Blackburn's Interpretation of Wittgenstein as a Proto Quasi Realist

In his 1993 'Review of Paul Johnston's Wittgenstein: Rethinking the Inner' (published in Ethics vol. 103 that year, pp. 588 - 590), Simon Blackburn tries to demonstrate that Wittgenstein has shown us the way to a fruitful theoretical perspective, while not going all the way himself. The view in question is Blackburn's quasi realism. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (which Blackburn wrote!), quasi realism is the view that projectivism or expressivism about ethics can make legitimate sense of the 'realist-sounding' aspects of ethical discourse. This contrasts with error theory, on which these aspects are held to reflect a false 'realist metaphysics'. (End of quotation.) Though quasi realism is by default regarded as applying to ethical discourse, analogous claims can be made about other kinds of discourse with 'realist-sounding' aspects. Some 'realist-sounding' discourse - for example discourse describing the present location of observable objects - is fully realistic, and can be taken at "face value" - that is, as describing reality. Terms like 'truth', 'fact', 'correspondence' and 'description' primarily apply to this kind of discourse, but also find legitimate uses elsewhere, e.g. ethical discourse, which are less transparent but can be explained by the quasi realist. That is the view; problems may have suggested themselves to you already, but this is not the place to criticize quasi realism directly.

Blackburn begins by noting that Wittgenstein 'is constantly suggesting that underneath the superficial similarity of linguistic form there is deep difference of function'. He gives several examples: philosophical statements are treated as 'rules of grammar', mathematical statements 'do not have the use of statements but of rules', apparent self-descriptions are 'forms of self-expression', ethical, aesthetic and theological assertions are 'not what they appear', and more. Blackburn is very approving of all this, but then comes the question:

So can we continue to talk of truth, fact, knowledge and the rest in these nondescriptive areas without blushing? It seems a good question, and I do not think Wittgenstein ever confronted it squarely. His answer is going to be that we can, but it is not at all plain how he gets to it, for the difference of activity he harps on is introduced precisely by contrast with describing and representing how things are, and those are the activities that most obviously must conform to norms of truth and fact. Wittgenstein seems to leave unfinished business ... taken up by the character I call the quasi realist, with whom he should therefore be allied.

Against this, I think it can be demonstrated that while Wittgenstein may be an inspiration for quasi realism, he cannot truly be regarded as its ally. To begin with, is Blackburn right in saying that the question above was never squarely confronted by Wittgenstein? There doesn't appear to be any extended philosophical treatment of this question in his corpus, but it would be too quick to conclude from this that Wittgenstein has left unfinished business here, something he might have got around to. Let us try to get clearer about the question of whether we can 'continue to talk of truth, fact, knowledge and the rest in these nondescriptive areas without blushing', in order to see where Wittgenstein might stand in relation to it.

Blackburn is expressing himself figuratively; actual blushing is not in question. I didn't even take note of that when I read it, which is noteworthy in itself; one feels here that Blackburn is making things rhetorically easier for himself by expressing his question this way. Since he does after all have a definite agenda, namely to ally Wittgenstein with quasi realism, I think we are justified in asking: what did Blackburn really mean by this figure?

A simple answer would be that Blackburn means to ask whether can we truly speak of truth, fact and knowledge in what he calls 'nondescriptive areas'. This will not do, however, since it is possible to express truths in a way which is misleading and confused, and perhaps this could be cause enough for 'blushing' in Blackburn's sense. Hence it cannot be merely truth and bare meaningfulness which is in question, but also the appropriateness of certain forms of words in certain uses. And what kind(s) of uses are relevant here? There are very diverse cases of talk about truth, fact and knowledge in what Blackburn calls 'nondescriptive' areas. As a rough heuristic, we may divide this talk into two categories: everyday and philosophical (or, to put a different slant on the matter, practical and idle). Intermediate and other cases are no doubt common too, but let us consider some clear examples of practical uses and philosophical uses.

Practical:

- "There are four primes between 10 and 20." 'That's not true! ..oh, wait, yes it is.'

- "I have very little knowledge in topology."

- "I know it's a bad screenplay, in fact it's terrible, but the performances were somehow wonderful nonetheless."

- "At that point, he knew he had done the right thing."

- "...and that was when I first felt the pain. As a matter of fact, it's come back; I'm going to lie down."

- "She is basically a decent person." "I just can't believe that. If that were true, she wouldn't have..."

Philosophical:

- "The knowledge we possess about the realm of natural numbers is eternally valid, and more certain than any empirical knowledge."

- "There are ethical facts."

- "I know with certainty that I am conscious, but I can only hypothesize that others are."

- "There are many facts about the properties of my sense-data which I cannot express, for lack of a proper phenomenal language."

There is reason to think that Blackburn's question largely concerned with the practical uses. Firstly, quasi realism is inconsistent with full-blown Realist philosophical claims about the 'nondescriptive' areas, which can after all be made in terms of fact, truth and knowledge. Blackburn would not want to say we're entitled to make them. Secondly, Wittgenstein himself would probably take such utterances as symptomatic of philosophical confusion. This may not mean that all philosophers who say such things should in any sense blush, or be ashamed of themselves, but such assertions do seem like the sort of thing Wittgenstein would want to investigate critically. Therefore we shall focus on Blackburn's question as it applies to the practical uses.

On this understanding, it does seem Blackburn is right in saying that Wittgenstein's answer will be that we can speak in this way without blushing. But what of the next, quasi-realism-motivating claim, that it is 'not at all plain' how Wittgenstein 'gets to' this answer?

The trick is to see that Wittgenstein doesn't get to it at all. The propriety of such talk is not something Wittgenstein establishes with philosophical considerations; it is his starting point. Wittgenstein's acceptance of our ordinary employment of language does not derive from philosophy but from life. In his philosophy, it is the given. As evidence for this, I offer the following remarks from the Philosophical Investigations:

§124:

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.

For it cannot give it any foundation either.

(...)

§126:

Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. (...)

§132:

(...) we shall constantly be giving prominence to distinctions which our ordinary forms of language make us easily overlook. This may make it look as if we saw it as our task to reform language.

Such a reform for particular purposes, an improvement in our terminology designed to precent misunderstandings in practise, is perfectly possible. But these are not the cases we have to do with. The confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine idling, not when it is doing work.

Blackburn pre-empts this exactly, by speaking of 'cluster of interpretations' of Wittgenstein on which there is no unfinished business. As Blackburn says, on this view:

The true Wittgensteinian reaction is just to find more motley. Talk of truth, knowledge, certainty is itself a patchwork. For these notions do not just arise in connection with descriptions and representations but with rules, ejaculations, and so on as well. Provided we have a correct "übersicht" of what we are doing, nothing needs explanation, nothing is hidden.

I think this is right, and that it is the truly Wittgensteinian reaction. (For the sake of simplicity, I will anticipate my conclusion by referring to it as such.) Blackburn's objection to this view gets us to the heart of the problem. I quote it in full, so that we may see in detail how it fails:

It is true to much in Wittgenstein, yet its problem is obvious: it denies Wittgenstein any words to say what he wanted about the differences that the position starts by celebrating. Maybe "description" and "representation" are a patchwork, or what might be called mottled themselves ("this is what we call describing ethical facts"). Drunk on clusters, we evade the problems that torment the quasi realist by reaching once more for the mottle. Of course ethical (mathematical logical, philosophical, psychological) statements are true, describe the facts, can be known, say how it is. No contrasts there! But they do not do so in the way that empirical statements do. Don't they? Find an interesting way in which they allegedly contrast and watch me mottle it!

The first claim, that the truly Wittgensteinian reaction denies Wittgenstein 'any words to say what he wanted' about the relevant differences, is simply false: all it says is that the propriety of 'realist-sounding' talk in (what Blackburn calls) 'nondescriptive' areas is part of the given, and not to be interfered with, and that such talk is variously used. This might deny Wittgenstein certain words to say what he wanted about the relevant differences, but he doesn't need them anyway. In fact, they can get in the way. There are many ways of talking about, and showing, relevant differences. Some basic examples:

- In Wittgenstein's simple language-games involving 'slab', 'there', etc., it is unnatural to regard the counting-words 'a', 'b', 'c', etc. as 'names of objects', and even if one does call them this, their completely different function is nonetheless manifest.

- It makes sense to say 'I doubt whether he is in pain', but not 'I doubt whether I am in pain'.

- Our method of verifying the proposition '25 x 25 = 625' is different in kind from our method of verifying the proposition 'It is raining'.

- It makes sense to talk about the destruction or disappearance of chairs, but not numbers.

This shows that Blackburn's first claim is wrong: there is plenty Wittgenstein can say about differences of function in language without employing the 'realist-sounding' words to do the distinguishing. The next claim which needs to be put right is: 'Drunk on clusters, we evade the problems that torment the quasi realist by reaching once more for the mottle.'

It is hard to know how to object to such a sentence. For a start, I think the quasi realist ought to be tormented by certain problems so long as they remain a quasi realist, since their view is not tenable. That the truly Wittgensteinian reaction avoids ('evades') these problems is a strength, not a weakness. However, it neither avoids nor evades the problem, shared with the quasi realist, of clarifying important differences in the working of language. Wittgenstein took that task very seriously. We 'reach once more for the mottle' only to show that Blackburn's particular approach, quasi realism, won't work. This is not to say: 'Find an interesting way in which ['nondescriptive' and 'empirical' statements] allegedly contrast and watch me mottle it!'. Here, Blackburn gives the impression that the quasi realist has proposed contrast after contrast, only to have each one mottled by the true Wittgensteinian. But not at all! He has only proposed one - that between quasi realistic and really realistic uses of language.

The examples given earlier, on the other hand, show some genuine contrasts which no Wittgensteinian would want to mottle. Unlike Blackburn's proposal, they are not distinctions which require extensive theoretical elaboration in order to have a chance of getting off the ground. Perhaps Blackburn finds them insufficiently 'interesting' or general, but this is a prejudice which Wittgenstein did not share, and which we need not share.

On the Problems of Reference and Intentionality II

The following remarks were written when I was wrestling with these problems over an extended period. They might act as a stimulus to someone. Part I is here.

Part II

24. What do I mean when I say 'reference is no ordinary relation' in (22)? Perhaps the point would be better put in terms of reference-ascribing propositions.

25. I have long had the feeling that the desire for a classical analysis of reference ('x refers to y iff ...') comes from within a way of looking at things which involves something which might be called a 'transcendental illusion'.

26. For some reason I want to say: remember, in reference-talk, we are, as always, presupposing a connection between our concepts and their objects. But what this means, if anything, is very unclear.

27. There is the urge to say something like: 'Remember, you can't get outside your own mind'. But what the hell kind of reminder is that?! Who would ever think otherwise? (Satisfaction with such remarks belongs to a relatively low level of philosophizing.)

28. I can imagine someone proposing a two-component theory of reference which makes use of a "disquotational base" together with "equivalence criteria". So when I say 'my concept of John is of John' this comes from the base, and so is similar to 'I have a concept of John, who exists'. But I can also say, for example, this name 'X' seems to be refer to John, this being similar to: This word is used in the same way as my 'John'.

29. We might say: Reference is that relation which is presupposed when anything is spoken of.

30. This ignores some complications (e.g. fiction) but is more appropriate, I think, than:

(1) Existence is that property which is presupposed. and

(2) Identity is that relation which is presupposed

because that distorts the logical form of existence and identity propositions. Reference is more properly a relation (i.e. more properly a property-or-relation, i.e. thing which can be ascribed to things).

31. What do I mean by 'more properly a relation' here? Here is one way to explicate this. Imagine a form of representation where objects are represented with dots or boxes, which are then labelled with names (or otherwise made intrinsically unique). Properties can be indicated by labelled lines which have one point of contact with dots or boxes, two-place relations with labelled directed lines which have two points of contact, etc.

With such a technique, an existence property-representation and an identity relation-representation would serve no purpose. Every object would have exactly one point of contact with an existence line, and exactly two points of contact with a single reflexive identity line.

32. This is, of course, a consequence of the way I am imagining this mode of representation to work. There are of course more sophisticated possibilities, where one uses dots and boxes at a higher semantic level, so to speak - as representations of ideas of objects rather than objects themselves. In that case, one can meaningfully use something like existence and identity lines - but then aren't they more properly seen as ascriptions of the property of designating something and the relation of codesignating respectively?

33. Now, what about reference? Here we can start to see that we can sort reference propositions into classes, depending on how they work and get verified. One distinction we can make is between reference propositions which concern expressions belonging to the same language-system, and those which talk about expressions from another language-system. Let us call the former 'intrasystematic' and the latter 'extrasystematic'.

34. Now we may make a further distinction between disquotational intrasystematic reference propositions, and non-disquotational. (Some of the latter can be used to give all kinds of information, e.g. '”The winner of the race” refers to John' can inform someone that John won the race.)

35. Consider what happens when we use the graphical mode of representation described above, and a new (extralinguistic) object comes to our attention. We draw in a new box or dot (let us say "node" from now on).

But in so doing, we bring into existence a new object - one which stands in the reference relation to the original object. We can represent this fact now too. One way of going would be simply to draw in another node, which represents the last node drawn, and then to connect it to that node with a line indicating the reference relation. But of course this procedure can then be repeated for the new node. This procedure corresponds roughly to giving a name its own name in word language.

36. Another way of going, which corresponds roughly to quotation in word language, would be to introduce a kind of operator on points of contact. An unmarked point of contact is the ordinary case, a marked point of contact indicates that the contacted node is representing itself.

37. Consider the first technique, where we start at the bottom level, and then construct nodes to represent those nodes, etc., as required. This process thus "automatically generates" reference propositions. These automatically generated ones are the disquotational intrasystematic ones.

38. Also, among extrasystematic reference propositions, two kinds of verification criteria can be distinguished. Direct comparison with our systems (looking at arithmetic talk for instance), vs. coordination which "involves the object" more. (The field-linguist would be doing both of these things.)

39. There is a close connection here to the Twin-Earthable/Non-Twin-Earthable distinction. (Perhaps it is that the direct comparison verifications yield propositions about the referents of non-Twin-Earthable expressions, and the “object-involving” ones yield propositions about the referents of Twin-Earthable expressions, but that may be an oversimplification.)

40. Consider Idealism here. On Idealism, perhaps all extrasystematic reference criteria can be reduced to system-coordination. A kind of collapse of Twin-Earthability.

41. For example: I see a man point at a rock and say 'N', and I form the hypothesis that 'N' is a name (which is not part of my system) representing the rock I see in front of me. This is a paradigm case, it might seem, of acting on criteria for extrasystematic reference which cannot be reduced to system coordination. I coordinate a part of his system directly with its object, not with a part of my system.

42. An Idealist may insist that this is not so. Rather (they may say), I am correlating my perceptual representation of the rock with something. But it would seem that if we are to be consistent, we can't really say that the perceptual representation of the rock is correlated by us with the name 'N', since 'N' is not part of our system. Mustn't we now say that we correlate our perceptual representation with our representation of the extrasystematic name 'N'?

43. But still, this does not give the Idealist the distinction I want to have between external-object-involving verifications of extrasystematic reference-propositions and verifications of extrasystematic reference propositions which involve "merely internal" comparison of systems. For in the internal case they also have to talk about our representations of some extrasystematic expression.

44. Why is this interesting? Not 'in case Idealism is true'!

45. When '”A” refers to B' is not disquotational, it seems that for practical purposes it means the same as the statement that 'A' and 'B' codesignate, and can therefore be understood as being verified by correlation of (aspects of) the role of two signs.

46. x refers to y iff x codesignates with 'y' iff x's referent = y.

47. But not all reference propositions which look like disquotational ones are such. For example: '”N” refers to N in German too'. Or when setting up a new language, as in formal Peano arithmetic: '"0" refers to 0'.

48. We should take note of the singularity of a truly disquotational reference-thought.

49. In philosophy, we think: 'N' refers to N. Then we think: how?

50. Now, that first thought is a thought to the effect that a certain symbol stands in the reference relation to a certain object. That much is clearly true to say.

51. Compare the thought, as had by an English speaker, that 'Deutschland' refers to Germany. This too can be truly said to be a thought to the effect that a certain symbol stands in the reference relation to a certain object. Likewise the thought that 'John' refers to the man I met yesterday.

52. But clearly the first, disquotational thought is a very different beast from the latter ones. What worries me is the effect of their assimilation under the rubric: reporting a reference relation between symbol and object. Reference propositions are propositions which report such relations (connections), reference thoughts are thoughts that such relations hold.

53. We might want to say that the disquotational reference propositions and thoughts are a subset of all reference propositions and thoughts, characterized by the fact that the symbol which the thought is about is also used to represent the related object. And now we may ignore this subset and concentrate instead on the non-disquotational subset.

54. There is a problem with this formulation, however. For example, suppose we are told that someone used a certain expression which itself is named E, but one does not know which expression E is. One may learn something about E, namely that it refers to Venus. Suppose E is actually 'Venus', the same word used in the same sort of language system. In that case, on my formulation above, the thought that E refers to Venus would be classed as disquotational, even when the thinker doesn't know that E is the name 'Venus'.

53. So it seems what we really wanted is: the disquotational subset is characterized by the fact that the same symbol is used twice over – to specify the referer, and the referent. But even this doesn't quite work, for '”The bearer of 'N'” refers to N' fulfills that condition.

54. The difference between disquotational and other reference statements is reminsicent of the difference between trivial (repetitive) and informative identities. However, the problem is in a sense inverted: the naive relational view of identity statements makes all instances look trivial, including the nontrivial ones, whereas the naive relational view of reference statements makes all instances look nontrivial, including the trivial ones. (This use of 'trivial' may not be fully warranted, but suffices for making the point.)

55. It is instructive to compare ' "N" refers to N ' with 'The word "N" has reference, and it is used in the way it is used.' Or even just: 'The word "N" has reference, and it refers to the object which does in fact refer to'.

56. What looks like (and in some sense is) a tautologous appendage changes the modal profile radically.

57. It certainly seems that having purely disquotational reference propositions in the mix can blind us to how the rest work, owing to the special direct way the former are verified. But would it be right to discount these as degenerate?

58. 'London' refers to London. This fact could have an interesting historical explanation. (Contrast 'London is London'.)

Part III coming soon.

On the Problems of Reference and Intentionality

The following remarks were written when I was wrestling with these problems over an extended period. They might act as a stimulus to someone.

Part I

1. What determines reference?

2. Not, in general, descriptive or conceptual content associated with the name. Although the usual counterexamples to descriptivism do not apply to a range of names - for example, names of mathematical objects.

3. Not, in general, a causal connection between the object and the name. Both because the kind of connection in question is unclear, and because there is clearly no such thing in many cases - e.g. mathematical objects. But there is no clear counterexample in a range of cases: names of spatiotemporal individuals which someone in the linguistic community at some time has been perceptually acquainted with, for example.

4. What determines reference? - What gives this question its power?

5. The question seems to be: given that someone is referring to a particular object, what determines which particular object that is?

6. This is to be distinguished from: What is it which characterizes all cases of representation of, or reference to, an object? I.e. what do they all have in common which distinguishes them from other phenomena, apart from 'involving representation of an object'? But it is close to: Given some particular object O, what characterizes all cases of representation of, or reference to, O?

7. The thing we just can't accept is that we have nothing definitive to say in answer to the question: what determines reference?

8. It is extremely remarkable and important that people have tried hard to say something definitive here. It not a matter of course that anyone is moved in this way by that question. (Many people innocent of philosophy would find the whole thing quite unnatural and meaningless.)

9. I would like to talk about the feeling that, when the investigation goes empirical and scientific, we have left the realm of essence, so to speak. Is that right, anyway? Could one not maintain that by increasing our knowledge of the contingent facts - how reference actually gets going - we may be better able to penetrate to the essence? I.e. to what it takes in principle for reference to get going?

10. Well, historical development itself cannot be part of the essence. It is clear enough that there is no logical impossibility in a whole lot of organisms being spontaneously generated out of nowhere and beginning to speak of things.

11. When we think of the representation of external, physical objects, some kind of correspondence or covariance theory seems attractive. One thinks of primitive representation (or proto-representation) which is of this kind.

12. However, the merest thought of arithmetic, and Wittgenstein's builders, at once makes all this look inessential.

13. There is no reason why one cannot erect a concept which applies, for example, only to the representation of physical phenomena. But if one is inclined to say that we refer also to abstracta, and to wonder how reference in general is possible, then an investigation of the first concept alone will never satisfy.

14. It is clear enough that the idea of referring, which is primitively connected with the ideas of looking-at and pointing - the picture of representation and represented - is widely useful, and widely used.

15. Now, it looks very much as though one might, having noticed this, ask for an explanation of why it is. I.e., what makes the picture of representation and represented apply in this wide range of cases. Or better: what is it about all these cases which makes the picture of representation and represented apply to them?

16. This traces the problem down quite deeply. At this point we see that none of the common 'theories of reference' is going to help us here.

17. No answer comes to this question. This seems to have something to do with the fact that, once you are talking about a potential object of reference, you have already prejudged, so to speak, that the picture of representation and represented applies. Wherever we think of an object, there already we have the material for a higher-order thought about our representation of that object.

18. 'The problem of the essence of the representation of things leads, in a certain sense, to the problem of the essence of things.' The problem of the essence of things is obviously no ordinary one! 

19. To explain this tracing again: whenever we find ourselves in conditions where we can refer to an object, we thereby find ourselves in conditions where we can apply the picture of reference.

20. But, this is not the same as saying: wherever the conditions for objecthood are fulfilled, thereby are the conditions for a representation. For this is refuted by imagining a world in which there is just one object and nothing else. (This sort of distinction is important all through logical philosophy. It appears to be neglected, for instance, when people try to analyze existence and identity statements as designation and codesignation statements respectively.)

21. Two senses of truth conditions, two conceptions of what I will call fulfilment worlds for representations:

(1) All conditions/worlds in which what the representation actually represents to be the case is the case.

(2) The narrower set of all conditions/worlds in which the representation exists, represents what it actually represents, and where what it represents is the case.

22. What I was saying above now comes to: all the fulfilment worlds in the second sense for 'x exists' are automatically fulfilment worlds in the first sense for '"x" refers to x'. Or: once 'x exists' is fulfilled in the second sense, '"x" refers to x' is fulfilled in the first. (This holds not just for 'x exists' but for any proposition which contains 'x' in an extensional context.)

22. By dwelling on this we can start to see that reference is no ordinary relation.

23. As long as one is prepared to ignore the distinction between (1) and (2), or to openly switch from one to the other mid-analysis, then one can analyze existence and identity both in terms of reference. (Early Frege, Geach.)

Part II.

Twenty Remarks on Necessitarianism and its Negation

Disclaimer: the following remarks are highly exploratory and are not to be read as expressing anything final. 

1. What is the status of the claim with which Lewis begins On the Plurality of Worlds? (That there are other ways the world could have been other than the way things are.) We have a tendency to hear it in the wrong key. Imagine someone who had lost a loved one saying 'Things really could have been different'. (There seems something self-deluding in this, although it is no ordinary self-delusion. You don't fix it with negation.)

2. Ayer, Carnap and others wanted to say: the necessities fall out of our linguistic/conceptual scheme. Codify 'the rules of correct English' (cf. Language, Truth and Logic) and you've codified the necessities (or a base from which they may be logically derived). But the Kripkean necessary a posteriori, semantic externalism etc. make it clear that one needs a lot more fine structure than 'rules of correct English', and that some structures are in some sense not correct, in a way which has nothing to do with internal incoherence, but rather to do with inadequacy to an external referent. 

* * *

3. 'I went to X, but could have gone to Y instead.'

How might such a proposition be used? A retrospective epistemic use. Or to point to various facts - e.g. that Y wasn't too far away, or that I was under no compulsion to go to X, or that I was seriously considering going to Y, etc. But what if I say that none of that is quite to the point? 'Sure, those things might be true, but over and above that, I'm saying that I really could have gone to Y. The world could have gone differently here, and my going to X was just how it happened to turn out.' What could this mean? (We can imagine someone being bothered, preoccupied, by the thought that things really could have gone differently.)

4. Consider these propositions:

(1) There are things which could have gone otherwise.

(2) There are contingencies.

When a philosopher asserts (1) or words to that effect, typically the reaction they want is 'of course!'. Now, this would happen sometimes, but more common among non-philosophers might be perplexity - 'what do you mean?' - and skepticism - 'but how do you know?'. (I have some experience of this.)

5. Both in and out of serious philosophy, there is a tendency to take (1) and (2) in what I would call the wrong way. Roughly: as though they described something extremely fundamental and general about reality. And yet that is not an entirely wrong-headed thought, for it is immensely important that we talk and think about non-actual scenarios.

6. It is as though, when someone pushes a statement of counterfactual possibility in a certain way, we take them to be making a very strong claim, quite beyond our ken.

7. When one hears (1) and (2) in an "inflated" way - whatever that comes to - necessitarianism can seem like the antidote: something wrong has been said, and so it should be denied. But then the denial turns out to be just as troublesome, if not more! (Now it is trivially false, instead of trivially true - like Idealism in relation to Realism.)

8. The disease is not fully containable in any one proposition. 

* * *

9. It can be very important to realize that some propositions are necessary - 'One cannot feel another's pain', 'The opium worked (if it worked at all) by means of a dormitative power'. Likewise, contingent - 'There are two sexes', 'We have one body each', 'We use the decimal system to count'. It can be very instructive to get clear about the "modal status" of these things. And of course this does not mean leaving the view that they are contingent (or necessary) and coming over to the other side, but rather: noticing something, which one might have been quite blind to. Think of the conceptual development of children - one cannot truly say that they go through a phase of believing that everyone knows the same as them, but we can see what this is getting at. In the place where we have a fundamental distinction or concept of great importance in adult life, they do not have anything to speak of.

10. So: it can be important to realize the modal status of certain propositions. But - and this is crucial - it does not at all follow from this that it is important, desirable or possible to draw a line which clearly divides all propositions according to modal status.

11. What is the modal status of 'Our conceptual scheme has moving parts'? I.e. how could anything else be a conceptual scheme? (Mind of God.) And yet the proposition easily acquires the flavour of a general fact of nature. Why? Well, lots of important facts lie immediately underneath.

* * *

12. The notion of the mind of God. It can look as though everything is an approach to this ideal, and yet we have absolutely no grip on the ideal. We (i.e. myself and most active philosophers) do not have any positive belief in the mind of God in the old sense, and all the minds we do believe in are completely un-Godly.

13. Our conceptual scheme has moving parts. But if God knows all, he doesn't need any moving parts. (Spinozistic necessitarianism, Leibniz's difficulties.)

14. So now it looks like, in a sense, the ideal conceptual scheme has no moving parts - no need to dance further with experience or reason. And yet we will always need a conceptual scheme with moving parts, and can really make no sense of anything else. Thus how could the mind of God be our ideal?!

15. From this perspective, one could imagine pantheism as a kind of scholastic solution to our present problem. (For it would block the assimilation of our mind with God's.) ('A full, non-redundant model of an object must be a duplicate of the object, or the object itself.')

16. We say things could have been otherwise - I could have walked somewhere else today. But then someone says 'but could that really have happened?' and it's like the stakes are raised somehow. But isn't this a shift to a more specialized modality?

17. "What makes you think things could have really been different, and that this isn't just a function of our ignorance?" - The first thing to say is there's no simple answer here: one can't just point to evidence. The question is symptomatic of something.

18. One pernicious kind of confusion when talking about metaphysical necessity - the modality identified, and separated from other concepts, by Kripke - is to think of it in a manner which would be appropriate for some kind of deep and remote form of retrospective epistemic possibility. This is illustrated by the notion of the Creation as an event. God did something, and it may have been reasonable to expect this to go various ways. It is important for our concerns here that such an idea is natural to some degree.

19. It is possible to feel that any kind of conceptual view of necessity, even if we grant everything to the concepts including external adequacy, somehow makes modality flimsy, shadowy - somehow still overlooks reality in some way. "The way things really could have been, concepts aside." (The notion of an inconceivable object. If such a thing is impossible, how is that not just a piece of luck? Thus it can seem that the conceptualist must rely on some kind of pre-established harmony between possible concepts and possible realities, which would of course be highly suspicious.)

20. There is a strong philosophical tendency to think of knowledge of how things must be as penetrating deeper into the world than mere contingent knowledge. As though we saw how a machine behaved, but then looked into its workings and saw that it had to behave that way. Or, we form a hypothesis about the workings based on, and in order to make sense of, the behaviour. (This gets us into difficulties, but it would be stupid to call it incorrect - or correct for that matter.)

For more on modality see here, here and here.