Category: Metaphilosophy

Continuing the Discussion of Time, Tense, and Existence

This just in from London.  I've intercalated my responses.

Here is another take. We agree on our disagreement about the following consequence

(A)  X is no longer temporally present, therefore X has ceased to exist.

You think it is not valid, i.e. you think the antecedent could be true with the consequent false. I think it is valid.

BV: Yes. So far, so good. 

However regarding

          (B) X is no longer temporally present, therefore X does not still exist

we seem to agree. We both think the antecedent cannot be true with the consequent false.

BV:  Right.  For example, we agree BOTH that the Berlin Wall is no longer temporally present (and is therefore temporally past) AND that the Berlin Wall does not still exist.  I should think that we also, as competent speakers of English, agree that locutions of the form 'X still exists' are intersubstitutable both salva veritate and salva significatione with locutions of the form 'X existed and X exists' where all of the verbs are tensed and none are tense-neutral or tenseless. Agree?  My second comment has no philosophical implications.  It is merely a comment on the meaning/use of a stock English locution.

My puzzle is that my reading, and I think a natural reading, is that (A) and (B) mean the same, because “X has ceased to exist” and “X does not still exist” mean the same. You clearly disagree.

BV:  If we stick to tensed language, then 'X has ceased to exist' and 'X does not still exist' mean the same.  So I don't disagree if we adhere to tensed language. But note that 'X has ceased to exist' is ambiguous as between

a) X has ceased to presently-exist (or present-tensedly exist)

and

b) X has ceased to be anything at all (and thus has become nothing at all).

For example, the Berlin Wall has ceased to presently-exist.  But it doesn't follow that said wall has become nothing, that it is no longer a member of the totality of entities, that it has been annihilated by the mere passage of time.  If you think that it is no longer a member of said totality, then you are assuming presentism and begging the question against me.  You have restricted the totality of what exists to what presently exists. Note that I do not deny that one can move validly from the premise of (A) to its conclusion if one invokes presentism as an auxiliary premise. My claim is that the inference fails as a direct or immediate inference.

I think you want to argue that there is a covert tensing in “X does not still exist” which is absent in “X has ceased to exist”, which (according to you) is tenseless. But how? Doesn’t the verb ‘cease’ always imply a time at which X ceased to exist? Would it make sense to say that 2+2 has ceased to equal 4? How?

BV: In 'X does not still exist,' 'exist' is present-tensed.  But 'X has ceased to exist' is ambiguous as explained above . It can be read your tensed way, but it can also be read in my tenseless way.  Surely you don't want to say that 'exists' has exactly the same meaning /sense as 'exists-now' or 'exists' (present tense).  We could call that semantic presentism. I don't think anyone is a semantic presentist.  And for good reason. You, as a nominalist, will not countenance abstracta such as numbers and sets and the other denizens of the Platonic menagerie. But you understand what you are opposing when you oppose their admission into our ontology in the Quinean sense (our catalog by category of what there is).  And so you understand the notion of tenseless existence and tenseless property possession as when a 'Platonist' says that 7 is prime. The copula is tenseless, not present-tensed.

So, in summary, my problem (and I am always seeing problems) is how you think (A) and (B) differ.

Over to you.

BV: The Boston Blizzard of '78 was one hell of a storm. When it ended, did it cease to exist? Yes of course, if we are using 'exist' in the ordinary present-tensed way. The storm because wholly past, and in becoming wholly past it stopped being presently existent. Obviously, nothing can exist at present if it is wholly past.  And it is quite clear that what no longer is present is not still present, and that what no longer presently exists is not still presently existent.

So far, nothing but platitudes of ordinary usage.  Nothing metaphysical. 

We venture into metaphysics when we ask: Does it follow straightaway from the storm's having become wholly temporally past, that it is nothing at all?  I say No. If you say Yes, then you are endorsing presentism, a controversial metaphysical theory. 

You can avoid controversy if you stick to ordinary language.  If you have trouble doing this, Wittgensteinian therapy may be helpful.

Problemverlust

The following remark in Wittgenstein's Zettel seems to fit certain ostriches of my acquaintance.

456. Some philosophers (or whatever you like to call them) suffer from what may be called "loss of problems." (Problemverlust) Then everything seems quite simple to them, no deep problems seem to exist any more, the world become broad and flat and loses all depth, and what they write becomes immeasurably shallow and trivial. Russell and H. G. Wells suffer from this.

Metaphysical Explanation Again

One question I am discussing with Micheal Lacey is whether any sense can be attached to the notion of metaphysical explanation. I answer in the affirmative. Perhaps he can tell me whether he agrees with the following, and if not, then why not.

Tom is a tomato of my acquaintance. The predicate 'red' is true of Tom. Equivalently, 'Tom is  red' is true.  Now the sentence just mentioned is contingently true. (It is obviously not necessarily true in any of the ways a sentence, or the proposition it expresses, could be necessarily true. For example, it is not true ex vi terminorum.)  

Now ask: could a contingently true sentence such as 'Tom is red' just be true?  "Look man, the sentence is just true; that is all that can be said, what more do you want?"  This response is no good. It cannot be a brute fact that our sample sentence is true.  By 'brute fact' I mean a fact that neither has nor needs an explanation.  So the fact that 'Tom is red' is true needs an explanation.  And since the fact is not self-explanatory, the explanation must invoke something external to the sentence.

This strikes me as a non-negotiable datum, especially if we confine our attention to present-tensed contingently true sentences.

I hope it is clear that what is wanted is not a causal explanation of why a particular tomato is red as opposed to green. Such an explanation would make mention of such factors as exposure to light, temperature, etc.  What is wanted is not a causal explanation of Tom's being ripe and red as opposed to unripe and green, but an explanation of a sentential/propositional representation's being actually true as opposed to possibly true.  The question, then, is this: WHAT MAKES A CONTINGENTLY TRUE PRESENT-TENSED SENTENCE/PROPOSITION TRUE?

Our contingently true sentence is about something, something in particular, namely Tom, and not about Tim. And what the sentence is about is not part of the sentence or the (Fregean) proposition it expresses.  It is external to both, not internal to either.  And it is not an item in the speaker's mind either.  Tom, then, is in the extralinguistic and extramental world.  Now I will assume, pace Meinong, that everything exists, that there are no nonexistent items.  Given that assumption I say: VERITAS SEQUITUR ESSE (VSE).  Truth follows being. Truth supervenes on being if we are talking about contingently true, present-tensed, truth-bearers.

That is to say: every contingently true, present-tensed, truth-bearer has need of at least one thing in the extralinguistic world for its truth.  Thus 'Tom is red' cannot be true unless there is at least one thing external to the sentence on which its truth depends. What I have just said lays down a necessary condition for a contingent sentence's being true.

But VSE is not sufficient for an adequate explanation of the truth of 'Tom is red.'  If Tom alone was all one needed for the explanation, then we wouldn't be able to account for the difference between the true 'Tom is red' and the false 'Tom is green.'  In short, the truth-maker must have a proposition-like structure, but without being a proposition. The truth-maker of 'Tom is red' is not Tom, not is it any proposition; the truth-maker of 'Tom is red' is the state of affairs, Tom's being red.  (I am sketching the Armstrong line; there are other ways to go.)

The state of affairs Tom's being red is the ontological ground of the truth of the corresponding sentence/proposition.  It is not a logical ground because it is not a proposition.  Nor is it a cause.  

It seems to me that I have just attached a tolerably clear sense to the notion of a metaphysical explanation. I have explained the truth of the sentence 'Tom is red' by invoking the state of affairs, Tom's being red.  The explanation is not causal, nor is it logical. And so we can call it metaphysical or ontological.

Have I convinced you, Micheal?

Is There Such a Thing as Metaphysical Explanation?

M. L. writes,
 
I've been enjoying your critique of [Peter] van Inwagen. [The reader is presumably referring to  my "Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method" in Studia Neoaristotelica: A Journal of Analytical Scholasticism, 2015, vol. 12, no. 2, 99-125]  I was initially astonished at his claim that metaphysics/ontology doesn't explain, but it also got me curious about where the explanation is going on in ontological accounts (especially of properties, however construed).
 
I'm doing a Ph.D. in metaontology and I'm contrasting neo-Quinean (van Inwagen) and neo-Aristotelian (Lowe) approaches. 
 
Can you direct me to where you might have written about, if indeed you have, how it is ontology/metaphysics explains?
 
Well, I haven't discussed the issue head-on in a separate publication, but I have discussed it en passant in various contexts. Below is a re-do of a 2012 weblog entry that addresses the question and may spark discussion. Combox open.
 
………………………
 

Let 'Tom' name a particular tomato.  Let us agree that if a predicate applies to a particular, then the predicate is true of the particular.  Predicates are linguistic items.  Tomatoes are not. If Tom is red, then 'red' is true of Tom, and if 'red' is true of Tom, then Tom is red. This yields the material biconditional

1. Tom is red iff 'red' is true of Tom.

Now it seems to me that the following question is intelligible:  Is Tom red because 'red' is true of Tom, or is 'red' true of Tom because Tom is red?  'Because' here does not have a causal sense.  So the question is not whether Tom's being red causes 'red' to be true of Tom, or vice versa.  So I won't speak of causation in this context.  I will speak of metaphysical/ontological grounding.  The question then is what grounds what, not what causes what.   Does Tom's being red ground the application (the being-applied)  of 'red' to Tom, or does the application (the being-applied) of 'red' to Tom ground Tom's being red?

I am not primarily concerned with the correct answer to this question, but with meaningfulness/intelligibility of the question itself.

Grounding is asymmetrical: if x grounds y, then y does not ground x.  (It is also irreflexive and transitive.)  Now if there is such a relation as grounding, then there will be a distinctive form of explanation we can call metaphysical/ontological explanation.  (Grounding, even though it is not causation, is analogous to causation, and metaphysical explanation, even though distinct from causal explanation, is analogous to causal explanation.)

Explaining is something we do: in worlds without minds there is no explaining and there are no explanations, including metaphysical explanations.  But I assume that, if there are any metaphysical grounding relations, then  in every world metaphysical grounding relations obtain.  (Of course, there is no grounding of the application of predicates in a world without languages and predicates, but there are other grounding relations. For example, if propositions are abstract objects that necessarily exist, and some of the true ones need truth-makers, then truth-making, which is a grounding relation, exists in worlds in which there are no minds and no languages and hence no sentences.)

Grounding is not causation. It is not a relation between event tokens such as Jack's touching a live wire and Jack's death by electrocution.  Grounding is also not a relation between propositions.  It is not a logical relation that connects propositions to propositions.  It is not the relation of material implication, nor is it entailment (the necessitation of material implication), nor any other logical relation wholly situated at the level of propositions.  Propositions, let us assume, are the primary truth-bearers. 

In our example, grounding is not a relation between propositions — it is not a logical relation — since neither Tom nor 'red' are propositions. 

I want to say the following.  Tom's being red grounds the correctness of the application of 'red' to Tom.  'Red' is true of Tom because (metaphysically, not causally or logically) Tom is red, and not vice versa.  'Red' is true of Tom in virtue of  Tom's being red.  Tom's being red is metaphysically prior to the truth of 'Tom is red' where this metaphysical priority cannot be reduced to some ordinary type of priority, whether logical, causal, temporal, or what have you.  Tom's being red metaphysically accounts for the truth of 'Tom is red.' Tom's being red makes it the case the 'red' is true of Tom.  Tom's being red makes 'Tom is red' true.  

I conclude that there is at least one type of metaphysical grounding relation, and at least one form of irreducibly metaphysical explanation. 

We can ask similar questions with respect to normative properties.  Suppose Jesus commands us to love one another.  We distinguish among the commander, the act of commanding, the content of the command, and the normative property of the commanded content, in this case the obligatoriness of loving one another.  If Jesus is God, then whatever he commands is morally obligatory. Nevertheless, we can intelligibly ask whether the content is obligatory because Jesus/God commands it, or whether he (rightly) commands it because it is obligatory.  The 'because' here is neither causal not logical.  It is metaphysical/ontological.
 
This of course a variation on the old Euthyphro Dilemma in the eponymous Platonic dialog.
 
I freely admit that there is something obscure about a grounding relation that is neither causal nor logical. But of course logical and causal relations too are problematic when subjected to squinty-eyed scrutiny. 
 
I conclude with a dogmatic slogan. Metaphysics without metaphysical explanation is not metaphysics at all.  

Could it be Reasonable to Affirm the Infirmity of Reason?

Any reasons one adduces in support of the thesis of  the infirmity of reason will share in the weakness of the faculty whose weakness is being affirmed.  Is this a problem for the proponent of the thesis? Does he contradict himself? Not obviously: he might simply accept the conclusion that the reasoning in support of the thesis is inconclusive.

Suppose I argue that, with respect to all substantive philosophical theses, there there are good arguments  pro and good arguments contra, and that these arguments 'cancel out.'  Now my thesis is substantive, and so my thesis applies to itself, whence it follows that my meta-thesis has both good arguments for it and good arguments against it, and that they cancel out.

Where is the problem? I am simply applying my meta-philosophical skepticism to itself, as I must if I am to be logically consistent.  Now I could make an exception for my meta-thesis, but that, I think, would be intolerably ad hoc.

I am not dogmatically affirming the infirmity of reason; I am merely stating that there are reasons to accept it, reasons that are not conclusive.

Deeper into this topic:

Seriously Philosophical Theses and Argument Cancellation

Thought, Action, Dogma, and De Maistre: The Infirmity of Reason

The Spirit of Philosophy

By my lights, the spirit of genuine philosophy is anti-dogmatic.  A real philosopher does not bluster. He does not claim to know what he does not know, and in some cases, cannot know. A real philosopher does not confuse subjective conviction with objective certainty. He has time and he takes time. He can tolerate suspense and open questions. But his suspension is not a Pyrrhonian abandonment of inquiry, but is in the service of it. His happiness is not a porcine ataraxia, but the happiness of the hunt. Unlike the dogmatist, however, he has high standards with the result that is hunt is long and perhaps endless as long as he remains in statu viae wandering among the charms and horrors of the sublunary.

And yet we are participants in life's parade and not mere spectators of it. Curiously, we are both part of the passing scene and observers of it.  To us as participants in the flux and shove of the real order a certain amount of bluster has proven to be life-enhancing and practically necessary. To live is to maneuver, to position oneself, to take a position, to adopt a stance, to grab one's piece of the action and defend it, and in the clinch to shoot first and philosophize later.

As so we are torn. It is a broken world and we are broken on its samsaric wheel. To put it grandly,  the human condition is a tragic predicament. We must act in conditions of poor lighting, maintaining ourselves in the Cave's chiaroscuro, with little more than faith and hope to keep us going. At the same time we seek light, light, more light and the transformation of faith into knowledge and hope into having. 

No Total Clarity in Philosophy

To demand total clarity in philosophy is like demanding that one's visual field be all focus and no fringe.  It is a demand  that cannot be satisfied.  But the situation in philosophy is worse than the metaphor suggests. The visual fringe can be brought into focus if one is willing to allow the focus to become fringe. The transdiscursive, however, to which philosophy is beholden and to which she points, can never be brought into discursive focus. The transdiscursive, ineliminably obscure, must forever remain fringe. 

The unity of the proposition, for example, without which no proposition can attract a truth value, and without which no proposition can be more than a truth-value-less aggregate of its sub-propositional parts, lies beyond the grasp of the discursive intellect.

Might we reasonably expect total clarity in the next world? The next world might be samsara 2.0, clearer, brighter, more intelligible, but still subject to the duality: clarity-obscurity. Ascend from the Cave, and you will still experience light and darkness, but more light and less darkness than down below. And beyond that there perhaps lies samsara 3.0, and so on.  Ever subtler realms of chiaroscuro. The nirvanic terminal state would then be the extinction of all dualities, and the unspeakable unity of clarity and obscurity, intelligibility and ab-surdity.  Could that be the ultimate Goal? Could the ens reallissimum himself take as his final goal, nibbanic extinction? 

Could the ens perfectissimum et necessarium say to himself: Take it to the limit Old Man and become finally in truth what you were supposed to be all along, Absolute and Unconditioned?

The above is a species of nonsense from the point of view of the discursive intellect.  Important nonsense or nugatory nonsense?  If you plump for the latter, are you not assuming that the discursive intellect is unconditioned?

Companion post: The Scariest Passage in the Critique of Pure Reason.

The Philosopher as Luftmensch

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Penguin, 2002), p. 11:

Philosophy today gets no respect. Many scientists use the term as a synonym for effete speculation. When my colleague Ned Block told his father that he would major in the subject, his father's reply was "Luft!" — Yiddish for "air." And then there's the joke in which a young man told his mother that he would become a Doctor of Philosophy and she said, "Wonderful! But what kind of disease is philosophy?"

Well, to adapt a chess player's expression, better to make Luft than to make war! (One 'makes Luft' in chess by moving a pawn in front of the castled king's position as prophylaxis against back rank mate. The allusion is to the Vietnam era's 'Make love not war.')

The Ashtray Has Landed: Errol Morris versus Thomas Kuhn

Talk of philosophy being a blood sport is usually and rightly metaphorical. But on occasion, actual weapons are brandished even if not deployed. You will recall Wittgenstein's poker. But perhaps you haven't yet heard of Thomas Kuhn's ashtray.   Curiously, pokers and ashtrays have something to do with fire and smoke, devilish elements.  A philosopher's devil, say I, is his own ego.

Philip Kitcher: 

Almost half a century ago, as a recent graduate from the University of Wisconsin fascinated by the history of science, the young Morris was rejected by some of the most prestigious graduate departments. Thanks to the efforts of one of the field’s major stars, Thomas Kuhn, he did eventually find his way to Princeton’s program in the history and philosophy of science. But his time there did not go smoothly. Matters came to a head in a one-on-one discussion of a paper he had written for Kuhn’s seminar. The emotional temperature rose. And then rose some more, until the tête-à-tête was ultimately punctuated by an overflowing ashtray. Launched from Kuhn’s hand, the ashtray hurtled across the room.

Read the rest.

Kuhn ashtray

Time Apportionment as between Athens and Benares

If a philosopher who meditates spends five hours per day on philosophy, how many hours should he spend on meditation?  One correspondent of mine, a retired philosophy professor and Buddhist, told me that if x hours are spent on philosophy, then x hours should be spent on meditation.  So five hours of philosophy ought to be balanced by five hours of meditation.  A hard saying!  I find it very easy to spend five to eight hours per day reading and writing philosophy. But my daily formal meditation sessions are almost never more than two hours in duration.  There is also mindfulness while hiking or doing other things such as clearing brush or washing dishes, but I don't count that as formal meditation.

What are the possible views on this topic of time apportionment?

1. No time should be wasted on philosophy. Pascal famously remarked that philosophy is not worth an hour's trouble.  (I am pretty sure he had his countryman Renatus Cartesius in mind.) But he didn't proffer his remark in defense of Benares, but of Jerusalem.  Time apportionment as between Athens and Jerusalem is a separate topic. Note that Pascal made an exception in his own case.  He left behind a magnificent collection that comes down to us as Pensées.  So no philosophy is worth an hour's trouble except Pascal's own. It would have shown greater existential consistency had the great thinker devoted himself after his conversion to prayer, meditation, and charitable works.  But then we would have been the poorer for it.

2. No time should be wasted on meditation.  Judging by their behavior, the vast majority of academic philosophers seem committed to some such proposition.

3. Time spent on either is wasted.  The view of the ordinary cave-dweller or worldling.

4. More time ought to be devoted to philosophy.  But why?

5. The two 'cities' deserve equal time.  The view of my Buddhist correspondent.

6.  More time ought to be devoted to meditation than to philosophy.

What could be said in defense of (6)?  Three quotations from Paul Brunton (Notebooks,  vol. II,  The Quest, Larson, 1986, p. 13):

  • The intuitive element is tremendously more important than the intellectual . . . .
  • The mystical experience is the most valuable of all experiences .  . . .
  •  . . . the quest of the Overself is the most worthwhile endeavour open to human exertions.