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Herbert Hochberg • Kevin Mulligan (Eds.) Relations and Predicates Herbert Hochberg • Kevin Mulligan (Eds.) Relations and Predicates P h i l o s o p h i s c h e A n a l y s e P h i l o s o p h i c a l A n a l y s i s Herausgegeben von / Edited by Herbert Hochberg • Rafael Hüntelmann • Christian Kanzian Richard Schantz • Erwin Tegtmeier Band 11 / Volume 11 Herbert Hochberg • Kevin Mulligan (Eds.) Relations and Predicates ontos verlag Frankfurt . Lancaster Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de North and South America by Transaction Books Rutgers University Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042 [email protected] United Kingdom, Ire Iceland, Turkey, Malta, Portugal by Gazelle Books Services Limited White Cross Mills Hightown LANCASTER, LA1 4XS [email protected] 2004 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 3-937202-51-X 2004 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work Printed on acid-free paper ISO-Norm 970-6 Printed in Germany. Contents Introduction 7 Herbert Hochberg / Kevin Mulligan Absurd Claims 11 Lars Gustafsson Relations, Properties and Particulars 17 Herbert Hochberg (University of Texas at Austin, USA) Predication Theory: Classical vs Modern 55 Ignacio Angelelli (University of Texas at Austin, USA) Bareness, as in ‘“Bare” Particulars’: Its Ubiquity 81 Fred Wilson (University of Toronto, Canada) Objects as Hierarchical Structures: A Comprehensive Ontology 113 Donald W. Mertz (University of Missouri at St. Louis, USA) The Ontological Problem of Order 149 Erwin Tegtmeier (University of Mannheim, Germany) On the Transitivity of the Parthood Relations 161 Ingvar Johansson (Umeå University, Sweden; University of Dresden, Germany) Warum es die Früher-Später Beziehung nicht gibt 183 Christian Kanzian (University of Innsbruck, Austria) Tropes and Relations 203 Käthe Trettin (J. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany) Once More: Bradleyan Regresses 219 Benjamin Schnieder (University of Hamburg, Germany) INTRODUCTION redication and the problems of universals and individuation have Ppreoccupied philosophers from Plato (if not before) to the present. Concerns about relations and the special problems posed by relational predication came later—along with the explicit recognition of “facts” as purported entities that “make” a judgment true, rather than false, and resultant questions about the structure of such grounds of truth. The essays in the volume explore aspects of the history of the classic issues raised as well as alternative attempts to deal with such issues. Aside from historical aspects of the problems, the essays take up a number of central issues that include: (1). The persistent “Bradley problem(s)” and the broader issue concerning the viability of the familiar distinction between particulars and universals derived from Aristotle’s often cited pronouncement that what is universal is what is “predicable of many” while what is particular is not. (2) The dispute between those who take attributes to be universals and those who take them to be special kinds of particulars— individual attributes or tropes, as they are now commonly called—the red of or in a particular colored area, as opposed to Red itself, as Plato might have put it. (3) The problems posed by the need to account for the order in relational facts (“complexes,” states of affairs) by those who recognize relations, either as universals or tropes. (4) The logical properties of relations themselves, and especially those employed in mereological-style analyses (part of, overlaps ), which have come to play a crucial role in the development of trope- type theories of predication. Such theories, somewhat ironically, often attempt to dispense with ordinary relations by grounding the truth of relational predications in the “natures” of what is normally taken to be related. Thus they employ the pattern of dispensing with relations as being “internal”—and hence not being anything in addition to the terms of an apparent relation. In a familiar sense such views take a 8 “minimalist” approach to standard relations—temporal and spatial, for example. This minimalist approach also connects to a familiar attempt to avoid the Bradley problem(s) by taking true predications in language not to reflect an “external” relation between a particular and a property but to be grounded in the “internal” connection between the property (which must be the particularized property of a given individual) and the ordinary individual it characterizes. (5) Such questions about predication and relations, in turn, are connected with others regarding the relationship between the linguistic role of predication, and diverse ways of understanding that linguistic phenomenon, and purported ontological “ties” or nexus that are supposedly reflected by it. (6) The perennial problems associated with the proper logical form of existential statements, the apparent role of “exists” as a predicate, and familiar paradoxical statements that result from ordinary linguistic usage. (7) The viability, even intelligibility, of the notion of a “bare particular” and the purported corresponding entity that traditionally plays the two-fold role of being a bearer of attributes, thus accounting for the “unity in diversity” of “ordinary” particulars, and the ground of individuation of such ordinary particulars—the particulars one confronts in everyday experience and speaks about in ordinary contexts. Such questions inevitably connect with other traditional issues regarding the analysis of such “ordinary” particulars or “objects”—Are they basic substances, bundles (of tropes, universals, etc.), “structures” that involve “structural properties,” etc? In its way the volume continues some of the centuries old debates that once again receive attention in the current revival of metaphysics that has become part of the analytic turn in philosophy. That turn developed from roots in the realism of Frege, the Austrian tradition of Brentano-Husserl-Meinong, and the revolt against idealism that was initiated in Cambridge in the early 20th century writings and lectures of Moore and Russell and, in a way, culminated in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. One of the curious turns recent philosophy took saw the early revival of realism develop into the attacks on traditional ontology of the Viennese and Berlin positivists and the casuist variant of 9 positivism that emerged among English speaking philosophers, based on the latter’s understanding of the later Wittgenstein’s teaching and writings and Moore’s defense of commonsense. An even more ironic development is seen in the way logical positivism, pragmatic instrumentalism and ordinary language casuistry led to a new era of idealism, with analytic “scientific” philosophers and so-called “continental” philosophers jointly proclaiming that the world was a mirror of our language or, even, a construct out of it. In one of the strangest unions in the history of philosophy, the logical pattern of idealism (rejecting facts as mind-independent grounds of truth) in the form of linguistic idealism (often in the guise of “minimalism” and disquotational theories of truth) embodying the idea that “coherence” of statements is the key to the analysis of “truth” has joined with materialism, via the reduction of “thought” to linguistic use, behavioral dispositions, and, of course, neurological underpinnings. (What could be more “scientific”?) Thus the linguistic turn in philosophy, at the opening of the 21st century, has turned into a circle, taking many philosophers back to linguistic variants of idealism that was dominant at the dawn of the 20th century. Yet, by emphasizing language, rather than thought, the new idealists could blend the contextualism and relativism of idealism with the supposed tough minded scientism of materialism. Such are the twists in the linguistic turn. Given that the problems posed by relations and predication were key aspects of the Absolute Idealism of once dominant figures like F. H. Bradley and B. Bosasnquet, and are now again involved in the various forms taken by linguistic idealism, it is not surprising that resolving such issues is critical for attempts to develop viable forms of realism in the analytic tradition. LARS GUSTAFSSON Absurd Claims 1.The Problem n the following we shall consider a type of sentence, which if seriously Iuttered in the relevant context, makes a claim which can impossibly be true. “I am not here.” “I am dead.” “I do not exist.” might serve as introductory examples. At a first look they might appear as the type of playful jokes which populate so much of Lewis Carroll’s books and logical puzzles. But there is something more to them - as I shall try to demonstrate. They belong to a region of what Sören Halldén called “The Logic of Nonsense” which illuminates some aspects of Meaning in general. I have already remarked that the claim made in each of my examples is a claim that can “impossibly be true”. But what sort of impossibility are we talking about? It has to be observed that the air of paradox is achieved only if the egocentric particular, "here" is taken in an authentic sense. In a sentence "I am not here, but I can take a message" recorded on a telephone answering device, there is nothing absurd, because "here" is used in a metaphorical sense. The same would hold for "I am not here any longer" in a letter from an already deceased person to those who live after him. The possibility of such meaningful and true utterances is based on the fact that “here” in such situations is not referring to the place and time of the speaker.
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