A Difficulty With Haecceity Properties

What it is By popular demand, here is revised version of a post that first appeared on the old blog in July of 2005.

Introduction. I find haecceity properties hard to accept, although I grant they they would do various useful jobs if they existed. ('Haecceity' from the Latin haecceitas, thisness.) In this post I explain one or two of my reasons for nonacceptance. If you know your Plantinga, you will know that he is my primary target in these notes.  This post is not about Duns Scotus or any medieval. 

Definition. Suppose we take on board for the space of this post the assumptions that (i) properties are abstract objects, that (ii) they can exist unexemplified, and that (iii) they are necessary beings. We may then define the subclass of haecceity properties as follows.

A haecceity is a property H of x such that: (i) H is essential to x; (ii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in the actual world; (iii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in any metaphysically possible world.

So if there is a property of Socrates that is his haecceity, then there is a property that individuates him, and indeed individuates him across all times and worlds at which he exists: it is a property that he must have, that nothing distinct from him has, and that nothing distinct from him could have. Call this property Socrateity. Being abstract and necessary, Socrateity is obviously distinct from Socrates, who is concrete and contingent. Socrateity exists in every world, but is exemplified (instantiated) in only some worlds. What's more, Socrateity exists at every time in every world that is temporally qualified, whereas Socrates exist in only some worlds and only at some times in the worlds in which he exists. Haecceity properties have various uses. I'll mention just one.

Use. Suppose I need to analyze 'Socrates might not have existed.' I start with the rewrite, 'Possibly, Socrates does not exist' which features a modal operator operating upon an unmodalized proposition. But 'Socrates does not exist,' being a negative existential proposition, gives rise to an ancient puzzle dating back to Plato. How is reference to the nonexistent possible? The sentence 'Socrates does not exist' is apparently about Socrates, but how so given that he does not exist? If the meaning of 'Socrates' is the name's referent, and nothing can be a referent of a term unless it exists, then Socrates must exist if he is to have nonexistence predicated of him. But the whole point of the sentence is to say that our man does not exist. How can one say of a thing that it does not exist without presupposing that it exists? Haecceities provide a solution. We can understand 'Socrates does not exist' to be about Socrateity rather than about Socrates, and to predicate of Socrateity the property of being exemplified. Recall that Socrateity, unlike Socrates, exists at every time and in every world. So this property, unlike Socrates, is always and necessarily available. Accordingly, we analyze 'Possibly, Socrates does not exist' as 'Possibly, Socrateity is not exemplified.' Socrates' possible nonexistence boils down to Socrateity's possible nonexemplification. It is a nice, elegant solution to the puzzle –assuming that there are haecceity properties.

Problem. One of the stumbling blocks for me, however, is the notion that the thisness of an individual could exist even if the individual whose thisness it is does not exist. Consider the time before Socrates existed. During that time, Socrateity existed. But what content could that property have during that time (or in those possible worlds) in which Socrates does not exist? Socrateity is identity-with-Socrates. Presumably, then, the property has two constituents: identity, a property had by everything, and Socrates. Now if Socrates is a constituent of identity-with-Socrates, then it seems quite obvious that Socrateity can exist only at those times and in those worlds at which Socrates exists. Socrateity would then be like Socrates' singleton, the set consisting of Socrates and Socrates alone: {Socrates}. Clearly, this set cannot exist unless Socrates exists. It is ontologically dependent on him. The same would be true of identity-with-Socrates if Socrates were a constituent of this property.

Problem Exacerbated. If, on the other hand, Socrates is not a constituent of Socrateity, then what gives identity-with-Socrates the individuating content that distinguishes it from identity-with-Plato and identity-with-Pegasus? Consider a possible world W in which Socrates, Plato, and Pegasus do not exist. In W, their haecceities exist since haecceities ex hypothesi exist in every world. What distinguishes these haecceities in W? Nothing that I can see. The only things that could distinguish them would be Socrates, Plato, and Pegasus; but these individuals do not exist in W. It might be said that haecceity properties are simple: identity-with-Socrates is not compounded of identity and Socrates, or of anything else. Different haecceities just differ and they have the content they do in an unanalyzable way. But on this suggestion haecceities seem wholly ungraspable or inconceivable or ineffable, and this militates against thinking of them as properties. I have no problem with the notion of a property that only one thing has, nor do I have a problem with a property that only one thing can have; but a property that I cannot grasp or understand or conceive or bring before my mind — such an item does not count as a property in my book. It would be more like a bare particular and inherit mutatis mutandis the unintelligibility of bare particulars.

Haecceities must be nonqualitative.  Consider a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are all the mutiply exemplifiable properties a thing has in the actual world. Such a property would individuate its possessor in the actual world: it would be a property that its possessor and only its possessor would have in the actual world. Such a property is graspable in that I can grasp its components (say, being barefooted, being snubnosed, being married, etc.) and I can grasp its construction inasmuch as I understand property conjunction. But the only way I can grasp Socrateity is by grasping is as a compound of identity and Socrates — which it cannot be for reasons given above.

Note that Socrateity is not equivalent to the big conjunctive property just mentioned. Take the conjunction of all of Socrates' properties in the actual world and call it K. In the actual world, Socrates has K. But there are possible worlds in which he exists but does not exemplify K. And there are possible worlds in which K is exemplified by someone distinct from him. So Socrateity and K are logically nonequivalent. What we need, then, if we are to construct a qualitative thisness or haecceity of Socrates is a monstrous disjunctive property D[soc] the disjuncts of which are all the K's Socrates has in all the possible worlds in which he exists. This monstrous disjunction of conjunctions is graspable, not in person so to speak, but via our grasp of the operations of conjunction and disjunction and in virtue of the fact that each component property is graspable. But D[soc] is not identical to Socrateity. The former is a qualitative thisness whereas the latter is a nonqualitative thisness. Unless the Identity of Indiscernibles is true, these two thisnesses are nonequivalent. And there are good reasons to think that the Identity of Indiscernibles is not true.  (Max Black's iron spheres, etc.) So D[Soc] is not identical to Socrateity. 

Conclusion. To compress my main point into one sentence: identity-with-Socrates is graspable only as a compound of identity and Socrates; but then this property cannot exist unexemplified. Hence haecceity properties as defined above do not exist.

Richard Gaskin on the Unity of the Proposition

The current issue of Dialectica (vol. 64, no. 2, June 2010) includes a symposium on Richard Gaskin, The Unity of the Proposition (Oxford 2008).  Gaskin's precis of his work is followed by critical evaluations by William F. Vallicella ("Gaskin on the Unity of the Proposition"), Manuel Garcia-Carpintero ("Gaskin's Ideal Unity"), and Benjamin Schnieder ("Propositions United: Gaskin on Bradley's Regress and the Unity of the Proposition").  The symposium concludes with Gaskin's replies ("The Unity of the Proposition: Replies to Vallicella, Schnieder, and Garcia-Carpintero"). 

Stefan Zweig on Caissa’s Allure

Zweig An old Hindu proverb has it that chess is an ocean in which a gnat may drink and an elephant bathe. Similarly pelagic is the literature of the game. Some of it is of high literary merit. An example follows for your delectation.

Stefan Zweig, "The Royal Game" in The Royal Game and Other Stories, tr. Jill Sutcliffe (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1983), p. 8:

I knew well enough from my own experience the mysterious attraction of 'the royal game,' that game among games devised by man, which rises majestically above every tyranny of chance, which grants its victor's laurels only to a great intellect, or rather, to a particular form of mental ability. But are we not already guilty of an insulting limitation in calling chess a game? Isn't it also a science, an art, hovering between these two categories as Muhammad's coffin hovered between heaven and earth? Isn't it a unique bond between every pair of opponents, ancient and yet eternally new; mechanical in its framework and yet only functioning through use of the imagination, confined in geometrically fixed space and at the same released from confinement by its permutations; continuously evolving yet sterile; thought that leads nowhere, mathematics that add up to nothing, art without an end product, architecture without substance, and nevertheless demonstrably more durable in its true nature and existence than any books or creative works? Isn't it the only game that belongs to all people and all times? And who knows whether God put it on earth to kill boredom, to sharpen the wits or to lift the spirits? Where is its beginning and where its end? Every child can learn its basic rules, every bungler can try it; and yet it requires, within those unchanging small squares, the production of a special series of master, not comparable to any other kind, men who have a singular gift for chess, geniuses of a particular kind, in whom vision, patience and technique function in just as precise divisions as they do in mathematicians, poets and musicians, only on different levels and in different conjunctions.

No Chamber Pot in General, Danish Philosopher Maintains

Hans Brøchner on Kierkegaard:

. . .I once spoke quite zealously about how no positive religion could be tolerant, precisely because, with its claim to be revealed religion, it must insist that it is the only true religion, and it would have to consign the others to untruth. From the point of view of positive religion, a general religiousness, 'a religion in general,' must therefore be a nonentity. As I eagerly developed this idea, I happened to repeat the expression 'a religion in general,' and adopted as my principle that a religion (i.e., a positive religion) in general is a nonentity. 'Yes, and so is a chamber pot in general,' said K., thus putting a damper on my zeal.

From Encounters with Kierkegaard: A Life as Seen by His Contemporaries, ed. Kirmmse, Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 243-244.

Pet Love as Idolatry? Problems of Attachment and Grief

I buried my little female cat Caissa at sunrise this morning in a beautiful spot in the Superstition Mountains in the same place where I buried my male cat Zeno in October of 2002.    When I buried Zeno, just before leaving the burial site, I prayed, "May we love the perishable as perishable and not idolatrously, as if it were imperishable."  I recalled and repeated the thought this morning.  I think it is important to reflect on the moral and spiritual dubiousness of any excessive love of the finite and transient, especially if the object of one's love cannot reciprocate it except in a highly attenuated and analogous manner.

Related to the idolatry question is the question of attachment. Attachment breeds suffering.  This is not an argument against any and all attachment, but it is an argument against excessive attachment.  One must keep within bounds  one's attachment to what must perish.  A whole-hearted love of what barely exists is surely a mistake.  There is such a thing as inordinate attachment.  Compare Simone Weil: "The objects of our love barely exist."  She's a Platonist, of course, and so if you do not share the Platonic sense of the relative unreality of the transient you are not likely to accept her or my line  of thought. 

How can attachment to something be inordinate?  It is in ordinate when it is out of proportion to the reality/value of the object of attachment. My cat, for example.  I would not be grieving now if I were not attached to my cat, and the question arises whether my attachment is within proper bounds.  If the attachment is within proper bounds, then the grief will be as well.

To hazard a definition of grief:  Grief is a mental state of intense sadness brought about by the death or absence of something, typically animate, to which one has become strongly attached.  In typical cases, grief arises from a physical separation, often abrupt, from an object to which one is mentally attached.  But if the beloved withdraws her love, while remaining physically near, can the lover be said to experience grief?  Or is it a necessary condition of grief that the beloved dies?  Can one experience grief at a state of affairs that does not involve the death or destruction of a particular sentient being such as a pet or a child or a spouse?  "I am grieved at the transitoriness of things," Nietzsche complained in a letter to Franz Overbeck.  Can a fundamental metaphysical structure of the phenomenal world be an object of grief?  Yes, insofar as the transitoriness of things entails the death of sentient beings including those sentient beings to which one becomes attached.  But something less grand than a fundamental  metaphysical structure of the phenomenal world could be the object of grief, e.g., a state of war at a given time and place. So perhaps we should say this:

Grief is a mental state of intense sadness brought about by (i) the death or absence of some particular thing, typically animate, to which one has become strongly attached; or (ii) the unrequiting or withdrawal of the love of the beloved; or (iii) some general circumstance that entails the death or destruction or emotional withdrawal of beings, typically sentient, to which one has become strongly attached. 

I began by speaking of attachment to pets and how it ought to be kept within bounds.  But attachment to persons must also be kept within bounds.  There is an old song by the 'British invasion' artist, Cilla Black, You're My World.  "You're my world, you're every move I make; you're my world, you're every breath I take."  This is romantic nonsense whether or not God exists. The nonexistence of an infinite good could not possibly justify loving a finite good infinitely.  If another human being is your very world, then I say you are succumbing to idolatry even if there is nothing genuinely worthy of worship. 

For characterizations of idolatry, see the Idolatry category.

It is true that that to live is is to be attached: there is no (normatively) human life without attachment.  There are forms of asceticism which seek to sever the root of all attachment, but such a radical withdrawal from life amounts to a refusal to learn its lessons, lessons it can teach only to those who participate in it.  So just as there can be inordinate attachment, there can be inordinate nonattachment.  Nevertheless, no one can live wisely who gives free rein to his attachment, investing the loved object  with properties it cannot possess.

We try to be satisfied with finite objects, but we cannot be, at least not completely or in the long run.  (I should argue that we could not  be satisfied even by an unending series of finite goods.)  Can we adjust our desire so that it will be satisfied by the finite?  Can we learn to accept the finite and not hanker after something more?  Can we scale back or moderate desire?  Not if it is the nature of desire to desire the infinite.  If this is the nature of desire, then it must always and everywhere fall into idolatry in the absence of an infinite object.  The only complete solution to the problem of the insatiability of desire by the finite, given the nonexistence or inaccessibility of an infinite object,  would then be the extinction of desire.  See Buddhism category.

But one could also take the insatiability of desire by the finite as a premise in an Argument from Desire for the existence of God or the Absolute Good.  Schematically: (i) The nature of desire as we humans experience it in ourselves is such that, ultimately, nothing finite can satisfy it completely; (ii) even though the fact of a particular desire by X for Y is no guarantee of the availability of Y to X (Stranded Sam's need/desire for water is no guarantee that he will receive the water he needs/desires), the general fact that there are desires of a specified sort is good evidence of the existence and availability of objects what will satisfy the desires. Therefore, (iii) there exists and is available an Object that will satisfy the desire that is insatiable by any finite object.

That desire is ultimately desire for something beyond the finite is indicated by the fact that when a beloved animal or person dies, the void one experiences seems infinite or indefinite: it is not the mere absence of that particular animal or person.  It is more than a specific absence one experiences in grief, but an absence that is 'wider' than the absence of a particular cat or woman, a sort of general emptiness.  It is the nullity of all things that one experiences in intense grief over the absence of one particular thing.  When a parent loses a child, it is not merely the son or daughter that he loses, but the significance and value of everything. 

This suggests that love of a finite object is at bottom love a of an Infinite Good, but a love that is not aware of itself as a love of such a good, but misconstrues itself as a love wholly directed to a finite object and satisfiable by such an object.  Otherwise, why would the void that is experienced when a finite object is taken away be experienced as a general void as opposed to the specific absence of a particular person, say?  One invests a finite object with more reality and importance than it can carry, which fact is made evident when the object is removed: the 'hole in one's soul' that it leaves is much bigger than it.

These ruminations are of course Augustinian in tenor.  See his Confessions, Book IV:  "For whence had that former grief [the one concerning his friend who had died] so easily reached my inmost soul, but that I had poured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one who must die, as if he would never die?"

The inordinate love of the finite leads to inordinate attachment which then issues in inordinate grief when the object of attachment is removed, as every finite object (including one's own body) must eventually be removed.  We fill our inner emptiness by becoming inordinately attached to objects that must pass away.  When such an objectof inordinate love is taken away, our inner emptiness is brought out of its concealment.  Augustine again: ". . . unjustly is anything loved which is from Him, if He be forsaken for it." (Pusey tr. 57-58)

We ought to love the finite as finite, without investing it with more reality and importance than it can bear.  We ought to love the finite in God, but not as God.   Trouble is, the the finite is all too available for our love and soon elicits an illicit and inordinate love, whereas God or the Good is largely absent and all too easy to doubt or deny.

That's our predicament.

 

Church, State, and Arizona SB 1070

E. J. Montini of the Arizona Republic reports that ". . . one of the lawsuits challenging SB 1070 is based on the notion that the law inhibits First Amendment freedom to worship."  As Montini correctly states, "Among other things, SB 1070 makes it a crime to knowingly transport, harbor, conceal or shield an illegal immigrant if you do so while committing a separate criminal offense."

This provision of the law will of course cause trouble for those pastors and other church members who transport illegals to and from church functions.  Suppose Pastor X is pulled over for a traffic violation while shuttling a group of illegals.  Said pastor is liable to prosecution under the 1070 law.  That is as it should be since the pastor is aiding and abetting the flouting of U. S. law.

But by what stretch of logic does one conclude that violators of U. S. immigration law are having their First Amendment rights violated?  They have no such rights!  Those are rights of U. S. citizens, not rights of anyone, citizen or not.  But even if you think that illegal aliens do have First Amendment rights, or some analogous universal human right, there is nothing in 1070 that prohibits the free exercise of religion on any reasonable construal of 'prohibit.'    The right to the free exercise of religion does not give one the right to do anything in the free exercise thereof.

Take a simple example.  Catholic priests cannot be prohibited by the state from saying mass.  To do so they need wine.  But there are laws against theft, so they need to come by their wine by some legal means.  Now suppose some benighted liberal argues that the laws against theft inhibit the First Amendment freedom to practice one's religion by prohibiting the stealing of wine and other supplies needed at mass.  Anyone can see that to argue in such a way would be a joke.  To take a more drastic case, suppose there is a Satanic ritual that requires the killing of cats.  No sane person could argue that the laws against cruelty to animals interfere with the First Amendment rights of satanists.

Similarly with 1070.  No rational person could argue that it inhibits First Amendment rights.  The right to practice one's religion does not give one the right to break laws in its practice.

Churchmen need to reflect carefully on their relation to the State.  If they flout its laws, and in so doing undermine the rule of law, then who will protect them when they need it?  Will the good pastors who aid and abet illegal aliens forego calling up the police when they need protection?  Will they try to have it both ways, deriving the benefits from the rule of law while undermining it?

Modality and Existence

Steven Nemes, who may prove to be my nemesis, e-mails:

I'm enjoying your book so far. I'm starting the constructive half of it now, and am going to reread the chapter "The Ground of the Contingent Existent" after a quick skim over it recently. I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but upon hearing some of the theories of existence you cover in the book, the thought in my head is "Man, this obviously can't be right. How could anyone think this?" But the philosophers in question are much smarter than me, so maybe my surprise at their theories is improper.

I have a question now regarding possible worlds, what is true-in-W, etc.

You make the point in your book that it is the fact that my existence is contingent that makes it true in some worlds that I exist and false in others. And it is the necessary existence of the Paradigm that would make it true in every possible world that he exists, rather than vice versa. This all seems very correct to me, but I am wondering about its consequences.

As I recall, my thought was along the following lines.  The biconditionals

N. x is a necessary being iff x exists in all metaphysically possible worlds

C. x is a contingent being iff x exists in some but not all possible worlds

are neutral with respect to reductions of the RHS to the LHS or vice versa.  So we can legitimately ask:  Is a necessary being necessary because it exists in all worlds, or does it exist in all worlds because it is necessary?  And:  Is a contingent being contingent because it exists in only some worlds, or does it exist in only some worlds because it is contingent?  My answer was that existence in all/some worlds is grounded in, and explained by, the different ways of existing of the Paradigm and what depends on it.

It seems the principle, then, is that what is possible depends upon what is actual, depends upon the potentialities that exist in what is actual, etc. Would you agree to this?

That's the next step, but my principle was merely that possible worlds talk is a very useful façon de parler, a graphic manner of speaking that allows us to picture modal relations in extensional terms  using the machinery of quantification, but that necessity and contingency of existence cannot consist in, or be constituted by, existence in all/some worlds.

But I do take the next step, though I didn't work it out in the book.  The Paradigm is the numero uno necessary existent and as such the ground of all actualities other than itself, but also the ground of all possibilities.  Mere possibilities, after all, are not nothing, and so have some ontological status shy of actuality.  So I had the not entirely original thought that mere possibilities could be identified with powers of the Paradigm.

Are there bad consequences of this, however? It seems like there is nothing actual sufficient to ground the truth of a typical counterfactual of creaturely freedom about nonexistent agents, like "If Bill the Bald Bostonian were offered the chance, he'd freely agree to murder the Yankees star pitcher". Does that mean it isn't true in any possible world? Can there be any truths about nonexistent agents and their free actions at all, assuming the only kind of free action is libertarian-free action? Can their be any truths in other possible worlds about what existent agents would freely do?

Underlying your question is whether there could be nonexistent but possible individuals.  The conclusion I came to in the book was that all mere possibilities are general in nature, hence not involving specific individuals.  Before Socrates came into existence there was no merely possible Socrates, though there was the possibility of there existing a snub-nosed sage, married to a shrewish wife, who was given to moments of abstraction when he communed with his daimon, etc.  To get a feel for the issue here, imagine someone prophesying the coming of Socrates, master dialectician, fearless questioner of powerful men, who ran afoul of them, got sentenced to death, etc.  Imagine the prophet being asked, after Socrates is on the scene, whether the Socrates in existence is the one he prophesied, or a numerically different one.  My claim is that this question makes no sense.  Before Socrates came into existence, there was no individual Socrates.

I was pushed into this view by my arguments against haecceity properties and also by my vew that existence is not a property added to a pre-formed fully individuated essence, but the unity of an individual's constitutents.  Accordingly, existence individuates so that there is no individuation apart from existence, hence no merely possible individuals.

Milan Kundera’s Misunderstanding of the Basic Thesis of Christian Anthropology: Imago Dei

In Giles Fraser's excellent Redeeming Nietzsche: On the Piety of Unbelief (Routledge 2002, p. 140) I came across the following quotation from Milan Kundera's Art of the Novel:

When I was small and would leaf through the Old Testament retold for children and illustrated in engravings by Gustave Dore, I saw the Lord God standing on a cloud. He was an old man with eyes, nose, and a long beard, and I would say to myself that if He had a mouth, He had to eat. And if He ate, He had intestines. But that thought always gave me fright, because even though I had come from a family that was not particularly religious, I felt the idea of a divine intestine to be sacrilegious. Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, as a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely, that man was created in God’s image. Either/or: either man was created in God’s image – and God has intestines! – or God lacks intestines and man is not like Him.  The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the great Gnostic master Valentinus resolved the damnable dilemma by claiming that Jesus “ate, drank, but did not defecate.” (emphasis added)

It is surprising that Kundera continues to endorse as an adult his childish misunderstanding of the imago dei doctrine.  Kundera's alternative rests on the false assumption that the only likeness between man and God could be a physical likeness.  

Kundera's reasoning appears to be like this:

1. Man is made in God’s image.
2. Man is a physical being with a digestive tract, etc.
Therefore
3. God is a physical being with a digestive tract, etc.

The incompatibility of God and excrement that the young Kundera rightly perceived is logically comptabile with the imago dei doctrine.  Now if Jesus Christ was wholly man, as orthodoxy maintains, then he did defecate.  But this presents no problem in addition to the problems already raised by the Incarnation doctrine itself.

Of Black Holes and Black Hos

Is 'black hole' code for black ho?  The NAACP seems to think so.  One wonders how many NAACP members could explain what a black hole is.  Hallmark caved and pulled the card.  Disgusting.  All decent people need to stand up against the politically correct lunacy of the race-baiting Left.

We've been around this block before.  For a fuller discussion see Of Black Holes and Political Correctness.

A Diversity Paradox for Immigration Expansionists

Liberals love 'diversity' even at the expense of such obvious goods as unity, assimilation, and comity.  So it is something  of a paradox that their refusal to take seriously the enforcement of immigration laws has led to a most undiverse stream of immigrants. "While espousing a fervent belief in diversity, immigrant advocates and their allies have presided over a policy regime that has produced one of the least diverse migration streams in our history." Here

Misgivings About Deflationary Theories of Truth

1. From my survey of the literature, there are four main types of truth theory being discussed: substantive theories, nihilist (for want of a better label) theories, deflationary theories, and identity theories.  Let me say just a little about the first two main types and then move on to deflationism. The Commenter (William Woking) will be sure to disagree with me about deflationism, which is good: by abrasion the pearl (of wisdom) is formed. Or as I read on a T-shirt at a road race recently: No pressure, no diamonds.

2. Substantive theories maintain that truth is (i) a metaphysically substantive item, presumably a property or relation, (ii) susceptible of non-trivial analysis or explication. Correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories count as substantive theories.  Such theories purport to analyze truth in terms of other, presumably more basic, terms such as a relation of correspondence or adequation to 'reality' or to facts as in Veritas est adequatio intellectus ad rem.  Or in terms of coherence of truth-bearers (beliefs, propositions, etc.) among themselves.  Or in terms of conduciveness to human flourishing as in William James' "the true is the good by way of belief."    Or in terms of broadly epistemic notions such as rational acceptability or warranted asseribility as in the Putnamian-Peircean 'Truth is rational acceptability at the ideal limit of inquiry.'

The latter is not a good proposal for reasons I won't go into now, but it illustrates the project of giving a substantive theory of truth.  One tries to analyze truth in more basic terms.  One tries to give an informative, noncircular answer to the  question, What is truth?  The sunbstantive approach is in the Granbd Tradition deriving from Plato wherein one asks What is X? for many values of 'X.'

The substantive approach to truth can be summed up in three propositions:

A. The facts about truth are not exhausted by the substitution-instances of the equivalence schemata 'p' is true iff p and *p* is true iff p.

B.  There is a substantive property of truth common to all and only truths.

C.  This substantive property is analyzable.

3. The 'nihilist' as he is known in the truth literature rejects substantive theories, not because they are substantive, but because they are theories.  He may grant that truth is a deep, substantial, metaphysically loaded, ontologically thick, topic.  But he denies that one can have a theory about it, that one can account for it in more basic terms: truth is just too basic to be explained in more fundamental terms.  The nihilist accepts (A) and (B) above but denies (C).

4.  The deflationist, like the nihilist, rejects substantive theories of truth.  The difference is that the deflationist holds that an account of truth is possible albeit in very 'thin' terms, while the nihilist denies that any account is possible thick or thin:  truth is too basic to be accountable.  Nihilism allows truth to be a thick (metaphysical) topic.  Deflationism disallows this.  Deflationists deny (A), (B), and (C).

5.  The deflationist makes a big deal out of certain perfectly obvious equivalences and he tries to squeeze a lot of anti-metaphysical mileage out of them.  Here are two examples, one involving a declarative sentence, the other involving a proposition.  Note that asterisks around a sentence, or around a placeholder for a sentence, form a name of the proposition expressed by the sentence. 

E1. 'Grass is green' is true iff grass is green.

E2. *Grass is green* is true iff grass is green.

Note that such biconditionals express logical, not material, equivalences:  they are not just true but true across all metaphysically (broadly logically) possible worlds.  With respect to such biconditionals, there is no possible situation in which the RHS is true and the LHS false, or vice versa.  If asked for the ground of this necessity, I would say it resides in the mere logic of the truth predicate.  Saying this, I do not concede that there is nothing more to truth than the merely syntactic role played by 'true ' in equivalences like the above.

Now let us assume something which, though false, will simplify our discussion.  Let us assume that there is no other type of use of the truth predicate other than the uses illustrated in logical equivalences like the foregoing.  (Thus I am proposing that we ignore such uses as the one illustrated by 'Everything Percy says is true.') 

The deflationist thesis can now be formulated as follows:  There is nothing more to truth  than what is expressed by such truisms as the foregoing equivalences.  Thus there is no metaphysically substantive property of truth that the LHS predicates of 'Grass is green' or of *Grass is green.*  The content on both sides is exactly the same: 'is true' adds no new content.  'Is true' plays a merely syntactic role.  In terms of Quine's disquotationalism (which is a version of the deflationary approach), 'is true' is merely a device of disquotation.  'Is true' has no semantic dimension: it neither expresses a substantive property, nor does it refer to anything.  Truth drops out as a topic of philosophical inquiry.  There is no such property susceptible of informative explication in terms of correspondence, coherence, rational acceptability, or whatnot.  The question What is truth? gets answered by saying that there is no such 'thing' as truth: there are truths, and every such truth reduces via the equivalence schema to a sentence or proposition in which the truth predicate does not appear.  Accordingly, there is nothing all truths have in common in virtue of which they are truths.  There is only a multiplicity of disparate truths.  But even this says too much since each 'truth' reduces to a sentence or proposition in which 'true' does not appear.

6. Now for my misgivings about deflationism.  But first three preliminary points.

a. Equivalence is symmetrical (commutative); if p is equivalent to q, then q is equivalent to p.  But explanation is asymmetrical: if p explains q, then q does not explain p.  From ' p iff q' one cannot infer 'p because q' or 'q because p.' 'p iff q' is consistent with both.   Connected with the asymmetry of explanation is that equivalences do not sanction reductions.  Triangularity and trilaterality are logically equivalent properties, but it doesn't follow that either reduces to the other.

b. If two items are equivalent, then both are propositions or sentences.  There cannot be equivalence between a sentence or proposition and something that is neither. 

c. To define equivalence we need to recur to truth.  To say that p, q are logically equivalent is to say that there is no possible situation in which p is true and q false, or q true, and p false.

Now what is the deflationist saying? His thesis is negative: there is nothing to truth except what is captured in the the equivalence schemata and their substitution-instances. Consider

E. *p* is true iff p.

First Misgiving:  The truth of the biconditional is not in question.  But equivalences don't sanction reductions. From (E) one cannot infer that the LHS reduces to the RHS, or vice versa.  But the deflationist is saying that the LHS reduces to, and is explained by, the RHS.  But what is his justification for saying this?  Why not the other way around?  Why not say that p because *p* is true?

Second Misgiving:  For an equivalence to hold, both sides must be true (or false).  Suppose both sides are true.  Then, although the predicate 'true' does not appear on the RHS, the RHS must be true.  So, far from dispensing with truth, the equivalence schemata and their instances presuppose it!

You don't get it, do you?  Let me try an analogy with existence.  A deflationist about existence might offer this equivalence schema:

F. Fs exist iff something is an F.   (E.g., 'Cats exist iff something is a cat.')

Squeezing this triviality hard, our deflationist announces that 'exist' plays a merely syntactic role and that there is no substantive property of existence.  But is it not obvious that if something is an F, then that thing must exist?  Are you quantifying over a domain of nonexistents?  If yes, then the equivalence fails.  But if you are quantifying over a domain of existents, then the existence of those existents is being presupposed.  So, even though 'exist' does not occur on the RHS of (F), existence is along for the ride.  Same with (E).  Even though 'true' does not occur on the RHS of (E), truth is along for the ride.  In both cases, existence and truth in meaty substantive senses are being presupposed.

Third Misgiving.  'Grass is green' and 'It is true that grass is green' have exactly the same content. That is perfectly obvious and denied by no one.  'Is true' adds no new content.  But how is it supposed to follow that truth is not a substantive property?  What follows is that truth is not a content property.  How do our deflationist pals get from 'Truth is not a content property' to 'Truth is not a substantive property'?  Isn't it obvious that truth refers us outside the content of the proposition or sentence?

Compare existence.  A thing and the same thing existing have exactly the same quidditative content.  The fastest runner and the existing fastest runner are numerically the same individual. Does it follow that existence is not a property?  No, what follows it that existence is not a quidditative property.  Same with truth.  There is no difference in content between p and true p.  But it makes a world of difference whether p is true or false just as it makes a world of difference whether an individual exists or not.

Fourth Misgiving.  If p and q are equivalent, then both are propositions.  The instances of (E) therefore do not get us outside the 'circle of  propositions.'  But isn't it obvious that whether or not a sentence or a proposition or a belief (or any truthbearer) is true or false depends on matters external to the truthbearer?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some Fine Guitar-Slingin’

I've never been able to find Lonnie Mack's Memphis on YouTube, but I just stumbled across this phenomenal Venture's version.  They never sounded that good in the '60s.  Here is what they sounded like back in the day.  Perfidia is an old song written in 1939 by Alberto Dominguez.   Xavier Cugat's version was the first.  Julie London does a good job with it. "While the gods of love look down and laugh at what romantic fools we mortals be."

A Most Amazing Time to be Alive

I am sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of my study before a magic box.  By means of this 'box,' and without stirring from my chair, I did the following this morning:  engaged in world-wide electronic correspondence; searched for, found,  downloaded and printed out an obscure 19th century article from the  JSTOR database; entered the 'card' catalogs of a couple of libraries; played and analyzed chess via the Internet Chess Club; viewed and listened to an old speech by Trotsky via YouTube; discovered and enjoyed an old tune I hadn't heard in 30 years via the same YouTube; published my thoughts to the world via my weblog; received and responded to comments from readers; got the directions to a local German restaurant; worked on an article.

And you don't think the Western culture that made and makes possible this marvellous technology is worth defending?

The Eternal Return of the Same Old Same Old

A redemption from transitoriness that consists of an endless repetition is no redemption at all.  An eternity of the same old crap is still crap.  It is actually worse than transient crap.  It is Crap Eternalized, nihilism on stilts.

Pious Nietzscheans will be shocked at my irreverence.  But wasn't it his irreverence that attracted their adolescent selves to him in the first place?

Nietzsche would restore the 'weight' to the world that the now absent God had supplied.  But his Eternal Recurrence is a makeshift not up to the task. 

Fulminate as he does against old Plato, he himself is a Platonist: he takes the world's impermanence to argue its unreality and unimportance. Which is why he posits Eternal Recurrence.  From within Becoming he would redeem Becoming.  But he should have seen that among the consequences of the death of God is not only the death of truth, but also the death of redemption.