Two Sources of Interest in Metaphysical Modality (and Kripke in Light of Them)

Source 1: We want to know the vocabulary and syntax of being, or as Rosen puts it in 'The Limits of Contingency', 'the combinatorial essence of the world'. What are the basic elements and how may they be combined?

Source 2: We want to know, as it were in advance, whether various kinds of statements that are not put in terms of the basic elements count as high-level descriptions of any possible world. 

Many of Kripke's arguments that certain kinds of statements are necessary furnish considerations which purport to show that whatever the possibilities are exactly, none of them is correctly described as one in which '...'. 

This mode of argumentation on Kripke's part can make it look like his modal notions can ultimately be explicated along conceptual or semantic lines. But, as Putnam came to appreciate in between 'The Meaning of "Meaning"' and 'Is Water Necessarily H2O?', this is not so.

In this connection it is notable that all of Kripke's distinctive modal theses are negative as regards possibility. (His claims, in the course of arguing against descriptivism about names, that well-known facts about Aristotle etc. could have been different, are an exception, admittedly - but for those arguments, I don't see that he needs these alternative possibilities to be real, metaphysical possibilities. The modality used in those arguments could be deflated to conceptual or semantic without affecting the arguments, which are after all for a semantic conclusion - that names aren't synonymous with descriptions.) As far as I know, Kripke never seriously argues that such and such really is possible, really is a way the world could have been. Rather, he just works on the assumption that there are many quite various ways things could have been, but then seeks to draw some limits in high-level vocabulary.

But these Kripkean results, if that's what they are, only satisfy interest in metaphysical modality that derives from the second source. How we might satisfy our interest that derives from the second source is largely left untackled, and this is one reason why many have found Kripke's work frustrating. He elicits epistemic hopes, someone might complain, without giving us even so much as a roadmap for how so satisfy them.

His suggestion that metaphysical possibility may coincide more closely with physical possibility than has often been supposed may however be suggestive. On the other hand, he is against physicalism, so this couldn't be the whole story from his point of view.

Notes on Modality II - "Deserving the name", the grandeur of the idea of metaphysical modality, &c.

I want to explore a 'no clear best deserver' view of the - very inchoate - role that the distinction between (metaphysically) necessary vs. contingent truths is supposed to play.

The idea is that once you drill down in the borderlands, you see that there are different ways of going.

So no clear best deserver. But also: it's not clear that anything is a good enough deserver.

The 'no clear best deserver' hypothesis raises questions: why wouldn't everyone agree? Why would this be news?

One reason might be that there really is a best desever. Or that it seemed like there was a clear best but on further reflection there are competitors and it's not clear that any one has the edge. But I think there's more to say about why this might be news. There is something very natural about thinking that there is some single distinction here. There is a strong inclination to think that there some one major, fundamental distinction between the truths that could have been otherwise and the ones that couldn't. 

So if there is a sense in which this is not so - or if we want to be circumspect about it - we could try to tell a positive story about how this comes about.

Also, it is important to remind ourselves that the strong inclination I am speaking of may not be universal, or even normal. (Think of people who encounter this philosophical discourse, feel vaguely skeptical, maybe kind of interested but not particularly compelled, don't sign up for any view in particular, or flirt with some unusual view (an undergrad fellow student of mine defended the view that all truths are necessary in a course essay), and simply move on with their lives and don't ever really think about the matter, except as something some people are concerned with.)

But, at the same time: it's not just some specific problem in some particular subliterature. Versions of it, or closely related things, come up in philosophy at many times and places. And I have the feeling that it springs from a kind of root that also gives rise to certain philosophical thoughts and frames of mind that all sorts of people have.

So, how might it come about? Perhaps: Some kind of drive towards systematic understanding run rampant. Desire to see world as mechanism with discrete states. And the point isn't that that's naive, or probably not true after all, or something like that. But one issue here may be: why should there be one clear best way of seeing the world that way? 

It is possible to get into a frame of mind where it seems like there must in some sense be a single or primary set of facts about the possible states of the world, if there really is a world at all. It is like Wittgenstein's demand for substance, for eternal objects, in the Tractatus. It can seem like if the thing you're demanding weren't so, there would be no world at all, or nothing would be true.

There's something here I want to say in connection with this 'no clear best deserver' idea, along the lines of: how little is said when the idea of metaphysical modality is introduced! How could there be enough specific information there - in phrases like 'really could have been that way' - to narrow things right down to a particular, clear distinction!  It feels completely "lay", really quite free of theory (but of course you can theorise about 'really' or formulate it in terms of 'some fundamental sense' and then theorise about that).

But on the other hand, isn't that a bit fallacious? Can't specific, detailed things come out of arrangements of ordinary, quite general concepts? And don't, for example, specific seeds produce specific trees, despite being so small?

So this thought needs to be stated carefully. There's not some general rule here that's being appealed to. Still I think there's a point here, a way to see something  - a way to break the grip of something.

The words and associated ideas we're using here are quite flexible things, on reflection. 'Things', 'really', 'could'.

You might say there's a kind of naive level of "buying into" the idea of this one major distinction between contingent and necessary truths. Just not thinking about it too much. But then if you've thought about it and seen it threatened or scoffed at or considered uninteresting, but still want to pursue it - OK, now you're after something. Now you have a dream, I feel like saying.

I think, awkward as it is to talk about, there is really no getting away from the fact that there's something fantastic about the idea, something grand. '"How things really could have been" - what could be more interesting than that?!'

* * *

Consider Kripke's suggestive remark at the end of Naming and Necessity about leaving open the extent to which metaphysical modality will turn out to be closer to physical than suspected.

It's remarkable how little investigation or facing up there has been to the issue of how such a thing might be decided. (Williamson talks about 'detailed theoretical investigation' but I can't help but feeling that this is a kind of mirage, like how Russell and the early Wittgenstein palmed off the question of what the logical atoms will turn out to be.)

Decades later, we seem to just have different viewpoints - some rationalists who are far from thinking it coincides more with physical possibility than you might think, and others who are captured by the idea of empirical insight into hard limits (due to what seems to me a kind of misinterpretation of the necessary a posteriori, but working out where the stand offs there lie would be good).

The picture I have now is this: there's a certain inchoate role, inchoate requirement or job description for this idea of the ways things really could have been (metaphysically), and then it recedes into the background when we look at cases and theories. But this needs to be scrutinised more, and this will shed light on skepticism about the notion, and on different positive views.

I don't mind if you settle on a best deserver and are happy with it, but I will want to be clear that this is what is happening, and be wary of an alternative way of thinking about the matter as something which has been investigated and a view found correct. <-- Inadequate, but there is an important feeling here that I don't want any smoke and mirrors.

A large part of the worry is: that this process of coming to rest upon a choice of best deserver gets misrepresented as investigation into how things could have been. A failure to distinguish between getting to a concept and investigating what it applies to. But there are dangers with this hypothesis too.

'Philosophers framed the question of how things really could have been, and detailed philosophical research has led to a convergence on the view that this turns out to be a matter of ...'

In terms of what we want from the term, what gives it its life and feeling of importance - this is so easy to write off as a trifling, preliminary thing. Almost indecent to talk about. But it is very important. And it's amazing how far it reaches, so to speak. 

The Resurgence of Metaphysics as a Notational Convenience

Reading Jessica Wilson's interesting new SEP entry on Determinables and Determinates, the following speculation occurred to me: the oft-remarked-upon resurgence of metaphysics heralded by the work of David Lewis, D.M. Armstrong and others was driven in part by cognitive resource limitations and practicalities of notation; putting things metaphysically often lightens our cognitive loads and makes thinking and writing more efficient in many philosophical situations.

Wilson's piece is dripping with metaphysical turns of phrase, but much of what she says could be re-expressed in a conceptual or linguistic key. I think this goes for a good deal of contemporary metaphysics. However, converting metaphysically-expressed ideas and claims into a conceptual or linguistic key may make them a bit fiddlier to think and express. And if you're doing hard philosophy and need to think and express a lot of things, this extra cost is going to pile up. Sometimes, having things in a conceptual or linguistic register may make things clearer, and sometimes it may be essential. But for many purposes the metaphysical register does fine, and often has the benefit of being less resource-hungry.

Yes, some metaphysics may not be capturable in conceptual or linguistic terms, and perhaps even in favourable cases the capturing will not be complete or perfect. And there are doubtless other important things going on behind the sociological phenomenon of the resurgence of metaphysics. But maybe this is part of the story.

UPDATE: Brandon Watson (at the end of a post on Fitch's paradox) links to this post, writing: 'I'm very interested, of course, in accounts of how philosophical scenes get transformed, how ideas transmogrify, and the like. This hypothesis for the rise of analytic metaphysics makes considerable amount of sense, and is probably true.' This is encouraging!

What Are My Problems Now?

This is a follow-up to What Was My Problem?.

1. The Basis of Puzzlement about Modality

One line of investigation I would like to pursue now is into what might be called the basis of the puzzlement about modality. And as suggested by my experience of vaguely wrestling with a bunch of problems, before realizing that my strongest leading ideas for my thesis were really about some of these problems rather than others, I think this line of investigation may itself call for the distinguishing of various problems.

One locus of puzzlement about modality is the notion of metaphysical or subjunctive necessity as it applies to propositions. And one question about this notion is whether, and how, meaning comes into the picture. Also, just the question of how this notion relates to other notions, and the extent to which it can be analyzed (not necessarily in non-modal terms). Those problems are addressed, properly I hope, by the account in my thesis. But lots of what I was wrestling with at the beginning of my research remains, and does not attach specifically to the notion of subjunctive necessity de dicto; there is a lot that is puzzling about modality that my thesis does not address.

One puzzling thing which borders directly on my thesis work, and does have to do with the notion of subjunctive necessity de dicto, is the question of how this relates to de re modal constructions and quantification into modal contexts. But I have been very frustrated in my research here, and to be honest I have come to feel like it is a bit of a minor, abstruse issue compared to some of the more fundamental problems about modality (although I have no doubt that very interesting work could be done on that issue, and have a couple of ideas).

A more fundamental area I would like to work on is indicated by the question: Why is modality puzzling at all? But here too there are probably several puzzling things to distinguish. One thing I am not primarily thinking of, although it may end up becoming relevant to the problems I am grasping at, are questions about modality in an extremely general sense. For instance, the question of what unifies all uses of expressions which we call modal, or which we say are about possibility or whatever - including 'You can come in if you like', 'It could be that John is on his way', 'It is impossible for two colours to be in the same place', '"Hesperus is Phosphorus" is necessarily true', 'I can lift this weight', 'This apparatus has four possible configurations'. Also, questions about what generalizations can be made covering all or at least a great diversity of such uses, for instance about logical implication relations between them.

Rather, I am interested in trying to get at the basis of our puzzlement about what may be called objective modality. What does 'objective modality' mean? Well, one clear thing it does is exclude epistemic modals, like 'It could be that John is on his way' in natural uses. These are to be put to one side - at least initially - in the line of investigation I want to pursue. Likewise with uses of modal language having to do with permission. Within the puzzlement attaching primarily to objective modality as opposed to these set-aside kinds, important distinctions may have to be made. For instance, there may be a need to distinguish between more down-to-earth uses of modal language, for instance 'I can lift this weight', from what may be called more metaphysical uses - but not 'metaphysical' in the sense often used in modal philosophy, to mean either something like 'objective' or something a bit more specific, like picking out what I pick out with 'subjunctive'. Rather, by 'more metaphysical uses' I mean uses which are so to speak puzzling from the start. That is, where there isn't as much non-problematic, clearly useful use as in the case of 'I can lift this weight' and the like. E.g. 'The world could have been otherwise', 'Aristotle is essentially human'.

One way forward in this line of investigation would be to look critically and closely at philosophers' attempts to give a sense of the puzzlement about (objective) modality, often as a preliminary to some account or a survey of accounts. For instance, Sider's remarks on the subject in 'Reductive Theories of Modality'. But I think it will also be important to look within, so to speak, and keep seriously asking myself 'What is it that puzzles me about this?'.

2. Propositions and Meaning, Language Systems, and Our Expectations

Another line of investigation I would like to pursue has to do with the account of propositions and meaning sketched in chapter 6 of my thesis. That account appeals to a notion of an expression's internal meaning, cashed out in terms of the expression's role in the language system to which it belongs. This may raise questions about the nature of the system, and how we should think of it and describe it. In my thesis, I tried to remain quite open about this, emphasizing that I was offering a sketch, and that different fillings in of the detail here may be possible.

It was hard to avoid striking a false note here. For I do not think this is the whole story about my sketch, and the middle-Wittgenstein idea about role-in-system which it takes over; it may not be quite right to just think about it as a sketch of a theory, where some aspects are not filled in. For the very idea of what needs filling in, and how, should I think be scrutinized. It is not that I am advocating quietism, or defeatism, about questions about the 'language system' I appeal to. But I think that some of our expectations here may be in need of examination.

A curious thing happens in this territory - it is easy to become disoriented, and wonder what the problem was and what is needed now. Maybe sometimes in philosophy, as we solve problems, they slip from our grasp. Sometimes there is a strange feeling where we wonder something like: how could there be a solution here which is given in mere words? How could that ever do? We feel we still need to be taught something, or shown something. Could it be something practical, so to speak? I.e. something we could get through practice?

In the new year, I intend to use this blog to try to make some inroads into these and related problems.

On Carnap's 'Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology' - Towards a More Nuanced View

Below are some notes on the first two sections Carnap's classic paper 'Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology'. (Carnap's ideas in this paper have been very influential, and there has been a recent flurry of interest in them, as reflected in the 2016 publication of a volume entitled Ontology After Carnap. Thomas Hofweber, whose ontological project I have criticized, is a contemporary philosopher who has been very influenced by these ideas of Carnap.)

The notes below end up suggesting a more nuanced view of what is going wrong in metaphysical debates about the existence of ordinary things and numbers, according to which Carnap has correctly diagnosed that a kind of impossible jumping out of a framework is being attempted. But on the more nuanced view, this kind of jumping out is possible in some cases. (Carnap's view is that it never is, except as a potentially misleading way of switching to talk about the practical question of whether to adopt a linguistic framework.) That it is possible in some cases better explains why we so much as attempt it in the case of ordinary things and numbers.

* * *

'If someone wishes to speak in his language about a new kind of entities, he has to introduce a system of new ways of speaking, subject to new rules; we shall call this procedure the construction of a linguistic framework for the new entities in question.' - What is the status of this proposition? Is it meant to be a tautology? What does it take to be a 'new kind' of entity in the relevant sense? For in some reasonable sense it seems clear that we can begin to talk about a kind of entity which we have not previously been talking about without introducing a new linguistic framework. The framework can have, so to to speak, advance provisions for that in some cases.

'To recognize something as a real thing or event means to succeed in incorporating it into the system of things at a particular space-time position so that it fits together with the other things as real, according to the rules of the framework.' - Shades of pragmatism, or coherentism. Is 'recognize as F' a success verb here? Can't we have an idea of something which does fit well with our other current ideas but which is nevertheless the idea of something which doesn't actually exist?

Also, why a particular position? That seems false. Surely we can come to recognize the existence of something without knowing where it is. Also, the language Carnap uses here is quite unclear because while he is actually talking about changes on our end, i.e. in our linguistic representations and thoughts, he makes it sound like we are operating with the things themselves, incorporating them into a system.

- 'From these questions we must distinguish the external question of the reality of the thing world itself.' - This is a strong case for Carnap (who is talking here about the world of ordinary, observable physical objects), but one might wonder if it fails to generalize. Isn't there something special about our talk about the thing world? Carnap himself admits that the members of the thing world are 'the simplest kind of entities dealt with in the everyday language: the spatio-temporally ordered system of observable things and events'.

Couldn't it be this - the special foundational role played by talk of ordinary things - that makes it nonsense to ask whether they exist? (Or makes the question unsettlable?) Couldn't you have other cases where you've set up a framework which seems to licence certain "internal" existence statements, but where you can quite intelligibly and productively ask whether the things posited really exist at all? (And where this is not plausibly construed, as Carnap would want to construe it, as a practical question about whether to accept certain linguistic forms?)

It may be instructive to attempt to construct a clear, if artificial, example of this. (Here is a first thought, though there may well be much better examples available: a legal linguistic framework may treat the existence of a court as a basic assumption, without which the framework could not be applied. This doesn't mean we can't drop the legalese - step outside the legal linguistic framework - and ask about the existence of the court.)

Remember, linguistic frameworks can be embedded in larger linguistic frameworks. And in that way, we may be able to call the existence of the entities posited in some framework into question outside that framework, by remaining in a larger containing framework which allows us to treat the question in what Carnap would allow is a 'scientific, non-metaphysical' way. So that in the larger framework, the existence of the kind of entity in question is a question which may be answered empirically or a priori, in a non-trivial and non-metaphysical way, while in the embedded framework, the existence of the kind of entity in question is a basic assumption. I.e. something without which we can't really get off the ground with the embedded framework at all.

'The acceptance of the thing language leads on the basis of observations made, also to the acceptance, belief, and assertion of certain statements. But the thesis of the reality of the thing world cannot be among these statements, because it cannot be formulated in the thing language or, it seems, in any other theoretical language.' - Again, it seems like the thing language is a special case here, which makes Carnap overgeneralize. In the cases of less basic, less foundational frameworks, the latter disjunct 'or, it seems, in any other theoretical language' may be weak indeed.

Now Carnap turns to numbers, and again his case there is strong.

So, what I am saying is no threat to the core of Carnap's way of understanding what is wrong with metaphysical questions about the reality of ordinary things or the reality of numbers. Rather, it may lead to a nuancing of this and greater plausibility for it.

The problem isn't that you can never get outside a framework and ask about the reality of the things posited in the framework. On the contrary, you often can. And that helps explain why the attempt in the case of things and numbers is made at all.

So this more nuanced view has greater explanatory power. On Carnap's simpler view, according to which there is no such thing, ever, as getting outside a framework to ask about existence (literally, not as a disguised practical question), it is less clear why we would ever try.

Furthermore, the very idea of this going outside a framework, i.e. the very idea of what Carnap would call an 'external existence question', becomes clearer on the view I am suggesting. Rather than this mysterious thing which cannot in any possible case be done, it becomes something which can happen, and which we have examples of. On that basis, we may then argue that certain cases which bother philosophers are such that there is no properly analogous going-outside-the-framework to be done.

Forthcoming in Philosophia

My paper 'A Problem for Hofweber's Ontological Project' is forthcoming in Philosophia. It grew out of this blog post. The final draft is available at PhilPapers.

My preoccupation with arguing against Hofweber goes back further than that blog post, and he has always been very gracious and encouraging about it.

Raisins at Dawn #1

Topics this time include: logical space and Wittgenstein, method and semantic notions in philosophy, the idea of metaphysics, Lichtenberg on selfishness, modality, semantic granularity, and F.P. Ramsey on what the vastness of the universe doesn't mean for us.

A Fallacy in Hofweber's Arguments in Ontology

[This is a draft of a paper.]

Hofweber's ontological project crucially involves inferring negative existential statements from statements of non-reference, i.e. statements that say that some term or terms do not refer. Here, after explaining the context of this move, I want to show that it is fallacious, and that this vitiates Hofweber's ontological project.

Thomas Hofweber has for several years been developing a distinctive approach to ontological and metaontological questions.

One of his starting points is the way some ontological questions in philosophy can apparently be settled with trivial arguments - for example, since mathematics has established that there are infinitely many prime numbers, it follows that there are numbers, and so there is no room for a special philosophical discipline of ontology (if it is to respect mathematics) to deal with this as a substantial question, the way ontologists of mathematics seem to try to do. Call this the puzzle about ontology.

Hofweber attempts to solve the puzzle about ontology by independently motivating a distinction between two different readings of quantifiers, or two sorts of quantification: internal and external. Internal quantificational statements, unlike external ones, do not work by placing conditions on a domain of objects. (To see that we might need something like this, consider the quantifier in 'Santa Claus doesn't exist, therefore there is something that doesn't exist'.) He then argues that the trivial arguments go through, but only when the quantifiers are given an internal reading. Give the quantifiers an external reading, and it is not clear that their premises have been established - in the case of 'There are infinitely many prime numbers', for instance, it might be that mathematics has established this on its internal reading, but not on its external reading.

Hofweber doesn't just want to solve the puzzle about ontology with his internal/external distinction, however. He also wants to use it to establish answers to certain (external) ontological questions - negative answers. This is what I call 'Hofweber's ontological project'.

Taking the number case, the project goes roughly like this. Hofweber argues that, if we can establish internalism about number-talk, including arithmetic (i.e. if we can establish that the quantifiers involved in number-talk, including arithmetic, are internal ones which do not place conditions on a domain of objects), we can show that the external question of whether numbers exist is left open by this talk, and is thus free for the taking by ontology.

Next, Hofweber argues that numerals, number words like 'four', and terms like 'the number 2' are not referring terms. I.e., that they are not in the business of referring to things. They sometimes assume the superficial grammatical position of referring terms for sophisticated linguistic reasons involving the notion of a 'focus construction' (and other considerations, depending on the kind of occurrence).

Then, on the basis that number terms don't refer, Hofweber concludes (via a principle designed to enable one to infer non-existence of things from statements of non-reference) that numbers don't exist, i.e. that there are no numbers (the quantifier here being intended externally), thus answering one of ontology's fundamental questions. I will good-naturedly call this last step 'the Howler'.

A couple of years ago, I inconclusively argued that Hofweber's distinction between internal and external quantification is ill-motivated. Here, I want to grant that distinction, and even grant that it enables Hofweber to explain the validity of the trivial arguments.

I want to make it clear that the Howler is a fallacious move, and that this vitiates Hofweber's project for answering certain ontological questions (e.g. about numbers, properties and propositions) in the negative. I will not be concerned here with whether Hofweber succeeds in establishing internalism about number-talk - my point is only that his argument from internalism to negative answers in ontology contains a fallacy.

The Howler appears in Hofweber's contribution to the influential 2009 anthology, Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. The contribution is called 'Ambitious, Yet Modest, Metaphysics'. (I include other relevant papers in the bibliography, to help readers piece together a more detailed view of Hofweber's overall project, but he gives a good sense of it in the paper just mentioned.)

I think my criticism will be most effective if I quote the Howler along with the argument in which it appears, rather than reconstructing it and insisting that that is what Hofweber was doing. Here is the argument:

Let’s briefly reflect on what seems to be a central thesis about reference or denotation: 

(REF) If Fred exists then ‘Fred’ refers to Fred. 

Of course, I am assuming that ‘Fred’ is unambiguous, or at least used in the same way throughout. (REF) is uncontroversial, I take it, and probably a conceptual truth. Note that it implies the following: 

(REF∗) If ‘Fred’ doesn’t refer to Fred then Fred doesn’t exist. 

There are two ways for an expression not to refer. One is to aim to refer, but not to succeed. A classic case of this are empty names. Although the details of any example one might try to give of this are controversial, let’s nonetheless take ‘Sherlock’ to be an empty name of this kind. That is, suppose Sherlock is a name and thus has the semantic function of picking out an object. But it fails in carrying out that function. It thus doesn’t succeed in referring, and thus doesn’t refer. Thus Sherlock does not exist. Nothing in the world is Sherlock, no matter what in general the world contains. There could be all kinds of people, with all kinds of professions, but no matter how general properties are instantiated in the world, nothing in it is Sherlock. And nothing could be. If ‘Sherlock’ does not refer then Sherlock does not exist. This is all fairly trivial, but I go over it to make it vivid for our next case. 

Names aim to refer, but they can fail to succeed in what they aim for. The second way in which an expression might not refer is when it does not even aim to refer. Non-referential expressions, like ‘very’, don’t refer since they don’t even aim to refer. If internalism is correct about talk about numbers, properties, and propositions, then the relevant singular terms are non-referential. They do not aim to refer, and thus they do not refer. According to the above version of internalism ‘two’ is just like ‘most’. But since it doesn’t refer we know that there is no such thing as the number two. Since ‘two’ and ‘the number two’ are non-referring expressions nothing out there is (or can be) the number two. There can be all kinds of objects, abstract or concrete, they can have all kinds of properties and relations to each other. Nonetheless, none of them is (or can be) the number two. Or any of the other numbers. Internalism thus answers the ontological question.

Note first that Hofweber says that '[a]ccording to the above version of internalism "two" is just like "most"'. But what do we get if we substitute 'most' for 'Fred' in Hofweber's (REF*) principle?:

(REF*-Most) If 'most' doesn't refer to most then most doesn't exist.

But this seems like ungrammatical nonsense. Furthermore, it doesn't seem that 'Does most exist?' or 'Is there such a thing as most?' are substantial, sensible questions. It may be argued that 'Does most exist? No.' is not complete gibberish, if it is construed as a kind of metalinguistic point - it's not true to say 'Most exists'. This question-and-answer does not appear to be about whether the domain of our external quantifiers meets certain genuine conditions (and not simply metalinguistic conditions such as 'being referred to by the word "most"').

So if 'two' really is just like 'most' in all relevant respects, Hofweber has a problem. There is, of course, an important difference. Consider:

(REF*-Two) If 'the number two' doesn't refer to the number two then the number two doesn't exist.

Unlike (REF*-Most), (REF*-Two) is superficially grammatical. It even appears not to be nonsense (if we consider it independently of Hofweber's views). Do either of these two differences help?

Superficial grammaticality doesn't help; consider the nonsensical but superficially grammatical question 'Is there a rock of eggs?'. This doesn't seem to turn on whether a domain of objects meets some genuine condition, and 'Is there a rock of eggs? No.', like the 'most' case, seems to be a metalinguistic point at best.

The appearance of sense doesn't help either, for Hofweber has no way of explaining it except in terms of internalism; he explains occurrences of number-expressions always in terms of their being non-referring terms that appear in the syntactic guise of referring terms (for sophisticated linguistic reasons). And it is not at all clear what these could possibly be doing in an external quantificational context.

In general, the point might be captured by the following principle: non-existence of something only follows by semantic descent from non-reference when the non-referring term plays the semantic role of referring. Otherwise you can't semantically descend to a well-formed, sensical proposition.

(This is a necessary condition for the non-existence of something following by semantic descent from non-reference, but it may not be sufficient. I say 'follows by semantic descent' rather than simply 'follows' because '"X" does not refer' may be argued to always imply 'The referent of "X" does not exist' - but there is no semantic descent there, as there is in Hofweber's arguments.)

This seems like the natural view, in lieu of some special story, and Hofweber hasn't given any such story.

In a forthcoming post, I will argue that Hofweber's ontological project is impossible, for a different (though related) reason: internalism at the strength he requires it is inconsistent with the thesis that there is a substantial ontological question about numbers left open by arithmetic and other non-metaphysical number-talk, since such a question would constitute a counterexample to internalism. This mistake is, I think, more profound than the one exposed here - making it involves a kind of sawing-off of the branch one is sitting on.

Bibliography

Main reference: 

Hofweber, T. 2009. 'Ambitious, yet modest, metaphysics', in David John Chalmers, David Manley & Ryan Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford University Press.

Background reading for Hofweber's project:

Hofweber, T. 2005a. 'Number Determiners, Numbers, and Arithmetic', The Philosophical Review 114:2.

Hofweber, T. 2005b. 'A Puzzle about Ontology', Nôus 39:2.

Hofweber, T. 2007. 'Innocent Statements and their Metaphysically Loaded Counterparts', Philosophers' Imprint 7:1, <www.philosophersimprint.org/007001/>.

These papers are available on Hofweber's homepage:

http://web.mac.com/hofweber/Thomas_Hofwebers_homepage/Papers.html

The Non-Indexical Core of Presentism is Monism

In recent discussions about temporal ontology, there has been interest in the question of the prospects for a non-indexical, or externalist, formulation of presentism. Some say there are no prospects. Thus Hinchliff (2000):

[A substantive distinction between presentism and eternalism] cannot be formulated in nonindexical terms. That is why I have formulated [presentism] with the aid of the indexical 'presently'.

Others have tried with elaborate means to formulate something which could reasonably be called a non-indexical version of presentism. Matthew Farr, for example, is currently exploring a strategy involving two temporal dimensions. (This note was inspired by a talk he gave at the University of Sydney on 25/3/13 called 'Supertemporal Ontology and the "Triviality" Problem'.)

The issue is obviously interesting, assuming that the question of the meaning of presentism is interesting. One special connection in which it is interesting is this: if there is no non-indexical core of presentism, then perhaps the metaphysical dispute between presentism and non-presentism can be dissolved, on the grounds that presentism is not a distinctive thesis about the structure of reality, but something else (a "view from inside", or something).

I am certainly sympathetic to the idea that the debate in temporal ontology (between presentism, eternalism, the growing block view etc.) is something which should be dissolved or transcended. I seriously doubt that this is a debate about some real subject matter, let alone that it is a debate about some real subject matter where one of the positions is right and the others wrong. I think the confusion here is deep, philosophically important, and deserves to be investigated carefully, not just dismissed. However, I do not think that the idea that the debate cannot be formulated non-indexically is a way to make progress on this, because I think that idea is wrong.

My suggestion here is that we can analyse presentism as the conjunction of two claims, one of which is non-indexical and incompatible with eternalism, growing blockism and shrinking blockism, the other of which is indexical but agreed to by all these parties.

(P) Only the present moment exists.

may be analysed as

(P-conj) Only one moment exists, and this moment exists (where 'this' indicates the present moment).

Call this the conjunction analysis. The non-indexical core of presentism, on this suggestion, is simply the first conjunct: monism about moments (or times, instants, timeslices or whatever).

This non-indexical core is, of course, compatible with strange propositions like:

(S) Only one moment exists, and it is the moment of Napoleon's birth.

But so what? No one believes that, and everyone (presentist, eternalist, growing blockist, shrinking blockist) believes that the present moment exists. Forget the label 'presentism' - look at the conjunction analysis, and it becomes clear that what is really distinctive about this view - i.e. what distinguishes it from other actual contenders - is its monism.

Reference

Hinchliff, M. 2000. 'A defense of presentism in a relativistic setting', Philosophy of Science 67, pp. S575-S586.

Changing the Past: An Examination of the Debate

Draft paper from the first half of 2011 here.

Coming soon: a post outlining recent developments in my account of subjunctive or metaphysical necessity. (Preview: A proposition is necessary iff it is, or is implied by, a proposition which is both counterfactually invariant and true. What remains is to explain what I mean by 'proposition' and 'counterfactually invariant'.)

Mind-Independence and Propositions

I will try to say something about a profound confusion or blindness which occurs in connection with the notion of mind-independence. What I will say will be reminiscent of some of Wittgenstein's ideas from his mid-late period, especially the ones which influenced Waismann's work on 'language strata' (see references).

This post was prompted by a recent lecture of David Macarthur's, wherein he emphasized that propositions were not linguistic items for Moore and Russell. (Nor, I would add, were they linguistic items (signs) in a projective relation to the world, as in the early Wittgenstein.) Instead, they were supposed to be abstract objects1 which do not in general depend on minds or on language for their existence. This aspect of Moore and Russell's early post-Hegelian thought is often labelled 'Platonism' or 'Platonic realism'. Macarthur wanted to emphasize that this is quite a difficult idea - i.e. to think of propositions as being 'so completely language-independent' (I think he used some such expression).

I want to say: no, not necessarily - this last statement has to be qualified, although it is appropriate enough in connection with the philosophical views of Moore and Russell. I will try to explain what I mean.

We talk of concepts, meanings, propositions, statements and the like. Our talk about these things has a certain logic and grammar; it makes sense to say that a concept is used by somebody, but it makes no sense to say that a concept is three metres away from somebody. It makes sense to call a proposition true, but not red.

I think it is plausible to think of the notion of a proposition, or statement - in something like the sense of 'that which is asserted by a meaningful declarative sentence' - as ordinarily not coming into direct contact with the notion of dependence as it applies to minds and spatiotemporal things. In Wittgensteinian-Waismannian terms, the relevant notion of dependence is part of one stratum of language, and the notion of a proposition is part of another. We don't talk of a proposition depending for its existence on this or that mind, thing, process, etc., any more than we talk of a house being tautological.

At least, this is how it is in the ordinary, or primary language-game. (I think the term 'primary' is perhaps better, since I don't mean to imply that there is anything especially folky about the primary language-games we play with the word 'proposition'.) And this, I believe, is what - in the first instance - makes it correct to say 'Propositions do not depend for their existence on minds', just as it is correct to say 'Houses do not themselves possess arithmetical properties'.

But there is something which makes the statement about propositions significant to us, in a way which the statement about houses is not likely to be. As a piece of grammar, this statement can be said to warn us against a mixing up of language strata which – for reasons which I will not inquire into here – we are especially prone to when philosophizing.

However, 'Propositions do not depend for their existence on minds' is not a reliable guard against this confusion, due to its superficial similarity to non-grammatical statements such as 'The nobility in fourteenth century England did not depend for their existence on the King'. This leads to what might be called a Platonic interpretation of this statement. Rather than being taken as a grammatical warning or prohibition against bringing the mind-(in)dependence concept into direct contact with the proposition concept, these concepts are brought together, and propositions are thought of as, so to speak, being positively independent.

This supports, and is supported by, strange uses of “pictures” of propositions which resemble our pictures of physical objects, ideas of durability and hardness being applied to propositions, Plato's Heaven, and the like. (This is of course very loose talk.) Also, consider the expressions used in this remarkable statement of Russell's in the Logical Atomism lectures: 'To suppose that in the actual world of nature there is a whole set of false propositions going about is to my mind monstrous.'

We should be careful not to confuse the grammatical sense of 'Propositions do not depend for their existence on our minds' with an apparently material sense which arises from a confused mixing of levels (or from a language-game which goes beyond the primary ones we play with 'proposition' and related words).

In the primary game, we simply don't talk about existential dependence on minds in relation to propositions, and this is perfectly in order. That is what is hard to see.

The idea that we simply don't, or can't, talk about propositions (in the ordinary or primary sense) depending on this or that mind, may have an air of quietism and renunciation about it. 'Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent' etc. Even worse, it might seem depressingly parochial and conservative. To a great extent, this would be a mistaken reaction. We are not prevented at all from talking about 'propositions' 'depending' on minds - however, if we do so, and if this is anything more than a mere grammatical confusion, then we are simply not playing the primary game.

Despite the anti-metaphysical political stance of the historical antecedents for this sort of view (particularly in the Vienna Circle), I don't see these points as being hostile to philosophical speculation, or the development of new ways of thinking. And perhaps a lot of what is called 'metaphysics' can be thought of as an attempt to develop such new ways of thinking (and talking) about the world. (None of this, by the way, should be taken to imply any sort of Rortian antirealism, excluding considerations of objectivity and correspondence to reality, or anything like that.)

Consider in this connection the growing attention paid by metaphysicians to the way they are using language, especially quantifiers and terms like 'real' and 'exists' (e.g. Hofweber) and also - more relevantly - terms like 'depends on' and 'grounds' (e.g. Schaffer). Investigations into such matters are increasingly common, and often go under the headings 'metametaphysics' and 'metaontology'.

The remarks above are not very well-made, nor are they particularly original. I make them anyway because they seem to embody an important sort of consideration which seems somewhat neglected in contemporary post-linguistic-turn philosophy (although hopefully this is changing).

The relative obscurity of this sort of consideration today has, of course, to do with the fact that it involves something like an analytic-synthetic distinction, or perhaps more like Wittgenstein's arguably non-exhaustive distinction between grammatical and empirical propositions. Such distinctions sit under a dark cloud today. This in turn has to do with the ideas of Quine in 'Two Dogmas' and 'Truth by Convention', and a shift in emphasis toward certain modal notions, arising from Kripke's clear isolation of them.

Tristan Haze

Cf. this freely available copy of Waismann's article, 'Verifiability', which has some material on language strata. (Note however that one can use the notion of language strata without accepting a verificationist view of meaning.)

References:

Thomas Hofweber (2005). A puzzle about ontology. Noûs 39 (2):256-283.

Thomas Hofweber (2007). Innocent statements and their metaphysically loaded counterparts. Philosophers' Imprint 7 (1):1-33.

Saul A. Kripke (1980). Naming and Necessity. Harvard University Press.

Willard Van Orman Quine (2010). Two dogmas of empiricism. In Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel (eds.), Arguing About Language. Routledge.

Willard Van Orman Quine (1951). Two dogmas of empiricism. Philosophical Review 60 (1):20-43.

Jonathan Schaffer (2009). On what grounds what. In David Manley, David J. Chalmers & Ryan Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford University Press.

Friedrich Waismann (1946). The many-level-structure of language. Synthese 5 (5-6):221 - 229.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1975). Philosophical Remarks. University of Chicago Press.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1974). Philosophical Grammar. Blackwell.

1 Or at least partly abstract objects; Russell thought propositions about concrete objects had those concrete objects as constituents.