{"id":10424,"date":"2011-08-23T16:11:24","date_gmt":"2011-08-23T16:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/08\/23\/butchvarov-against-facts\/"},"modified":"2011-08-23T16:11:24","modified_gmt":"2011-08-23T16:11:24","slug":"butchvarov-against-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/08\/23\/butchvarov-against-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Butchvarov Against Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his essay, "Facts," (Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann<\/em>, Javier Cumpa, ed., Ontos Verlag, 2010, p. 83) Panayot Butchvarov generously cites me as a defender of realism and a proponent of facts.  He credits me with doing something William P. Alston does not do in his theory of facts, namely, specifying their mode of reality:<\/span><\/p>\n

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However, William Vallicella, also a defender of realism, does.  He argues that true propositions require "truth-making facts." And he astutely points out that facts could be truth-making only if they are "proposition-like," "structured in a proposition-like way" — only f a fact has a structure that can mirror the the structure of a proposition." (A Paradigm Theory of Existence<\/em>, 13, 166-7,192-3)  Vallicella's view is firmly in the spirit of Wittgenstein's account in the Tractatus<\/em> of the notions of fact and correspondence to fact, but his formulation of it may invite deflationist attacks like Strawson's.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Butchvarov, however, is firmly against adding the category of facts to our ontological inventory. This post will consider one of his arguments.  Butchvarov tells us (p. 86) that<\/span><\/p>\n

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The metaphysical notion of fact is grounded in our use of declarative sentences, and the supposition that there are facts in the world depends at least in part on the assumption that sentences must correspond to something in the world, that somehow they must be names<\/em>.  But this assumption seems absurd.  Sentences are not even nouns, much less names.  They cannot serve as grammatical subjects or objects of verbs, which is the mark of nouns. [. . .] Notoriously, "p is true," if taken literally, is gibberish.  "Snow is white is true" is just ill-formed. "'Snow is white' is true" is not, but its subject-term is not a sentence — it is the name of a sentence. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here is what I take to be Butchvarov's argument in the above passage and surrounding text:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. If there are facts, then some declarative sentences are names.<\/span>
2. Every name can serve as the grammatical subject of a verb.<\/span>
3. No declarative sentence can serve as the grammatical subject of a verb.<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
4. No declarative sentence is a name. (2, 3)<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
5. There are no facts. (1, 4)<\/span><\/p>\n

The friend of facts ought to concede (1).  If there are truth-making facts, then some declarative sentences refer to them, or have them as worldly correspondents.  The realist holds that if a contingent sentence such as  'Al is fat' is true, then that is not just a matter of language, but a matter of how the extralinguistic world is arranged.  The sentence is true because of Al's being fat<\/em>.  Note that Al by himself cannot be the truth-maker of the sentence, nor can fatness by itself, nor can the set, sum, or ordered pair of the two do the job.  If {Al, fatness} is the truth-maker of 'Al is fat,' then it is also the truth-maker of 'Al is not fat' — which is absurd. <\/span><\/p>\n

As for (2), it is unproblematic.  So if the argument is to be neutralized — I prefer to speak of 'neutralizing' rather than 'refuting' arguments — we must give reasons for not accepting (3).  So consider this argument for the negation of (3).<\/span><\/p>\n

6. 'Snow is white' is true.<\/span>
7. No name is true or false.<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
8. 'Snow is white' is not a name.<\/span>
9. Anything either true or false is a declarative sentence.<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
10. 'Snow is white' is a declarative sentence.<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
11. 'Snow is white'  serves as the grammatical subject of the verb 'is a declarative sentence.'<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
12. Some declarative sentences can serve as the grammatical subjects of a verb.<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
~3. It is not the case that no declarative sentence can serve as the grammatical subject of a verb.<\/span><\/p>\n

The argument just given seems to neutralize Butchvarov's argument.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Paradox of the Horse and 'the Paradox of Snow'<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Butchvarov's view is deeply paradoxical.  He holds that 'Snow is white ' in (6) is not a sentence but the name of a sentence.  The paradox is similar to the paradox of the horse in Frege.  Frege notoriously held that the concept horse<\/em> is not a concept.  Butchvarov is maintaining  that the sentence 'Snow is white' is not a sentence. <\/span><\/p>\n

What is Frege's reasoning?  He operates with an absolute distinction between names and predicates (concept words).  Corresponding to this linguistic distinction there is the equally absolute ontological distinction between  objects and concepts.  Objects are nameable while concepts are not.  So if you try to name a concept you willy-nilly transform it into an object.  Since 'the concept horse<\/em>' is a name, its referent is an object.  Hence the concept horse<\/em> is not a concept but an object.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly with Butchvarov.  To refer to a sentence, I must use a name for it.  To form the name of a sentence, I enclose it in quotation marks.  Thus the sentence 'snow is white' is not a sentence, but a name for a sentence.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Butchvarov finds it "absurd" that a sentence should name a fact.  His reason is that a sentence is not a name.  But it strikes me as even more absurd to say that the sentence 'Snow is white' is not a sentence, but  a name.   <\/span><\/p>\n

My tentative conclusion is that while realism about facts is dubious, so is anti-realism about them.  But there is also what Butchvarov calls "semi-realism" which I ought to discuss in a separate post.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his essay, "Facts," (Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann, Javier Cumpa, ed., Ontos Verlag, 2010, p. 83) Panayot Butchvarov generously cites me as a defender of realism and a proponent of facts.  He credits me with doing something William P. Alston does not do in his theory of facts, namely, specifying their mode … Continue reading “Butchvarov Against Facts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,487,237,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-butchvarov","category-constituent-ontology","category-facts","category-paradoxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}