Language, Philosophy of – Page 4 – Maverick Philosopher

The Function-Argument Schema in the Analysis of Propositions, Part II

A second installment from the Ostrich of London.

Another difficulty with the function-argument theory is staring us in the face, but generally unappreciated for what it is. As Geach says, the theory presupposes an absolute category-difference between names and predicables, which comes out in the choice of ‘fount’ [font] for the schematic letters corresponding to name and predicable. For example ‘Fa’, where the upper case ‘F’ represents the predicable, as Geach calls it, and lower case ‘a’ the name. As a direct result, there is only one negation of the proposition, i.e. ‘~Fa’, where the tilde negates whatever is expressed by ‘Fa’. But ‘F’ is a function mapping the referent of ‘a’ onto the True or the False, so ‘~Fa’ says that a does not map onto the True. The object a is there all right, but maps to a different truth-value. Thus ‘Fa’ implies ExFx, ‘~Fa’ implies Ex~Fx, and excluded middle (Fa or ~Fa) implies that something, i.e. a, does or does not satisfy F. The function-argument account has the bizarre consequence that the name always has a referent, which either does or does not satisfy the predicable. There is no room for the name not being satisfied. Indeed, the whole point of the function theory is to distinguish the idea of satisfaction, which only applies to predicables, from reference, which is a feature of proper names only. As Frege points out here:

The word 'common name' is confusing .. for it makes it look as though the common name stood under the same, or much the same relation to the objects that fall under the concept as the proper name does to a single object. Nothing could be more false! In this case it must, of course, appear as though a common name that belongs to an empty concept were as illegitimate as a proper name that designates [bezeichnet] nothing.

The scholastic two-term account, by contrast, allows for the non-satisfaction of the proper name. ‘Frodo is a hobbit’ is true if and only if something satisfies both ‘hobbit’ and ‘Frodo’. It is essential to Aristotle’s theory of the syllogism, as Geach notes, that the middle term (the one which appears in both premisses) can be subject in one premiss, predicate in another. The notion of ‘satisfaction’ or ‘supposition’ applies to both subject and predicate, even if the subject is a proper name like ‘Frodo’. Thus the negation of ‘Frodo is a hobbit’ can be true in two ways. Either some individual satisfies ‘Frodo’ but does not satisfy ‘hobbit’. We express this in English by so-called predicate negation ‘Frodo is not a hobbit’, where the negative is placed after the copula. Or no individual satisfies ‘Frodo’, which we can express by placing the negation before the whole proposition, ‘it is not the case that Frodo is a hobbit’. So the scholastic theory neatly accounts for empty proper names. Not so for the function-argument theory, a difficulty which was recognised early on. Frege developed a complex and (in my view) ultimately incoherent theory of sense and reference. Russell thought that proper names were really disguised descriptions, which is actually a nod to the scholastic theory.

Of course there is a separate problem for the two term theory, of making sense of a proper name not being ‘satisfied’. What concept is expressed by the proper name that is satisfied or not satisfied, and which continues to exist as a concept even if the individual ceases to exist? Bill and I have discussed this many times, probably too many times for his liking.

BV: What is particularly interesting here is the claim that Russell's theory of proper names is a nod to to the scholastic theory. This sounds right, although we need to bear in mind that Russell's description theory is a theory of ordinary proper names. Russell also allows for logically proper names, which are not definite descriptions in disguise. The Ostrich rightly points out that that for Frege there there is an absolute categorial difference between names and predicables. I add that this is the linguistic mirror of the absolute categorial difference in Frege between objects and concepts (functions). No object is a concept, and no concept is an object. No object can be predicated, and no concept can be named. This leads directly to the Paradox of the Horse: The concept horse is not a concept. Why not? Because 'the concept horse' is a name, and whatever you name is an object.

This is paradoxical and disturbing because it imports ineffability into concepts and thus into logic. If concepts cannot be named and objectified, then they are not wholly graspable. This is connected with the murky notion of the unsaturatedness of concepts. The idea is not that concepts cannot exist uninstantiated; the idea is that concepts have a 'gappy' nature that allows them to combine with objects without the need for a tertium quid to tie them together. Alles klar?

Now it seems to me that Russell maintains the absolute categorial difference between logically proper names and predicates/predicables. ('Predicable' is a Geachian term and it would be nice to hear how the Ostrich defines it.) Correct me if I am wrong, but this presupposition of an absolute categorial difference between logically proper names and predicates/predicables is a presupposition of all standard modern logic. It is 1-1 with the assumption that there are atomic propositions.

Here is one problem. On the Russellian and presumably also on the scholastic theory, an ordinary proper name stands to its nominatum in the same relation as a predicate to the items that satisfy it. Call this relation 'satisfaction.' Socrates satisfies 'Socrates' just as he and Plato et al. satisfy 'philosopher.' Now if an item satisfies a term, then it instantiates the concept expressed by the term. But what is the concept that 'Socrates' expresses? One candidate is: the unique x such that x is the teacher of Plato. Another is: the greatest philosopher who published nothing.

Notice, however, that on this approach singularity goes right out the window. 'Socrates' is a singular term. But 'the greatest philosopher who published nothing' is a general term despite the fact that the latter term, if satisfied, can be satisfied by only one individual in the world that happens to be actual. It is general because it is satisfied by different individuals in different possible worlds. Without prejudice to his identity, Socrates might not have been the greatest philosopher to publish nothing. He might not have been a philosopher at all. So a description theory of names cannot do justice to the haecceity of Socrates. What makes Socrates precisely this individual cannot be some feature accidental to him. Surely the identity of an individual is essential to it.

If we try to frame a concept that captures Socrates' haecceity, we hit a brick wall. Concepts are effable; an individual's haeceity or thisness is ineffable. Aristotle says it somewhere, though not in Latin: Individuum ineffabile est. The individual as such is ineffable. There is no science of the particular qua particular. There is no conceptual understanding of the particular qua particular because the only concepts we can grasp are general in the broad way I am using 'general.' And of course all understanding is conceptual involving as it does the subsumption of particular under concepts.

Some will try the following move. They will say that 'Socrates' expresses the concept, Socrateity, the concept of being Socrates, or being identical to Socrates. But this haecceity concept is a pseudo-concept. For we had to bring in the non-concept Socrates to give it content.

There are no haecceity concepts. As the Ostrich appreciates, this causes trouble for the scholastic two-name theory of predication according to which 'Socrates' and 'wise' are both names, and the naming relation is that of satisfaction. It makes sense to say that the concept wise person is uninstantiated. But it makes no sense to say that the concept Frodoity is uninstantiated for the simple reason that there cannot be any such concept.

It looks like we are at an impasse. We get into serious trouble if we go the Fregean route and hold that names and predicates/predicables are radically disjoint and that the naming/referring relation is toto caelo different from the satisfaction relation. But if we regress to the scholastic two-name theory, then we have a problem with empty names.

The Function-Argument Schema in the Analysis of Propositions

The Ostrich of London sends the following to which I add some comments in blue.

Vallicella: ‘One of Frege's great innovations was to employ the function-argument schema of mathematics in the analysis of propositions’.

Peter Geach (‘History of the Corruptions of Logic’, in Logic Matters 1972, 44-61) thinks it actually originated with Aristotle, who suggests (Perihermenias 16b6) that a sentence is composed of a noun (ὄνομα) and a verb (ῥῆμα), and the verb is a sign of something predicated of something else. According to Geach, Aristotle dropped this name-predicate theory of the proposition later in the Analytics, an epic disaster ‘comparable only to the fall of Adam’, so that logic had to wait more than two thousand years before the ‘restitution of genuine logic’ ushered in by Frege and Russell. By ‘genuine logic’ he means modern predicate logic, which splits a simple proposition into two parts, a function expression, roughly corresponding to a verb, and an argument expression, roughly corresponding to a noun. ‘To Frege we owe it that modern logicians almost universally accept an absolute category-difference between names and predicables; this comes out graphically in the choice of letters from different founts [fonts] of type for the schematic letters of variables answering to these two categories’.

The Fregean theory of the proposition has never seemed coherent to me. Frege began his studies (Jena and Göttinge, 1869–74) as a mathematician. Mathematicians naturally think in terms of ‘functions’ expressing a relation between one number and another. Thus

f(3) = 9

where ‘3’ designates the argument or input to the function, corresponding to Aristotle’s ὄνομα, ‘f()’ the function, here y=x², corresponding to Aristotle’s ῥῆμα, and ‘9’ the value of the function. The problem is the last part. There is nothing in the linguistic form of the proposition which corresponds to the value in the linguistic form of the mathematical function. It is invisible. Now Frege thinks that every propositional function or ‘concept’ maps the argument to one of two values, either the True or the False. OK, but this is a mapping which, unlike the mathematical mapping, cannot be expressed in language. We can of course write

___ is wise(Socrates) = TRUE

but then we have to ask whether that equality is true or false, i.e. whether the function ‘is_wise(–) = TRUE’ itself maps Socrates onto the true or the false. The nature of the value (the ‘truth value’) always eludes us. There is a sort of veil beyond which we cannot reach, as though language were a dark film over the surface of the still water, obscuring our view of the Deep.

BV: First a quibble. There is no need for the copula 'is' in the last formula since, for Frege, concepts (which are functions) are 'unsaturated' (ungesaettigt) or incomplete. What exactly this means, of course, is a separate problem. The following suffices:

___wise(Socrates) = TRUE.

The line segment '___' represents the gappiness or unsaturatedness of the concept expressed by the concept-word (Begriffswort).

Quibbling aside, the Ostrich makes two correct interrelated points, the first negative, the second positive.

The first is that while 'f(3) = 9' displays the value of the function for the argument 3, namely 9, a sentence that expresses a (contingent) proposition does NOT display its truth-value. The truth-value remains invisible. I would add that this is so whether I am staring at a physical sententional inscription or whether I am contemplating a proposition with the eye of the mind. The truth or falsity of a contingent proposition is external to it. No doubt, 'Al is fat' is true iff Al is fat.' But this leaves open the question whether Al is fat. After all the biconditional is true whether or not our man is, in fact, obese.

The second point is that there has to be something external to a contingent proposition (such as the one expressed by 'Socrates is wise') that is involved in its being true, but this 'thing,' — for Frege the truth-value — is ineffable. Its nature eludes us as the Ostrich correctly states. I used the somewhat vague phrase 'involved in its being true' to cover two possibilities. One is the Fregean idea that declarative sentences have both sense and reference and that the referent (Bedeutung) of a whole declarative sentence is a truth-value. The other idea, which makes a lot more sense to me, is that a sentence such as 'Socrates is wise' has a referent, but the referent is a truth-making fact or state of affairs, the fact of Socrates' being wise.

Now both of these approaches have their difficulties. But they have something sound in common, namely, the idea that there has to be something external to the contingent declarative sentence/proposition involved in its being true rather than false. There has to be more to a true proposition than its sense. It has to correspond to reality. But what does this correspondence really come to? Therein lies a major difficulty.

How will the Ostrich solve it? My impression is that he eliminates the difficulty by eliminating reference to the extralinguistic entirely.

Use, Mention, and Identity

Ed plausibly maintains that the following argument is invalid:

Hesperus is so-called because it appears in the evening
Hesperus = Phosphorus
————–
Phosphorus is so-called because it appears in the evening.

But then he asks: if the above is invalid why isn't the following argument also invalid?

'Hesperus’ designates Hesperus
Hesperus = Phosphorus
————-
‘Hesperus’ designates Phosphorus.

I say both arguments are valid. The second strikes me as obviously valid. As for the first, suppose we rewrite it by replacing 'so-called' with an equivalent expression. We get an argument I will call the REWRITE:

Hesperus is called 'Hesperus' because it appears in the evening
Hesperus = Phosphorus
————-
Phosphorus is called 'Hesperus' because it appears in the evening.

Now the conclusion of the REWRITE is admittedly strange. But it is true! Phosphorus is called 'Hesperus' when it appears in the evening, and it is called that because it appears in the evening. So the REWRITE is valid, whence it follows that the first argument, pace Ed, is valid.

So both arguments are valid.

UPDATE (9/12). My thesis is refuted in the combox. But as Chisholm once said after some point of his had been refuted, "Well, at least I said something clear enough to be refuted!" I am not suggesting, however, that Ed's suggestion that the second argument supra is invalid has any merit.

Lukáš Novák on Use and Mention

From a comment in a now fast-receding earlier thread:

An editor trying to impose a clear use-mention distinction on authors soon realises that most certainly words can be both used and mentioned, and that it is not inherently wrong. BTW, the Scholastics believed that in the case of the so-called material supposition it is regularly the case: cf. "man is a noun" (note the lack of quotes around "man"); and the apparatus of material supposition cannot be always equivalently "translated" into the "quoting" convention.

There are also some interesting cases involving quotes:

– Nietzsche said that "God is dead".

Here the phrase "God is dead" is both used to complete the sentence, and mentioned as that what Nietzsche literally said.

Scare quotes:

– I cannot wait to hear and refute Peter's "arguments".

"Arguments" is both used to refer disparagingly to what Peter presents as arguments, and mentioned as the word Peter actually uses.

To be clear, the issue is not whether words can be both used and mentioned, but whether some words can be both used and mentioned in the same sentence or clause or phrase. The answer, I think, is yes. The challenge is to find crystal-clear examples.

When I am quoting an actual person's words, I use double quotation marks. These are genuine quotation marks. When I am not quoting, but mentioning a word, phrase, clause, or sentence, I use single 'quotation' marks as in:

'Boston' is disyllabic.

Please note that the indentation, as just performed, serves a mentioning function but without the messiness of additional 'quotation' marks.

Besides quoting and mentioning there is also sneering/scaring. For sneering/scaring I use single 'quotation' marks as in

There is nothing liberal about contemporary 'liberals.'

and

I use single 'quotation' marks to show that a word is being misused or analogically extended.

You can begin to see from this what a punctilious pedant and language Nazi I am. There are other niceties and puzzles relating to all of this, but let's proceed to Dr. Novak's examples, starting with the last one. This is a very interesting case, but it doesn't seem to me to be a totally clear example of a word being both used and mentioned. Simplify the example:

Peter's 'arguments' are fallacious.

No doubt, 'arguments' is being used in this sentence. Or rather, " 'arguments' " is being used in this sentence. But I don't see that it is being mentioned. The inverted commas signal that the word is being used in an extended or improper way to refer to something that really ought not be called an argument. An extended use is not a mention.

Novak's second example is:

Nietzsche said that "God is dead."

But this is not a good English sentence, and so does not constitute a clear example. One must write either

(a) Nietzsche said that God is dead

(b) Nietzsche said, "God is dead."

In (a), 'that God is dead' is being used to refer to the content of Nietzsche's assertion, while in (b) the sentence Nietzsche wrote is mentioned.

Novak's first example is:

Man is a noun.

I'm sorry, but that is just false. 'Man' is a noun, not man. 'Man' is monosyllabic, but no man is monosyllabic. 'Man' is a word, but no man is a word.

Finally, an example that seems to work:

Big Bill Broonzy was so-called because of his size.

Clearly the name is being used to refer to a black bluesman. But that he was called 'Big Bill Broonzy' because of his size is also conveyed by the sentence. The name is therefore both used and (implicitly) mentioned in the same sentence.

Logical Form, Equivocation, and Propositions

Ed Buckner wants to re-fight old battles. I'm game. The following post of his, reproduced verbatim, just appeared at Dale Tuggy's site:

The concept of logical form is essential to any discussion of identity, and hence to any discussion of the Trinity. Here is a puzzle I have been discussing with the famous Bill Vallicella for many years.

(Argument 1) ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Cicero is a Roman’

(Argument 2) ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’

My puzzle [is] that the first argument is clearly not valid if the first ‘Cicero’ means the Roman, the second the American town, yet the argument seems to instantiate a valid form. Bill objects that if there is equivocation, then the argument really has the form ‘a is F, therefore b is F’, which fails to instantiate a valid form.

I then ask what is the form of. Clearly not of the sentences, since the sentences do not include the meaning or the proposition. Is it the form of the proposition expressed by the sentences? But then we have the problem of the second argument, where both ‘Cicero’ and ‘Tully’ mean the same man. Then the man is contained in both propositions, and if the form is of the proposition, the argument has the true form ‘a is F, so a is F’, which is valid. But I think no one would agree that the second argument is valid.

So logical form does not belong to the sentences, nor to the propositions expressed by them. So what is it the form of?

My answer is that the logical form of the argument is the form of the Fregean propositions expressed by the sentences that make up the argument. Let me explain.

I agree with Ed that logical form is not the form of an array of sentence-tokens. It is rather the form of an array of propositions expressed by the sentences. (To be painfully precise: it is the form of an array of propositions expressed by the assertive utterance, and thus the tokening, of a series of sentence-types by a speaker or thinker on a given occasion. A sentence-token buried in a book does not express anything by itself!)

To solve Ed's puzzle we need to distinguish three views of propositions: the Aristotelian, the Fregean, and the Russellian. This would be a good topic for an extended post. Here I will be brief. Brevity is the soul of blog.

An Aristotelian proposition is an assertively uttered meaningful sentence in the indicative mood that expresses a complete thought. What makes such a proposition 'Aristotelian' as opposed to 'Platonic' is that the meaning of the sentence is not something that can subsist on its own apart from the assertive tokening of the sentence. The meaning of the sentence depends on its being expressed, whether in overt speech or in thought, by someone. If there were no minds there would be no Aristotelian propositions. And if there were no languages there would be no Aristotelian propositions. In this sense, Aristotelian propositions are linguistic entities.

In brief: An Aristotelian proposition is just a declarative sentence in use together with its dependent sense or meaning. Suppose I write a declarative sentence on a piece of paper. The Aristotelian proposition is not the string of physical marks on the paper, nor it is the producing of the marks; it is the marks as produced by a minded organism on a particular occasion together with the meaning those marks embody.

A Fregean proposition is a nonlinguistic entity that subsists independently of minds and language. It is the sense (Sinn) of a declarative sentence from which indexical elements have been extruded. For example, 'I am blogging' does not express a Fregean proposition because of the indexical 'I' and because of the present tense of the verb phrase. But 'BV blogs at 10:50 AM PST on 4 September 2017' expresses a Fregean proposition.

Fregean senses are extralinguistic and extramental 'abstract' or 'Platonic' items. They are not in time or space even when the objects they are about are in time and space. This is what makes Fregean propositions 'Platonic' rather than 'Aristotelian.' Fregean propositions are the primary truth-bearers; the sentences that express them are derivatively true or false.

A Russellian proposition is a blurry, hybrid entity that combines some of the features of a Fregean truth-bearer and some of the features of a truth-maker. A Russellian proposition does not reside at the level of sense (Sinn) but at the level of reference (Bedeutung). It is out there in the (natural) world. It is what some of us call a fact or 'concrete fact' (as in my existence book) and others a state of affairs.

Now consider a singular sentence such as 'Ed is happy.' For present purposes, the crucial difference between a Fregean proposition and a Russellian proposition is that, on the Fregean view, the subject constituent of Ed is happy is not Ed himself with skin and hair, but an abstract surrogate that represents him in the Fregean proposition, whereas in the Russellian proposition Ed himself is a constituent of the proposition!

We needn't consider why so many distinguished philosophers have opted for this (monstrous) view. But this is the view that seems to have Ed in its grip and that powers his puzzle above.

If we take the relatively saner (but nonetheless problematic) view that propositions are Fregean in nature, then the puzzle is easily solved.

Ed asks: What is the logical form the form of? He maintains, rightly, that it cannot be the form of an array of sentences. So it must be the form of an array of propositions. Right again. But then he falls into puzzlement:

. . . ‘Cicero’ and ‘Tully’ mean the same man. Then the man is contained in both propositions, and if the form is of the proposition, the argument has the true form ‘a is F, so a is F’, which is valid.

The puzzlement disappears if we reject the Russsellian theory of propositions. A man cannot be contained in a proposition. and so it cannot be the same man in both propositions.

‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’ is plainly invalid. Its form is: Rc, ergo Rt, which is an invalid form. If we adopt either an Aristotelian or a Fregean view of propositions we will not be tempted to think otherwise.

‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Cicero is a Roman’ is plainly valid. ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’ is plainly invalid. The logical forms are different! If, on a Russellian theory of propositions, the forms are the same, then so much the worse for a Russellian theory of propositions!

A Question about Use and Mention

Here is a curious sentence suggested to me by London Ed:

1) The last word in this sentence refers to cats.

(1) is part of a larger puzzle the discussion which we leave for later.

My question is this: Can a word be both used and mentioned in the same sentence? It would seem so. (1) is no doubt an unusual sentence. But it is grammatical, makes sense, and is true.

It seems that the last word in (1) is being both used and mentioned. (Assume someone is uttering a token of (1).) The last word in the sentence is 'cats' and 'cats' refers to cats. So the last word in (1) is being used. But it is also being mentioned. It is mentioned by 'the last word in this sentence.'

So it seems that one and the same word can be both used and mentioned in one and the same sentence.

What say you, London Ed?

Names on Grave Stones

The names on grave stones are proper names for a time, while the memories of survivors provide reference-fixing context. But with the passing of the survivors the names revert to commonality. After a while the dead may as well lie in a common grave.

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 no longer exists.

Against Ostrich Nominalism

As magnificent a subject as philosophy is, grappling as it does with the ultimate concerns of human existence, and thus surpassing in nobility any other human pursuit, it is also miserable in that nothing goes uncontested, and nothing ever gets established to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners. (This is true of other disciplines as well, but in philosophy it is true in excelsis.) Suppose I say, as I have in various places:

That things have properties and stand in relations I take to be a plain Moorean fact beyond the reach of reasonable controversy. After all, my cat is black and he is sleeping next to my blue coffee cup. ‘Black’ picks out a property, an extralinguistic feature of my cat.

Is that obvious? Not to some. Not to the ornery and recalcitrant critter known as the ostrich nominalist. My cat, Max Black, is black. That, surely, is a Moorean fact. Now consider the following biconditional and consider whether it too is a Moorean fact:

1. Max is black iff Max has the property of being black.

As I see it, there are three main ways of construing a biconditional such as (1):

A. Ostrich Nominalism. The right-hand side (RHS) says exactly what the left-hand side (LHS) says, but in a verbose and high-falutin' and dispensable way. Thus the use of 'property' on the RHS does not commit one ontologically to properties beyond predicates. (By definition, predicates are linguistic items while properties are extralinguistic and extramental.) Predication is primitive and in need of no philosophical explanation. On this approach, (1) is trivially true. One needn't posit properties, and in consequence one needn't worry about the nature of property-possession. (Is Max related to his blackness, or does Max have his blackness quasi-mereologically by having it as an ontological constituent of him?)

B. Ostrich Realism. The RHS commits one ontologically to properties, but in no sense does the RHS serve to ground or explain the LHS. On this approach, (1) is false if there are no properties. For the ostrich realist, (1) is true, indeed necessarily true, but it is not the case that the LHS is true because the RHS is true. Such notions as metaphysical grounding and philosophical explanation are foreign to the ostrich realist, but not in virtue of his being a realist, but in virtue of his being an ostrich.

C. Non-Ostrich Realism. On this approach, the RHS both commits one to properties, but also proffers a metaphysical ground of the truth of the LHS: the LHS is true because (ontologically or metaphysically speaking) the concrete particular Max has the property of being black, and not vice versa.

Note 1: Explanation is asymmetrical; biconditionality is symmetrical.

Note 2: Properties needn't be universals. They might be (abstract) particulars (unrepeatables) such as the tropes of D. C. Williams and Keith Campbell. Properties must, however, be extralinguistic and extramental, by definition.

Note 3: Property-possession needn't be understood in terms of instantiation or exemplification or Fregean 'falling-under'; it might be construed quasi-mereologically as constituency: a thing has a property by having it as a proper ontological part.

Against Ostrich Nominalism

On (A) there are neither properties, nor do properties enter into any explanation of predication. Predication is primitive and in need of no explanation. In virtue of what does 'black' correctly apply to Max? In virtue of nothing. It just applies to him and does so correctly. Max is black, but there is no feature of reality that explains why 'black' is true of Max, or why 'Max is black' is true. It is just true! There is nothing in reality that serves as the ontological ground of this contingent truth. Nothing 'makes' it true. There are no truth-makers and no need for any.

I find ostrich nominalism preposterous. 'Black' is true of Max, 'white' is not, but there is no feature of reality, nothing in or at or about Max that explains why the one predicate is true of him and the other is not!? This is not really an argument but more an expression of incomprehension or incredulity, an autobiographical comment, if you will. I may just be petering out, pace Professor van Inwagen.

Can I do better than peter? 'Black' is a predicate of English. Schwarz is a predicate of German. If there are no properties, then Max is black relative to English, schwarz relative to German, noir relative to French, and no one color. But this is absurd. Max is not three different colors, but one color, the color we use 'black' to pick out, and the Germans use schwarz to pick out. When Karl, Pierre, and I look at Max we see the same color. So there is one color we both see — which would not be the case if there were no properties beyond predicates. It is not as if I see the color black while Karl sees the color schwarz. We see the same color. And we see it at the cat. This is not a visio intellectualis whereby we peer into some Platonic topos ouranos. Therefore, there is something in, at, or about the cat, something extralinguistic, that grounds the correctness of the application of the predicate to the cat.

A related argument. I say, 'Max is black.' Karl says, Max ist schwarz. 'Is' and ist are token-distinct and type-distinct words of different languages. If there is nothing in reality (no relation whether of instantiation or of constituency, non-relational tie, Bergmannian nexus, etc.) that the copula picks out, then it is only relative to German that Max ist schwarz, and only relative to English that Max is black. But this is absurd. There are not two different facts here but one. Max is the same color for Karl and me, and his being black is the same fact for Karl and me.

Finally, 'Max is black' is true. Is it true ex vi terminorum? Of course not. It is contingently true. Is it just contingently true? Of course not. It is true because of the way extralinguistic reality is arranged. It is modally contingent, but also contingent upon the way the world is. There's this cat that exists whether or not any language exists, and it is black whether or not any language exists.

Therefore, I say that for a predicate to be contingently true of an individual, (i) there must be individuals independently of language; (ii) there must be properties independently of language; and there must be facts or truth-making states of affairs independently of language. Otherwise, you end up with (i) total linguistic idealism, which is absurd; or (ii) linguistic idealism about properties which is absurd; or (iii) a chaos, a world of disconnected particulars and properties.

The above is a shoot-from-the hip, bloggity-blog exposition of ideas that can be put more rigorously, but it seems to to me to show that ostrich nominalism and ostrich realism for that matter are untenable — and this despite the fact that a positive theory invoking facts has its own very serious problems.

Metaphilosophical Coda: If a theory has insurmountable problems, these problems are not removed by the fact that every other theory has problems. For it might be that no theory is tenable,while the problem itself is genuine.

The Primacy of the Intentional Revisited

Long-time reader writes,

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'?

Belief, Designation, and Substitution

Suppose it is true that Sam believes that Hesperus is a planet. One cannot substitute 'Phosphorus' for 'Hesperus' in 'Sam believes that Hesperus is a planet' and be assured that the resulting sentence will also be true. And this despite the fact that Hesperus is Phosphorus. The reason is that Sam may be ignorant of the fact that Hesperus is Phosphorus. So here we have a context, that of belief de dicto, in which the substitution of one co-referential expression for another fails to preserve truth.

Valid: Hesperus is a planet; Hesperus is Phosphorus; ergo, Phosphorus is a planet.

Invalid: Sam believes that Hesperus is a planet; Hesperus is Phosphorus; ergo, Sam believes that Phosphorus is a planet.

The difference in Quinean jargon is that in the valid argument, each name is in a referentially transparent position, while in the invalid argument the first occurrence of 'Hesperus' and the second occurrence of 'Phosphorous' are in referentially opaque positions. (Cf. Word and Object, sec. 30)

So far the Opponent will agree. But he has a question for me.

Why does substitution succeed for the ‘designates’ relation, but fail for the ‘believes’ relation? The two arguments below are of exactly the same logical form:

A. ‘H’ designates H; H = P, therefore ‘H’ designates P.
B. Sam believes that H is a planet; H = P, therefore S believes that P is a planet.

My answer is that substitution succeeds for the 'designates' relation because there is no referential opacity in (A). 'H' in (A) — I am mentioning the third word in (A) — is referentially transparent. Let's not forget that we are assuming that names are rigid designators that refer directly to their designata, not via a Fregean sense or a Russellian description.

A directly referential term 'lassoes' its object, or you could say it 'harpoons' it or 'grabs' it. If I grab my cat I don't grab him under a description or via a Fregean "mode of presentation." I grab the cat himself, all 25 lbs of him with all his parts and properties. Analogously, successful reference on Kripke's scheme get us right to the thing itself.

I am maintaining against the Opponent that if names are rigid designators that target their designata directly and not via any sort of semantic intermediary, then the (A) and (B) cases are very different. (B)-type cases are counterexamples to universal substitutivity salva veritate; (A)-type cases are not. He is maintaining that the cases are parallel and that both generate referential opacity.

The Opponent's view might make sense if we add to the dialectic the Opponent's surprising thesis that all reference is intralinguistic reference, but this thesis cannot be brought into a discussion of Kripke who holds no such view. My view is that while there is of course intralinguistic reference, it is a derivative phenomenon: the paradigm cases are of extralinguistic reference. Reference to a massive planet is nothing like a pronoun's back-reference to its antecedent.

But I don't endorse Kripke's views. I incline toward a descriptivist theory of names. Names don't refer; people or rather their minds refer using names that need not be publicly expressed. Linguistic reference is built upon, and nothing without, thinking reference, or intentionality. The primacy of the intentional! (Chisholm would be proud of me.) The intentionality of finite mind, however, never presents us with the thing itself, Venus say, in all its infinitely-propertied glory. Mental reference in never direct but mediated by a semantic intermediary, whether a Fregean sense, an Husserlian noema, a Castanedan guise, or something of that order.

Thinking about my cat is quite unlike picking him up. When I pick him up I get the whole cat including stomach contents into my hand. But I can't get the whole cat into my mind when I think about him. I can only think of him under a description which doesn't begin to exhaust his full kitty-kat kwiddity.

Kripke's scheme is crude, especially when he tries to explain via causation how a name acquires its reference. The causal theory of reference quite hopeless for reasons canvassed in other posts.

Finally, if 'a' and 'b' are rigid designators that directly target their objects, and a = b, then surely there is no possible world in which the referents of these names both exist and are numerically different. If substitution comes into this at all, it cannot fail to preserve truth. For if the meaning of 'a' is exhausted by a, and the meaning of 'b' exhausted by b, and a = b, then there is no additional factor that could induce referential opacity.

If a = b, it does not follow that necessarily, a = b, for if a/b is contingent, there there are worlds in which the identity does not hold. But we can say this: if a = b, then essentially, a = b. This rules out the contingency of their identity across all worlds in which a/b exists.

Yet Another Exchange on the Necessity of Identity

The Opponent by e-mail:

Still puzzling over this. I think Kripke believes we can get to N of I directly, via rigidity of designation.

If names are rigid designators, then there can be no question about identities being necessary, because ‘a’ and ‘b’ will be rigid designators of a certain man or thing x. Then even in every possible world, ‘a’ and ‘b’ will both refer to this same object x, and to no other, and so there will be no situation in which a might not have been b. That would have to be a situation in which the object which we are also now calling ‘x’ would not have been identical with itself. Then one could not possibly have a situation in which Cicero would not have been Tully or Hesperus would not have been Phosphorus. (‘Identity and Necessity’ p. 154, there is a similar argument in N&N p.104).

BV's comment: The great Kripke is being a little sloppy above inasmuch as a rigid designator does not designate the same object in every possible world, but the same object in every possible world in which the object exists. Socrates, to coin an example, is a contingent being: he exists in some but not all metaphysically possible worlds. If names are rigid designators, then 'Socrates' picks out Socrates in every world in which the philosopher exists, but not in every world, and this for the simple reason that he does not exist in every world. 'Socrates' if rigid is known in the trade as weakly rigid. 'God,' by contrast, if a name, and if a rigid designator, is strongly rigid since God exists in every possible world.

But I don't think this caveat affects the the main bone of contention.

My interpretation:

Let ‘a’ rigidly designate a and ‘b’ rigidly designate b
Suppose a=b
Then there is a single thing, call it ‘x’, such that x=a and x = b
‘a’ designates x and ‘b’ designates x
If designation is rigid, ‘a’ designates x in every possible world, likewise ‘b’
If ‘a’ and ‘b’ designate x in any possible world w, and not a=b, then not x=x
Therefore a=b in w
But w was any possible world. Therefore, necessarily a=b.

I claim that all the steps are valid, except 4, which requires substitutivity. But Kripke does not assume, or endorse, substitutivity (neither do I).

BV's interpretation:

A. 'a' and 'b' are rigid designators.
B. 'a' and 'b' designate the same object x in the actual world.
Therefore
C. 'a' and 'b' designate the same object x in every possible world in which x exists. (By the df. of 'rigidity')
Therefore
D. There is no possible world in which x exists and it is the case that ~(a = b).
Therefore
E. If a = b, then necessarily, a = b.

I see no reason for Substitutivity if we are given Rigidity and Coreferentiality.

Another Round With the Opponent on the Necessity of Identity

The Opponent writes,

The Maverick Philosopher has a comment on my earlier question about the necessity of identity. Can we get from ‘a=b’ to ‘necessarily a=b’ in a simple step? He thinks we can.

Now if ‘H’ and ‘P’ designate one and the same entity, then what appears to be of the form a = b, reduces to the form a = a. Clearly, if a = a, then necessarily, a = a. The assumption that the identity of H with P is contingent entails the absurdity that a thing is distinct from itself. Therefore the relation denoted by ‘=’ holds necessarily in every case in which it holds. Q. E. D.

The problem is the claim that ‘H’ (‘Hesperus’) and ‘P’ (‘Phosphorus’) designate one and the same entity. How do we get there, given only that H is the same object as P? Suppose we grant that H and P are this ‘one and the same entity’. We are saying that there is some entity, call it ‘V’ (i.e. Venus), such that H is identical with V and P is identical with V. Fair enough. But how do we get from there to the claim that the names designate this one and the same entity, i.e. that ‘H’ designates V and ‘P’ designates V? I.e. what validates the move from 2 to 3 in the following argument?

1. H=V
2. ‘H’ designates H
3. Therefore ‘H’ designates V.

You need the principle of substitutivity, the principle that if a=b and Fa, then infer Fb. For example, let F be the function ‘‘H’ designates –’. Then we agree that F(H), because we assumed that ‘H’ designates H. And we posit that H=V. Given substitutivity, it follow that F(V). But only given that substitutivity is valid in this case, which is not at all obvious, at least to me.

RESPONSE

I am afraid I just don't understand what the Opponent's problem is. He writes, "The problem is the claim that ‘H’ (‘Hesperus’) and ‘P’ (‘Phosphorus’) designate one and the same entity. How do we get there, given only that H is the same object as P?" Apparently, the Opponent wants to know what validates the inference from

Hesperus is the same entity as Phosphorus

'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus' designate the same entity.

What validates the inference is the principle that if two putatively distinct entities are in fact numerically the same entity, then the names for these putatively distinct entities are co-referential: they designate one and the same entity.

I don't see the need to invoke a principle of substitutivity. In the above inference there was no substitution of a name for a name.

The Necessity of Identity: A Puzzle and a Challenge

The Opponent comments in black; my responses are in blue:

Here is the puzzle: how can we establish the necessity of identity without appealing to principles which are either insufficient, or which are not universally valid? The principle of identity (necessarily, a = a) is not sufficient. We agree that necessarily, Hesperus is identical with Hesperus. That planet could not be numerically different from itself in any circumstance. But the question is whether necessarily, Hesperus is identical with Phosphorus. You will object that if H = P, then necessarily, H = P, because necessarily, H = H. is H. I reply: this begs the question. Under what law of logic or reasoning does nec (H = H) imply nec (H = P)? The principle of identity is insufficient on its own to establish necessity of identity.

BV: This seems correct. There is no immediate valid inference from the principle of identity to the necessity of identity. The inference would seem to be valid only in the presence of auxiliary 'mediating' premises.

But let me play the role of advocatus diaboli. We know empirically that H = P. And we know a priori about the identity relation. We know that it is an equivalence relation (reflexive, symmetric, transitive). We also know that it is governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals (InId) which states that for any x, y, if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and vice versa. InId is not a principle external to the notion of (numerical) identity, but part of what we mean by 'identity.' Obviously, if two putatively distinct items are one item, i.e., are identical, then whatever is true of the one is true of the other, and vice versa. We would never apply the concept of identity to any thing or thing that violated InId.

So if we know that H = P, then we know that in reality (i.e., extralinguistically, and extramentally) there is just one thing where H and P are. Call this one thing 'V.' We know from the principle of identity that necessarily, V = V. Now suppose, for reductio, that it is not the case that necessarily, H = P. Suppose, in other words that possibly, ~(H = P). One would then be supposing that the identity of H and P is contingent. But that is to suppose that the identity of V with itself is contingent, which is absurd. Therefore, the necessity of identity holds.

So it appears that I have validated the inference from the the principle of identity to the necessity of identity by adducing premises that are well-nigh self-evident. One of my supplementary premises is that we know some such truths as that H = P. I also assumed that if x = y, then there are not two things denoted by 'x' and 'y,' but one thing. I also assumed that when we use terms like 'H' and 'P' we are referring to things in reality with all their properties and relations and not to items like sense data or Husserlian noemata or Castanedan guises or any sort of incomplete object or epistemic deputy. I am assuming that our thought and talk about planets and such reaches right up to the thing itself and does not stop short at some epistemic/doxastic intermediary.

And now back to the Opponent:

What if ‘Hesperus’ means exactly the same thing as ‘Phosphorus’? This is the principle of Semantic Identity. Then it certainly follows that nec (H = H) implies nec(H = P), because both statements mean exactly the same thing. But does ‘Hesperus’ mean exactly the same thing as ‘Phosphorus’? Surely not. When the names were given, when those planets were dubbed, people understood the meaning of both names perfectly. But while they understood that H=H, they did not understand that H=P. The names cannot have meant the same. So the assumption of semantic identity does not hold.

BV: That's right. The names do not have the same Fregean sense (Sinn). This is why 'H = H' and 'H = P' do not have the same Fregean cognitive value (Erkenntniswert). To know one is to know an instance of the principle of identity. It is to know a logical truth. To know the other is to know a non-logical truth, one that is synthetic a posteriori in Kant's sense.

Finally, let’s try the principle of substitutivity, which states that Fa and a = b implies that Fb. Then let F be ‘nec (a = –)’. The principle of identity says that nec(a = a), i.e. Fa. Then if a = b, the principle of substitutivity says that Fb, i.e. nec(a = b). This is valid, but is the principle of substitutivity valid? There are many counterexamples to this, so we cannot assume it is valid. You will object that the principle of substitutivity may be invalid for a type of necessity known as ‘epistemic necessity’, but valid for a type of necessity known as ‘metaphysical necessity’. I reply: under what assumption or principle can you justify that substitutivity is valid for metaphysical necessity, when it is clearly not valid for other types of necessity. You object: we shall define metaphysical necessity as that type of necessity for which substitutivity is valid. I reply: how do you know that anything whatsoever fits that definition? You need to establish that the principle of substitutivity holds for some kind of necessity, without assuming the principle of substitutivity itself. But of course you can’t. If this were possible, Marcus and Quine would have been able to prove the necessity of identity without having to assume substitutivity. But they couldn’t.

BV: it is true that there are counterexamples to the principle of substitutivity in the 'wide open' formulation that the Opponent provides. Sam can believe that Hesperus is a planet, not a star, without believing that Phosphorus is a planet, not a star, despite the fact that Hesperus = Phosphorus. So the following is a non sequitur:

Hesperus has the property of being believed by Sam to be a planet.
Hesperus = Phosphorus.
Ergo
Phosphorus has the property of being believed by Sam to be a planet.

This example is also a counterexample to the Indiscernibility of Identicals which is presumably equivalent to the substitutivity principle. I think that should worry us a bit.

To appreciate the dialectical lay of the land it may help to set forth the problem as an aporetic tetrad:

A. InId: For any x, y, if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and conversely.
B. Hesperus = Phosphorus.
C. It is true of Hesperus that it is believed by Sam to be a planet.
D. It is not true of Phosphorus that it is believed by Sam to be a planet.

The tetrad is inconsistent: any three limbs entail the negation of the fourth. One could solve the problem by rejecting InId in its wide-open or unrestricted formulation. What speaks against this solution is that InId in its unrestricted formulation is part and parcel of what we mean by '=.' If you were trying to explain to a student what relation '=' stands for, you couldn't just say that it stands for an equivalence relation since not every such relation is picked out by '=.' You would have to bring in InId.

A second way to solve the tetrad is by denying (B). It can be true that H is the same as P without it being the case that H = P. Note that '=' is not a bit of ordinary language; it is a terminus technicus. One can't just assume that the only type of sameness is the sameness denoted by '=.' Suppose we distinguish between formal identity statements of the form a = a and material identity statements of the form a =* b. While both are equivalence relations, the former are necessary while the latter are contingent. We can then say that H and P are materially identical and thus contingently the same. Because they are contingently the same, they are not one and the same. H and P are together in reality but are nonetheless distinct items. If so, (C) and (D) can both be true in the presence of InId/Substitutivity.

At this point I ask the Opponent whether his denial of the necessity of identity amounts to an affirmation of the contingency of the relation picked out by '=,' or whether it amounts to a rejection of the relation picked out by '=.' It seems to me that if you admit that there is a relation picked out by '=,' then you must also admit that it holds noncontingently in every case in which it holds.

One could hold the following view. There is a relation picked out by '=.' Call it formal identity. It holds of everything. But no synthetic identity statement is noncontingently true if true. No such statement is reducible to the form a = a. All are contingently true if true. So 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' is contingently true, and what the names refer to are distinct items. They refer directly to these items. But these items are something like Castaneda's ontological guises or Butchvarov's objects.

My problem is therefore that we cannot establish the identity of necessity without appealing to principles which are either insufficient (the principle of identity) or which are not universally valid (the principles of semantic identity and substitutivity). We could of course assume it as a sort of bedrock, a truth which is obviously true in its own right, a per se nota principle which requires no further demonstration. But I am not sure it is such a truth. It’s not obvious to me, for a start.

So my challenge to Bill and others is to demonstrate necessity of identity by appeal to principles of reasoning which are stronger than the ones given above, or by demonstrating its self-evidence. Neither will work, in my view.

BV: It seems to me I gave a reductio-type demonstration in my first comment. The paradigm cases of the relation picked out by '=' are the cases of the form a = a. Now if 'H' and 'P' designate one and the same entity, then what appears to be of the form a = b, reduces to the form a = a. Clearly, if a = a, then necessarily a = a. The assumption that the identity of H and P is contingent entails the absurdity that a thing is distinct from itself. Therefore the relation denoted by '=' holds necessarily in every case in which it holds. Q. E. D.

Note that I didn't use Substitutivity/Inid or Semantic Identity in this reductio. But I did assume that there is a relation picked out by '=' — which is not obvious! — and that it is this relation that the 'is' expresses in the synthetic truth 'H is P.' Which is also not obvious!

Luke 2:21: Can the Not-Yet-Existent be Named?

Luke 2:21 (NIV): On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived. (emphasis added)

This New Testament passage implies that before a certain human individual came into existence, he was named, and therefore could be named. The implication is that before an individual comes into existence, that very individual can be an object of irreducibly singular reference by a logically proper name. That is by no means obvious as I shall now argue.

To simplify the discussion let us revert to a mundane example, Socrates, to keep the particulars of Christian incarnational theology from clouding the issue. We will have enough on our plates even with this simplification. At the end of this entry I will return to the theological question.

A Remarkable Prophecy

Suppose there had been a prophet among the ancient Athenians who prophesied the birth among them of a most remarkable man, a man having the properties we associate with Socrates, including the property of being named 'Socrates.' Suppose this prophet, now exceedingly old, is asked after having followed Socrates' career and having witnessed his execution: Was that the man you prophesied?

Does this question make sense? Suppose the prophet had answered, "Yes, that very man, the one who just now drank the hemlock, is the very man whose birth I prophesied long ago before he was born!" Does this answer make sense?

An Assumption

To focus the question, let us assume that there is no pre-existence of the souls of creatures. Let us assume that Socrates, body and soul, comes into existence at or near the time of his conception. For our problem is not whether we can name something that already exists, but whether we can name something that does not yet exist.

Thesis

I say that neither the question nor the answer make sense. (Of course they both make semantic sense; my claim is that they make no metaphysical or broadly logical sense.) What the prophet prophesied was the coming of some man with the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess. What he could not have prophesied was the very man that subsequently came to possess the properties in question.

What the prophet prophesied was general, not singular: he prophesied that a certain definite description would come to be satisfied by some man or other. Equivalently, what the prophet prophesied was that a certain conjunctive property would come in the fullness of time to be instantiated, a property among whose conjuncts are such properties as being snubnosed, being married to a shrewish woman, being a master dialectician, being accused of being a corrupter of youth, etc. Even if the prophet had been omniscient and had been operating with a complete description, a description such that only one person in the actual world satisfies it if anything satisfies it, the prophecy would still be general.

Why would the complete description, satisfied uniquely if satisfied at all, still be general? Because of the possibility that some other individual, call him 'Schmocrates,' satisfy the description. For such a complete description, uniquely satisfied if satisfied at all, could not capture the very haecceity and ipseity and identity of a concrete individual.

We can call this view I am espousing anti-haecceitist: the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual cannot antedate the individual's existence. Opposing this view is that of the haecceitist who holds that temporally prior to the coming into existence of a concrete individual such as Socrates, the non-qualitative thisness of the individual is already part of the furniture of the universe.

My terminology is perhaps not felicitous. I am not denying that concrete individuals possess haecceity. I grant that haecceity is a factor in an individual's ontological 'assay' or analysis. What I am denying is that the haecceity of an individual can exist apart from the individual whose haecceity it is. From this it follows that the haecceity of an individual cannot exist before the individual exists.

But how could the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual be thought to antedate the individual whose thisness it is? We might try transforming the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual into an abstract object, a property that exists in every possible world, and thus at every time in those worlds having time.

Consider the putative property, identity-with-Socrates. Call it Socrateity. Suppose our Athenian prophet has the power to 'grasp' (conceive, understand) this non-qualitative property long before it is instantiated. Suppose he can grasp it just as well as he can grasp the conjunctive property mentioned above. Then, in prophesying the coming of Socrates, the prophet would be prophesying the coming of Socrates himself. His prophecy would be singular, or, if you prefer, de re: it would involve Socrates himself.

What do I mean by "involve Socrates himself"? Before Socrates comes to be there is no Socrates. But there is, on the haecceitist view I reject, Socrateity. This property 'deputizes' for Socrates at times and in possible worlds at which our man does not exist. It cannot be instantiated without being instantiated by Socrates. And it cannot be instantiated by anything other than Socrates in the actual world or in any possible world. By conceiving of Socrateity before Socrates comes to be, the Athenian prophet is conceiving of Socrates before he comes to be, Socrates himself, not a mere instance of a conjunctive property or a mere satisfier of a description. Our Athenian prophet is mentally grabbing onto the very haecceity or thisness of Socrates which is unique to him and 'incommunicable' (as a Medieval philosopher might say) to any other in the actual world or in any possible world.

But what do I mean by "a mere instance" or a "mere satisfier"?

Let us say that the conjunctive property of Socrates mentioned above is a qualitative essence of Socrates if it entails every qualitative or pure property of Socrates whether essential, accidental, monadic, or relational. If Socrates has an indiscernible twin, Schmocrates, then both individuals instantiate the same qualitative essence. It follows that, qua instances of this qualitative essence, they are indistinguishable. This implies that, if the prophet thinks of Socrates in terms of his qualitative essence, then his prophetic thought does not reach Socrates himself, but only a mere instance of his qualitative essence.

My claim, then, is that one cannot conceive of an individual that has not yet come into existence. For until an individual comes into existence it is not a genuine individual. Before Socrates came into existence, there was no possibility that he, that very man, come into existence. (In general, there are no de re possibilities involving future, not-yet-existent, individuals.) At best there was the possibility that some man or other come into existence possessing the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess. To conceive of some man or other is to think a general thought: it is not to think a singular thought that somehow reaches an individual in its individuality.

To conceive of a complete description's being satisfied uniquely by some individual or other it not to conceive of a particular individual that satisfies it. If this is right, then one cannot name an individual before it exists.

Back to Theology

Could an angel have named Jesus before he was conceived? If I am right, no angel, nor even God, could name Socrates before he came to be. But the case is different for Jesus on classical Trinitarian theology. For while there is on Christian doctrine no pre-existence of the souls of creatures, there is on Christian doctrine the pre-existence of the Word or Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity. So one could possibly say that the angel named the pre-existent Word 'Jesus.'

Identity and Quasi-Epistemic Contingency

The Opponent sends the following puzzle to vex us:

Story: there was someone called 'a', and there was someone called 'b'.

This is all we have of the story. Let the predicate F be 'The story is consistent with a
not being identical with ___'. Then clearly Fa is false, and Fb is true.

This is the case even if a, in fact, is identical with b.

Is there a puzzle here? It may be only a malformed attempt at a puzzle. We are presented with a very short story consisting of exactly two claims. We are given no information as to whether the person called 'a' is the same as or different from the person called 'b.' So the story allows for the possibility that the person called 'a' is not the same as the person called 'b.' This is the case even if, in fact, outside the story, it is not the case that a = b.

It is not clear that there is a puzzle here since the following propositions are logically consistent:

A. Within the story, it is possible that the person called 'a' is not the same as the person called 'b.'
B. It is the case that a = b.
C. For any x, y, if x = y, then necessarily, x = y. (Kripke's Necessity of Identity thesis)

It is the presence of the story operator in (A) that saves the triad from inconsistency.

Suppose 'Axwell' and 'Buswell' are the two names in the story and that both refer to an existing man, the same man. That a = b is no part of the story. Given only what we know from the story it is possible that a not be identical to b. But this possibility is something like an epistemic possibility which, as such, cannot be used to show the real (non-epistemic) possibility that a not be identical to b in reality.

So on this New Year's Day I tax the Noble Opponent with a metabasis eis allo genos (μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος), which is something like a Rylean category mistake: he shifts illicitly from a story-immanent perspective to a story-transcendent perspective. Within the story there is a story-immanent contingency as to both the identity and the difference of the referents of the names. But this is a sort of epistemic contingency consequent upon the fact that literary fiction leaves much indeterminate: the literary characters have all and only the properties assigned to them in the story.

So it looks as if the Opponent may be conflating a sort of epistemic contingency with real contingency. He does not have the makings of a sound argument for the claim that real-world identities are contingent, contra Kripke.

By contrast, the following triad is plainly inconsistent. This is the case whether we take names to be Kripkean rigid designators or Russellian definite descriptions in disguise.

A*. Possibly, it is not the case that a = b.
B. It is the case that a = b.
C. For any x, y, if x = y, then necessarily, x = y.