Language, Philosophy of – Page 5 – Maverick Philosopher

An Imagined Exchange With Yogi Berra

Me: He who hesitates is lost.

Yogi: You mean Peter?

……………..

What inspired this imagined exchange? The thought that the grammatically third-person singular masculine pronoun has logically non-pronominal uses.

Is Beef Food?

Beef is the flesh of a formerly sentient being, a dead cow. And of course beef is edible. For present purposes, to be edible is to be ingestible by mastication, swallowing, etc., non-poisonous, and sufficiently nutritious to sustain human life.

But is everything that is edible food? Obviously not: your pets and your children are edible but they are not food. People don't feed their pets and children to fatten them up for slaughter. So while all food is edible, not everything edible is food.

What then is the missing 'ingredient'? What must be added to the edible to make it food? We must move from merely biological concern with human animals and the nutrients necessary to keep them alive to the cultural and normative. Sally Haslanger: "Food, I submit, is a cultural and normative category." ("Ideology, Generics, and Common Ground," Chapter 11 of Feminist Metaphysics, 192)

This is surely on the right track, though I would add that food is not merely cultural and normative. Food, we can agree, is what it is socially acceptable to eat and/or morally permissible to eat. But food, to be food, must be material stuff ingestible by material beings, and so cannot be in toto a social or cultural construct. Or do you want to say that potatoes in the ground are social constructs? I hope not. Haslanger seems to accept my obvious point, as witness her remark to the effect that one cannot chow down on aluminum soda cans. As she puts it, "not just anything could count as food."(192) No construing of aluminum cans, social or otherwise, could make them edible to humans.

Could it be that certain food stuffs are by nature food, and not by convention? Could it be that the flesh of certain non-human animals such as cows is by nature food for humans? If beef is by nature food for humans, then it is normal in the normative sense for humans to eat beef, and thus morally acceptable that they eat it. Of course, what it is morally acceptable to eat need not be morally obligatory to eat.

Haslanger rejects the moral acceptability of eating beef but I don't quite find an argument against it, at least not in the article under examination. What she does is suggest how someone could come to accept the (to her) mistaken view that it is morally acceptable to eat meat. Given that 'Beef is food' is a generic statement, one will be tempted to accept the pragmatic or conversational implicature that "there is something about the nature of beef (or cows) that makes it food." (192)

For Haslanger, 'Beef is food' is in the close conceptual vicinity of 'Sagging pants are cool' and 'Women wear lipstick.'

Surely there is nothing intrinsic to sagging pants that makes them 'cool': 'coolness' is a relational property had by sagging pants in virtue of their being regarded as 'cool' by certain individuals. It is not in the nature of pants to sag such that non-sagging pants would count as sartorially defective. We can also easily agree that it is it not in the nature of women to wear lipstick such that non-lipstick-wearing women such as Haslanger are defective women in the way that a cat born with only three legs is a defective cat, an abnormal cat in both the normative and statistical senses of 'abnormal.' One can be a real woman, a good woman, a non-defective woman without wearing lipstick.

These fashion examples, which could be multiplied ad libitum (caps worn backward or sideways, high heels, etc.), are clear. What is not clear is why 'Beef is food' and 'Cows are food' are like the fashion examples rather than like such examples as 'Cats are four-legged' and 'Humans are rational.'

Cats are four-legged by nature, not by social construction. Accordingly, a three-legged cat is a defective cat. As such, it is no counterexample to the truth that cats are four-legged. 'Cats are four-legged' is presumably about a generic essence, one that has normative 'bite': a good cat, a normal cat has four legs. 'Cats are four-legged' is not replaceable salva veritate by 'All cats are four-legged.'

Why isn't 'Cows are food' assimilable to 'Cats are four-legged' rather than to 'Sagging pants are cool'? I am not finding an argument. Haslanger denies that "cows are for eating, that beef just is food":

Given that I believe this to be a pernicious and morally damaging assumption, it is reasonable for me to block the implicature by denying the claim: cows are not food. I would even be willing to say that beef is not food. (192)

Beef is not food for Haslanger because raising and slaughtering cows to eat their flesh is an "immoral human practice." But what exactly is the argument here? Where's the beef? Joking aside, what is the argument to the conclusion that eating beef is immoral?

There isn't one. She just assumes that eating beef is immoral. In lieu of an argument she provides a psycholinguistic explanation of how one might come to think that beef is food.

The explanation is that people believe that beef is food because they accept a certain pragmatic implicature, namely the one from 'Beef is food' to 'Beef has a nature that makes it food.' The inferential slide is structurally the same as the one from 'Sagging pants are cool' to 'There is something in the nature of sagging pants that grounds their intrinsic coolness.'

Now it is obvious that the pragmatic implicature is bogus is the fashion examples. To assume that it is also bogus in the beef example is to beg the question.

We noted that not everything edible is food. To be food, a stuff must not only be edible; it must also be socially acceptable to eat it. Food is "a cultural and normative category." (192) But Haslanger admits that "cows are food, given existing social practices." (193) So beef is, as a matter of fact, food. To have a reason to overturn the existing social practices, Haslanger need to give us a reason why eating beef is immoral — which she hasn't done.

Generic Statements

Statements divide into the singular and the general. General statements divide into the universal, the particular, and the generic. Generic statements are interesting not only to the logician and linguist and philosopher but also to critics of ideology and conservative critics of leftist ideology critique. For example, leftists will find something 'ideological' about the generic 'Women are nurturing' whereas conservatives will hold that the sentence expresses the plain truth and that some sort of obfuscation and chicanery is involved when leftists deny this plain biologically-based truth and try to tie its very meaning to the legitimation and preservation of existing power relations in society.

In this entry, perhaps the first in a series, I confine myself to presenting examples of generic statements and to giving a preliminary exegesis of the linguistic data, noting some features of generic generalizations, and some philosophical questions that arise.

Examples of Generic Statements

Some of the examples are my own, some are culled from the literature. Some of the following are true, some false, and some politically incorrect. Trigger Warning! All girly girls and pajama boys out of the seminar room and into their safe spaces! Uncle Bill will visit you later with milk and cookies and cuddly animals.

Dutchmen are good sailors. (Arnauld)
Germans are industrious.
Jews are very intelligent.
Birds fly.
Chickens lay eggs.
Germans make better soldiers than Italians.
Cigars are what Bill smokes these days.
Men are taller than women.
Blacks are more criminally prone than whites.
Priests don't ride motorcycles.
Reducing taxes leads to increased economic growth.
Turks are hospitable.
Turks are very bad drivers.
Analytic philosophers do not know the history of philosophy very well.
Humanities departments are lousy with leftists.
The dodo is extinct.
Schockley invented the transistor.
The lion has a mane.
Blacks are not good at deferring gratification.
Conservatives are racists.
Women are nurturing and better with children.
Fred drinks wine with dinner.
The potato is highly digestible.

Some Features of Generic Statements

One obvious feature of generic statements is that they are not replaceable either salva veritate or salva significatione by either universal or particular quantified statements. It is true that Germans are industrious, but false that all are. That some are is true, but 'Some Germans are industrious' does not convey the sense of 'Germans are industrious.' The generic and the particular generalization agree in truth value but differ in sense.

In a vast number of cases, if I assert that the Fs are Gs I do not mean to endorse the corresponding universal generalization. No doubt birds fly, but it is false that all birds fly: the penguin is a bird, but it doesn't fly. And I know that. So if I say that birds fly, you can't refute me by bringing up the penguin. And if I say that Italians and those of Italian extraction are frugal and masters of personal finance, which is manifestly true, you cannot refute me by bringing up your cousin Vinny, the spendthrift of Hoboken. The same goes for 'Humanities departments are lousy with leftists.' 'Chickens lay eggs' has the interesting property that all the roosters strutting around in the world's barnyards cannot counterexample it into falsehood.

It is interesting to note that one can make a generic statement (express a generic proposition) using a sentence with 'all' or 'every.' My example: Omnis homo mendax. 'Every man is a liar.' An assertive utterance of this sentence in normal contexts expresses the proposition that people lie, not the proposition that all people lie. Or if someone says, unguardedly, or Trumpianly, 'All politicians are crooks,' he won't be fazed if you point out that the late Patrick Daniel Moynihan was no crook. The speaker may have engaged in a hasty generalization, but then again he may have intended a generic statement.

On the other hand, we sometimes omit the universal quantifier even though the proposition we intend to express is a universal quantification. An assertive utterance of 'Arguments have premises' intends Every argument has premises. The possibility of counterexamples is not countenanced. Contrast this with the generic 'Chickens lay eggs' which is plainly true even though only hens lay eggs.

'Arguments have premises' is non-generic and elliptical for 'All arguments have premises.' But what about 'Men are mortal'? Is it replaceable salva significatione with 'All men are mortal'? Perhaps not, perhaps it is a generic statement that admits of exceptions, as generics typically do. After all, Christ was a man but he was not mortal inasmuch as he was also God.

A clearer example is 'Man is bipedal.' This cannot be replaced salva veritate by 'All men are bipedal' since the latter is false. Nor can it be replaced salva significatione by 'Some man is bipedal, which, though plainly true, is not what 'Man is bipedal' means. And the same holds for translations using the quantifiers 'many' and 'most' and 'almost all.'

We are tempted to say that 'Man is bipedal' by its very sense cannot be about individual humans, whether all of them, most of them, many of them, or some of them, but must be about a common generic essence that normal, non-defective humans instantiate. But how could this be? No generic essence has two feet. It is always only an individual man that has or lacks two feet. Here, then, is one of the philosophical puzzles that arise when we think about generic statements. It is the problem of what generic statements are about, which is not to be confused with the question whether they have truth makers.

And then there is 'Man is a rational animal.' Let us agree that to be rational is either to possess the capacity to reason or to possess the second-order capacity to develop this first-order capacity. Aristotle's dictum is true, while 'All humans are rational animals' is false. So Aristotle's dictum is a generic sentence that cannot be replaced by a quantified sentence. It is false that all humans are rational animals because an anencephalic human fetus, while obviously human (not bovine, canine, etc.), having as it does human parents, is not rational in the sense defined.

And of course we cannot replace 'Man is a rational animal' with 'Most men are rational animals.' For the dictum plainly intends something like: it the nature or essence of man to be rational. What then is the dictum about? If you tell me that it is about the generic essence man, then I will point out the obvious: no abstract object reasons, is capable of reasoning, or has the potentiality to acquire the power to reason.

Some philosophers hold that every truth has a truth-maker. What then are the truth-makers for the vast class of true generics? Do they have any?

REFERENCE

Panayot Butchvarov, Anthropocentrism in Philosophy: Realism, Antirealism, Semirealism, de Gruyter, 2015, Chapter 8, "Generic Statements," pp. 151-168.

‘Women are Better at Looking After Children’

The Opponent supplies the above-captioned sentence for analysis. He reports that a female family member was widely defriended (unfriended?) on Facebook for agreeing that it is true. Of course the sentence is true as anyone with common sense and experience of life knows.

It is an example of a generic statement or generic generalization. It obviously does not mean that all women are better at looking after children. The Opponent writes,

I think the PC brigade would claim that any utterance whatsoever of ‘women are better at looking after children’ has a separate implicature, i.e. ‘what is suggested in an utterance, even though neither expressed nor strictly implied.’ Something like ‘women belong in the home’, i.e. the normative 'women ought to be at home looking after the children.'

No?

The Opponent and I agree that the sentence under analysis is true. This leaves three questions.

First, does the non-normative sentence conventionally imply the normative one? Is there conventional implicature here? We of course agree that we are not in the presence of logical implication or entailment.

Second, is there conversational implicature here?

Third, is the normative sentence true?

As for the first question,I find no conventional implicature. A conventional implicature is a non-logical implication that is not context-sensitive but depends solely on the conventional meanings of the words in the relevant sentences. For example, 'Tom is poor but happy' implies that poverty and happiness are not usually found together. This is not a logical implication; it is a case of conventional implicature. Same with 'Mary had a baby and got married.' This is logically consistent with the birth's coming before the marriage and the marriage's coming before the birth. But it conventionally implies that Mary had a baby and then got married. This implicature is not sensitive to context of use but is inscribed in (as a Continental philosopher might say) the language system itself.

What about conversational implicature? This varies from context of use to context of use. Consider my kind of conservative, the traditional conservative that rejects both the conservatism of the neo-cons and the white-race-based identity-political conservatism of the Alternative Right. My brand of conservatism embraces certain classical liberal commitments, including: universal suffrage, the right of women to own property in their own names, and the right of women to pursue careers outside the home.

So if conservatives of my type are conversing and one says, 'Women are better at looking after children,' then this does not conversationally imply that women ought to be at home looking after the children. But among a different type of conservative, an ultra-traditional conservative who holds that woman's place is in the home, then we are in the presence of a conversational implicature.

Finally, is it true that women ought to be at home looking after children? I would say No in keeping with my brand of conservatism, which I warmly recommend as the best type there is, avoiding as it does the extremism of the ultra-traditional throne-and-altar, women-tied-to-the-stove conservatism (men are better cooks in any case), the namby-pamby libertarian-conservative fusionism of the Wall Streer Journal types, and the race-based identity-political extremism of the 'alties' and the neo-reactionaries.

Now if this were part of a journal article, I would not preen like this. But this ain't no journal article. This here's a blog post, bashed out quickly.

Blogging's a 'sport' like speed chess.

Your move, Opponent.

On the Expressibility of ‘Something Exists’

I am trying to soften up the Opponent for the Inexpressible. Here is another attempt.

……………………..

Surely this is a valid and sound argument:

1. Stromboli exists.
Ergo
2. Something exists.

Both sentences are true; both are meaningful; and the second follows from the first. How do we translate the argument into the notation of standard first-order predicate logic with identity? Taking a cue from Quine we may formulate (1) as

1*. For some x, x = Stromboli. In English:

1**. Stromboli is identical with something.

But how do we render (2)? Surely not as 'For some x, x exists' since there is no first-level predicate of existence in standard logic. And surely no ordinary predicate will do. Not horse, mammal, animal, living thing, material thing, or any other predicate reachable by climbing the tree of Porphyry. Existence is not a summum genus. (Aristotle, Met. 998b22, AnPr. 92b14) What is left but self-identity? Cf. Frege's dialog with Puenjer.

So we try,

2*. For some x, x = x. In plain English:

2**. Something is self-identical.

So our original argument becomes:

1**. Stromboli is identical with something.
Ergo
2**. Something is self-identical.

But what (2**) says is not what (2) says. The result is a murky travesty of the original luminous argument.

What I am getting at is that standard logic cannot state its own presuppositions. It presupposes that everything exists (that there are no nonexistent objects) and that something exists. But it lacks the expressive resources to state these presuppositions. The attempt to state them results either in nonsense — e.g. 'for some x, x' — or a proposition other than the one that needs expressing.

It is true that something exists, and I am certain that it is true: it follows immediately from the fact that I exist. But it cannot be said in standard predicate logic.

What should we conclude? That standard logic is defective in its treatment of existence or that there are things that can be SHOWN but not SAID? In April 1914. G.E. Moore travelled to Norway and paid a visit to Wittgenstein where the latter dictated some notes to him. Here is one:

In order that you should have a language which can express or say everything that can be said, this language must have certain properties; and when this is the case, that it has them can no longer be said in that language or any language. (Notebooks 1914-1916, p. 107)

Applied to the present example: A language that can SAY that e.g. island volcanos exist by saying that some islands are volcanos or that Stromboli exists by saying that Stromboli is identical to something must have certain properties. One of these is that the domain of quantification contains only existents and no Meinongian nonexistents. But THAT the language has this property cannot be said in it or in any language. Hence it cannot be said in the language of standard logic that the domain of quantification is a domain of existents or that something exists or that everything exists or that it is not the case that something does not exist.

Well then, so much the worse for the language of standard logic! That's one response. But can some other logic do better? Or should we say, with the early Wittgenstein, that there is indeed the Inexpressible, the Unsayable, the Unspeakable, the Mystical? And that it shows itself?

Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich, es ist das Mystische. (Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus 6.522)

Meaning is Tied to Use; Syntax Too?

It would seem so. Consider the way Peggy Noonan, no slouch of a political commentator, uses the adjective 'crazy' in this passage about Donald Trump:

He had to be a flame-haired rebuke to the establishment. He in fact had to be a living insult—no political experience, rude, crude ways—to those who’ve failed us. He had to leave you nervous, on the edge of your seat. Only that man could have broken through. Crazy was a feature, not a bug. (The assumption seemed to be he could turn crazy on and off. I believe he has demonstrated he can’t.)

That is perfectly intelligible of course, even though Noonan uses 'crazy' twice as a noun.

The syntactical difference between noun and adjective no doubt remains in place; it is just that a word that traditionally was always used as an adjective is here used as a noun, as a stand-in for the abstract substantive, 'craziness.' A bit earlier in her piece, Noonan uses 'crazy' as an adjective.

(Can you adduce a counterexample to my 'always' above?)

No word has a true or real or intrinsic meaning that somehow attaches to the word essentially regardless of contextual factors. Is the same true of syntactical category? Can every word 'jump categories'? Or only some?

For a long time now, verbs have been used as nouns. 'Jake sent me an invite to his Halloween party.' 'How much does the install cost?' 'An engine overhaul will cost you more the vehicle is worth.' How far can it go? Will tire rotations ever be advertised as 'tire rotates'? 'I thought the rotate was part of the deal!'

Some words have always (?) had a dual use as verbs and nouns. 'Torch,' might be an example.

'I' is an interesting case. (I mean the word, not the English majuscule letter or the Roman numeral.) 'I' is the first-person singular pronoun. But it can also be used as a noun.

Suppose a Buddhist says, 'There is no I.' Is his utterance gibberish? Could I reasonably reply to the Buddhist: What you've said, Bud, is nonsense on purely syntactical grounds. So it is neither true not false.

More later.

Exaggeration and the Erosion of Credibility

Why do people exaggerate in serious contexts? The logically prior question is: What is exaggeration, and how does it differ from joking, lying, bullshitting, and metaphorical uses of language?

Donald Trump in the first of his presidential debates with Hillary Clinton made the astonishing claim that she has been fighting ISIS all her adult life.

Note first that Trump was not joking but making a serious point. But he couched the serious point in a sentence which is plainly false and known by all to be false. So he cannot be taxed with an intention to deceive. Since he had no intention of deceiving his audience, and since the point he was making (not merely trying to make) about Clinton's fecklessness is true, he was not lying. He was not bullshitting either since he was not trying to misrepresent himself as knowing something he does not know or more than he knows.

Our man was exaggerating. That is different from joking, lying, and bullshitting.

The Debate That Won’t Go Away: Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

Not again! Yes, again. On 5 September 2016 anno domini, in the pages of Crisis Magazine, Fr. Brandon O'Brien opined (emphasis added):

While some similarities may exist between the Christian and Muslim conceptions of God, it is certain that the Christian who prays “Our Father, Who art in Heaven” each day is not praying to the same God as the Muslim who prays “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.” This is because they are not worshipping the same God.

Certain! How's that for theological chutzpah?

The title of the piece is "Why Christians and Muslims Worship Different Gods." The reason is that the Christian and Muslim conceptions of God are drastically different. The doctrine of the Trinity is perhaps the key difference. For normative Christians God is tri-une: one God in three divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is well-known that normative Muslims reject this trinitarian conception and hold to the radical unity of Allah. God cannot have a son, either in heaven or on earth. This key difference leads to the crucial difference. For Christians, God, or rather God's Son, died on the cross (crux, crucis) for man's salvation, was resurrected, and ascended into heaven body and soul.

So the conceptions of God in the two religions are radically different. But how is it supposed to follow that Christians and Muslims worship numerically different Gods? It doesn't follow! Let me explain.

Suppose Sam's conception of the author of Das Kapital includes the false belief that the author is a Russian while Dave's conception includes the true belief that he is a German. This is consistent with there being one and same philosopher whom they have beliefs about and are referring to. One and the same man, Karl Marx, is such that Sam has a false belief about him while Dave has a true belief about him.

Now suppose Ali's conception of the divine being includes the false belief that said being is non-triune while Peter's conception includes the true belief that God is triune. This is consistent with there being one and same being whom they have beliefs about and are referring to. One and the same god, God, is such that Ali has a false belief about him while Peter has a true belief about him.

What I have just shown is that from the radically different, and indeed inconsistent, God-conceptions one cannot validly infer that (normative) Christians and (normative) Muslims refer to and worship numerically different Gods. For the difference in conceptions is consistent with sameness of referent. So you can see that Fr. O'Brien has made a mistake.

But nota bene: Difference in conceptions is also consistent with a difference in referent. It could be that when a Christian uses 'God' he refers to something while a Muslim refers to nothing when he uses 'Allah.' Consider God and Zeus. Will you say that the Christian and the ancient Greek polytheist worship the same God except that the Greek has false beliefs about their common object of worship, believing as he does that Zeus is a superman who lives on a mountain top, literally hurls thunderbolts, etc.? Or will you say that there is no one God that they worship, that the Christian worships a being that exists while the Greek worships a nonexistent object? And if you say the latter, why not also say the same about God and Allah, namely, that there is no one being that they both worship, that the Christian worships the true God, the God that really exists, whereas Muslims worship a God that does not exist?

In sum, difference in conceptions is logically consistent both with sameness of referent and difference of referent.

Apparently, this is difficult for some to see. My good friend Dale Tuggy writes,

Christians and Muslims disagree about whether God has a Son, right? Then, they’re talking about the same (alleged) being. They may disagree about “who God is” in the sense of what he’s done, what attributes he has, how many “Persons” are in him, and whether Muhammad was really his Messenger, etc. But disagreement assumes one subject-matter – here, one god.

Tuggy is saying in effect that disagreement presupposes, and thus entails, sameness of referent.

I think Tuggy is making a mistake here. Surely disagreement about the properties of a putatively self-same x does not entail that there is in reality one and the same x under discussion, although it is logically consistent with it.

A dispute between me and Ed Feser, say, about whether our mutual acquaintance Tuggy has a son no doubt presupposes, and thus entails, that there is one and the same man whom we are talking about. It would be absurd to maintain that there are two Tuggys, my Tuggy and Ed's, where mine has a son and Ed's does not. It would be absurd for me to say, "I'm talking about the true Tuggy while you, Ed, are talking about a different Tuggy, one that doesn't exist. You are referencing, if not worshipping, a false Tuggy." Why is this absurd? Because we are both acquainted with the man ('in the flesh,' by sense-perception and countless memories) and we are arguing merely over the properties of the one and the same man with whom we are both acquainted. There is simply no question but that he exists and that we are both referring to him. The dispute concerns his attributes.

But of course the situation is different with God. We are not acquainted with God: God, unlike Tuggy, is not given to the senses. Mystical intuition and revelation aside, we are thrown back upon our concepts of God. And so it may be that the dispute over whether God is triune or not is not a dispute that presupposes that there is one subject-matter, but rather a dispute over whether the Christian concept of God (which includes the sub-concept triune) is instantiated or whether the Muslim concept (which does not include the subconcept triune) is instantiated. Note that they cannot both be instantiated by the same item.

The point I am making is a subtle one, and you have to think hard to grasp it. The point is that it is not at all obvious which of the following views is correct:

V1: Christian and Muslim worship the same God, even though one of them must have a false belief about God, whether it be the belief that God is unitarian or the belief that God is trinitarian.

V2: Christian and Muslim worship different Gods precisely because they have mutually exclusive conceptions of God. So it is not that one of them has a false belief about the one God they both worship; it is rather that one of them does not worship the true God at all.

The difference can be put in terms of the difference between heresy and idolatry. If Islam is a Christian heresy, as has been maintained by G. K. Chesterton et al., then the Muslim has false beliefs about the same being about which the Christian has true beliefs. If, on the other hand, the Muslim is an idolator, then he worships a god that does not exist, which obviously cannot be identical to the true God who does exist.

There is no easy way to decide rationally between these two views. We have to delve into the philosophy of language and ask how reference is achieved. How do linguistic expressions attach or apply to extralinguistic entities? How do words grab onto the (extralinguistic) world? In particular, how do nominal expressions work? What makes my utterance of 'Socrates' denote Socrates rather than someone or something else? What makes my use of 'God' (i) have a referent at all and (ii) have the precise referent it has?

For the technical details see the entries collected here.

Summary

Most of the writing on this topic is exasperatingly superficial and uninformed, even that by theologians. Fr. O'Brien is a case in point. He thinks the question easily resolved: you simply note the radical difference in the Christian and Muslim God-conceptions and your work is done. Others make the opposite mistake. They think that, of course, Christians and Muslims worship the same God either by making Tuggy's mistake above or by thinking that the considerable overlap in the two conceptions settles the issue.

My thesis is not that the one side is right or that the other side is right. My thesis is that the question is a very difficult one that entangles us in controversial inquiries in the philosophies or mind and language.

You might say it doesn't matter. If Christians and Muslims worship the same God, then Muslims are heretics: they have false beliefs about the true God. If Christians and Muslims worship different Gods, then the Muslims are idolaters: they worship a nonexistent god. Not good either way. This won't be acceptable to Muslims, of course, but why shouldn't a Christian say this and leave it at that?

God as Biblical Character and as Divine Reality

When Thomas Aquinas and Baruch Spinoza write about the God of the Old Testament, they write about numerically the same Biblical character using the same Latin word, Deus. They write about this character, refer to it, and indeed succeed in referring to it. But Aquinas and Spinoza do not believe in the same divine reality. Of course they both believe in a divine reality; but their conceptions of a divine reality are so different that it cannot be maintained — or so I argue here contra F. Beckwith — that it is one and the same reality that they believe in. Nor do they succeed in referring to the same reality. Since it cannot be the case that both divine realities exist, one of the two philosophers fails to refer to anything at all. It follows that they cannot be said to worship the same God: one of them worships an idol.

God, Adam, Moses, "and all them prophets good and gone" (Bob Dylan, Gospel Plow) actually exist qua characters in the Biblical narrative. But of course it does not follow that they exist 'outside' the narrative in reality.

A few months ago in the wake of the Wheaton contretemps we were much exercised over the question whether the God of the Christians is the same as the God of the Muslims. I wonder if the distinction between God as Biblical character and God as divine reality can help in that dispute. Perhaps some variants of the dispute arise from a failure to draw this distinction. Perhaps the following irenic proposal will be acceptable:

Christians and Muslims write about, talk about, and refer to one and the same Biblical character when they use 'God' and 'Allah.' In this sense, the God of the Christians and that of the Muslims is the same God. It is one and the same Biblical character, God. But Christians and Muslims do not refer to one and the same divine reality by their uses of 'God' and 'Allah.' This is because extralinguistic reference is conceptually mediated, not direct, and no one item can instantiate both the Christian and the Muslim conceptions of God. Nothing can be both triune and non-triune, to mention just one important different in the two conceptions.

So either the Christian is failing to refer to anything such that his worship is of an idol, or the Muslim is failing to refer to anything such that his worship is of an idol. The situation is strictly parallel to the Aquinas-Spinoza case. The two philosophers are clearly referring to the same Biblical character when they write Deus. But their conceptions of God are so different that they cannot be said to be referring to the same being in external reality.

My suggestion, then, is that some may have got their knickers in a knot for no good reason by failing to make the above-captioned distinction.

According to Ed Buckner over at Dale Tuggy's place,

. . . there is at least one sort of case where it is clear they [Aquinas and Spinoza] are using the name ‘God’ in exactly the same way, namely when they discuss the interpretation of the scriptures. Aquinas does this many times in Summa Theologiae, using the words of the Bible and the Church Fathers to support complex theological and philosophical arguments. Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise is an extensive commentary on the text of the Bible and its meaning, also supported throughout by biblical quotation. So when Thomas writes

According to Chrysostom (Hom. iii in Genes.), Moses prefaces his record by speaking of the works of God (Deus) collectively. (Summa TheologiaeIª q. 68 a. 1 ad 1)

and Spinoza writes

As for the fact that God [Deus] was angry with him [Balak] while he was on his journey, that happened also to Moses when he was setting out for Egypt at the command of God [Dei]. (Tractatus ch. 3, alluding to Exodus 4:24-26)

it is clear that they are talking about the same persons, i.e. they are both talking about God, and they are both talking about Moses. It is somewhat more complicated than that, because Spinoza has a special theory about what the word ‘God’ means in the scriptures, but more of that later. In the present case, it seems clear that whenever we indirectly quote the scriptures, e.g. ‘Exodus 3:1 says that Moses was setting out for Egypt at the command of God’, we are specifying what the Bible says by using the names ‘Moses’ and ‘God’ exactly as the Bible uses them. Bill might disagree here, but we shall see.

I agree that they are both talking about the same persons qua characters in the Old Testament. The fact that Ed puts 'God' and 'Moses' in italics suggests, however, that he thinks that there is more here than reference to Biblical characters: there is also reference to really existent persons, and that our two philosophers are referring to the same really existent persons. But here I suspect that Ed is attempting a reduction of bona fide extralinguistic reference to what I will call text- and discourse-immanent reference, whether intertextual (as in the present case) or intratextual (as in the case of back references within one and the same narrative). If Ed is proposing a reduction — or God forbid an elimination — of real extralinguistic reference in favor of some form of discourse-immanent reference, then I have a bone to pick with him.

The issues here are much trickier than one might suspect. They involve questions Ed and I have been wrangling over for years, questions about fiction and intentionality and existence and quantification and logical form and what all else.

Direct and Indirect Reference: Questions and Puzzles

London Ed asks:

Exactly what does ‘refer’ mean? And when we talk about ‘direct reference’ and ‘indirect reference’, are we really talking about exactly the same relation, or only the same in name?

The second question got me thinking.

The paradigms of direct reference are the indexicals and the demonstratives. The English letter 'I' is not the English word 'I,' and the word 'I' — the first-person singular pronoun — has non-indexical uses. But let's consider a standard indexical use of this pronoun. Tom says to Tina, "I'm hungry." Tom refers to himself directly using 'I.' That means: Tom refers to himself, but not via a description that he uniquely satisfies. The reference is not routed through a reference-mediating sense. If you think it is so routed, tell me what the reference-mediating sense of your indexical uses of the first person singular pronoun is. I wish you the best of luck.

As I understand it, to say of a singular term that it is directly referential is not to say that it lacks sense, but that it lacks a reference-determining sense. If a term has a reference-determining sense, then the reference of that term is 'routed though' or 'focused by' the sense: the term picks out whatever satisfies the sense, if anything satisfies it. The indexical 'now' does have a sense in that whatever it picks out must be a time, indeed, a time that is present. But this very general sense does not make a use of 'now' refer to the precise time to which it refers. So 'now' is directly referential despite its having a sense.

Consider the demonstrative 'this.' Pointing to a poker, I say 'This is hot.' You agree and say 'This is hot!' We point to the same thing and we say the same thing. The same thing we say is the proposition. The proposition is true. Neither the poker nor its degree of heat are true. The reference of 'this' is direct. It seems to follow that the poker itself is a constituent of the proposition that is before both of our minds and that we agree is true. The poker itself is a constituent of the proposition, not an abstract and immaterial surrogate or representative of the material poker. But then propositions are Russellian as opposed to Fregean. The poker itself, not an abstract surrogate such as a Fregean sense, is a constituent of the proposition.

How can this be? I grasp (understand) the proposition. So I grasp its constituents. (Assumption: I cannot understand a proposition unless I understand its logical parts. Compositionality of meaning.) One of the constituents is the poker itself. But how is it possible for my poor little finite mind to grasp the hot poker in all its infinitely-propertied reality? How can I get that massive chunk of external reality with all its properties before my puny little intellectus ectypus? Here is an aporetic triad for your delectation:

The proposition is in or before my mind.
The hot poker is a constituent of the proposition.
The hot poker is not in or before my mind.

How will you solve this bad boy? The first limb is well-nigh datanic. Since I understand the proposition expressed by 'This is hot' asserted while pointing to a hot poker, the proposition is before my mind. So we must either deny the second or the third limb.

My tendency is to deny the second limb and affirm that all propositions are Fregean. If all propositions are Fregean, then no proposition has as a constituent an infinitely-propertied material object such as a red-hot poker.

But if I say this, then it seems that I cannot say that the reference of 'this' is direct. But if not direct, then mediated by sense. What then is the sense of 'this'? What is the meaning of 'this'?

Or we could say the following: there is direct reference all right, but not to an infinitely-propertied chunk of physical reality, but to an incomplete object, something like what Hector-Neri Castaneda calls an "ontological guise." It is a Meinongian sort of item and involves us in the difficulties of Meinongianism.

London Ed will not like this answer one bit.

To say that a singular term t indirectly refers to object o is to say two things. (i) It is to say that there is a description D(t) that gives the sense of t, a description which is such that anything that satisfies it uniquely satisfies it. (ii) And it is to say that o uniquely satisfies D(t).

Note that for the indirect reference relation to hold there needn't be any real-world connection such as a causal connection between one's use of t and o. It is just a matter of whether or not o uniquely satisfies the description encapsulated by t. Satisfaction is a 'logical' relation. It is like the 'falling-under' relation. Ed falls under the concept Londoner. The relation of falling-under is not 'real': it is not causal or spatial or temporal or a physical part-whole relation. It is a 'logical' relation.

Indirect reference is just unique satisfaction by an item of a description encapsulated in a term. If 'Socrates' refers indirectly, then it refers to whatever satisfies some such definite description as 'the teacher of Plato.' (Or perhaps a Searlean disjunction of definite descriptions.) Direct reference, on the other hand, has nothing to do with satisfaction of a description.

So I think London Ed is on to something. When we talk about ‘direct reference’ and ‘indirect reference’, we are not talking about exactly the same relation. The two phrases have only a word in common, 'reference.' If all reference is indirect, then direct reference is not reference. And if all reference is direct, then indirect reference is not reference. There are not two kinds of reference. Only the word is in common.

The reason, again, is that indirect reference is just unique satisfaction of a description whereas direct reference has nothing to do with satisfaction of a description. This is even more obvious if the direct reference theorist brings causation into the picture.

Indicative Mood and Assertoric Force

Assertion is a speech act of an agent, a speaker. This topic belongs to pragmatics. But one can also speak of the assertoric force of a sentence, considered apart from a context of use. So considered, assertoric force is presumably an aspect of a sentence's semantics along with the sentence's content. That is what I want to think about in this entry. The assertoric force of a sentence is, as it were, a semantic correlate of the speech act of assertion. I cannot assert a sentence unless it is of the right grammatical form. I can assert 'Dan is drunk' but not 'Dan, be drunk!' or 'Is Dan drunk?' or 'Would that Dan were drunk.'

My asserting that Dan is drunk is a speech act. When I make an assertion, I do at least two things: I commit myself to the truth of what I assert, and I communicate the content of my assertion to a hearer.

Suppose I assert that Dan is drunk. I do this by tokening the sentence type 'Dan is drunk.' The assertoric force of the tokened sentence type is indicated by 'is' which signals the indicative mood among other things. Now here is my question: Are indicative mood and assertoric force the same, or different? When I refer to the assertoric force of a sentence, am I referring to its indicativity, and vice versa? Or must we distinguish between indicativity and assertoric force? I will argue that they are the same property.

Consider this exchange between speakers A and B:

A: Peter is innocent.
B: (Ironically) Yeah, right. Peter is innocent.

Although both A and B are tokening 'Peter is innocent,' only A is asserting that Peter is innocent. Now the sentence type considered by itself is in the indicative mood. So I am tempted to say that assertoric force, as a semantic component, is identical to indicativity. Both tokens have assertoric force despite the fact that only one is asserted. Now consider this example:

1. If Peter is innocent, then his conviction is unjust.

To assert a conditional is not to assert its antecedent. (Or its consequent for that matter.) The antecedent, 'Peter is innocent,' is in the indicative mood. I want to say that it has assertoric force despite the fact that it is not being asserted.

What is assertoric force? I suggest that it is that property of a sentence that renders it capable of being used by an agent to say something either true or false. As far as I can see, it is the same as the property of indicativity. Sentences with assertoric force can be used without being asserted, but no sentence lacking assertoric force can be asserted. To say that a sentence is assertoric, or has assertoric force, is to say that it is of the appropriate form for the making of assertions.

Since assertoric force either is or is equivalent to the property of being either true or false, a sentence's being assertoric does not entail its being true. Nor, of course, does a sentence's being asserted by someone entail its being true. To assert a sentence is to assert it as being true, but that is not to say that an asserted sentence is true. Whatever truth is, it involves a relation to something external to sentences or propositions.

The Univocity of ‘Exist(s)’: Obsessing Further

The general existential, 'Philosophers exist,' is reasonably construed as an instantiation claim:

G. The concept philosopher has one or more instances.

But a parallel construal seems to fail in the case of the singular existential, 'Socrates exists.' For both of the following are objectionable:

S1. The concept Socrates has one or more instances.

S2. The concept Socrateity has one of more instances.

(S1) is objectionable because Socrates is not a concept (Begriff), but an object (Gegenstand), while (S2) is objectionable because there is no haecceity concept Socrateity (identity-with-Socrates), as I have already argued ad nauseam. (But see below for another go-round.)

On the other hand, 'exist(s)' across general and singular existentials would seem to be univocal in sense inasmuch as arguments like the following appear valid:

Philosophers exist
Socrates is a philosopher
————
Socrates exists.

Whatever the exact logical form of this argument, there does not seem to be an equivocation on 'exist(s)' or at least not one that would induce a quaternio terminorum. (A valid syllogism must have exactly three terms; if there is an equivocation on one of them, then we have the quaternio terminorum, or four-term fallacy.)

Here then is the problem. Is it possible to uphold a broadly Fregean understanding of 'exist(s)' while also maintaining the univocity of 'exist(s)' across general and singular existentials? A broadly Fregean understanding is one that links existence with number. The locus classicus is Frege, Foundations of Arithmetic, 65:

In this respect existence is analogous to [hat Aehnlichkeit mit] number. Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number nought. Because existence is a property of concepts the ontological argument for the existence of God breaks down.

To affirm the existence of philosophers, then, is to affirm that the number of philosophers is one or more, and to deny the existence of philosophers is to affirm that the number of philosophers is zero. But then what are we saying of Socrates when we say that he exists? That the number of Socrateses is one or more? That can't be right: 'Socrates' is a proper name (Eigenname) not a concept-word (Begriffswort) like 'philosopher.' It makes no sense to say that the number of Socrateses is one or more. And when I say, with truth, that Socrates might never have existed, I am surely not saying that the number of Socrateses might always have been zero.

London Ed doesn't see much of a problem here. From his latest entry:

But why, from the fact that ‘Socrates’ is not a concept word, does it follow that there is no corresponding concept? [. . .] Why can’t ‘Socrates’ be semantically compound? So that it embeds a concept like person identical with Socrates, which with the definite article appended gives us ‘Socrates’?

From my point of view, Ed does not see the problem. The problem is that if 'Socrates' expresses a concept, that concept can only be an haecceity concept, and there aren't any. It doesn't matter whether we call this concept 'Socrateity,' or 'person identical with Socrates.'

Ask yourself: Is the haecceity H of Socrates contingent or necessary? Socrates is contingent. And so one might naturally think that his haecceity must also be contingent. For it is the ontological factor that makes him be this very individual and no other. Haecceitas = thisness. No Socrates, no haecceity of Socrates. But then you can't say that the existence of Socrates is the being-instantiated of his haecceity, and the non-existence of Socrates is the non-instantiation of his haecceity. For that presupposes that his haecceity exists whether or not he exists. Which is absurd.

So haecceities must be necessary beings. But now we have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Socrateity involves Socrates himself, that very individual, warts and all, mit Haut und Haar. It is not a conjunction of multiply instantiable properties. This is why identity — absolute numerical identity –is brought into the definition of H as, for example, 'person identical with Socrates.' Hence an haecceity of a contingent being cannot be a necessary being.

The absurdity here is the attempt to make a necessarily existent abstract property out of a contingent concrete individual. This is why I say that haecceity concepts/properties are metaphysical monstrosities.

It should also be pointed out that on a Fregean scheme, no concept is an object and no name is a predicate. You cannot turn a name such as 'Socrates' into a predicate, which is what Ed is trying to do.

So the problem remains unsolved. On the one hand, 'exist(s)' appears univocal across general and singular existentials. And yet how can we make sense of this if we are not allowed to bring in haecceity properties?

On an Argument for the Univocity of ‘Exist(s)’

Here is an argument adapted from Peter van Inwagen for the univocity of 'exist(s)' across general and singular existentials.

a. Number-words are univocal.

b. 'Exist(s)' is a number-word.

Therefore

c. 'Exist(s)' is univocal.

(a) is plainly true. The words 'six' and 'forty-nine' have the same sense regardless of what we are counting. As van Inwagen puts it, "If you have written thirteen epics and I own thirteen cats, the number of your epics is the number of my cats."

(b) captures the Fregean claim that ". . . existence is analogous to number. Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number nought." (Foundations of Arithmetic, p. 65)

How so? Well, to say that unicorns do not exist is equivalent to saying that the number of unicorns is zero, and to say that horses exist is equivalent to saying that the number of horses is one or more. Surely that is true for both affirmative and negative general existentials. Whether it is true for singular existentials is a further question.

Van Inwagen maintains "The univocacy [univocity] of number and the the intimate connection between number and existence should convince us that existence is univocal."

I am not convinced.

Consider my cat Max Black. I exclaim, 'Max exists!' My exclamation expresses a truth. Contrast the singular 'Max exists' with the general 'Cats exist.' I agree with van Inwagen that the general 'Cats exist' is equivalent to 'The number of cats is one or more.' But it is perfectly plain that the singular 'Max exists' is not equivalent to 'The number of Max is one or more.' For the right-hand-side of the equivalence is nonsense, hence necessarily neither true nor false.

This question makes sense: 'How many cats are there in BV's house?' But this question makes no sense: 'How many Max are there in BV's house?' Why not? Well, 'Max' is a proper name (Eigenname in Frege's terminology) not a concept-word (Begriffswort in Frege's terminology). Of course, I could sensibly ask how many Maxes there are hereabouts, but then 'Max' is not being used as a proper name, but as a stand-in for 'person/cat named "Max" .' The latter phrase is obviously not a proper name.

And so I deny the univocity of 'exist(s)' across general and singular existentials.

Andrew Bailey lodges the following objection to what I maintain:

You note that "‘Max exists’ is not equivalent to ‘The number of Max is one or more’", and that seems right.

But why think "The number of Max is one or more" is the way to say of Max that he exists using number-words? Why not, instead, "At least one thing is Max"? My suggestion, note, would align closely with the way one would ordinarily translate "Max exists" into the predicate logic: — 'Ex(x=Max)' — a statement of logic one might render in English as "there is at least one thing that is identical to Max".

Dr. Bailey is of course right that 'Max exists' can be translated into standard first-order predicate logic in the way he indicates and that this is equivalent in 'canonical English' to 'There is at least one thing that is identical to Max.' Bailey's rebuttal seems to be the following: Just as we can express 'Cats exist' as 'At least one thing is a cat,' we can express 'Max exists' as 'At least one thing is Max.'

But this response is unavailing. Note that the 'is' in 'is a cat' is not the 'is' of identity, but the 'is' of predication, while the 'is' in 'is Max' is the 'is of identity. So if Bailey tries to secure the univocity of 'exist(s)' in this way, he does so by exploiting an equivocation on 'is.'

Another possible rebuttal would be by invoking haecceities. One might argue that there is no equivocation on 'is' because both of the following feature the 'is' of predication:

At least one thing is a cat

At least one thing is Max-identical.

On the second approach one secures the univocity of 'exist(s)' but at the expense of those metaphysical monstrosities known as haecceity properties. The haecceity H of x is a property x cannot fail to instantiate, alone instantiates in the actual world, and that nothing distinct from x instantiates in any possible world. If Max has such such a property — call it Maxity — then this property captures Max's haecceitas or thisness, where 'thisness' is to be understood as irreducible and nonqualitative. If there is such a property, then it is the property of identity-with-Max or Max-identity.

So if you want to maintain the univocity of 'exist(s)' across general and singular existentials, you must either conflate the 'is' of identity' with the 'is' of predication, or embrace haecceity properties.

Gentlemen, pick your poison!

Lukas Novak Against the Millian Theory of Names

Lukas Novak in a comment writes,

It seems to me that the theory [the Millian theory of proper name] must fail as soon as its psychological implications are considered (those about beliefs are among them). In a judgement "Peter is wise" Peter must be somehow represented, not just linguistically but mentally. And since we are not omniscient, Peter-qua-represented will not equal Peter-qua-real ("warts and all"). In other words, there will have to be some conceptual content corresponding to "Peter" through which Peter will be represented; i.e. a "Sinn" or imperfect "Art der Gegebenheit" of Peter.

BV: I agree. The human mind is finite. So when I make a judgment about Peter, it cannot be Peter himself who is before my mind, Peter with all his properties. And yet something must be before my mind if I am to affirm that Peter is wise or even just to entertain the proposition that Peter is wise. Furthermore, this thinking reference or mental reference is prior to any linguistic reference. We can call this the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic. Chisholm championed it, but it is a controversial thesis. Now what it is that I have before my mind if it is not Peter himself?

Here very difficult questions arise. It seems we need some intermediary item to mediate the mind's commerce with the thing in reality. One vexing question is whether this intermediary item is or is not an ontological constituent of the infinitely-propertied thing in reality. If the intermediary item is a Fregean sense, then it is not such a constituent, but belongs in a third world (Third Reich?) of its own, a realm of Platonica, sealed off from the realm of primary reference (the first world) containing things like Peter. If the intermediary item is a Castanedan guise, then it is an ontological constituent of Peter.

Connected with this is the dispute whether Husserl's noema is something like Frege's Sinn.

I agree that "there will have to be some conceptual content corresponding to 'Peter' through which Peter will be represented."

This seems to me completely unrelated to the question of rigidity/non-rigidity of reference. It seems to me that all Kripke & Co. can (and do) prove is that names (normally) refer rigidly. But in my opinion rigidity/non-rigidity is not part of the semantics of an expression (Kripke's tacit assumption), but a way of its usage. Undeniably, you can use even a description rigidly, if you choose so. ("The president of the U.S. might very well not be a president" is perfectly meaningful and true, if "the president of the U.S." is meant to rigidly refer to whomever satisfies the description in the actual world.).

BV. Now you have lost me, Lukas. Suppose sense determines reference. And suppose the sense of 'Socrates' is specified by the definite description, 'the wisest Greek philosopher.' Used attributively as opposed to referentially (Donnellan), this definite description is non-rigid: it picks out different individuals in different possible worlds. So if the sense of 'Socrates' is given by 'the wisest Greek philosopher,' then the reference of 'Socrates' will be non-rigid. What then do you mean by "completely unrelated"?

But IMHO there is something true in the "mere label" intuition about names. I take names to have a dual role: First, they serve as imagined labels we use to mark individuals in order to be able to uniquely identify them. So far Kripke's intuitions are correct. But this role of a name is non-linguistic; in this role the name is not a sign but an imagined quasi-property of the individual. We could as well use real labels, real or imagined colours, numbers etc. Once an individual is named ("baptized"), we always have a descriptive content the one who (in this context) bears the name so-and-so uniquely representing that individual at our disposal. If we marked our individuals by means of colours, we would need a special linguistic item to represent such a description: the linguistic phrase "the one who (in this context) is marked by the colour so-and-so". But since we used words and not colours as our labels, we can use these very words as shorthands for such descriptions – and this is (usually) the other, properly linguistic role of proper names. Just like all other categorematic (extra-logical) terms, names in this role stand for a mental content, a "something-qua-mentally-represented" and in virtue of this can linguistically refer to the named individual. Note that this relation of "referring to" is distinct from (and conditioned by) the extra-linguistic relation of "naming" or "being a label of". This is why the theory is not circular (pace Kripke). Many names have this "minimal" meaning; but there are others, like "Jack the Ripper", that are shorthands for more substantial descriptions. But this does not preclude their capability to be used to refer rigidly – which, I would say, is the same thing as to supposit de re (in modal and other (hyper)intensional contexts). You need not expel the "reference-fixing descritpion" from the sphere of meaning in order to save the possibility of rigid reference.

BV: You are on to something important here. We need to distinguish the tagging/labeling function of names from their properly linguistic function. Suppose you and I each have a black cat and that the cats are practically indistinguishable. To tell them apart, to identify them, to refer to them, I put a red collar on mine and you put a blue collar on yours. The collars are tags or labels. As you point out, in effect, these collars are not signs of the cats, but something like properties of them or features of them. The collars by themselves have no semantic or referential function. The collars are, in themselves, senseless tags. The baptizing of a cat is the attaching of a collar. Corresponding to the physical act of my attaching a red collar to my cat is the sense expressed by the sentence, 'the cat with the red collar is Bill's cat.'

What makes the red collar signify Bill's cat cannot be the merely physical fact that the cat wears a red collar. We are brought back to intentionality and sense. A mind (my mind) must intend to mark my cat with a red collar, and to communicate this intention to Lukas I must use some such sentence as 'the cat with the red collar is my cat.'

The semantic function of a name cannot be exhausted by the object to which it refers since no physical item (whether a cat collar or sounds in the air or marks on paper) refers to anything. There has to be more to the semantics of a name than the object to which it refers. A name that actually names something cannot be a senseless tag.

Kripke, Belief, Irrationality, and Contradiction

London Ed comments:

I also note a confusion that has been running through this discussion, about the meaning of ‘contradiction’. I do not mean to appeal to etymology or authority, but it’s important we agree on what we mean by it. On my understanding, a contradiction is not ‘the tallest girl in the class is 18’ and ‘the cleverest girl in the class is not 18’, even when the tallest girl is also the cleverest. Someone could easily believe both, without being irrational. The point of the Kripke puzzle is that Pierre seems to end up with an irrational belief. So it’s essential, as Kripke specifies, that he must correctly understand all the terms in both utterances, and that both utterances are logically contradictory, as in ‘Susan is 18’ and ‘Susan is not 18’.

Do we agree?

Well, let's see. The Maverick method enjoins the exposure of any inconsistent polyads that may be lurking in the vicinity. Sure enough, there is one:

An Inconsistent Triad

a. The tallest girl in the class is the cleverest girl in the class.
b. The tallest girl in the class is 18.
c. The cleverest girl in the class is not 18.

This trio is logically inconsistent in the sense that it is not logically possible that all three propositions be true. But if we consider only the second two limbs, there is no logical inconsistency: it is possible that (b) and (c) both be true. And so someone, Tom for example, who believes that (b) and also believes that (c) cannot be convicted of irrationality, at least not on this score. For all Tom knows — assuming that he does not know that (a) — they could both be true: it is epistemically possible that both be true. This is the case even if in fact (a) is true. But we can say more: it is metaphysically possible that both be true. For (a), if true, is contingently true, which implies that it is is possible that it be false.

By contrast, if Tom entertains together, in the synthetic unity of one consciousness, the propositions expressed by 'Susan is 18 years old' and 'Susan is not 18 years old,' and if Tom is rational, then he will see that the two propositions are logical contradictories of each other, and it will not be epistemically possible for him that both be true. If he nonetheless accepts both, then we have a good reason to convict him of being irrational, in this instance at least.

Given the truth of (a), (b) and (c) cannot both be true and cannot both be false. This suggests that the pair consisting of (b) and (c) is a pair of logical contradictories. But then we would have to say that the contradictoriness of the pair rests on a contingent presupposition, namely, the truth of (a). London Ed will presumably reject this. I expect he would say that the logical contradictoriness of a pair of propositions cannot rest on any contingent presupposition, or on any presupposition at all. Thus

d. Susan is 18

and

e. Susan is not 18

form a contradictory pair the contradictoriness of which rests on their internal logical form — Fa, ~Fa — and not on anything external to the propositions in question.

So what should we say? If Tom believes both (b) and (c), does he have contradictory beliefs? Or not?

The London answer is No! The belief-contents are not formally contradictory even though, given the truth of (a), the contents are such that they cannot both be true and cannot both be false. And because the belief-contents are not formally contradictory, the beliefs themselves — where a belief involves both an occurrent or dispositional state of a person and a belief-content towards which the person takes up a propositional attitude — are in no theoretically useful sense logically contradictory.

The Phoenix answer suggestion is that, because we are dealing with the beliefs of a concrete believer embedded in the actual world, there is sense to the notion that Tom's beliefs are contradictory in the sense that their contents are logically contradictory given the actual-world truth of (a). After all, if Susan is the tallest and cleverest girl, and the beliefs in question are irreducibly de re, then Tom believes, of Susan, that she is both 18 and not 18, even if Tom can gain epistemic access to her only via definition descriptions. That belief is de re, irreducibly, is entailed by (SUB), to which Kripke apparently subscribes:

SUB: Proper names are everywhere intersubstitutable salva veritate.

A Second Question

If, at the same time, Peter believes that Paderewski is musical and Peter believes that Paderewski is not musical, does it follow that Peter believes that (Paderewski is musical and Paderewski is not musical)? Could this conceivably be a non sequitur? Compare the following modal principle:

MP: If possibly p and possibly ~p, it does not follow that possibly (p & ~p).

For example, I am now seated, so it is possible that I now be seated; but it is also possible that I now not be seated, where all three occurrences/tokens of 'now' rigidly designate the same time. But surely it doesn't follow that it is possible that (I am now seated and I am now not seated). Is it perhaps conceivable that

BP: If it is believed by S that p and it is believed by S that ~p, it does not follow that it is believed by S that (p & ~p)?

Has anybody ever discussed this suggestion, even if only to dismiss it?