The first footnote to Patrick Toner's "Hylemorphic Animalism" (Phil. Studies, 2011, 155: 65-81) reads:
The more common spelling is "hylomorphic," but David Oderberg has convinced me to substitute this spelling. After all, the Greek term in question is hyle, not hylo.
By this reasoning we should write 'cruxade,' 'cruxiform,' and 'cruxial' instead of the standard 'crusade,' 'cruciform,' and 'crucial.' After all, the Latin term in question is crux, not crus or cruc.
Furthermore, why not write 'hylemorphec' rather than 'hylemorphic'? After all, the Greek term in question is morphe, not morphi.
Why don't we write 'polisology' and 'polisics' rather than 'politology' and 'politics'? After all, the Greek term in question is polis, not polit.
And why don't we write 'morphelogy,' and 'gelogy' and 'gemetry' rather than 'morphology,' 'geology,' and 'geometry'? After all, etc.
What am I missing?
For a conservative there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional ways of doing things. Note 'defeasible.' Conservatives are not opposed to change; they are opposed to unnecessary and foolish and deleterious and change-for-the-sake-of-change change. You could say that they are opposed to Obaminable change.
Addendum (18 May)
Ed Feser writes,
I had this debate with David years ago and initially defended "hylomorphism" precisely on the conservative grounds that that is the standard usage. (You'll notice that in my book Philosophy of Mind I use "hylomorphism.") However, "hylemorphism" is not David's invention, and when I was writing the Aquinas book I found that some (though of course not all) of the old manuals did indeed use "hylemorphism." So there hasn't in fact been uniformity on the spelling. Hence I decided "Fine, what the heck." I'm not committed to it the way David is, though.
I am aware that 'hylemorphism' is not Oderberg's invention and that this spelling has also been used. But unless I am badly mistaken, the 'hylo' forms occur more frequently that the 'hyle' forms. So while Oderberg's usage is not an innovation, it does go against standard usage. That's one consideration. Another is euphony. The 'hylo' compounds roll right off the tongue; the 'hyle' forms are slightly 'stickier.' But your tongue may vary. And then there are the considerations adduced above.
It just now occurs to me that there is one instance where the 'o' would be out of place. Edmund Husserl speaks of hyletische Daten, the translation being 'hyletic data.' Here the 'e' satisfies the exigencies of euphony quite nicely.
This is surely no earth-shaking matter. But on one way of looking at things it is wonderful that civilization has advanced to such a point that large numbers of people can spend time discussing such a scholarly punctilio.
I've had only three vehicles in the past 31 years: (1) a 1976 Oldsmobile Cutlass, purchased from my brother Glenn in May 1983; (2) a 1989 Pontiac Grand Am, purchased new in August 1989; and (3) a 2007 Honda Accord, purchased new in February 2007. How many vehicles have you had in the past 31 years?
In one sense old Keith has me beat. I've owned four cars during this time period: (1) a 1978 VW bus purchased used in spring '79; (2) a 1988 Jeep Cherokee bought new at Thanksgiving 1987; (3) a low-mileage, immaculate, 2005 Jeep Liberty Renegade 'stolen' used for a paltry $12 K on St. Valentine's Day, 2009; (4) a 2013 Jeep Wrangler Sport purchased new at Thanksgiving 2012.
So I've owned four vehicles during the period when Keith owned three.
But there is a sense in which I have him beat: I owned the Cherokee for over 21 years, whereas the longest he has owned a vehicle appears to be less than eight years.
The old Cherokee is celebrated in the first article below.
In my whole life I have owned only four cars, the ones mentioned and a 1963 Karmann Ghia convertible purchased for $650 from my half-brother in 1969. The license plate read: GOE 069. I kid you not. I sold it in 1973 when I headed east for grad school. I should have kept it. Just like I should never have sold that Gibson ES 335 TD. That was the dumbest thing I ever did.
Long-time Pakistani reader A. A. presents me with a nice challenging question:
You hold the view that the central problems of philosophy are insoluble. I assume that also includes central questions of ethics and meta-ethics, such as the existence of objective moral values. What implication does this have, however, for the more peripheral and applied problems of ethics, such as the moral status of abortion? Does it imply that they are also essentially insoluble?
Consistency demands that I drive to the end of the road. So yes, my metaphilosophical thesis implies that the moral problem of abortion, for example, is insoluble. Does the fact that I must, on pain of inconsistency, draw this conclusion amount to an objection to my metaphilosophy? Let's see.
One objection might run as follows. "If you are a solubility skeptic, then you can't take a position for or against the morality of abortion. But you yourself have argued over many posts against the moral permissibility of abortion. You do take a position. Therefore, at the end of the day you are not a solubility skeptic."
I don't think this objection need cause me any trouble. For it is consistent with what I maintain that I also maintain that some arguments on a topic are better than others, and that some are good enough to win our tentative assent, an assent sufficient to justify action in support of our causes. One can be a solubility skeptic and also maintain that some arguments are very bad and bare of probative force. Consider the Woman's Body Argument:
1. The fetus is a part of a woman's body. 2. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with any part of her body. Therefore 3. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with the fetus, including having it killed.
This is clearly a very bad argument, involving as it does an equivocation on the term 'part.' For an analysis in depth, see here.
The Potentiality Argument, however, is a good argument. It is not open to any obvious refutation, despite what some people erroneously think. But it is not an absolutely compelling argument. For one thing, its underlying nomenclature and conceptuality is broadly Aristotelian: there is talk of potency and act, substance and accident, and so on. The broadly Aristotelian metaphysical framework, though defensible and ably defended by many, is however not without its difficulties, some of which are explored in my Aristotle category. These age-old difficulties bleed into the Potentiality Argument, rendering it less than absolutely rationally compelling.
Any argument in applied ethics will rest on normative-ethical and meta-ethical presuppositions, with these in turn resting on metaphysical presuppositions. Starting at the periphery with the problems of applied ethics we are ineluctably drawn toward the center where the core problems live. For example, any discussion about the morality of abortion will lead to questions about rights and duties, the nature of persons, identity over time, the nature of change, and many others besides. The insolubility of the core problems extends to the peripheral problems. But this does not prevent us from taking definite rationally defensible stands on such issues as abortion.
Go Kirsten! Kirsten Powers has it all: beauty, brains, and the female equivalent of that which I was about to refer to using a word I decided not to use. I think I'm in love. And she stands up to Bill O'Reilly displaying grace under pressure when the pugnacious Irishman becomes obnoxious. She's smarter than O'Reilly and she knows it. Bill does too. But hats off to O'Reilly for giving the young whippersnappers a forum and for speaking truth to power lo these many years. He is an inspiring profile in civil courage.
"Speaking truth to power" is a lefty phrase that we need to co-opt. Leftards use the phrase even when they have power. You see, for a lefty, having power is supposedly bad and so they have to pretend that they don't have it even when they do. It's like money in that respect. They like to posture that they are anti-Establishment when they are the Establishment, and that they are dissenting when they are spouting and toeing the party line. They also think they somehow own dissent as if conservatives are somehow barred by the very meaning of the word from dissenting.
In any case, Miss Powers really hits the nail on the head in her column: Here is some of it and it ought to anger you with a righteous anger:
Don't bother trying to make sense of what beliefs are permitted and which ones will get you strung up in the town square. Our ideological overlords have created a minefield of inconsistency. While criticizing Islam is intolerant, insulting Christianity is sport. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is persona non grata at Brandeis University for attacking the prophet Mohammed. But Richard Dawkins describes the Old Testament God as "a misogynistic … sadomasochistic … malevolent bully" and the mob yawns. Bill Maher calls the same God a "psychotic mass murderer" and there are no boycott demands of the high-profile liberals who traffic his HBO show.
The self-serving capriciousness is crazy. In March, University of California-Santa Barbara women's studies professor Mireille Miller-Young attacked a 16-year-old holding an anti-abortion sign in the campus' "free speech zone" (formerly known as America). Though she was charged with theft, battery and vandalism, Miller-Young remains unrepentant and still has her job. But Mozilla's Brendan Eich gave a private donation to an anti-gay marriage initiative six years ago and was ordered to recant his beliefs. When he wouldn't, he was forced to resign from the company he helped found.
Got that? A college educator with the right opinions can attack a high school student and keep her job. A corporate executive with the wrong opinions loses his for making a campaign donation. Something is very wrong here.
As the mob gleefully destroys people's lives, its members haven't stopped to ask themselves a basic question: What happens when they come for me? If history is any guide, that's how these things usually end.
One of the books I am reading is Joachim Fest's Not I: Memories of a German Childhood (orig. publ. in German in 2006 by Rowohlt, tr. Martin Chalmers, New York, Other Press, 2013).
The title alludes to Mark 14:29: "But Peter said unto him, Although all shall be offended, yet will not I."
WSJ review by T. J. Reed here. I reproduce a sizeable chunk of it in case it ends up behind a pay wall:
The [Fest] family lives under a shadow. Their dissent is no secret. Father had been a member of the Reichsbanner, the organization in which his Catholic Centre Party had joined with liberals and Social Democrats to defend the republic against Communists and Nazis. It's not every school headmaster who gets involved in street fights and comes home bloody, as Johannes Fest did. But after 1933 he was a headmaster no longer, suspended indefinitely by the new political masters. The family's status and income were lost, their lives transformed. Grandfather had to come out of retirement to earn a bit for them. Father never worked again. The Nazis did try to cajole him back into teaching, since any observable dissent was bad publicity. They even offered accelerated promotion if he would outwardly conform. He remained firm.
Family tension became palpable. Mother, bearing the brunt of straitened family circumstances, asks Father if he might not compromise. Weren't lies always the resort of the "little people"? He replies: "We aren't little people." It is one of the maxims that guided the conduct of Fest's father and a few friends. (The title of his son's memoir comes from a Gospel passage that he would often quote, Peter promising Jesus: "Even if all others fall away—not I.") There were some Germans who made sure that they were carrying something in both hands when they went out into the street, the only plausible ground for not giving the required "Heil Hitler" salute to anyone they met. But Fest's father goes out resolutely empty-handed.
"Keep your head down," Johannes [father of Joachim] told his family, "but don't let it make you smaller." Young Joachim didn't always listen. A classmate reports him for carving a Hitler caricature on his desk. (He has been scribbling them on surfaces all over town.) As a consequence, he is removed from the school; his brothers too. The episode is just one instance of an independence akin to his father's.
The friends of the Fests—they now became former friends—and many neighbors and acquaintances fell by the wayside, even without being keen Nazis. Only one of the 12 families in the apartment block was in the party. The rest merely went along as things changed, drifting deeper into acquiescence, making excuses even as stable social and political structures fell apart in the name of a new "people's community." The Nazis, after all, were formally the legitimate government, however brutal their conduct of affairs—from the realm of international diplomacy to the arbitrary laws that replaced justice down to the small changes in everyday life, the swindles and favoritism of party members.
By recording these small changes, Joachim Fest creates a picture of how the one-party state operated on an intimate level, and exerted its unbreakable grip. It recalls the bleak account of incremental misery in Victor Klemperer's diaries of the period. A woman sees a Jewish-looking man in the street not wearing a star, pursues and denounces him. There are first rumors and then reliable evidence of atrocities.
Anti-Semitism had considerably more popular resonance than many other Nazi policies, such as the campaign for "Lebensraum" in the east. How many Germans would have wanted to up sticks and resettle somewhere on the vast Russian plains? As for Jewish Germans themselves, even after Kristallnacht there were those who waited for the Nazi "phase" to pass. Their trust in a culture that had produced Kant, Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and Beethoven, a culture into which they felt they had assimilated, meant that they delayed escape too long.
But was it German culture that produced Kant, Goethe, et al.? Or was it the Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian culture that had its sources in Athens and Jerusalem? That is one question. A second question is whether talk of production is anywhere near adequate, whether any culture could produce such geniuses as opposed merely to providing a fertile soil in which they developed themselves.
A third question is whether we are not now drifting toward a totalitarian unculture in which the slightest deviations from politically correct modes of thought and speech bring down drastic punishments on those who think they can speak their minds in private and in public without fear of reprisal from illiberal 'liberals.'
You blogged that doing philosophy has great value in itself; even if philosophy is aporetic. But how often, or how long per day or month, should one devote to it? Doing philosophy seems (to me at least) to have diminishing returns, if philosophy is aporetic. Or has your experience been different?
My approach to philosophy could be called radically aporetic. Thus I hold not only that philosophy is best approached aporetically, via its problems, but also that its central problems are insoluble. Thus I tend, tentatively and on the basis of inductive evidence, to the view that the central problems of philosophy, while genuine and thus not amenable to Wittgensteinian or other dissolution, are true aporiai, impasses. It is clear that one could take a broadly aporetic approach without subscribing to the insolubility thesis. But I go 'whole hog.' Hence radically aporetic.
I won't explain this any further, having done so elsewhere, but proceed to V.'s question.
I take our friend to be asking the following. How much time ought one devote to philosophy if philosophy is its problems and they are insoluble? But there is a deeper and logically prior question lurking in the background: Why do philosophy at all if its problems are insoluble? What good is philosophy aporetically pursued?
1. It is good in that it conduces to intellectual humility, to an appreciation of our actual predicament in this life, which is one of profound ignorance concerning what would be most worth knowing if we could know it. The aporetic philosopher is a Socratic philosopher, one who knows what he knows and knows what he does not know. The aporetic philosopher is a debunker of epistemic pretense. One sort of epistemic pretense is that of the positive scientists who, succumbing to the temptation to wax philosophical, overstep the bounds of their competence, proposing bogus solutions to philosophical problems, and making incoherent assertions. They often philosophize without knowing it, and they do it incompetently, without self-awareness and self-criticism. I have given many examples of this in these pages. Thus philosophy as I conceive it is an important antidote to scientism. Scientism is an enemy of the humanities and I am a defender of the humanities.
There is also the threat emanating from political ideologies such as communism and leftism and Islamism and their various offshoots. The critique of these and other pernicious worldviews is a task for philosophy. And who is better suited for debunking operations than the aporetician?
2. Beyond its important debunking use, philosophy aporetically pursued has a spiritual point and purpose. If there are indeed absolutely insoluble problems, they mark the boundary of the discursive intellect and point beyond it. Immersion in philosophical problems brings the discursive mind to an appreciation of its limits and raises the question of what, if anything, lies beyond the limits and how one may gain access to it.
I take the old-fashioned view that the ultimate purpose of human life, a purpose to which all others must be subordinated, is to search for, and if possible, participate in the Absolute. There are several approaches to the Absolute, the main ones being philosophy, religion, and mysticism.
The radical aporetician in philosophy goes as far as he can with philosophy, but hits a dead-end, and is intellectually hnest enough to admit that he is at his wit's end. This motivates him to explore other paths to the Absolute, paths via faith/revelation and mystical intuition. The denigration of the latter by most contemporary philosophers merely shows how spiritually benighted and shallow they are, how historically uniformed, and in some cases, how willfully stupid.
But once a philosopher always a philosopher. So the radical aporetician does not cease philosophizing while exploring the other paths; he uses philosophy to chasten the excess of those other paths. And so he denigrates reason as little as he denigrates faith/revelation and mystical intuition. He merely assigns to reason its proper place.
Now to V.'s actual question. How much time for philosophy? A good chunk of every day. Just how much depending on the particular circumstances of one's particular life. But time must also be set aside for prayer and meditation, the reading of the great scriptures, and other religious/ mystical practices.
For one ought to be a truth-seeker above else. But if one is serious about seeking truth, then one cannot thoughtlessly assume that the only access to ultimate truth is via philosophy. A person who refuses to explore other paths is like the churchmen who refused to look through Galileo's telescope. They 'knew' that Aristotle had 'proven' the 'quintessential' perfection of celestial bodies, a perfection that would disallow any such 'blemishes' as craters. So they refused to look and see.
One of my correspondents is a retired philosophy of professor and a Buddhist. He maintains that one ought to spend as much time meditating as one spends on philosophy. So if one philosophizes for five hours per day, then one ought to meditate for five hours per day! A hard saying indeed!
In the Orwellian world of the leftist loon, black is white, so black privilege, which exists, becomes white privilege, which doesn't.
But there is no point in serious discussion with delusional leftards, so the best course of action is mockery and derision either in the moderate style of Kurt Schlichter or the take-no-prisoners style of Jim Goad.
In the interests of full disclosure, I am not now and never have been a redneck or a Southerner and I don't agree with everything Goad says. But I am heartily sick of lying liberal scum and their endless race-baiting, double-standards, and preternatural dumbassery.
. . . my old copy of Alan Hamilton, Logic for Mathematicians, CUP 1978, uses 'statement variables' in his account of the 'statement calculus', as here. The justification for 'variable' is surely that statements have values, namely truth and falsehood. The truth value of a compound statement is calculated from the truth values of its component simple statements by composition of the truth functions corresponding to the logical connectives. This is analogous to the evaluation of an arithmetic expression by composition of arithmetic functions applied to the values of arithmetic variables.
I detect a possible conflation of two senses of 'value.' There is 'value' in the sense of truth value, and there is 'value' in the sense of the value of a variable.
If I am not mistaken, talk of truth values in the strict sense of this phrase enters the history of logic first with Gottlob Frege (1848-1925). Truth and Falsity for him are not properties of propositions, but values of propositional functions. Thus the propositional function denoted by 'x is wise' has True for its value with Socrates as argument, and False for its value with Nero as argument. Please note the ambiguity of 'argument.' We are now engaging in MathSpeak. The analogy with mathematics is obvious. The squaring function has 4 for its value with 2 or -2 as arguments. Propositional functions map their arguments onto the two truth values.
But we also speak in a different sense of the value of a variable. The bound variables in
(x)(x is a man –> x is mortal)
range over real items. These items are the values of the bound variables but they are not truth values. Therefore, one should not confuse 'value' in the sense of truth value with 'value' in the sense of value of a variable. When Quine famously stated that "To be is to be the value of a [bound] variable" he was not referring to truth values.
Brightly says that "The justification for 'variable' is surely that statements have values, namely truth and falsehood." I think that is a mistake that trades on the confusion just exposed. Agreed, statements have truth values. But it doesn't follow that that placeholders for statements are variables.
I was pleased to see that Hamilton observes the distinction I drew several times between an abbreviation and a placeholder. He uses 'label' for 'abbreviation,' but no matter. But I distinguish a placeholder from a variable while Hamilton doesn't.
To appreciate the distinction, first note that with respect to variables we ought to make a three-way distinction among the variable, say 'x,' the value, say Socrates, and the substituend, say 'Socrates.' Now consider the argument:
Tom is tall or Tom is fat Tom is not tall ——- Tom is fat
This argument has the form of the Disjunctive Syllogism:
P v Q ~P ——- Q.
Obviously, 'P' and 'Q' are not abbreviations (labels); if they were then the second display would not display an argument form. It would be an abbreviated argument. But it doesn't follow that 'P' and 'Q' are variables. For if they were variables, then they would have both substituends andf values. But while they have substituends, e.g., the sentences 'Tom is tall' and 'Tom is fat,' they don't have values. Why not? Because we are not quantifying over propositions (or statements if you prefer). There are no quantifiers in the form diagram. (This is not to say that one cannot quantify over propositions.)
'Tom' is tall' is one of many possible substituends for 'P.' But 'Tom is tall' is not the value of 'P.' For we are not quantifying over sentences. We are not quantifying over propositions either. So *Tom is tall* is also not a value of 'P.'
My thesis is that placeholders in the propositional calculus are arbitrary propositional constants. Since they are constants, they are not variables. It is a subtle distinction, I'll grant you that, but it seems necessary if we are to think precisely about these matters. But then one man's necessary distinction is another man's hair-splitting.
You also argue that London must wrongly decide that 'if roses are red then roses are red' (RR) is a contingency, because we say it can be seen as having the form 'P–>Q' and in general statements of this form are contingencies. Indeed they are. But we don't so decide. We say this is a special case in which P and Q stand for the same simple sentence, 'roses are red', not different ones. P and Q are therefore either both true or both false and either way the truth function for –> returns true. Hence this special case is tautologous. We disagree that the move from RR to 'P–>Q' must be seen as an abstraction. We retain the information that P and Q stand for specific substatements within RR, which may themselves have internal structure. 'Form' is a device for making such structure explicit.
So you are saying that 'P –> Q' has a special case that is tautologous. But that makes no sense to me if RR has both forms. A sentence (understood to have one definite meaning) is tautologous if its logical form is tautologous, and if RR has the form 'P–> Q' then it it is not tautologous as an instance of that form. So you seem committed to saying that RR is both tautologous and not tautologous.
Isn't that obvious? If one and same sentence (understood to have one definite meaning) has two logical forms, one tautologous and the other non-tautologous, then one and the same sentence is both tautologous and non-tautologous — which is a contradiction.
One solution, as I have suggested several times already, is to say that, while 'P –> P' is a special case of 'P –>Q,' namely the case in which P = Q, the two forms are not both forms of 'If roses are red, then roses are red.' Only one of them is, the first one. The second is a form of the first form, not a form of the English sentence.
Putting the problem as an aporetic hexad:
1. 'P –>P' is a special case of 'P –> Q' 2. If a proposition s instantiates form F, and F is a special case of form G, then s instantiates G. 3. 'P –> P' is a tautologous form. 4. 'P –> Q' is a non-tautologous form. 5. No one proposition instantiates both a tautologous and a non-tautologous form. 6. 'If roses are red, then roses are red' instantiates the form 'P –> P.'
The hexad is inconsistent. Phoenix and London agree on (1), (3), (4), and (6). The Phoenician solution is to reject (2). The Londonian solution is reject (5).
But the Phoenicians have an argument for (5):
7. The logical form of a proposition is not an accidental feature of it but determines the very identity of the proposition. Ergo 8. If s instantiates form F, then necessarily, s instantiates F. ergo 5. No one proposition instantiates both a tautologous and a non-tautologous form.
I am not historian enough to pronounce upon the relation of what is standardly called Occam's Razor to the writings of the 14th century William of Ockham. The different spellings of his name will serve as a reminder to be careful about reading contemporary concerns into the works of philosophers long dead. Setting aside historical concerns, Occam's Razor is standardly taken to be a principle of theoretical economy or parsimony that states:
OR. Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.
It is sometimes formulated in Latin: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. The principle is presumably to be interpreted qualitatively rather than quantitatively, thus:
OR*. Do not multiply TYPES of entity beyond necessity.
It is not individual entities that are not to be multiplied, but types or kinds or categories of entity. To illustrate. Some criticized David Lewis' extreme modal realism on the ground that it proliferates concreta: there are not only all the actual concreta , there are all those merely possible ones as well. He responded quite plausibly to the proliferation charge by pointing out that the Razor applies to categories of entity, not individual entities, and that category-wise his ontology is sparse indeed.
'Multiply' is a picturesque way of saying posit. (Obviously, there are as many categories of entity as there are, and one cannot cause them to 'multiply.') And let's not forget the crucial qualification: beyond necessity. That means: beyond what is needed for purposes of adequate explanation of the data that are to be explained. Hence:
OR** Do not posit types of entity in excess of what is needed for purposes of explanation.
So the principle enjoins us to refrain from positing more types of entity than we need to explain the phenomena that need to be explained. It is obvious that (OR**) does not tell us to prefer theory T1 over theory T2 if T1 posits fewer types of entity than T2. What it tells us is to prefer T1 over T2 if T1 posits fewer types of entity AND accounts adequately for all the data. So there is a trade-off between positing and accounting.
Our old pal London Ed sometimes seems to be unaware of this. He seems to think that simply brandishing the Razor suffices to refute a theory. Together with this he sometimes displays a tendency to think that whole categories of entity can be as it were shamed out of existence by labeling them 'queer.' I picked up that word from him. A nice, arch, donnish epithet. But that is just name-calling, a tactic best left to ideologues.
What is offensive about Razor brandishing is the apparent ignorance on the part of some brandishers of the fact that we all agree that one ought not posit types of entity in excess of the needs of explanation. What we don't agree on, however, is whether or not a given class of entities is needed for explanatory purposes. That is where the interesting questions and the real disagreements lie.
The Razor is a purely methodological principle. It does not dictate any particular ontology. Taken as such, and apart from its association with the nominalist Ockham, it does not favor nominalism (the view that everything is a particular) over realism (the view that there are both particulars and universals). It does not favor any ontology over any other.
Nor does it rule out so-called 'abstract objects' such as Fregean propositions. I gave an argument a while back (1 August 2010 to be precise) to the conclusion that there cannot, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, be nothing at all, that there must be at least one abstract object, a proposition. A fellow philosopher commented on that post, Thinking about Nothing, and made the objection that I was multipying entities. But again, the salient question is whether the entity-positing is necessary for explanatory purposes. If my argument was a good one, then it was. One cannot refute such an argument simply by claiming that it introduces a type of entity that is less familiar than one's favorite types.
To sum up. Philosophy is in large part, though not entirely, an explanatory enterprise. As such it ought to proceed according to the methodological principle formulated above as (OR**). This principle is not controversial. Hence it should not be presented to one's opponents as if it were controversial and denied by them. Nor is it a principle that takes sides on the substantive questions of ontology.
What I am objecting to is the idea is that by earnest asseverations of a wholly uncontroversial methodological principle one actually advances the substantive debate. After all, no one enjoins that we multiply entities beyond necessity.
What follows are some ideas from London Ed about a book he is writing. He solicits comments. Mine are in blue.
The logical form thing was entertaining but rather off-topic re the fictional names thing. On which, Peter requested some more.
Let’s step right back. I want to kick off the book with an observation about how illusion impedes the progress of science. It looks as though the sun is going round the earth, so early theories of the universe had the earth standing still. It seems as though objects are continuously solid, and so science rejected the atomists’ theory and adopted Aristotle’s theory for more than a millenium.
A final example from the psychology of perception: in 1638, Descartes takes a eye of a bull and shows how images are projected onto the retina. He finally disproves the ‘emissive theory of sight’. The emissive theory is the naturally occurring idea that eyesight is emitted from your eye and travels to and hits the distant object you are looking at. If you ask a young child why you can’t see when your eyes are shut, he replies (‘because the eyesight can’t get out’).
Scientific progress is [often] about rejecting theories based on what our cognitive and perceptual framework suggests to us, and adopting theories based on diligent observation and logic.
We reject ‘eyebeams’. We reject the natural idea that the mental or sensitive faculty can act at a distance. When we look at the moon, science rejects the idea that a little ethereal piece of us is travelling a quarter of a million miles into space. Yet – turning to the main subject of the book – some philosophers think that objects themselves somehow enter our thoughts. Russell writes to Frege, saying “I believe that in spite of all its snowfields Mont Blanc itself is a component part of what is actually asserted in the proposition ‘Mont Blanc is more than 4,000 metres high”. Kaplan mentions, with apparent approval, the idea that the proposition ‘John is tall’ has two components: the property expressed by the predicate ‘is tall’, and the individual John. “That’s right, John himself, right there, trapped in a proposition”. The dominant theory in modern philosophical logic is ‘direct reference’, or object-dependent theories of semantics: a proper name has no meaning except its bearer, and so the meaning of ‘John is tall’ has precisely the components that Kaplan describes.
BV: I too find the notion that there are Russellian (as opposed to Fregean) propositions very hard to swallow. If belief is a propositional attitude, and I believe that Peter is now doing his grades, it is surely not Peter himself, intestinal contents and all, who is a constituent of the proposition that is the accusative of my act of belief. The subject constituent of the proposition cannot be that infinitely propertied gnarly chunk of external reality, but must be a thinner sort of object, one manageable by a finite mind, something along the lines of a Fregean sense.
The purpose of the proposed book is to advance science by showing how such object-dependent theories are deeply mistaken, and also to explain why they are so compelling, because of their basis on a cognitive illusion as powerful as the illusions that underlie the geocentric theory, or the emissive theory of sight.
What is the illusion? The argument for object dependence is roughly as follows
(1) We can have so-called ‘singular thoughts’, such as when we think that John is tall, i.e. when we have thoughts expressable [expressible] by propositions [sentences, not propositions] whose subject term is a proper name or some other non-descriptive singular term.
(2) A singular term tells us which individual the proposition is about, without telling us anything about it. I.e. singular terms, proper names, demonstratives, etc. are non-descriptive. They are ‘bare individuators’.
BV: This is not quite right. Consider the the first-person singular pronoun, 'I.' This is an indexical expression. If BV says, 'I am hungry,' he refers to BV; if PL says 'I am hungry,' he refers to PL. Either way, something is conveyed about the nature of the referent, namely, that it is a person or a self. So what Ed said is false as it stands. A use of 'I' does tell us something about the individual the sentence containing 'I' is about.
Examples are easily multiplied. Apart from the innovations of the Pee Cee, 'she' tells us that the individual referred to is female. 'Here' tells us that the item denoted is a place, typically. 'Now' picks out times. And there are other examples.
There are no bare items. Hence there cannot be reference to bare items. All reference conveys some property of the thing referred to. But variables may be a counterexample. Consider 'For any x, x = x.' One could perhaps uses variables in such a way that there is no restriction on what they range over. But it might be best to stay away from this labyrinth.
One criticism, then, is that there are no bare individuators. A second is that it is not a singular term, but a use of a singular term that individuates. Thus 'I' individuates nothing. It is PL's use of 'I' that picks out PL.
(3) If a singular term is non-descriptive, its meaning is the individual it individuates. A singular term cannot tell us which individual the proposition is about, unless there exists such an individual.
The course of the book is then to show why we don’t have to be forced into assumption (3). There doesn’t have to be (or to exist) an individual that is individuated. The theory of non-descriptive singular terms is then developed in the way I suggested in my earlier posts. Consider the inference
Frodo is a hobbit Frodo has large feet ——- Some hobbit has large feet
I want to argue that the semantics of ‘Frodo’ is purely inferential. I.e. to understand the meaning of ‘Frodo’ in that argument, it is enough to understand the inference that it generates. That is all.
BV: 'Frodo' doesn't generate anything. What you want to say is that the meaning of 'Frodo' is exhausted by the inferential role this term plays in the (valid) argument depicted. Sorry to be such a linguistic prick.
What you are saying is that 'Frodo,' though empty, has a meaning, but this meaning is wholly reducible to the purely syntactical role it plays in the above argument. (So you are not an eliminativist about the meanings of empty names.) But if the role is purely syntactical, then the role of 'Frodo' is the same as the role of the arbitrary individual constant 'f' in the following valid schema:
Hf Lf ——- (Ex)(Hx & Lx).
But then what distinguishes the meaning of 'Frodo' from that of 'Gandalf'?
Meinongian nonentities are out. Fregean senses are out. There are no referents in the cases of empty names. And yet they have meaning. So the meaning is purely syntactical. Well, I don't see how you can squeeze meaning out of bare syntax. Again, what distinguishes the meaning of the empty names just cited? The obviously differ in meaning, despite lacking both Sinn and Bedeutung.
We don’t need an object-dependent semantics to explain such inferences, and hence we don’t need object-dependence to explain the semantics of proper names. If an inferential semantics is sufficient, then the Razor tells us it is necesssary: Frustra fit per plura, quod potest fieri per pauciora.
BV: You should state explicitly that you intend your inferential semantics to hold both for empty and nonempty names.
And now we see the illusion. The proposition
John is thinking of Obama (or Frodo, or whomever)
has a relational form: “—is thinking of –”. But it does not express a relation. The illusion consists in the way that the relation of the language so strongly suggests a relation in reality. It is the illusion that causes us “to multiply the things principally signified by terms in accordance with the multiplication of the terms”.
That’s the main idea. Obviously a lot of middle terms have been left out. Have at it.
BV: So I suppose what you are saying is that belief in the intentionality of thought is as illusory as the belief in the emissive theory of sight. Just as the the eye does not emit an ethereal something that travels to the moon, e.g., the mind or the 'I' of the mind — all puns intended! — does not shoot out a ray of intentionality that gloms onto some Meinongian object, or some Thomistic merely intentional object, or some really existent object.
You face two main hurdles. The first I already mentioned. You have to explain how to squeeze semantics from mere syntax. The second is that there are theoretical alternatives to the view that intentionality is a relation other than yours. To mention just one: there are adverbial theories of intentionality that avoid an act-object analysis of mental reference.
How many of these do you remember? If you were too much of the '60s then you probably don't remember anything assuming you still animate the mortal coil; if you were too little of the '60s then you won't remember any of these for a different reason. But among the latter are some very beautiful songs from that amazingly creative time.
London Ed refers us to Understanding Arguments: an Introduction to Informal Logic, Robert Fogelin and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and provides this quotation:
Perhaps a bit more surprisingly, our definitions allow 'roses are red and roses are red' to be a substitution instance of 'p & q'. This example makes sense if you compare it to variables in mathematics. Using only positive integers, how many solutions are there to the equation 'x + y = 4'? There are three: 3+1, 1+3, and 2+2. The fact that '2+2' is a solution to 'x + y = 4' shows that '2' can be substituted for both 'x' and 'y' in the same solution. That's just like allowing 'roses are red' to be substituted for both 'p' and 'q', so that 'roses are red and roses are red' is a substitution instance of 'p & q' in propositional logic.
In general, then, we get a substitution instance of a propositional form by uniformly replacing the same variable with the same proposition throughout, but different variables do not have to be replaced with different propositions. The rule is this:
Different variables may be replaced with the same proposition [Ed: Let's call this the London rule], but different propositions may not be replaced with the same variable.
Suppose I am given the task of determining whether the conditional English sentence 'If roses are red, then roses are red' is a tautology, a contradiction, or a contingency. How do I proceed?
Step One is translation, or encoding. Let upper case letters serve as placeholders for propositions. Let '–>' denote the truth-functional connective known in the trade as the material or Philonian conditional. I write 'P –> P.'
Step Two is evaluation. Suppose for reductio that the truth value of 'P –>P' is false. Then, by the definition of the Philonian conditional, we know that the antecedent must be true, and the consequent false. But antecedent and consequent are the same proposition. Therefore, the same proposition is both true and false. This is a contradiction. Therefore, the assumption that conditional is false is itself false. Therefore the conditional is a tautology.
Now that obviously is the right answer since you don't need logic to know that 'If roses are red, then roses are red' is a tautology. (Assuming you know the definition of 'tautology.') But if if Fogelin & Co. are right, and the 'P –>Q' encoding is permitted, then we get the wrong answer, namely, that the English conditional is a contingency.
I am assuming that if 'P–>Q' is a logical form of 'If roses are red, then roses are red,' then 'P –>Q' is a legitimate translation of 'If roses are red, then roses are red.' As Heraclitus said, the way up and the way down are the same. The assumption seems correct.
If I am right, then there must be something wrong with the mathematical analogy. Now there is no doubt that Fogelin and his side kick are right when it comes to mathematics. And I allow that what they say is true about variables in general. Suppose I want to translate into first-order predicate logic with identity the sentence, 'There is exactly one wise man.' I would write, '[(Ex)Wx & (y)(Wy –> x = y)].' Suppose Siddartha is the unique wise man. Then Siddartha is both the value of 'x' and the value of 'y.'
So different variables can have the same value. And they can have the same substituend. In the example, Siddartha is the value and 'Siddartha' is the substituend. But is a placeholder the same as a variable? I don't think so. Here is a little argument:
No variable is a constant Every placeholder is an arbitrary constant Every arbitrary constant is a constant ——- No placeholder is a variable.
A placeholder is neither an abbreviation, nor a variable. It is an arbitrary constant. Thus the logical form of 'Al is fat' is Fa, not Fx. Fa is a proposition, not a propositional function. 'F' is a predicate constant. 'a' is an individual constant. We cannot symbolize 'Al is fat' as Fx. For Fx is not a proposition but a propositional function. If 'a' were not an arbitrary constant, then Fa would not depict the logical form of 'Al is fat,' a form it shares with other atomic sentences.
Here is another argument:
Every variable is either free or bound by a quantifier No placeholder is either free or bound by a quantifier ——- No placeholder is a variable.
Here is a third argument:
Every variable has a domain over which it ranges No placeholder has a domain over which it ranges ——- No placeholder is a variable.
A fourth argument:
There is no quantification over propositions in the propositional calculus ——- There are no propositional variables in the propositional calculus If there are no propositional variables in the propositional calculus, then the placeholders in the propositional calculus cannot be variables ——- The placeholders in the proposition calculus cannot be variables.
Punchline: because placeholders are not variables, the fact that the different variables can have the same value and the same substituend does not show that different placeholders can have the same substituend. 'If roses are red, then roses are red' does not have the logical form 'P –>Q' and the latter form does not have as a substitutution-instance 'If roses are red, then roses are red.'
As I have said many times already, one cannot abstract away from the fact that the same proposition is both antecedent and consequent.
What one could say, perhaps, is that 'P –> P' has the higher order form 'P –> Q.' But this latter form is not a form of the English sentence but a form of the form of the English sentence.
Ed can appeal to authority all he wants, but that is an unphilosophical move, indeed an informal fallacy. He needs to show where I am going wrong.
My grandmother is on her deathbed. My mother flew out to Boston to be there with her when she dies. Of course my grandmother is putting up a good fight; however, they expected her to die yesterday. My mother had a conversation with her while she was lucid. She asked her, “Why are you fighting so hard? Do you fear something?”
My grandmother’s reply, “I fear that there is nothing on the other side.” Here is a woman who has spent eighty nine years of her life devoting herself to the [Catholic] church and her family. Now, when it comes down to death she is clinging on because her entire life is behind her and the only thing that she faces in front of her is the uncertainty of whether there is a heaven awaiting her in the coming days.
If you were there at my grandmother’s deathbed and she would convey to you her fears, what would you tell her?
I'm a philosopher, not a pastor, and what a dying nonphilosopher needs is pastoral care, not philosophical dialog. But if I were to play the pastor I would say something along the following lines.
"You have lived your long life faithfully and devotedly in the embrace of Holy Mother the Church. She has presided over central events in your life, your baptism, first communion, confirmation, and your marriage. She has provided guidance, moral instruction, comfort, and community as you have navigated life's difficulties and disappointments. She provided meaning and solace when your parents died, and your husband, and your many friends and relatives. If your faith was a living faith and not a convenience or a matter of social conformity, then from time to time you had your doubts. But through prayer and reflection you have repeatedly reaffirmed your faith. You faith was made deeper and truer by those doubts and their overcoming."
"I ask you now to recall those moments of calm reflection and existential lucidity, those moments when you were at your best physically, mentally, and spiritually. I ask you to recall them, and above all I ask you not to betray them now when you are weak. Do not allow the decisions and resolutions of your finest and and clearest hours to be taken hostage by doubts and fears born of weakness. Your weakness has called forth the most vicious attacks of the Adversary and his agents. You have lived in the faith and now you must remain true to a course of life judged right at the height of your powers. Your doubts are of the devil and they must be put aside. Pray, and remain true to a course judged right."
So that is what I would say to the old Irish Catholic woman on her deathbed. I would exhort her to remain true to a course judged right in the moments of her highest existential lucidity and to bring her life to a successful completion. The hour of death is not the time to grapple with the devil of doubt!
To myself and the others for whom the hora mortis is still a ways off, to those in the sunshine of their strength, physical and mental, I say the following. Now is the time to wrestle with doubts and either defeat them or succumb to them. Now is the time to get serious about The Last Things. It is far better to get serious about them before they get serious about you. Now is the time to face the reality of death without evasion and to prepare for a happy death. Now is the time to realize that you don't have all the time in the world, that as the Zen Master Dogen says, "Impermanence is swift." Now is the time to stop fooling yourself about how you are going to live forever. For "What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." (James 3, 14)
