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

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.

Wild Thoughts on Modality, Propositions and Concepts

Here. (Readers who like Sprachlogik for its clear-headedness are duly warned that this title is no joke.)

Quine and Lewis on Semantic Relativity

This post is by guest author Timothy Scriven.

In 'Ontological relativity' Quine suggests that the linguist's translation of a term into another language is radically indeterminate. Neither the intension nor the extension of terms can be deduced from behavior alone. In his famous example “Gavagai” might refer to a rabbit, an undetached rabbit part, a time slice of a rabbit or any number of other entities. This under-determination is not merely an epistemological problem (perhaps one we could solve via inference to the best explanation), for if anything is meaning constitutive, it is behaviour.

Quine does concede that the linguist is likely to make certain sorts of translations and not others. Quine says that “Enduring and relatively homogenous object[s]” which “[move] as a whole against a contrasting background” are likely to be selected as the translations for short expressions. We might call this “the rule of moving blocks” (RMB). Surely though there will be other rules that linguists tend to use to resolve indeterminacy, let’s call these rules R collectively.

Imagine a linguist considering lexicons from a variety of languages, and noticing a pattern of R-preserving meanings. For example, languages tend to have words for “Horse” but not “The undetached lower half of a horse”. A linguist might think that they have uncovered a human universal in RMB, and in whatever other rules they may extract. Quine, however, thinks this is purely an artifact of our interests, and the way we do linguistics. Roughly speaking, translations consistent with R rules tend to be more natural.

Quine thinks that if we are being purely philosophical and bracketing our values and interests, we cannot make a choice between the alternative translations, one of which preserves R as much as possible, and one of which disregards R. Only facts about our interests determine which translation it is best to adopt. Quine says that he would recommend adopting the semanticist’s practice of sticking with R-friendly or natural translations to anyone. But this is only for practical reasons, from what we might think of as a purely theoretical perspective, we’re stuck with massive indeterminacy.

There’s a ruffle in the carpet for Quine’s view that isn’t urged by commentators often enough. Quine sets up a dialectic in which he is being philosophical, refusing to attend to pragmatic interests at least for a while, and considering alternative translations schemas without referring to human interests. The semanticist on the other hand attends to the mucky practical requirements of her field. What she should say is relative to her interests. Not her pecuniary, ethical or emotional interests, but certain cognitive interests- simplicity, tractability etc. No blame falls on the semanticist for this, but the projects of the philosopher and the semanticist are clearly divergent.

How does Quine come to the view that semanticists typically make assignments on the basis of adjoining words to natural things or types? Why, by parsing the semanticist’s language of course. Presumably he reaches his understanding of the semanticist’s language through an interpretive theory, but either this theory is incomplete and does not uniquely select an interpretation, or it is laden with interests. Thus Quine “shows” that linguists interpret relative to a set of pragmatic concerns, but he can only show this by smuggling in pragmatic concerns of his own, inferences about meaning beyond what his cherished behavioral data would permit. There is no strict self-refutation here, but it is surely compromising nonetheless.

Lewis is famous for expounding the view that natural properties play a vital role in fixing meaning (c.f. 'New work for a theory of universals'). For Lewis, it’s not that, as a contingent psychological matter, people tend to refer to natural properties instead of unnatural properties. Instead it’s part of the meaning of “meaning” that translation schemes which are “higher scoring” with respect to certain virtues, like mapping onto natural properties, win out over lower scoring schemas.

At heart, these views have very little separating them. Perhaps this is unsurprising. In my view, Lewis can be read as Quine, with greater respect for Moorean facts.¹ Both Quine and Lewis acknowledge the role of something like naturalness in deciding our theories of meaning. Quine just insists that naturalness gets a role for “pragmatic reasons”. When the difference is put so, I think it becomes difficult indeed to give a reason to be a Quinean rather than a Lewisian. One might insist that Quine has one less ontological commitment than Lewis, he doesn’t need to hold there is anything actually like natural properties. But if Quine can do without these properties in his semantics and metaphysics, I think we can reconfigure the Lewisian thesis as simply stating that the correct meaning theory is the competitor that preserves naturalness the best². as captured by R, without a commitment to any particular ontology.

It is not even clear that there is a material difference between the views. One could talk about the set of meaningsQ and the set of meaningsL. The meaningsQ of a word W are those that are compatible with all available data on F that Quine would consider acceptable. The meaningsL of a word W are those that are compatible with all available data on W that Lewis would consider acceptable. The set of MeaningsL for W will hopefully consist in just one meaning, since, unless there are ties, there will only be one top ranked meaning for each term, accounting for all of Lewis’s ranking criteria. MeaningQ is underdetermined, meaningL is not, so we are inclined to use meaningL. 

Timothy Scriven

The University of Sydney 

References 

David Lewis (1983). New work for a theory of universals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (December):343-377. 

Quine, W. V. (1968). Ontological relativity. Journal of Philosophy 65 (7):185-212. 

1 Compare for example Quine’s reasons for accepting Platonism, and Lewis’s reasons for accepting modal realism. Of course Lewis is a modal realist, but even this position was reached by trying to respect deep principles of commonsense.

2 Of course there may be other criteria.