about a mountain lion.
Note the difference between the subjective and the objective genitive. The tracks of a mountain lion are a mountain lion's tracks (genitivus subjectivus) whereas the hiker's fear of a mountain lion is not a mountain lion's fear but the hiker's fear (genitivus objectivus). Both genitives can occur in one and the same sentence. My favorite example: Timor domini initium sapientiae. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. A second example: Obsidis metus mortis magnus est. The fear of death of the hostage is great. The hostage is the subject of fear; death the object. Analysis of this example in German here.
But I digress.
Could the natural world point to God in the way mountain lion tracks point to a mountain lion? Yes, if the natural world is the effect of a divine cause. But how do we know this? One cannot tell that the natural world is a created world just by observing it. Even if it is created, its createdness cannot be 'read off' from it. It can only be 'read into' it.
Now let me try to answer my reader's question. I take him to be asking the following question:
Q. Does the the natural world, by its sheer existence, directly show (i.e., show without the aid of auxiliary premises), that there exists a transcendent creator of the natural world?
If (Q) is the question, my answer is in the negative. This is invalid: the universe exists; ergo, God exists. This is valid: the universe exists; the universe is contingent; whatever contingently exists cannot exist as a matter of brute fact but must have a cause of its existence; nothing can cause its own existence; ergo, God as transcendent causa prima exists. Whether the second is a sound argument and how one would know it to be sound are of course further questions; it is, however, a valid argument.
But we had to bring in auxiliary premises. And similarly for this question:
Q*. Does the apparent designedness of the natural order directly show the existence of a transcendent designer?
And this one:
Q**. Does the beauty of "The starry skies above me" (Kant) directly show that this beauty has a transcendent Source which "all men call God" (Aquinas)?
I was going through some of your posts from earlier this month (Belief, Designation, and Substitution, January 10, 2017) and was interested in seeing your comment that "[l]inguistic reference is built upon, and nothing without, thinking reference, or intentionality."
. . . I have to say that your above sentence was the first time I've heard anyone articulate what you have articulated in such a direct manner. It's something that certainly makes the most sense to me in terms of thinking about some of the broad discussion points in the field, but I'm surprised, actually, that no one I've come across has articulated this, and I'm curious whether that lacuna has to do with the analytic tradition's anti-metaphysical tendencies (of a more robust type of metaphysics, in any event): if one moves the object of analysis from questions about how language refers to how the mind refers, perhaps it gets one into hoary metaphysical waters that people back in the day would rather have left alone. Is this actually the case or am I missing something or is the whole thing simply too obvious for most people to bother mentioning?
It is actually an old debate within analytic philosophy. I would refer you to the 1957 Roderick Chisholm-Wilfrid Sellars correspondence although the debate antedates their discussion. Your note warrants the reposting of an old entry from six years ago. This is a redacted and expanded version.
Note to the Astute Opponent: Can you come up with a powerful counterargument to the primacy of the intentional? I'd like to test whether there is perhaps an aporia here.
The Primacy of the Intentional Over the Linguistic
Following Chisholm, et al. and as against Sellars, et al. I subscribe to the broadly logical primacy of the intentional over the linguistic.
But before we can discuss the primacy of the intentional, we must have some idea of (i) what intentionality is and (ii) what the problem of intentionality is. Very simply, (mental) intentionality is object-directedness, a feature of some (if not all) of our mental states. (The qualifier 'mental' leaves open the epistemic possibility of what George Molnar calls physical intentionality which transpires, if it does transpire, below the level of mind. I take no position on it at the moment. Dispositionality would count as physical intentionality.)
Suppose a neighbor asks me about Max Black, a stray cat of our mutual acquaintance, who we haven't seen in a few weeks. The asking occasions in me a thought of Max, with or without accompanying imagery. The problem of intentionality is to provide an adequate account of what it is for my thought of Max to be a thought of Max, and of nothing else. Simply put, what makes my thought of Max a thought of Max? How is object-directedness (intentionality, the objective reference of episodes of thinking) possible? How does it work? How does the mental act of thinking 'grab onto' a thing whose existence does not depend on my or anyone's thinking?
Why should there be a problem about this? Well, an episode of thinking is a datable event in my mental life. But a cat is not. First of all, no cat is an event. Second, no cat is a content of consciousness. It's an object of consciousness but not a content of consciousness. Cats ain't in the head or in the mind. Obviously, no cat is spatially inside my skull, or spatially inside my nonspatial mind, and it is only a little less obvious that no cat depends for its existence on my mind: it's nothing to Max, ontologically speaking, if me and my mind cease to exist. He needs for his existence my thinking of him as little as my thinking needs to be about him. We are external to each other. Cats are physical things out in the physical world. And yet my thinking of Max 'reaches' beyond my mind and targets — not some cat or other, but a particular cat. How is this possible? What must our ontology include for it to be possible?
To get the full flavor of the problem, please observe that my thinking of Max would be unaffected if Max were, unbeknownst to me, to pass out of existence while I was thinking of him. (He's out on the prowl and a hungry coyote kills him while I am thinking of him.) It would be the very same thought with the very same content and the very same directedness. But if Max were to cease to exist while a flea was biting him, then the relation of biting would cease to obtain. So if the obtaining of a relation requires the existence of all its relata, it follows that intentionality is not a relation between a thinker (or his thought) and an external object. But if intentionality is not a relation, then how are we to account for the fact that intentional states refer beyond themselves to objects that are (typically) transcendent of the mind?
How is it that the act of thinking and its content 'in the mind' hooks onto the thing 'in the world' and in such a way that true judgments can be made about the thing, judgments that articulate the nature and existence of thing as it is in itself apart from any (finite) thinking directed upon it?
Now it seems to me that any viable solution must respect the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic. This thesis consists of the following subtheses:
A. Words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs and the like, considered in their physical being as marks on paper or sounds in the air or carvings in stone (etc.) are entirely lacking in any intrinsic referential, representative, semantic, or intentional character. There is nothing in the nature of the mark 'red' that makes it mean red. After all, it doesn't mean red to a speaker of German. It doesn't mean anything to a speaker of German qua speaker of German. In German 'rot' means red while in English the same sign is in use but has a different meaning. Clearly, then, marks on paper, pixels on screen, etc. have no intrinsic sense or reference grounded in their very nature. It is a matter of conventional that they mean what they mean. And that brings minds into the picture.
B. So any sense or reference linguistic signs have must be derivative and relational as opposed to intrinsic: whatever intentionality they have they get from minds that are intrinsically intentional. Mind is the source of all intelligibility. Linguistic signs in and of themselves as mere marks and sounds (etc.) are unintelligible.
C. There can be mind without language, but no language without mind. Laird Addis puts it like this:
Conscious states can and do occur in beings with no language, and in us with no apparent connection to the fact that we are beings with language. Thus we may say that "mind explains language" in a logical or philosophical sense: that while it is perfectly intelligible to suppose the existence of beings who have no language but have much the same kinds of conscious states that we have, including introspections of other conscious states, it is unintelligible to suppose the existence of beings who are using language in all of its representative functions and who are also lacking in conscious states. The very notion of language as a representational system presupposes the notion of mind, but not vice versa. (Natural Signs: A Theory of Intentionality, Temple University Press, 1989, pp. 64-65)
These considerations strike me as decisive. Or are there counter-considerations that 'cancel them out'?
The influential Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano took intentionality to be the mark of the mental, the criterion whereby physical and mental phenomena are distinguished. For Brentano, (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental, and (iii) no mental phenomenon is physical. (Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874), Bk. II, Ch. 1.)
What is intentionality? ‘Intentionality’ is Brentano's term of art (borrowed from the Medievals) for that property of mental states whereby they are (non-derivatively) of, or about, or directed to, an object. Such states are intrinsically such that they 'take an accusative.' The state of perceiving, for example is necessarily object-directed. One cannot just perceive; if one perceives, then one perceives something. The idea is not merely that when one perceives one perceives something or other; the idea is that when one perceives, one perceives some specific object, the very object of that very act. The same goes for intending (in the narrow sense), believing, imagining, recollecting, wishing, willing, desiring, loving, hating, judging, knowing, etc. Such mental states refer beyond themselves to objects that may or may not exist, or may or may not be true in the case of propositional objects. Reference to an object is thus an intrinsic feature of mental states and not a feature they have in virtue of a relation to an existing object. This is why Brentano speaks of the "intentional in-existence of an object." It is also why Husserl can 'bracket' the existence of the object for phenomenological purposes. Intentionality is not a relation, strictly speaking, though it is relation-like. This is an important point that many contemporaries seem incapable of wrapping their heads around.
There are some interesting points of analogy between intentionality and potentiality. An intentional state exhibits
a. directedness to an object b. an object that may or may nor exist c. an object that may be, and typically is, indeterminate or incomplete.
For example, right now I am gazing out my study window at Superstition Mountain. The gazing is an intentional state: it is of or about something, a definite something. It takes an accusative, and does so necessarily. The accusative or intentional object in question presumably exists. But the intentional object is what it is whether or not it exists. The phenomenological description of object and act remains the same whether or not the object exists. Moreover, the object as presented in the act of gazing is incomplete: there are properties such that the intentional object neither has them nor their complements. Thus, to a quick glance, what is given in the intentional experience is 'a purplish mountain.' Just that. Now anything purple or purplish is colored, and anything colored is extended; but being colored and being extended are not properties of the intentional object. No doubt they are properties of the mountain itself in reality; but they are not properties of the precise intentional object of my gazing, which has all and only the properties it is seen to have. Furthermore, in reality, yonder mountain is either such that someone is climbing on it or not; but the intentional object of my momentary gazing is indeterminate with respect to the property of being climbed on by someone.
The potentiality inherent in a thing exhibits
a*. something analogous to intentional directedness: a potentiality is a potentiality for something, or to something. For example, a human embryo has the potentiality to develop, in the normal course of events, into a human neonate. But a human sperm cell lacks this potentiality. It has a different potentiality: it can combine with a human egg cell to form a zygote. A thing cannot just have a potentiality: every potentiality is a potentiality for something or to something. This something is not merely a something or other, but a definite something, analogously as in the case of intentional directedness.
b*. something analogous to the feature of an intentional experience whereby, from the occurrence of the intentional experience, one cannot infer the existence of its intentional object. Just as the intentional object may or may not exist without prejudice to its being an intentional object, a potentiality may or may not be realized. The embryo's potentiality to develop into a neonate may go unrealized — and this without prejudice to the potentiality's being something quite definite and quite real.
c*. something analogous to the incompleteness of intentional objects. To revert to a hackneyed example, an acorn has the potentiality to become an oak tree. But this is not to say that there is some perfectly determinate (definite) oak tree that an acorn has the potentiality to become, a 50 foot oak tree the diameter of whose trunk is two feet, etc.
The same points can be made about dispositions. If a piece of glass is fragile, then it is disposed to shatter if suitably struck. There cannot be a disposition that is not a disposition to do something, to shatter, or explode, or melt. Second, the reality of a disposition is independent of its manifestation: a fragile piece of glass is fragile whether or not it ever breaks. From the fact that x is disposed to F one cannot infer that x ever Fs. This parallels a feature of intentionality: from the fact that x is thinking about Fs one cannot infer that there exist Fs that x is thinking about. (If I am thinking about unicorns it does not follow that there exist unicorns I am thinking about; if I want a sloop it doesn't follow that there is a sloop I want; if Ernest is hunting lions it doesn't follow that there are any lions he is hunting.)
Third, although a manifested disposition is a fully determinate state of affairs, this complete determinateness is not present in the disposition qua disposition. The disposition to shatter if suitably struck is not the disposition to shatter into ten pieces if suitably struck, although it is of course the disposition to shatter into some number or other of pieces, the exact number being left indeterminate.
Now here is a tough question: are dispositionality and intentionality merely analogous, or can we take it a step further and say that utimately there is no difference between dispositionality and intentionality? If that case could be made, then Brentano would be shown to be wrong in his claim that intentionality is the mark of the mental. For if the three characteristics of intentionality mentioned above are found below the level of mind in the physical world, then it looks as if intentionality cannot be the mark of the mental. Or should we stay instead that, since intentionality is the mark of the mental, and intentionality is found in nature below the level of mind, that there is something mind-like about all of nature?
Ed Buckner raises this question, and he wants my help with it. How can I refuse? I'll say a little now, and perhaps more later.
Kant was brought up a rationalist within the Wolffian school, but then along came David Hume who awoke him from his dogmatic slumber. This awakening begins his Critical period in which he struggles mightily to find a via media between rationalism and empiricism. The result of his struggle, the Critical philosophy, is of great historical significance but is also an unstable tissue of irresolvable tensions. As a result there are competing interpretations of his doctrines.
I will propose two readings relevant to Ed's question. But first a reformulation and exfoliation of the question.
Can one think about God and meaningfully predicate properties of him? For example, can one meaningfully say of God that he exists, is omnipotent, and is the cause of the existence of the natural world? Or is it rather the case that such assertions are meaningless and that the category of causality, for example, has a meaningful application only within the realm of phenomena but not between the phenomenal realm as a whole and a putative transcendent causa prima? Are the bounds of sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) also the bounds of sense (Sinn), or are there senseful, meaningful assertions that transgress the bounds of sensibility?
Weak or Moderate Reading. On this reading, we can think about God and meaningfully make predications of him, but we cannot have any knowledge of God and his attributes. We cannot have knowledge of God because knowledge necessarily involves the interplay of two very different factors, conceptual interpretation via the categories of the understanding, and sensory givenness. God, however, is not given to the senses, outer or inner. In Kantian jargon, there is no intuition, keine Anschauung, of God. All intuition is sensible intuition. The Sage of Koenigsberg will not countenance any mystical intuition, any Platonic or Plotinian visio intellectualis, at least not in this life. That sort of thing he dismisses in the Enlightenment manner as Schwaermerei, 'enthusiasm' in an obsolete 18th century sense of the English term.
But while Kant denies that there is knowledge of God here below whether by pure reason or by mystical intuition, he aims to secure a 'safe space' for faith: "I have found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith." (Preface to 2nd ed. of Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1787, B xxx.) Now if God and the soul are objects of faith, this would imply that we can think of them and thus refer to them even if we cannot have knowledge of them.
The soul is the object of the branch of metaphysica specialis called rational psychology. Since all our intuition is sensible, there is no sensible intuition of the soul. As is well-known, Kant denies that special metaphysics in all three branches (psychology, cosmology, and theology) is possible as science, als Wissenschaft. To be science it would have to include synthetic a priori judgments, but these are possible only with respect to phenomena.
Kant's key question is: How are synthetic a priori judgments possible? He believes they are actual in mathematics and physics, and would have to be actual in metaphysics if the latter were a science. To put it quick and dirty: synthetic a priori judgments are possible in math and physics because the phenomenal world is our construction. The dignity and necessity of the synthetic causal principle — every event has a cause — is rescued from the jaws of Humean skepticism, but the price is high: the only world we can know is the world of phenomena. Things in themselves (noumena in the negative sense) are beyond our ken. And yet we must posit them since the appearances are appearances of something (obj. gen.). This restriction of human knowledge to the physical rules out any knowledge of the metaphysical.
On the moderate reading, then, Kant restricts the cognitive employment of the categories of the understanding to phenomena but not their thinking employment. We can think about and refer to the positive noumena, God, the soul, and the world as a whole, but we cannot have any knowledge of them. (And the same goes for the negative noumena that correspond to sensible appearances.) We can talk sense about God and the soul, and predicate properties of these entities, but we cannot come to have knowledge of them. Thus we can meaningfully speak of the soul as a simple substance which remains numerically self-same over time and through its changing states, but we cannot know that it has these properties.
The arguments against the traditional soul substance of the rationalists are in the Paralogisms section of KdrV, and they are extremely interesting.
Strong or Extreme Reading. On this reading, we cannot talk sense about positive or negative noumena: such categories as substance and causality cannot be meaningfully applied beyond the bounds of sensibility. Riffing on P. F. Strawson one could say that on the strong reading the bounds of sensibility are the bounds of sense. This reading wins the day in post-Kantian philosophy. Fichte liquidates the Ding an sich, the neo-Kantians reduce the transcendental ego to a mere concept (Rickert, e.g.), the categories which for Kant were ahistorical and fixed become historicized and relativized, and we end up with a conceptual relativism which fuels a lot of the nonsense of the present day, e.g., race and sex are social constructs, etc.
How's that for bloggity-blog quick and dirty?
So my answer to Ed Buckner's title question is: It depends. It depends on whether we read Kant in the weak way or in the strong way.
Aquinas says that any given nature can be considered in three ways: in respect of the esse it has in concrete singulars; in respect of the esse it has in minds; absolutely, in the abstract, without reference to either material singulars or minds, and thus without reference to either mode of esse. The two modes are esse naturale (esse reale) and esse intentionale. We can speak of these in English as real existence (being) and intentional existence (being). Real existence is existence 'outside' the (finite) mind. Intentional existence is existence 'in' or 'before' the mind. The mentioned words are obviously not to be taken spatially. Esse is the Latin infinitive, to be. Every human mind is a finite mind, but don't assume the converse.
According to Schopenhauer, the medievals employed but three examples: Socrates, Plato, and an ass. Who am I to deviate from a tradition at once so hoary and noble? So take Socrates. Socrates is human. The nature humanity exists really in him, and in Plato, but not in the ass. The same nature exists intentionally in a mind that thinks about or knows Socrates. For Aquinas, there are no epistemic deputies standing between mind and thing: thought reaches right up to and grasps the thing itself. There is an isomorphism between knowing mind and thing known. The ground of this isomorphism is the natura absoluta, the nature considered absolutely. Call it the common nature (CN). It is so-called because it is common to both the knower and the known, informing both, albeit in different ways. It is also common to all the singulars of the same nature and all the thoughts directed to the same sort of thing. So caninity is common to all doggy thoughts, to all dogs, besides linking the doggy thoughts to the dogs.
Pause to appreciate how attractive this conception is. It secures the intrinsic intelligibility of the world while avoiding the 'gap problem' that bedevils post-Cartesian thought.
I need to know more, however, about the exact ontological status of the common nature (CN) which is, as it were, amphibious as between knowing mind and thing known.
With the help of Anthony Kenny, I realized that there are four possible views, not three as I stated in earlier forays:
A. The CN really exists as a separate, self-subsistent item.
B. The CN exists only intentionally in the mind of one who abstracts it from concrete extramental singulars and mental acts. (Note: a mental act is a concrete singular because in time, though not in space.)
C. The CN has Meinongian Aussersein status: it has no mode of being whatsoever, and yet is is something, not nothing. It actually has properties, it does not merely possibly have them, but is property-incomplete (and therefore in violation of the Law of Excluded Middle) in that it is neither one nor many, neither universal nor particular, neither intentionally existent nor really existent.
D. The CN exists intentionally in the mind of God, the creator.
(A) is a nonstarter and is rejected by both me and Lukas Novak. (B) appears to be Novak's view. (C) is the interpretation I was tentatively suggesting in earlier entries.. My thesis was that the CN must have Aussersein status, but then it inherits — to put it anachronistically — all the problems of Meinongianism. The doctor angelicus ends up in the jungle with a Meinongian monkey on his back.
Let me now try to explain why I reject (B), Novak's view, and incline toward (C), given that (A) cannot possibly be what Aquinas had in mind.
Consider a time t before there were any human animals and any finite minds, and ask yourself: did the nature humanity exist at t? The answer has to be in the negative if there are only two modes of existence, real existence in concrete extramental singulars and intentional existence in finite (creaturely) minds. For at t there were no humans and no finite minds. But surely it is true at t that man is rational, that humanity includes rationality. This implies that humanity at t cannot be just nothing at all. For if it were nothing at all at t, then 'Man is rational'' at t would lack a truth-maker. Furthermore, we surely don't want to say that 'Man is rational' first becomes true when the first human being exists. In some sense, the common nature must be prior to its existential realization in concrete singulars and in minds. The common nature cannot depend on these modes of realization. Kenny quotes Aquinas (Aquinas on Being, Oxford 2002, p. 73):
Socrates is rational, because man is rational, and not vice versa; so that even if Socrates and Plato did not exist, rationality would still be a characteristic of human nature.
Socrates est rationalis, quia homo est rationalis, et non e converso; unde dato quod Socrates et Plato non essent, adhuc humanae naturae rationalitas competeret. (Quodl. VIII, I, c, 108-110)
Aquinas' point could be put like this. (i) At times and in possible worlds in which humans do not exist, it is nevertheless the case that rationality is included in humanity, and (ii) the metaphysical ground of humans' being rational is the circumstance that rationality is included in humanity, and not vice versa.
Now this obviously implies that the common nature humanity has some sort of status independent of real and intentional existence. So we either go the Meinongian route or we say that comon natures exist in the mind of God. Kenny:
Aquinas' solution is to invoke the divine mind. There are really four, not three ways of considering natures: first, as they are in the mind of the creator; second, as they are in the abstract; third, as they are in individuals; and finally, as they are in the human mind. (p. 74)
This may seem to solve the problem I raised. Common natures are not nothing because they are divine accusatives. And they are not nothing in virtue of being ausserseiend. This solution avoids the three options of Platonism, subjectivism (according to which CNs exist only as products of abstraction), and Meinongianism.
The problem with the solution is that it smacks of deus ex machina: God is brought in to solve the problem similarly as Descartes had recourse to the divine veracity to solve the problem of the external world. Solutions to the problems of universals, predication, and intentionality ought to be possible without bringing God into the picture.
Ulysses had himself bound to the mast and the ears of his sailors plugged with wax lest the ravishing strains of the sea nymphs' song reach their ears and cause them to cast themselves into the sea and into their doom. But what song did the Sirens sing, and in what key? And what about the nymphs themselves? Were their tresses of golden hue? And how long were they? Were the nymphs equipped with special nautical brassieres to protect their tender nipples from rude contact with jelly fish and such?
One cannot sing a song without singing some definite song in some definite key commencing at some definite time and ending at some definite later time.
But you understand the story of Ulysses and the Sirens and you are now thinking about the song they sang. And you are thinking about the nymphs and their ravishing endowments. But what sorts of objects are these? Incomplete objects. Are there then in reality incomplete objects?
I was purchasing shotgun ammo at a gun store a while back. The proprietor brought out a box of double-aught buckshot shells which he recommended as having "the power to separate the soul from the body." The proprietor was a 'good old boy,' not someone with whom a wise man initiates a philosophical discussion. But his colorful phraseology got me thinking.
The words 'soul' and 'spirit' carry a cargo of both religious and substance-dualist connotations. And that is the way I will use them. The soul is that in us which thinks in the broad Cartesian sense of 'think.' it is the subject of consciousness and self-consciousness and moral sense (conscience). It is the thinker of our thoughts and the agent of our actions. It is the ultimate reference of the first person singular pronoun 'I' in its indexical use. But I must add that the soul is these things construed as capable of independent existence, as having not only an immaterial nature, but also an immaterial nature capable of existing on its own apart from these gross physical bodies with which we are all too familiar. So 'soul' is a theoretical term; it is not datanic or theory-neutral. 'Consciousness,' by contrast, is theory neutral. If you deny that there are souls, you will be forgiven, and you may even be right. If you deny that there is consciousness, however, then you are either a sophist, a lunatic, or an eliminativist, which is to say, a lunatic. Sophists and lunatics are not to be debated; they are to be 'shown the door.'
A substance, among other things, is an entity metaphysically capable of independent existence. The soul is a substance. It does not require some other thing in which to exist. (Nulla res indiget ad existendum.) So it is capable of independent existence. We encounter it as 'attached' to the body, but it can 'separate' from the body. The question is what these words mean in this context. The problem is to ascribe some coherent sense to them. What is the nature of this strange attachment?
1. Only physical things can be physically separated and physically attached. (The toenail from the toe; the stamp to the envelope; the spark plug from the cylinder; the yolk from the white, etc.) The soul is not a physical thing; ergo, souls cannot be physically separated from or attached to anything. So in this context we are not to take 'separation' and 'attachment' in any physical or material sense, whether gross or subtle. So don't think of ghosts or spooks floating out of gross bodies. Spook-stuff is still stuff, while what we are talking about now is not 'stuffy' at all.
2. It follows from this that every physical model is inadequate and just as, or more, misleading than helpful. The soul is not like the pilot in the ship, the man in his house, the oyster in the shell, the prisoner in his cell. These analogies may capture certain aspects of the soul-body relation, but they occlude others so that on balance they are of little use. But they are of some use. The morally sensitive, for example, experience a tension between their higher nature and their animal inclinations. There is more to the moral life than a struggle against the lusts of the flesh, but that is part of it. Thus the resonance of the Socratic image of the body as the prison-house of the soul.
3. The soul-body relation cannot literally be an instance of a physical relation, nor could it be an instance of a logical or mathematical or mereological or set-theoretical relation. We can lump these last four together under the rubric 'abstract relations.' Presumably the soul-body relation is sui generis. It's its own thing. Just as it would be absurd to say that entailment is an instance of a physical relation, it is absurd to suppose that soul-body is an instance of a physical or a logico-mathematical relation. The soul is neither a physical entity nor an abstract entity.
4. It seems to follow that if the the soul-body relation is sui generis, then there can be no model for it borrowed from some more familiar realm. The relation can only be understood in 'soulic,' or as I will say, spiritual terms. It can only be understood in its own terms. So let's consider mental or spiritual attachment. I am attached to my cat in the sense that, were he to die, I would grieve. Clearly, this is not a physical relation. Whether he is on my lap or far away, the attachment is the same. Spiritual attachment is consistent with physical separation. And spiritual non-attachment (spiritual separation) is consistent with physical proximity and indeed contact.
We allow ourselves to become attached to all sorts of things, people, and ideas, especially our own ideas. Attachments wax and wane. Many are foolish and even delusional. We become attached to what cannot last as if it will last forever. We become attached to what has no value. We have trouble apportioning our degree of attachment to the reality and value of attachment's object. As has been appreciated in many religions and wisdom traditions, much of our misery arises from desire and attachment to the objects of desire. For Pali Buddhism it is desire as such that is the problem; on more moderate views inordinate and misdirected desire. We are also capable of non-attachment or detachment, and this has been recommended in different ways and to different degrees by the religions and the wisdom traditions. There can be no doubt that non-attachment is a major component in wisdom.
5. None of this attaching and detaching would be possible without intentionality. The spiritual self, by virtue of its intentionality, flees itself and loses itself among the objects of its attachment. Chief among these is the mundane self: the body, the personality, their pasts, and the myriad of objects that one takes to be one's own. My car, my house, my wife, my children, my brilliant insights . . . . And now I come to my speculation. The soul attaches itself to this body here in a manner similar to the way it attaches itself to everything else to which it attaches itself. So attaching itself, my soul makes this body here my body. I come to 'inhabit' this body here, thereby making it my body, by my having chosen this body as the material locus of my subjectivity, as the vehicle of my trajectory through space-time. But when" Where? How? I chose this fall into time?
I am telling a Platonic story. I am penning yet another footnote to Plato. Who can believe it? Well, consider the alternatives! You are not your body and yet you are attached to it. What is your theory as to the nature of this attachment? I know what you will say. And I will have no trouble poking holes in it.
I am happy to see that Ed is back to blogging. It have reproduced his latest entry and added some comments.
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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.
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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?
Suppose I point out a certain tree in the distance to Dale and remark upon its strange shape. I say, "That tree has a strange shape." Dale responds, "That's not a tree; that's a scarecrow!" Suppose we are looking at the same thing, a physical thing that exists in the external world independently of us. But what I take to be a tree, Dale takes to be a scarecrow. Suppose further that the thing in the external world, whatever it is, is the salient cause of our having our respective visual experiences. Are we referring to the same thing? The cause of the visual experiences is the same, but are the referents of our demonstrative phrases the same? Could we say that the referents are the same because the cause is the same?
If this makes sense, then perhaps we can apply it to the 'same God?' problem.
'Same cause, same referent' implies that the cause of my tokening of 'That tree' is its referent. It implies that we can account for successful reference in terms of physical causation. The idea is that what makes my use of 'that tree' successfully refer to an existing tree, this particular tree, and not to anything else is the tree's causing of my use of the phrase, and if not the tree itself, then some physical events involving the tree.
But the notion of salience causes trouble for this causal account of reference. What make a causal factor salient? What makes it jump out from all the other causal factors to assume the status of 'the cause'? (Salire, Latin, to jump.) After all, there are many causal factors involved in any instance of causation. Can we account for reference causally without surreptitiously presupposing irreducibly intentional and referential notions? Successful reference picks out its object from others. It gets to an existing object, and to the right object. Causation might not be up to this task. I shall argue that it is not.
We often in ordinary English speak of 'the cause' of some event, a myocardial infarction say, even though there are many contributing factors: bad diet, lack of exercise, hypertension, cigarette smoking, high stress job, an episode of snow-shoveling. Which of these will be adjudged 'the cause' is context- and interest-relative. A physician who gets a kick-back from a pharmaceutical concern will point to hypertension, perhaps, so that he can prescribe anangiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor, while the man's wife might say that it was the snow shoveling that did him in. A liberal might say that the heart attack was caused by smoking.
Or suppose a short-circuit is cited as 'the cause' of a fire. In terms of fundamental physics, the whole state of the world at time determines its state at subsequent times. At this level, a short-circuit and the power's being on are equally causal in respect of a fire. Our saying that the short-circuit caused the fire, not the power's being on, simply advertises the fact that for us the latter is the normal and desired state of things, the state we have an interest in maintaining, and that the former is the opposite. Desire and interest are of course intentional notions: to desire is to desire something; to be interested is to be interested in something.
What these examples show is that there is an ordinary-language use of 'cause' which is context-sensitive and interest-relative. The ordinary notion of cause, then, resting as it does on our interests and desires, presupposes intentional notions. I cannot be interested in or desire something unless I am conscious of it. And I cannot adjudge one state of affairs as normal and the other as abnormal unless I have interests and desires.
In the case of my tokening of 'that tree,' what justifies us in saying that it is the tree that causes the tokening as opposed the total set of causal conditions including sunlight, my corrective lenses, my not having ingested LSD, the absence of smoke and fog, the proper functioning of my visual cortex, etc.? How is it that we select the tree as 'the cause'? And what about this selecting? It cannot be accounted for in terms of physical causation. The tree does not select itself as salient cause. We select it. But then selecting is an intentional performance. So intentionality, which underpins both mental and linguistic reference, comes back in through the back door.
The upshot is that an account of successful reference in terms of causation is viciously circular. What makes 'that tree' as tokened by me here and now refer to the tree in front of me? It cannot be the total cause of the tokening which includes all sorts of causal factors other than tree such as light and the absence of fog. It must be the salient cause. To select this salient cause from the among the various casual factors is to engage in an intentional performance. So reference presupposes intentionality and cannot be accounted for in non-intentional, purely causal, terms. Otherwise you move in an explanatory cricle of embarrassingly short diameter.
The point could be put as follows: I must already (logically speaking) have achieved reference to the tree in a noncausal way if I am then to single out the tree as the physical cause of my successful mental and linguistic reference.
Of course, I am not denying that various material and causal factors underpin mental and linguistic reference. What I am maintaining is that these factors are useless when it comes to providing a noncircular account of reference.
Now if causation cannot account for reference, then it cannot account for sameness of reference.
Dale and I are both in perceptual states. These two perceptual states have a common cause. But this common cause cannot be what makes one of our references successful and the other unsuccessful.
Christ and Allah
The above questions are analogs of the 'Same God?' question. Suppose a Christian and a Muslim each has a mystical or religious experience of the same type, that of the Inner Locution. Each cries out in prayer and each 'hears' the inner locution, "I am with you," and a deep peace descends upon him. Each is thankful and expresses his thanks. Suppose God exists and is the source of both of these locutions. But while the Christian may interpret the source of his experience in Trinitarian terms, the Muslim will not. Suppose the Christian takes the One who is answering to be a Person of the Trinity, Christ, while the Muslim takes it to be Allah who is answering. In expressing his thankfulness, the Christian prayerfully addresses Christ while the Muslim prayerfully addresses Allah.
Are Christian and Muslim referring to one and the same divine being? Yes, if the referent is the source/cause of the inner locutions. But this common cause does not select as between Christ and Allah, and so the common cause does not suffice to establish that Christian and Muslim are referring to one and the same divine being.
So far, Ed Feser's is perhaps the best of the Internet discussions of this hot-button question, a question recently re-ignited by the Wheaton dust-up, to mix some metaphors. Herewith, some notes on Feser's long entry. I am not nearly as philosophically self-confident as Ed or Lydia McGrew, so I will mainly just be trying to understand the issue for my own edification. But I am sure of one thing: the question is difficult and has no easy solution. If you think it does, then I humbly suggest you are not thinking very hard, indeed, you are hardly thinking.
1. Feser rightly points out that a difference in (Fregean) sense does not entail a difference in (Fregean) reference. So the difference in sense as between 'God of the Christians' and 'God of the Muslims' does not entail that these expressions differ in reference. Quite so. But I would add that on a descriptivist semantics reference is routed through, and determined by, sense: an expression picks out its object in virtue of the latter's unique satisfaction of an identifying description associated with the referring expression, a description that unpacks the expression's sense. If we think of reference in this way, then 'God' refers to whichever entity, if any, that satisfies the definite description encapsulated in 'God' as this term is used in a given linguistic community. So while difference in sense does not by itself entail difference in reference, difference in sense is consistent with difference in reference, so that in a particular case it may be that the difference in sense is sufficiently great to entail a difference in reference. Suppose that in one linguistic community a person understands by 'God' the unique contingent being who created the universe but was himself created, while in another a person understands by 'God' the unique necessary uncreated being who created the universe. In this case I think it is clear that the difference in sense entails a difference in reference. Both uses of 'God' may fail of reference, or one might succeed. But they cannot both succeed. For nothing can be both necessary and contingent.
From what has been said so far, 'God' (used by a Christian) and 'Allah' (used by a Muslim) may have the same reference or may have a different reference. The issue cannot be decided by merely pointing out that a difference in sense does not entail a difference in reference.
2. Feser makes a point about beliefs that is surely correct. You and I can have conflicting beliefs about a common object of successful reference without prejudice to its being precisely a common object of successful reference. For example, we both see a sharp-dressed man across the room drinking from a Martini glass. Suppose I erroneously believe that he is drinking a Martini while you correctly believe that he is drinking water. That difference in belief is obviously consistent with one and the same man's being our common object of perceptual and linguistic reference. "Similarly, the fact that Muslims have what Christians regard as a number of erroneous beliefs about God does not by itself entail that Muslims and Christians are not referring to the same thing when they use the expression 'God.'" (Emphasis added.)
True, but it could also be that conflicting beliefs make it impossible that there be a common object of successful reference. It will depend on what those beliefs are and whether they are incorporated into the respective senses of 'God' as used by Muslims and Christians. I will also depend on one's theory of reference, whether descriptivist, causal, hybrid, or something else.
It should also be observed that in perceptual cases such as the Martini case there is no question but that we are referentially glomming onto one and the same object. The existence and identity of the sharp-dressed drinker are given to the senses. Since we know by direct sensory acquaintance that it is the same man both of us see, the conflicting beliefs have no tendency to show otherwise. But God is not an object of perception via the outer senses. So one can question how much weight we should assign to the perceptual analogies, and indeed to any analogy that makes mention of a physical thing. At best, these analogies show that, in general, contradictory beliefs about a putatively self-same x are consistent with there being in reality one and the same subject of these beliefs. But they are also consistent with there not being in reality one and the same subject of the contradictory beliefs.
But not only is God not an object of sensory acquaintance, he is also arguably not an object among objects or a being among beings. Suppose God is ipsum esse subsistens as Aquinas held. It will then be serious question whether a theory of reference that caters to ordinary references to intramundane people and things, beings, can be extended to accommodate reference to self-subsistent Being. Not clear! But I raise this hairy issue only to set it aside for the space of this entry. I will assume for now that God is a being among beings. I bring this issue up only to get people to appreciate how difficult and involved this 'same God?' issue is. Do not comment on this paragraph; it is off-topic for present purposes. See here for one of the posts in which I disagree with Dale Tuggy on this issue.
3. Now consider these conflicting beliefs: God is triune; God is not triune. Please note that it would be question-begging to announce that the fact of this dispute entails that the object of the dispute is one and the same. For that is exactly what is at issue. The following would be a question-begging little speech:
Look man, we are disputing whether God is triune or not triune; we are therefore presupposing that there is one and the same thing, God, about whose properties we are disputing! The disagreement entails sameness of object! Same God!
This is question-begging because it may be that the tokens of 'God' in "God is triune; God is not triune" differ in sense so radically that they also differ in reference. In other words, the mere fact that one and the same word-type 'God' is tokened twice does not show that there is one and the same object about whose properties we are disputing.
4. Feser writes,
Even errors concerning God’s Trinitarian nature are not per se sufficient to prevent successful reference. Abraham and Moses were not Trinitarians, but no Christian can deny that they referred to, and worshiped, the same God Christians do.
[. . .]
But shouldn’t a Christian hold that some reference to the Trinity or to the divinity of Jesus is also at least necessary, even if not sufficient, for successful reference to the true God? Doesn’t that follow from the fact that being Trinitarian is, from a Christian point of view, also essential to God? No, that doesn’t follow at all, and any Christian who says otherwise will, if he stops and thinks carefully about it, see that he doesn’t really believe that it follows. Again, Christians don’t deny that Abraham and Moses, or modern Jews, or Arians and other heretics, refer to and worship the same God as orthodox Christians, despite the fact that these people do not affirm the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus.
There is a modal fudge across these two passages that I don't think it is mere pedantry on my part to point out. In the first passage Feser claims in effect that
A. No Christian CAN deny that Abraham and Moses worshiped the same God that Christians do
while in the second Feser claims in effect that
B. No Christian DOES deny that Abraham and Moses worshiped the same God that Christians do.
If we charitably substitute 'hardly any' for 'no' in (B) then we get a statement that I am willing to concede is true. (A), however, strikes me as false. I myself am strongly tempted to deny that Jews and Christians worship the same God — assuming that the Jewish God is non-triune and explicitly determined to be such by Jews – and what I am strongly tempted to do strikes me as entirely possible and rationally justifiable. Why can't someone reasonably deny that Jews and Christians worship the same God?
Feser thinks he has cited some incontrovertible fact that decides the issue, the fact being that everyone or almost everyone claims that Jews and Christians worship the same God. I concede the fact. What I don't concede is that it decides the issue. My claim against Feser on the present occasion is not that he is wrong to maintain that (normative) Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God, but that he is not obviously right, his confident asseverations in the passages lately quoted notwithstanding. I am saying to Feser what I said to Beckwith and Tuggy: you gentlemen think this issue easily resolved. But it isn't, in large part because its resolution depends on the solution of hitherto unsolved problems in the philosophy of language.
Here are two questions we ought to distinguish:
Q1. Do Christians use 'God' and equivalents with the intention of referring to the same being that Jews refer to or think they are referring to with 'God' and equivalents?
Q2. Do Christians and Jews succeed in refer to the same being?
An affirmative answer to the first question is consistent with a negative answer to the second question. I agree with an affirmative answer to (Q1). But this affirmative answer does not entail an affirmative answer to (Q2). Moreover, it is reasonable to return a negative answer to (Q2). I will now try to explain how it is reasonable to answer (Q2) in the negative.
5. The crux of the matter is the nature of reference. How exactly is successful reference achieved? And what exactly is reference? And how is worship related to reference?
First off,the causal theory of Kripke, Donnellan, et al. is reasonably rejected and I reject it . It is rife with difficulties. (See e.g., John Searle, Intentionality, Cambridge UP, 1983, ch. 9) Connected with this is my subscription to the broadly logical primacy of the intentional over the linguistic. Part of what this means is that words don't refer, people refer using words, and they don't need to use words to refer. All reference, at bottom, is thinking reference or mental reference. Reference at bottom is intentionality. To refer to something, then, whether with words or without words, is to intend it or think of it. This is to be understood as implying that words, phrases, and the like, considered in their physical being as marks on paper or sounds in the air or carvings in stone (etc.) are entirely lacking in any intrinsic referential, representative, semantic, or intentional character. They are not intrinsically object-directed. There is no object-directedness in nature apart from mind. (Though it may be that dispositionality is an analog of it. See here.) This is equivalent to saying that there is no objective reference without mind. A word acquires reference only when it is thoughtfully used.
Reference to particulars in the sense of 'refer' just explained is always and indeed necessarily reference to propertied particulars. This is because reference to a particular 'picks it out' from all else, singles it out, designates it to the exclusion of everything else. Particulars taken in abstraction from their properties cannot be singled out to the exclusion of all else. To think of a thing or person is to think of it as an instance of certain properties and indeed in such a way as to distinguish it from all else. So, to think of, and thus refer to, a particular is to think of it as an instance of a set of properties that jointly individuate it.
To refer to God, then, is to think of God as an instance of certain properties. I cannot think of God directly as just a particular, and then as instantiating certain properties. This ought to be quite clear from the fact that in this life our (natural) knowledge of God is not by acquaintance but by description. I don't literally see God when I look upwards at "the starry skies above me" or gaze inward at "the moral law within me" to borrow a couple of signature phrases from Immanuel Kant. Our only access to God here below is indirect via his properties, as an instance of those properties. Here below we approach God from the side of his properties as we understand them. The existence and identity of my table is known directly by acquaintance. Not so in the case of God. The existence of God is not given to sense perception but has to be understood as the being-instantiated of certain properties. The God I know by description is God qua uniquely satisfying my understanding of 'God.'
Someone could object: What about mystical experience? Is it not possible in this life to enjoy mystical knowledge by acquaintance of God? This is a very large, and I think separate topic. To the extent that mystical experience leads to mystical union it tends to collapse the I-Thou and man-God duality that is part of the framework of worship as we are discussing it in this context. See my Buber on Buddhism and Other Forms of Mysticism. It also tends to explode the framework in which questions about reference are posed . I mean the framework in which: here is a minded organism with linguistic capacity who thoughtfully utters certain words and phrases while out there are various things to which the organism is trying to refer and often succeeding.
There is also the question of the veridicality of mystical experience. How do I know that an experience of mine is revelatory of something real? How do I know that successive experiences of mine are revelatory of the same thing? How do I know that the mystical experiences of different people are veridically of the same thing? So I suggest we bracket the question of mystical experience.
Any natural knowledge of God in this life, then, is by description. Reference to God is indirect and via the understanding of 'God' within a given religion. Now the orthodox Christian understanding of 'God' is that God sent his only begotten Son, begotten not made, into our predicament to teach us and show us the Way (via, veritas, vita) and to suffer and die for our sins. Together with this contingent Sending goes the triunity of God as the necessary condition of its possibility. This is part of what an orthodox Christian means by 'God,' although I reckon few Christians would put it the way I just did. It is part of the sense of 'God' for an orthodox Christian. But this is not part of the sense of 'God' for the orthodox Muslim who denies the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the soteriology connected with both.
So do Christians and Muslims succeed in referring to the same being? No. Successful reference on a descriptivist semantics requires the cooperation of Mind and World. Successful reference, whether with words or without words, requires that there exist outside the mind something that satisfies the conditions set within the mind. (Remember: it is not primarily words that refer, but minds via words and mental states.) Now suppose there exists exactly one God and that that God is a Trinity. Then the Christian's understanding of 'God' will be satisfied, and his reference to God will be successful. But the Muslim's reference will fail. The reason for this is that there is nothing outside the mind that satisfies his characteristic understanding of 'God.'
Of course, the Muslim could put it the other way around. Either way, my point goes through: Muslim and Christian cannot be referring to the one and the same God.
You say the Christian and Muslim understandings of 'God' overlap? You are right! But this overlap is but an abstraction insufficient to determine an identifying reference to a concrete, wholly determinate, particular. In reality, God is completely determinate. As such, he cannot be neither triune nor not triune, neither incarnated nor not incarnated, etc. in the way the overlapping conception is. So if the triune God exists, then the non-triune God does not exist. Of course, we can say that the Christian and the Muslim are 'driving in the same direction.' Heading West on Interstate 10, I am driving toward the greater Los Angeles area, and thus I am driving toward both Watts and Laguna Niguel. But there is a big difference, and perhaps one pertaining unto my 'salvation,' whether I arrive in Watts or in Laguna Niguel. What's more, I cannot terminate my drive in some indeterminate location. The successful termination of my peregrination must occur at some wholly definite place. So too with successful reference to a concrete particular: it must terminate with a completely determinate referent.
Here is another related objection. "If the Christian God exists, then both Christian and Muslim succeed in referring to the same God — it is just that this same God is the Christian God, i.e., God as understood in the characteristically Christian way. The existence of the Christian God suffices to satisfy the common Christian-Muslim underdstanding of 'God.'"
In reply I repeat that both mind and world must cooperate for successful reference on a descriptivist semantics. So it is not enough that God exists and that there be exactly one God. Nor is it enough that the one God satisfy the common Christian-Muslim conception; for the Muslim God to be an object of successful reference it must both exist and satisfy the characteristic Muslim understanding of 'God.'
Conclusion
My thesis is a rather modest one. To repeat what I said above:
My claim against Feser on the present occasion is not that he is wrong to maintain that (normative) Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God, but that he is not obviously right, his confident asseverations in the passages lately quoted notwithstanding. I am saying to Feser what I said to Beckwith and Tuggy: you gentlemen think this issue easily resolved. But it isn't, in large part because its resolution depends on the solution of hitherto unsolved problems in the philosophy of language.
Having just read Peter Geach's "On Worshipping the Right God" (in God and the Soul, Thoemmes Press, 1994, pp. 100-116, orig. publ. 1969) I was pleased to discover that I had arrived by my own reasoning at some of his conclusions. On Christmas Eve I quoted Michael Rea:
Christians and Muslims have very different beliefs about God; but they agree on this much: there is exactly one God. This common point of agreement is logically equivalent to [the] thesis that all Gods are the same God. In other words, everyone who worships a God worships the same God, no matter how different their views about God might be.
Rea's argument is this:
A. There is exactly one God if and only if all Gods are the same God
Ergo
B. Everyone who worships a God worships the same God.
But as I pointed out, the state of worship/worshipping is an intentional or object-directed state, and like all such states, not such as to entail the existence of the object of the state. One cannot worship without worshipping something, but it does not follow that the object worshipped exists. So (B) is false. Geach makes the same point in 'formal mode':
It may be thought that since there is only one God to worship, a man who worships a God cannot but worship the true God. But this misconceives the logical character of the the verb 'to worship.' In philosophers' jargon, 'to worship' is an intentional verb. (108)
Exactly right. And so, just as I can shoot at an animal that is not there to be shot at, I can worship a God that is not there to be worshipped.
I put the point in my own 'formal mode' way when I said that 'worships' is not a verb of success.
The possibility of worshipping what does not exist is connected with the question whether 'God' is a logically proper name. Geach rightly argues that "'God' is not a proper name but a descriptive term: it is like 'the Prime Minister' rather than 'Mr. Harold Wilson.'" (108) One of his arguments is similar to one I had given, namely, that God is not known by acquaintance in this life. As Geach puts it, ". . . in this life we know God not as an acquaintance we can name, but by description." (109)
God is therefore relevantly disanalogous to the examples Beckwith and Tuggy gave. Those examples were of things known or knowable by sensory acquaintance here below. Suppose Dale and I are seated at one and the same table. I pound on it and assert "This table is solid oak!" Dale replies, "No, it is not: there is particle board where you can't see." Dale thinks that a disagreement about the properties of a putatively self-same x presupposes, and thus entails, that there really is a self-same x whose properties are in dispute. But that is not the case. Disagreement about the properties of a putatively self-same x is merely logically consistent with there really being a self-same x whose properties are in dispute. In the case of the table, of course, we KNOW that the dispute is about one and the same item. This is because the table is an object of sensory acquaintance: its existence and identity are evident. But it can be different in the case of God with whom we are not sensorily acquainted.
Clearly, a Spinozist and a Thomist are not worshipping one and the same God despite the fact that for both Thomists and Spinozists there is exactly one God. One of them is worshipping what does not exist.
And so it is not at all obvious that Jew, Christian, and Muslim are all worshipping the same God. That, I submit, is crystal-clear. And so those who think that the question has an obvious answer are plainly wrong.
But this is not to say that Jew, Christian, and Muslim are NOT worshipping one and the same God. That is much more difficult question.
