Logical Form, Equivocation, and Propositions
A re-post with minor edits and additions from 4 September 2017.
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Ed Buckner wants to re-fight old battles. I'm game. The following post of his, reproduced verbatim, just appeared at Dale Tuggy's site:
The concept of logical form is essential to any discussion of identity, and hence to any discussion of the Trinity. Here is a puzzle I have been discussing with the famous Bill Vallicella for many years.
(Argument 1) ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Cicero is a Roman’
(Argument 2) ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’
My puzzle [is] that the first argument is clearly not valid if the first ‘Cicero’ means the Roman, the second the American town, yet the argument seems to instantiate a valid form. Bill objects that if there is equivocation, then the argument really has the form ‘a is F, therefore b is F’, which fails to instantiate a valid form.
I then ask what is the form of. Clearly not of the sentences, since the sentences do not include the meaning or the proposition. Is it the form of the proposition expressed by the sentences? But then we have the problem of the second argument, where both ‘Cicero’ and ‘Tully’ mean the same man. Then the man is contained in both propositions, and if the form is of the proposition, the argument has the true form ‘a is F, so a is F’, which is valid. But I think no one would agree that the second argument is valid.
So logical form does not belong to the sentences, nor to the propositions expressed by them. So what is it the form of?
My answer is that the logical form of the argument is the form of the Fregean propositions expressed by the sentences that make up the argument. Let me explain.
I agree with Ed that logical form is not the form of an array of sentence-tokens. It is rather the form of an array of propositions expressed by the sentences. (To be painfully precise: it is the form of an array of propositions expressed by the assertive utterance, and thus the tokening, of a series of sentence-types by a speaker or thinker on a given occasion. A sentence-token buried in a book does not express anything by itself!)
To solve Ed's puzzle we need to distinguish three views of propositions: the Aristotelian, the Fregean, and the Russellian. This would be a good topic for an extended post. Here I will be brief. Brevity is the soul of blog.
An Aristotelian proposition is an assertively uttered meaningful sentence in the indicative mood that expresses a complete thought. What makes such a proposition 'Aristotelian' as opposed to 'Platonic' is that the meaning of the sentence is not something that can subsist on its own apart from the assertive tokening of the sentence. The meaning of the sentence depends on its being expressed, whether in overt speech or in thought, by someone. And this expression must be thoughtfully done and not mindlessly like a parrot or a voice synthesizer. If there were no minds there would be no Aristotelian propositions. And if there were no languages there would be no Aristotelian propositions. In this sense, Aristotelian propositions are linguistic entities.
In brief: An Aristotelian proposition is just a declarative sentence in use together with its dependent sense or meaning. Suppose I write a declarative sentence on a piece of paper. The Aristotelian proposition is not the string of physical marks on the paper, nor it is the producing of the marks; it is the marks as produced by a minded organism on a particular occasion together with the meaning those marks embody where meaning is first in the mind and only then embodied in the marks.
A Fregean proposition is a nonlinguistic entity that subsists independently of minds and language. It is the sense (Sinn) of a declarative sentence (Satz) from which indexical elements have been extruded. For example, 'I am blogging' does not express a Fregean proposition because of the indexical 'I' and because of the present tense of the verb phrase. But 'BV blogs at 10:50 AM PST on 4 September 2017' expresses a Fregean proposition.
Fregean senses are extralinguistic and extramental 'abstract' or 'Platonic' items. They are not in time or space even when the objects they are about are in time and space. This is what makes Fregean propositions 'Platonic' rather than 'Aristotelian.' Fregean propositions are the primary truth-bearers; the sentences that express them are derivatively true or false. Likewise with the judgments whose content they are.
A Russellian proposition is a blurry, hybrid entity that combines some of the features of a Fregean truth-bearer and some of the features of a truth-maker. A Russellian proposition does not reside at the level of sense (Sinn) but at the level of reference (Bedeutung). It is out there in the (natural) world. It is what some of us call a fact or 'concrete fact' (as in my existence book) and others, e.g. D. M. Armstrong, a state of affairs.
Now consider a singular sentence such as 'Ed is happy.' For present purposes, the crucial difference between a Fregean proposition and a Russellian proposition is that, on the Fregean view, the subject constituent of Ed is happy is not Ed himself with skin and hair, but an abstract surrogate that represents him in the Fregean proposition, whereas in the Russellian proposition Ed himself is a constituent of the proposition!
We needn't consider why so many distinguished philosophers have opted for this (monstrous) view. But this is the view that seems to have Ed in its grip and that powers his puzzle above.
If we take the relatively saner (but nonetheless problematic) view that propositions are Fregean in nature, then the puzzle is easily solved.
Ed asks: What is the logical form the form of? He maintains, rightly, that it cannot be the form of an array of sentences. So it must be the form of an array of propositions. Right again. But then he falls into puzzlement:
. . . ‘Cicero’ and ‘Tully’ mean the same man. Then the man is contained in both propositions, and if the form is of the proposition, the argument has the true form ‘a is F, so a is F’, which is valid.
The puzzlement disappears if we reject the Russsellian theory of propositions. A man cannot be contained in a proposition, and so it cannot be the same man in both propositions.
‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’ is plainly invalid. Its form is: Rc, ergo Rt, which is an invalid form. If we adopt either an Aristotelian or a Fregean view of propositions we will not be tempted to think otherwise.
‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Cicero is a Roman’ is plainly valid. ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’ is plainly invalid. The logical forms are different! If, on a Russellian theory of propositions, the forms are the same, then so much the worse for a Russellian theory of propositions!
Saturday Night at the Oldies: My Bob Dylan Top Ten
Hector C. asked me to name my top ten favorite Dylan songs. With pleasure.
Don't Think Twice. I first heard this in the Peter, Paul, and Mary version circa 1962 or '63. Deeply moved by it, I bought the 45 rpm single and noted that the song was written by one B. Dylan. I pronounced the name to myself as 'Dial in' and had a sense that this songwriter was about to speak to me and my life. And here he is still speaking to my 'lived experience' 60 years later.
Chimes of Freedom. With Joan Osborne, NOT Joan Baez! Byrds' version. No Dylan, no folk rock.
Farewell Angelina. Joanie's version. No Baez, no Dylan. She took the scruffy kid under her wing and introduced him to her well-established audience.
Just Like a Woman. Better than the Blonde on Blonde version.
Few songs capture the 'magic' of the '60s like this one. But you had to have been there, of a certain impressionable age, with the right disposition, with an open mind, and an open heart, idealistic, a seeker, and at least a little alienated from the larger society and the quiet desperation and dead usages of parents and relatives . . . .
YouTuber comment: "This Bob Dylan song brings me to tears and I don't know why. I'm 76 years old and remember when it was new. It still is." Comment on the comment: "This is a nostalgic feeling for the passing of the time. A saudade of a time whose dreams seem real. I know about it. I'm 71."
Not Dark Yet. YouTuber comment: "All my life, Dylan has been able to touch my soul. This is undoubtedly one of his best."
An alternative Dylan top ten next week.
John Anderson: “We are all bothered by different things.”
One of the nasty roots of political disagreement. Over at Substack
The Witness of Maximilian Kolbe
Substack latest
Political Observations
The short statements below are from my Facebook page. It is important to explain to the open-minded and politically uncommitted, in a pithy and non-polemical way, what American conservatives stand for. The American conservative, as I use the term, is neither a throne-and-altar neo-reactionary, nor is he an alt-Right tribalist. His conservatism takes on board the best of classical liberalism. You could call him a paleo-liberal. And of course he is far from the yap-and-scribble, do-nothing 'cruise ship' pseudo-conservatives who are willing to accept political dhimmitude so long as their perquisites and privileges and invitations to the tonier Beltway salons remain intact.
My 'voice' over at Facebook is usually polemical, unlike the shorts below. I tread the razor's edge between saying what needs to be said about incendiary topics and getting de-platformed. Polemical discourse, including invective, mockery, and the rest are justified by the fact we are engaged in a war with the destructive Left over the soul of America. You are welcome to join me, but just be sure to read the pinned post at the top of the page.
THE FIRST OBLIGATION OF GOVERNMENT
The main obligation of a government is to protect and serve the citizens of the country of which it is the government. It is a further question whether it has obligations to protect and benefit the citizens of other countries. That is debatable. But if it does, those obligations are trumped by the main obligation just mentioned. I should think that a great nation such as the USA does well to engage in purely humanitarian efforts such as famine relief. Such efforts are arguably supererogatory and not obligatory.
NATIONALISM AND 'FAMILIALISM'
America First is as sound an idea as that each family has the right to prefer its interests over the interests of other families. If my wife becomes ill, then my obligation is to care for her and expend such financial resources as are necessary to see to her welfare. If this means reducing my charitable contributions to the local food bank, then so be it. Whatever obligations I have to help others 'ripple out' from myself as center, losing claim to my attention the farther out they go, much like the amplitude of waves caused by a rock's falling into a pond diminishes the farther from the point of impact. Spouse and/or children first, then other family members, then old friends, then new friends, then neighbors, and so on.
The details are reasonably disputable, but not the general principle. The general principle is that we are justified in looking to our own first.
ENLIGHTENED NATIONALISM
AMERICA FIRST does not mean that that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them. It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. We say 'America first' because we are Americans; the Czechs say or ought to say 'Czech Republic first.' The general principle is that every country has a right to grant preference to itself and its interests over the interests of other countries while respecting their interests and right to self-determination. America First is but an instance of the general principle. The principle, then, is Country First.
ENLIGHTENED NATIONALISM AND CHAUVINISM
America First has nothing to do with chauvinism which could be characterized as a blind and intemperate patriotism, a belligerent and unjustified belief in the superiority of one's own country. America First expresses an enlightened nationalism which is obviously compatible with a sober recognition of national failings. Germany has a rather sordid history; but Germany First is compatible with a recognition of the wrong turn that great nation took during a well-known twelve-year period (1933-1945) in her history.
NATIONALISM, NATIVISM, ISOLATIONISM
An enlightened nationalism is distinct from nativism inasmuch as the former does not rule out immigration. By definition, an immigrant is not a native; but an enlightened American nationalism accepts immigrants who accept American values, which of course are not the values of the Left or of political Islam.
An enlightened nationalism is not isolationist. What it eschews is a fruitless meddling and over-eager interventionism. It does not rule out certain necessary interventions when they are in our interests and in the interests of our allies.
So America First is not to be confused with chauvinism or nativism or isolationism.
Back to the Intentionality/Reference Discussion
Returning to the ongoing thread:
So to summarise the discussion so far. The doctrine of Reference and Identity is that empty names can refer. That is because the verb phrase ‘refers to’ is intentional. That is, “S refers to N” is consistent with “there is no such thing as N”. Contrast with “S touches N” which implies there is such a thing as N.
[. . .]
Do you see any problem with that position?
When you say, "empty names can refer," do you mean that some empty names refer and some empty names do not refer? Or do you mean that all empty names refer? (Compare: If I said that integers can be either odd or even, that would be equivalent to saying that some integers are odd and some are even.)
I will assume that you mean that all empty names refer. You say that this is because 'refers to' is intentional. It is intentional in the very same way that thinking-of is intentional. To think is to think of something. But 'A thinks of N' is logically consistent with 'there is no such thing as N.' If I am thinking of Asmodeus, it does not follow that I am thinking of something that exists. So far, so good. Now I take it that you hold that the following are all logically equivalent where the substituends for 'N' are proper names such as 'Moses' and 'Asmodeus.'
- There is no such thing as N
- There exists no such thing as N
- It is not the case that there exists an x such that x = N
- It is not the case that some existing thing is identical to N
- It is not the case that something is identical to N
- No existing thing is identical to N
- Nothing is identical to N
- N is not a member of the class K of existing things.
- N is not a member of class K of things.
You are making the following additional assumptions. Everything exists. (Quine contra 'Wyman.') 'Is' and 'exists' have the same sense. 'Existential quantifier' and 'particular quantifier' are two different names for one and the same quantifier. 'N does not exist' says just this: it is not the case that something is identical to N.
Your view implies a contradiction:
1) Empty names such as 'Asmodeus' refer. (R & I, 9-10)
2) To refer is to refer to something. (R & I, 9-10)
Therefore
3) 'Asmodeus' refers to something. (As you explicitly state, ibid.)
4) In the case of 'Asmodeus,' an empty name, 'Asmodeus' refers to something that does not exist.
5) Everything exists. (There are no nonexistent things. 'Something does not exist' is contradictory.)
Therefore
6) 'Asmodeus' refers to nothing. (3, 4, 5)
Therefore
7) (3) and (6) are contradictories.
Therefore
8) One of your assumptions is false.
Philosophers as Bad Drivers?
Reader Riccardo writes,
I remember reading on your blog some time ago an hilarious post with an anecdote on Richard Swinburne. It was about the importance for philosophers of developing practical skills in addition to intellectual ones. In the same post you recounted how you and Swinburne were driving together to a conference and he was driving really really slow.I tried many times and in many ways, but i can't find that post anymore. Have you deleted it? If you haven't, could you help me find it?
That entry, filed under Automotive, was published on 19 November 2016. Here it is again in a larger font, with Comments enabled. But it wasn't me and Swinburne who were driving together; had we been travelling together I would have insisted on driving. I would have listened to him discourse on the body and the immortal soul while I did my damndest to keep them connected.
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Just over the transom:
C.J. F. Williams told me a [Richard] Swinburne story. Swinburne offered to give him a lift to some philosophy conference, but warned him ‘I only drive at 30 miles an hour’. Christopher thought he meant that he strictly abided by the urban 30 mph speed limit, and accepted the lift.
It turned out that Swinburne never ever drove more than 30 mph, even on the freeway, where in the UK the limit is 70 mph. It took a while to get to there.
Slow is not safe on freeways. Swinburne is lucky to have lived long enough to be insulted by the Society of Christian Philosophers.
I have heard rumors to the effect that David Lewis was 'automotively challenged.'
My old friend Quentin Smith didn't drive at all.
One of the reasons that philosophers from Thales on have been the laughingstock of Thracian maids and other members of hoi polloi is that many of them are incompetent in practical matters.
Quentin was just hopeless in mundane matters. The tales I could tell, the telling of which loyalty forbids.
Me? I'm an excellent driver, a good cook, a pretty good shot, competent in elementary plumbing, electrical, and automotive change-outs and repairs, and well-versed in personal finance.
A life well-lived is a balanced life. You should strive to develop all sides of your personality: intellectual, spiritual, artistic, emotional, and physical.
Addenda
Here is an obituary of C. J. F. Williams by Richard Swinburne.
It came as news to me that Williams spent most of his life in a wheelchair. It testifies to the possibilities of the human spirit that great adversity for some is no impediment to achievement. I think also of Stephen Hawking, Charles Krauthammer, and FDR.
So stop whining and be grateful for what you have. You could be in a bloody wheelchair!
Related: C. J. F. Williams' Analysis of 'I Might Not Have Existed'
UPDATE (11/21/2016).
J. H. writes,
Your blog post "Philosophers as Bad Drivers?" brought back to memory a philosophy professor that I had as an undergrad and a story he told us about himself.
Dr. Ken Ferguson told us a story one day about his time in one of the branches of the military. While serving, an officer instructed him to move a jeep. Ferguson says he objected and explained to the officer that he simply could not drive. The officer wasn't sympathetic to his excuse and doubled down on his request. Ferguson said that he attempted to follow the orders and ended up wrecking the jeep and some other equipment. He was not asked to drive again.
Ferguson said that he simply does not drive. Multiple times I remember seeing him walking down one of the main streets leading to campus in what I suspect was a distance of at least over two miles in the morning, and while always wearing a full suit at that!
Thanks for the story! Ferguson is a counterexample to the famous Stirling Moss quotation: “There are two things no man will admit he cannot do well: drive and make love.”
One of the reasons philosophy and philosophers get such bad press among the general public is because of the high number of oddballs and incompetents in philosophy. Your former professor might have had a number of good reasons for never learning how to drive. But I would argue that there are certain things every man ought to know how to do and they include knowing how to drive cars and trucks of various sizes and operate a stick shift. Like it or not, we are material beings in a material world and knowing how to negotiate this world is important for us and those with whom we come into contact.
We should develop ourselves as fully and many-sidedly as possible so as to be worthy acolytes of our noble mistress, fair Philosophia. We represent her to the public.
Transcendence
The Transcendence we aim at is so faint and uncertain, so easy to suspect of being a mirage, while the earthly lures are so loudly attractive, so seemingly real. This is reality, the sense world shouts at us. All else is illusion!
Braggadocio, Self-Deprecation, Contempt
Brag and your peers will hate you. A little self-deprecation may win their hearts. Too much will earn their contempt. We learn these things by living.
On Death: Objective and Subjective Views
Death viewed objectively seems normal, natural, and 'acceptable.' And not evil. Is it evil that the leaves of deciduous trees fall off and die in the autumn? There are more where they came from. It is nature's way. Everything in nature goes the way of the leaves of autumn. If this is not evil, why is it evil when we fall from the Arbor Vitae? Are we not just bits of nature's fauna? Very special bits, no doubt, but wholly natural nonetheless.
Viewed subjectively, however, the matter looks decidedly different. Gaze at someone you love at a moment when your 'reasons' for loving the person are most in evidence. Then give unblinkered thought to the proposition that the dearly beloved child or spouse will die and become nothing, that the marvellous depth of interiority that has revealed itself as unique to your love will be annihilated, utterly blotted out forever, and soon.
Now turn your thought back on yourself and try to confront in all honesty and without evasion your upcoming annihilation as a subject of experience and not as just another object among objects. Focus on yourself as a subject for whom there is a world, and not as an object in the world. Entertain with existential clarity the thought that you will not play the transcendental spectator at your demise and cremation.
The horror of nonexistence from which Epicurus wanted to free us comes into view only when we view death subjectively: I as subject, not me as object, or as 'one.' No doubt one dies. But it is not possible that one die unless it is is possible that I die or you die, where 'you' is singular. Viewing myself objectively, I am at a distance from myself and thus in evasion of the fact I as subject will become nothing.
That the self as subject should be annihilated ought to strike one as the exact opposite of normal, natural, and acceptable. It should strike one as a calamity beyond compare. For there are no more where the dearly beloved came from. The dearly beloved, whether self or other, is unique, and not just in the 0ne-of-kind sense. For there is no kind whose instantiation is the dearly beloved.
Which view is true? Can either be dismissed? Can they be 'mediated' by some dialectical hocus-pocus? These are further questions.
But now it is time for a hard ride as Sol peeps his ancient head over the Superstition ridge line.
Ingredients of Happiness
What makes for happiness?
Acceptance is a good part of it: acceptance of self, of one's ineluctable limitations, of others and their limitations, of one's lot in life, of one's place in the natural hierarchy of prowess and intellect and spiritual capacity, acceptance of the inevitable in the world at large.
Gratitude is another ingredient in happiness: one cultivates gratitude for and appreciation of what one has here and now without comparisons to an idealized past, a feared future, or to the lots of others. No regret, resentment, worry, or comparison. Comparison breeds envy, one of the seven deadly sins. Be your incomparable self. If you are not yet incomparable, take up self-individuation as a life project. Realize yourself. Your life is more a task than a given, a task of transmuting givens into accomplishments. It is the task of becoming actually the unique person you are potentially. But no hankering for what is out of reach. No false ideals. No consorting with the utopian. No Lennon-esque imagining of the impossible. No dreaming impossible dreams.
You were born somewhere in the natural hierarchy of physical endowment, moral and affective and aesthetic sensitivity, mental power, spiritual capacity, and strength of will. But your place in the hierarchy allows for development. Know your place but press against its upper limits.
But of course happiness is not just a matter of attitude and exertion but also rests on contingency and luck. We need, but cannot command, the world's cooperation. Happenstance holds happiness hostage. You were dealt a bad hand? Suck it up and play it the best you can for as long as you can.
Conservatives emphasize attitude and exertion, leftists happenstance. Both have a point. "The harder I work, the luckier I become" is a conservative exaggeration, but a life-enhancing one. It is however the foolish conservative who thinks he is self-made and not the beneficiary of a myriad of forces and factors far beyond his control. There is truth in Phil Ochs' lament, "There but for fortune go you or I," but not such truth as to trump the conservative's exaggeration. Weathering "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," (Hamlet, Act III, Scene I) he will slog on, per aspera ad astra.
Can an Atheist be an Idolater?
Substack latest.
Is the US Becoming the SU?
I've been warning of this for years. Ed West, America has become its own worst enemy. Excerpt:
Communists saw their political beliefs as so all-encompassing that even science was political: if science contradicted the goals of communism, it wasn’t science. In today’s United States the slow death of liberalism has resulted in the blatant politicisation of science, to the extent that as in Russia, scientists teach things which are obviously untrue because it supports the prevailing ideology. Then there is the media, much of which parrots the party line with almost embarrassing, “Comrade Stalin has driven pig iron to record production” levels of conformity. Once again, if you want to hear the truth, go to the BBC (until the young people who run the website take over).
America, once the most trusting of societies, is heading in the direction of Russia, one of the least trusting. Most disturbing of all is that, formerly the most demographically vibrant of western countries, today the United States has suffered a spectacular collapse in fertility. This is mostly down to stagnant wages among the middle class, who can no longer afford a family with one breadwinner, and a rapid decline of religious faith. But maybe people have also lost belief in themselves, and the ideals of their country.The Soviet Union broke into 15 different pieces, and the transition was, as CNN might put it, mostly peaceful — although Gorbachev’s old dacha is now in Russia once again after some local unpleasantness.
Today it is the United States where people talk of secession, escaping a crumbling superpower ruled by geriatrics. This seems very unlikely to happen, more clickbait than reality, because why would you leave what has been for more than two centuries the richest, most impressive state on earth? But then a generation ago few would have foreseen the Soviet Union crumbling in a haze of alcoholic despair.
Commentary by Rod Dreher here.
The Characteristic Attitude of the Pyrrhonists
Benson Mates, The Skeptic Way, Oxford UP, 1996, p. 5: ". . . the characteristic attitude of the Pyrrhonists is one of aporia, of being at a a loss, puzzled, stumped, stymied." Aporia is not doubt. Doubt implies understanding, but aporia is a lack of understanding. The modern skeptic may doubt, but not the ancient skeptic.
Connected with this is a distinction between epoché as the withholding of assent to the meaningfulness of a claim and suspension of judgment as to the truth or falsity of a claim. (Meaningfulness is a necessary condition of a claims's being either true or false.) One can withhold assent from an assertion without granting that it makes sense; but if one suspends judgment then one has a clear propositional sense before one's mind which one neither affirms nor denies. See Mates, p. 32. A good distinction! Add it to the list.
Consider, for example, this statement of the doctrine of the Trinity: "There is one God in three divine persons." The epochist, to give him a name, takes no stand on the question whether the doctrinal formulation makes sense. He neither affirms nor denies that there is a proposition that the formula expresses. Propositions are the vehicles of the truth-values; so by practicing epoché our epochist takes no stand on the question whether the doctrinal sentence expresses anything that is either true or false. The suspender of judgment, by contrast, grants that the sentence expresses a proposition but takes no stand on its truth or falsity.
So, strictly speaking, aporia is not doubt and epoché is not suspension of judgment. Close but not the same. One in the psychological state of aporia may or may not go on to practice epoché. Suppose I am stumped by what you say. I might just leave it at that and not take the further step of performing epoché.
The aporia Mates describes is an attitude. But there is another sense of the term, a non-attitudinal sense, and I use it in this other propositional sense: an aporia is a propositional polyad, a set of two or more propositions that are individually plausible but jointly inconsistent.
I also distinguish broad and narrow sub-senses of aporia in the second, the propositional, sense. What I just described is a propositional aporia in the broad sense. In the narrow, balls-to-the-wall sense, an aporia is an absolutely insoluble problem set forth as a set of collectively inconsistent propositions each of which makes such a strong claim on our acceptance that it cannot be given up.
Alles klar? No way!