Top of the Substack pile. A reader wanted to read this article, the link to which was busted after the demise of Typepad. So here it is in violation my rule to post at most once a day at Substack.
Category: Language, Philosophy of
A Point of Logic
Jouni Lappi, having read the Substack article on Heidegger and Carnap, writes:
One thing I cannot get my head around is this part:’Nothing is F’ => ’Everything is not F’
Maybe there is some syntactic agreement behind the ’Everything is not F’, that I do not understand. In my layman ears it sounds strange and wrong. I would understand ’it is true for every thing, that it is not F’. Say in my universe there is A, B and F.’Nothing is F’ is false, ’Everything is not F’ is true.This is probably some newbie error in thinking. And especially because of that, I would appreciate if you could explain this to me and point out where I think wrong.
First of all, what you express as a conditional is really a biconditional. Thus
1) Nothing is F <=> Everything is not F.
Bear in mind that ‘F’ is a predicate. If it names anything, it names a property, not an individual. (Properties, by definition, are instantiable items; individuals are not.) So an instance of (1) is
2) Nothing is fragile if and only if everything is not fragile.
Surely (2) is true; indeed it is necessarily true. In a universe U in which there are exactly two individuals, a and b, and one property F-ness, if neither a nor b instantiates F-ness, then every/each individual in U does not instantiate F-ness, and vice versa.
Are you perhaps confusing individuals and properties? Or perhaps you do not appreciate that ‘everything’ is being used above as a distributive, not a collective term? ‘Everything’ means each thing; it does not mean the collection of things.
He Who Hesitates is Lost
Sometimes, however, it is better to look before you leap.
Note this curious philo-lang point: 'he' above, though grammatically classifiable as a pronoun, does not function logically as a pronoun: it has no antecedent. It functions as a sex-neutral universal quantifier, or rather, it functions as an individual variable bound by a universal quantifier. Thus the maxim translates as 'For any x, if x hesitates, then x is lost.'
Pluralities
To what does the plural referring expression, 'the cats in my house,' refer? Not to plurality, but to a plurality. A plurality is one item, not many items. It is one item with many members. 'The guitars in my house' refers to a numerically different plurality. It too refers to one item with many members. It follows that a plurality cannot be identical to its members. For if it were there would be no 'it.'
I am not saying that a plurality is a mathematical set. I am saying that a plurality is not just its members. I am rejecting Composition as Identity. If the Londonistas do not agree with the Phoenician on this one, then I fear that there is little point to further discussion. We are at the non-negotiable. We are at bedrock and "my spade is turned."
Nominalism Presupposes What it Denies
What makes a pair of shoes a pair and not just two physical artifacts? Nominalist answer: nothing in reality. Our resident nominalist tells us that it is our use of 'a pair' that imports a unity, conventional and linguistic in nature, a unity that does not exist in reality apart from our conventional importation. We are being told that out there in the world there are no ones-in-many, let alone any ones-over-many. If that is right, then there are no sets. For a set is a one-over-many in this sense: it is one item distinct from its many members. (Let's not worry about the null set, which has no members and unit-sets or singletons which have exactly one member each. Here lies yet another rich source of aporiai, but one problem at a time.)
If there are no sets, then there are neither finite sets nor infinite sets. There are just pluralities, and all grouping, collecting, subsuming under common rubrics, unifying, etc. is done in language by language-users. What I will try to show is that if you think carefully about all of this you will have to make distinctions that are inconsistent with nominalism.
My aim is purely negative: to show that the nominalism of the resident nominalist is untenable. If you have read a good amount of what I have written you will recall that I am a solubility skeptic, which in this instance means that I am not endorsing any realist solution of the problem. I am not pushing an opposing theory.
I will start with some data that I find 'Moorean,' i.e., rationally indisputable and pre-theoretical. (Unfortunately, one man's datum is another man's theory.) The phrase 'a pair' has a sense that remains the same over time and space, a sense that is the same for all competent speakers of English whether here or abroad. The same holds for ein Paar in German, and similarly for all languages. The sense or meaning of an expression, whether word, phrase, sentence, etc. must be distinguished from the expression. An expression is something physical and thus sensible. The sensible is that which is able to be sensed via one of our senses. I hear the sound that conveys to me the meaning of 'cat,' say, or I see the marks on paper. Hearing and seeing are outer senses that somehow inform us or, more cautiously, purport to inform us of the existence and properties of physical or material things that exist whether or not we perceive them. But I don't hear or see the meaning conveyed to me by your utterance of a sentence such 'The cats are asleep.' The sentence, being a physical particular, is sensible; the meaning is intelligible. That's just Latin for understandable. I hear the words you speak, and if all goes well, I understand their meaning or sense, thereby understanding the proposition you intend to convey to me, namely, that the cats are asleep. Note that while one can trip over sleeping cats, one cannot trip over that the cats are asleep.
There are two distinctions implicit in the above that need to be set forth clearly. I argue that neither is compatible with nominalism
A. The distinction between the sense/meaning of a linguistic expression and the expression. Why must we make this distinction? (a) Because the same sense can be expressed at different times by the same person using the same expression. (b) Because the same sense can be expressed at the same and at different times by different people using the same expression. (c) Because the same sense can be expressed in different languages using different expressions by the same and different people at the same and at different times. For example the following sentences express, or rather can be used to express, the same sense (meaning, proposition):
The cat is black.
Il gatto è nero.
Die Katze ist schwarz.
Kedi siyah.
Kočka je černá.
So the sense of a word or phrase or sentence is a one-in-many in that each tokening of the word or phrase expresses numerically the same sense. A tokening, by definition, is the production of a token, in this case, a linguistic token. One way a speaker can produce such a token is by uttering the word or phrase in question. Another way is by writing the word or phrase down on a piece of paper. (There are numerous other ways as well.) This production of tokens therefore presupposes a further distinction:
B. The distinction between linguistic types and linguistic tokens. In the following array, how many words are there?
cat
cat
cat
Three or one? Is the same word depicted three times? Or are there three words? Either answer is as good as the other but they contradict each other. So we need to make a distinction: there are three tokens of the same type. We are forced by elementary exegesis of the data to make the type-token distinction. If you don't make it, then you will not be able to answer my simple question: three words or one?
You see (using the optical transducers in your head, and not by any visio intellectualis) the three tokens. And note that the tokens you now see are not the tokens I saw when I wrote this entry. Those were different tokens of the same type, tokens which, at the time of your reading are wholly past. Linguistic tokens are in time, and in space, which is not obviously the case for linguistic types. I said: not obviously the case, not: obviously not the case. You see the three tokens, but do you see the type of which they are the tokens? If you do, then you have powers I lack. And yet the tokens are tokens of a type. No type, no tokens. So types exist. How will our nominalist accommodate them? He cannot reduce types to sets of tokens since he eschews sets. No sets, no sets of linguistic tokens. Linguistic types are multiply instantiable. That makes them universals. But no nominalist accepts universals. Nominalists hold that everything is a particular. I grant that the rejection of sets and the rejection of universals are different rejections. But if one rejects sets because they are abstract objects, one ought also to reject universals for the same reason.
Now glance back at the first array. What we have there are five different sentence tokens from five different languages. Each is both token – and type-distinct from the other four.
To conclude, I present our nominalist with two challenges. The first is to give a nominalist account of linguistic types without either reducing them to sets or treating them as ones-in-many or ones-over-many. The second challenge is to explain the distinction between the sense or meaning of an expression, which is not physical/material and the expression which is.
Suppose he responds to the second challenge by embracing conceptualism according to which meanings are mental. Conceptualism is concept-nominalism, as D. M. Armstrong has maintained. My counterargument would be that the meaning/sense expressed by a tokening of 'The cats are asleep' is objectively either true or false, and thus either true or false for all of us, not just for the speaker. Sentential meanings are not private mental contents. Fregean Gedanken, for example, are not dependent for their existence or truth-value on languages or language-users.
Questions about Pronouns, Sex, and ‘Wokism’
Elliot Crozat writes,
During my visit, one of our conversation topics was pronoun usage. If I recall, on one of the hikes, you gave the example "He who hesitates is lost” and asked about the function of ‘He.’ You then said that this pronoun seems to function as a universal quantifier such that, for any x, if x hesitates, then x is lost. I agree. Our agreement suggests that pronouns can function logically in ways that differ from their merely grammatical appearance.
BV: Right. Although 'he' and 'she' are classified grammatically as pronouns, their logical function in examples like the one I gave is not pronominal, but quantificational. Pronouns typically have noun antecedents, but 'he' in 'He who hesitates is lost' has no antecedent. It functions like a bound variable. I can imagine a Yogi Berra type joke. I say to Berra, "He who hesitates is lost," and he replies, "You mean Joe Biden?" (Here is a real Yogi Berra joke. Someone asked Berra what time it is. He replied, "You mean now?")
I spoke today with a friend, a philosopher, who is under some pressure from his employer to use the ‘preferred pronouns’ of colleagues and others even if such 'pronouns' don't align with the biological sex of the 'preferrers.' For various reasons concerning clarity and accuracy of language, freedom of speech and thought, and ideological disagreement, my friend is concerned about how to navigate this progressivist current in a responsible manner. We discussed some ideas.
Here’s one. Suppose a biological male, Mark, desires and requests to be referred to as ‘she.’ Suppose also that, generally speaking, all pronouns that are indexicals (i.e., demonstratives) refer to their respective persons or objects as they objectively are. Smith, a colleague of Mark, attempts to refer to Mark as ‘she.’ It would seem, then, that ‘she’ fails to refer – or that Mark fails to refer via ‘she’ – and thus ‘she’ is a useless and confusing bit of language. Smith’s use of ‘she’ is unhelpful on this account.
BV: I will first make the minor point that an indexical is not the same as a demonstrative. Every demonstrative is an indexical, but not conversely. Suppose I am standing before the deli counter. Having temporarily forgotten that the name of what I want is 'prosciutto,' I say to the deli man, "I'd like some of that." My use of the demonstrative 'that' must be accompanied by a demonstration if I am to succeed in conveying my request. I have to point to the meat I want. But I don't have to point to myself when I utter the indexical 'I' in 'I'd like some of that." 'I' is not a demonstrative.
A second minor point is that 'I' sometimes functions as a bound variable. Suppose that in explaining intentionality to a student, I say, "I cannot think without thinking of something." I have not made an autobiographical remark. The proposition I am attempting to convey to the student is that, for any person x, if x thinks, then x thinks of something.
Grammatical pronouns can function pronominally, indexically, and quantificationally. Here is a sentence featuring a pronoun functioning pronominally and which therefore has an antecedent:
Peter always calls before he visits.
In this sentence, 'Peter' is the antecedent of the third-person singular pronoun 'he.' It is worth noting that an antecedent needn't come before the term for which it is the antecedent:
After he got home, Peter poured himself a drink.
In this sentence 'Peter' is the antecedent of 'he' despite occurring after 'he' in the order of reading. The antecedency is therefore referential rather than temporal. In both of these cases, the reference of 'he' is supplied by the antecedent. The burden of reference is borne by the antecedent. So there is a clear sense in which the reference of 'he' in both cases is not direct, but mediated by the antecedent. (And if the reference of the antecedent is mediated by a Frege-style sense or Sinn, then we have a double mediation.) The antecedent is referentially prior to the pronoun for which it is the antecedent. But suppose I point to Peter and say
He smokes cigarettes.
This is an indexical use of 'he.' Part of what makes it an indexical use is that its reference depends on the non-linguistic context of utterance: I utter a token of 'he' while pointing at Peter, or nodding in his direction. The sentence need not be situated in a linguistic context. Another part of what makes 'he' in the example an indexical is that it refers directly, not just in the sense that the reference is not routed through a description or sense associated with the use of the pronoun that fixes the reference to Peter and nothing else, but also in that there is no need for an antecedent to secure the reference. Now suppose I say
I smoke cigars.
This use of 'I' is clearly indexical, although it is purely indexical (David Kaplan) inasmuch as there is no need for a demonstration: I don't need to point to myself when I say 'I smoke cigars.' And like the immediately preceding example, there is no need for an antecedent to nail down the reference of 'I.' Not every pronoun needs an antecedent to do a referential job.
In fact, it seems that no expression, used indexically, has or could have an antecedent. Hector-Neri Castaneda puts it like this:
Whether in oratio recta or in oratio obliqua, (genuine) indicators have no antecedents. ("Indicators and Quasi-Indicators" reprinted in The Phenomeno-Logic of the I, p. 67)
For a quantificational use of a grammatical pronoun, consider
He who hesitates is lost.
Clearly, 'he' does not function here pronominally — there is no antecedent — nor does it function indexically. It functions like the bound variable in
For any person x, if x hesitates, then x is lost.
But is this token ‘she’ a pronoun in appearance only? It seems to function in some ways like a proper name (perhaps a sobriquet or a tag of sorts) of one who has undergone a name change. On this view, the token ‘she’ wouldn’t function as a rigid designator, since there are possible worlds in which Mark doesn’t use ‘she.’ But the token seems to work as a name or tag for Mark in relevant circumstances.
BV: I would say that 'she' has a sense which requires that any human being successfully referred to by its use is a biological female. I am inclined to say that if you try to refer to a biological male as 'she,' then the reference won't be successful. But this is none too clear.
Consider the example of Cassius Clay, who underwent a change in the way he viewed himself and hence selected a new name to reflect his subjective change of ‘self-identification.’ As a matter of respect for Clay as a person, others began to call him by his new name ‘Ali.’
Is the Clay-Ali scenario relevantly similar to the situation of Mark, who in this world subjectively identifies as female despite being biologically male and having formerly identified as male? Suppose Smith speaks about Mark by saying “She went to the market.” Does Smith refer successfully to Mark in virtue of using “she” as something like a proper name rather than a pronoun?
BV: One can change one's religion but one cannot change one's sex. That's an important difference. I myself find it very easy to identify with women, but surely it is impossible for me to identify as a woman if that means: apperceive or interpret myself or alter my physicality or raiment in such a way as to bring it about that I become a woman. I can no more identify as a woman than I can identify as a cat or a carrot. Of course, I can pretend to be a woman and even successfully pass myself off as one. (Cf. the movies "Tootsie" and "Mrs. Doubtfire" which you no doubt have seen.) But a man in drag remains a man, even if he is in what I call 'super-drag' where this includes surgical mutilation and augmentation of the body, hormone replacement 'therapy,' etc. And the sexual frisson/excitation that a man might feel when putting on panties and bra is male frisson is it not? And thus further proof that he remains a man even if he has had his genitalia lopped off and a vagina fashioned from his former penis?
I am inclined to say that a literal sex change operation is an impossibility. No animal can change its sex or have its sex changed.
Here is a proof from the metaphysics of time. Tell me what you think of it. Every adult woman was a girl. Every adult male was a boy. The past is unalterable. (Not even God can restore a virgin.) Now it is possible for a man to become a woman only if it is possible for a man to have been a girl. But that is impossible because it is impossible to alter the past. Therefore, it is impossible for a man to become a woman no matter how he is altered, even chromosomally. The nature of time rules it out.
Here is another thought. You can change your religion or your political affiliation, but not your race or your sex. These non-negotiable facts are extra-linguistic. Now with the exception of mere Millian tags, the senses of words determines their reference and not the other way around. I suggested above that one cannot successfully refer to a biological male using 'she.' And this for the reason that 'she' has a sense that is sexually restrictive, assuming that it is being used to refer to sexually-polarized animals such as human beings as opposed to ships and flags as in "She's a grand old flag; she's a high-flying flag . . . ." So is the extra-linguistic fact I mentioned partially determining the sense of 'she'? That's what I am puzzling over at the moment. But I am just 'shootin' from the hip here and perhaps what I have written is not sufficiently clear to permit evaluation.
If the proper name account doesn’t succeed, perhaps ‘she’ has a non-indexical use. Some pronouns have non-indexical applications. David Braun lists three types of pronoun use: indexical(demonstrative), bound variable, andunbound anaphoric. See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/indexicals/#IndNonIndUsePro
Perhaps ‘she’ has a bound variable use, such as: “Every male who subjectively identifies as a female believes she will be better off doing so.” Or maybe ‘she’ has an unbound anaphoric use, such as: “Mark was late to work today. She was caught in traffic.”
These non-indexical accounts seem strained to me, and hence I’m thinking the proper name account might be better. Or maybe there is still another account that best explains what is happening in these linguistically-odd situations. Maybe all efforts to refer to Mark as 'she' fail to refer.
I’d like to hear what you have to say on this issue, since you’ve thought deeply about pronouns and about the philosophy of language. I’d be glad to give you a call this weekend to chat, if you're free. Or we can discuss via email.
BV: I have time for one more comment. 'Mark was late for work because she was caught in traffic.' If I heard that I would ask, "Who was the female in question and what did her getting caught in traffic have to do with Mark's being late for work?"
Your philosopher friend should politely tell his employer that his preferred pronouns are those of standard English and that, while he is willing to tolerate the linguistic innovations of others, he expects toleration in return. If his tolerance is met with intolerance, then he should politely remind the intolerant about who has the guns.
Are the Names on Grave Stones Proper Names?
You will reflexively answer in the affirmative. But the names on grave stones are proper names for only so long as the memories of survivors are extant to supply reference-fixing context. With the passing of the survivors the names revert to commonality. After a while the dead may as well lie in a common grave.
No matter how unusual the name, every so-called proper name either actually has, or could have had, more than one bearer. A name that has more than one bearer is surely not proper, but common. Thus so-called proper names are not properly so-called. If a name has exactly one bearer in actuality, but could have had more than one, then it does not designate either one.
Names are rigid designators in Kripke's sense.
What lies below the stone is not Patrick J. McNally, but a Patrick J. McNally. And not even this; rather, the bodily remains of a Patrick J. McNally. The person has fled or else no longer exists.
I Know My Limits
I know my limits, but I also know that I have limits that I don't know. Complete self-knowledge would require both knowledge of my known limits and knowledge of my unknown limits. Complete self-knowledge, therefore, is impossible.
(Note how 'I' is used above. It is not being used as the first-person singular pronoun. It is being used as a universal quantifier. As above used, 'I' does not have an antecedent; it has substituends (linguistic items) and values (non-linguistic items). The above use of 'I' is a legitimate use, not a misuse.)
The Fearful are Easy to Control
Is the sheep your totemic animal? A sheep in a mask? A dose of Emerson may help if it is not too late.
"He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay "Courage")
(I note that the pronoun as it functions in the quoted line has neither an antecedent nor a gender. So while grammatically it is a masculine pronoun, logically it is neither.)
Ernst Mach and the Shabby Pedagogue: On Belief De Se
1. In The Analysis of Sensations (Dover, 1959, p. 4, n. 1) Ernst Mach (1838-1916) offers the following anecdote:
Not long ago, after a trying railway journey by night, when I was
very tired, I got into an omnibus, just as another man appeared at
the other end. 'What a shabby pedagogue that is, that has just
entered,' thought I. It was myself; opposite me hung a large
mirror. The physiognomy of my class, accordingly, was better known
to me than my own.
When Mach got on the bus he saw himself, but not as himself. His first thought was one expressible by 'The man who just boarded is a shabby pedagogue.' 'The man who just boarded' referred to Mach. Only later did Mach realize that he was referring to himself, a thought that he might have expressed by saying, 'I am a shabby pedagogue.'
Clearly, the thought expressed by 'The man who just boarded is shabby' is distinct from the thought expressed by 'I am shabby.' After all, Mach had the first thought but not the second. So they can't be the same thought. And this despite the fact that the very same property is ascribed to the very same person by both sentences. The second thought is the content of a belief de se. Such a belief is a belief about oneself as oneself.
One can have a belief about oneself without having a belief about oneself as oneself.
The difference emerges even more clearly if we alter the example slightly. Suppose Mach sees that the man who has just got on the bus has his fly open. He thinks to himself: The man who has just boarded has his fly open, a thought that leads to no action on Mach's part. But from the thought, I have my fly open, behavioral consequences ensue: Mach buttons his fly. Since the two thoughts have different behavioral consequences, they cannot be the same thought, despite the fact that they attribute the very same property to the very same person.
But if they attribute the same property to the same person, what exactly is the difference between the two thoughts?
Linguistically, the difference is that between a definite description ('the man who just boarded') and the first-person singular pronoun 'I.' Since the referent (Frege's Bedeutung) is the same in both cases, namely Mach, one will be tempted to say that the difference is a difference in sense (Frege's Sinn) or mode of presentation (Frege's Darstellungsweise). Mach refers to himself in two different ways, a third-person objective way via a definite description, and a first-person subjective way via the first-person singular pronoun.
If this is right, then although there are two different thoughts or propositions, one indexical and the other non-indexical, it might seem that there need only be one fact in the world to serve as truth-maker for both, the fact of Mach's being shabby. This is a non-indexical fact. It might seem that reality is exhausted by non-indexical facts, and that there are no such indexical or perspectival facts as those expressed by 'I am shabby' or 'I am BV' or 'I am the man who just got on the bus.' Accordingly, indexicality is merely a subjective addition, a projection: it belongs to the world as it appears to us, not to the world as it is in itself, in reality. On this approach, when BV says or thinks 'I,' he refers to BV in the first-person way with the result that BV appears to BV under the guise of 'I'; but in reality there is no fact corresponding to 'I am BV.'
2. But is this right? There are billions of people in the world and one of them is me. Which one? BV! But if the view sketched above is correct, then it is not an objective fact that one of these people is me. That BV exists is an objective fact, but not that BV is me. BV has two ways of referring to himself but there is only one underlying objective fact. Geoffrey Maddell strenuously disagrees:
If I am to see the world in a certain way, then the fact that the
world seen in this way is apprehended as such by me cannot be part
of the content of that apprehension. If I impose a subjective grid
on the world, then it is objectively the case that I do so. To put
it bluntly, it is an objective fact about the world that one of the
billions of people in it is me. Mind and Materialism, 1988, p.
119.)
Maddell's point is that the first-person point of view is irreducibly real: it itself cannot be a subjective addition supplied from the first-person point of view. It makes sense to say that secondary qualities are projections, but it makes no sense to say that the first-person point of view is a projection. That which first makes possible subjective additions cannot itself be a subjective addition. That which is at the root of the very distinction between the for-us and the in-itself cannot be merely for-us. (Maddell might not approve of this last sentence of mine. It sounds a little 'Continental.')
Consider the phenomenal redness of a stop sign. It makes sense to say that this secondary quality does not belong to the sign itself in reality, but is instead a property the sign has only in relation to a perceiver. In this sense, secondary qualities are subjective. But to say that subjectivity itself, first-person perspectivity itself, is a subjective projection is unintelligible. It cannot belong to mere appearance, but must exist in reality. As Madell puts it, "Indexical thought cannot be analysed as a certain 'mode of presentation', for the fact that reality is presented to me in some particular way cannot be part of the way in which it is presented." (p. 120)
3. Trouble for materialism. According to materialism, reality is exhausted by non-indexical physical facts. But we have just seen that indexical thoughts are underpinned by indexical facts such as the fact of BV's being me. These facts are irreducibly real, but not physically real. Therefore, materialism is false: reality is not exhausted by non-indexical physical facts.
Romantic Postscript
That most mysterious of all pronouns, the first-person singular, is the key, or one of them, to the riddle of the universe.
More on Pronouns: Reply to Claude Boisson
Claude Boisson writes, and I respond in blue:
From a strictly linguistic point of view, this:1) In the flow of discourse “pronouns” may indeed have anaphoric use, and sometimes cataphoric use (the “antecedent” being then what we should call a postcedent).
Thus they are rightly called *pro*-nouns, or rather *pro*-noun phrases, given that they usually point to a NP in the left context, sometimes in the right context (After he had conquered Gaul, Julius Caesar marched on Rome).This use is internal to speech.
I have made these points myself though in different terms. If we think of antecedency referentially as opposed to temporally/spatially, then the antecedent of 'he' in your example is 'Julius Caesar' despite the pronoun's appearing before/to the left of 'Julius Caesar.' Perhaps we could define the antecedent of a pronoun that has one, whenever/wherever it appears in a stretch of discourse, as the word or phrase that bears the burden of objective reference that the pronoun merely borrows.
For example, 'When he arrived at the bar, Tom Lush ordered a double Manhattan.' The antecedent (as I use the term) of the pronoun 'he' is the proper name 'Tom Lush.' While both the name and the pronoun refer objectively, i.e., extra-linguistically, the pronoun also 'refers back' or rather in this case 'refers forward' — horizontally if you will — to the name. But both words refer 'vertically' to the extra-linguistic domain (the 'world' in one sense of this polyvalent word); it is just that the objective reference of the pronoun is parasitic upon the objective reference of the name. By itself, the pronoun achieves no objective reference. It is the antecedent that gives the pronoun a reference and a particular, singular, extra-linguistic referent That is how I see it.
My long-time sparring partner, Edward Buckner, sees things differently. For him all reference is intra-linguistic. That makes him a linguistic idealist by my lights. See this post of mine in which I discuss a bit of Buckner's theory.
I agree that the reference of the pronoun in your example, Claude, is intra-linguistic or "internal to speech" and writing too. But only in part. It also exhibits extra-linguistic reference. I would say that the extra-linguistic reference of a pronoun in cases like the one you cite is parasitic upon the reference of its antecedent: it borrows the extra-linguistic reference of the antecedent, whereas the reference of the antecedent — 'Julius Caesar' in your example — is unborrowed.
Is there purely intra-linguistic reference? I should think so. Consider the following sentence from a piece of pure fiction: 'Tom's wife left him.' The antecedent of the pronoun 'him' is Tom.' This back reference is purely intra-linguistic. It is plausible to maintain that the only reference exhibited by 'him' is back reference, and that 'him' does not pick up the extra-linguistic reference of 'Tom,' there being no such reference to pick up. Then we would have case of purely intra-linguistic reference.
There is also the point I made in my earlier post, namely, that in 'He who hesitates is lost,' 'he' has no antecedent/postcedent and is therefore not functioning as a pronoun, assuming that a pronoun is 'pro' a noun or name. I dubbed this use 'quantificational.' The pronoun 'he' can be removed. paraphrased away, without any loss of meaning. Thus: for any x, if hesitates, then x is lost. The variable 'x' bound by the universal quantifier does not refer to anything or anyone. (Or should we say, with W. V. Quine, that the bound variable refers with "studied ambiguity"?)
Elizabeth Anscombe in her important paper, "The First Person," (in Mind and Language, ed. Guttenplan, Oxford UP, 1975, p. 53) makes a closely related point when she tells us that "a singular pronoun may even be a variable (as in 'If anyone says that, he is a fool') — and hence not any kind of singular designation of an object." Surely she is right. This is especially clear from the fact that there might be no person who says the foolish thing. A pronoun that functions as a quantifier in a given context is not functioning pronominally.
2) But so-called “pronouns” also have a quite different use, a deictic use. They then point to entities in the environment, and outside discourse, speech.When you say “I”, you don’t need to take the trouble of referring to yourself as “William F. Vallicella” or “the person who is now talking”. This is a pro-Vallicella. When I say “I”, “I” is a pro-Boisson. It is a pro-X, with X ranging over human beings, gods, and even animals, plants or things in fairy tales, fables, “myths”…
I basically agree. I would put the point by saying that, in addition to strictly pronominal and quantificational uses, grammatical pronouns also have indexical uses. Suppose I point to Peter and say
He smokes cigarettes.
This is an indexical use of 'he.' Part of what makes it an indexical use is that its reference depends on the context of utterance: I utter a token of 'he' while pointing at Peter, or nodding in his direction. Another part of what makes it an indexical is that it refers directly, not just in the sense that the reference is not routed through a description or sense associated with the use of the pronoun, but also in that there is no need for an antecedent to secure the reference. Now suppose I say
I smoke cigars.
This use of 'I' is clearly indexical, although it is a purely indexical (D. Kaplan) inasmuch as there is no need for a demonstration: I don't need to point to myself when I say 'I smoke cigars.' And like the immediately preceding example, there is no need for an antecedent to nail down the reference of 'I.' Not every pronoun needs an antecedent to do a referential job.
In fact, it seems that no indexical expression, used indexically, has or could have an antecedent. Hector-Neri Castaneda puts it like this:
Whether in oratio recta or in oratio obliqua, (genuine) indicators have no antecedents. ("Indicators and Quasi-Indicators" reprinted in The Phenomeno-Logic of the I, p. 67)
3) As far as I am aware, and notably, the same entities economically serve both ends in (all?) languages. But I may very well be mistaken. It would be interesting if there were a language with two sets of words, one for personal ana/cata-phora, and one for personal deixis. Surely some linguists must have asked that question before. What can a philosopher make of this?
It is not clear to me what you are now suggesting, Claude. The semantics of the first-person singular pronoun, used indexically, is extremely tricky. This entry is already too long, and so I will end with a question. Suppose that WFV assertively utters a token of 'I smoke cigars.' One might naturally think that the I-sentence can be replaced, not only salva veritate, but also salva significatione, with 'WFV smokes cigars.' Now it is clear that both sentences have the same truth-conditions. But do they have the same sense? To take a simpler example, the following two sentences have the same truth-conditions:
I am WFV (asserted by WFV)
and
WFV is (identical to) WFV.
But do they have the same sense? Hint: if anyone other than WFV makes the first assertion, he lies. But everyone who makes the second assertion tells the truth.
A Pronoun Puzzle: “He who hesitates is lost”
Grammatically, 'he' is a pronoun. Pronouns have antecedents. What is the antecedent of 'he' in the folk saying supra? It does not have one.
A Yogi Berra type joke is in the offing. We're hiking. We must go forward; we can't go back. But the path forward is perilous and requires a bold step over an abysmal chasm. I say, "He who hesitates is lost!" My hiking partner, a smartass, replies, "You mean Biden?"
My witticism is modelled on a genuine Yogi Berra joke. You are asked what time it is and you reply, "You mean now?"
'He' in the folk saying is grammatically a pronoun, but it does not function logically as one. How then does it function?
I say it functions as a universal quantifier. Not like a universal quantifier, but as one. Thus:
For any x, if x hesitates, then x is lost.
This strikes me as clear as day. Rather less clear is the role of the first-person singular pronoun in 'I think, therefore I am.' Does 'I' in this context have an antecedent, and if it does, what or who is the antecedent? Anythng you say will land you in the aporetic frying pan. Or so I could argue.
Later.
Token, Type, Proposition: Write-Up of Some of Yesterday’s Dialog
I am enjoying the pleasure of a three-day visit from Dr. Elliot Crozat who drove out yesterday from San Diego. The following expands upon one of the topics we discussed yesterday.
How many sentences immediately below, two or one?
Snow is white
Snow is white.
Both answers are plausible, and indeed equally plausible; but they can't both be right. There can't be both two sentences and one sentence. The obvious way to solve the problem is by distinguishing between token and type. We say: there are two tokens of the same type. One type, two tokens. That's a good proximate solution but not a good ultimate one. It is a stop-gap solution.
For the solution gives rise to problems of its own. And these may be expected to be as bad as, or worse than, the original one. We made a distinction between sentence-token and sentence-type to avoid contradiction. But what is a sentence-type and how is it related to its tokens? You see the tokens above but you do not see the type. The tokens are in space and bear spatial relations to each other and to other things. The type is not in space. It is obvious that the tokens came into being and will pass out of being. But that is not obviously the case with respect to sentence-types. Such types are arguably a species of platonica. The tokens exist contingently, but this is presumably not the case with respect to their type. The tokens are temporal items, but it doesn't follow that the type is. If the concrete is the causally active/passive, then the tokens are concrete whereas the type is not and is therefore abstract in the Quinean though not the traditional sense. If there are both abstracta and concreta, are both sorts of entity in time? Or only the abstracta?
Now consider:
Snow is white
Schnee ist weiss.
Here we have two different sentence-tokens of two different linguistic types. It is reasonable to maintain that such types are necessarily tied to their respective languages, English and German, in the sense that, were the languages not to exist, then neither would the types exist. But 'surely' human languages are contingent in their existence. If so, then the linguistic types are contingent in their existence, in contradiction to the strong tendency to view them as platonica, and thus as necessary beings.
Puzzles are erupting like weeds in Spring. I can't hope to catalog them all in one entry.
But let's throw a couple more into the mix. The two sentences lately displayed, the one in English, the other in German, express the same proposition or thought (Gedanke in Frege's lingo). Or at least they express the same proposition when assertively uttered or otherwise tokened by a speaker/writer competent in the language in question, a speaker/writer with the appropriate expressive intentions.
We now have token, type, and proposition to understand in their interrelatedness. It is obviously not enough to make distinctions; one must go on to inquire as to how the items distinguished gear into one another, fit together, are 'related.' To avoid this task would be unphilosophical.
One more set of questions. How do we become aware of types and propositions? We see with our eyes the sentence tokens on the page or we hear them with our ears when spoken. But we have no sense-acquaintance with abstracta. Do we 'see' them with the 'eye of the mind'? And how does that 'eye' hook up with the 'eye of the head'?
This ties in with another topic Elliot and I discussed yesterday evening: the difference between the literal and the metaphorical. Is talk of the 'eye of the mind' and of visio intellectualis metaphorical or is it literal? What does it mean to be literal? Is the literal the same as the physical? And what is the difference between metaphorical talk and analogical talk? Can food literally be healthy? Or is food healthy only metaphorically or figuratively? Some dead meat is good food. But no dead animal or its flesh is healthy. For an animal, being alive is a necessary condition of its being healthy.
Are analogical statements about God literally true?
Truthmaker Maximalism Questioned
0) What David Armstrong calls truthmaker maximalism is the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker. Although I find the basic truthmaker intuition well-nigh irresistible, I have difficulty with the notion that every truth has a truthmaker. Thus I question truthmaker maximalism (TM). Alan Rhoda has recently come out in favor of TM in a penetrating weblog entry. After sketching my position, I will try to pinpoint my disagreement with Rhoda.
1) Compare *Peter is tired* and *Every cygnet is a swan.* I will argue that truths like the first need truthmakers while truths like the second do not. A declarative sentence enclosed in asterisks names the primary truthbearer expressed by the sentence when assertively uttered or, more generally, assertively tokened. A truthbearer is anything appropriately characterizable as either true or false when 'true' and 'false' are used in their sentential as opposed to their ontic senses. ('True friend' and 'false teeth' feature ontic senses of 'true' and 'false'.) Candidate truthbearers include assertively tokened sentences in the indicative mood, statements, asseverations, judgments, Fregean Gedanken, Bolzanian Saetze an sich and more. By definition, a truth is a true truthbearer, whatever truthbearers are taken to be.)
2) Intuitively, *Peter is tired,* being contingently true, both due to its dependence on the existence of Peter, and on Peter's accidentally possessing the property of being tired, is in need of something external to it that 'makes' it true or determines it to be true, or serves as the ontological ground of its truth. (An ontological ground is not the same as an empirical cause.) *Peter is tired* can't just be true. This is because its truth-value depends on the way the world is. It needs a truthmaker external to it. By 'external to it,' I don't just mean that the truthmaker of a truth must be distinct from it: this condition is satisfied by a distinct proposition (or other type of truthbearer) that entails *Peter is tired.* Entailment, however, is not truthmaking: entailment connects propositions to propositions; truthmaking connects extra-propositional entities (states of affairs for Armstrong) to propositions. What I mean when I say that a contingent truth needs something external to it to 'make' it true is that the truthmaker must be both distinct from the truthbearer and not, like the truthbearer, a 'representational entity' where the latter term covers such items as assertively uttered sentences, judgments, Fregean thoughts/propositions (the senses of context-free sentences in the indicative mood), and whatever else counts as a truthbearer. In other words, a truthmaker of a contingent atomic truth such as *Peter is tired* must be outside the sphere of representations: it must be extralinguistic, extramental, and extra-propositional. Thus the truthmakers of propositions like *Peter is tired* cannot belong to the category of propositions. The ontological ground of a contingent proposition's being true cannot be an entity within the sphere of propositions.
3) The truthmaker of *Peter is tired* cannot be a proposition; but it also cannot be utterly unlike a proposition. Consider Peter himself, that very concrete individual. It is clear that he could not be the truthmaker of *Peter is tired.* Granted, if Peter were not to exist, then the proposition in question could not be true. There are no truths about what does not exist. But although Peter or Peter's existence is a necessary condition of the truth of every true proposition about him, that very individual, it is not the case that Peter or Peter's existence is a sufficient condition of the truth of contingent propositions about him if these propositions are predications such as *Peter is tired.* (I am open to the suggestion that Peter himself suffices for the truth of *Peter exists.*) That Peter by himself cannot be the truthmaker of contingent predications about him can be proven or at least argued as follows.
Argument from Necessitation. Assume for reductio that Peter by himself can serve as truthmaker of contingent predications about him. Now, by truthmaker necessitarianism, whatever truthmakers are, they broadly logically necessitate the truth of their corresponding truthbearers. So if X is the truthmaker of *Peter is tired at t,* then there is no possible world in which X exists and *Peter is tired at t* is not true. But there are plenty of worlds in which Peter exists but *Peter is tired at t* is not true. So Peter by himself cannot be the truthmaker of *Peter is tired at t.*
Argument from Selection. Consider any two true affirmative atomic contingent monadic propositions about Peter such as *Peter is tired at t* and *Peter is hungry at t.* If Peter by himself can serve as the truthmaker of one, then he can serve as the truthmaker of the other. But they obviously require numerically different truthmakers. So Peter is the truthmaker of neither of them. Although different truths can have the same truthmaker, this is not the case when both truths are atomic, even if both are about the same individual. The truthmakers of such atomic propositions as that Peter is a philosopher and that Peter is a violinist must be distinct and they must match up with, or select, their truthbearers. To do this, the truthmakers must have an internal structure isomorphic to the structure of the truthbearers. In other words, the truthmakers must be proposition-like despite their not being propositions. Extra-propositional but proposition-like! What may look like a 'bug' is a 'feature' of truthmaker theory. It follows that Peter by himself cannot be the truthmaker of atomic contingent propositions about him.
4) If Peter by himself cannot serve as truthmaker of the accidental predication *Peter is F,* then neither can F-ness by itself. The same goes for the set {Peter, F-ness}, the mereological sum (Peter + F-ness) and the ordered pair [Peter, F-ness]. For what is needed in addition to Peter and F-ness is a link in the truthmaker that corresponds to the copulative link in the proposition. After all, not every possible world in which both Peter and F-ness exists is a world in which Peter is F. There could be a world in which Peter exists and F-ness exists (by being instantiated by Paul) but in which Peter does not instantiate F-ness. I am assuming that F-ness is a universal, but not that F-ness is a transcendent universal (one that can exist uninstantiated). This is why concrete states of affairs are plausible candidates for the office of truthmaker, as in middle-period Armstrong.
5) But even if one balks at the admission of concrete states of affairs or facts, one will have to admit that Peter himself — assuming that this concrete individual is not assayed as a state of affair but as an individual — cannot be the truthmaker of contingent propositions of the form *Peter is F.* Some will say that tropes can serve as truthmakers. Fine, but they too have a proposition-like structure. If the trope Peter's-tiredness-at-t is the truthmaker of *Peter is tired at t,* then it is made true by an entity that has a proposition-like structure, a structure isomorphic to, and mirroring, the structure of the truthbearer.
6) It seems to me that I have just definitively established that the truthmakers of accidental atomic predications like 'Peter is a philosopher' cannot be concrete individuals lacking a proposition-like structure. I have also made it clear that we should not confuse the principle that there are no truths about nonexistent objects with the truthmaker principle. We can call the first principle veritas sequitur esse (truth follows being). What it says is that a truth cannot be true unless there are one or more items it is about. Thus VSE requires that if Milo kicked Philo, this is true only if both Milo and Philo exist or have some mode of being other than existence. The truthmaker principle (TMP) goes beyond this in requiring the instantiation of the dyadic relation —kicks___ by Milo and Philo, in that order.
7) Consider now the analytic proposition *Every cygnet is a swan.* As analytic, it is true solely in virtue of the meanings of 'cygnet' and 'swan.' It is true ex vi terminorum. Its truth is not contingent on the existence of any cygnets. Why does it need a truthmaker? It certainly does not need anything external to it to make it true. The concept cygnet includes the concept swan, so that, by sheer analysis of the subject concept, one can arrive at the truth in question. That's why we call it, following Kant, 'analytic.' Clearly, nothing external to an analytic proposition is required to make it true. It follows that it cannot have a truthmaker. Or rather it follows if a truthmaker of a first-order truthbearer is an entity that is external to the truthbearer and resident in the realm of reality beyond the sphere of representations broadly construed.
Does this not decisively refute truthmaker maximalism? There are plenty of analytic truths, but none of them has or can have a truthmaker. For if you say that an analytic truth needs a truthmaker, then you are saying that it needs something external to it to 'synthesize,' to bring together, subject and predicate concepts. But analytic truths are precisely not synthetic in that (Kantian) sense. But I hear an objection coming.
8) "*Every cygnet is a swan* does have a truthmaker, namely, the fact that cygnet includes swan." This is a confused response. There would not be a analytic truthbearer at all if cygnet did not include swan. The very existence of the proposition *Every cygnet is a swan* requires that the first concept include the second. So there is no need of an ontological ground of the truth of this proposition. One could of course say that in the analytic case the truthbearer is its own truthmaker. But it is better to say that in the analytic case there cannot be a truthmaker as 'truthmaker' was defined in #2 above.
9) Here is where Alan Rhoda will disagree:
Some philosophers say that truthmaking is asymmetric rather than anti-symmetric, but that is a mistake. Asymmetry disallows the possibility of self-grounding truthbearers. Anti-symmetry allows for that possibility. And this is something we should allow, because conceptually necessary propositions (e.g., all triangles have three sides) are their own truthmakers. If the proposition exists—whether it exists [as] a Platonic object, an idea in God’s mind, or something else—its very existence supplies a parcel of reality sufficient to explain and ground its own truth.
10) For me, truthmaking is an asymmetric relation whereas for Alan it is an antisymmetric relation. Thus I am maintaining that, for any x, y, if x makes-true y, then it is not the case that y makes-true x. This implies that no truthbearer is its own truthmaker or truth-ground. It implies that in no case is the truthmaker of a truth (a true truthbearer) that very truth. It implies that the truthmaker of a truth is in every case 'external' to that truth in the manner explained above.
Now a relation R is said to be antisymmetric just in case: for any x, y, if x stands in R to to y, and y stands in R to x, then x = y. The antisymmetry of 'makes-true' allows for cases in which a proposition (or other truthbearer) is its own truthmaker. Thus Every cygnet is a swan is its truthbearer that is its own truthmaker. This is Alan's position.
11) Here is a consideration in favor of my position. Truthmakers play an explanatory role. Now explanation is asymmetric: if x explains y, then it is not the case that y explains x. This holds for causal explanation, but also for metaphysical explanation or metaphysical grounding. It is the existence of Milo that metaphysically grounds the truth of Milo exists. And not the other way around. No one — I hope! — will say that that the truth of Philo's belief that Milo exists is what makes it the case that Milo exists or that Shlomo's sincere assertive utterance of 'Milo is sleeping' is what makes it the case that Milo is sleeping.
Now if truthmakers play an explanatory role, and metaphysical explanation is asymmetric, then no truthbearer is its own truthmaker. So in the case of analytic or conceptually necessary truths, we should say that they do not have and do not need truthmakers. To maintain this is to reject truthmaker maximalism.
It is worth noting that my position is consistent with saying that a truthbearer (whether a Platonic proposition, a divine thought, whatever) can serve as a truthmaker for a different truthbearer. The Platonic proposition expressed by '7 is prime,' for example, makes-true the general Platonic proposition that there are Platonic propositions.
Your move, Alan.
Can a Sentence be Named?
One thing we do with words is make assertions, as when I assert that snow is white. I use those words, but I can also talk about them, refer to them, mention them. You are all familiar with the use-mention distinction. 'Boston' is disyllabic, but no city is.
One way to mention an expression is by enclosing the words in single quotation marks, thus: 'Snow is white.' One can then go on to say things about that sentence, for example, that it is true, that it is in the indicative mood, that it consists of three words, that it is in the present tense, and so on. But a puzzle is soon upon us. Try this aporetic triad on for size:
1) No name is either true or false.
2) 'Snow is white' is the name of a sentence.
3) 'Snow is white' is true.
The propositions are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true. Which will you reject?