Does Meinong Multiply Entities Beyond Necessity?

There is a very good and a very simple reason why Meinong cannot be accused of multiplying entities  beyond necessity, and that is because his characteristic objects are not entities! An entity, by definition, is anything that is or has being. Since Meinongian objects lack being, they are not entities.

The golden mountain and the round square, to take the two most celebrated, neither exist, nor subsist, nor have any mode of being whatsoever. This is a point that is often missed. Misled by Russell, many think that Meinong's possibilia and impossibilia have a mode of being weaker than existence. Not so: his objects are jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, beyond being and nonbeing. They are ausserseiend,   outside of being. Indeed, he speaks of das Aussersein des reinen Gegenstandes. The phrase is hard to translate, but "the extrabeing of the pure object" approximates to its sense. The point is that an   object like the golden mountain is a pure Sosein: its Sein is exhausted by its Sosein, its being by its being-so. It is a pure what, a pure essence wihout being.

I reject Meinong's Theory of Objects for reasons I may provide later.  My present point is merely that the theory cannot be faulted for a lack of ontological parsimony. A theory cannot posit entities beyond necessity if it does not posit them at all.

In his early Principles of Mathematics (1903), Bertrand Russell made a distinction that he later abandoned, namely, a distinction between Being and existence:

     Being is that which belongs to every conceivable term, to every
     possible object of thought — in short to everything that can
     possibly occur in any proposition, true or false, and to all such
     propositions themselves. [ . . . ] Existence, on the contrary, is
     the prerogative of some only amongst beings. (p. 449)

But this has nothing to do with Meinong and should not be read back into Meinong. Now Meinong does distinguish between existence and subsistence (Bestehen), but the latter is the mode of Being of ideal entities such as state of affairs; it has nothing to do with items like the golden mountain and the round square.
 

Burden of Proof in Philosophy: Preliminary Thoughts

A reader asks about burden of proof in philosophy.  I really ought to have a worked-out theory on this, but I don't.  Here are some very tentative remarks.

1. In the law it is clear where the burden of proof lies: on the plaintiff in a civil case and on the prosecutor in a criminal case.  The party bringing the charge must show that the accused is guilty; the accused does not have to show that he is innocent.  One is presumed innocent until proven guilty.  To be presumed innocent is of course not to be innocent.  It is simply false that one is innocent of a crime unless or until proven guilty.  And to be found innocent/guilty is not to be innocent/guilty.  O. J. Simpson, for example, was found innocent of a double homicide.  But I have no doubt in my mind that he was guilty.  I don't mean that autobiographically as a report on my mental state; I mean the S.O.B. really was guilty.  Agree with me on this or not, you must agree that someone found innocent can be guilty and someone found guilty can be innocent. 

We should distinguish between burden of proof and standards of proof.  In the criminal law, the probative standard for guilt is 'beyond a reasonable doubt,' while in civil cases the standard is less demanding: 'preponderance of the evidence.'

2. In philosophy it is not often clear where the burden of proof lies, nor what our probative standards ought to be.  (What the hell did you expect?)  'Proof' can be used in a very strict way to refer to a valid deductive argument with objectively self-evident premises.  But this is not what 'proof' means in 'burden of proof.'  It means something like: burden of argument or burden of persuasion.   It means that some claims need to be argued for, and some don't.  Or perhaps: there is a (perhaps defeasible) presumption in favor of some claims but not in favor of their negations. 

For example, I would say there is a defeasible presumption in favor of the claim that drinking coffee in moderate amounts carries no health risk for most people.  So the burden of proof would be on a researcher who claims that coffee-drinking causes pancreatic cancer.  And because the evidence that coffee-drinking is harmless is so strong,  the probative bar the researcher must clear is correspondingly high.  The researcher needs to give strong evidence for his claim; the rest of us don't need to do anything.

Now consider the Holocaust denier, the 9/11 'truther,' the Obama 'birther,' and the Osama-was-killed-in 2001 kook.  Clearly, the burden lies on them to make their respective cases, and good luck to them.  The appropriate thing to say to those of this stripe is "Put up or shut up."  That 9/11 was an 'inside job' is a claim of such low antecedent probability that the case for it must be correspondingly strong.

A more philosophical example is provided by my present dispute with Peter Lupu about the modal principle that states that if proposition p is necessary, and p entails proposition q, then q is necessary.  He thinks he has found a counterexample to this principle.  Where does the onus probandi lie, and why?  It seem clear to me that the burden lies on Peter since he is controverting a well-known principle of elementary modal propositional logic.  (See. e.g., K. Konyndyk, Introductory Modal Logic, U. of Notre Dame Press, 1986, p. 32.) The burden does not lie on me since I am invoking a well-established, uncontroversial principle. 

Can we generalize from this example and say that whenever one controverts something well-established and long-accepted one assumes the burden of proof?   I doubt it.  Galileo defied Aristotle and the Church when he made certain empirically-based claims about the moon.  He claimed that the moon was not a perfect sphere.  As the story goes, the Church authorties refused to look through his telescope.  But it is at least arguable that the onus probandi rested on the authorities since they were flying in the face of sense perception.

But I hesitate to say that whenever one's case is based on sense perception one can shirk the burden of proof.

3.  I doubt that there is any criterion that allows us to sort claims that need proof or argument from those that don't.  Or can you think of one?  Some maintain that whenever a person make a claim to the effect that X exists, then the burden of proof is on him.  Well, it is in some cases, but surely not in all.  If you claim that extraterrestrial intelligent beings exist, then the burden is on you.  But if you claim that there are Saguaro cacti in Arizona, then the burden of proof is not on you but on the one who denies it.

Others seem to think that whenever one makes an affirmative claim one assumes a burden of proof.  Not so.  'That hillside is studded with Saguaros' said to my hiking companion needs no proof.  I shoulder no probative burden when I make a commonplace observation such as that.

4. Burden of proof and the ad ignorantiam 'fallacy.'  Gun instructors sometimes say that every gun is loaded.  That is plainly false as is stands, but a wise saying nonetheless if interpreted to mean: every gun is to be presumed loaded until proven unloaded.  So if  person A claims to person B that a certain gun is unloaded, the burden of proof is on him to show that it is unloaded; person B does not bear the burden of proving that it is loaded.  Indeed it seems that B would be within his epistemic rights were he to claim that his ignorance of whether or not the gun is loaded is good evidence of its being loaded.  But this is an appeal to ignorance.  It has not been shown that ~p; therefore p gives us the form of the ad ignoratiam 'fallacy.'  But in this case the appeal to ignorance seem nonfallacious.  Safety considerations dictate a defeasible presumption in favor of every gun's being loaded, a presumption that shifts the onus probandi onto the one who maintains the opposite.

The situation is similar to that in a court of law.  The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty, so the burden of proof rests on either the state or the plaintiff.  In a criminal case the probative bar is set high: the accused has to be shown guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  Here too there is a legitimate appeal to ignorance: it has not been shown that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; therefore, he is not guilty.

There are 'safety' considerations in both the gun example and the law example.  It is because we want to be on the safe side — and not get shot — that we presume every gun to be loaded.  And it is because we want to be on the safe side — and not sentence an innocent person — that we presume the accused to be innocent until proven guilty.

But now what about God?  Don't safety considerations apply here as well? If God exists, then our ultimate happiness depends on getting into right relation with him.  So why can't one make a legitimate appeal to ignorance here?  Now of course from the fact that no one has proven that God does not exist, it does not follow that God exists.  That is an invalid deductive argument.  That would be a truly fallacious instance of ad ignorantiam.  But it is also invalid to infer than a gun is loaded because it hasn't been proven to be loaded, or that a man is innocent because he hasn't been proven to be guilty.  It just doesn't follow in any of these cases.  And yet we reasonably consider the gun loaded and we reasonably find the accused to be innocent.  And so why can't we reasonably presume God to exist on the basis of the fact that he hasn't been shown not to exist?  If the burden of proof rests on the one who claims that gun is unloaded, why doesn't the burden of proof rest on the one who claims that God is nonexistent?  We don't want to get shot, but we also don't want to lose our ultimate beatitude — if ultimate beatitude there be. 

You can't say that that the burden of proof rests on the theist because he is making a positive claim; for there are positive claims that need no proof.  And you can't say that the burden of proof rests on the theist becuase he is making an existential claim; for there are existential claims — I gave an example above — that need no proof.  Nor can you say that the burden rests on the theist because he is controverting the widely-accepted; the consensus gentium is that God exists.

But I suppose you could reasonably say that the burden rests on the theist since he is making a claim that goes well beyond what is empirically verifiable.

The Late Great Failed State of California

Here.  Excerpt:

Let there be no mistake: when you produce so many criminals that you can’t afford to lock them up, you are a failed state.  Virtually every important civil institution in society has to fail to get you to this point.  Your homes and houses of worship are failing to build law abiding citizens, much less responsible and informed voters.  Your schools aren’t educating enough of your kids to make an honest living.  Your taxes and policies are so bad that you are driving thousands of businesses away.  Your management systems must be fouled and confused to the max for you to create something so dysfunctional, so wildly beyond your means, that the Supreme Court of the United States (wisely or foolishly is another question) starts to micromanage your jails.

 

Peter Berger on Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the ‘Perp Walk’

Peter Berger, in Symbols of Tyranny in America, writes (emphasis added):

The “perp walk”, as far as I know, is a peculiar American institution. The police like to use it especially with high-status defendants, who would be particularly embarrassed by such public exposure. Beyond serving to enhance relations between the police and the press, the practice is also supposed to express democratic egalitarianism—look, we can do this to anybody—corollary: watch out, we could do it to you. The “perp walk” is what the sociologist Harold Garfinkel called a degradation ceremony.  It serves no legitimate purpose whatever. Its only purpose is to humiliate and to show the helplessness of the “perp”. It is an egregious offence against the presumption of innocence. I know of no similar practice in any other democratic country (though it has been common in China). A faint parallel may be the “dock” in British courtrooms, also suggesting that the “prisoner in the dock” is guilty, but it does not have the humiliation and helplessness inflicted on the accused.

Berger's is an excellent and thought-provoking article, but that the 'perp walk' serves no legitimate purpose is arguably false, and for the very reason that Berger himself supplies without endorsing, namely, that it expresses the egalitarianism of a judicial system in which the high and mighty are held to the same standards as the rest of us.  It is very important in a well-functioning society that the people believe that the law applies to all equally, that like cases are treated in a like manner regardless of the perpetrator's social or economic status.  The 'perp walk' lets the people see that even the likes of Strauss-Kahn are subject to the law.  So it does serve a legitimate purpose.

But I have to agree with Berger that it does offend against the presumption of innocence.  You can decide whether this consideration outweighs the other.

 

The Rabbit of Real Existence and the Empty Hat of Mere Logic

Consider again this curious piece of reasoning:

1. For any x, x = x.  Ergo:
2. a = a.  Ergo:
3. (Ex)(x = a). Ergo:
4. a exists.

This reasoning is curious because it seems to show that one can deduce the real existence of an individual a from a purely formal principle of logic, the Law of Identity.  And yet we know that this cannot be done.  We know that the rabbit of real existence cannot be pulled from the empty hat of mere logic. Since the argument cannot be sound, it must be possible to say where it goes wrong.  (It is a strange fact of philosophical experience that arguments that almost all philosophers reject nevertheless inspire the wildest controversy when it comes to the proper diagnosis of the error.  Think of the arguments of Zeno, Anselm, and McTaggart.) 

The move from (1) to (2) appears to be by Universal Instantiation.  One will be forgiven for thinking that if everything is self-identical, then a is self-identical.  But I say that right here is a (or the) mistake.   To move from (1) to (2), the variable 'x' must be replaced by the substituend 'a' which is a constant.   Now there are exactly three possibilities:

Either 'a' refers to something that exists, or 'a' refers to something that does not exist or 'a' does not refer at all.  On the third possibility it would be impossible validly to move from (2) to (3) by Existential Generalization.  The same goes for the second possibility:  if 'a' refers to a Meinongian nonexistent object, then  one could apply existentially-neutral Particular Generalization to (2), but not Existential Generalization.  This leaves the first alternative.  But if 'a' refers to something that exists, then right at this point real existence has been smuggled into the argument. 

I hope the point is painfully obvious.  One cannot move from (1) to (2) by logic alone: one needs an extralogical assumption, namely, that 'a' designates something that exists.  To put it another way, one must assume that the domain of quantification is not only nonempty but inhabited by existing individuals.  After all, (1) is true for every domain, empty or not.  (1) lacks Existential Import.  The truth of (1) is consistent with there being no individuals at all.

Let's now consider Peter's supposed counterexample to the principle that if p entails q and p is necessary, then q is also necessary.  He thinks that the above argument shows that there are cases in which necessary propositions entail contingent ones.  Thus he thinks that the conjunction of (1) and (2) entails (3), but that (3) is contingent.

Well, I agree that if we are quantifying over a domain the members of which are contingent individuals, then (3) is contingent.  But surely the conjunction of (1) and (2) is also contingent.  For the conjunction of a necessary and a contingent proposition is a contingent proposition.  Now of course (1) is necessary.  But (2), despite appearances, is contingent.  For if 'a' designates a contingent individual, then it designates an individual that exists in some but not all worlds, and in those worlds in which a does not not exist it is not true that a = a.

In the worlds in which a exists, a is essentially a.  But a is not necessarily a because there are worlds in which a does not exist.

What accounts for the illusion that if (1) is necessary, then (2) must also be necessary?   Could it be the tendency to forget that while 'x' is a variable,  'a' is an arbitrary constant?

 

Hume’s Fork and Leibniz’s Fork

No doubt you have heard of Hume's Fork.  'Fork,' presumably from the Latin furca, suggests a bifurcation, a division; in this case  of meaningful statements into two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes, the one consisting of relations of ideas, the other of matters of fact. In the Enquiry, Hume writes:

     Propositions of this kind [relations of ideas] can be discovered
     purely by thinking, with no need to attend to anything that
     actually exists anywhere in the universe. . . . Matters of fact . .
     . are not established in the same way; and we cannot have such
     strong grounds for thinking them true. The contrary of every matter
     of fact is still possible, because it doesn't imply a contradiction
     and is conceived by the mind as easily and clearly as if it
     conformed perfectly to reality. That the sun will not rise tomorrow
     is just as intelligible as – and no more contradictory than – the
     proposition that the sun will rise tomorrow.

One question that arises is whether Hume's Fork was anticipated by any earlier philosopher. Leibniz of course makes a distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact that is very similar to Hume's distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact. See, for example, Monadology #33. In a very astute comment from the old blog, 'Spur' details the similarities and concludes:

     Leibniz and Hume have the same basic distinction in mind, between
     those truths which are necessary and can be known a priori, and
     those which are contingent and can only be known a posteriori. The
     two philosophers use slightly different terminology, and Leibniz
     would balk at Hume's use of 'relations between ideas' in connection
     with truths of reason only, but the basic distinction seems to me
     to be the same.

I deny that the basic distinction is the same and I base my denial on a fact that Spur will admit, namely, that for Leibniz, every proposition is analytic in that every (true) proposition is such that the predicate is contained in the subject: Praedicatum inesse subjecto verae propositionis. I argue as follows. Since for Leibniz every truth is analytic, while for Hume some truths are analytic and some are not, the two distinctions cannot be the same. To this, the Spurian (I do not say Spurious) response is:

     The [Leibnizian] distinction is between two kinds of analytic
     truths: those that can be finitely analyzed, and those that can't.
     This is an absolute distinction and there are no truths that belong
     to both classes. Even from God's point of view there is presumably
     an absolute distinction between necessary and contingent truths,
     though perhaps he wouldn't view this as a distinction between
     finitely and non-finitely analyzable truths, because his knowledge
     of truths is intuitive and never involves analysis.

I grant that the two kinds of Leibnizian analytic truths form mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes. But I deny that this suffices to show that "the same basic distinction" is to be found in both Leibniz and   Hume.

One consideration is that they do not form the same mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes. Though every Humean relation of ideas is a Leibnizian truth of reason, the converse does not hold. I think Spur will agree to this. But if he does, then surely this shows that the two distinctions are not the same. I should think that extensional sameness is necessary, though not sufficient, for sameness.

But even if the two distinctions were extensionally the same, they are not 'intensionally' the same distinction.

Consider Judas is Judas and Judas betrays Christ. For both  philosophers, the first proposition is necessary and the second is contingent. But Leibniz and Hume cannot mean the same by 'contingent.' If you negate the first, the result is a contradiction, and both philosophers would agree that it is, and that it doesn't matter whether the proposition is viewed from a divine or a human point of view. The negation of the second, however, is, from God's point of view a contradiction for Leibniz, but not for Hume. For Leibniz, the betrayal of Christ is included within the complete individual concept of Judas that God has before his mind. So if God entertains the proposition Judas does not betray Christ, he sees immediately that it is self-contradictory in the same way that I see immediately that The   meanest man in Fargo, North Dakota is not mean is self-contradictory.

Of course, for Leibniz, it is contingent that Judas exists: there are possible worlds in which Judas does not exist. But given that Judas does exist, he has all his properties essentially. Thus Judas betrays   Christ is contingent only in an epistemic sense: we finite intellects see no contradiction when we entertain the negation of the proposition in question. Given our finitude, our concepts of individuals cannot be complete: they cannot include every property, monadic and relational, of individuals. But if, per impossibile, we could ascend to the divine standpoint, and if every truth is analytic (as Leibniz in effect holds via his predicate-in-subject principle), then we would see that Judas betrays Christ is conditionally necessary: nec
essary given the existence of Judas.

'Contingent' therefore means different things for Leibniz and Hume. Contingency in Hume cuts deeper. Not only is the existence of Judas contingent, it is also contingent that he has the properties he has. This is a contingency rooted in reality and not merely in our ignorance.

Perhaps my point could be put as follows. The Leibnizian distinction is not absolute in the sense that, relative to the absolute point of view, God's point of view, the distinction collapses. For God, both of the Judas propositions cited above are analytic, both are necessarily true (given the existence of Judas), and both are knowable a priori.  But for Hume, the distinction is absolute in that there is no point of view relative to which the distinction collapses.

I'm stretching now, but I think one could say that, even if Hume admitted God into his system, he would say that not even for God is a matter of fact knowable a priori. For the empiricist Hume the world is radically contingent in a way it could not be for Leibniz the rationalist.

Realism and Idealism

An excerpt from an e-mail by Chris C., with responses in blue.

. . . I read your post on Butchvarov's latest paper, and you made clear your argument about the problem with the crucial step in the "idealist" position; then you closed with the assertion that realism has its own set of problems.  Granted that that's obviously true, I was wondering if you had a piece, whether a paper or a blog post, that elucidated your positions on 1) Why, although you think ultimately he is wrong, you also think Butch's position is a serious alternative to realism; and 2) Why, despite its problems, you believe realism addresses those problems adequately.

That post ended rather abruptly with the claim, "Metaphysical realism, of course, has its own set of difficulties."  I was planning to say a bit more, but decided to quit since the post was already quite long by 'blog' standards.  Brevity, after all, is the soul, not only of wit, but of blog.  I was going to add something like this:

My aim in criticizing Butchvarov and other broadly Kantian idealists/nonrealists is not  to resurrect an Aristotelian or Aristotelian-Thomistic theory of knowledge, as if those gentlemen clearly had the truth, a truth we have somehow, post Descartes, forgotten.  My aim is to throw the problems themselves into the starkest relief possible.  This is in line with my conception of philosophy as fundamentally aporetic: the problems come first, solutions second, if ever.  A philosopher cannot be true to his vocation if he is incapable of inhibiting the very strong natural tendency to want answers, solutions, definite conclusions which he can live by and which will provide 'doxastic security' and legitimation of his way of life.    You are not a philosopher if you are out for solutions at all costs.  As Leo Strauss points out near the beginning of his essay on Thucydides, and elsewhere, the unum necessarium for the philosopher, the one thing needful, is free inquiry.  Inquiry, however, uncovers problems, difficulties, questions, and some of these are reasonably viewed as insolubilia.

The philosopher, therefore, is necessarily in tension with ideologues and dogmatists who claim to be in possession of the truth.  What did Socrates claim to know?  That he didn't know.  Of course, to be in secure possession of the truth (which implies knowing that one is in secure possession of it) is a superior state to be in than in the state of forever seeking it.  Obviously, knowing is better than believing, and seeing face-to-face is better than "seeing through a glass darkly." On the other hand, to think one has the truth when one doesn't is to be in a worse state than the state of seeking it.  For example, Muhammad Atta and the boys, thinking they knew the truth, saw their way clear to murdering 3000 people.

Your first question:  How can I believe that Butch's position is untenable while also considering it a serious alternative to realism?  Because I hold open the possibility that all extant (and future) positions are untenable.  In other words, I take seriously the possibility that the central problems of philosophy are genuine (contra the logical positivists, the later Wittgenstein, and such Freudian-Wittgensteinian epigoni as Morris Lazerowitz), important  — what could count as important if problems relating to God and the soul are not important? — but absolutely insoluble by us. 

Your second question:  How can I believe that metaphysical realism, despite its problems, addresses those problems adequately?  Well, I don't believe it addresses them adequately.

I would say your book is pretty much a response to those questions, but what I'm looking for is your understanding of what makes Butch's position so powerful.  What I have in mind is something like what [Stanley] Rosen does in The Elusiveness of the Ordinary, where in a couple of essays he makes clear that there is not going to be a way based on analysis or deduction to adjudicate between the Platonic and the Kantian claims – that is, the claims, respectively, that the "Forms" are external and mind-independent and that they are internal and mind-dependent.  The final two essays in the aforementioned book are Rosen's attempt to provide a way to tip the scales in favor of Plato, and I have to say I haven't really seen a better way to do it.

I haven't read Rosen's book, but I will soon get hold of it.  It will be interesting to see whether he has a compelling rational way of tipping the scales.

The point is that I was wondering if you thought, along those lines, that roughly speaking your form of realism and Butch's form of idealism form a similar sort of "fundamental alternative" in the way Rosen believes Platonism and Kantianism do.  And if so, I would be interested to see your take on what makes Butch's idealism (again roughly speaking) as something that cannot be truly defeated, but rather must be established as something of a less plausible vision of how things really stand.
 
Can any philosophical position be "truly defeated"?  I assume that we cherish the very highest standards of intellectual honesty and rigor and we are able to inhibit the extremely strong life-enhacing need for firm beliefs and tenets (etymologically from L. tenere, to hold, so that a tenet is literally something one holds onto for doxastic security and legitimation of one's modus vivendi.)  Now there are some sophomoric positions that can be definitively defeated, e.g., the relativist who maintains both that every truth is relative and that his thesis is nonrelatively true.  But in the history of philosophy has even one substantive position ever been "truly defeated," i.e., defeated to the satisfaction of all competent practioners?  (A competent practioner is one who possesses all the relevant moral and intellectual virtues, is apprised of all relevant empirical facts, understands logic, etc.)  I would say No.  But perhaps you have an example for me. 
 
Now why don't I think that I have defeated Butchvarov on any of the points we dispute?  Part of the reason is that he does not admit defeat.  If I cannot bring him to see that he is wrong about, say, nonexistent objects, then this gives me a very good reason to doubt that I am right and have truly refuted his position.  It seems to me that, unless one is an ideologue or a dogmatist, one must be impressed by the pervasive and long-standing fact of dissensus among the best and brightest.  Of course, I could be right and Butch wrong.  If he maintains that p and I maintain that not-p, then one of us is right and the other wrong.  But which one?  If I do not know that I am right, or know that he is wrong, then I haven't solved the problem that divides us.  It is not enough to be right, one must know that one is right and be able to diagnose convincingly how they other guy went wrong.
As for Platonism versus Kantianism, see my post on another latter-day Kantian, Milton Munitz, espceically the section on Platonic and Kantian intelligibility.  My Existence book avoids both Kantianism and Platonism by adopting an onto-theological idealism.  If the reality of the real traces back to divine mind, that is reality and realism enough, but it is also a form of idealism in that the real is not independent of mind as such.
 
As I've indicated in previous emails, I have always taken realism as a presumptive truth (in a general way) and I thus place the burden of truth [proof]  on idealism.  Kant impressed me, but he didn't convince me, and consequently I've never understood what it was exactly in realism that made people jump into the idealist camp.  That is, I've never understood that basic shift where someone takes idealism as presumptively true and thus places the burden of proof on realism.  What was so bad about realist arguments that made idealism so attractive as an alternative for these thinkers?
 
Well, this is a very large topic, but you can glean some idea of what motivated Kant to make his transcendental turn from his famous 1772 letter to Marcus Herz, part of which is here.  And then there is the metaphilosophical topic of burden of proof.  How does one justify a claim to the effect that the burden of proof lies on one or the other side of a dispute?  For you there is a (defeasible?) presumption in favor of realism, and that therefore the onus probandi lies on the nonrealist.  But what criteria do you employ in arriving at this judgment?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Do Clothes Make the Man?

Back in '65, I could relate to the message of The Yardbirds, Mister, You're a Better Man Than I.  Continuing with the sartorial theme, we have Charlie Rich, Mohair Sam.  Now that we've got Charlie Rich cued up, may as well give a listen to his Lonely Weekends.   Here is Rich again, followed by April Steven's parody, "No Hair Sam."  I'll pass on Marty Robbins' "White Sport Coat" and end with  ZZ Top, Sharp Dressed Man.

Hell

Over at The Constructive Curmudgeon I happened upon this quotation which is relevant to recent concerns:

The magnitude of the punishment matches the magnitude of the sin. Now a sin that is against God is infinite; the higher the person against whom it is committed, the graver the sin—it is more criminal to strike a head of state than a private citizen—and God is of infinite greatness. Therefore an infinite punishment is deserved for a sin committed against Him.
–Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia2ae. 87, 4.

 

Deducing John McCain from the Principle of Identity

What, if anything, is wrong with the following argument:

   1. (x)(x = x) (Principle of Identity)
   Therefore
   2. John McCain = John McCain (From 1 by Universal Instantiation)
   Therefore
   3. (Ex)(x = John McCain) (From 2 by Existential Generalization)
   Therefore
   4. John McCain exists. (From 3 by translation into ordinary idiom)

The initial premise states that everything is identical to itself, that nothing is self-diverse. Surely this is a necessary truth, one true no matter what, or in the jargon of possible worlds: true in every (broadly logically) possible world.

(2) follows from (1) by the intuitively clear inference rule of Universal Istantiation.  Surely, if everything is self-identical, then John McCain is  self-identical. The inferential move from (2) to (3) is also quite obvious: if McCain is self-identical, then something is identical to McCain. But (3) is just a complicated way of saying that John McCain exists. So we get the surprising result that the existence of John McCain is validly deducible from an a priori knowable necessary truth  of logic!

You understand, of course, that the argument is not about John McCain: it is about any nameable entity. Supposedly, Wilhelm Traugott Krug (1770-1842) once demanded of Hegel that he deduce Herr Krug's pen. If we name that pen 'Skip,' we can then put that name in the place of 'John McCain' and run the argument as before.

There is one premise and three inferences. Does anyone have the chutzpah to deny the premise? Will anyone make bold to question inference rules U.I. and E.G.? And yet surely something has gone wrong. Intuitively, the existence of a contingent being such as McCain cannot be deduced from an a priori knowable necessary truth of logic.  For that matter, the existence of a necessary being such as God cannot be deduced from an a priori knowable necessary truth of logic.  Surely nothing concrete, not even God, is such that its existence can be derived from the Law of  Identity.

So what we have above is an ontological argument gone wild whereby the  rabbit of real existence is pulled from the empty hat of mere logic!

St. Bonaventura said that if God is God, then God exists. If such  reasoning does not work in the case of God, then a fortiori it does not work  in the case of McCain or Herr Krug's pen.

Note that (1) is necessarily true. (It doesn't just happen to be the case that each thing is self-identical.) If (2) follows immediately  from (1), (2) is also necessarily true. And if (2) is necessarily true, then (3) is necessarily true. And the same holds for (4). But surely it is not the case that, necessarily, John McCain exists. He cannot be shown to exist by the above reasoning, and he certainly cannot be shown to necessarily exist by it.

So what went wrong? By my count there are three essentially equivalent ways of diagnosing the misstep.

A. One idea is that the argument leaves the rails in the transition from (3) to (4). All that (3) says is that something is identical to John McCain. But from (3) it does not follow that John McCain exists.   For the something in question might be a nonexistent something. After all, if something is identical to Vulcan, you won't conclude that  Vulcan exists. To move validly from (3) to (4), one needs the auxiliary premise:

3.5  The domain of quantification is a domain of existents only.

Without (3.5), John McCain might be a Meinongian nonexistent object. If he were, then everything would be logically in order up to (3). But  to get from (3) to (4) one must assume that one is quantifying over existents only.

But then a point I have been hammering away  at all my philosophical life is once again thrown into relief:  The misnamed 'existential' quantifier, pace Quine, does not express existence, it presupposes existence!

B. Or one might argue that the move from (1) to (2) is invalid. Although (1) is necessarily true, (2) is not necessarily true, but  contingently true: it is not true in possible worlds in which McCain does not exist. There are such worlds since he is a contingent being. To move validly from (1) to (2) a supplementary premise is needed:

1.5 'John McCain' refers to something that exists.

(1.5) is true in some but not all worlds. With this supplementary premise on board, the argument is sound. It also loses the  'rabbit-out-of-the-hat' quality. The original argument appeared to be  deducing McCain from a logical axiom. But now we see that the argument  made explicit does no such thing. It deduces the existence of McCain  from a logical axiom plus a contingent premise which is indeed   equivalent to the conclusion.

C. Finally, one might locate the error in the move from (2) to (3). No doubt McCain = McCain, and no doubt one can infer therefrom that something is identical to McCain. But this inferential move is not existential generalization, if we are to speak accurately and nontendentiously, but particular generalization. On this diagnosis,  the mistake is to think that the particular quantifier has anything to do with existence. It does not. It does not express existence, pace Quine, it expresses the logical quantity someness.

In sum, one cannot deduce the actual existence of a contingent being from a truth of logic alone. One needs existential 'input.' It follows that there has to be more to existence than someness, more than what  the 'existential' quantifier expresses. The thin conception of existence,  therefore, cannot be right.

Now let me apply these results to what Peter Lupu has lately been arguing.   Here he argues:

(i) (x)(x=x);

(ii) a=a, for any arbitrarily chosen object a; (from (i))

(iii) (Ex)(x=a); (from (ii) by existential generalization);

Now, (i) is necessary, but (iii) is contingent. Yet (i) entails (iii) via (ii), which is also necessary. So I simply do not see how the principle (1*) which you and Jan seem to accept applies in modal logics that include quantification plus identity.

Peter thinks he has a counterexample to the principle that if p entails q, and p is necessary, then q is also necessary.  For he thinks that *(x)( x = x)*, which is necessary, entails *(Ex)(x = a)*, which is contingent.

But surely if *a = a* is necessary, i.e. true in all worlds, then *(Ex)(x = a)* is necessary as well.

The mistake in Peter's reasoning comes in with the move from *Necessarily, (x) (x = x)* to *Necessarily, a = a*.   For surely it is false that in every possible world, a = a.  After all, there are worlds in which a does not exist, and an individual cannot have a property in a world in which it doesn't exist.  One must distinguish between essential and necessary self-identity.  Every individual is essentially (as opposed to accidentally) self-identical: no individual can exist without being self-identical.  But only some individuals are necessarily self-identical, i.e, self-identical in every world.  Socrates, for example, is essentially but not necessarily self-identical: he is self-identical in every world in which he exists (but, being contingent, he doesn't exist in every world).  By contrast, God is both essentially and necessarily self-identical: he is self-identical in every world, period (because he is a necessary being).   

Does Any Noncontingent Proposition Entail a Contingent Proposition?

This post continues the discussion in the comment thread of an earlier post.  

Propositions divide into the contingent and the noncontingent.  The noncontingent divide into the necessary and the impossible.  A proposition is contingent iff it is true in some, but not all, broadly logical possible worlds, 'worlds' for short.   A proposition is necessary iff it is true in all worlds, and impossible iff it true in none.  A proposition p entails a proposition q iff there is no world in which p is true and q false.

The title question divides into two:  Does any impossible proposition entail a contingent proposition?  Does any necessary proposition entail a contingent proposition?

As regards the first question, yes.  A proposition A of the form p & ~p is impossible.  If B is a contingent proposition, then there is no possible world in which  A is true and B false.  So every impossible proposition entails every contingent proposition.  This may strike the reader as paradoxical, but only if he fails to realize that 'entails' has all and only the meaning imputed to it in the above definition.

As for the second question, I say 'No' while Peter Lupu says 'Yes.'  His argument is this:
1. *Bill = Bill* is necessary.
2. *Bill = Bill* entails *(Ex)(x = Bill)*
3. *(Ex)(x = Bill)* is contingent.
Ergo
4. There are necessary propositions that entail contingent propositions.

Note first that for (2) to be true, 'Bill' must have a referent and indeed an existing referent.  'Bill' cannot be a vacuous (empty) name, nor can it have a nonexisting 'Meinongian' referent.  Now (3) is surely true given that 'Bill' is being used to name a particular human being, and given the obvious fact that human beings are contingent beings.  So the soundness of the argument rides on whether (1) is true.

I grant that Bill is essentially self-identical: self-identical in every world in which he exists.  But this is not to say that Bill is necessarily self-identical: self-identical in every world.  And this for the simple reason that Bill does not exist in every world.  So I deny (1).  It is not the case that Bill = Bill in every world.  He has properties, including the 'property' of self-identity, only in those worlds in which he exists.

My next post will go into these matters in more detail.

Addendum 28 May 2011.  Seldom Seen Slim weighs in on Peter's argument as follows:

I believe your reply to Peter is correct. It follows from how we should define constants in 1st order predicate logic. A domain or possible world is constituted by the objects it contains. Constants name those objects. If a domain has three objects, D = {a,b,c}, then the familiar expansion for identity holds in that domain, i.e., (x) (x = x) is equivalent to a = a and b = b and c = c. But notice that this is conditional and the antecedent asserts the existence in D of (the objects named by) a, b, and c. Thus premise 2 of Peter's argument is actually a conditional: IF a exists in some domain D, then a = a in D. The conclusion (3) must also be a conditional: if a exists in D , then something  in D is self-indentical. That of course does not assert the existential Peter wants from (x)(x = x). Put simply, a = a presumes [presupposes] rather than entails that a exists.

Socialist, Shmocialist

It is a tactical mistake for libertarians and conservatives to label Obama a socialist.  For what will happen, has happened: liberals will revert to a strict definition and point out that Obama is not a socialist by this definition.  Robert Heilbroner defines socialism in terms of "a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production."  To my knowledge, Obama has never advocated such a thing.  So when the libertarian or conservative accuses Obama of socialism he lets himself in for a fruitless and wholly unnecessary verbal dispute from which he will emerge the loser.

It is enough to point out that the policies of Obama and the Democrat Party lead us toward bigger government and away from self-reliance, individual responsibility, and individual liberty.

It is even worse to label him a 'communist.'  Every communist is a socialist, but not every socialist is a communist.  If our president is not a socialist, then a fortiori he is not a communist.  It is intellectually irresponsible to take a word that has a definite meaning and turn it into a semantic bludgeon.  That's the sort of thing we expect from leftists, as witness their favorite 'F' word, 'fascist,' a word they apply as indiscriminately as 'racist.' 

"But haven't you yourself said, more than once, that politics is war conducted by other means?"  Yes, I have said it, and more than once.  In the end that's what politics is.  I call it the Converse Clausewitz Principle.  But we are not quite at the end.  Before we get there we should exhaust the possibilities of civil and reasonable debate.

"But what if the tactic of labeling Obama a socialist or even a communist would keep him from a second term.  Wouldn't that inaccurate labeling then be justified?"  That's a very tough question.  An affirmative answer would seem to commit one to the principle that the end justifies the means — in which case we are no better than liberals/leftists.  On the other hand, how can one play fair with those who will do anything to win?