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! A E E A! 24 2013

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SZCZECIN 2013 Advisory Board – Arianna Betti (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Piotr Bołtuć (University of Illinois, Springsfield), Andrzej Bronk (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski), Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (Uniwersytet Szczeciński), Józef Dębowski (Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski, Olsztyn), Adam Drozdek (Duquesne University, Pittsburgh), Stanisław Judycki (Uniwersytet Gdański), Josef Moural (Univerzita Jana Evangelisty Purkyně, Ústi nad Labem), Zbysław Muszyński (Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, Lublin), Robert Piłat (Uniwersytet Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego, Warszawa), Roger Pouivet (Universite de Lorraine), Alexander Pruss (Baylor University, Texas), Andrzej Przyłębski (Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, Poznań), Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund University), John Skorupski (St Andrews University), Marek Szulakiewicz (Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń), Ryszard Wiśniewski (Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń), Urszula Żegleń (Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń)

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John Skorupski, Existence...... 5

John Collier, Emergence in Dynamical Systems...... 17

Piotr (Peter) Boltuc, Non-Homogenous Moral Space (from Bentham to Sen)...... 43

Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak, Some Arguments for the Operational Reading of Truth Expressions...... 61

Roxanne Marie Kurtz, Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed...... 87

Alexander Pruss, Aristotelian Forms and Laws of Nature...... 115

Justyna Japola-DesVergnes, No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism...... 133

Alon Segev, Uncovering the True “Wealth” of Happiness —Examining the Limitations that Govern Crœsus’s Question about Happiness and Aristotle’s Subsequent Reply ...... 165

Donald Morris, The Civic Duty to Pay Taxes and the Fair-Share Calculation...... 177

„Analiza i Egzystencja” 24 (2013) ISSN 1734-9923

JOHN SKORUPSKI*

EXISTENCE

Abstract

The question what really—ultimately, basically, and so forth—exists remains a fundamental question of philosophy. It is also, however, a prime example of how misleading it can be to try to answer a philosophical question without first taking pains to clarify it. In this case, clarification has turned out to be difficult and controversial, which leads to a meta-question: Is this apparently fundamental question—the ontological question—also a pseudo-question, a question that should be dissolved rather than solved? This paper argues for an answer that is somewhat Meinongian.

Keywords: existence, causality, reason relations

1. The question what really—ultimately, basically, and so forth—exists remains a fundamental question of philosophy. It is also, however, a prime example of how misleading it can be to try to answer a philosophical question without first taking pains to clarify it. In this case, clarification has turned

* John Skorupski—Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Saint Andrews. His books include John Stuart Mill (1989), English-Language Philosophy 1750–1945 (1993), Ethical Explorations (1999), and most recently, The Domain of Reasons (2010). E-mail: [email protected]. 6 John Skorupski out to be difficult and controversial, which leads to a meta-question: Is this apparently fundamental question—the ontological question—also a pseudo- question, a question that should be dissolved rather than solved? Or does careful clarification allows us to appreciate the true ontological stakes? Reflection on these questions begins with two traditional criteria of existence, which I call the semantic and the causal. The semantic criterion is that whatever can be thought and talked about is real. If accepted, it also becomes a criterion of ‘ontological commitment’: we are committed to the existence or reality of what we take ourselves to be thinking or talking about. And this goes with the puzzling claim that ‘exists’—contrary to appearance—is not a predicate. The causal criterion is that if an object has causal standing it is real. It can be strengthened to a necessary and sufficient condition: So strengthened, I refer to it as the causal condition on existence. To have causal standing is to be an effect or have an effect, to cause or be caused, to act or be acted upon. For this purpose we should understand ‘cause’ widely, not restricting it to our modern notion of a cause as something of which an intelligible, scientific account can in principle be given. The notion of causation relevant to the causal condition is the broad notion of productive power. Whether the scientific account exhausts that notion (or even captures any part of it) is a separate question. If, for example, as Kant suggested, noumena have the power to ‘affect’ phenomena in a non-natural way that lies beyond the scope of science, then the causal condition says that noumena are real. Equally, if God creates the world by some non-natural productive act of will, God is real; if Platonic forms somehow generate or produce or give rise to sensible appearances, they are real. If some normative realists believe that normative facts cause normative beliefs by a scientifically inexplicable productive relation, their view does not fall to the causal condition. In contrast, of course, if we think that the only intelligible causal relations are natural relations, relations that are objects of scientific inquiry, then the causal condition will lead us to conclude that all objects and facts are natural objects and facts. But the causal condition itself does not beg the question in favour of naturalism. It has proved tempting to accept both the semantic criterion and the causal condition. That, in turn, poses challenges that have occupied philosophers. Apparently, for example, we refer to and think about numbers, or fictional objects, but numbers and fictional objects have no causal standing. Existence 7

Yet if we accept both the criterion and the condition, this cannot be the case. Either we do not really refer to numbers or fictional objects, or else they have causal standing after all. These difficulties lead many philosophers to reject the causal condition: specifically, to reject it as a necessary condition. I shall instead support the view that the semantic criterion should be rejected, while the causal condition should be accepted. However, my discussion here is not mainly about the case that can be made for this view. Rather, it aims to set out some of the view’s implications—though doing so will suggest how certain arguments against it can be blocked. In setting out the suggestion starkly, I am not forgetting the meta-doubts about whether any real question is at stake. Rather, I want to resist opposition on two fronts. On the one side are those who hold that the semantic criterion of existence should be accepted. On the other are those who hold that the search for criteria or conditions of existence is misguided, at least if this is thought of as a metaphysical question of ‘ontology.’ I come back to this scepticism about ontology in section 7.

2. Some matters of terminology should be settled from the start. So consider this statement:

(1) There are characters in War and Peace who do not exist and characters who do.

Here ‘exist’ is used as a predicate to distinguish between the purely fictional characters and the real people who feature in the novel. Equally, however, ‘exist’ can be used, and often is used, to express the so-called existential quantifier. (I follow others in calling it the particular quantifier.) When it expresses the particular quantifier, ‘Fs exist’ has the same force as ‘there are Fs’; ‘a exists’ then says that (∃x)(a = x). Call this use of ‘exist’ the quantifier use. In the quantifier use, it is trivially true that whatever is referred to exists, since Fa entails (∃x)(Fx). On this use we have to substitute some other phrase for ‘does not exist’ in (1) – for example,

(2) There exist characters in War and Peace who are not real and characters who are. 8 John Skorupski

Both uses of ‘exist’ can be found in ordinary language. In this paper, however, I am not going to use ‘exist’ in the quantifier sense, butonly as an ontological predicate with the sense found in (1). For the purposes of this paper, ‘exists’, ‘really exists’ and ‘is real’ mean exactly the same thing. Thus, when we say that Pierre is one of the characters in War and Peace who does not really exist, we are saying:

(3) (∃x)(x is a character in War and Peace and x = Pierre and x does not exist).

I shall use the verb ‘to be’, as in (1), to express the particular quantifier, while denying that it has any ontological force. So I can agree with Quine that to be is to be the value of a variable; but I disagree that this has any ontological significance. A major source of confusion here is that ordinary language has no systematic way of distinguishing the quantifier use and the ontological use. For example, to say that there still exist some difficulties to be solved in the planning proposal is not to make an ontological claim: it is the quantifier use. Equally, however, to say that these difficulties arereal , or that they are not merely apparent but really exist, is not to make an ontological claim. Although this is a perfectly natural way to put it, it does not follow the convention I have stipulated. For the contrast between reality and appearance in this case pertains to objectivity, not ontology: to put it in terms of my convention, it does not merely seem that there are problems; there are problems. If, in contrast, we ask, ‘Did Homer really exist?,’ we are asking an ontological question. Both a sceptic about ontology and an adherent to the semantic criterion will question the contrast I have just made. The sceptic will say that I am relying on an intuition about what is ‘ontological’ which cannot ground any such contrast. I shall come back to this scepticism in the final section. In contrast, someone who accepts the semantic criterion will say that there is no distinction to be made between merely quantificational and genuinely ontological uses of ‘to be’ and ‘to exist,’ so the distinction I have stipulated between these two verbs is empty. (1), (2) and (3) are all misleading. ‘Exist’ should not be regarded as a predicate, so we must find some other way of regimenting what (3) tries to express, which eliminates reference to a fictional character in War and Peace who has the name ‘Pierre.’ Existence 9

3. Taken as an ontological thesis, the semantic criterion is that whatever one can think and talk about exists. It is, to put it mildly, hard to see what case can be made for such a Parmenidean claim.1 On inspection, we see that the only condition that discourse about any topic must satisfy is that we know and can communicate to each other what we are talking about. We must be able to anchor the topics of our discourse by means of predicates they instantiate in such a way as to allow us to refer back to them and quantify over them. To get to the semantic criterion from this anchoring condition, there must be an inference from the sound point that successful reference requires the ability to identify what we are talking about to the conclusion that it requires that what we are talking about exists. And this inference seems completely gratuitous. You and I, for example, can discuss how attractive a character Pierre is. There is something we are both discussing and we both know what it is. We can discuss Pierre, refer back to the character we were discussing, disambiguate our reference where necessary by using a referential anchor such as ‘the young idealist in Tolstoy’s novel who gets involved with Free Masonry.’ Pierre instantiates that description, but that does not entail that Pierre exists. As the last remarks imply, there is something about which we are both talking de re—namely Pierre. However that does not imply that Pierre exists:

(4) (∃x)(you and I are talking about x and x = Pierre and x does not exist) seems straightforwardly true. So de re reference does not entail existence. There has to be a res about which we are talking; it does not follow that it has to exist. We can apply that to intentional identities:2

(5) The flying saucer Peter thought he saw is thought by Joseph to have landed in his field, but the air force thinks it does not exist.

What obstacle is there to the straightforward parsing?—

(6) (∃x)(Peter thinks x is a flying saucer he saw and Joseph thinks x landed in his field but the air force thinks thatx does not exist.)

1 I take the description of the semantic criterion as ‘Parmenidean’ from Priest (2009). 2 Geach (1967). 10 John Skorupski

Note that in this case we are not dealing with a fictional object but with what I will call a putative real. Or, rather, that is what we are dealing with on the assumption that the flying saucer in question does not exist. If the air force is wrong, then the flying saucer is not a putative real; it is real. In that case, the air force wrongly thinks, of something that exists, that it does not exist. The question whether the flying saucer exists or not is not settled by (6): it follows neither that the supposed flying saucer about which we are talking exists, nor that it does not exist.

4. Can we perhaps argue from the theory of truth to the semantic criterion? Consider the correspondence theory of truth, according to which a proposition is true just if it corresponds to a fact. Assume also that a fact consists in or supervenes on the possession of a property by some existent object, or the obtaining of a relation among some existent objects. Hence, on this theory, any truth entails the existence of some objects. We shall have to come back to the notion of fact, and to the truth of the correspondence theory of truth, but let us accept this reasoning for the moment. Consider then:

(7) In the stories about him, Albert Campion lived in Bottle Street.

The reference is to a fictional detective and a fictional street, but the statement is true. In the Albert Campion mysteries, it is made clear that Campion lives in a flat in that street. So, by the correspondence theory, it is a fact that in the stories about him, Albert Campion lived in Bottle Street, and that fact must consist in or supervene on the instantiation of a property or relation by some existent objects. As indeed it does: in this case, it supervenes on facts about the writing of certain detective stories by an author and their reception by an audience. None of this, however, entails that the references to Albert Campion and Bottle Street are merely apparent. They are genuine references to two non-existent entities. Note also that I might know (7) to be true, know it to be a statement about some novels, that is, to be about some fictions produced by an author, and still not know whether Bottle Street exists. Indeed, I might not know whether Albert Campion really existed, just as I may not know whether Prince Bagration, in War and Peace, really existed. Existence 11

In similar fashion, the truth of (6) supervenes on facts about Peter, Joseph and the air force. These are real entities, whereas the flying saucer may not be. But whether or not it is, the reference to it is genuine. Truths about fictional objects and putative reals are truths about non-existent entities, but they are mind-dependent: They supervene on facts about existent minds.

5. So far, I would like to say that I have been following the tradition of Brentano, Twardowski and Meinong, rather than that of Quine. Contrary to Quinean orthodoxy, ‘being presented’ is not the same as existing. Twardowski and Meinong were right about that—but not, I think, about some other things. In particular, there is the question of merely possible objects. We should not, I believe, agree with them that such objects have being, because we should not agree that such objects are ‘presented.’ Consider the following:

(7) The golden mountain is made of gold.

Is it true? If it is, it entails that there exists a golden mountain. That is because only what exists can be made of gold. Being made of gold is an existence- entailing property. So, since there exist no golden mountains, (7) is false or neither true nor false. But further, there is no golden mountain. In (7), the singular term ‘the golden mountain’ has no reference. True, there might have been a golden mountain, but it does not follow that there is one. In contrast, suppose Peter believes that there exists a certain mountain made of gold. It is, he thinks, somewhere near Zurich, is owned by Swiss bankers, etc. In that case, we have an anchoring condition for a putative real: the golden mountain that Peter thinks exists, which he thinks is near Zurich, which he hopes to buy a share in. We might refer to it, whether or not we know it does not exist, as Peter’s mountain. It is a putative real: (∃x)(x = Peter’s golden mountain). However, it is still not true that Peter’s mountain is golden, since being made of gold is an existence-entailing property. All that is true is that it is thought by Peter to be golden. In general, we should draw a contrast between the actual and the possible, as well as the real and the irreal. Fictional objects and merely putative existents are actual but not real. The realm of the actual is the realm of what there is. Let us now stipulate that the term ‘irreal’ covers whatever 12 John Skorupski there is but does not exist. Then we can say that the realm of the actual consists exclusively of the irreal and the real. Consider then the following exchange: —You could have had children. —They would have had a bad father. Suppose both statements are true. It does not follow that there are ‘possible objects’ to which we are referring. There are no such objects. No possible children are ‘presented’ to us in this exchange. That is, there is no irreal object, a possible child, of which it is true, de re, that we are referring to it. Equally, there could have existed a mountain which had the properties that Peter thinks Peter’s mountain has. But here, too, in making that modal statement we are not referring to any possible mountain. There is no object which might have been a mountain and might have had those properties, including existence, of which we are speaking. I might say that Peter’s mountain might exist, meaning it epistemically: for all I know, it exists. But if it does not exist, then it is false that it might have existed. To put it another way, if Peter’s mountain does not exist, it necessarily does not exist. This follows from the fact that if Peter’s mountain is a merely putative real, then its property of being the object of Peter’s thought is an essential property. Similarly, if we consider a possible world in which a detective called ‘Sherlock Homes’ exists, lives in Baker Street, etc., we are not supposing something about Sherlock Homes. Being invented by Conan Doyle would not be among such a detective’s properties, whereas it is an essential property of Conan Doyle’s fictional detective. Thus I agree with Kripke that actual objects that do not exist could not have existed.3 Non- existence is an essential property of non-existent actual objects.

6. So far we have noticed two categories of irreality—purely fictional objects and putative reals. I believe there is a third, very important category of irreal objects of discourse: normative objects – the distinctively normative properties and relations about which we speak when we speak normatively.4 I have argued elsewhere that all these properties and relations are reducible to what I call reason relations, so I shall speak only of these. Nothing hangs on

3 See Kripke (1981; 1972); also (2013). 4 The assertions which follow are defended at length in Skorupski (2010). For a brief outline, see Skorupski (2012). Existence 13 this: If there is an irreducible plurality of normative properties and relations, the ontological points I want to make would apply equally to them all. Consider the following:

(8) Were someone to experience undeserved suffering that it was possible to alleviate, that would be a reason to do so.

This says that a certain fact, were it to obtain, would be a reason to do a particular action. The fact would stand in that reason relation to the action. This seems to be a truth, and a purely normative—not a factual—truth. The difference between a factual and a purely normative proposition is just that: to assert a factual proposition is to claim that some fact obtains, whereas to assert a purely normative proposition is not to assert that some fact obtains. Thus, whereas the claim that a fact obtains can—obviously—be true only if the fact in question does obtain, the truth of a purely normative assertion does not depend on the obtaining of any facts. Purely normative content is genuine content, true or false, but not factual content.5 What then is the status of the reason relation in which the fact stands to the action? If it were real, (8) would be a factual claim. However, denying that it is real does not entail that it is either a fictional object or a putative real. These latter two claims would correspond to two views in current meta-ethics—fictionalism and error theory—which both assume that purely normative assertions are factual assertions. The right response, I believe, is to insist that purely normative assertions are indeed genuine assertions about reason relations, with truth-apt content, but that they are not factual assertions. Reason relations are irreal—but the contrast with fictional objects and putative reals is fundamental. Assertions about the latter are factual assertions, and the facts in question, if they obtain, do so because they supervene in part or whole on facts about minds. Thus, these assertions are assertions about mind-dependent facts. Purely normative assertions, in contrast, are not factual and not mind-dependent. Reason relations are objective irreals, neither mind-dependent nor world-dependent. That is how they make knowledge of self and world possible. If they were real, they would just be some further items ‘in the mind’ or in the world ‘outside the mind,’ and the question of how the mind

5 This standpoint necessitates rejecting the correspondence theory of truth in favour of a minimalist theory. 14 John Skorupski knows the world, including these items in it, would remain opaque. If these points sound excessively dramatic, note that they simply follow from the basic claim that there are purely normative truths about reasons, and that they are not factual truths. We can quite innocently, without lurching into ontology, ascend an order and talk about the reason relations that feature in these truths about reasons. But equally, instead of saying that thought about the world is possible because reason relations are neither mind-dependent nor world-dependent, we could say that thought about the world is possible only because it is inherently responsive to normative truth, and because that responsiveness rests solely on spontaneity, in Kant’s sense; i.e., as contrasted with receptivity. Irrealism about reason relations is implicit in this view of reason.

7. I come now to two sceptical reactions to the position on existence that I have sketched. First, someone might ask whether there is more than a verbal difference between the position about existence that I have outlined here and platonism. “You mean by ‘actual’ (it might be said) what the platonist means by ‘exists,’ and you mean by ‘exists’ what the platonist means by ‘has causal standing.’” What then does the platonist say about fictional objects and putative reals? To have a perfect translation from our terms to his terms (is actual = exists; exists = has causal standing) he must say they exist, though they have no causal standing. There is then a serious question about why this position should be called platonist, since platonism is a position about abstract objects in particular.6 In any case, most platonists are likely to go with common sense by denying that such objects exist. The semantic criterion then requires that apparent references to such objects must be paraphrased out—with all the difficulties that attend that project. Thus we do not have a perfect translation of the irrealist view—according to which, for example, there is a non-existent fictional character known as Sherlock Holmes about whom we can perfectly straightforwardly talk. Secondly, someone might ask whether I am not, in describing reason relations as irreal, inviting metaphysical inflation. Saying that there are Fs, or that Fs exist, this person might say, are ways of talking that have various

6 I argue in Skorupski (2010) that abstract objects are objective irreals in the way that reason relations are; indeed, more strongly, that they are all reducible to reason relations. Existence 15 unproblematic uses in various contexts. The mistake is to think that there is some overarching philosophical question about whether Higgs particles, numbers, reason relations, purely fictional characters or unresolved problems ‘really exist.’ These questions are first-order questions internal to their respective domains of discourse. When we say that a character in a novel really did exist (and was not just invented by the author), we are saying one thing; when we say a problem really exists and is not just an apparent problem, we are saying another. When we say that there exist two prime numbers between 16 and 22, we are saying a third, and when we say that Higgs particles really exist, we are saying a fourth. The beguiling idea of a single ‘world,’ or ‘reality as a unified domain,’ is a will o’ the wisp. There is no such thing as a criterion of ‘ontological commitment’—that phrase means nothing. Ontology should be swept away as a pseudo-subject. What then remains, as is especially clear on the minimalist view of truth, is a mere tautology: it is true that there are Fs if and only if there are Fs.7 On this view, the term ‘realism’ (as well as the term ‘irrealism’) should be discarded from meta-normative debate, since both suggest that some significant ‘ontological’ question is at stake when we ask, for example, whether there are three distinct reason relations or just two. I have considerable sympathy for this view; I would be happy to dissolve, rather than resolve, the debate between realism and irrealism. But I am afraid this would be too quick. For we do, it seems to me, have a conception of unified ‘Existence,’ or ‘Reality.’ It is not a philosophical construct; it is integral to our thinking. If a quantum physicist or a metaphysical theologian gives a public lecture entitled “The Nature of Reality,” examining the fundamental structure of matter, or its relation to mind and God, we understand perfectly well what they are talking about and why they give their lecture its title. We do not accuse them of leaving reason relations out, or of treating reality as though it were a single domain. We think reality is a single domain, and we are deeply interested in its ultimate constituents. Reason relations are not part of the Nature of Reality—not Constituents of Existence—when ‘Reality’ and ‘Existence’ are so understood.

7 This is the view T. M. Scanlon takes in Scanlon (2013), except that he wishes to retain a role for ontology and thus thinks my remark about sweeping away ontology (in Skorupski 2010) too sweeping (Scanlon, p. 24). However by ‘ontology’ I meant a unified theory of ‘ontological commitment’, as envisaged by Quine, and Scanlon agrees that there is no such theory. 16 John Skorupski

A strategy that seeks to treat the question whether reason relations are real or irreal as a mere pseudo-question fails to take this important aspect of our notion of reality, or ‘the world,’ seriously. Existence in this sense is causal standing, in the wide sense of ‘causal’ that we have discussed. Not that ‘exists’ means ‘has causal standing.’ Rather, when we use the word ‘existence’ in a certain way, what we are referring to is causal standing. That existence, understood in this way, is causal standing is an a priori but not an analytic identity.

8. What then if some metaphysician insists that reason relations are causally inert existents in just this sense of ‘existence?’ A fundamental difficulty remains for such a position. Knowers can cognise existents distinct from themselves only through some form of receptivity—be it scientifically describable, metaphysical or magical. But reason relations are not known in any such way. Our knowledge of them is not based on any form of receptivity, in the Kantian sense referred to in section 6, but derives from spontaneity alone. It follows from the pure spontaneity of normative knowledge that its objects are irreal; but crucially, in the absence of assumptions about existence and truth that have been rejected here, it does not follow that they are subjective.

References

Geach, P. T. 1967. “Intentional Identity”. Journal of Philosophy 64: 627–632. Kripke, S. A. 1981 (1972). Naming and Necessity. Oxford: Blackwell. ______2013. Reference and Existence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Priest, G. 2009. “Not to Be”. In: R. Le Poidevin, P. Simons, A. McGonigal, and R. Cameron (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics. London: Routledge. Quine, W. V. O. 1948. “On what There Is.” Review of Metaphysics 48: 21–38. Scanlon, T. M. 2013. Being Realistic about Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skorupski, J. 2010. The Domain of Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ______2012. ‘Precis’ of The Domain of Reasons. Philosophy and Phenomeno logical Research, LXXXV: 174–184. „Analiza i Egzystencja” 24 (2013) ISSN 1734-9923

JOHN COLLIER*

EMERGENCE IN DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS

Abstract

Emergence is a term used in many contexts in current science; it has become fashionable. It has a traditional usage in philosophy that started in 1875 and was expanded by J. S. Mill (earlier, under a different term) and C. D. Broad. It is this form of emergence that I am concerned with here. I distinguish it from uses like ‘computational emergence,’ which can be reduced to combinations of program steps, or its application to merely surprising new features that appear in complex combinations of parts. I will be concerned specifically with ontological emergence that has the logical properties required by Mill and Broad (though there might be some quibbling about the details of their views). I restrict myself to dynamical systems that are embodied in processes. Everything that we can interact with through sensation or action is either dynamical or can be understood in dynamical terms, so this covers all comprehensible forms of emergence in the strong (nonreducible) sense I use. I will give general dynamical conditions that underlie the logical conditions traditionally assigned to emergence in nature.

* John Collier—Philosophy, University of KwaZulu-Natal Durban, South Africa. John Collier works in the Foundations of Systems Theory, Information, Evolution and Development, and Pragmatics. He also dabbles in metaphysics, epistemology and naturalistic ethics. He has worked on five continents. Fortunately, he likes to travel. He has visited Poland for meetings almost every year since 2001, and loves the country. E-mail [email protected]. 18 John Collier

The advantage of this is that, though we cannot test logical conditions directly, we can test dynamical conditions. This gives us an empirical and realistic form of emergence, contrary those who say it is a matter of perspective.

Keywords: emergence, dynamical systems, reduction, cohesion, predictability

Introduction

“Emergence” has become somewhat of a buzzword in the past few decades. Inevitably it has been used in ways that do not reflect its intellectual roots. Before I go on to explain the traditional philosophical notion of emergence, I want to make clear what that notion is not. It is necessary to do this because some authors have rejected the very idea of emergence based on misuses of the word that often draw for their apparent significance on the philosophical notion. For example, we might talk of something new and unexpected as emergent, such as “the emergence of the Internet” or of “the emergence of a new scientific discipline”, or even of a new political party. Characteristic of this sort of case is that something unexpected but integrated evolves that is importantly different from what has come before. What is not implied is that this novelty could not have been in principle predicted, nor that it cannot be fully understood by understanding what it emerged from together with the processes by which it emerged. Sometimes this sort of emergence is called “weak emergence” (Bedau 1997; Collier and Muller 1998; Chalmers 2006), though characterizations of emergence, and weak emergence in particular, are usually done in terms of a relation between levels at the same time (synchronic), whereas the sort of usage I gave examples of above is typically the result of a process and across time (diachronic). Although I don’t think this difference is metaphysically significant for the traditional idea of emergence, it can matter in practice. In particular, it creates potential problems for determining when exactly emergence arises. Later I will argue that fully understanding and detecting strong emergence, which unlike weak emergence is not reducible in principle,1 is enhanced by a process-oriented, diachronic view. One consequence is that emergence is

1 Chalmers (2006) defines weak emergence so that strong emergence may be a variety of weak emergence. I think this is confusing, and prefer to define them so that they are mutually exclusive. See (Collier and Muller 1998 and Bedau 1997) for more details. Emergence in Dynamical Systems 19 seen as a process, and emerging can reasonably be seen as something that happens by degrees at a fine scale, though at a larger scale it appears sudden. One example of a group that focuses on weak emergence (though they often give the impression of dealing with something more) is the New England Complex Systems Institute (Bar-Yam 2011). They say such things as:

In describing collective behaviors, emergence refers to how collective properties arise from the properties of parts, how behavior at a larger scale arises from the detailed structure, behavior and relationships at a finer scale. For example, cells that make up a muscle display the emergent property of working together to produce the muscle’s overall structure and movement. A water molecule has emergent properties that arise out of the properties of oxygen and hydrogen atoms. Many water molecules together form river flows and ocean waves. Trees, other plants and animals form a forest. When we think about emergence we are, in our mind’s eye, moving among views at different scales. We see the trees and the forest at the same time, in order to see how the trees and the forest are related to each other. We might consider particularly those details of the trees that are important in giving rise to the behavior of the forest. In conventional views the observer considers either the trees or the forest. Those who consider the trees consider the details to be essential and do not see the patterns that arise when considering trees in the context of the forest. Those who consider the forest do not see the details. When one can shift back and forth between seeing the trees and the forest one also sees which aspects of the trees are relevant to the description of the forest. Understanding this relationship in general is the study of emergence.

They also refer to function as relevant to emergence, but as in interaction of something with its environment:

Consider a key. A description of a key’s structure is not enough to show us that it can open a door. To know whether the key can open a door, we need descriptions of both the structure of the key and the structure of the lock. However, we can tell someone that the function of the key is to unlock the door without providing a detailed description of either.

Their restriction to weak emergence comes out clearly in their non- standard use of “reductionist”: 20 John Collier

The perspective that considers emergence is often contrasted with a reductionist perspective, which thinks about parts in isolation. Reductionism is the often vilified “anti-complex systems” view of the world. The concept of a system is itself based upon a limited form of reductionism that distinguishes the system from its environment, and the parts of a system from each other. The key difference is that the non-reductionist approach considers the relationships among them.

I belabour this because NECSI claims to deal with complex systems in general, which might lead one to deal with strongly emergent systems, but their focus and definitions make this dubious at best. Their notion of reduction is not the one used in traditional philosophical approaches to emergence, as I will explain in the next section. Furthermore, there is more than a hint of the idea that emergence depends on the viewpoint or stance of an observer.2 Bedau (1997) claims that weak emergence was developed in the context of complexity theory (also Chalmers 2006). I think this is right, with an important caveat. Something was needed to explain the breakdown and reappearance of order in chaotic processes like the “period doubling route to chaos.”3 These are often surprising, but need not be unpredictable in principle, although they can be computationally intractable to model due to combinatoric explosions requiring more computational capacity than we can provide. Bedau also points out that what is sometimes called “emergent computation” (e.g., Forrest 1991) at best models strong emergence, and is weakly emergent (examples are the “gliders” in cellular automata). Similar confusion exists over notions like complexity itself and self-organization. It turns out that there are two notions of complexity in the complexity literature, and also two distinct notions of self-organization. Some authors, like Robert Rosen (1991), connect emergence with notions of computability; indeed, I do myself (Collier 2008a). It turns out, furthermore, there are two notions of computability that must be distinguished (Collier 2012a). I will return to these points at the end of this section.

2 Ernst Nagel (1961, p. 367) argues that emergence is relative to a theory, based on his positivist principles. Basically, this makes emergence a language-dependent property. The observer-dependence of emergence (and complexity) is also advanced by Allen and Hoekstra (1991), among others, though their text seems to me to often presuppose the opposite. 3 Contrary to some opinion, the state of onset of “chaos” via the period doubling route is completely analysable by classical mathematical techniques (Smith 1999). Emergence in Dynamical Systems 21

Some emergentists invoke notions of separate substances, causal independence and teleology that border on obscurantism. They believe that emergent properties must “arise from”, but not be causally dependent on, underlying or prior properties. Whether or not this position is coherent, it is certainly mysterious, and evidence in its favour is lacking. Nagel (1961, p. 377) points out that although emergence is sometimes associated with radical indeterminism and/or teleological causation, this association is not essential. Let us assume that his usage, which follows C. D. Broad (1925), is authoritative. I will therefore assume that emergent entities and properties supervene on the level that they emerge from; that is, given the lower-level properties in total, at most one set of supervenient properties is possible. Kim (1978) bases the principle of supervenience on a general metaphysical position that the world is determined by its physical structure, whereas Kincaid (1987) suggests that the principle is empirically based, given that we have no testable reasons to believe that there is anything nonphysical. I believe that the metaphysical and empirical reasons are each sufficient independently, but combined they are stronger than either alone. Each answers certain doubts otherwise left open by the other. If emergence, weak or strong, entails radical indeterminism, the principle of supervenience rules it out. Whereas weak emergence is too weak, the separate substance view is too strong. For now it is important that, while weak emergence is interesting, it is not nearly as interesting as strong emergence, nor as controversial.4 Furthermore, it is strong emergence that corresponds to the traditional philosophical notion of Mill and Broad.5 A final point is that though there is nothing especially dynamically unusual about weak emergence, strong emergence is very special dynamically and violates longstanding assumptions about dynamical systems that have held up until very recently and are still assumed in much of science, let alone amongst philosophers, though the assumptions were questioned as early as 18th Century criticisms of Laplace’s work (Collier 2012b). I will make the violation of these assumptions clear

4 Chalmers (2006) thinks that only consciousness is strongly emergent; I will argue that this is false. Chalmers seems to me to flirt with the two-substance view, or at least two realms of some sort. There are also emergent views about naturalized religion that seem to me to flirt with the two-substance view. Examples are Stuart Kauffman (1995) and a number of the articles in Davies and Gregersen (2010). 5 Chalmers agrees with this. 22 John Collier below. Clarifying this will require making the distinctions between weak and strong emergence, two notions of complexity and two notions of computation as clear as possible.

The philosophical notion of emergence

The term ‘emergent’ was introduced in its modern philosophical version by G. H. Lewes in 1875 (Blitz 1992), though the idea arguably appeared as early as Aristotle. Lewes said that the emergent is incommensurable with its components and cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference. This notion is basically the same as Bill Wimsatt’s notion of non-aggregativity (Wimsatt 1995; 2007, pp. 174–177). A system is aggregative just in case its properties are determined fully by some sum of the properties of its parts. J. S. Mill had earlier developed a very similar notion in his System of Logic (1843, Book III, Ch. 6), according to which a living body cannot be understood as a mere summing up of the separate actions of its components. He accepted that basic physical laws were not violated, but what we would now call strongly-emergent laws could impose further restrictions. The next major step was taken by C. D. Broad (1925), who expanded in some detail on the idea of in-principle irreducibility, in the sense of non- derivability of emergent dynamics from any composition of the lower level dynamics (compare with the weak version of non-reduction proposed by the NECSI group). Broad’s notion of emergence makes any emergent property unpredictable from its basis dynamics (Broad 1925, p. 61). Broad, like his predecessors, also held that emergent properties are novel: they are not properties of their underlying basis, except when fused (Humphreys 1997; Wong 2006) to produce the emergent properties.6 Strong emergence constitutes a cluster of properties that are tied together by a logical notion of non-derivability and its counterpart, non-reducibility. Corning (2002) lists the properties, following Goldstein (1999) as follows:

6 See Collier (2008a) for an explanation of how fusion defeats Kim’s (2005) mistaken view that if supervenience holds, the supervenient system has no casual power. Humphreys views fusion as replacing the underlying properties, whereas my cohesion (Collier and Muller 1998; Collier 2003) retains the lower level properties but restricts their range. The difference is not large. Both, I think, explain Campbell’s (1974) rather mysterious “downward causation” (shudder quotes in the original title). Emergence in Dynamical Systems 23

(1) radical novelty (features not previously observed in systems); (2) coherence or correlation (integrated wholes that maintain themselves over some period of time); (3) A global or macro “level” (i.e., there is some property of “wholeness”); (4) it is the product of a dynamical process (it evolves); and (5) it is “ostensive” (it can be perceived). For good measure, Goldstein throws in supervenience—downward causation.

Strangely, they leave out the non-reducibility/non-derivability/non- aggregativity requirement, which leaves open the possibility of weak emergence. From talks and my reading of both Corning’s and Goldstein’s other works, I am pretty sure that they intended to capture something both stronger and objective. The non-reducibility requirement is crucial to the traditional view, and from it Goldstein’s’ other properties can be derived without ambiguity (see Collier and Muller 1998; Collier 2008a). They also don’t include the traditional property of emergent systems being non- predictable. As we shall see, this is tied up with non-reducibility. Instead, they have the slippery condition of “radical novelty” and tie it to observation, suggesting that they have not moved beyond weak emergence. Broad’s conditions are four: Unpredictability—The higher level cannot be predicted in principle; Non-reducibility—The whole is logically more than the sum of its parts; Holistic—The system cannot be decomposed into its parts without loss; and Novelty—The tricky one because there is no clear definition, but not merely surprise, implying a new kind of property. I will argue below that the first three of Broad’s conditions have the same dynamical source, and then I will argue that this implies a specific sort of novelty. The problem with accounts of strong emergence in terms of non- reducibility, non-predictability, holism and novelty is that these are logical conditions that cannot be observed directly, because they cannot be interacted with directly. For this reason, I advocate a dynamical account of emergence from which the logical conditions for emergence can be derived. The dynamical conditions can be tested for directly, confirming the system has the required properties for emergence. I will give these conditions after a couple of brief excursions through related ideas. 24 John Collier

A Note on Systems

A system in the sense of Systems Theory is a coordinated set of elements or components that combine through their relationships to form a unity. Systems are distinguished from each other either by their parts or their components (including qualities and especially relations), or both. For any dynamically embodied system, the relations are causal interactions (or at least grounded in causal interactions). The causal interactions can go in both directions between elements, allowing for positive and negative feedback, and non-linearity in general. These relations are constituted of forces and flows among nodes, making them dynamical in a physical sense. Dynamical relations among combinations of three or more components that cannot be reduced to pairwise dynamical relations are not excluded. If the relations are stable, then their totality can be called the structure of the system. We can also speak of the boundary conditions of a system, which are a set of constraints on its behaviour, and the laws of a system, which refer to regularities in its behaviour and possible behaviours (usually allowing for a wide range of possible boundary conditions). Note that system laws can be peculiar to a particular system and are not the same as natural laws, though they may be instantiations of natural laws. If the nodes change (are added, subtracted or merge), the system is much more complex and the system structure is

Ordinary Partial Equation: Algebraic Differential Differential

One Parameter Trivial Easy Difficult

Linear Several Easy Difficult Intractable Equations Parameters Many Intractable Intractable Impossible Parameters

One Parameter Very Difficult Very Difficult Impossible

Nonlinear Several Very Difficult Impossible Impossible Equations Parameters Many Impossible Impossible Impossible Parameters Emergence in Dynamical Systems 25 itself dynamical. Without going into details, we can say that the constraints on the system are not static and the constraints and system laws cannot be separated. I will go into more detail below, as this is a necessary condition for dynamical emergence. ‘Dynamical system’ is a mathematical concept that describes how a system evolves from one state to another. Technically, it is smooth mapping of either the reals or integers of a manifold (state space) onto itself. The mathematical concept is the accepted way of describing systems, at least as an ideal to be approximated, and as a regulating principle in any case for descriptions of natural systems. This ideal can be easy to satisfy in some cases, difficult in others, and cannot be obtained in practice for many systems. For other mathematical kinds of systems, no general solutions are possible. The full set of possibilities is given in the table above (after Bertalanffy 1968, p. 20). The impossible cases have no analytical solution in principle. This is where we should look for strong emergence.

Computability and Predictability

A system can be predicted across time if and only if its trajectory can be calculated from its initial and boundary conditions specified within some region of its phase (state) space, together with its equations of motion, to be within some region of phase space at some arbitrary later time. Specifically, the trajectory of a system is predictable if and only if there is a region η constraining the initial conditions at t0 such that the equations of motion ensure that the trajectory of the system passes within some region

ε at some time t1, where the region η is chosen to satisfy ε. Indeterministic systems have probabilistic predictability. Predictability applies in principle to all closed Hamiltonian systems (specifically, conservative of energy and holonomic; i.e., roughly, that the parameters of the system are a function of its energy and positions only), including those without exact analytical solutions, such as the three-body case.7 The systems without exact analytical solutions can be numerically calculated in principle for any finite time, if we

7 Laplace was able to show that the orbits of the major bodies of the Solar System were stable for at least 100 million years, no mean accomplishment for a many-bodied system (Collier 2012b; also Gillespie 1997). 26 John Collier have a large enough computer. We might call this stepwise computability. All computations are stepwise computable, but some computations do not terminate. These computations, however, are stepwise computable and allow, in principle—the required computer might have to be larger than the known universe—the arbitrarily exact computation of a finite later state. The macrostate of a microsystem can be predicted similarly by composing the trajectories of the microcomponents and averaging to get the expected macrovalues. This makes higher levels synchronically predictable. Stochastic (chance) systems are predictable within the bounds of their probabilities in general, and introduce no special problems: higher levels can again be predicted statistically as long as all of the low level laws are holonomic. To undermine predictability, at least one of the assumptions must go. The assumptions are: 1) the system is closed, 2) the system is a traditional Hamiltonian system with holonomic or at least near-holonomic laws, and 3) there exist sufficient computational resources. The third condition is a shorthand way of saying that the information in all properties of the system can be computed from some set of boundary conditions and physical laws, where information is understood as an objective measure of asymmetry as in (Muller 2007, and less rigorously in Collier 1996). I will demonstrate later that all three of these assumptions are violated for some simple physical systems, including some in the solar system.8 There are some systems that violate (3) because no computer could, even in principle, have sufficient power, let alone one connected to the system under study, yet the systems evolve to more ordered states. I will give an example below in terms of Newtonian body mechanics with gravity and friction that serves as an exemplar of this sort of case. More complex cases may be more nuanced, but there are systems that go beyond just unpredictability and the formation of ordered properties. Novelty does not necessarily follow from mathematical unpredictability, since there may be no new properties formed in unpredictable systems, but novelty is impossible with unpredictability, except in the trivial sense that a pile of blocks is novel with respect to the block components scattered

8 I have argued that causation can be understood as computation (Collier 1999; 2012a). I resolve the problem of non-computable processes by making the distinction between Turing computability and stepwise computability. Only the former allows information entailments to be calculated. It is quite possible for information in one state to entail the information in another without the relation being Turing computable. Emergence in Dynamical Systems 27 about in a child’s toy box. The predictability of the macrostate of a system from its microstate (states of the components of its substrate) is just the condition of reducibility, so unpredictability is also required for and sufficient for irreducibility. The advantage of the mathematical rendition of the characteristics of emergence is that we have reduced three to one, except for possible additional requirements to ensure novel properties. Now the problem is to determine when computability fails in dynamical systems. That is when emergence begins.

Complexity and Organization

Complexity can mean complicated, that is, having many factors and many components, but it also is used in complexity theory to refer to organized complexity. Collier and Hooker (1999) note that if complexity in the complicated sense and organization are put on orthogonal axes, there are four quadrants of the following kinds: –– Type I: Simple with low organization –– Type II: Complex with low organization –– Type III: Simple with high organization –– Type IV: Complex with high organization The first type would be typified by single-particle, conservative and decomposable (linearizable) multi-particle systems. The second would be exemplified by statistically-specified systems at or near equilibrium (e.g., gases and fluids). The third type would be sufficiently well-constrained but non-linearizable multi-particle systems; e.g., many machines and some electromagnetic systems. All three of these types of systems have analytic solutions for their dynamics, or convergent higher order additive approximations to these. This makes them tractable in the sense of predictability in the previous section. Type IV systems, however, are not tractable and can produce new organization through time. Known living systems fit into this category; so do weather systems, stream eddies and solar systems. Unlike systems of types I and III, whose organization, if any, is fully determined by their initial internal and boundary conditions, some type IV systems can produce new organization through time. And, unlike type II systems, whose organization, if any, is entirely imposed by initial and boundary conditions (think of a personal computer running a program), 28 John Collier type IV systems contribute internally to maintaining their organization and, where it increases, to increasing it. I will explain how this works in more detail below; my main point here is to clearly distinguish complexly organized systems from merely complex systems. The latter can at best be weakly emergent; I will argue that type IV systems are typically emergent. They achieve this through dynamics that modify their own boundary conditions. This is self-organization. I said earlier that two types of self-organization need to be distinguished. The first type is widespread and results from characteristics of components that allow them to form patterns as energy in the system is dissipated. Collier and Hooker (1999) call these self-reorganizing systems. They give the unambiguous example of a coin-sorting machine:

Coins are often sorted by being placed in a sorting box, above a series of graduated meshes ordered by mesh size (biggest size on top) and chosen so that each mesh size is intermediate between the corresponding coin sizes. The sorter is randomly jiggled horizontally and the coins are automatically sorted by size as each eventually falls to its appropriate mesh, the meshes acting as passive filters. The coins have acquired a small increase in organization (von Foerster’s order-from-noise principle, with gravity the ordering principle) but the coin+sorter system has simply re-organized.

Note that in this device the extra energy of the coins must be dissipated, otherwise they would just continue to bounce around. All self-re-organization involves energy dissipation and leads to a local minimum of energy. Self-re-organization is often called self-assembly. Consider hydrophobic-hydrophilic (ambipathic) molecules, such as fatty acids, that self-assemble to form a membrane through rearrangement of their hydrophobic and hydrophilic ends. In water, the hydrophobic ends tend to bunch together, whereas the hydrophilic ends tend to stick towards water. This leads to a double molecule layer that naturally forms into a nearly spherical vesicle. It has been proposed that such vesicles could allow amino acids and other molecules to reach a concentration inside that allows (with very large numbers of simultaneous “experiments”) eventually life-forming chemistry within the relatively protected regime inside the vesicle. Although the exact process of vesicle formation is not fully understood, dissipation is surely at work, or the molecules would just bounce back rather than bond. The vesicle forms a lower-energy state than other arrangements. Emergence in Dynamical Systems 29

In both these cases of self-re-organization, there is no new information created in the system, despite the appearance of what we deem order. If anything, information is lost as dissipation occurs. There is no compensating information produced. The order in the different sizes of the coins and the interaction potentials of water with fatty acids is implicit, and the dissipation process eliminates what is essentially noise, which is analogous to friction and the production of heat. It used to be thought that the Moon always facing one side to the Earth was the result of another example of such an energy minimizing process in which there is a single final state determined by the properties of the components. Laplace was able to show that the 1-1 ratio of the Moon’s rotation to its revolution around the Earth was stable. If the Moon were to move slightly faster, the gravity of the Earth would pull it back and similarly if it were to go slightly slower: the lowest energy condition is the 1:1 ratio. This didn’t explain how the Moon got into the 1-1 ratio, however. George Darwin, one of Charles’ sons, was able to explain the approach to the ratio through the dissipation of tidal torque that is exerted if the ratio is either greater or less than 1-1. Laplace also explained the complex resonances of the four largest moons of Jupiter by the same dynamics. He answered objections that his theory did not fit the known observations by developing probability theory to show that it was more probable that his theory was right than that the measurements were right. He was right, and the addition of dissipation led to a theory that was accepted for a long time. The assumption was that dissipation leads to resonances that are at the lowest energy level, essentially the same mechanism as self-assembly. It turns out these assumptions were wrong. This was discovered when it was discovered in the 1960s that Mercury turns on its axis three times for each two times that it goes around the Sun (Collier 2012b). Without going into great detail, the state space of the Mercury-Sun system has a number of stable basins (or attractors) that, while not the lowest energy situations, are lower energy than any place nearby in space, so that if the system gets close to one of these basins, dissipation is more likely to result in capture in that basin. The boundaries between the basins are almost certainly fractal, meaning that for any two points in one attractor basin there is a point between them in another basin. In fact, there are many basins in the system corresponding to ever higher resonances. The chances of a 1-1 capture are about ½. For a 3-2 ratio the odds are about ⅓. The rest of the probabilities 30 John Collier are taken up by higher order resonances. What does this mean for Darwin’s explanation of the 1-1 ratio of the Moon’s orbit? Basically, it means that it is only a partial explanation: It explains why the 1-1 ratio is possible, and even likely, but it does not explain why the ratio is 1-1 rather than some higher resonance.9 In the planetary resonance cases, unlike in self-re-organization, there is arguably new information produced in the system as one or another of the possible resonances is selected. One might ask why this is not true in the self-assembly case. The answer is that the parts (coins or molecules) are interchangeable, so although there are many ways to get to the final result, they are all equivalent to each other.10 Noise dissipation creates a more ordered state, but the way it happens does not matter, since the noise (shaking in the case of the coin-sorting machine and random molecular translations, and vibrations in the case of the molecules) is random. In the planetary resonance case, however, minor differences that are effectively random are enough to put the system in one attractor rather than another. The result is not fully predictable (or retrodictable), even in principle. Unlike the unsolvable three-body case that can be predicted in principle for any finite time and for a specific margin of error, the result in this case is not predictable in finite time. The reason is that the dissipation allows the whole unsolvable process to be carried out in finite time, which never happens in systems without dissipation. So, are planetary resonances emergent? They certainly are unpredictable, at least in their details, and these details are significantly different. It might be argued, however, that they fail the condition of novelty. After all, we have no radically new properties: we start with orbits and rotations, and we end with orbits and rotations, albeit synchronized. I have argued that while such systems are not reducible, they can be explained, insofar as they can be explained, by reductive explanation using our understanding of the underlying dynamics (gravity and dissipation through tidal torques). If there

9 Critics in his own time were right in saying that he had not given a full explanation of how the resonances came about. Such an explanation is in principle impossible. 10 But it is worth noting that the location of formed fatty acid vesicles might be intrinsically unpredictable because their nuclei of condensation might depend on chaotic fluctuations in the densities of their distribution in water. Emergence in Dynamical Systems 31 is a novel property, it is synchronization. This is certainly not radically novel like life or mind, but perhaps it is a beginning. It is worth noting that despite their unpredictability, planetary resonances are diagnosable in the sense that once they are established, we can treat them as type I or III systems. I use “diagnosable” technically to mean that given the system laws – gravity and tidal dissipation, in this case—states of the system can be calculated to an arbitrarily high degree of accuracy. The resonant state is diagnosable, but its ancestral states are not fully diagnosable. In particular, planetary resonances do not appear to be complexly organized. In fact, they do not seem to be complex at all. Furthermore, there is no clear sense in which there is anything that we might call levels or wholes that emerge out of some underlying basis. So on a scale of emergence they are not weakly emergent, because they are not predictable, but they are not strongly emergent either, because they do not form wholes, and aggregativity is not relevant because they do not even seem to aggregate (or not to aggregate) anything. I think, however, that despite their simplicity, they can be worked into the same category as other, more paradigmatic type IV systems. There are fairly simple systems that do clearly have the properties of non-aggregativity and of forming wholes. Self-organizing systems, after Prigogine, are dissipative systems that use some of their dissipated energy to form order within themselves, where this order is at a larger scale than any order that existed before. Examples are eddies and cyclones, but classic examples are Bénard cells and slime molds. In all of these cases, small fluctuations are promoted to larger scale order at what is clearly a higher level, one that contains and constrains motions of the parts at a lower level. The higher level properties that form cannot be predicted knowing only the lower level properties. These lower level properties constrain what can happen at the higher level, but the higher level also constrains what happens at the lower level. Because of these higher-level constraints, possibilities become available that would not be available without them. It is worthwhile looking in some detail at the Bénard cell system. This is a fluid in a container with a lid (to avoid surface effects) heated gently from below. As the heat differential from the bottom to the top is increased, there is a relatively sudden change from conduction of heat through the fluid to convection. It is possible to calculate the transition point from the properties of the fluid by comparing the equations of motion of the molecules of the 32 John Collier fluid and their pairwise (local) interactions with the equations of motion of the fluid in the convecting state. The two are equal at the transition point. The convecting state cannot be computed (in principle) from the equations of motion for the molecules (though interesting computational models can be made). We have to know that there is a convecting state in order to compare the two states and derive the transition point.11 There is no known way to derive a convecting state from the microscopic movements of molecules or local fluid dynamics, but we can give an intuitive explanation. It is very likely impossible due to (a) the impossibility of solving the equations of motion and (b) likely chaos at the molecular level. Nonetheless, we can get a pretty good understanding of what is going on. There are fluctuations in density in the system. These fluctuations are larger the higher the temperature. There is also viscosity that creates cohesion among the molecules of the fluid (or we may think of the fluid as intrinsically cohesive). As the temperature gradient is increased, there are larger regions of greater and lesser density. These regions are either buoyant or the opposite, respectively. The viscosity of the fluid holds these regions together against their tendency to disperse thermodynamically. As the regions grow larger, this tendency overcomes the dispersive tendency and the buoyant regions float upwards, while the denser regions sink. Because of the close constraints on the experimental conditions, regular cells form. The transition is thermodynamically stable, because it minimizes entropy production, basically following the path of least resistance. Viscosity, buoyancy and gravity make convection possible. Thermodynamic stability maintains it. It is tempting to call Bénard cells emergent except for one thing, and that is that they are not unexpected. From our past knowledge of fluids we expect to see whorls and convection cells, so it is not surprising to find convection in Bénard cells. In fact, they were designed and studied just because we expected them to convect. Unlike planetary resonances, there is only one final state possible, given the design of the system. On the other hand, we are concerned with ontological emergence, not merely the surprisingly or unexpectedly new. Perhaps Bénard cells have the right dynamical properties to be emergent by sharing the required properties with other emergent systems. There is a clear sense in which Bénard cells are like

11 For mathematical and intuitive details in more depth, see (Collier and Banerjee 2000). Emergence in Dynamical Systems 33 type IV systems: They are organized at a higher level, and their organization is deep in the sense that computing their surface structure from the dynamics of their components is at best highly non-trivial. It is worth noting at this point that my description of the Mercury-Sun resonance was over-simplified. In fact, it is a very weakly dissipative system. Gravitational influences from other planets cause perturbations from the perfect 3-2 resonance; however, tidal dissipation brings the resonance back (the perturbation times are so slow compared to the relaxation back to resonance, that Mercury basically maintains the resonance continuously, but the principle of continuous dissipation to maintain the resonant state holds). All resonances are subject to external perturbations.

Dynamical Emergence

As I have said, self-reorganizing systems are not emergent in any but a weak sense, since they are reducible, and any novelty, such as it is, is predictable in principle (at least statistically). Self-organizing systems are different. Yet the steady state of convection in Bénard cells is diagnosable (the equations of motion for convection are solvable), as are the steady states of planetary resonances. The main differences are that Bénard cells have only one final state, whereas planetary resonances have multiple possible final states, and that Bénard cell convection cannot be computed from only the molecular dynamics, whereas resonant motion can. In one case, we have diachronic predictability, but not form the lower level; in the other case, exactly the opposite. On the other hand, in both cases we have truly novel properties appearing, albeit relatively simple. This leads to the question of what is the same across the two sorts of cases. Although neither case seems to be like paradigmatic cases of emergence, like life or mind, perhaps a common property is essential to emergent systems. Hamiltonian systems as they are commonly understood have an overall force function that is holonomic; i.e., dependent only on the position coordinates and time if and only if the force is conservative, an example being particles in a gravitational field. It is possible that component forces are not conservative, but their combination must be. Energy being constant is also holonomic, as it depends only trivially on position coordinates and time. In general, if a system is holonomic, it can do no virtual work, because 34 John Collier all virtual displacements are perpendicular to the forces of the constraints, so there is (or would be) no force on them. This is really just another way of saying that the Hamiltonian of holonomic systems depends only on (appropriately chosen) generalized coordinates and energy. A result of this, as I indicated in the section above on predictability, is that holonomic systems are predictable, at least by numerical methods.12 This is of central importance to the theory of dynamical emergence, as I will argue below. The Bénard cell and resonance cases, being essentially dissipative in their dynamics, do not have constant system energy, since some leaves the system through dissipation. They are thus non-holonomic and cannot be dealt with by standard methods. This is true of both Bénard cells and the origin of the evolution of planetary resonances, simple as they are. For this reason, I include them with type IV systems, since they are more like them than any of the other three types of system. The characteristic of type IV systems, then, is not so much the amount of organization, but its irreducibly larger scale. An important characteristic of non-holonomic systems is that their equations of motion cannot be separated from their boundary conditions. Conrad and Matsuno (1990) make clear the consequences for dynamical systems:

Differential equations provide the major means of describing the dynamics of physical systems in both quantum and classical mechanics. The indubitable success of this scheme suggests, on the surface, that in principle it could be extended to a universal program covering all of nature. The problem is that the essence of a differential equation description is a separation of itself from the boundary conditions, which are regarded as arbitrary.

Conrad and Matsuno draw conclusions for the whole universe (they claim the method breaks down, but it must be compatible with “no boundary conditions” constraints on cosmological theories). More significant for present purposes is the breakdown of the separation of differential equations and boundary conditions in non-integrable systems, exactly the ones that are non-holonomic (in which constraints like boundary conditions cannot

12 The argument is given in a more technical form in (Collier 2008a). See also Hooker (2012). Emergence in Dynamical Systems 35 be separated from their dynamics). In these systems, computation from partwise interactions fails, and the system is in a sense holistic. In any case, its dynamics cannot be reduced to the dynamics and partwise relations. This is one of the conditions for emergence. Non-integrability also implies some sort of unpredictability as I have defined it. Note that inseparability applies in both the Bénard cell and planetary resonance cases. The origin of the cells in the first case cannot be understood in terms of boundary conditions (gravity, heat differential) alone; the formation of the cells creates new boundary conditions on the cells (a macro constraint) that cannot be computed from relations of the parts (molecules) alone. In the planetary resonance case, the formation of the resonance changes the boundary conditions by adding a new constraint (resonance). This is the common feature. It is generally recognized that standard Hamiltonian systems are mechanical (mechanistic). This idea is summed up by their holonomic character, in an engineer’s sense that all their constraints can be expressed algebraically and are basically geometric. Non-holonomic systems, on the other hand, must have a constraint that is expressed as a rate of change, so their form cannot be integrated into an algebraic form and they cannot be understood geometrically. Some examples of non-holonomic systems are a rolling wheel (friction matters) or whirlwinds. A wheel can undergo a sudden change of state when it goes into a skid; a whirlwind dies if it loses its sustaining energy differential. These indicate two central features of emergent systems: relatively sudden changes of the state space, and the necessity of dissipation in understanding the dynamics. These two characteristics also hold of the examples of planetary resonance (resonance arises rapidly in astronomical time) and Bénard cells. Some systems are non-Hamiltonian, but are nearly Hamiltonian. We can deal with such systems with approximations. This is a common method, using a version of perturbation theory. Other non-Hamiltonian systems step rapidly from one state to another (rapidity is relative here). The dynamics of these systems can be analyzed by comparing the micro- and known macro-mechanics, along with knowledge of the transition, and by treating the transformation as a step function. This is how Bénard cells were in fact analyzed. However, there is a large range of systems that are not close to step functions or close to smooth Hamiltonian systems. I conjecture that this sort of radically non-Hamiltonian behavior underlies all emergence. In particular: 36 John Collier

1. The system must be non-holonomic, implying that the system is non-integrable (this ensures non-reducibility). 2. The system is energetically (and/or informationally) open (boundary conditions are dynamic). 3. The system has multiple attractors (the Bénard cell has two). 4. The characteristic rate of at least one property of the system is of the same order as the rate of the non-holonomic constraint (radically non-Hamiltonian). 5. If at least one of the properties is an essential property of the system, the system is essentially non-reducible; it is thus an emergent system. I don’t claim that these conditions are independent; in fact I think they are not. I choose them because they are relatively easy to argue for in specific dynamical cases, and from that to emergence. I do claim, however, that the conditions are necessary and sufficient dynamical conditions for emergence. All are required for the emergence of systems, and all but the last for emergence of properties. If any condition above is violated (perhaps implying the violation of others), there is no emergence. To show necessity is fairly trivial. If condition 1 is violated, the system is at least numerically computable and hence predictable. If condition 2 is violated, the boundary conditions are fixed rather than dynamic, so they are holonomic. If condition 3 is violated, we can predict a single attractor, as we can for classic complex systems like the Lorenz attractor. If condition 4 is violated, then the system can be treated as approximately Hamiltonian, and it is predictable. If condition 5 is violated, there is no emergent property, perhaps just a chaotic system. Since none of these conditions are specific to the examples I have given, they apply to all cases. Together, I claim, the conditions are sufficient. So I have given necessary and sufficient (but probably not independent) dynamical conditions for non-reducibility and unpredictability. There might be worries at this point. Typical life and mind have been taken to be emergent. These seem to be novel in a way that my examples are not. Am I missing important properties of emergence? Living systems are functional in a way that nonliving systems are not. Mind has the additional property of consciousness. Although I have argued that Bénard cells and planetary resonance have novel properties (convection and resonance, respectively), perhaps these are not novel enough. They certainly do not seem to be on the same scale. Novelty is a tricky issue with dynamical Emergence in Dynamical Systems 37 emergence, since all of the causes are driven in some sense at the lower level. Given that conditions 1-5 are satisfied, the new property is not a sum of the properties of the components, either. There is something genuinely novel. In my own work, I have focused on cases in which the emergent entity is a system, rather than a system property, and I have called the fusion of the dynamical unity property of the system cohesion (Collier and Muller 1998; Collier and Hooker 1999). Both Bénard cells and resonances require cohesion for their central emergent property. Novelty, rather than being hard to get, is rather easy to achieve, and many systems have emergent properties that define them dynamically. This might be reflected in Broad’s view that water is emergent from its components (whether or not he was right about this).

The centrality of work

One of the things that is typical of living systems is that they do work on themselves in order to maintain themselves. The major currency for the cell, and consequently for known living systems, is ATP. It allows otherwise thermodynamically impossible chemical processes to occur (typically producing more organized states). Organization in living systems ensures that these processes contribute to the maintenance and growth of the system. Basically, an organism does work on itself in order to maintain the conditions for its continued existence. It does this by producing the boundary conditions required. This is a typical emergent process in which the dynamics of the system interact in both ways with the boundary conditions. I have argued elsewhere (Collier 2004; 2011) that the organization that contributes to the continued existence of the organism, which I call autonomy, is the dynamical identity of the organism. Anything that contributes to autonomy is biologically functional. This approach guarantees the “forward-looking” character of function by incorporating anticipation (Collier 2008b). A full explanation would be too long, but we can ask the question of whether functionality is emergent. Given the non-equilibrium and dissipative quality of life (required for it to do work on itself), life is surely emergent in my sense. Unfortunately, I do not know at this point if functionality itself is emergent in some further sense. I suspect so, since I see it to be a necessary property of autonomy, which emerges from the work done to maintain organization. However, if autonomy itself is a non-dynamic (static or steady state) network, 38 John Collier then its dynamics are fully diagnosable as outlined above. But if autonomy is dynamic, with new nodes forming and old ones disappearing, then it is a good candidate for emergence. I think the evidence favours the latter, but it would take me to far afield to recite all the evidence. The issue of consciousness is much more difficult, especially the notorious “hard problem” (Chalmers 1996). Terrence Deacon (2011), in a masterful work, makes some headway on this problem, but does not claim to have solved it. Obviously the brain itself is supported by dissipative processes and uses a very large percentage of the body’s energy consumption by weight. Presumably there is a lot of work done to maintain the nervous system, and this is especially important for maintaining thought. This does not show, however, that thought requires dissipation, let alone consciousness. If thought is strictly computational, as has been widely held,13 then it is reducible to its underlying processes (like all computation). Deacon argues that this leaves open questions about meaning and intention that are either presupposed, explaining nothing, or dismissed, explaining nothing. I will have to leave the issue here as far as analysis goes, but I do have a few observations. First, as with function, a steady state model of thought implies reducibility (of thought to its components), ruling out emergence. This position is implied by Fodor’s Language of Thought Hypothesis (Fodor 1975), as all the basic nodes are innate. As with function, the emergence in thought requires the formation and/or elimination of nodes. This is an empirical matter for which there is currently only ambiguous evidence. I have argued (Collier 2001) that if thought is not in equilibrium with its external conditions, an unexpected stimulus can cause it to reorganize around the new stimulus, accommodating it and thereafter being prepared for it to some degree. This would represent emergence in thought, though it must be said that the dynamical closure involves both the thinker and the environment, and there is a clear sense in which that whole is the locus of the emergence. Further work requires empirical studies.

13 The arguable view goes back to the Cartesians, like de La Mettrie, but re-emerged in the 20th Century with the invention of digital computers. It held sway for some time, but wilted under attacks concerning its capacity to explain meaning, something that Deacon has taken up. S. Edelman (2008) has revived the approach. Emergence in Dynamical Systems 39

Conclusions

Emergence has two forms, weak and strong. Although the weak version is interesting, it is the strong one that requires revision of many current views of the nature of things. The central properties of strong emergence, irreducibility, unpredictability, holism and novelty stem from the same source in computability. This source can be explained in dynamical terms. Strong emergence turns out not to be rare, but fairly common from physics on up, but clear examples even from biological function require more work, and even more so for psychological, mental and social sciences.

References

Allen, T. F. H. and Thonas, W. H. 1991. Toward a Unified Ecology. New York: Columbia University Press. Bar-Yam, Y. 2011. “Concepts: Emergence.” New England Complex Systems Institute: http://www.necsi.edu/guide/concepts/emergence.html (accessed 2012-12-05). Bedau, M. A. 1997. “Weak Emergence.” In: J. Tomberlin (ed.). Philosophical Perspectives: Mind, Causation and World. Malden, MA: Blackwell: 375–399. Bertalanffy, L. von. 1968. General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. New York: George Braziller. Blitz, D. 1992. Emergent Evolution: Qualitative Novelty and the Levels of Reality. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Broad, C. D. 1925. The Mind and its Place in Nature. Routledge and Kegan. Campbell, D. T. 1974. “‘Downward Causation’ in Hierarchically Organized Biological Systems.” In: F. J. Ayala and T. Dobzhansky (eds.). Studies in the Philosophy of Biology. New York: Macmillan. Chalmers, D. J. 1996. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chalmers, D. J. 2006. “Strong and Weak Emergence.” In: P. Clayton and P. Davies (eds.). The Re-emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 244–254. Originally published 2002 at http://consc.net/papers/emergence.pdf. Collier, J. 1996. “Information Originates in Symmetry Breaking.” Symmetry: Culture & Science 7: 247–256. 40 John Collier

______1999. “Causation is the Transfer of Information.” In: H. Sankey (ed.). Causation and Laws of Nature. Dordrecht: Kluwer: 279–331. ______2001. “Dealing with the Unexpected.” Partial Proceedings of CASYS 2000: Fourth International Conference on Computing Anticipatory Systems. International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems 10: 21–30. Leuven: CHAOS. ______2003. “Hierarchical Dynamical Information Systems with a Focus on Biology.” Entropy 5: 57–78. ______2004. “Interactively Open Autonomy Unifies Two Approaches to Tunction.” In: Computing Anticipatory Systems: CASY ’03—Sixth International Conference. Ed. by D. M. Dubois. American Institute of Physics Melville, New York. AIP Conference Proceedings 718: 228–235. ______2008a. “A Dynamical Account of Emergence.” Cybernetics and Human Knowing 15, 3–4: 75–86. ______2008b. “Simulating Autonomous Anticipation: The Importance of Dubois’ Conjecture.” Biosystems 91: 346–354. ______2011. “Explaining Biological Functionality: Is Control Theory Enough?” South African Journal of Philosophy 30, 1: 53–62. ______2012a. “Information, Causation and Computation.” In: G. Dodig Crnkovic and M. Burgin (eds.). Information and Computation: Essays on Scientific and Philosophical Understanding of Foundations of Information and Computation. Singapore: World Scientific. ______2012b. “Holism and Emergence: Dynamical Complexity Defeats Laplace’s Demon.” South African Journal of Philosophy 30: 229–243. Collier, J. and Hooker, C.A. 1999. “Complexly Organized Dynamical Systems.” Open Systems and Information Dynamics 6: 241–302. Collier, J. and Banerjee, M. 2000. “Bénard Cells: A Model Dissipative System.” Unpublished presentation at Emergence, Complexity, Hierarchy, Organization conference. Espoo, Finland, August 2000. http://web.ncf.ca/collier/papers/ BC-ECHOIV.pdf. Collier, J. and Muller, S. 1998. “The Dynamical Basis of Emergence in Natural Hierarchies.” In: G. Farre and T. Oksala (eds.). Emergence, Complexity, Hierarchy and Organization, Selected and Edited Papers from the ECHO III Conference. Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica, MA91. Espoo: Finish Academy of Technology. Emergence in Dynamical Systems 41

Conrad, M. and Matsuno, K. 1990. “The Boundary Condition Paradox: A Limit to the Universality of Differential Equations.” Applied Mathematics and Computation 37: 67–74. Davies, P. and Gregersen, N. H. (eds.). 2010. Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deacon, T. W. 2011. Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Edelman, S. 2008. Computing the Mind: How the Mind Really Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fodor, J. A. 1975. The Language of Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Forrest, S. 1991. Emergent Computation: Self-organizing, Collective, and Cooperative Phenomena in Natural and Artificial Computing Networks. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gillespie, C. C. with collaboration of Fox, R. and Grattan-Guiness, I. 1997. Pierre Simon Laplace, 1794–1827: A Life in Exact Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hooker, C. A. 2012. “On the Import of Constraints in Complex Dynamical Systems.” Foundations of Science. DOI 10.1007/s10699-012-9304-9. Humphreys, P. 1997. “How Properties Emerge.” Philosophy of Science 64: 1–17. Kauffman, S. 1995. At Home in the Universe. New York: Oxford University Press. Kim, J. 1978. “Supervenience and Nomological Incommensurables.” American Philosophical Quarterly 15: 149–156. ______2005. Physicalism or Something Near Enough. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kincaid, H. 1987. “Supervenience doesn’t Entail Reducibility.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 25: 343–356. Mill, J. S. 1843. System of Logic. London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer. [8th ed., 1872]. Muller, S. J. 2007. Asymmetry: The Foundation of Information. Berlin: Springer- Verlag. Nagel, E. 1961. The Structure of Science. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. Rosen, R. 1991. Life Itself: A Comprehensive Inquiry into The Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life. New York: Columbia University Press. 42 John Collier

Smith, J. D. H. 1999. “Wreath Products along the Perioddoubling Route to Chaos.” Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems 19: 1617–1636. Wimsatt, W. 1995. “The Ontology of Complex Systems.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 20: 564–590. ______2007. Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wong, Hong Yu. 2006. “Emergents from Fusion.” Philosophy of Science 73: 345–367. „Analiza i Egzystencja” 24 (2013) ISSN 1734-9923

PIOTR (PETER) BOLTUC*

NON-HOMOGENOUS MORAL SPACE (FROM BENTHAM TO SEN)

Abstract

The notion of moral space covers all thin (universal) and thick (particular) characteristics that may plausibly be seen as morally relevant. In this paper, I investigate certain properties of moral space so defined. These properties are not easily visible if we analyze moral characteristics individually, but become clear once we consider them collectively. In particular, following Amartya Sen, I claim that the value of moral properties is, in part, a function of positional characteristics. I call this notion the non-homogeneity of moral space.1

Keywords: moral space, non-homogenous space, special obligations, Sen, Pargetter, consequence based moral evaluation

* Piotr (Peter) Boltuc—Endowed Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of Philosophy, University of Illinois at Springfield. Co-editor: International Journal of Machine Consciousness; Editor, Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers of the American Philosophical Association. Areas of Research: Machine Consciousness; Ethics of Special Moral Obligations. Competency: E-Learing. Professor of online learning, Warsaw School of Economics (SGH). Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Poznań University (UAM). E-mail: [email protected]. 1 My paper entitled “Moral Space and Moral Luck and Realistic Obligation” is devoted to the issue of discontinuity of moral space—understood as the property which allows for moral luck. It was given to the International Society for Value Inquiry (with the World Congress of Philosophy) on Aug. 12, 1998. After many years, I now come back to this issue. 44 Piotr Boltuc

Definition of moral space

Moral space may be understood as the set of moral options, similar to a logical space of possibilities, which includes whatever considerations may be morally relevant. There are many other, loosely related understandings of moral space. According to Tilghman, moral space is understood, somewhat metaphorically, as an arena of action. Tilghman claims that aesthetic space—for instance a fictitious space in a painting—brings about a moral aspect, which may be called the ‘moral space’ of an artwork.2 Another quite intuitive use of the term ‘moral space’ heavily stresses its spatial aspect, defining it asthe part of physical space inhabited by human beings. Moral space, so conceived, provides a potential moral value to states of affairs taking place in it. Moral space that satisfies this definition can be calledethos in its Heideggerian interpretation as the space where living creatures dwell.3 Moral space also may be understood as a domain within the institutional setup of a society which allows for “shared moral deliberation” (Walker).4 Finally, it can be understood as a geographic or architectural location that is particularly hospitable to moral conversations; for instance, the Agora in the architecture of Ancient Athens. The latter two senses of ‘moral space’ refer to a social or geographical space (room) good for ethical deliberation, whereas the understanding of ‘moral space’ that I present is closer to a more abstract notion of “space” that is created by ethics. More precisely, it is a logical space created by the sum of the properties identified as moral.

Non-homogeneity of Moral Space

Let me introduce the following definition of ‘non-homogeneity.’ Any moral space in which (the) moral value (of an act) changes as a function of its

2 Tilghman (1988) claims that Caravaggio’s space is “largely constituted by the human figure as an acting moral force.” This means that aesthetic characteristics of space in Caravaggio’s paintings can be fully appreciated only under the condition that we take into account the moral aspect of the human beings he represents. 3 This definition of moral space may be extended to other living creatures when understood as persons. 4 Walker (1993). A moral thinker in this conception is envisaged as a “mediator in the moral conversation taking place” within moral spaces. Non-Homogenous Moral Space 45 positional characteristics, such as distance from the moral agent (in a relevant sense of the notion of the distance in moral space, to be defined below), will be termed non-homogeneous moral space. Alternatively, if moral space is homogeneous, moral value is independent of positional characteristics. To put it differently, a set of moral properties is non-homogeneous if at least one property which is a member of this set is relative to positional characteristics, and it is homogeneous otherwise. We may also speak of homogeneity and non-homogeneity of moral theories. By this terminological convention, a theory is homogeneous if it rejects any limitations of the extension of its moral maxims (if applied to the moral agents who enjoy the same moral status, e.g., to human beings). This means that in such a theory, all moral requirements pertain to every person if he or she finds herself in relevantly similar circumstances. Theories such as J. S. Mill’s utilitarianism and Kant’s theory of perfect duties, on their standard interpretations, are homogeneous, whereas Aristotle’s ethics of friendship is non-homogenous.

The inherent value clause

For a theory to be non-homogeneous, the positional (or, in particular, indexical) reasons it accepts cannot be purely instrumental. For instance, J. S. Mill accepts partiality towards one’s kin and friends, which is a characteristic of non-homogenous theories; yet, he does so merely on rule utilitarian grounds. Mill believes that people are better motivated to maximize the general utility if the people they are trying to help are their kin (Mill 1979). But the overarching goal of Mill’s ethics is to promote the greatest utility for the greatest number of people. Hence, his moral theory is best characterized as homogenous since the agent-relative value it incorporates is not inherent but instrumental. This consideration leads us directly to the Inherent Value Clause: For a theory to be non-homogenous, it must accept inherent agent-relative moral value.5 A theory which maintains that, other things being equal, parents (rather than social workers or strangers) should read stories to their children

5 This is the issue I discussed in my paper at the Inherent and Instrumental Value conference, organized by this society at D’Ouville College several years ago. 46 Piotr Boltuc because this tends to make children happier—is still a homogenous moral theory. This is because the agent-relative rule according to which these are people who should read stories to their children, is accepted only in so far as it maximizes general utility more than any alternative arrangements. Sen calls this kind of merely instrumental agent-relativity by the name of ‘doer- -relativity.’6 In contrast, common sense moral intuitions seem to indicate that in some circumstances it is morally wrong tout court to disregard certain positional characteristics of moral agents. The fact that X is my friend may justifiably influence my action towards her, even if this action is not justifiable on universal grounds (whether deontic, act- or rule-utilitarian, or otherwise). According to the inherent value clause, only theories that adopt the stance that positional characteristics may influence the inherent moral value of one’s action (viewer-relativity and self-evaluation relativity in Sen’s classification) will be seen as non-homogeneous.

Propinquity

An unexpected example of a moral property that leads to the non- homogeneity of a theory of which it is a part is Jeremy Bentham’s notion of propinquity. In his discussion of the circumstances relevant for estimating the value of pleasure or pain with reference to a single person, Bentham mentions the following characteristics: intensity, duration, certainty and, finally, “propinquity or remoteness” (Bentham).7 By propinquity, Bentham means something other than the certainty or uncertainty of future pleasure, which he mentions as a separate characteristic. Hence, uncertainty is not the only factor that is able to change our attitude toward a given pleasure in the distant future in comparison to a present one. There is, Bentham claims, another factor that could make my 20 utiles today more valuable to me than 27 utiles next year; this is just the proximity of my pleasure today that makes it more valuable to me today than a somewhat stronger pleasure in the distant future.

6 I present Sen’s position later in this paper, in the section on Sen’s conception of agent-relativity. 7 Bentham (1948, ch. 4, sec. 2). Non-Homogenous Moral Space 47

Bentham’s criterion of propinquity has been a source of puzzlement for many philosophers, especially utilitarians. Parfit refers to C. I. Lewis’s characterization of propinquity (his principle of fractional prudence) as clearly irrational.8 A resolute rejection of propinquity by contemporary utilitarians comes in part due to historic reasons; in particular, Immanuel Kant’s influence on Mill.9 Propinquity violates a general tenet of later utilitarianism that we may call “neutrality among the indexical characteristics of different pleasures and pains.” The value of pleasure and pain is not supposed to depend on its temporal and spatial location or on the characteristics of a particular agent.10 This position is quite consistent with later utilitarians’ general distrust of agent-relativity and their model of adopting homogenous moral space. There is a tidy way to demonstrate the connection between Bentham’s propinquity in time and agent-relativity. The argument is Parfitian in style.11 If I give credence to propinquity, I care more about experiences of mine now than about my experiences in the distant future. This attitude could be seen as violating the criterion of impartiality among different agents, since by caring more about my present pleasure and pain I treat my future and present self (different “momentary selves”) unequally. This is how propinquity in time may be seen as leading to a form of unequal concern for different moral patients.12 I shall adopt a broad definition ofpropinquity by which it includes not only proximity in time and geographical space, but also social proximity, which Robert Pargetter calls, somewhat misleadingly, by the name of kinship.

8 Similar objections have been raised towards generalized propinquity, which I introduce below. (It is similar to Sidgwick’s “duty of neighbourhood.”) He acknowledges that “one cannot easily sympathize with each individual in a multitude” and that “one sympathizes more easily with one’s like.” But, he claims, “[t]he duty of neighbourhood seems … only a particular application of the duty of general benevolence or humanity.” Sidgwick (1981, p. 251). 9 See Mill (1979, pp. 325–326). 10 See Parfit (1984, pp. 117–136). 11 It refers indirectly to the criteria of continuity and connectedness in personal identity. 12 John Cotthingam claims, to the contrary, that this may be a rather healthy approach. (Cothingham1988). 48 Piotr Boltuc

Pargetter’s kinship argument

In a generally overlooked article on moral kinship, Pargetter13 demonstrates why ‘proximity’, cast in terms of morally relevant ties, is an important moral feature. Denotation of his term kinship incorporates friendship, family ties, networks of friends and various kinds of communities. Even Sidgwick (a utilitarian) agrees that non-homogenous moral theories—his Common Sense Morality—provide the best approximation of our everyday moral intuitions. As Pargetter points out, although we have a general moral intuition that teaches that to help someone is a good thing, we also have more paticularist moral intuitions that require a much stronger commitment to help “if the person involved is our spouse, or child, or a close friend.” It goes “against our entire moral fibre to decide to help the stranger rather than our spouse or child or friend.”14 Traditional universalist ethics, which relies on general moral properties, is hard-pressed to accommodate these intuitions. This is a special problem for consequentialism.15 One customary reply of moral universalists is that ethics is a domain of universal rational claims, while intuitions which point to the contrary are subjective and hence either confused or irrelevant. Such a regulative definition of ethics is unpersuasive16 since it does not grasp an important point espoused by Pargetter. He notes that feelings that we have moral obligations toward certain particular persons that are stronger than those held towards others “are as strong and basic as any we experience. If these are to be put aside, why not others?”17 The last point is important since, as Pargetter argues in the same article, every system of ethics starts with some intuitive assumptions and therefore there is no reason to treat some of these intuitions as privileged over the others. Within the theory presented by Pargetter, the strength of our moral obligations varies according to our closeness to particular persons in a given situation. (Interestingly, my closeness to different persons “in the kinship

13 Pargetter (1991). 14 Ibid. 15 Henceforth, I discuss primarily the consequentialist form of moral universalism. 16 Moreover, this reply is not available to moral particularists, or indeed to the followers of most forms of intuitionist moral realism. I return to this point later in this paper. 17 Pargetter (1991, p. 346). Non-Homogenous Moral Space 49 sense” is based on different types of kinship—e.g., professional friendship, family ties or shared religious affiliation—and the strength of each varies under different circumstances.) Pargetter’s approach leaves us without a homogeneous theory of what is good, all things considered, independently of any particular features of a situation. As Pargetter put it, “[t]he fundamental judgments of goodness and badness will be relativized to a person at a time,”18 so that moral judgments depend on positional properties. Pargetter’s relativistic, or rather relationistic, approach does not lead to moral skepticism, egoism or vulgar relativism19. His moral theory, which is a sophisticated version of utilitarianism, is closer to Einstein’s relativity theory in physics than to moral skepticism of any sort, since it allows us to specify well-defined moral duties. It differs from universalistic theories since the well-defined duties present in this theory are relative to the frames of reference in which they are assessed. (Such frames of reference may be provided by non-universal, agent relative characteristics, such as X’s position in the social network, for instance, by his friendships). No description of moral duties is complete if it fails to specify the reference frame in which it is assessed, just like, for instance, position of an object in Einstein’s physics cannot be assessed in abstraction from its physical reference frame. According to a relationistic (rather than relativistic, which sounds like moral relativism) moral theory, it may be morally good of me to help Frank, a friend of mine, instead of helping Paul, who is a stranger to me but a friend to you, while it may be good of you to do the opposite, because of the objectively existing ties of kinship. Consequently, in a relationistic moral theory the existence of special ties among given persons entails a certain special duty, or reason, to take their good into account as more important than the good of others.20 I shall develop this view a little further. The special duty of kinship (or neighborliness) changes the features of moral space

18 Ibid., p. 354. 19 By the fact that Pargetter is not a primitive relativist I understand that he does not claim, as do many students taking their first classes in ethics, that certain things are good for Jack if Jack believes that they are good for him (or, if they accord with “Jack’s values”, or with the values of “Jack’s society”), whereas other things are good for Jane if they accord with “her values.” 20 Obviously, such situation leads to inter-personal moral dilemmas. I discuss this issue in the next section. 50 Piotr Boltuc

(defined as a set of morally relevant properties).21 Moral reasons are not impartial over the identities of moral agents and moral patients. Moral ties or, as Pargetter calls them, “objective morally relevant relations of kinship,” produce stronger moral obligations among certain persons and groups than among others. Hence, moral ties can be envisaged as fields, similar in structure to magnetic fields in physics which bind vectors of forces acting in physical space. The moral space, then, is non-homogeneous, creating curved vectors of moral obligation around certain agents. Is such a moral theory plausible? It would seem clearly implausible unless we had an agent-relative conception of value at our disposal. The structure of such a theory can be best understood using Sen’s analysis of agent-relativity.

Sen’s agent-relativity

Sen does not actually commit himself to accepting agent-relativity of value, but rather considers, with a sympathetic eye, what formal consequences follow from arguments for agent-relativity “if they are accepted.”22 Within an agent-relative system, the goodness of a state of affairs depends intrinsically “on the position of the evaluator in relation to the state.” The statement, “y is morally good,” is like the statement, “the sun is setting”: Its truth value depends on the position of observation. Hence, “morally good” is a two-place predicate (y is morally good from position Q), whereas “morally better” is even a three-place predicate (y is morally better than x from position Q). What philosophers refer to as agent-relative values actually constitute several categories with different formal characteristics. Sen distinguishes three types of agent-relativity, defined as negations of the following neutrality claims: Doer neutrality (DN): Person i may do this act if and only if person i may permit person j to do this act. Ai(i) <=> Ai(j).

21 Moral space can be defined, more precisely, as the complete collective set of properties of those weakly intentional actions which affect persons. 22 Sen (1983, p. 208). Non-Homogenous Moral Space 51

Viewer neutrality (VN): Person i may do this act if and only if person j may permit person i to do this act. Ai(i) <=> Aj(i).

Self-evaluation neutrality (SN): Person i may do this act if and only if person j may do this act. Ai(i) <=> Aj(j). Sen has discovered an interesting formal regularity. These three kinds of agent-neutrality are bilaterally dependent on each other, which means that any one form of agent-relativity entails one other form: “[I]f any one type of agent-relativity is satisfied, at least one other type of relativity will also obtain.”23 Let me concentrate on the second, most radical kind of agent-relativity. Viewer-relative valuation of outcomes is sensitive to differences in the positions that different people occupy vis a vis states to be evaluated. Since these positions may differ, it may happen that “different people [correctly] evaluate the same state differently.”24 Morality recommends different and, on some occasions, incompatible solutions because moral statements are “positional.” By positional statements, Sen understands statements “reflecting the view of the state from the position of the evaluator.”25 He defines function Gki(x), which can be read: “the moral value that in the opinion of person k (parameter) should be appropriately attached to state x (variable) by person i (variable).”26 Sen’s analysis encounters a few serious objections. As Donald Regan observes, the judgments of goodness-from-a-point-of-view must have two properties. First, “they must have significance beyond the immediate context of choosing and judging acts.” Second, they must be “essentially and ineradicably relative.”27

23 Sen calls these characteristics ‘bilaterally independent,’ but, as Ellen Paul has pointed out to me, this terminology makes little sense, since bilateral dependency is what Sen actually demonstrates. Ibid., p. 206. 24 Ibid., p. 213. 25 Ibid., p. 219. 26 Ibid., p. 216. I gather that the word ‘opinion’ in this sentence should be understood as equivalent to ‘a proper moral judgment’; otherwise, Sen would fail to avoid a form of vulgar moral relativism (opinion-relativism), which is his intention. 27 Ibid., p. 102. 52 Piotr Boltuc

Regan’s first point of criticism of Sen’s approach is that “divergent points of view require conflict.”28 This issue can be formulated as a problem of interpersonal moral dilemmas, which emerge if agent A has the best moral reason to do X and agent B has the best moral reason to do Y, while X and Y are practically incompatible and there is no overarching value V such that we could adjudicate between X and Y (Sinnott-Armstrong). Replying to this objection, Sen declares, plausibly, that the absence of conflict would not be a merit of a moral theory if we accept moral realism.29 Yet, if such a theory is supposed to describe moral obligations that are independent of this theory, and the obligations actually conflict, a moral theory should not skirt this conflict.30 This question does not emerge for a moral anti-realist (or non-cognitivist) like Bernard Gert. But if we believe that there are moral truths to be discovered and that ethics is not a well-entrenched, internalized system of social coordination, Sen’s reply is satisfactory.31 Regan’s other objection is based on his claim that moral judgments, unlike aesthetic judgments, face the following problem. Once we abandon the perspective of universal benevolence, it is not clear why an agent should evaluate a situation from his/her point of view rather than from the point of view of another person. This is a serious objection, which amounts to asking why anybody should act on agent-relative reasons (and whether this obligation is agent-relative as well). There are different ways to tackle this objection. One could try to adopt a complex framework that includes agent- relative and agent-neutral reasons.32 In such a framework, agent-neutral

28 Regan (1983, p. 107). 29 Sen accepts moral realism. He argues: “[W]e are not discussing the choice of an instrument. If the correct view happens to incorporate inter-positional differences and conflict, then clearly it will be incorrect to insist on absence of conflicts” (Sen 1983, p. 126). Yet, he is somewhat agnostic on the issue of moral cognitivism, which may need to be reformulated if we adopt “the positional interpretation of moral statements” (ibid., p. 118). 30 Ibid., p. 118. 31 Ibid., pp. 114–115. In the last part of this paper, I address a further issue that follows from this point which has been raised by Derek Parfit, but (Boltuc 2007) is devoted primarily to this problem. 32 In a paper, “Death of the Impartial Spectator,” presented for discussion at various colloquia, but never finished for publication, I call this approach “meta-impartial observer theory.” I am grateful to David Schmidtz, Henry West and David Sobel, who gave me helpful comments on this issue. Non-Homogenous Moral Space 53 reasons may not override the agent-relative ones. If they did, my inherent value clause would not be satisfied and an interpersonal dilemma would not be generated. Instead, the agent-neutral rules must be placed at a meta-level at which they are the objective rules of the game that each player has to follow, but the rules do not decide before the game which player should win; the actual play is to decide this. Within such a meta-ethical structure one would have to justify why agent-relativity is to be tolerated (one could refer to reasons of personal integrity or autonomy, if one were to build such an argument further). But this reply seems to be missing an important point. The gist of the problem (at least insofar as Sen’s criterion of viewer-relativity is concerned) is that there is no a priori privileged reference frame to adjudicate among different agent-relative and agent-neutral values.33 If there is no such privileged reference frame, we do not know what the basis of normativity of these various so-called values is, which is the point of Regan’s objection. Sen’s reply to Regan’s objection is simpler; it is based on an ethics of identity. The reply starts directly with the idea that personal identity34—for instance, one’s role as a parent, a friend or a compatriot—results in objective moral reasons. This move shifts justification to normative philosophical anthropology: Reasons come with social roles. Moreover, Sen emphasizes that people are not free to choose moral norms incompatible with their social role. The fact that an agent is not free to follow an ethos unbecoming of his/her social identity is an objective fact, just like any other facts in the world. If somebody is John’s mother or a head-physician in a hospital, he or she must follow one of a cluster of ethical directives compatible with their identities. And if John is the patient, those clusters are not identical. Also, if the same person is both the mother and the physician, a third cluster is created that incorporates some of the rights and duties from the previous sets of moral obligations, but not all of them; professional ethics deals with those kinds of issues. Those specific, and often conflicting, identities provide

33 Having attempted to pursue this path in my earlier conference paper (“Is It Sometimes Required Morally to Be Partial”, American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, Seattle 1996), I moved on to endorsing Sen’s solution to this problem based on Ch. Taylor and A. Macintyre’s version of ethics of identity. 34 Charles Taylor’s approach fits with Sen’s at this point. 54 Piotr Boltuc bearers of these roles with reasons to view situations from the point of view of the appropriate person. Another vital aspect of Sen’s theory, which I am unable to discuss in any detail within the confines of this paper, is his ‘mixed framework’ of broad consequentialism that combines deontic and consequentialist reasons in the moral calculus. Sen claims that although agent-neutrality has been a feature of consequentialism because of historic contingencies, there is nothing in the very structure of consequence-based moral theories that would require agent-neutrality. Sen’s mixed framework, called “the system of consequence- based evaluation” or “broad consequentialism,” in which value has been defined in mixed consequentialist-deontic terms (such as “goal-rights”), closely approximates Pargetter’s version of utilitarianism presented in the paper on kinship and, importantly, it fits with popular intuitions.35 Let me draw some conclusions from this discussion: It seems that Regan’s objection is detrimental to Pargetter’s point that there are objective, morally relevant relations (such as kinship), since there seems to be no privileged point of view from which this claim can be established. Yet, Sen’s reply in terms of ethics of identity is immune to this criticism. Regan’s objection may be able to force Sen into a corner, which makes his position less than plausible on other counts. Although an ethics of identity would be endorsed by such writers as Michael Walzer, Charles Taylor, Alastair MacIntyre and Virginia Held, it is rejected by many mainstream moral theorists who follow Locke’s (or Kant’s) universal definition of moral agents. It is not clear that a defense of non-homogeneity of moral space needs to rely on a vision of personal identity (social identity) implied by an ethics of identity, but an argument to this effect goes beyond the scope of this paper36. The goal of this paper is more modest: It is to demonstrate that the structure of a theory that accepts non-homogenous moral space is generally defensible even though such a defense may lack a plausible level of generality.

35 Incidentally, if Sen is right, Jonathan Dancy seems mistaken in believing that agent- relative consequentialism cannot be achieved. See J. Dancy (1993). 36 I discuss some of those broader social issues in Boltuc (2001), which presents a somewhat more popular version of the gist of the current argument. Non-Homogenous Moral Space 55

Parfit’s Self-Defeatingness Argument

Sen’s positional interpretation of morality does not escape the problem faced by any version of Common Sense Morality (i.e., morality that ascribes a special value to particular moral ties). This is the problem with practical consistency. This problem has been given a detailed discussion by D. Parfit in terms of the theory of rationality. Parfit agrees that although Common Sense Morality generates interpersonal moral dilemmas, it does not fail in its own terms. This is because it contains a version of viewer-relativity, which defines its objective from a viewer-relative point of view and does not claim to adjudicate among different agents. However, he argues that such a system violates broader rationality.37 Parfit’s main criticism of Common Sense Morality is that it produces the following situation: (1) It gives different agents different aims; (2) the achievement of each person’s aims partly depends on what other people do; yet, (3) “what each does will not affect what these others do.”38 Actually, Parfit should have also covered cases of direct competition which are clearly allowed by conditions (1) and (2). In these cases, “what each agent does” will affect what others do in a negative way.39 He argues that agent- relative theories, both Common Sense Morality and Self-Interest Theory,40 are directly collectively self-defeating because the goals they give to an agent may collide with those given to others and therefore frustrate the goals of the first agent. To put it simply, Parfit claims that Common Sense Morality leads to the frustration of more goals (accepted by it) than would be frustrated by the adoption of an impartial system of ethics. I argue that this is a contingent claim dependent on particulars of the situation and on the method of evaluation of these goals. In particular, Parfit’s approach prejudges the case by providing goals with assigned agent-neutral value (as opposed, for instance, to doer-relative evaluations of various states of affairs). Let us focus on a different problem, though.

37 This material is covered in: ibid. 38 Parfit (1984, p. 95). 39 Even in reference to coordination games, what Parfit shows later in this section is not that agents do not affect each other, but that (at least in some cases) they affect each other in the wrong way. 40 Self-Interest Theory is a version of moral egoism defined by Parfit. 56 Piotr Boltuc

In his critique of Common Sense Morality, Parfit has confused two separate, though closely linked, decision-theoretic problems: coordination problems below the edge of optimal solutions and zero-sum games on this edge.41 Those who accept non-homogeneous moral space need to agree that in some sub-domains of morality we face competitive situations. We talk about moral conflicts such that the moral reasons that agents have lead to practically incompatible actions and, in such situations, there are no more general principles given by morality that would take precedence over particular moral reasons of the agents. Hence, we lack a principle with the authority to adjudicate between their competing claims; this leads to moral competition. There is a certain problem with this position. Since such competitions among moral agents need to be adjudicated by non-moral means (hopefully fair ones),42 their results may be viewed as morally arbitrary. Such arbitrariness may be morally relevant only if we accept moral luck.43 Hence, it seems that a defense of non-homogenous moral theories requires us to accept moral luck; otherwise, Parfit’s point wins the day.44

41 Coordination (or non-zero sum) games are games in which all players can improve their situation. Therefore, they can benefit from cooperation. But in many games there exists the so called ‘edge of optimal solutions’—a set of situations in which the players cooperate so well that there are no further benefits from cooperation to be had. If the game is to continue after the edge of optimal solutions has been reached, it transforms itself into a perfectly competitive game. In perfectly competitive games (or distribution games), benefits of one player come at the expense of another player or group thereof. 42 Auctions, duels, major league baseball games and entrance exams to Harvard are examples of non-moral competitive games. Procedural fairness of these games is an ethical feature, but it does not make these games a part of ethics since fairness is just one of the circumstances in which the games may take place, whereas the substance of the games is non-moral. 43 This leads us not only the issue of moral luck, but also relates to the problem of moral responsibility in the context of the problem of free will, discussed well by R. Ingarden in his work On responsibility. 44 This is why it seems that non-homogeneity of moral space requires its discontinuity, which makes moral luck possible. But the issue of moral luck belongs to a different paper, “Moral Luck and Realistic Obligation,” which is my next, nearly finished project. Non-Homogenous Moral Space 57

Conclusion

My purpose is not to decide whether moral space is homogenous or not. It is rather to demonstrate that a discussion at the level of properties or sets of moral properties may be fruitful; homogeneity is just an example. If my argument is correct, I have established that according to a defensible moral theory such as Sen’s or Pargetter’s, the structure of moral reasons (or obligations) in an agent-relative theory is “curved” around agents or their groups. Consequently, in this framework, the moral obligations of agent A depend in part on positional characteristics (e.g., the identity of the moral patients toward whom she acts). Theories that accept this last assumption operate within a non-homogeneous set of moral properties; hence, this set exhibits some philosophically interesting properties.

References

Archard, D. 1995. “Moral Partiality.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 20. Aristotle 1980. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. T. Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett. Badhwar, N. K. (ed.). 1993. Friendship. New York: Cornell University Press. Bentham, J. 1948. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. New York: Hafner. Boltuc, P. 1990. “Person as a Locus of Permanence.” Dialectics and Humanism 2: 213–234. ______1995. “Does Equality Have an Independent Moral Value?” Dialogue and Universalism 123–155. ______2001. “Moral Neighborhoods.” Dialogue and Universalism: 117–133. ______2007. “Why Common Sense Morality is Not Collectively Self-Defeating.” Polish Journal of Philosophy 2: 19–39. ______2011. “Solidarity and Special Moral Obligations.” In: The Idea of Solidarity, G. McLean (series ed.), D. Dobrzanski (ed.), The Council of Research in Values and Philosophy, Washington D.C.: 83–96. Cardozo, N., Lopez, T. 1995. Between Silence and Speech: Essays on Jewish Thought. Northvale, NJ: Jason Arson Inc. Cottingham, J. 1988. “The Ethical Credentials of Partiality: Presidential Address.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society: 1–21. 58 Piotr Boltuc

Dancy, J. 1993. Moral Reasons. Oxford: Blackwell. Flanagan, O. 1991. Varieties of Moral Personality. Boston: Harvard University Press. Friedman, M. 1993. What Are Friends For? New York: Cornell University Press. Hooker, B. (ed.). 1996. Truth in Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell. Ingarden, R. 1983. “On Responsibility.” In: Man and Value. University of Michigan. Kraemer, E. “How Realistic Are ‘Realistic’ Obligations” (unpublished manuscript). Lévinas, E. 1994. Outside the Subject. Trans. M. B. Smith. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. McClennen, E. 1991. Rationality and Dynamic Choice: Foundational Explora tions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mill, J. S. 1979. Utilitarianism. Indianapolis: Hackett. Mitchell, J. C. 1969. “The Concept and Use of Social Networks.” In: Social Networks in Urban Situations. Manchester University Press. Nagel, T. 1979. Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ______1991. Equality and Partiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pargetter, R. 1991. “Kinship and Moral Relativity.” Philosophia (February). Plato 1997. “The Eutyphro”. In: The Collected Works of Plato. T. Irwin (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Porter, M. E. 1980. Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. London: Macmillan. Regan, D. 1983. “Against Evaluator Relativity: A Response to Sen.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12. Ryan, A. 1987. Utilitarianism and Other Essays. New York: Penguin Books. Saint-Exupéry, A. de. 1943. The Little Prince. Trans. K. Woods. New York: Harcourt. Scheffler, S. 1982. The Rejection of Consequentialism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ______1997. “Relationships and Responsibility.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 3. Sen, A. 1983. “Evaluator Relativity and Consequential Evaluation.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12. ______1988. “Rights and Agency.” In: Consequentialism and Its Critics. S. Scheffler (ed.). Oxford: Oxford Universtiy Press. Non-Homogenous Moral Space 59

Sidgwick, H. 1981. The Methods of Ethics. Cambridge: Hackett. Sinnott-Armstrong, W. 1998. “Particularism and Moral Epistemology” (author’s manuscript; a different version later published in Metaphilosophy). Statman, D. (ed.). 1993. Luck. New York: SUNY Press, 1–34. Tilghman, B. R. 1988. “Picture Space and Moral Space.” British Journal of Aesthetics 28. Waldron, J. 1993. “Special Ties and Natural Duties.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 22: 3–30. Walker, M. 1993. “Keeping Moral Space Open: New Images of Ethics Consulting.” Hastings Center Report 23. Williams, B. 1981. “Moral Luck.” In: idem, Moral Luck, Philosophical Papers 1973–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolf, E. 1966. “Kinship, Friendship, and Patron-Client Relations in Complex Societies.” In: The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies. M. Banton (ed.). New York: Praeger. Wolf, S. 1982. “Moral Saints.” Journal of Philosophy 79: 419–436. Ziarek, K. 1994. Inflected Language: Toward a Hermeneutics of Nearness. New York: SUNY Press.

„Analiza i Egzystencja” 24 (2013) ISSN 1734-9923

JAKUB GOMUŁKA*, JAN WAWRZYNIAK**

SOME ARGUMENTS FOR THE OPERATIONAL READING OF TRUTH EXPRESSIONS

Abstract

The main question of our article is: What is the logical form of statements containing expressions such as “… is true” and “it is true that …”? We claim that these expressions are generally not used in order to assign a certain property to sentences. We indicate that a predicative interpretation of these expressions was rejected by Frege and adherents to the prosentential conception of truth. We treat these expressions as operators. The main advantage of our operational reading is the fact that it adequately represents how the words “true” and “truth” function in everyday speech. Our approach confirms the intuition that so-called T-equivalences are not contingent truths, and explains why they seem to be—in some sense—necessary sentences. Moreover, our operational reading of truth

* Jakub Gomułka, PhD.—Position: Assistant Professor at the Chair of Philosophy of God, Faculty of Philosophy, Pontitifal University of John Paul II in Cracow. Main fields of professional concern: philosophy of language, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is the author of Gramatyka wiary: Dziedzictwo Wittgensteinowskiego fideizmu (Kraków: Instytut Myśli Józefa Tischnera, 2011). E-mail: [email protected]. ** Jan Wawrzyniak, PhD.—Position: Assistant Professor at the Chair of Contemporary Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Pedagogical University in Cracow. Main fields of professional concern: philosophy of language, metaphilosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein. E-mail: [email protected]. 62 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak expressions dissolves problems arising from the belief that there is some specific property—truth. The fact that we reject that truth is a certain property does not mean that we deny that the concept of truth plays a very important role in our language, and hence in our life. We indicate that the concept of truth is inseparable from the concept of sentence and vice versa—it is impossible to explicate one of these concepts without appeal to the other.

Keywords: truth, operator, predicate, logical form, Frege, Wittgenstein, Tarski

The question of truth causes many conflicts, even wars. Philosophy, in general, is not an exception to this rule. The difference is that philosophical struggles are wars of words. The majority of philosophers, however, agree on one question regarding the notion of truth. According to them, truth is a property and the expressions “… is true” and “it is true that …” are predicates. This point of view is shared by the proponents of many conceptions of truth. Some identify the property of truth with correspondence to reality; others see it as long-run utility in a broad sense or consistency of an extensive set of beliefs. What leads to the acceptance of the view that truth is a property and the expressions “… is true” and “it is true that …” are predicates? It seems that the main reason is a belief that when we attach the word ‘true’ (or its derivates) to some sentence1 (or its name or description), we attribute to the latter some more or less abstract feature, namely being true. This feature amounts to, e.g., the sentence’s relation to a mind-independent reality, or its coherence with other sentences accepted as true. This view seems to be confirmed by grammar. The phrase “… is true” in sentences like “the sentence ‘grass is green’ is true” or “Fermat’s last theorem

1 We are aware of the tradition of recognizing the difference in meaning between the terms ‘proposition’ and ‘sentence.’ This difference is recognised in many ways in the literature. However, as we reject the existence of ideal entities called ‘propositions,’ so we do not use this word in the technical sense. Generally, we use the word ‘sentence’ to mark meaningful expressions; however, we do not exclude the possibility of the existence of sentences which lack meaning. In the latter case, we make it explicit. (It is worth noticing that the proposition/sentence difference does not appear in every European language, particularly in German.) Some Arguments for the Operational Reading of Truth Expressions 63 is true” functions as a predicative expression. The same can be said of the phrase “it is true that …” in sentences like “it is true that snow is white” or “it is true that there are no elves.” From a grammatical point of view, truth expressions are predicates attributed to a subject anaphorically referred to by the pronoun ‘it.’ Hence, if we agree that standard grammatical analysis of these sentences gives us an accurate account of their logical form—at least in the respect being considered – then we must recognise the phrases “it is true that …” and “… is true” as predicates. Obviously, many of the proponents of such an account of truth are aware of the exceptional nature of the “is true” predicate and the uniqueness of the property of being true. This is evident by the fact that, according to them, truth can be characterised by sentences which are substitutions of Tarski’s Convention T2. The equivalence “the sentence ‘April is the cruellest month’ is true iff April is the cruellest month” can serve as an example of such a substitution. According to the semantic theory of truth, the expression which attributes the property of truth to the sentence “April is the cruellest month” is logically equivalent to this sentence. So “is true” is quite an unusual predicate: It does not determine either any syntactic feature of sentences or, seemingly, their sense.3 In short, any sentence is what it is regardless of being true or false. However, on the other hand, when we find out which sentences are true and which are false, we gain real knowledge, the knowledge about the world. So, there is a vital difference between true and false sentences and it seems that the most natural way to express it is to say that truth and falsity are mutually exclusive properties of sentences. Such intuitions as presented above lie at the core of the view that the expressions “it is true that …” and “… is true” are predicates, despite their being fundamentally different from other predicates. Certainly, some of these

2 Such characterisation of this predicate requires either a list of all T-equivalences or a definition which results in all T-equivalences. 3 Intuitively, the sense of any sentence must be independent of its being true: We need to know what it means to be able to recognise whether it is true or false. Cf. Wittgenstein (1961: 4.061–4.064). This view can be rejected assuming that a class of models for a given language can be determined by ascribing logical values to sentences of the given language (still not interpreted). However, this solution is exposed to the following objection: Truth predicates (“… is true”, “… is false”) in their normal use can be attributed to meaningful expressions only. 64 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak intuitions are right, but we believe that they do not entail the predicative character of truth expressions. Strictly speaking, we do not propose a total rejection of the predicative theories of truth,4 because we can see neither a priori nor a posteriori reasons for the belief that the expressions “… is true” and “it is true that …” cannot serve as predicates on some occasions due to the will of language users. For certain needs, it can be useful to accept that, e.g., for a given formal symbolic system L with a given syntax, it is possible to define certain feature of syntactically acceptable formulas, which can be named, for instance, ‘model-related truth’ (or ‘model-related falsity,’ alternatively). The definition of the feature and the predicate related to it would belong to a wider symbolic system, ML. Now we must make one remark concerning the concepts of formal semantics and meta-language. Philosophers who accept a model theory think that the semantics of a given language L can be described in its meta- language, ML. ML enables us to define a model which is a structure consisting of a certain domain and a specific function by means of which a logical value can be assigned to every sentence of L. The meta-language may serve to represent the object language’s sentences and the reality described by those sentences. It is possible because the so-called semantic definition of truth contains a set of translation rules which enable the rendering of each primitive expression of L into ML. So, one can give a precise definition of truth for L in ML. However, such a definition of truth for L is—from the perspective of ML—in a sense, purely syntactic. All it really says in regard to any given sentence p belonging to L is that it has the property of being true iff a certain sentence π belonging to ML which is a translation of p is true. That π is true is, however, taken for granted in ML, and that is the reason to claim that Tarski’s definition is in some sense syntactic – the specification of true sentences of L is made by means of giving a list of true sentences of ML, and the sentences on the list play the role of axioms. The syntactic character of formal semantics has been noticed by the noblest critic of the whole idea of meta-languages, Ludwig Wittgenstein.5 Wittgenstein, in his later philosophy, emphasised that semantics cannot be derived from syntax.

4 We apply the term “predicative theory” to any conception which treats expressions like “it is true that …” and “the sentence ‘…’ is true” as predicates. 5 Cf. Wittgenstein (1979a: 133). Some Arguments for the Operational Reading of Truth Expressions 65

Understanding language requires not only a competence in construction and transformation of expressions, but also a competence in using them in different language-games. “Every sign by itself seems dead. What gives it life? —In use it is alive.”6

There is a fundamental difficulty with the account of truth as the property referred to by the predicate “… is true.” It concerns how to understand T-equivalence. If the expression “… is true” is a predicate ascribed to sentences, then T-equivalences seem to be non-trivial, which is counter- intuitive. Consider, for instance, the following equivalence: 1. The sentence “grass is green” is true iff grass is green. That a certain object, namely the sentence “grass is green,” has a certain property (specifically, being true) neither follows from the fact that another object (grass) has another property (namely, being green), nor entails this fact. Some of the adherents of Tarski’s conception agree with that and accept the claim that T-equivalences are material. It seems, however, that Convention T imposes some additional constraints which prevent us from counting certain sentences as T-equivalences. Consider the following example: 2. The sentence “grass is green” is true iff Tarski emigrated to the USA. This sounds absurd; therefore, we are forced to accept further constraints which will exclude merely material equivalences. The sentence on the right side of the equivalence must be a meta-linguistic translation of the sentence whose name occurs on the left side. Hence, according to the semantic definition of truth, the equivalence in 1 is non-trivial in itself, but only if such additional constraints are satisfied. However, the language users intuitively recognise 1 and other sentences of its kind as necessarily and unconditionally true. Moreover, it seems that they do it because of the form of such sentences, not because of some feature of their content. This simple fact has been omitted due to the misconception of the function of quotation marks, as has been pointed out by Peter Geach.7 That some expression is mentioned does not exclude its being used at the

6 Wittgenstein (1974: §432). 7 Cf. Geach (1971: 81–85, 96). 66 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak same time. In contrast, we believe that mentioning an expression generally entails that it is being used. This account of quotation marks can be proved by appeal to ordinary language intuitions. Note that we normally see no substantial difference (unless we consider superficial linguistic forms) between 1 and the following: 3. It is true that grass is green iff grass is green.8 According to Alfred Tarski, the logical form of 3 as an example of T-equivalence looks like this: “x is a true sentence iff p.”9 Such an account of the form, if it is not supplemented in some way, does not allow us to infer the right side from the left side and vice versa. The inference—as Tarski says—can be made provided that the definition of truth is given.

III

We believe that Tarski’s interpretation of the logical form of 3 (and other utterances containing the phrases “… is true” or “it is true that …”) presented above is wrong.10 There is another, much more accurate account of truth expressions. According to us, the logical role of phrases like “… is true” and “it is true that …” is operational – they should be understood as operators. The notion of an operator can be explained in terms of the notion of operation. If a symbol of a base of an operation is removed from a complex symbol of a result of this operation, what is left is a symbol of an operator. (For instance, if the base of our operation consists of the sentential symbols ‘p’ and ‘q,’ and the symbol of its result is ‘p & q,’ then the symbol ‘&’ is our operator.) We can explain the meaning of the two unary truth-operators using the following truth tables:11

8 Elizabeth Anscombe makes a similar remark. Cf. Anscombe (2000: 4). 9 Cf. Tarski (1983). 10 This belief has been uttered previously by Peter Geach: “The genuine significance of ‘true’ is thus missed, and then queer theories and definitions of truth are framed.” Geach (1971: 96). 11 Truth tables as complex symbols require further analysis. What is meant by ‘T’ and ‘F’ used in the tables should be explained in particular. For the time being, we naively treat the tables as “semantic” definitions of logical connectives. We shall reject this assumption soon. Some Arguments for the Operational Reading of Truth Expressions 67

p ~ p p |– p T F T T F T F F

The first of them is certainly the well-known operator of logical negation which expresses the logical aspect of utterances like “it is not true that …” and “… is false.” The other is the assertion operator introduced to modern logic by Frege in his famous Begriffsschrift.12 According to the operational account, the logical form of 3 should be represented by the following formula: “|– p ≡ p.”13 It should be noted that there is no need for any additional ‘definition of truth’ here, since we can infer the right side from the left side and vice versa by appealing only to the meaning of the assertion operator. We cannot support our denial of predicative character of truth expressions by the authority of any classical philosopher. There are some traces of similar intuitions in the works of Frege and Wittgenstein, but even these two thinkers never clearly questioned the predicative account of truth. In more recent times, Dorothy Grover (and other prosententialists) and Robert Brandom explicitly rejected the latter view.14 However, we can point out

12 Cf. Frege (1970: 11–12). It is worth mentioning that, according to Michael Dummett, the sign of assertion does not play the same role as the expression “it is true that …” One of his arguments is that when we utter conditionals like “if it is true that it is raining, then streets are wet,” we assert neither that it is raining nor that streets are wet. According to Dummett, only a content stroke can be recognised as a sentential operator (though not without qualifications), not a sign of assertion. Cf. Dummett (1973: 295–363). The opposite suggestion has been made by van Heijenoort. Cf. Heijenoort (1967: 440–446). However, the accuracy of our account of the logical form of the utterances “it is true that …” and “… is true” does not depend on who is right in this dispute. Our acceptance of Dummett’s interpretation would require a change in terminology only. 13 Dummett takes a different point of view: The sentence “it is true that grass is green” should be read as a statement which attributes truth to a certain thought. We refer to this thought by the utterance “that grass is green.” So, according to Dummett, this sentence should be analyzed in the following way: “it is true (that grass is green)”; the phrase “it is true” is a predicate and the phrase “that grass is green” is an individual constant. Cf. Dummett (2000: 10–11). 14 Grover is a co-author of the so-called prosentential theory of truth, according to which the phrase “… is true” is a semantically dependent part of the expression “it is true.” The latter is called a prosentence due to the analogy to pronouns and proverbs, and it can occur after normal sentences. Cf. Grover, Camp, Belnap (1975). Brandom presents 68 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak one otherwise famous thread in Kant’s thought which may be viewed as an astonishingly close parallel to our understanding of how the notion of truth works. Kant, arguing against the ontological proof, describes the function of the notion of being as follows:

Being is obviously not a real predicate, i.e., a concept of something that could add to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing (Position) of a thing or of certain determinations in themselves. In the logical use it is merely the copula of a judgement.15

We believe that this description is generally correct: ‘being’ in its usual meaning cannot be taken as a real predicate. The same is correct in regard to ‘truth’ in its original and natural sense: it cannot be taken as a real predicate either. As attribution of existence to something says nothing about its character, so does the ascription of truth to a sentence says nothing about its syntax or content. As we noted before, the concept of truth can be given a predicative sense. The same thing can be done with the concept of being, since it is possible to divide names into two classes according to whether there are bearers of these names or not. We can, for instance, include names of existing animals (e.g., horses, cows, hens, boars, lions and elephants) to the first class and include names of nonexistent animals (e.g., dragons, hippogryphs, unicorns, dinosaurs and dodos) to the second class. Having done such a classification, we may be driven to the thought that being is a kind of feature of certain creatures. Nothing makes this thought wrong; however, its context – this classification of names—is quite unusual. What is particularly unusual here is the meaning of the word ‘feature’ in the sentence, “being is a kind of feature of certain creatures.” This use of the word ‘being,’ although odd, can be easily understood, but does not serve as a home for our old, familiar concept of being. One must remember, of course, that there is a great dissimilarity between the two pairs of elements of language and reality we try to juxtapose, for a sentence is not a name and a fact is not an object. Therefore, being a modification of the prosententialists’ account. According to him, expressions like “… is true” serve as sentential operators. Cf. Brandom (1994: 299–305). The conception we defend in the present paper is very similar to Brandom’s account. 15 Kant (1998: 567). Some Arguments for the Operational Reading of Truth Expressions 69 should not be linked to facts represented by sentences, and truth should not be linked to what is referred to by a name or a definition. We recognise the importance of this categorial difference. However, many see even greater dissimilarity here: they say that truth is predicated to the linguistic entities (sentences) and being is attributed to the elements of extra-linguistic reality (things). Hence the two concepts are placed on different levels of language: the latter is recognised as belonging to the so-called object-language, and the former to its meta-language. We try to undermine this claim at the end of our paper.

Our belief that expressions like “it is true that …” and “… is true” play, in principle, the role of an operator is, in the first place, supported by observations of their function (grammar)16 in ordinary language. To begin with the typical contexts of everyday life, in the cases when we replace ellipses by whole sentences, the latter form (e.g., “the sentence ‘he has lost his mind’ is true”) is much less frequent than the former one (e.g., “it is true that he has lost his mind”). Therefore, we assume that the phrase “it is true that …” is basic and the phrase “… is true” can be treated as a rarely used equivalent reserved for some special purposes (e.g., for meta-language). The fact that use of the truth expression “it is true that …” does not require putting a relevant sentence in quotation marks already suggests an operational interpretation of this expression: 4. (It is true that) p But still, some may wonder whether the very existence of such expressions as “the sentence ‘grass is green’ is true” does not undermine the operational conception of truth. As we mentioned above, there is only a difference in style between the example just given and the utterance “it is true that grass is green.” Hence, according to our account, the phrase “the sentence ‘…’ is true” is an operator, too. The possibility of assigning truth to a foreign

16 We use this notion after the later Wittgenstein; therefore, it should not be confused with the traditional concept of grammar. As we noticed before, according to traditional grammatical analysis, truth expressions work as predicates. Our turn towards non- philosophical contexts does not mean that we take at face value a common sense view of how language is employed. 70 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak language’s sentences does not undermine this solution. We have to assume only that the operator “the sentence ‘…’ is true” plays, in some contexts, an additional function: the result of its applying to foreign language sentences is the translation of these sentences into English; for instance, the effect of applying the operator “the sentence ‘…’ is true” to the German sentence “Der Schnee ist weiss” is logically equivalent to the following English expression: “it is true that snow is white”. Another issue we must examine is the question: How should we analyze statements such as “All he said is true”? No sentences are used or mentioned in constructions of this type. We propose to render the structure of the statement by the following formula: 5. For every p (if X said p, then (it is true that) p). We think that in case of such judgments, quantification is substitutional and, therefore, their acceptance does not commit us to the belief that there are some entities referred to by the sentences; for example, propositions conceived as some abstract and extralinguistic things. By the way, the conception of ontological commitment is exposed to serious objections.17 Note that the phrases “it is true that …” and “… is true”—as we consider their syntactic form—belong to the family of expressions: “it is possible that …,” “it is necessary that …” and, obviously, “it is not true that …” All these expressions are treated in logical calculus as operators. So, why should an exception be made for “it is true that …”? Of course, it should not. The operational interpretation is, to some extent, consistent with the redundancy theory, but on the other hand, the operational reading of phrases like “it is not true that …” does not suggest they are redundant. On the contrary, their contribution to the meaning of a whole utterance is plainly obvious. Why? Because each time our use of negation is not pragmatically idle. We seem to move the action forward: We come to a different ‘truth- possibility’18 which can be particularly spectacular in a context of other logical operators, especially quantifiers.

17 First, the famous dictum, “to be is to be a value of a variable,” cannot be formulated in the canonical notation. Second, if we accept Frege’s assumption that being is not a property of individuals, then Quine is wrong: We can say that Julius Caesar is a value of a variable, but we cannot say that he exists. Cf. Geach (1968: 161–162). 18 This concept was used by the early Wittgenstein. Cf. Wittgenstein (1961: 4.3). Some Arguments for the Operational Reading of Truth Expressions 71

Assertion behaves differently. Logicians quickly lost their interest in the assertion operator due to its logical ‘redundancy.’19 It is evident that this operator does not change the logical value of its argument and its effectiveness is equal to the practical effectiveness of exponentiation with exponent 1, or multiplying by 1, or adding zero.20 On the other hand, the assertion operator is without a doubt the only expression of symbolical notation which to a large extent renders the sense of the phrase “it is true that …” It seems, then, that the acceptance of an operational reading of truth expressions entails the acceptance of ‘full blooded’ redundancy theory, for we can always dispense with an operator which does not change anything. Here we have the answer to our question: Why, despite the syntactically suggested symmetry between the two expressions, namely “it is not true that …” and “it is true that …,” is the former easily read in the operational way and the latter is not? Our intuitive resistance to the idea that the proper logical sense of “it is true that …” is expressed by the assertion operator has the same source as our resistance to redundancy theory. It springs from the conviction that the phrase “it is true that …” (like the phrase “it is not true that …”) may function as a semantically relevant component of our discourse. This conviction was brilliantly described by Frege in his interesting, though not a very conclusive, remark regarding truth:

It is … worth noticing that the sentence “I smell the scent of violets” has just the same content as the sentence “it is true that I smell the scent of violets.” So it seems, then, that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. And yet is it not a great result when the scientist after much hesitations and laborious researches can finally say “My conjecture is true”? The Bedeutung [meaning] of the word ‘true’ seems to be altogether sui generis.21

Frege recalled two contexts (from many possible ones) in which we use the word ‘truth.’ The use of this word in the first context is rather queer

19 A critique of the Fregean notion of assertion can be found in several places in the works of the early Wittgenstein, for instance in propositions 4.063 and 4.064 of the Tractatus. 20 Notice that all of these mathematical operations are not meaningless in the sense that they are forbidden (like division by zero). They are simply useless; they bring nothing to our calculations. 21 Frege (1977: 328). 72 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak due to the special grammar of first-person expressions of feelings. We can replace the Fregean example by the following pair of sentences: “the book lies on the table” and “it is true that the book lies on the table.” We gain absolutely nothing by preceding the first sentence with the phrase “it is true that …” though there is no grammatical prohibition – no rule embedded in our use of this expression – which would forbid us adding it to the first sentence. This observation seems to favor the redundancy theory.22 However, the second context mentioned by Frege seems to indicate that the redundancy theory is wrong, since it ignores situations in which the sense of the phrase “it is true that …” has an essential contribution to the sense of the whole. Note that the second Fregean example refers to a situation where a subject who formulates a conjuncture does not initially assign any definite logical value to it, for one does not yet know whether it is true or false. The knowledge has come after some time and it has been expressed by the words “My conjecture is true.” We believe that both contexts mentioned by Frege can be read in an operational manner. It is rather obvious in regard to the first. The trouble with the second context is the supposition that there is a third logical value, which can drive us back to the predicative theory of truth. Therefore, we must take a look at non-classical systems. The fact that a logical value of a sentence is undetermined can be rendered in a symbolic system by an ascription of an intermediate value to the sentence; Łukasiewicz was guided by this idea when introducing his three-valued logic. But when you admit three-valued logic, nothing can stop you from admitting infinitely many logical values.23 In consequence, the logical value becomes a parameter and the truth (alternatively falsity) is understood just as a peculiar value of probability, namely 1 (alternatively 0); probability itself is understood as a concept more fundamental than truth, a measurable feature of sentences like weight or size of some objects. But such an interpretation trivialises both the concept of truth and the concept of probability. It seems that acceptance of many-valued systems entails intuitions which blur the uniqueness of the logical values.

22 Of course, provided that the sentence in question is part of non-anaphoric expression (if there are any), not part of a dialogue. 23 Cf. Woleński (1989: 119–128). Some Arguments for the Operational Reading of Truth Expressions 73

So far, we have examined merely syntactical clues which can support our operational reading of truth expressions. But there are much more fundamental pragmatic reasons for accepting this view. Let us start with the question concerning the genesis of the concepts of truth and falsity. Considering this difficult subject matter, we appeal to an interesting conception of Alasdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre, in his Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, convincingly argues that the question of whether any belief is true is preceded by an experience of falsity.24 Therefore, it can be said that the explicitly expressed concept of falsity is ‘older’ than the explicit concept of truth. Strictly speaking, the latter can be formed only on the model of the former – as its counterpart – to make an explicit expression of assertion possible, which was previously expressed only in an implicit way, namely, by uttering relevant indicative sentences. The moment of emergence of the concept of falsity is extremely important for the analysis of sentences. Before this moment, sentences could have one of the following forms: Fx, xRy, or P(x1, x2, x3…), and so on.25 The expression of the experience of falsity consists in the extension of basic forms of indicative sentences – the extension enables us to say that a certain belief is false. Hence the forms have been enriched by the phrases equivalent to the English “it is false that …” The logical structure of the new forms contains the operator of negation, or, to be more precise, a place for an operator which is initially filled by the operator of negation, but which can be filled later by any unary operator. The new forms can be represented as follows: ψFx, ψxRy, etc., where ψ is an operator variable. The domain of the operator variable is a set of unary sentential operators.26 These considerations have led us to the point where we can explain more closely what is the source and the function of the assertion operator. Its possibility emerges with the possibility of negative sentences. The assertion operator can fill the place for negation and other unary sentential operators,

24 Cf. MacIntyre (1988: 355–357). 25 These are, respectively sentential functions from which one can obtain, by making relevant substitutions, the following sentences: “Socrates is a man,” “Othello loves Desdemona,” “Alfred needs a car in order to go from London to Brighton.” All arguments are italicised in these examples. 26 The idea of an operator variable came to Łukasiewicz’s mind before the second world war. Cf. Woleński (1989: 107–110). According to us, this variable, contrary to Woleński’s belief, is of a great importance for the logical analysis of sentences. 74 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak such as “it is possible that …” and “it is necessary that …”, which enable us to express our affirmation of the content of indicative sentences. This way of affirmation is no longer ‘naïve’; it comes after the recognition of the possibility of denying any sentence. This possibility is inherent in the logical structure of a sentence extended by a place for an operator. Thus, from a pragmatic point of view, the vital use of the assertion operator does not consist in the transition from Fa to |–Fa, as this transition is pragmatically idle, but rather consists in replacing other operators in sentences of the form: ~Fa or ◊Fa. The most evident example of linguistic activity a couple of different unary sentential operators are used in is discussion – disputants can adopt different attitudes, expressed by the use of relevant operators, toward a certain view being considered. We can see that although treating the expression “it is true that …” as an operator seems to deprive it of an important semantic function, it plays a significant role, should it be considered in the context of molecular sentences. It finds its natural place in dialogical situations where different attitudes toward the same content are adopted. These various attitudes are expressed by unary operators like assertion, negation, possibility, etc. MacIntyre’s thesis that the experience of falsity is prior to the experience of truth and its extension, saying that the concept of truth was formed later than the concept of falsity, can provoke objections. It seems that assertion is more fundamental than negation, at least for a reason that any negative sentence is more complex than corresponding positive sentences—the former consists of a indicative sentence and the specific operator while the latter may be expressed without using any operators. We do not want to reject it. Moreover, the claim that the idea of assertion is implicitly inherent in the idea of an indicative sentence is the climax of our considerations. However, according to our belief, the formation of the explicit concept of truth has become possible after the formation of the explicit concept of falsity. There is no contradiction: use of the indicative mood implying assertion of a content does not require explicit assertion of a content.

If we assume that ‘|–’ is an abbreviation of “it is true that …,” then the following scheme expresses the right intuition underlying the Convention T: Some Arguments for the Operational Reading of Truth Expressions 75

6. |– p ≡ p The meaning of the assertion operator, as we mentioned before, can be explained by means of the following truth table:

p |– p T T F F

Look into this complex symbol for a moment. What, in fact, do its components stand for? Particularly, what is the meaning of the ‘T’ and ‘F’ signs? We admit that the standard notation of truth tables can suggest that they refer to some special logical objects. However, the truth tables should be preferably treated as a kind of heuristic device, just as they were by Wittgenstein when he used them in defining logical connectives for the first time.27 We believe that the best way to understand the real content of truth tables is to translate them into a language which is closer to everyday speech. When we make such a translation, we get the explication of the meaning of a truth table for the assertion operator as follows: Any sentence p is true iff its assertion is true, and it is false iff its assertion is false. Now, this explication can be stated more systematically, namely: 7a. It is true that p iff it is true that |– p. 7b. It is not true that p iff it is not true that |– p. These conditions can be transformed into the language of sentential calculus as follows: 8a. |– p ≡ |– |– p 8b. ~ p ≡ ~ |– p Analogically the truth table for the ‘twin’ operator of negation can be explicated by the following formulas: 9a. |– p ≡ ~ ~ p 9b. ~ p ≡ |– ~ p This translation is possible only if we reject the idea that the expression, “… is true” predicated of sentences in a given language must belong to

27 The early Wittgenstein considered several different ways of defining logical constants. The task can be done, for example, in terms of ‘ab p’ notation, presented in Notes on Logic, or by using the signs ‘T’ and ‘F.’ Cf. Wittgenstein (1979b: 102), Wittgenstein (1961: 4.443). The variety of possible notations supported his main idea, being as follows: “the ‘logical constants’ do not represent.” Wittgenstein (1961: 4.0312). 76 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak its meta-language. While translating, we must be wary, because it is easy to forget that the expression which is on the right side of the sign of the equivalence must have a more complex logical form than that which is on the left side – this feature should be reflected by the notation. Any notation which is not perspicuous enough to exhibit this difference can be a source of semantic paradoxes.28 What has been achieved in this way? We have translated the truth table, in which there are symbols seeming to stand for logical objects (as we know, Frege was misled by that appearance), into expressions containing sentential variables preceded by operators. Some may say we have a problem here, since our procedure of dispensing with truth tables, which are treated as semantic definitions of operators, has led to pairs of sentences which are not normal definitions – they do not enable any substitution of assertion and negation by other expressions. They are axioms characterizing how symbols ‘|–’ and ‘~’ function. If there is any operator preceding a sentence, the result of the operation of negation applied to the whole is the sentence preceded by the operator opposite the original one, whereas the operation of assertion applied to the whole does not result in the change of the operator. This syntactic feature suggests – to those who roughly understand unary logical operators—that truth is the designated value.29 What, however, does it mean that we understand these operators? It is a question of an interpretation of a symbolic system. As we pointed out, one can be deluded into thinking that one can interpret such a system only by means of its meta-language. In fact, as we argued, every meta-language is

28 Our approach to this question is based on the following Wittgenstein’s claim: “No proposition can say anything about itself, because the propositional sign cannot be contained in itself (that is the whole ‘theory of types’)”. Wittgenstein (1961: 3.332). The first part of this statement suggests that it applies only to predicates, but a similar argument concerning expressions containing sentential operators can be formulated as well. This argument can be used to dissolve semantic paradoxes. (Wittgenstein shows, in the next proposition of Tractatus, that Russell’s paradox can be dispensed of in this way.) We will return to this point in the appendix to our article. 29 This thought can be presented by means of the following logical riddle: Assuming that f and g are unary extensional operators, and: 1) f ≠ g, 2) f p ≡ f f p, 3) g p ≡ g f p, the question is: Which operator does f stand for? It is, of course, the assertion operator. Some Arguments for the Operational Reading of Truth Expressions 77 merely a translation of a relevant object language supplemented by rules associating primitive expressions of both languages—they are treated by adherents of formal semantics as rules of interpretation of an object language. A meta-language can give us what we want only if its interpretation is unproblematic, but there is no general reason to think that an understanding of an object language is more problematic than an understanding of its meta-language. Of course, some adherents of the idea of meta-languages do not admit it, but they do not present any reasonable arguments supporting their beliefs. We can understand symbolic systems, such as sentential calculus, as an abstraction from natural language. The most important in that abstraction is a strict formulation of logical connections holding between sentences. But the very understanding of these connections, and hence the understanding of truth and falsity, relies on the understanding of a natural language possessed by competent users, no matter how inexplicit it is. Moreover, this understanding cannot be described from outside of any language. The concept of truth can be elucidated by examples which show how important true beliefs are for our life and how useful they can be. Imagine a hungry and determined buffalo hunter. If he believes that it is true that a big herd of buffalos is half a day’s journey west from the place where he is, he will set off west and continue his journey at least for half a day, but if he believes that this information is false, he will not leave his home unless he has other reasons for going west (or in some other direction). Of course, the aim of our example is not to vindicate the so-called pragmatic definition of truth, for being true is obviously not the same as being useful. According to us, the concept of truth cannot be defined. We can only illustrate its use. So, in what sense does the operational reading of truth expressions explain ‘the nature’ of truth? Only in the sense that it correctly explicates the syntactic structure of sentences having the following superficial forms: “it is true that p” and “the sentence ‘p’ is true.” It is obvious that it is not a definition of truthsimpliciter , but only a partial elucidation of the concept.30 As we already mentioned, the full explanation of the meaning of the assertion

30 As Frege rightly emphasised, there are explanations which are not definitions, because what is logically simple and primitive cannot be defined, but only elucidated. This means that we can only give some hints or suggestions that will lead the reader to a proper grasp of a question. Cf. Frege (1984). 78 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak operator cannot be based on its syntactic features alone31—it must, of course, appeal to the use of this sign within different language-games. It is also worth pointing out that the claim that the concept of truth is indefinablesimpliciter is not a hallmark of the operational conception of truth expressions. For example, Tarski observed that although it is possible to define the word ‘true’ for any given language (which satisfies certain conditions) in its meta- language, this word cannot be defined, should it express the concept of truth not relativised to any particular language.32 Indefinability of truth simpliciter (alternatively, falsity simpliciter) refers to the fundamental characteristic of any sentence, namely, to its being a “propositional sign in its projective relation to the world.”33 We cannot understand what the indicative mood is if we do not understand what truth and falsity are, and vice versa: We cannot understand what truth and falsity are if we do not understand what the indicative mood is.34 The meaning of indicative sentences is determined by the conditions in which they are true and the ones in which they are false. Thus, the dichotomy of truth and falsity is an intrinsic feature of any sentence. They are spanned between their truth possibilities. This was excellently formulated by Wittgenstein:

31 Dummett, in his article Truth, points out, appealing to an analogy with chess, that you cannot fully describe the language-games of assertion in only syntactical terms. As there is a fundamental difference between chess and a game having the same rules, but differing in that the winning consists in being check-mated; so there is a vital dissimilarity between our language-games and some language-games with the same grammatical rules but the opposite goals, namely uttering false sentences. We should add, however, that in the case of language, the second option seems to be difficult to imagine or even illusory. See Dummett (1978). 32 Cf. Tarski (1983). The view that the concept of truth is not definable was accepted also by Frege and Davidson. Cf. Frege (1977), Davidson (1996). 33 Wittgenstein (1961: 3.12). 34 The late Wittgenstein expressed this in the following way: “And what a proposition is is in one sense determined by the rules of sentence formation (in English for example), and in another sense by the use of the sign in the language-game. And the use of the words ‘true’ and ‘false’ may be among the constituent parts of this game; and if so it belongs to our concept ‘proposition’ but does not ‘fit’ it.” Wittgenstein (1974: §136). Cora Diamond, analyzing Wittgenstein’s remarks on truth, also notices that there is a dependence between the concept of truth and the concept of sentence. Cf. Diamond (2002), Diamond (2003). Some Arguments for the Operational Reading of Truth Expressions 79

From this it results that ‘true’ and ‘false’ are not accidental properties of a proposition, such that, when it has meaning, we can say it is also true or false: on the contrary, to have meaning means to be true or false: the being true or false actually constitutes the relation of the proposition to reality, which we mean by saying that it has meaning (Sinn).35

Thus, truth and falsity are intrinsic and indefinable aspects of every meaningful indicative sentence36—Wittgenstein tried to exhibit this fact by the use of different notations, e.g. truth tables.37 These aspects are inseparable and cannot be detached from any sentence—it is not possible to ask about their nature without asking about the essence of sentence. However, they are not symmetrical, because every sentence has the claim to be true.38 We formulated the content of this claim earlier in the following way: the idea of assertion is implicitly inherent in the idea of indicative sentences. The implicitly inherent idea of assertion precedes every operation of cancelling it. A sentence is not so much a line spanned between the poles of truth and falsity—to use a metaphor taken from Wittgenstein’s Notes on Logic—but an arrow which points out one of these poles, namely truth.39 The equivalence of both columns of the truth table for the assertion operator shows that the operator does not bring into a language anything more than what is already contained in an indicative sentence. This statement can be interpreted twofold. It can mean that the concept of truth is superfluous. In our opinion such a thesis is unjustified. We believe that the assertion operator can be useful in explicating the claim to be true implied by any indicative sentence. It does not mean that there is such a property as being true (unless we construct a certain property and call it ‘truth’)—in our analyses of natural language sentences containing phrases like “it is true that …” and “… is

35 Wittgenstein (1979c: 113). We do not change the traditional translation of the German word Satz in this and the following quotations from Wittgenstein. 36 We are aware that saying “truth and falsity are aspects of sentence” sounds like saying that they are properties, perhaps very special, but properties. So, is our treating the expression “it is true that …” as an operator—to use Diamond’s phrase—chickening out? We use this transitional way of speaking because we think that it can help to avoid deflationism, which is in a sense the other side of the correspondence theory of truth. 37 See footnote 27. 38 Cf. Wittgenstein (1979c: 113). 39 “Names are points, propositions arrows—they have sense. The sense of a proposition is determined by the two poles, true and false.” Wittgenstein (1979b: 101–102). 80 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak true,” we try to show that the logical form and function of such expressions radically differs from that of predicates. Contrary to deflationists, however, we claim that the concept of truth plays a not only special, but also significant role in our language, and hence in our lives. Briefly speaking, the difference between deflationism and our conception consists in the fact that deflationists hold that the concept of truth can be in principle eliminated from all contexts, while we claim that this concept is indispensable in the language-games where we are free to question the natural, implicit claim of the sentences we use to be true. Note that the concept of truth—despite a view which is widespread among philosophers and which is mentioned in section III—is not originally applied to sentences. This means it is not originally predicated of them, but connected with them. That is why it is used to speak about a reality described by a sentence, not about the sentence itself. So, there is a closer likeness between the concept of truth and the concept of being than we suggested earlier. Look at the following utterances: “something exists” and “it is true that thus and so.” The expression “thus and so” functions in this context analogously to the pronoun ‘something’: The former plays the role of an individual variable, the latter of a sentential variable. We replace the relevant variables with names and sentences, but the semantic values of names and sentences are, of course, extra-linguistic entities. When we say that there are dragons, we do not mean that there is the name ‘dragon,’ but that there are certain creatures. Similarly, when we say “It is true that the sun is shining today,” we do not mean that the subordinate sentence has a certain property, namely, a property of being true. What we mean is that some state of affairs obtains, namely, that the sun is shining today. In brief, the words ‘truth’ and ‘true’ are used in order to point out that what we are speaking about is ultimately an extra-linguistic reality.40 Moreover, it is possible to substitute in certain contexts the word ‘truth’ by the word ‘reality.’ We can say that the reality is such that there is a time for everything instead of saying that the truth is such that there is a time for everything. This does not mean that we should accept the medieval view that the concepts of truth and being are interchangeable,41 for such

40 This view is accepted by, for example, Willard Van Orman Quine. See: Quine (1970). 41 A similar approach has recently been developed by adherents of the identity theory of truth; cf. Hornsby (1997). Some Arguments for the Operational Reading of Truth Expressions 81 a substitution is impossible in many contexts. The statement “the reality which surrounds us is full of useless things” is not only meaningful, but also true; on the other hand, it is difficult to assign any sense to the utterance: “the truth which surrounds us is full of useless things.” The significance of the concept of truth does not consist in its representing a kind of entity: an object, property or relation. A deeply rooted inclination tempts us to think that by rejecting the naming function of the word ‘truth,’ we deprive the word of any significance.42 In fact, we reject only an illusion concerning its function in language. Truth is neither something located in the world nor something to be found in mind or language. This illusory alternative leads to vehement disputes concerning the question of which kind of entity truth is. However, we think that the best way to determine the essence of truth is to look at the grammar (in the later Wittgenstein’s sense) of the expressions “it is true that …” and “… is true”. The operational interpretation of truth expressions shows what connection between truth and reality consists in. First, the fact that truth expressions are concatenated with sentences and not with their names explains why the subject of a statement assigning truth to a sentence is not the sentence itself, but what it speaks about. The use of the operator does not serve to assert something about the sentence which is the basis of the operation, but, at most, it can modify the content of the sentence. Second, according to our conception, there is a relation of mutual entailment between sentences of the form |– p and p. It is warranted by the truth table for the assertion operator. When we say it is true that there is a time for everything, we thereby assert something about reality, namely that there is a time for everything. (It sounds trivial, but it is doubtful whether it is possible to say something really original as far as this question is concerned.) In other words, if the fact that any sentence says that things are thus and so belongs to its essence, and if any sentence of the form |– p entails a sentence of the form p, then the sentence of the form |– p also says that things are thus and so. Therefore, our conception is not liable to the objection which we raised against a predicative reading of truth expressions, because it explicates

42 The other reason for rejecting the operational interpretation of truth expressions may be the justified belief that it precludes formulation of a normal definition of truth for any language in which it is possible to construct infinitely many sentences. It seems, however, that this reason is insufficient, because the thesis that the concept of truth can be defined is not supported by undeniable arguments—it is rather a demand. 82 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak in a perspicuous way an intuitively accepted necessary character of the connection between the left and right side of equivalences such as our sentence 1.

Conclusion

The approach to the notion of truth presented above is not an alternative to the classical conception, if the latter is understood in the following way: “to say that what is is, and what is not is not, is true.”43 The main advantage of the operational reading is, in our opinion, that it represents in an adequate way how the expressions “it is true that …” and “… is true” work in everyday speech. Our conception confirms a widespread intuition that so- called T-equivalences are not contingent truths, and shows why it is so. This enables us to avoid difficulties related to the belief that there is a peculiar and mysterious property, namely, being true. While rejecting the belief that truth is a property, we do not deny the significance of the concepts of truth and falsity. We indicate that the notions of truth and sentence are in a sense inseparable. You cannot explain what sentence is without an appeal to the concept of truth, nor can you explain what truth is without any reference to the concept of sentence or the notion of its content. It is worth noticing that we believe that the concept of falsity is, from a pragmatic point of view, even more significant than the concept of truth. Statements of the form “it is true that p” are not, from a pragmatic point of view, derivatives of utterances of the form “p,” but strictly connected to the sentences of the form “it is false that p.”

Appendix

It is a widespread opinion that the most important criterion for a test indicating whether a conception of truth is correct or not is its ability to eliminate the liar paradox. Tarski’s approach, which we have criticised, passes the test. Does our conception pass it, too? If not, then, even if it were in all other respects better than the predicative reading, it should be

43 Aristotle, Metaphysics, VII 7, 1011 b. Cf. Aristotle (1933: 201). Some Arguments for the Operational Reading of Truth Expressions 83 rejected. It can seem, at first sight, that our conception cannot deal with this antinomy. We believe, however, that irrespectively of which account of a logical form of truth expressions we adopt, the so-called liar sentence generates only an apparent problem. Moreover, the operational reading has an advantage because it enables one to notice almost immediately how difficult it is to assign any determinate meaning to the liar sentence. The real form of statements such as “the sentence ‘snow is white’ is true” is not the sentential function ‘P(x)’, in which ‘x’ should be substituted by a name of the sentence and ‘P(…)’ by the predicate “… is true,” but the sentential function ψp, in which ‘p’ should be substituted by the sentence and ‘ψ’ by the operator “it is true that …” A sentence containing the operator “it is true that …” or “it is false that …” must contain its base as well. And the base can contain the operator, too, but there must be a primitive, non-molecular sentence at last. If there were not, the sentence in question would be infinitely complex. The parallel conclusion from the predicative standpoint is not obvious at first blush. If the names of sentences, and not the sentences themselves, appear in statements assigning truth or falsity to those sentences, then the belief that the ultimate objects of our statements must be sentences which do not contain semantic predicates requires an additional justification.44 Our conception easily explains the intuition that the ultimate objects of our statements must be sentences which do not contain semantic terms. Apply the above observations to the following string of words: 11. “11 is false.” How should we read this utterance? If we appeal to the operational reading of truth expressions, we will get the infinite series: 12. “It is false that it is false that it is false that …”

44 This belief, however, is rarely supported by an independent argument. It is often justified by observing that its rejection leads to the liar paradox. Adherents of a predicative reading put forward different proposals for avoiding this antinomy. Tarski’s classical solution assumes that utterances of everyday language—if they have any definite meaning at all – do not belong to one language, but to a hierarchy of languages of which the lowest element is a language lacking semantic terms. Another proposal was advanced by Saul Kripke. See: Kripke (1975). Kripke’s conception is based on the postulate of groundness – the postulate which is in a sense a counterpart of the belief that the ultimate objects of our statements must be sentences which do not contain semantic predicates. Kripke appeals to this requirement because he believes that it is in accordance with our intuitions. 84 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak

Our conception requires the substitution of the symbol ‘11’ by the sentence 11. (According to the standard approach it should be substituted by the sentence 11 enclosed by quotation-marks, but it does not matter whether we accept the standard conception at this point, because the expression, “the sentence ‘…’ is false”—from the point of view of an operational reading – plays the same role as the expression “it is false that …” —namely, the role of an operator. What we do need to reject is the claim that a sentence put into quotation marks must be its own name. The fixation of the logical form of the liar sentence cannot be finished, because each occurrence of the symbol ‘11’ must be substituted by the sentence “11 is false,” which contains this very symbol. No sentence, however, can have an infinitely complex logical form, so – if we try to interpret it in the most natural way – we cannot assign any logical form to it. Taking into account that no definite meaning is given to sentences no logical form is assigned to, it has to be admitted that, despite appearances, no definite sense is given to the liar sentence. It is worth noticing that the liar sentence raises a merely apparent difficulty for adherents of predicative conceptions as well. The sentence seems to be obtained by a substitution of the formula X(p), in which ‘X( )’ is a variable with a domain of unary predicates and ‘p’ is a sentential variable. ‘X( )’ is substituted by the predicate “… is false,” but what should be inserted in the place of ‘p’? The liar sentence, of course. This step, however, does not stop the process of the analysis of the liar sentence’s logical form, because, as we assumed, the sentence just inserted seems to have the form X(p), so it turns out that the liar sentence has the form X(X(p)). Thus, relevant expressions must be put again in place of the variables—the result of this substitution is a sentence of the form X(X(X(p))). The procedure can never end; it drives us, of course, to an infinite regress.

References

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Brandom, R. B. 1994. Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Davidson, D. 1996. “The Folly to Define Truth.”Journal of Philosophy 93: 263–278. Diamond, C. 2002. “Truth before Tarski: After Sluga, after Ricketts, after Geach, after Goldfarb, Hylton, Floyd, and Van Heijenoort”. In: E. Reck (ed.). From Frege to Wittgenstein: Perspectives on Early Analytic Philosophy. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 252–279. Diamond, C. 2003. “Unfolding Truth and reading Wittgenstein”. Nordic Journal of Philosophy 4: 24–58. Dummett, M. 1973. Frege—Philosophy of Language. London: Duckworth. ______1978. “Truth.” In: M. Dummett, Truth and Other Enigmas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 1–25. ______2000. “Sentences and Propositions.” In: R. Teichmann (ed.). Logic, Cause & Action. Essays in Honour of Elizabeth Anscombe (Royal Institute of Philosophy, Philosophy Supplement: 46). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 9–23. Frege, G. 1970. Begriffschrift, a Formula Language, Modeled upon that of Arithmetic, for Pure Thought. Trans. S. Bauer-Mengelberg. In: J. van Heijenoort (ed.). Frege and Gödel: Two Fundamental Texts in Mathematical Logic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 1–82. ______1977. “Thought.” Trans. M. Beaney. In: M. Beaney (ed.). The Frege Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 325–345. ______1984. “On Concept and Object.” Trans. P. Geach. In: G. Frege, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy. Ed. B. McGuinness. Oxford: Blackwell 1984, pp. 182–194. Geach, P. 1968. Reference and Generality. An Examination of Some Medieval and Modern Theories. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press. Geach, P. 1971. Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects. London & New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Grover, D., Camp, J., Belnap, N. 1975. “A Prosentential Theory of Truth.” Philosophical Studies 27: 73–125. Heijenoort, J. van 1967. “Logic as Calculus and Logic as Language.” In: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Eds. R. S. Cohen and M. W. Wartofsky. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 440–446. 86 Jakub Gomułka, Jan Wawrzyniak

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ROXANNE MARIE KURTZ*

QUINEAN ONTOLOGICAL COMMITMENT DERAILED

Abstract

What should we believe exists? The Quinean response is straightforward: We should believe in all and only those objects over which we must quantify in our best scientific theories. Let us call this view Ontological Commitment = Quantifier Commitment, or OC=QC. The author draws upon resources from Jody Azzouni and Stephen Yablo, who reject this criterion to disrupt a central argument for platonism in mathematics. The project has two parts. First, the negative project is to argue that OC=QC is misguided because we ought not read our ontological commitments off of our quantifier commitments. Second, the positive project is to suggest an alternative criterion to OC=QC that allows us to accept the idea that statements that quantify over mathematical objects that would be abstract if they existed are indispensable to our best scientific theories, but nevertheless reject the existence of numbers.

Keywords: ontological commitment, indispensability thesis, fictionalism, platonism, formalism, thick epistemic access, existence of numbers, metaphor

* Roxanne Marie Kurtz—Department of Philosophy, University of Illinois Springfield, Kurtz’s research in metaphysics focuses on questions that concern the ontology of ordinary objects versus abstract objects. She also works in political philosophy, especially on topics that involve accommodating diversity within liberal justice frameworks. E-mail: [email protected]. 88 Roxanne Marie Kurtz

1. The task at hand

This is a discussion on metaphor, language, and the existence of numbers. What should we believe exists?1 The Quinean response is straightforward: We should believe in all and only those objects over which we must quantify in our best scientific theories. Let us call this view Ontological Commitment = Quantifier Commitment, orOC=QC .2 If we accept OC=QC, then we get a straightforward argument that if we trust science, then we should believe in the existence of mathematical objects:3 OC=QC: We should believe in the existence of all and only those objects over which we must quantify in our best scientific theories.

Indispensability: We must quantify over mathematical objects in our best scientific theories. C1: So, we should believe that mathematical objects exist.

Abstractness: If mathematical objects exist, then they are abstract objects.

Platonism: Thus, we should believe that abstract objects (including numbers and other mathematical objects) exist.

1 Note that this is a different question from ‘what exists?’ Perhaps on the planetoid Pluto there are cute, purple-feathered flying orange fish. If so, I take it we have no good reason to believe in their existence. 2 OC=QC blends two theses: (1) we should believe in the existence of those things that the theories we believe say exist and (2) we should believe our best scientific theories. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer who pressed me on this point, correctly assessing that my target is (1), and noted that I followed cases in the literature in which the two claims are stated as a combined thesis. I agree. I chose to use OC=QC rather than (1) to sidestep exegetical questions about Azzouni’s work and to bypass questions that may arise when we pull them apart. For instance, we might ask what counts as a theory that is not also a scientific theory, and we might wonder why we “ought” to believe in the things of which our theories speak if they are not our best theories. Because these issues need not be settled for my discussion to proceed, I took the simpler path. But thanks again to the reviewer for the encouragement to take up this topic in a further paper. 3 This is simply a version of an indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objects that cashes out “indispensability” in terms of quantifier commitment. For a useful discussion of such arguments see Colyvan (2011). Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 89

I invite you to join me in accepting Indispensability4 and Abstractness for the sake of argument. Our aim here is to seek good reasons to deem OC=QC untenable and to thereby disrupt the justification for Platonism. Our method is exploratory: We consider how work by Jody Azzouni on quantifier commitments and the powers of observation to yield thick epistemic access to concrete objects might complement Stephen Yablo’s work on hermeneutic fictionalism/figuralism with respect to number talk in the sciences, and vice versa. We have a negative project: to argue that OC=QC is misguided because we ought not read our ontological commitments off of our quantifier commitments. We also have a positive project: to suggest an alternative criterion to OC=QC that allows us to accept Indispensability and Abstractness, yet to reject C1 and so Platonism. To give just a taste of context on these two authors, Azzouni is a nominalist who not-so-controversially holds that mathematical objects do not exist (nor subsist), yet he is also a formalist who quite controversially claims that statements that quantify over mathematical objects can nevertheless be literally true. For, he thinks, we can have a coherent notion of truth that appeals to formalization alone.5 In contrast, I think we can fairly say that Yablo is neither nominalist nor platonist. He quite controversially holds instead that in at least some important cases, there is no fact of the matter as to whether abstract objects exist. He also (less controversially) holds, like many other fictionalists/figuralists, that statements that quantify over mathematical objects are not (or perhaps more weakly, are not meant to be taken as) literally true, but nevertheless that they remain useful as their important content is given by their metaphorical or figurative content.6 Despite the clear differences between the two philosophers, they both (largely) take Indispensability and Abstractness as given and locate the problem with the argument for Platonism with the untenability of OC=QC. They concur that issues with how and why we quantify over mathematical objects in our best scientific theories make it the case that we ought not

4 This is an empirical claim about science that we will take as given, though it faces some strong opposition. Hartry Field, for instance, offers strong arguments with compelling examples to show that we may well be able to eliminate talk of mathematical objects in science. See Colyvan (2012) for a discussion. 5 See Azzouni (2005 and 2011). 6 Yablo (2010) and Turner (2012). 90 Roxanne Marie Kurtz read our ontological commitments off of the quantifier commitments of our theories. In this way, the views of Azzouni and Yablo are congenial with respect to what we should believe exists. First, I briefly recount the highlights of Yablo’s argument that our metaphorical use of language makes equating the quantifier commitments of a first order theory (with all nonessential metaphors paraphrased away) with its ontological commitments a dubious project. Next, I put forward Azzouni’s picture of ontological commitment that distinguishes between those entities that theories quantify over because of the nature of the world, and those that they quantify over because of the nature of language. With these views on the table, I then look at how they provide mutual support against OC=QC and in favor of Azzouni’s notion of thick epistemic access as a criterion of ontological commitment. Finally, I sketch some possible replies from this fortified position to the philosopher who bucks at the new version of ontological commitment and to the mathematician who insists that she does have thick epistemic access to mathematical objects.

2. Yablo’s make-believe

I was trying to find a way of being unserious about theoretical entities in math that didn’t force me to take a similar view of theoretical entities in physics. Stephen Yablo in a 2011 interview.7

Let us take two key points away from Yablo’s “Apriority and Existence” and “A Paradox of Existence.”8 First, Yablo argues that we ought to take statements that quantify over platonic objects like numbers figuratively: We ought to understand them as existential metaphors rather than commitments, with their value to scientific theories reducing to metaphorical truth, utility or aptness. Second, because of the challenges of unscrambling metaphorical and literal quantifiers within scientific theories, Quine’s criterion for ontological commitment will not work: We ought not read our ontological commitments off of a theory’s quantified statements when some ought to be taken metaphorically.

7 Bateman (2011). 8 Yablo (2000a; 2000b). Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 91

In broad strokes, Yablo defends his position by offering it as a solution to a dilemma. If we hold statements that quantify over platonic objects to be literally true, then existence proofs for platonic objects become immediate and trivial thanks to straightforward a priori bridge principles conjoined with uncontroversial a priori or a posteriori premises. The triviality of such proofs is an untenable result for the philosopher who either accepts Quine’s position that a successful argument for the existence of platonic objects must be an a posteriori, holistic effort that shows why the kind of entity in question is required by the best version of the theory at hand, or believes that we can prove the existence of platonic objects only through sophisticated a priori arguments. On either horn, existence proofs for platonic objects ought not to be so easy. Let us step back a bit to see how he arrives at this position. To Yablo, objects are platonic “relative to an area of discourse due to the combination of something positive—the discourse depends for its truth-value on how objects like that behave—with something negative—the discourse is not about objects of that type.”9 So, relative to the claim, ‘there are as many black dogs as red dogs in my house,’ numbers are platonic objects because: (a) the truth value of the claim hinges on whether the number that numbers the black dogs in my house also numbers the red dogs, and (b) the claim concerns my mutts, not some kind of mysterious entities called numbers. Now, here is the rub: (1) There are as many black dogs as red dogs in my house. (2) There are as many black dogs as red dogs in my house iff the number of black dogs in my house also numbers the red dogs. (3) Thus, the number of black dogs in my house also numbers the red dogs, and further, numbers exist! This argument is valid and apparently sound—we may easily establish the truth of (1)10 and we seem to accept the truth of (2) on a priori grounds. But if things are as they appear to be, then the proof for the existence of numbers becomes unfortunately immediate. Yablo neatly avoids this outcome by denying the literal truth of bridge principles like (2). To make his position

9 Yablo (2000b: 199). 10 Yablo (2000b: 202) also shows how this difficulty may arise when the first premise is an a priori truth. His example: an argument is valid iff it lacks counter models; there is an invalid argument; thus, counter models exist. 92 Roxanne Marie Kurtz plausible, he suggests an alternative to (2) along with a sustained argument meant to assuage our reluctance to give up (2). Yablo notes that one strategy we might use to deny that the proof for numbers is trivial is to require an a posteriori justification for (2). If so, then the truth of (2) would depend on the ontological status of the platonic objects in question. Yablo resists this move, however. He holds, and let us concur, that we do not wait for the answers to ontological questions before committing ourselves to (2). We simply do not agree that (2) is “‘hanging by a thread’ until the empirical situation sorts itself out.”11 Further, the strength of our beliefs about bridge principles like (2) does not vary with the strength of our beliefs that the relevant platonic objects will be shown to exist through empirical investigation. If our justification for (2) were a posteriori, then we could not remain so carefree about these matters.12 Presumably, this message generalizes to other claims about platonic objects, such as those we target in this paper. In particular, we do not care whether or not objects like number exist when we endorse claims that quantify over numbers in our scientific theories. Instead, Yablo invokes the idea of quantifiers that are not meant to be taken literally to block the easy proof of the existence of numbers—on his view we speak metaphorically or figuratively when we say that there is an x such that x is a platonic object. He argues that because bridge principles employ existential metaphors, “we were never committed in the first place to their truth.”13 Thus, we ought to see (2) as a metaphorical claim that literally says: (2*) There are as many black dogs as red dogs in my house iff, supposing that numbers exist, the number of black dogs in my house also numbers the red dogs. Arguably, (2*) has the virtue that the ontological status of numbers is irrelevant to its truth, yet it still does the theoretical work that we require from a bridge principle. To support (2*) as an alternative to (2), Yablo responds to three objections from those who believe that the philosophical benefits of accepting

11 Ibid.: 200. 12 Ibid.: 201–202. 13 Ibid.: 202. Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 93

(2) as literally true force us to accept the ontological consequences. First, critics argue that if platonic objects offer significant power to clarify our discourse that it would otherwise lack, then we ought to embrace these objects and not shy away from the associated ontological commitments. Yablo replies that increased clarity in our discourse is owed to our conception of platonic objects in itself. The existence of platonic objects would add nothing to enhance these conceptions as tools of clarification.14 Second, a critic might claim that bridge principles like (2) are necessary to metalogical proofs that we cannot do without. As an example, Yablo considers a proof that includes a bridge principle that quantifies over models which yields the conclusion that if an argument is valid, then any argument with the same conclusion and premises will likewise be valid. Yablo counters that while it seems that such proofs depend on the truth of the bridge principle, instead this feature of valid arguments stems from our notion of validity in itself. An argument that employs a bridge principle modified à la (2*) can bring this out and, “[o]nce again, we gain as much purchase on the content of the concept by aligning it with a condition on assumed objects as would be gained by treating the objects as real.”15 Third, and perhaps of most concern, is the claim that if we want our discourse to be seen as objective, then we must accept the platonic objects it references into our ontology. For, what chance do theories have of being objectively true if they refer to nonexistent things? To diffuse this objection, Yablo poses a dilemma to those who insist we ought to accept that platonic objects exist for the sake of objectivity. Either we have a complete conception of the nature of the platonic objects at issue, or we do not. Suppose we do: Our conception determines an objective answer as to the truth or falsity of a bridge principle like (2*), so we do not a need principle like (2). Suppose we do not: We will need to determine the truth or falsity of bridge principles like (2) and this will require empirical investigation of the platonic objects mentioned, but this takes us back to the untenability of a posteriori justifications for such bridge principles discussed above.16 Having offered significant arguments in defense of the claim that we basically pretend that platonic objects exist when we say things like (2) and

14 Ibid.: 203–205. 15 Ibid.: 205–207. 16 Ibid.: 209–211. 94 Roxanne Marie Kurtz that instead we literally mean (2*), and furthermore, that claims like (2*) will do the work philosophers need from a bridge principle, Yablo (playing with a crime metaphor) asks about means—how this subterfuge sneaks in; motive—what good the pretense does; and opportunity—why this make- believe goes unnoticed by philosophers. As to means, Yablo argues that some figurative speech is so embedded in our language, and so ordinary, that we miss its figurative nature. It is easy to see the metaphor when we speak of Italy as a boot. It is less easy to catch figures of speech that are “too familiar, insufficiently picturesque, too boring,” such as, “[t]hey put a lot of hurdles in your path, there’s a lot that could be said about that, there’s no precedent for that, something tells me you’re right, there are some things better left unsaid…” Thus, it is reasonable to believe that we may similarly overlook the mundane existential metaphors that he holds occur with references to platonic objects.17 As to opportunity, first he demonstrates that attending too much to the nature of platonic objects leads us away from the subject matter—consider above: My subject was red and black dogs, not numbers. Thus, to avoid missing the point, we allow platonic objects to remain “unobtrusive.”18 Second, he argues that the content of some metaphors remains unsettled, and that one of the possible contents is the literal content in the case of what he calls a “maybe metaphor. For instance, maybe I speak literally maybe I speak figuratively when I say that the number of orange fish is two. In such cases, the difficulty of seeing the figurative nature our utterances arises because the possible literal content obscures the possible metaphorical content.19 I will revisit this kind of metaphor again later. As to motive, Yablo identifies three ways in which metaphors may benefit us: They may be representationally essential, cognitively advantageous or anticipatorily truthful.20 A metaphor is representationally essential if the language of discourse does not allow the content to be expressed literally. His example—the literal content of “[t]he average star

17 Ibid.: 212–214. Also note that over time, Yablo increases his emphasis on his figuralism (rather than mere metaphor). See his collection Things 2010, and Turner’s (2012) helpful discussion of the evolution of Yablo’s thought in his review of Things. 18 Ibid.: 218–219. 19 Ibid.: 221. 20 Ibid.: 214–218. Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 95 has 2.4 planets”—is inexpressible in English without the use of platonic objects (for instance, the average star or numbers) because the required infinite disjunction is an impermissible construction (“[t]here are 12 planets and 5 stars or 24 planets and 10 stars or…”).21 A metaphor is cognitively advantageous to Yablo if it allows us to grasp the intended content more fully because its presentational force stimulates important psychological processes or promotes productive thought due to its suggestiveness (re: the average star, “then how many electrons does the average atom have?”), or helps us reason by making our thoughts logically tractable (the Davidsonian move of going from ‘my red dog barked’ to ‘there was a barking done by my red dog’ yields significant logical benefits).22 A metaphor that I have described as anticipatorily truthful is one “in which the speaker’s sense of the potential metaphorical truthfulness of a form of words outruns her sense of the particular truth(s) being expressed,” and may be pregnant, prophetic or patient. 23 Yablo gives ‘the state is an organism’ as an example of a pregnant metaphor.24 Notice how, upon continued reflection, the metaphor delivers new contents: the interdependency of the parts of a state; the dependence of a state’s survival upon what happens in a larger world and so on. A prophetic metaphor is one whose content is determinate but becomes evident only over time: Yablo again—someone tells Macbeth that “none of woman born” will harm him. But we, and Macbeth, see the particular truth expressed only at the end of the play.25 Yablo offers number talk as an example of a patient metaphor, that is, a metaphor whose initial content is open and remains open until and unless we find one interpretation to be superior. If we see (2) as a patient metaphor, then, depending on how the world turns out to be, the content of (2) might be that which it literally expresses or it might be that which (2*) literally expresses and (2) metaphorically expresses.26

21 Ibid.: 217. 22 Ibid.: 217–218. 23 Ibid.: 220. 24 Ibid.: 217, footnote 37. 25 Ibid.: 217, footnote 38. 26 Ibid.: 220–221 96 Roxanne Marie Kurtz

This sketch illustrates how Yablo seeks to support the position that platonic objects may remain useful even if we take them to be objects of existential metaphor and to explain how so many philosophers have been snookered into taking references to platonic objects literally. Next, Yablo strengthens the intuitive plausibility of his position by bringing out several properties that some platonic objects have in common with some make- believe objects. These include paraphrasability (references to either kind of object may often be eliminated from the discourse without “felt loss of subject matter”), impatience (if someone questions whether the platonic or pretend object of which we speak exists, we become impatient), translucency (when making sense of claims that reference such an object, the object often fails to be part of the content), insubstantiality (any property ascribed to such an object generally follows from our conception of it), indeterminacy (the identity conditions of such objects may be indeterminate), silliness (questions about aspects of such an object that are not answered by what follows from our conception of it seem silly), expressiveness (reference to such objects may allow us to express things about other entities not otherwise expressible), irrelevance (such objects may be used to explain facts that would continue to hold in their absence), disconnectedness (usually, we attribute no causal power to such objects) and availability (our only access to such objects is through our conceptions of them, not through the world).27 To foreshadow, I will suggest this list can help us flesh out Azzouni’s criterion of ontological commitment. We now have Yablo’s view, presented, defended and supported. If he is right about our extensive use of existential metaphor, then, as he recognizes, OC=QC is in trouble. For, the philosopher who wants to use OC=QC would first need to strip theories of figurative speech before determining her commitments.28 But, it looks as if this may turn out to be an unrealistic project, given that the figurative speech in a theory is often pretty much invisible, and even when identified it may be near impossible to eliminate because of its being representationally essential, cognitively advantageous or anticipatorily truthful. Yablo makes this point concisely: “Quine lost the debate, in my mind, because he trusted science to drive out the metaphors,

27 Ibid.: 224–226. 28 Yablo (2000a). Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 97 leaving behind the literal truth. I didn’t see why metaphorical entities couldn’t earn a permanent place in our theories.”29 So, we see that Yablo gives us reason to let go of (2). His view also offers an explanation as to why it might be reasonable to deny the existence of numbers even though our best scientific theories quantify over them: (i) our conceptions of numbers serve us equally as well as platonic numbers, and, (ii) our continued metaphorical use of numbers is fruitful. Whether or not this captures the value of math in science is debatable. Certainly, Azzouni and Yablo diverge here. But set that aside. The point I wish to make here is that even if we get on board with Yablo at this point, we are left without a positive criterion for ontological commitment. It is here that I think Azzouni’s thick epistemic access as a criterion of ontological commitment meshes especially well with Yablo’s hermeneutic fictionalism. If something is not pretend, after all, we should be able to interact with it in the material world (or at least understand why it is part of the material world even if we cannot do so.)

3. Azzouni’s untouchable numbers

One of the little tragedies of my early childhood is that I never saw a hobbit; and because I did not, I regretfully had to conclude that there were no such things. Jody Azzouni30

In “Thick Epistemic Access: Distinguishing the Mathematical from the Empirical,”31 Azzouni argues against the Quinean view that a first order theory’s quantifier commitments32 are, in themselves, sufficient to establish its ontological commitments. Rather, he contends that quantifiers range over a theory’s posits, some of which enter the theory because of facts about the

29 Bateman (2011). 30 Azzouni (1997: 472). 31 Azzouni (1997). 32 In footnote 5, Azzouni (1997), explains his use of ‘quantifier commitment’: “Be forewarned: while Quinean doctrines are being denied, I shall not use the term ‘existential commitments’ to describe implications of a theory which are in the form of an existential quantifier followed by a formula with one free variable; rather, I shall adopt more neutral terminology: ‘quantifier commitment.’” 98 Roxanne Marie Kurtz world and some of which enter the theory because of facts about language. Ontological commitment ought to follow from quantifier commitment only in the case of some of the former kind of posits—those to which we have thick epistemic access. Azzouni initially considers observation as he develops the notion of thick epistemic access (TEA) to demonstrate the difference between these two kinds of posits. Observation via our sensory experiences is a form of thick epistemic access in virtue of (at least) four epistemic properties. Fuller descriptions will follow, but for now I will give a very concise gloss of these. Our observations are robust—they do not hinge (too much) on our expectations. They are refinable—we can get a better look at things using appropriate strategies. We can use them to monitor and track an object’s properties through time. And finally, observations can ground our explanations of why we can or cannot know things about what properties an object does or does not have.33 Now, it would be hard to deny a theory’s ontological commitment to posits to which the theorist, via observation, has thick epistemic access (and I will ignore philosophers who would want to); but clearly the ontological commitments of many theories go beyond things that we can directly observe. This is not a problem for Azzouni, as he asserts that there are other forms of thick epistemic access: for one, access to objects through the use of instruments. Such instrumental access can possess all the virtues of observation enumerated above (although the robustness of instrumental access derives from the robustness of observation), thereby delivering the possibility of thick epistemic access to unobservable objects such as electrons. Azzouni contrasts thick epistemic access to thin epistemic access. A posit to which we have thin epistemic access is any posit in a theory that has the Quinean virtues of “simplicity, familiarity, scope, fecundity, and success under testing.” Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment amounts to commitment to any posit to which we have thin epistemic access; that is, it amounts to quantifier commitment.34 On this view, Azzouni points out, the ultimate epistemic ground for claiming that a posit exists is the same for

33 For three discussions on thick epistemic access, see especially Azzouni (1997: 474–476; 2004a: 129; 2004b: 383). 34 Azzouni (1997: 479). Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 99 every posit in a theory; thus, to claim that some posits exist while others do not would be arbitrary.35 To hold that to be is to be the value of a variable is to hold that the values of all variables are on equal footing in terms of ontological commitment. Azzouni aims to use this distinction between thick and thin epistemic access to explain how we might reasonably be ontologically committed to electrons but not to mathematical objects. Few would argue against the idea that thick epistemic access to an object is sufficient for our being ontologically committed to its existence; and clearly, we have no such access to things like numbers, so his project looks promising.36 However, to go further and claim that thick epistemic access is necessary for our being ontologically committed to an object’s existence would be to make the mistake of the verificationist. Azzouni carefully avoids this error by introducing a defeasability condition: “a theoretical item can be one we think exists, even if we do not have appropriate instrumental access to it, provided that we can tell a decent story, in terms of its properties, about why we cannot have such instrumental access to it.”37 (Azzouni calls these defeasibility stories.) So, although we have no thick epistemic access to the Higgs boson,38 it is not untenable to assert its existence because, first, we can explain our lack of thick epistemic access and, second, we have other good reasons to think such particles exist. We might now, as a first stab, say that the following is Azzouni’s criterion for ontological commitment:

TEA: Thick epistemic access is sufficient for ontological commitment. Further, we may maintain the existence of any posit that we believe has properties that let us tell a defeasability story about why we cannot gain thick epistemic access to it.

But this is too easy. As Azzouni himself recognizes, in terms of ontological commitment, TEA once again puts mathematical objects on equal footing in terms of ontological commitment with the Higgs boson,

35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid.: 480. 38 Let us pretend this is before CERN’s recent announcement concerning the Higgs boson and we do not yet have instrumental access to it. We can always substitute any scientific posit to which we lack thick epistemic access but still hope to find it. 100 Roxanne Marie Kurtz though not atoms—that is, with any posit to which we currently fail to have thick epistemic access. After all, we do have a defeasability story: mathematical objects exist outside of space and time, thus, of course we have no route to thick epistemic access of them.39Azzouni responds to this difficulty by arguing that we ought not to take such a defeasability story seriously because, “one already understands that, of course, they [mathematical objects] are not the sorts of things one would even want to get in instrumental or observational contact with.”40 Thus, we need to recast TEA as:

TEA*: Thick epistemic access is sufficient for ontological commitment. Further, we may maintain the existence of any posit that we believe has properties such that we ought to tell a defeasability story about why we cannot gain thick epistemic access to it.

For this response to be anything but ad hoc, Azzouni must provide a criterion for when we ought to tell a defeasability story and when we ought not. This he does in the final section of his paper by separating posits that enter our theories because of how the material world is from those that enter because of how our language works. He uses the oft-cited example of numbers to suggest how it could be the case that all mathematical objects are of the latter type (though even if we accept this example, he does not suggest that this serves as a proof for such a claim). For any upper limit on the number of Fs and Gs, first order logic can express that the number of Fs is the number of Gs without quantifying over numbers—suppose, at most, there are two Fs and Gs, then we may say: {¬∃xFx∧¬∃xGx}∨{∃x[Fx∧∀z(Fz→z=x)]∧∃x[Gx∧∀z(Gz→z=x)]} ∨{∃x∃y[Fx∧Fy∧x≠y∧∀z(Fz→(z=x∨z=y))]∧∃x∃y[Gx∧Gy∧x≠y∧∀z (Gz→(z=x∨z=y))]} However, because of the inexpressibility of infinite disjunctions in first order logic, we cannot say that the number of Fs is the number of Gs without establishing an upper limit first. This linguistic limitation forces

39 Azzouni (1997: 480). 40 Ibid. Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 101 our use of numbers in many first order theories.41 Azzouni’s point is that in such cases, “we are not implicitly using an inference to the best explanation, hypothetical-deductive methods, or any other traditional scientific method for establishing the existence of something.”42 Thus we get the basis for the normative claim that Azzouni needs: If something is a posit merely because the limitations of language force it into our theory, then we ought not try to tell a defeasability story about it.

4. Why team up to derail the Quinean train?

As discussed early on, Azzouni and Yablo sharply disagree on some key questions regarding mathematical objects, especially with respect to the truth conditions of mathematical claims when we take them literally and the facts about the existence of mathematical objects. Nevertheless, I hope my discussion thus far has suggested to the reader that we may still find reasons informed by and consistent across both positions to pursue our tasks of rejecting OC=QC and exploring a possible alternative criterion. Letting the theories inform each other seems particularly productive because (in some sense) they are two sides of the same coin. I think it is fair to say in terms of ontological carving work, Azzouni’s approach focuses on the distinctiveness of concrete objects while Yablo’s approach focuses on special features of platonic objects.

5. OC=QC: Off-track

One reason we can combine views to call OC=QC into question is the congeniality of Azzouni’s view to Yablo’s idea of mathematical objects as metaphorical objects essential to the expressive power of language. We see this quite clearly when Azzouni writes that we quantify over mathematical objects because “the language we use to describe things has to be formulated

41 Azzouni gives an interesting second example from geometry, which I will not rehearse here. 42 Azzouni (1997: 482). 102 Roxanne Marie Kurtz a certain way if we want greater facility to manipulate descriptions of objects and recognize similarities among them…”43 The important move that Yablo and Azzouni share is to separate quantifier commitment from ontological commitment because we ought not to treat all quantifiers alike. Azzouni argues that if some posits are indispensable because of how language is rather than how the world is, then we ought not to be ontologically committed to them, regardless of our use of quantifiers. Yablo explains more fully why we may permissibly fail to follow quantifiers blindly to our ontological commitments by bringing out that the quantifiers in claims that enter theories because of language alone are metaphorical and can be representationally essential. Further, he smoothes the way a bit for our acceptance of the failure of OC=QC with a discussion of how such posits enter language, how they remain in use regardless of our attempts to remove them from scientific theories and why we might not want to remove them in any case. Further, if we read Azzouni in a way that allows some quantifiers to be metaphors, then Yablo’s fuller account of the benefits of using existential metaphors in our theories adds depth to the notion of a posit entering theory for reasons of language alone. For instance, Yablonian considerations of the value of cognitively advantageous or anticipatorily truthful metaphors ought to strike scientists as very appealing when designing a fruitful theory (though it may leave some questions unanswered when patient metaphors are used). Permitting such existential metaphors into a theory may make the ideas within the theory more easily and fully communicated and their logical connections better understood, encourage ongoing creative thinking, allow work to progress until relevant facts become evident, allow work to progress without regard to the truth or falsity of claims irrelevant to the subject matter, and allow work to progress toward “something right” before all the details are known. Recognizing the diverse benefits of existential metaphors brings out how useful they may be in trying to make a theory simple, familiar, of useful scope, fecund and successful under testing (to borrow from Quine). And this fact can help someone who likes Azzouni’s approach (even rejecting his formalism) explain why we fail to have thick epistemic access to far more

43 Ibid.: 482–483. Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 103 posits mentioned in important bits of critical theories than those that can be explained away by reference to purely representational concerns alone. Then, Azzouni delivers a final blow by providing a suitable alternative to OC=QC that does not make us look at a theory’s claims and divide them into two piles—one of literal claims and one of figurative claims—and then reformulate the theory without using claims in the second pile before deciding what there is. This is especially important given Yablo’s position that we might simply never be able to eliminate figurative claims from our best scientific theories. And why should we strive to, given their utility and fruitfulness, once we have other means of arriving at our ontological commitments? A Quinean defender might want to argue that Azzouni’s criterion could serve as a way to distinguish metaphorical from non-metaphorical claims and that Quine could revise his criterion to limit ontological commitment to posits mentioned in our best theory’s non-metaphorical claims. But this seems to distort Quine’s intentions too much. Using Azzouni’s criterion in such a way would mean that the revised Quinean criterion would require us to look at the world with one eye and study our theory with the other, to say what there is. Further, even if it were an acceptable distortion, it would amount to Azzouni’s criterion with a Quinean brand.

6. Contrasting Silly Access to Platonic Objects Thick Epistemic Access

Some philosophers who otherwise might be moved by Yablo’s arguments may resist coming fully to his side because it would seem to leave them without a viable theory of ontological commitment—given the stubborn difficulties we face in isolating literal claims from metaphorical claims. Not only does Azzouni’s criterion fill this void, it cleanly avoids the problems for Yablo’s view that Quine’s view creates. In separating quantifier commitment from ontological commitment, metaphorical existential claims become ontologically unproblematic. On Azzouni’s view we look not to the quantifiers, but to our access to things in the world, to decide our ontological commitments. And this seems fair enough. Indeed, it appears probable that philosophers have misread the evidence when, to use Yablo’s metaphor, they believe that there is a crime 104 Roxanne Marie Kurtz to be investigated—the smuggling of metaphorical claims into our theories. Scientists, or normal people anyway, may never have wanted to believe that all things we need to quantify over exist. To repeat an earlier point, TEA* goes a long way toward making this claim tenable because it offers a principled way to identify the kind of posits that Yablo calls platonic objects. And it does so without a reliance on our intuitions about the roles of various bits of language or on our creativity (or lack thereof) to find solutions that dispense with them. Moreover, if we carry our Yablonian intuitions over to our musings on TEA*, we might uncover more features of thick epistemic access or better understand some of those already put on the table by Azzouni. I try to capture some of the possible back-and-forth in the table below. The table offers a fuller description of Azzouni’s four features of observation, in virtue of which it counts as a form of thick epistemic access, along with some connections to Yablo. Beyond the four features already discussed, I have expanded the list. Yablo’s discussion of the similarities between platonic objects (which I take to be the same thing as the posits of a theory to which we fail to have thick epistemic access) and make-believe objects suggests properties of observation that look to be additional properties in virtue of which observation is a form of thick epistemic access because of opposites (though I do not mean to suggest that either Azzouni or Yablo would go along with all of these indicators of TEA*). To motivate the idea that Revealingness is an important property of observation in virtue of which we gain thick epistemic access to the things observed, contrast our observation of the activities of some members of a species that reveals new things about the species with our study of numbers from which “[a]ll the really important facts … follow from (2nd order) Peano’s Axioms.”44 In the latter case, anything we learn about numbers follows from our concepts of them. The point here is that if a theory mentions a posit for reasons of language alone, then discoveries about that posit should not extend beyond those implied by our concept of what the posit would be like. With respect to Contingency on Existence, this merely highlights that our observations of non-platonic objects stop if they cease to exist, in contrast to platonic objects.

44 Yablo (2000b: 225). Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 105

Indicator of Thick Epistemic Azzouni Yablo Access Robustness: although some of Original component of Azzou- Yablo helps us contrast the our observations are mistaken, ni’s thick epistemic access. For robustness of observation with affected by training or under- three formulations, see espe- our beliefs about things like stood only if given some theory, cially Azzouni (1997: 474–476; numbers which are only con- in the main, our observations 2004a: 129; 2004b: 383). ceptually available to us. Our are robust across most circum- observations of mathematical stances and “largely independ- objects are robust only in the ent (epistemically speaking) of trivial sense that they remain what the recipient(s) expect” to steady in their absence. observe (Azzouni 2004a: 129). Refinability: we can refine and Original component of Azzou- Perhaps it is because of the adjust our observations—for ni’s thick epistemic access. For translucency and insubstantial- instance, by moving closer to three formulations, see espe- ity of platonic objects that we an object—to help us distin- cially Azzouni (1997: 474–476; have no chance to refine our guish between a thing’s true 2004a: 129; 2004b: 383). observations of them. properties and properties it may merely seem to have because of perceptual error. Monitoring: our observations Original component of Azzou- Here the problems of monitor- over time allow us to learn ni’s thick epistemic access. For ing platonic objects are evident, about various properties of an three formulations, see espe- but below I suggest some Yab- object and to track changes in cially Azzouni (1997: 474–476; lo-inspired indicators of TEA* an object’s properties over time. 2004a: 129; 2004b: 383). that are either part of Azzouni’s monitoring or related to it. Grounding: we can use ob- Original component of Azzou- Notice that this indicator helps served properties of a thing ni’s thick epistemic access. For the significance of Yablo’s point to explain how we can know three formulations, see espe- that platonic objects are like (or fail to know) about those cially Azzouni (1997: 474–476; pretend objects in that they are or other of its properties—we 2004a: 129; 2004b: 383). only conceptually available to can see books because they are us. As such, we could not use solid, opaque objects. observed properties of numbers, for instance, to explain our knowledge of their properties. Revealingness: observation In correspondence, Azzouni Yablo’s discussion of both the reveals theoretically significant shared with me that he intends insubstantiality of platonic ob- properties of the object studied his tracking indicator to cap- jects and the silliness of ques- over and above those that our ture. Fair enough. I have tried tions that go beyond those conception of them already to capture this in “Monitoring” answered by our conceptions of entails. above. This also may be part them highlight the importance of “Robustness.” Still, I keep of this indicator. Revealingness separate here to show how Yablo’s discussion emphasizes the importance of this aspect of the indicator. 106 Roxanne Marie Kurtz

Contingency on existence: Plausibly, Azzouni would al- Yablo’s discussion of the ir- some of our observations ready count this as part of his relevance of platonic objects to change upon destruction of tracking indicator. science motivates this indicator the object. — nothing in our observations will change if the number nine self-destructs. His point on the impatience we experience when asked about the existence of platonic objects is likewise suggestive for the same reason. Finally, his concern about the disconnectedness of platonic objects supports this as an indicator. Language resistance: the This suits Azzouni’s view that Inspired by Yablo on the para- value of information gleaned we ought not to take quantifiers phrasability of apparent ref- through observation is lan- that enter our theories for rea- erences to platonic objects guage resistant. It remains sons of language alone serious- without a “felt loss of subject relevant to a theory’s success ly, though in correspondence he matter,” along with the trans- no matter how one rephrases notes that such a suggestion is lucency of platonic objects or paraphrases its hypotheses, quite controversial. and, finally, the bonus in terms so long as the subject matter of expressiveness delivered by does not change. Moreover, platonic objects. the information would remain relevant even if the expressive powers of our language were to change significantly. Identity Establishing: usu- Again, this indicator is congen- Inspired by Yablo on the inde- ally, we can use observation ial to Azzouni’s view; perhaps terminacy of platonic objects to distinguish one thing from we might understand it as part and the silliness of questions another thing, one token from of the explanation of epistemic about them. another token. Further, when access. we cannot, it is not silly to ask why not.

Yablo also tells us that we can paraphrase away talk of platonic objects in our scientific theories without feeling as though we have lost information. In contrast, we cannot likewise “disappear” the importance of observational data to science. This is what motivated Language Resistance. To see how the fact that the importance of observation reports is language resistant plays a role in having thick epistemic access to observed objects, let us again compare two cases. First, consider the relevance to the theory of zoology of any observed behavior of creatures that we call Donzos and classify as belonging to a certain genus, class, etc. The relevance of such observations to zoology remains constant, no matter how we try to paraphrase or rephrase claims about Donzos, or even if we try to eliminate them (perhaps because Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 107 they were false in virtue of the fact that we were wrong about the genus of Donzos). But now consider the relevance of proving certain mathematical claims to zoology (I assume some mathematical theory enters zoology). If we succeed in rephrasing, paraphrasing, or eliminating any mathematical claim in zoological theory, then that claim and whatever proof the claim depended upon become irrelevant to zoology. Observation allows us contact with the things that our theory is about. This explains why our observation reports remain pertinent to our theories no matter how we use language to spell them out. Also in contrast with the indeterminate identity conditions of platonic objects and the perceived silliness of questions about platonic objects that are not answered by what follows from our conceptions, Yablo’s view suggests that when we instead have thick epistemic access to an object, our observations should help us answer non-silly questions about identity: they should be Identity Establishing. Again, to see the import of this property of observation to the idea of thick epistemic access, let us see what difference it makes. Notice that we can establish that one frog is not another frog through observation, or, if observation fails to enlighten us, we can, at a minimum, explain what barriers to establishing identity would need to be removed. However, our access to numbers is not at all like this. Observation will never establish whether or not the Fregean number 7 is identical with the Zermelo number 7, or even if the number two that numbers my dogs is the same number two that numbers my feet. I expect that Yablo’s discussion could suggest more properties of observation than I have managed to think of that Azzouni might want to consider. But let us now turn to seeing if our fortified list of properties in virtue of which observation is a form of thick epistemic access helps either philosopher respond to critics of his position.

7. Replying to naysayers

Let us now consider how we may better address critics of both Yablo and Azzouni if we are willing to intertwine some aspects of their views. At the end of his article, Azzouni cautions us against taking his argument as one that purports to show that there are no mathematical objects; his argument has the more modest goal of demonstrating that quantifier commitment, in 108 Roxanne Marie Kurtz itself, does not entail ontological commitment. In footnote 17, his claim becomes even more tentative:

I am writing as if I have given an argument for this position, but perhaps I am only shifting burdens. What response is there to someone who argues, “You have to say, ‘there is the same number of cats as dogs’, and that is enough of a reason by itself to think that item (the number) exists. Who cares about whether this posit got into the theory ‘the wrong way’; the point is that we cannot get it out again.” What can anyone say to this?45

However, the neo-Yabounnian may well have a response to the footnote naysayer. What can anyone say? We can explain why we cannot get it out again by appeals to the indispensability of metaphor to our scientific theories as motivated by Yablo.

The OC=QC Loyalist

If the challenge is that if one accepts a theory, then he ought to believe in what it says there is, then it sounds as if the critic is holding tenaciously to OC=QC. However, as we saw above, Azzouni’s champion who embraces Yablo’s view is well positioned to reject this argument. Once the two views are combined, she has a reasonable alternative to OC=QC to offer the critic that better answers questions concerning what roles claims about pretend posits do in our best theories—we may use them in virtue of their representational, cognitive or truth-conveying advantages. Since we may obtain these advantages through existential metaphor without postulating the existence of these objects, then it makes sense to change our criterion of ontological commitment to that of Azzouni to avoid either sacrificing the utility of our theories or making unnecessary assumptions. This strikes me as a fairly significant something to say. Further, our new properties of observation that we have identified as important to thick epistemic access may also be invoked to bring out aspects of the purported objects that the critic might not have previously considered. He will see that he must be willing to admit to the existence of objects such that: all he will ever know about them follows from what we know about our concepts of them; his affirmation of their existence will quickly change to

45 Azzouni (1997: 184). Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 109 denial if some way is found to eliminate mention of them; and the identity of the objects will remain, despite our best efforts, uncomfortably vague. At this point it seems that for his view to remain plausible, the critic needs to do more than reiterate the indispensability argument.

Mr. Serious

Alternatively, the challenge might be to rebut Mr. Serious who claims that given the high assertibility of claims about pretend posits in the middle of our best theories, they must be true.46 It still seems as though scientists might still be going around saying things they do not mean all time. Mr. Serious demands to know how they could ever be justified in doing this. Here, Azzouni’s defender could appeal to Yablo’s idea of existential metaphor together with the idea of apt metaphors. Yablo writes that a make- believe game:

is apt relative to such and such a subject matter to the extent that it lends itself to the expression of truths about that subject matter. A particular metaphorical utterance is apt to the extent that (a) it is a move in an apt game, and (b) it makes impressive use of the resources that game provides. [Yablo: class notes, lecture on “Mathematics as Gameskeeping,” p. 17]

So, for instance, the game of mathematics is particularly apt relative to physics. On this view, we say that scientists are playing make-believe when they make claims that refer to pretend posits, but they justifiably engage in this activity because all the non-metaphorical implicatures of apt metaphors are literally true. It is in virtue of this fact that the claims involving existential metaphors become assertible, and, indeed, why they seem so darn true to us. Consider the sentence, ‘Blue combined with yellow makes green.’ Here, blue, yellow and green appear to be entities (‘Flour combined with water makes paste’), rather than properties. Assuming properties do not exist, we can see this as a case of existential metaphor. The literally true implicatures that follow from this metaphor are sentences like, ‘Blue paint combined with yellow paint makes green paint,’ or, ‘When one looks through two lenses, one yellow and one blue, things will look green.’ These implicatures are

46 Yablo at one point suggested something like this, as well as the question about the mathematical platonist, to me. 110 Roxanne Marie Kurtz literally true, as are a whole bundle of implicatures we implicitly understand follow from the metaphor, and this makes us very inclined to ascribe truth to the metaphor because it leads us to these truths. So, the quick answer to Mr. Serious is that scientists may justifiably assert existential metaphors when their non-metaphorical implicatures turn out to be literally true.

Mathsense of a Philosopher-Mathematician

Finally, let us consider a problem facing Yablo that is also better addressed by the combined view. A philosopher-mathematician might accept Azzouni’s alternative criterion for ontological commitment, but argue that she has thick epistemic access to numbers via some form of mathematical perception or intuition—call it mathsense. Such a person could remain committed to the literal truth of mathematical statements, even in light of Yablo’s arguments, because Yablo undermines only the a priori and Quinean arguments for the existence of numbers. Now, on the one hand, that we could conclusively prove that such a person lacks mathsense seems as unlikely as the possibility that we could prove that a Pope cannot hear God. On the other hand, our extended list of properties of observation that make it a form of thick epistemic access may cause some believers in mathsense to question themselves. Our philosopher-mathematician already says she has thick epistemic access to numbers. To be consistent, then, she would have to argue that mathematical observation via mathsense counts as a form of thick epistemic access. But it seems she could do this using our indicators of thick epistemic access. Without blaringly obvious difficulties, she could argue that mathematical observation via her mathsense is robust across most circumstances and refinable through mathematical training. Further, she could claim that she could use her it to monitor the properties of mathematical objects over time (though, given the eternal nature of numbers, changes would likely be limited to relations to physical objects), and use it to ground her explanation of why we cannot observe mathematical objects through the other modes of perception—just like we can only taste flavors, hear sound and see light, we can only mathsense mathematical objects. However, I think that she will find it more difficult to hold that mathematical observation could have the properties of thick epistemic access Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 111 that we appended. Through regular observation, we can discover properties of things that we could never have deduced that they would possess. However, the philosopher-mathematician with mathsense does not discover any properties of numbers that the less fortunate mathsense-blind individual could not have discovered through deduction. She will also be hard-pressed to explain why her mathematical observations that were essential to the development of a theory remain relevant to that theory even if paraphrased away later. Finally, she would need to tell us why her mathsense does not allow her to see which numbers are identical. Thus, our mathematician will face more troubles trying to endow mathematical observation with the expanded list of thick epistemic access indicators. In light of our enriched notion of the nature of thick epistemic access, our philosopher-mathematician might finally concede that her access to numbers is lacking—perhaps even that it amounts to unusual familiarity and facility with mathematical concepts, and that it is her skill that makes it clear to her what properties objects standing behind mathematical concepts would have to have, if they existed.

***

I end here without a neat conclusion to bring these bits and pieces of discussion on the fit of Yablo’s story about our metaphorical talk of numbers (and such) and Azzouni’s tale of what we should believe exists if we believe science. I can only reiterate the point I have made over and over: a joined view deserves serious consideration.47 It remains to be asked: How shall we join the views to yield the most defensible metaphysics? We may not merely sew them together as they include inconsistent metaphysical commitments. Should we import parts of Azzouni’s machinery into Yablo’s position when it is possible to do so without distorting Yablo’s view, or vice versa? Ought we to draw from both

47 Thanks to Stephen Yablo and Jody Azzouni for helpful comments on a previous draft of this paper. 112 Roxanne Marie Kurtz positions to arrive at a third alternative not yet considered? I will be happy to have shown these questions are worth asking.48

References

Azzouni, J. 1997. “Thick Epistemic Access.” The Journal of Philosophy 94 (9): 472–484. ______2004a. Deflating Existential Consequence: A Case for Nominalism. New York: Oxford University Press. ______2004b. “Theory, Observation and Scientific Realism.”British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (3). ______2005. “How to Nominalize Formalism.” Philosophia Mathematica 13 (2): 135–159. ______2007. “Ontological Commitment in the Vernacular.” Nous 41 (2): 204–226. ______2009. “Ontology and the Word ‘Exist’: Uneasy Relations.” Philosophia Mathematica 18 (1): 74–101. ______2010. Talking about Nothing: Numbers, Hallucinations, and Fictions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ______2011. “Chapter Two: Nominalistic Content.” In: C. Cellucci, E. Grosholz, and E. Ippoliti. Logic and Knowledge. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ______2012. “Summary.” Analysis 72 (2): 327–329. Balaguer, M. 2011. “Fictionalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition). E. N. Zalta (ed.). PDF version. URL = . Bateman, C. 2011. “Yablo on Fictionalism.” Interview posted on Only a Game. URL = . Cellucci, C., Grosholz, E. and Ippoliti E. 2011. Logic and Knowledge. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

48 Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for asking for clarification on this point and the encouragement to pursue such questions in future work. Quinean Ontological Commitment Derailed 113

Colyvan, M. “Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition). E. N. Zalta (ed.). URL = . ______2012. “Chapter 4: Fiction, Metaphor, and Partial Truths.” An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eklund, M. 2007/2011. “Fictionalism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition). E. N. Zalta (ed.). PDF version. URL = . Kalderon, M. E. 2005. Fictionalism in Metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Linnebo, Ø. “Platonism in the Philosophy of Mathematics.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition). E. N. Zalta (ed.). PDF version. URL = . Turner, J. 2012. “Things: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2,” [review]. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. URL = . Weir, A. “Formalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition). E. N. Zalta (ed.). PDF version. URL = . Yablo, S. 2000a, “A Paradox of Existence.” In: A. J.Everett, and Th. Hofweber. Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Non-existence. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, pp. 275–312. ______2000b. “9. Apriority and Existence.” In: P. A. Boghossian, and Ch. Peacocke. New Essays on the A priori. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ______2001. “Go Figure: A Path through Fictionalism.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 25 (1): 72–102. ______2002. “Abstract Objects: A Case Study.” Nous 36: 220–240. ______2010. Things: Papers on Objects, Events, and Properties. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yablo, S. and Gallois, A. 1998. “Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 72: 229–261.

„Analiza i Egzystencja” 24 (2013) ISSN 1734-9923

ALEXANDER PRUSS*

ARISTOTELIAN FORMS AND LAWS OF NATURE

Abstract

Aristotelian Forms are mysterious entities. I offer an account of them as entities that make the laws of nature be laws. The Aristotelian ontology is fundamentally an anti-Humean ontology: Not only are laws a reality over and beyond regularities, but that in virtue of which they are laws is in fact that which is most truly called substance. If we further take it, say, on ethical grounds, that there are individual forms, then we get a multiplicity of substances in the universe, including multiple substances of the same sort, and the laws of nature end up being grounded in their powers. But we have global regularities, then, only because there is coordination between the lawmakers, or forms, of the solo doings of individual entities, a coordination that entails global patterns.

Keywords: Aristotle, forms, laws of nature, metaphysics, ontology, matter

* Alexander Pruss—Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, Director of Graduate Studies of Philosophy. His publications include the books One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics and The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment, as well as articles in metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion, formal epistemology and pure mathematics. Blog: http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com; web page: http://alexanderpruss. com. E-mail: [email protected]. 116 Alexander Pruss

I. Introduction

We may have a bit of a handle on roughly what kinds of entities the Platonic Forms are. We can think of them as analogous to a number of notions in contemporary philosophy that are denominated “Platonic abstracta,” e.g., propositions, concepts, mathematicals and the like. We may think them queer, but we have some idea what their queerness consists in. We may even believe that some of these kinds of entities actually exist. But what are Aristotelian forms? We know they are not like the Platonic ones. For instance, Aristotle insists that the great fault of Platonic forms is that they are not causes and so are of no explanatory use. Indeed, likewise, our contemporary Platonic abstracta fail to be causes. We take it for granted that it would be a category mistake to talk of a proposition or a mathematical object causing something to happen—that is, indeed, why it is so puzzling how one can know abstracta. But Aristotelian forms are causes. For one, they are the primary entities in Aristotelian ontology and if Aristotle is to escape his own attack on Platonism, they thus had better be causes. For another, Aristotle explicitly says that they are in Metaphysics Z.17. What kind of a queer entity is the form of the human being if this form actually can cause things to happen, while still being the principle of intelligibility of human beings apparently like a Platonic Form and like what we might denominate “the concept humanity”? There are plenty of things we can say about Aristotelian forms. They are causes. They are principles of intelligibility. They are in some way the primary things in existence. They are somehow primary this-somethings or this-suches (depending on the interpreter). And there are controversial questions we can ask about Aristotelian forms. Are there forms of the four elements? Is there one form for all human beings, or does each have her own particular form? Are the divine substances forms? But even if we answered these controversial questions, we still would not know what the Aristotelian forms are. The challenge, then, is to explain, with the help of ontologies that we think we have some grasp of, what Aristotelian forms are. This paper is an attempt at an answer to this expository challenge. In this attempt, I will have to make some exegetical choices. I shall not try to justify them specifically, but rather will hope that the fact that the account as a whole makes Aristotelian forms intelligible will provide some justification for these choices. In the end, I will be satisfied if the account is Aristotelian Forms and Laws of Nature 117 interesting metaphysically, even if it turns out not to be exactly what Aristotle intended. The account of forms as analogous to lawmakers that I shall give is inspired by an “analytic Thomist” account of substantial forms that John Haldane has given at a colloquium at the Center for Philosophy of Science (Pittsburgh). Thus, much of what I say about Aristotle will apply to Aquinas. This is a project in rational reconstruction of Aristotelian thought, showing how one might attempt to characterize forms understood along Aristotelian lines in terms of truthmakers and laws of nature. But now a digression is needed, as it will turn out that our explication of forms requires us first to give a general account of some non-Humean theories of laws of nature.

II. Laws of nature and lawmakers

The most basic dichotomy between views of laws of nature is that between Humean views, on which the laws of nature are merely descriptions of the actual states of affairs that obtain, and anti-Humean views, according to which the laws of nature have modal import and describe something over and beyond correlations between actual states of affairs. The best argument against the Humean approach may well be the very one that Aristotle levies against Platonic Forms: Humean laws of nature do not have any causal power and fail to explain anything. That all ravens are black is only explanatorily relevant to the claim that my raven, Smitty, is black if its force goes beyond the mere description of the color of the ravens in existence. If it is a mere coincidence that all ravens are black, then this accidental generalization fails to explain Smitty’s blackness. Indeed, explaining the blackness of Smitty by the blackness of all ravens when the latter is a mere coincidence is explaining the obscure by the more obscure: The coincidence of all ravens being black is more surprising and calls out for explanation more than Smitty’s happening to be black. Our best modern Humean accounts of laws are best systems accounts like that of David Lewis.1 Roughly,2 to be a law is to be entailed by that system

1 D. Lewis (1983), “New Work for a Theory of Universals”. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61: 343–377. 2 There are further complications in the case of indeterministic laws. 118 Alexander Pruss of true propositions which best optimizes a combination of two desiderata, (a) informativeness and (b) simplicity, and to be a fundamental law is to be a proposition (or axiom) of that best system. Informativeness is a measure of how much detail about the universe the propositions in the system entail. Simplicity can be measured, say, by brevity of expression in a language all of whose terms correspond to perfectly natural concepts. Suppose, then, that it is a fundamental law that all ravens are black.3 A part of what makes the proposition, p, that all ravens are black a law on the best systems account is that p is a true proposition, since it is only true propositions that are allowed to be in the system. But surely a part of what makes it true that all ravens are black is precisely that Smitty the raven is black. Thus, that Smitty is black partly explains why it is a law that all ravens are black. It is implausible, then, that the law should explain why Smitty is black. Let us then part company with the Humeans on the laws of nature. There is more to something’s being a law of nature than its being true of the actual universe. We must, of course, be careful here. Suppose it is indeed a law of nature that all ravens are black. It is reasonable to say then that the law of nature is a proposition, namely the proposition that all ravens are black. But then, it seems, we are no further ahead than the Humean, because qua proposition, it asserts nothing more than that all ravens happen to be black. However, while the proposition B that all ravens are black merely predicates blackness of the actually existent ravens, the further proposition that B is a law of nature says something more than just that B is true. We can characterize dissent from a Humean position by saying that there is more to a proposition p’s being a law of nature than p’s being true, p’s having certain formal features (like being universally quantified and perhaps involving non-gerrymandered concepts) and/or p’s fitting into some optimal account of the world’s actual occurrences (as on David Lewis’s story about laws). In particular, there might well be propositions p which are laws of nature in some possible worlds (and they may even fit into a best account of the events there), and yet which are not laws of nature in all possible worlds in which they are true.4 For instance, in our world, that objects fall

3 Presumably, it is not, but the example is more convenient than statements about fundamental particles, say. 4 This is not true of all laws of nature. For instance, some laws of nature might be necessary truths if they predicate essential properties of their objects. Also, arguably, Aristotelian Forms and Laws of Nature 119 when dropped is a law of nature; however, one can imagine a world where the laws of nature do not at all constrain the movement of massive falling objects, but where the massive objects indeterministically happen to move just as they do in our world. Now, plausibly, every true proposition is true in virtue of its accurately reflecting some aspect of reality. That aspect of reality is the proposition’s “truthmaker.” The truthmaker of the proposition that all ravens are black is the blackness of all actual ravens. The truthmaker of the proposition that Socrates exists is Socrates himself. The truthmaker of the proposition that Socrates is sitting is Socrates’ (act or passion of) sitting. Now, if p is a purely categorical proposition that is a law of nature, then we can ask not just what the truthmaker of p is, but also what is the truthmaker of the further proposition that p is a law of nature. This truthmaker must be some aspect of reality. It must thus exist, since the nonexistent cannot be a truthmaker by Parmenides’ principle. We need a name for the truthmaker of a true proposition of the form that p is a law of nature. The name should not be an abstract noun, because this truthmaker is not an abstract entity or concept, but an actual aspect of our existent universe, having explanatory prowess. I shall call such a truthmaker a “lawmaker” of p, that which makes the true proposition p into a law. Of course, just as the “truthmaker” of a proposition need not be a person that makes the proposition true (except in special cases: the truthmaker of “Socrates exists” is a person, namely Socrates), so too one should not read personhood into the term “lawmaker.”5 Of course, there have been challenges to the Parmenidean claim that true propositions require existent truthmakers, with the most powerful ones focusing on negative existential propositions, or equivalently universal the proposition that p is a law of nature is itself a law of nature if and only if p is a law of nature, so that the proposition that affirms nomicity of the proposition that all ravens are black is a proposition that is a law of nature in every possible world in which it is true. 5 On certain views of laws of nature, some or all lawmakers will turn out to be persons or aspects of persons. For instance, a theist like Richard Swinburne will say that a proposition’s being a law of nature is constituted by God’s directly willing it to be such, so that the lawmaker of the proposition is the will of God. Or if one thinks that ultimately all natural lawfulness supervenes on dispositional properties of substances, and if persons are substances, then the dispositional properties of persons will be lawmakers, though there will also be lawmakers which are the dispositional properties of substances that are not persons. 120 Alexander Pruss propositions. What makes it true that there are no unicorns? It would seem to trivialize the truthmaker theory to claim that there exists the state of affairs of there not existing unicorns. One might, following a suggestion of Richard Gale,6 instead posit a conjunctive state of affairs of everything’s being either A1, A2, or … (the list being finite or infinite) and A1’s having some positive property P1 incompatible with unicornicity, A2’s having some positive property P2 incompatible with unicornicity, and so on. Alternately, one might, perhaps inspired by Aristotle’s famous statement that speaking truly is saying “of what is that it is or of what is not that it is not,”7 allow that there are two basic kinds of propositions. There are positive propositions, which are made true by something that exists, and there are negative ones, which are made true by the non-existence of something whose existence would have made them false. In other words, a basic proposition is either made true by a truthmaker or by the absence of a falsemaker.8 Of course, there are technical difficulties in distinguishing positive from negative propositions, and the view must be extended to more complicated combinations of positive and negative propositions. I will ignore the truthmaker-falsemaker view, because it seems prima facie unlikely that explanatory laws are at base constituted as such primarily by the lack of something. It is something positive that we are looking for when we seek the ground of laws. At the same time, because a lack might enter into an explanation (the rock fell because of the force of gravity and because nothing counteracted this force), so we may need to allow that in addition to the lawmaker of a law, for the law to be such there may need to be some sort of a lack as well. But it is the lawmaker, which in this case will consist of the positive aspects of reality reported by the proposition that p is an explanatory law, that I will focus on. Now, it is a truism that laws of nature are not causes. This is because they are mere propositions. However, there are contexts in which one wants to use causal language about laws of nature. One may wish to say: “The law of gravitation made this apple fall.” Yet, since the law of gravitation is a mere proposition, it cannot make anything fall. But what does make apples fall,

6 R. M. Gale (1976), Negation and Non-being. American Philosophical Quarterly Monograph, no. 10. 7 Metaphysics G, 1011b27. 8 Cf. D. Lewis (2001), “Truthmaking and Difference-Making.” Noûs 35: 602–615. Aristotelian Forms and Laws of Nature 121 given appropriate initial conditions, is the lawmaker of the proposition that the law of gravitation holds. For, the explanatory relation between (a) the 2 proposition that F=Gm1m2/r (the formula, of course, abbreviates a more complicated statement which gives the definitions of all the symbols), (b) the proposition reporting the initial conditions and (c) the proposition reporting the fall of an apple mirrors an objective, ternary relation in nature between the 2 lawmaker of the proposition that F=Gm1m2/r , the dropping of the apple and the falling of the apple. If the explanatory relation between a law-reporting proposition, an initial fact-reporting proposition and a final fact-reporting proposition failed to mirror some kind of extra-mental relation in nature between the lawmaker and truthmakers of the respective propositions, then explanatory relations would lack objectivity. But the search for explanations is a search for objective truths. Given that, generally speaking, we are willing to say that a relation of causality between events A and B is parallel to a relation of explanation between the propositions reporting that A and that B happened, the relation between the lawmaker of the law of gravitation, the initial conditions and the fall of the apple is one that we can also call “causal” in an extended sense. Thus, nomological explanatory relations can be said to be parallel to causal relations between lawmakers and truthmakers. So the laws of nature are not causes, but their lawmakers can be meaningfully said to have causal efficacy or causal relevance. And there must be such lawmakers if the laws of nature are not to be Humean, and every true positive proposition must have a truthmaker while the claim that something is a law is a positive proposition. What I have said so far is, however, neutral between various concrete anti-Humean accounts of laws of nature. Indeed, these accounts can be seen as nothing else than different substantive accounts of what the lawmakers are, with differing levels of ontological commitment to these lawmakers. If one thinks that the laws of nature can be reduced ontologically to the dispositional properties of substances, then the lawmakers will ultimately be nothing but instances of these dispositional properties. If one thinks that a theory of physics is true on which ultimately it is spacetime that moves particles around, then spacetime or its properties will be the lawmaker or lawmakers. If one thinks that the idea of a law of nature is primitive, then there will be no reductive account of a lawmaker beyond saying that it is “the truthmaker of a proposition reporting that some other proposition is a law of nature.” If one thinks that what makes something a law is that it has natural necessity, then the lawmaker 122 Alexander Pruss is some state of affairs of there being a natural necessity or some universals or essences, or at least relations between universals or between essences,9 or perhaps it is some fact about the world as a whole.10 There is a further step that may be taken. One may insist that the relation between the lawmaker and the initial conditions, on the one hand, and the events reported in the explanandum, on the other hand, is literally causal, and not just causal in some extended sense. If one takes this further step, one departs from many non-Humean accounts. But this step has a significant explanatory advantage. A scientific explanation of an event will include a statement that such-and-such is a law of nature. This statement is a statement about a lawmaker. Now, we only include statements about Napoleon in a non-constitutive explanation if Napoleon is in some way causally connected with the explained events. We can now extend this intuition to the lawmakers: The lawmakers are only included because they are causally relevant to the outcome. The advantage of doing this is that now we can say why laws are explanatory. They are explanatory because causal relations are explanatory, while causal relations give us our paradigm of explanation: “Why did he die? Jones killed him. Why did the garbage dump catch on fire? Lightning struck it.” We can now add the exchange: “Why did the apple fall? The lawmaker of the law of gravitation together with its being in its initial conditions caused it to do so.”

III. Things

The next step in our exposé of Aristotelian ontology is to think about what there is. The universe is made of things that are objectively delineated, identifiable and countable. What those things are is a question for further investigation. Maybe they are natural things like human beings, horses, nettles and their like. Maybe they are solid things like human beings, a rock, the Empire State Building and an oak tree. Maybe they are elementary

9 Cf. D. M. Armstrong (1983), What is Law of Nature? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and M. Tooley (1977), “The Nature of Laws,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7: 248–268. 10 J. Bigelow, B. Ellis and C. Lierse (1992), “The World as One of a Kind: Natural Necessity and the Laws of Nature.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43: 371–378. Aristotelian Forms and Laws of Nature 123 particles, such as electrons, photons and fermions. What is important to the Aristotelian is that it is objective reality, and not just linguistic convention, that settles what the things are, what they are identical with and how many of them there are. The Sunalex, which is the mereological sum of me and the sun, is not objectively a thing. The reason it is not a thing is that it is two things. Now, of course one wants to retort: In one way the Sunalex is one thing and in another way it is two things. But saying this misses the objectivity involved in identifying the things. If in one way the Sunalex were one and in another two, then because we are looking for the things that are objectively delineated and objectively countable, we would have to have an objective fact of the matter about which of these it really is. When we talk about “that reality, the Sunalex,” are we talking of one thing or two things? Now, given that we must choose, it is evident that on the scientific grounds of what lends itself better to explanatory purposes it will be objectively better to talk of the Sunalex as two things rather than as one. So there already is something we can say about the things. No thing can be a mereological sum of other things. A heap of sand, then, is not a thing, for it is nothing but the mereological sum of the grains of sand. Whether the grains of sand are things or not is a more dificult question. In any case, the universe is made up of things. We can use the Greek “ousia” or the Latin “substantia” in place of “thing” if we want our claim to sound as non-trivial as it in fact is.

IV. Doings

But that is not all. For, evidently, things engage in various kinds of antics. Depending on what we think things are, they may emit radiation, they may write philosophical treatises, they may “spin” as electrons do, they may gravitationally attract, they may sit colorfully or they may suffer passively. So, the things do various kinds of activities besides just existing. Now, sometimes we talk of an action that is done cooperatively by several things. The torment of Ivan might be a joint doing performed by the KGB agents Natalya and Boris together with Ivan (in his act of suffering, i.e., in his non-intentional self-stimulation of C-fibers, or in his paining, depending on one’s theory of mind). But on the ontology I am recounting, 124 Alexander Pruss we can use our metaphysical microtome to cut up a joint action into the activities or solo doings of the things involved, some of which of course trigger doings in other things. Natalya engages in a holding of the electrodes, Boris in a pressing of the switch, and (therefore) Ivan pains. One might try to define anactivity or a solo doing as a doing by a thing x such that the only thing involved in the truthmaker of the proposition reporting this doing is x itself, but whether this would work depends on the substantial question whether an object of an action (say, the electrodes in Natalya’s act of holding) may not need to be specified to specify the action. Now, the things we see generally vary their doings. They do not always do the same activity, though the doings do have regularities (e.g., statistical ones). In such cases, we can distinguish between the thing and its solo doings. If a thing always does the same thing and of metaphysical necessity must always do the same thing, we cannot as easily make this distinction. We can call such a thing a “disembodied form.” Aristotle’s prime movers are things of this kind, but not all things are like that; indeed, it is not self- evident that there even are any such things, though Aristotle in Metaphysics L attempts to prove this non-self-evident fact. Now, where we can distinguish between a thing and its solo doings, we can also ask for an explanation of why that pattern of activities obtains that in fact obtains. Moreover, we can ask for a proximate such explanation, i.e., an explanation p of a fact (i.e., true proposition) r which cannot be put into a sentence of the form “p explains q which in turn explains r.” An explanation is a proposition, but true propositions have truthmakers, and so we can single out a truthmaker of the proximate explanation of the pattern of activities of a thing and give it the fancy name “form.” The form, then, is some real feature of the world that enters into a causal explanation of the pattern of activities that a thing, say Callias, exhibits and could exhibit. If Callias is a flower, Callias’s form explains its blooming, its giving forth of pollen, its photosynthesis and so on. It is essential to note that this form is not identical with any abstract entity, such as a “type of activity” or a “pattern,” understood as something abstract and mathematical. Rather, it is something concrete in the world. It is here that the discussion of laws of nature and lawmakers comes in. Suppose we take a deductive-nomological stance towards the explanation of Callias’s pattern of behavior and also take the stance that lawfulness is an ontologically primitive feature of the world, so that lawmakers cannot be reduced or their nature further elucidated. Then, Aristotelian Forms and Laws of Nature 125 the lawmakers of the relevant laws of nature are enter into the proximate explanation of Callias’s pattern of behavior, and hence are a part of the form of Callias. The form of Callias is related to the abstract type that specifies what the behavior of Callias in the same way as the lawmaker is related to the categorical proposition that reports what behaviors (which in fact are lawlike) occur. Moreover, we can see that it is difficult to deny that things have forms, unless we are to take a Humean stance here. For surely there is something in virtue of which a thing acts the way it does. It is certainly not claimed that that something predetermines the activity: the explanatory relation may well be non-deterministic, as, e.g., in libertarian personal causation or quantum mechanical explanation. But that something does explain the pattern of behavior. What there is room for disagreement about is what exactly the forms are. Are they aggregates of lawmakers of global laws? Aristotle says that they are not; rather, they are immanent in the things of which they are forms. It is here that considering the fact that our things are objective basic units in the composition of the universe will help. Callias, if he is a thing, must have an objective unity if he is not to be a mereological sum of other things. His activities or solo doings are something that comes in a strong sense from him, since after all they are his solo doings. But at the same time, these activities come from Callias’s form, by the very definition of “form” given above. Therefore, there must be a relevant sense in which Callias is his form or at least what Callias is is defined by Callias’s form. If this is so, then Callias’s form cannot consist of lawmakers of global natural laws that apply equally everywhere, unless of course Callias happens to be the universe as a whole. The possibility that our Callias is the universe as a whole and its form is the totality of the laws of nature is essentially the monistic Parmenidean suggestion that there is really only one material thing, namely the universe. For if the universe is a thing, and if the proper parts of things are not things, then if the universe which is the aggregate of all material stuff is a thing or substance, there are no other objectively delineated material things or substances. This kind of Parmenideanism is the consequence of seeing the lawmakers of the laws of nature as somehow global. If we reject this, then the intimate connection or even identity between a thing and its form ensures that we should think of forms as local and bound up with the things they are forms of. It might be argued that this in turn means that we can 126 Alexander Pruss reduce lawmakers in general to the interplay of the forms of existent things, because since it is the forms that are the causes of what the things do, we no longer have any explanatory need for other lawmakers than those associated with things, i.e., the forms, and so we can cut other lawmakers away with Ockham’s razor. Observe now how very different the forms are from Platonic Ideas. The Idea of Humanity is simply descriptive of, or at best normative for, what humanity is like. But this Idea is not that entity in virtue of the causal influence of which human beings do human things. The Platonic Ideas are analogous to the laws of nature considered as abstract propositions specifying what happens (that dropped rocks fall, that ravens are in fact black), and like the abstract propositions are impotent with respect to causal explanation. Indeed, how could a purely abstract entity explain concrete goings on? At best, causal explanatory prowess could be had by instances of participating, since an instance of a participating (say, of Socrates in the Idea of Humanity) can be considered a causally charged feature of the concrete world. But once we consider the instances of participating in such a way that they actually causally affect the things that are doing the participating, then it is no longer clear what role that which they are participating in has. E.g., the Idea of Humanity is not a concrete feature of the universe that has causal prowess. Let us suppose that that instance, call it x, of participating in Humanity that is Socrates’s causally explains some action of his. This x is some feature of the concrete world—else it would have no causal power (I take causal impotence to be one of the defining features of abstracta). But then Socrates’s action is explained by the causal influence of x, a feature of the concrete world, and in this explanation we do not invoke any non-concrete entity. Ex hypothesi, our x is an instance of a relating to the abstract entity Idea of Humanity; however, that abstract entity plays no role in x’s causal influence on Socrates, but at most in the specification ofx —otherwise it would not be abstract. But now we can with good reason call x the Aristotelian “form of Socrates,” since it is that entity which in a broad sense causally explains Socrates’s doings. Hence we can go from Platonism to Aristotelianism in this way, though whether this was the path actually taken is a difficult historical question. In the case of an anti-Humean view of the laws of nature, the causal role is played not by the propositions reporting the laws but by the lawmakers, namely those features of the world in virtue of which that which those Aristotelian Forms and Laws of Nature 127 propositions express are laws. And analogous to these causally relevant laws are the forms, which are features of the concrete world.

V. Matter

More needs to be said about the relationship between the thing and its form. If Callias’s solo doings are done in virtue of that form, then, as argued before, there must be a very close relationship between Callias and that form, and probably even an identity of some sort. We could just let it be an identity and say nothing more, were it not for one empirically observable phenomenon. Things can pass away and new things come to be out of them. If horses are things, then we can note that horses die and carcasses come to be out of them. (Whether the carcass is one thing or maybe many things conjoined, is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion.) On good empirical grounds, we do not want to say merely that the horse ceased to exist and immediately a carcass came to be, the way an effect follows a cause on Hume’s account. For if we said that, then it would be eminently mysterious why the carcass of a black horse is not a white tetrahedron, but initially is approximately the same color and shape as the horse was. To explain that, we need to posit a causal relation between some aspect of the horse and its carcass. But this causal relation cannot be between the horse’s form and the horse’s carcass. After all, the horse’s form and carcass never exist simultaneously. For, the horse’s form exists (at least in that locality—I am not prejudging here whether there are individual forms) when and only when the horse does, since it is by definition that which explains the horse’s doings. Were the form to exist after the cessation of the existence of the horse, then we could not have the kind of identity between form and horse that is needed to ensure that those doings that are proximately explained by the causal activity of the form are in fact the horse’s doings. In that case, the “form” would be an alien imposition, and the activities would be its activities and not the horse’s. So, if the form and carcass do not exist simultaneously, there can never be a causal relation between them. But maybe there are causal relations between temporally separated entities? Aristotle will not think so, since for him the things that do not exist now do not exist simpliciter and there cannot be a causal relation between an existent thing and a non-existent one, which entails that there is never a time 128 Alexander Pruss at which there is a causal relation between non-simultaneous entities. Even if we reject the theory of time behind such an argument, we might find plausible the claim that the horse’s perishing and the production of the carcass is not an activity or solo doing of the horse’s in the way that the horse’s jumping (even over a cliff, when this jump is a suicide!) or the horse’s neighing or the horse’s kicking are. The perishing and carcass-making are very different from these paradigmatic activities. If the intuitions here are not convincing, then for the remainder of this account the reader can at least stipulate that “activities” do not include perishings, one’s-own-carcass-makings and their like, and that the form is that aspect which explains the activities. The carcass, then, comes from the horse, and there is a causal relation there. But this causal relation cannot be between the horse’s form and the carcass. There is thus another aspect to the horse besides the form. By analogy with “lawmaker,” we could give this aspect the macabre name of “the carcass maker,” but let us just call it neutrally “matter.” There is good reason for this neutral choice of words, namely that occasionally one thing will be transformed into something more “advanced” than itself. Aristotle thought that properly constituted rotting stuff could become a worm. Many people think that chemicals properly combined can become a life-form. On all accounts, an egg and sperm (admittedly, not a thing, but an aggregate) can become a human being. In a way, the Aristotelian worm is the carcass of the rotting stuff, the life-form is the carcass of the chemicals, and the human being is the carcass of the egg-and-sperm aggregate, but this is a strained way of speaking, and so let us speak of “matter” rather than “carcass makers.” What is this matter of the horse? One can now answer: “It is that aspect or part of the horse which proximately causally explains the coming-to-be of the carcass.” If we think that such causal specification is a good way of specifying entities (it is, after all, the way that science uses in the case of many theoretical entities: The electron is that which causes the glow on cathode-ray tubes and the discreteness of electric charge measurements in Brownian motion experiments and so on), then this gives us a good definition. Seen in this way, the matter is the potentiality for being a carcass, i.e., that objective feature of the horse which grounds the possibility of a carcass’s coming to be there (note how explicitly Aristotelian the language is of necessity getting at this point). It has no identity beyond that which is given to it by this explanatory causal relation. Aristotelian Forms and Laws of Nature 129

One might alternately try to define matter as the remaining aspects of the thing once we subtract the form. But one can argue that the two definitions come to the same thing. For any intrinsic aspect of the horse can be thought of as the horse in some sense doing something or being capable of doing something: Color is the horse’s ability to reflect certain wavelengths of light, mass is the horse’s resistivity to acceleration, intelligence is the horse’s being able to solve various problems, acceleration is the horse’s current changing of speed, etc. And perishing and producing a carcass is in a sense one of the things the horse does. But it is a doing in a somewhat different sense, because what is being done is no longer simultaneous with the horse. There is only one such doing, and this is that doing by which the horse produces a carcass. Hence there is only one aspect of the horse which is not explained by the horse’s form. If, further, we accept that causal relations are simultaneous, then we conclude that the matter persists past the death of the horse, since it is causally related to the carcass. Indeed, we can see the being of the carcass as an activation of that capability for carcass-making which the horse’s matter was. Matter is still just a potentiality, but it is a potentiality that is realized. Nonetheless, even in a realized potentiality one can distinguish the potentiality from its realization. So the matter persists in some way. Of course, things can be more complicated than in the case of the horse. Something might be capable of perishing in various different ways. The matter is what grounds the capability of perishing into one or another of these then. But as there is no special problem with one thing’s having a potentiality for many effects, we need not complicate the account by dwelling on such cases. We can now make sense of the claim that what the horse really is is its form rather than its matter. For one, this claim entails that a horse is when and only when its form is. This is false with “matter” in place of “form,” unless by “matter” we mean “the unrealized carcass-making matter of the horse.” For another, the real solo activities of the horse are proximately caused by the horse’s form. The matter has as its only role the explaining of the horse’s perishing into the various things it can perish. The sentence, which Aristotle endorses, that “the horse is its matter” on this interpretation may simply say just that the potentiality for carcass-making that the matter of the horse provides is a potentiality that the horse has, even though it is a potentiality that can survive its demise—the carcass-maker is the horse, but considered 130 Alexander Pruss as a carcass-maker, not as a doer of proper solo doings. Admittedly, Aristotle likes to predicate form of matter, but that can be done as well. For the horse’s form is the realization of the potentiality for being a horse which the horse’s matter has inherited from having been the matter of the egg-and-sperm that the horse has come from. Insofar as it is the realization of that potentiality, it can be predicated of that potentiality, as in the phrase: “That potentiality is realized.”

VI. Individual forms

Nothing in the above account has addressed the vexed issue of whether there are individual forms or not. The issue is whether that entity which explains your human activities also explains mine. There is nothing obviously absurd about one form producing activities in two different places at the same time. After all, those anti-Humeans who believe in global laws of nature that do not strongly supervene on dispositional properties of individual things believe in very much such a thing, since the lawmaker of these global laws of nature will be an entity very much like the forms of this account, but an entity that manages to produce activities located in various places. And in any case, Socrates’s form explains the movement both of his arms and of his legs, though these are in different spatial locations. Ockham’s razor favors the idea that the same form explains your human activities and mine. Against it is the intuition that my activities are mine and yours are yours, which we intuitively understand to mean that these activities are wrought by numerically different proximate causes, viz., me and you. It is not my purpose here to decide the issue as a question of Aristotelian scholarship. As a question of philosophy, the issue is prima facie not a difficult one because in any philosophical account we need to preserve that which ethics needs—the imperative to do that is indeed a moral one—and concepts of moral responsibility are prima facie incompatible with the idea that your activities are explained by the causal influence of that very entity which my activities are explained by. However, this is only an opening maneuver in a discussion. After all there are people who think that your activities are proximately explained by the influence of the same entities as my activities are (note that “activity” here includes both the voluntary and the involuntary). These people are compatibilists who are anti-Humeans and who believe Aristotelian Forms and Laws of Nature 131 in global exceptionless laws of nature. For, as anti-Humean believers in global exceptionless laws of nature, they hold that your activities and mine are explained by the same entity, the aggregate of the lawmakers of the global laws of nature, though they may prefer to avoid this terminology. Ultimately, I do not believe this is tenable on ethical grounds, and moreover I hold that the issue is best decided on ethical grounds. For it is ethics that, of all the philosophical disciplines, most carefully studies the significance of our activities. But the issue does not seem to be capable of metaphysical resolution apart from such considerations. For the above account of forms as analogous to lawmakers shows that both views about whether forms are individual are, at least prima facie, coherent. The question is which of them is actually true. With St. Thomas, I opt for individual forms, but for ethical reasons, as described above.

VII. Form as a principle of intelligibility and conclusions

Were a thing not to have form, we could not know anything about it. For we know and define a thing only insofar as it engages in activities. These activities are caused by the form, so that by knowing the activities of a thing, we get to know its form. True, we can know something about the matter of the horse: it is that in virtue of which the horse can give rise to a carcass. But in knowing this, we only learn about what the matter potentially is. And even here there is an epistemological and definitional priority of form and actuality. For we know the horse’s potentiality to give rise to a carcass only insofar as we know the forms or actualities involved in carcasses11 and the form of the horse, since arguably it is the form of the horse that lets us identify as an individual the matter of the horse, as it is only by means of the form of the horse that the horse can be known. When we grasp what a thing is, we are grasping its form, i.e., the nature of that in virtue of which the thing behaves in the ways it does. So forms

11 I am not claiming that a carcass is a single thing and has a form, hence this cautious formulation. The carcass presumably is a heap of substances—a mix of primarily earth and water, Aristotle would say—and these substances have their forms, which I call “the forms or actualities involved in carcasses.” 132 Alexander Pruss are prior not only in the order of explanation of the development of natural things, but also in logos, in intelligibility. Finally they are prior, or at least not posterior, in the order of time, as the matter of a thing always already has a form—else it could not be identified. Hence the form is the best candidate for being a substance, since it is substance that is in every way prior.12 If this analysis is correct, then if some contemporary ontology has laws and particles, it is the lawmakers that are what Aristotle would consider to be most truly substances, while the particles he would consider to be mere matter, merely something existing potentially. And if the laws reduced to one global Grand Unified Theory, then in Aristotelian terms we would have to say that the cosmos is exactly one thing, as per Parmenides.13 The Aristotelian ontology is fundamentally an anti-Humean ontology: Not only are laws a reality over and beyond regularities, but that in virtue of which they are laws is in fact that which is most truly called substance or at least that which makes the substance be what it is. If we further take it, say, on ethical grounds, that there are individual forms, then we get a multiplicity of substances in the universe, including multiple substances of the same sort, and the laws of nature end up being grounded in their powers. But we have global regularities, then, only because there is coordination between the lawmakers, or forms, of the solo doings of individual entities, a coordination that entails global patterns.

12 Cf. Metaphysics Z.1, 1028a 32–33. 13 Cf. J. Bigelow, B. Ellis and C. Lierse (1992), for an argument that might push us in this direction. This argument can, I think, be resisted by accounting for the global phenomena like conservation laws in terms of the account I offer (2013) in “Omnirationality.” Res Philosophica 90: 1–21. „Analiza i Egzystencja” 24 (2013) ISSN 1734-9923

JUSTYNA JAPOLA-DESVERGNES*

NO MORE MAD-DOG CONCEPT NATIVISM

Abstract

According to Jerry Fodor, there are two possibilities with respect to the origin of concepts: a concept is either innate, or it is acquired from experience by means of the process of ‘concept learning.’ Fodor’s view in his 1975 and 1980 is that the empiricist method of concept acquisition, forming and testing hypotheses about objects that fall under a concept, can only work for complex concepts. He claims that we must possess some concepts in order to form hypotheses, so none of our simple (or primitive) concepts can be learned. If we have them—then they must be innate. In his 2008 Fodor contends furthermore that no new concepts at all, neither primitive, nor complex, can be learned, and so that all concepts must be innate. I argue that Fodor’s famous mad-dog concept nativism should be rejected because it could only work together with what I call neural nativism, and the latter turns out to be scientifically untenable. In addition, I suggest that one’s position in the empiricism/nativism debate should be a function of one’s account of the architecture of the mind, which, in Fodor’s case, only implies

* Justyna Japola-DesVergnes was born in Lublin, Poland. She has a Master’s Degree in French Language and Literature from the Catholic University of Lublin, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Georgetown University. Dr. Japola-DesVergnes’ areas of interest include analytic Thomism, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, Medieval philosophy, and French literature. 134 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes architectural nativism, and so, the existence of innate mechanisms. It neither obviously requires, nor precludes, representational—or concept—nativism.

Keywords: Fodor, concepts, concept acquisition, concept nativism, architecture of the mind

1. Introduction

Is the human cognitive endowment innate? And in particular, do we have innate concepts? According to Jerry Fodor,1 there are two possibilities with respect to the origin of concepts: a concept is either innate or it is acquired from experience by means of the process of ‘concept learning.’ Since, as Fodor argues, it turns out that no new (primitive) concepts can be learned, we must conclude that all (primitive) concepts are innate.2 This is Fodor’s famous ‘mad-dog’ concept nativism,3 a view that not many philosophers find plausible, but few dare to attack (cf. Cowie 1998, p. 227). I argue that Fodor’s radical nativism about concepts should be rejected based on neurological evidence. I also show that the reason why Fodor ends up a concept nativist is that he assumes that if a trait is not learned, then it must be triggered, and that it can be triggered only if it is innate. Once we reject the latter unsupported assumption, and provide a plausible definition of innateness, it turns out that Fodor himself has no reason to hold on to his radical nativism about concepts.

2. Concepts and concept acquisition according to Fodor

According to Fodor, a subject is said to have a concept C if she is able to think about something as (a) C (if she can bring the property C before her mind; cf. Fodor 2008, p. 138). Concepts, for Fodor, are thought-parts. They are mental entities (species of representations) that are constituents of cognitive mental states, i.e., of propositional attitudes, such as beliefs, desires, thoughts

1 My main sources are Fodor’s (1975; 1981; 1998 and 2008). 2 As I explain below, in his 2008 Fodor concludes that no new concept at all, neither primitive, nor complex, can be learned, and so that all concepts must be innate. 3 The term first appears in Fodor’s (1984, p. 39). No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 135 and the like (Fodor 1998, p. 6, and 2000, pp. 14–15). Lexical concepts, such as DOG (or GREEN, or BACHELOR), are expressible by morphologically simple predicate terms. Some lexical concepts are primitive: they do not have an internal structure and cannot be decomposed into other concepts.4 The set of primitive lexical concepts of any natural language is finite (cf. Fodor1981, p. 261). Phrasal concepts, such as the concept LIVES IN CHICAGO AND EATS MANGLEWORTS, are expressible by morphologically complex predicate terms. The semantic properties of phrasal concepts depend on the semantic properties of lexical concepts (the latter are constituents of the former). Phrasal concepts are acquired by the application of the recursive constructive procedures to primitive lexical concepts (there are, thus, infinitely many phrasal concepts). Lexical concepts, according to Fodor, either are acquired as a result of what is called the process of concept learning, or they are innate and only triggered by experience.

Concept learning vs. triggering

Concept learning is an epistemic process: it involves the formation of beliefs and the search for evidence. Fodor explains:

the mechanisms of concept learning are realizations of some species of inductive logic. In particular, they involve the formulation and confirmation of hypotheses about the identity of the concept being learned. (Fodor 1981, p. 267; cf. also Fodor 1975, p. 42)

Each trial provides inductive evidence pro or con a hypothesis of the form: the concept being learned is the concept of something which is…, where what goes in the blank is a candidate specification of those properties of a stimulus in virtue of which it satisfies the concept. (Fodor 1981, p. 268)

A crucial and distinguishing characteristic of concept learning, Fodor explains, is a rational connection between the concept and what it represents (Fodor 1981, p. 275). When a concept is acquired in a rational-causal way, “the experiences which eventuate in the availability of such a concept are

4 See footnote 6 below. According to some interpretations, for Fodor all lexical concepts are primitive (cf. Jackendoff 1989, p. 98). 136 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes held to bear a confirmation relation to some hypothesis which specifies the internal structure of the concept” (Fodor 1981, p. 272). In other words, in the case of those concepts which are learned, it is possible to provide an intentional description of the acquisition process and to show that the acquisition of the concept is rationally related to the experiences that gave rise to it, that it ‘makes sense’ in the light of those experiences. Concepts which are triggered are acquired not by learning, but by “opening one’s eyes and looking” (Fodor 1975, p. 97). All that is needed for the acquisition of a concept in this case is a properly functioning sensorium and the right kind of stimulus. As Fodor explains, “the structure of the sensorium is such that certain inputs trigger the availability of certain concepts” (Fodor 1981, p. 273). The connection between a concept and the experience that triggers it is brute-causal. The experiences of the organism do not stand in a confirmation relation to the concepts whose availability they occasion (Fodor 1981, p. 273), but rather they “function as the innately specified triggers” (Fodor 1981, p. 280).

Standard Argument

In what he calls the Standard Argument,5 Fodor shows at first that it turns out to be impossible to learn any new primitive lexical concept by means of concept learning, and thus that all of our primitive concepts must be innate. Here is the gist of Fodor’s reasoning. Imagine that you are a subject in an experiment in which your task is to learn a new concept: FLURG. The experimenter shows you different cards with colored geometrical figures on them. You make guesses whether the card you see has a flurg on it or not. You make a first hypothesis: perhaps there is a flurg on a card with a yellow square. The experimenter gives a negative answer. Your hypothesis is disconfirmed. You hypothesize that flurg may be a green circle. This gets you a positive answer from the experimenter. The hypothesis is confirmed. Eventually you arrive at the right answer: a flurg is a figure that is either green or a triangle. It is clear that you were able to complete the task only because you already had the two concepts, GREEN and TRIANGLE, at your disposal. But if that’s the case, then you did not learn any new primitive concept. The

5 See Fodor (1998, p. 123ff; 1981, pp. 266–269). No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 137 concepts you used to figure out what a flurg is were already there in your conceptual apparatus. You were able to successfully formulate and confirm the hypothesis that a flurg is something green or triangular because you already had both concepts GREEN and TRIANGLE. And so, it turns out that what is called ‘concept learning’ does not really refer to any process by means of which we would learn any new primitive concepts. Hypotheses can only be formed using some preexisting concepts. You cannot acquire DOG by forming hypotheses about dog-like objects because in order to form such hypotheses you would need to already have the very concept that you are supposed to learn (cf. Fodor 1981, pp. 269, 272). And since primitive concepts cannot be learned, they must be innate.6 In his 1975 and 1998, Fodor states that by means of ‘concept learning’ it is possible to acquire complex (i.e., non-primitive) concepts. And so, even though a primitive concept RED cannot be learned because it is primitive, the concept FLURG (which means: GREEN OR TRIANGULAR) could be learned. FLURG cannot be identified with either of its constituents; GREEN and TRIANGULAR must be previously possessed, and FLURG can be learned as a construction from these two previously possessed basic concepts. In his 2008, however, Fodor notices that his argument works equally well for complex concepts, and so, that “the whole notion of concept learning is per se confused” (Fodor 2008, p. 130). As an illustration, Fodor considers the concept GREEN AND TRIANGULAR, and concludes that it cannot be learned by the method of hypothesis testing, because we would need to possess this very concept together with its constituents before making any hypotheses. The explanation of this fact appears already in his 1975, where Fodor says:

The hypothesis whose acceptance is necessary and sufficient of learning [the concept] C is that C is that concept which satisfies the individuating conditions on Φ for some or other concept Φ. But, trivially, a concept that satisfies the conditions which individuate Φis the concept Φ. It follows that no process which consists of confirming such a hypothesis could be

6 Another element in Fodor’s argument for his mad-dog nativism is informational atomism, that is, a view according to which most, if not all, of our lexical concepts are primitive: they are atoms, unstructured symbols of the language of thought, carrying information about features of the world (see Fodor 1981 and 1998). I accept informational atomism without argument. 138 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes

the learning of a new concept (viz., a concept distinct from Φ). (Fodor 1975, p. 95)

If this is true, then it also works against complex concepts. The individuating condition has to be a single condition. Even if there are different components, there has to be some one thing that assembles them into a condition for that concept. And so, Fodor concludes, “there can’t be any such thing as concept learning” (Fodor 2008, p. 139). (Notice that if Fodor really wanted to hold on to the view according to which ‘innate’ means ‘not learned,’ he would need to conclude that even the most complex phrasal concepts (such as the concept LIVES IN CHICAGO AND EATS MANGLEWORTS) must be innate. This would make his view even more implausible.) The conclusion according to which the Standard Argument leads to a radical concept nativism is, however, too quick. All that Fodor’s argument shows is that the acquisition of concepts of any kind cannot be accounted for in terms of concept learning. Concepts, then, must be acquired in another way. This other way, for Fodor, consists in concepts being triggered by sensory experience. It is far from obvious, however, why triggering is supposed to require that concepts themselves are innate. What we are dealing with here seems to be just a terminological matter. Fodor makes the assumption to the effect that either there is a rational connection between a concept and what it represents, or the concept is triggered. And then he simply defines the process of triggering as involving some innate items. He says, “you can only trigger a concept that’s there, genetically specified, waiting to be triggered” (Fodor 1998, p. 129). But why should we think that a concept can be triggered only if it is already there, in the innate endowment of the organism, waiting to be released by the right kind of stimulus? And also, what would it mean for concepts to be there, waiting to be triggered? Unfortunately, nowhere in Fodor’s writings do we find a satisfactory explanation of what triggering is really supposed to be or why it requires innate concepts.

The d/D problem

According to Fodor, the crucial feature of the triggering relation between primitive lexical concepts and their occasioning experiences is that it seems random (cf. Fodor 1980, p. 280). Looking at the experience that triggered a concept does not explain why exactly this concept, and not a different No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 139 one, was acquired. This is what Fodor calls ‘the d/D problem’: we have no way to explain why it is experience with doorknobs, and not giraffes, that causes the concept DOORKNOB to be acquired. In concept learning, “the organism’s knowledge of its environment is exploited to confirm (or disconfirm) generalizations about the extensions of concepts” (Fodor 1975, p. 94, footnote 28). On the other hand, “triggering stimuli may have an arbitrary relation to the structures they release” (Fodor 1975, p. 94, footnote 28). In the case of triggering, Fodor emphasizes, the environment in fact provides a poor basis for the concepts that the organism acquires (Fodor 1981, p. 280). The data sample from the environment is ‘fragmentary and impoverished,’ and it is just not sufficient to explain why a given concept is acquired. If the environment does not provide a sufficient explanation of how we acquire concepts, then, Fodor suggests, we should look for an explanation on the side of the organism. According to Fodor, what could solve the d/D problem is exactly the hypothesis testing method, a method which does guarantee that there is a reliable relationship between experiences and concepts that they cause. After all, doorknobs are certainly the best source of evidence for DOORKNOB. Unfortunately, as we have seen, concept learning is of no use when we want to explain acquisition of primitive concepts. In addition, we may question whether hypothesis testing is really immune to the d/D problem. Fodor holds that it remains unexplained why we get the concept DOORKNOB from experiences of doorknobs, and not from experiences of cats. But it seems that he should worry as well about why we form hypotheses about doorknobs, when perceiving doorknobs, and not when perceiving cats. The d/D problem, therefore, arises equally with hypothesis formation and triggering, and it cannot be taken to require concepts to be innate only in the latter case. Fodor’s approach to nativism about concepts seems to be similar to that of Descartes. For Descartes, when we say that external things trigger in us sensory concepts (or sensory ‘ideas,’ in Descartes’s vocabulary), we do not mean that external things through the organs of sense actually transmit concepts into our heads. Rather, he suggests, what we mean is that they transmit “something which gave the mind occasion to form these ideas, by means of an innate faculty, at this time rather than at another.” From this Descartes immediately infers that: 140 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes

ideas [or concepts] of movements and figures are themselves innate in us. So much the more must the ideas of pain, color, sound and the like be innate, that our mind may, on the occasion of certain corporeal movements envisage these ideas (Descartes, “Notes Against a Certain Program”7).

What we see in this passage is a quick switch from an ‘innate faculty’ or mechanism to innate ideas. Neither Descartes nor Fodor seem to think that such a switch requires any kind of justification. Instead, both assume that if the mind comes up with concepts as a result of being stimulated by external objects, it must be the case that the concepts ‘were already there, waiting to be triggered.’ Innate mechanisms, however, do not necessarily imply innate concepts. Even though talking about the sensorium does not immediately provide us with an explanation of how sensory concepts are acquired, still, it is far from obvious that the mechanisms which allow us to obtain these concepts also require that concepts themselves be innate.

Innate concept forming mechanisms vs. innate concepts

Even the empiricist idea of concept learning requires some amount of innateness. If we acquire any concepts by means of hypothesis formation and testing, then what is needed to account for that is an innate mechanism, an innate ‘machine’ for producing inductive inferences (see Fodor 1981, pp. 268–269 for what such a machine must include). In the case of primitive concepts, there also must be some innate mechanisms that realize the function from sensory stimuli to sensory concepts. In his 1998, Fodor actually notices that on the account he proposes:

All that needs to be innate for RED to be acquired is whatever the mechanisms are that determine that red things strike us as they do; which is to say that all that needs to be innate is the sensorium.

And he continues:

The ‘innate sensorium’ model suggests that the question how much is innate in concept acquisition can be quite generally dissociated from the question whether any concepts are innate. The sensorium is innate by assumption …But …the innateness of the sensorium isn’t the innateness

7 Cited in Adams (1975, pp. 76–77). No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 141

of anything that has intentional content. Since the sensorium isn’t an idea, it is a fortiriori not an innate idea. So, strictly speaking, the innate sensorium model of the acquisition of RED doesn’t require that it, or any other concept, be innate. (Fodor 1998, p. 142)

Fodor clearly does not like this conclusion. Everybody agrees that the sensorium is innate, so what we have here is just a boring claim. Whether concepts are innate should not, however, be decided on a priori grounds. Rather, in order to determine what position in the nativism/empiricism debate is the most plausible we need to focus on what exactly we mean by the term innate (see below) and also on what account of concepts we endorse.

3. What is innate in cognition?

The problems with assessing the plausibility of Fodor’s mad-dog concept nativism are exacerbated by a general lack of clarity with respect to the meaning of the term ‘innate.’ One may have the impression that the answer to the empiricism/nativism debate depends merely on what definition of nativism we accept. Say you like the idea of innate concepts. Well, you can go ahead and define ‘innate’ in such a way that concepts just must be innate. But then, why bother with the whole discussion? Let me clarify at this point that I do not intend to argue that Fodor should or should not be a concept nativist in some universal sense of ‘innate’ because, obviously, there is no such thing. My goal is more modest. What I want to show is that given Fodor’s account of concepts and his account of the architecture of the mind, and also given the definition of innateness I support, it does not make sense for Fodor to hold on to his mad-dog concept nativism. First of all, it should be clear by now that, with respect to the present considerations, we are interested in what can be called developmental nativism. We are discussing theories concerning cognitive development, that is, theories about how human beings acquire concepts, develop their language skills, etc. We are not interested in issues concerning epistemological nativism and empiricism that refer to theories about how knowledge claims are to be justified. Secondly, within developmental nativism, we distinguish between representational nativism and architectural nativism. Representational nativism is the view according to which some mental representations (that is, 142 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes some beliefs, some types of knowledge or some concepts) are innate. On this view, the mind possesses some pre-specified representational content, where different explanations are offered of the innateness or pre-specification of the mental representations in question (I talk about this below). Architectural nativism does not focus on the output of the cognitive process, or on the character or source of our representations. Rather, its center of attention is the process of cognition itself. Architectural nativism holds that there is an innate structure or an innate functioning of our minds. It says that the architecture of the mind is pre-specified. The mind is organized, at birth (or before birth), into some innate structures, and there are some innate ways in which information coming from the external world must be processed by the brain so that the process of cognition can take place. It is commonly assumed as obvious (by both empiricists and nativists) that some sort of architectural innateness is true.8 Fodor’s mad-dog nativism is an extreme version of representational innateness. Our main task at this point is, then, to figure out how representational nativism could be explained in more detail, and what exactly we mean when we talk about innate mental representations. Let us first look at various more general explanations of the term ‘innate.’

Meanings of the term ‘Innate’

On the most commonly known version of nativism, a feature is considered to be innate if it is possessed from birth (cf. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding). There are, however, many features considered to be innate (for instance, secondary sexual characteristics) that are not present at birth. In addition, it is possible that some traits that are present at birth were actually learned in utero (e.g., the newborn’s capacity to recognize certain smells or sounds). ‘Innate’ may also be taken to mean something that is a priori to the operation of the senses, something that is not derived from the operation of the senses, but from the mind itself, or more generally, something that

8 The empiricist tabula rasa metaphor is meant to indicate that the mind is originally empty of objects of thought (e.g., of ideas, concepts or knowledge). Empiricists do not deny that the mind is endowed with various natural faculties such as perception, understanding or memory, and with certain innate mental powers (e.g., abstraction or comparison). No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 143 is completely independent of sensation (cf. Tavuzzi 1987). An innate feature, on this interpretation, is also sometimes defined as “the product of interactions internal to the organism” (Elman 1996, p. 23). Fodor himself hints at this meaning of innateness when he considers whether ‘innate’ means ‘not acquired’ (Fodor 2008, p. 132), or, more specifically, ‘not acquired in consequence of experience’ (Fodor 2008, p. 144), and also when he says that concepts are innate because they do not come from the environment, but rather from the organism (Fodor 1981, p. 280). This definition of innateness, however, is also not very plausible. If it were accepted, it would turn out that there is really nothing innate because basically everything in the human development requires at least minimal interaction with the environment, and thus, also sensory experience. We would be inclined to think, for instance, that walking is an innate capacity of quadruped mammals. But walking is not independent of sensation, of some sort of physical circumstances (e.g., at least gravity and friction are needed), and of some kind of interaction between the organism and the environment (at least, the organism needs to breath, eat and drink in order to be able to ever acquire this innate feature). Fodor’s explanation of innate traits as traits that are acquired by means of the brute-causal process of triggering avoids the problems faced by the first two explanations of innateness. A trait that is acquired by means of triggering does not have to be present at birth. Also, it is quite likely that the process of triggering involves interaction with the environment, and some kind of sensory experience. However, as we have seen, Fodor claims that ‘innate’ is the only alternative to ‘learned,’ and that ‘learned’ is equivalent to ‘acquired by means of hypothesis testing.’9 Such a claim has some obviously implausible consequences. If something is ‘innate’ just because it is ‘not acquired by means of hypothesis testing,’ then too many things (AIDS, for instance) would count as innate. Also, consider the scenario in which a person acquires knowledge of, say, Latin, by swallowing a special Latin-pill (the example comes from Fodor 1975 and 1981). We don’t want to say that the knowledge of Latin is innate. For Fodor, however, it would have to be so. The person’s knowledge of Latin is not acquired by means of hypothesis

9 Hypothesis testing is the only rational cognitive or rational psychological process that Fodor considers as a possible way in which we acquire concepts. 144 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes testing, and so, it must have been triggered by the pill. If it was triggered, it means that it is innate: it had to already be there, waiting to be triggered. A possible solution to the Latin pill problem would be to come up with an additional constraint on what it means to be innate. We could say, for instance, that a trait is innate if it satisfies the normalcy constraint, that is, if a given organism will acquire it ‘in the normal course of events.’ Our capacity to walk, then, is innate because it is successfully developed whenever a healthy baby is raised in normal circumstances. On the other hand, our knowledge of calculus is not innate, because it won’t be acquired unless special circumstances (learning in a classroom) take place, and it requires the employment of various psychological processes of teaching, learning, reading, studying, etc. The knowledge of Latin from the example above is not innate on this modified version of innateness because it is acquired in a very unusual way. The concept of ‘normalcy,’ however, brings with itself its own problems. There may be cases when it is “the very abnormality of the conditions of acquisition that points to the innateness of capacities acquired” (Khalidi 2002, p. 256). So, for instance, if some species of birds are able to “develop adult song even when reared in isolation from conspecifics,” then this is “taken as evidence that birdsong in these species is innate” (Khalidi 2002, p. 256). Also, the definition of innateness which refers to the normalcy condition would allow too many traits to count as innate. For instance, it would imply that getting colds is an innate property of humans. Normal conditions can and do change over time. In the modern world, being taught to read is pretty normal. So, because humans now learn to read in the normal course of development, reading would be considered an innate trait. The conclusion, therefore, is that the fact that a certain trait is always acquired in normal circumstances on its own does not say anything about whether the trait is innate or not. At the same time, it seems that any plausible definition of innateness has to take into consideration some kind of minimally understood ‘normal circumstances.’ This is because for any living organism there are various requirements that must be met so that it can function properly—without them, no traits, whether innate or not innate, can be acquired. Consideration of the normal course of events or normal circumstances, as well as the suggestion that those traits count as innate which manifest themselves in all normally developing members of a given population, No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 145 takes us back to a biological understanding of innateness. This, I think, is the direction that we ought to take in our search for a plausible account of innateness. There are, however, many different senses in which the term ‘innate’ is used in biological sciences. Biologists sometimes consider as innate the following: –– traits that lack malleability (or that do not manifest developmental plasticity; traits that are hard to change, because they are insensitive to environmental changes); –– traits that are characteristic of particular species (traits that are typical, universal or exclusive to a species; traits that reflect what it is to be an organism of a given kind); –– traits that are evolutionary adaptations (that are the result of natural selection); –– traits that are genetically determined; –– traits that are unlearned; –– traits that develop in the absence of contact with conspecifics; –– traits (behaviors) that develop fully formed in animals that have been prevented from practicing them (cf. Griffiths 2002, pp. 72–74). Unfortunately, there is no agreement on how to define these supposed characteristics of innate traits (e.g., it is far from clear how a trait which is genetically determined should be defined). In addition, it turns out that the listed characteristics do not pick out the same traits as innate. A feature may turn out to be innate in one of the senses, but not in another. For instance, a trait may be universal to all members of a species, but learned (e.g., there are birds that have innate song patterns, but in order to trigger these patterns it is required that the birds have contact with other members of the same species; Maclaurin 2002, p. 106). Or it may happen that some trait is a result of natural selection, but does require social interaction for its development (Griffiths 2002, p. 74). My suggestion is that a plausible definition of innateness should both acknowledge the scientific (i.e., biological) origins of the term ‘innate,’ and enable us to answer two questions about traits that are considered. First of all, it has to put limits on how an organism can end up possessing an innate trait in question. Secondly, an explanation is needed of why the organism has that trait in the first place. Answers to these two questions indicate certain desiderata that any plausible explanation of the term ‘innate’ should satisfy. 146 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes

First question: How are innate traits acquired?

The answer to the first question will have several parts. First of all, we allow an innate trait to be acquired ‘in time.’ That is, for any given innate trait, there will always be a time t1 when the organism did not have it and another time t2 when it did. (The time t2 may occur still in the womb, at the moment of birth or at a later stage of development of the organism.) This way, we arrive at the first desideratum:

Desideratum 1: An innate trait may fail to be present at birth.

Secondly, there will be some processes of acquisition, for instance learning (in the most common sense meaning of the term, as in learning calculus in school) or swallowing a second-language-pill, such that if a trait was acquired by means of them (and could not be acquired without them, excluding science fiction and other extraordinary circumstances), then it is certainly not innate. Acquiring French as a second language will count as an instance of learning; French as a second language is, therefore, not innate. (If French is acquired as a result of being hit in the head, it still does not count as innate.)

Desideratum 2: An innate trait is not learned.

Third, since all features in our phenotype depend basically on two things, our genetic makeup and the influence of environmental factors (it also depends on gene products, such as RNA and protein, and on different interactions between the genes and the environment), it makes sense to say that our innate traits are genetically determined (and genetically inherited) and require certain environmental factors. And so, we have two more desiderata:

Desideratum 3: The acquisition of an innate trait requires and depends on environmental factors.

Desideratum 4: An innate trait is a trait that is genetically determined (and genetically transmitted from one generation to another). No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 147

Innate traits are somehow coded in the genes (and genetically inherited)10 so that, in normal circumstances, all normally developing members of a given species are going to possess them (it is not unconditionally guaranteed that the organism will actually acquire a genetically determined trait; serious damage or a disease may prevent acquisition of the trait). In other words, a phenotypic trait is innate for a given genotype if it is sufficiently invariant (Samuels 2002, p. 242), that is to say, if it will emerge even if there are some (not too drastic) changes in the environment, and even if the organism itself undergoes some (again, not too drastic) changes. So, given the normal circumstances (not too rich, as in the calculus class, and not too impoverished, as in the case of a child being raised in complete isolation from other human beings), all the genetically inherited traits that are developed by normal members of a given population would count as innate. A now obvious objection to this explanation of genetic determination is that it could still allow us to identify too many traits as innate. Most likely all normal adult human beings in a variety of environments have the belief, ‘water is wet.’ This belief is invariant and it must have some genetic foundations, but we would not want to say that it is innate. Samuels offers the following diagnosis of the problem:

The fundamental flaw to which all invariance accounts are subject is that they attempt to explain the central features of innateness solely in terms of a mapping relation between genotypic and phenotypic traits, without imposing any substantive constraints on the mechanisms or processes in virtue of which such mapping relations obtain. What they all ignore, in other words, is the question of what explains the existence of such invariant mappings. (Samuels 2002, p. 245)

My suggestion is that what can solve the problem is the explanation of why/in what sense a given trait is invariant.

Second question: Why do we have innate traits?

Given that the greatest concern of the present considerations is the phenomenon of the human capacity to think by means of concepts, and that

10 There is no agreement with respect to how a trait that is genetically determined should be defined. For more details, cf. Samuels (2004, pp. 137–138; Symons 1992, pp. 140–402). 148 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes the main question that we discuss is how concepts are acquired by human thinkers, what we need is a definition of a trait that is innate in a—in this case human—species. (For this reason, we do not consider as innate those traits that are produced by random mutations in an individual organism, and then inherited by its offspring.) In order to answer the question why an organism belonging to a given species has an innate trait that it does, we refer, in the end, to evolution. And so, we say:

Desideratum 5: An innate trait is a result of natural selection; it is an evolutionary adaptation.11

To claim that a trait is an adaptation means:

to make a claim about the past: …[it] refers to something produced in the past by natural selection. …It is also to make a claim about design. …When one claims that a feature of an organism is an adaptation, ‘one is claiming not only that the feature was brought about by differential reproduction among alternative forms, but also that the relative advantage of the feature vis-à-vis its alternatives played a significant causal role in its production.’ Finally, given modern understandings of the genetical basis of reproduction, to claim that a trait is an adaptation is to make a certain kind of claim about genes. (Symons 1992, p. 140)

‘Evolutionary adaptations’ are not the same thing as ‘adaptive traits.’ Adaptations are those traits that are the result of natural selection; they occur through a combination of successive, small, random changes in traits and become fixed in a population by the selection of those variants which have the greatest survival chances. Adaptive traits are those traits which (now) increase the fitness of organisms that possess them. Some of the now adaptive traits, if they do increase survival chances (and if they are heritable), may in the future become fixed for a given population. Until they are fixed, they would not be considered innate. So, what traits are innate will change over time. Supposedly, there was a certain moment in the past when the capacity for language appeared as a result of just some random mutations. After that, this capacity turned out to be an adaptive trait—creatures endowed with language were more likely to reproduce. Now, for the last several thousands

11 On my account, innate traits are not those features which have arisen from a random evolutionary force like statistical drift (cf. Pinker 1997, p. 36). Rather, they were produced by natural selection, which is not random. No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 149 of years, language capacity can be considered an evolutionary adaptation,12 an innate feature of human beings. It is also possible that a trait that is an evolutionary adaptation (and so, innate) currently does not have the same (or any) survival value for the species (it may not be an adaptive trait anymore). For a trait to stop being innate, it must disappear. (It is important to emphasize that whether a trait is an adaptation is an empirical matter. For this reason, we may expect not to know sometimes whether or to what degree a trait is innate.) At this point, let us see how the proposed definition of innateness can be applied in the case of representational nativism. Next, we will clarify what it could mean to say that concepts are innate in the sense of being genetically inherited evolutionary adaptations. Finally, we will assess how plausible such a view is, and whether Fodor is indeed committed to it given his account of concepts and of the architecture of the mind.

4. Kinds of Representational Nativism

What does it mean for mental representations, such as knowledge, beliefs or concepts, to be innate? In order to answer this question we need to distinguish two subcategories within representational innateness: tissue and organism nativism (cf. Samuels 1998, pp. 559f). Tissue nativism is a view according to which to say that there is innate knowledge is to claim that some representations are hard-wired into the brain, and that various neurons are “born ‘knowing’ what kinds of representations they are destined to take on” (the definition comes from Elman 1996, pp. 26–27). More generally, TN claims that in some cases it is innately specified that various groups of cells (in a normally developing organism) will take on some specific function. For instance, it may be that specific neurons in the cerebral cortex know in advance (perhaps even before they reach their destination when they migrate from the proliferation center, that is, from the place where they are born) that no matter what happens, they can and will be responsible only

12 This definition of innateness indicates that different traits may be innate to a different degree. The longer a trait is an adaptation, the more innate it is. Language is less innate than, e.g., the functioning of the circulatory system, and other traits that the old parts of the brain are responsible for. 150 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes for vision (this is equivalent to saying that on tissue nativism, innate traits lack developmental plasticity). Organism nativism is not concerned with features of various pieces of brain tissue. Rather, it is a thesis about whole organisms. It holds that:

it is innately specified that organisms possess certain mental representa tions, … [that is,] there are some types of mental representations (e.g. the type [MOTHER] or RED), such that it’s innately specified that we all possess tokens of that type of representation. (Samuels 1998, p. 559)

According to organism nativism, beliefs (or concepts) that are innate for human beings are in some way genetically programmed to arise in our mind; i.e., innate representations are phenotypes that all humans (at least all those with similar enough genotypes, and those who develop in normal conditions) have in common. Samuels (1998) claims that contemporary theorists who defend nativism about representations, Fodor included, endorse organism nativism; they are “concerned with claims about what innate mental representations people (and other organisms) possess and not claims about the properties of specific pieces of neural tissue” (Samuels 1998, p. 560). We know that this is the case, Samuels points out, because pretty much everybody agrees that mental representations are multiply realizable, that is, that “tokens of the same type of psychological entity (state or process) can be realized by different kinds of neural entity (state or process)” (Samuels 1998, p. 560). And, according to Samuels, tissue representational nativism wants to deny multiple realizability. Organism nativism, however, could not work as a general definition of nativism. There are many traits that all members of a given species will develop in normal conditions, but these traits do not have to be innate. Their invariance may be due to environmental invariance, they may not have been genetically transmitted and they may have nothing to do with survival value for the species. In addition, recall that the question we keep struggling with is whether concepts as thought-parts are innate. If we assume that organism nativism is true and that it is innately specified what concepts we are going to end up with, does this mean that concepts are innate? Well, first of all, if all that organism nativism says is that (1) the organism will acquire concepts (assuming it functions normally) and (2) what kind of concepts it acquires is determined by the kind of world in which it lives and the kind of No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 151 neurobiology it has (the kind of species it belongs to), then, clearly, Fodor is a nativist, but so is almost everybody else. Organism nativism with respect to various mental representations would be hard to refute. It does not seem very controversial to claim that it is an evolutionary adaptation that while all sheep (quickly) acquire the belief ‘wolves are dangerous,’ all human infants quickly acquire the beliefs ‘unsupported objects generally fall,’ or ‘the parts of the same object generally move together’ (cf. Fodor 2000, p. 93), and that ducks have the innate concept MOTHER that they apply to the first moving object that they see right after they have hatched out of an egg. As we shall see below, however, it is not very likely that what this requires is innate propositional knowledge, or innate thought-parts.

Neural nativism

My suggestion is that if we want to find a place for Fodor’s mad-dog nativism in the discussion about representational nativism, we will find it—contrary to Samuels’ claim—on the side of tissue nativism. We should notice, however, that there are in fact two distinct versions of tissue nativism. Consider the following two ways in which tissue nativism can be summarized:

I. Various neurons are ‘born knowing’ what kinds of representations they are destined to take on. II. Some representations are hard-wired into the brain; they are encoded in the brain as particular patterns of synaptic connectivity within a specific neural system. (Elman 1996, pp. 26–27)

The first description expresses the kind of tissue nativism presented above. It claims, as we have seen, that as a result of natural selection, specific pieces of tissue are genetically determined to take on certain functions, assuming that all goes well with a given creature’s development. The second claim expresses what I call neural nativism, and it defines mental representations as ‘fine-grained patterns of cortical activity, which depend on specific patterns of synaptic connectivity’ (Elman 1996, p. 364). It says that (at least) some mental representations are hard-wired into the brain; that is, they are in advance encoded as particular patterns of synaptic connectivity within a specific neural system (Elman 1996, p. 26) and in specific locations in the brain. According to neural nativism, those pre-specified neural structures are genetically determined to represent specific objects: They have been 152 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes inherited by the individual and evolved in the species because there is an adaptive value such that the activation of a given neural pattern constitutes thinking a thought containing a specific thought-part, and so constitutes the occurrence of a given concept. Whenever a given neuronal structure fires up, the organism entertains a given representation. If what neural nativism describes is the actual state of affairs regarding the human possession of concepts, then this confirms Fodor’s mad-dog nativism. For Fodor’s nativism to be plausible, it would have to be the case that it is genetically determined and an evolutionary adaptation that for any kind of stimulus that a (human) cognizer can register, there are certain specific neuronal patterns in specific parts of the brain ‘waiting to be triggered’; any cognizable object will (and can only) be represented by some pre-specified neural structure, realized by particular patterns of neural activations in a specific location of the brain. On such an interpretation, Fodor’s position turns out to be:

a type-type identity theory according to which every type of mental entity is identical with some type of neural entity—e.g. that being pain = C-fibre activity, being the concept RED = 30 MHz activity in the frontal cortex and so on. (Samuels 1998, pp. 561–562)

Neural nativism which would support Fodor’s mad-dog nativism claims that all primitive concepts that ever appear in our minds are innate, in the sense of being hard-wired. All those patterns of neuronal activity that constitute the thinking of primitive concepts are pre-specified: they are ready to fire prior to experience, they will fire when stimulated by the right kind of a trigger and they are assigned to specific parts of the brain. The exact character of every such pattern that represents any given object is genetically determined and fixed in advance by natural selection, independently of experience.

What would science say?

How plausible, from a scientific point of view, is this kind of radical representational nativism? And what exactly can it mean for our genes to code for innate primitive mental representations? Consider what is called the Hebbian theory of cell interaction, according to which, No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 153

when one cell repeatedly assists in firing another, the axon of the first cell develops synaptic knobs (or enlarges them if they already exist) in contact with the soma of the second cell. (Hebb 1949, p. 63)

As a result,

any two cells or systems of cells that are repeatedly active at the same time will tend to become ‘associated,’ so that activity in one facilitates activity in the other. (Hebb 1949, p. 70)

(The theory is often summarized as ‘cells that fire together, wire together.’) For our genes to code for innate mental representations, it would mean that they determine, prior to experience, exactly what cells, in what configurations and in what parts of the brain, need to be excited to arouse a given concept. (If we were to distinguish different concepts at the neural level, we would need to be able to distinguish different patterns of excitations of different neural cells.) In order to make sense, such a view would also require the existence of a mechanism that would guarantee the right connection between a trigger (that is, the object that ends up being represented) and the pre-specified neural pattern ‘waiting’ in the brain—a neural pattern which, when activated, represents the object. We could say, perhaps, that at some point in the past, this connection used to be established as a result of experience. Perception of a given object would trigger certain cells in a specific location in the brain to start firing together. In agreement with the theory according to which cells that fire together, wire together, a new neural pattern would be formed. In order for mental representations to become innate, it would have to be the case, first of all, that possessing specific kinds of neural patterns is a heritable trait. In addition, it would have to be an adaptive trait for the organism to have it pre-specified independently of experience what concrete patterns of neural activation will stand for any given (primitive) mental representation. How plausible is such a view? While the issue is far from settled, neural nativism seems unlikely in light of current scientific evidence. What scientists can determine is which parts of the brain are (the most) active during various cognitive tasks (cf. Elman 1996, pp. 3–5). They have no way of saying, however, what exactly happens in the brain when I think ‘CAT’ (cf. Elman 1996, p. 4; Merritt 2008, p. 184) and so there is no certainty whether any kind of concept nativism, whether extreme or partial, is the case. 154 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes

What science does suggest is that specified localization is not sufficient for innateness, and that neither specified localization nor identity of neural patterns across individuals are necessary for innateness. So, first of all, it is not necessarily true that if a function is localized in specific regions of the brain, then it must be innate. Rather, it seems to be the case that various regions of the brain specialize only in virtue of experience.13 Also, it turns out that the same outcome “can be achieved in a number of ways, i.e., with different forms of cortical representation, and with the collaboration of several different brain regions, in several different working coalitions” (Elman 1996, p. 247). For instance,

[b]rain organization for language and other higher cognitive functions may vary markedly across normal individuals, in idiosyncratic patterns that are as unique as their finger prints. (Elman 1996, p. 248)

There are no grounds for positing the existence of exactly the same neural patterns in the same parts of the brain that would correspond to the same concepts in different people. Finally, and most importantly, it is hard to imagine what evolutionary advantage there would be to have pre-specified neural patterns for each mental representation that the organism could entertain. Perhaps it would be plausible to claim that there are some innate (that is, fixed) patterns of synaptic connections in the brain that govern the functioning of the heart, of the circulatory system or of visual edge detectors. It would clearly be advantageous if the brain did not have to learn new patterns in order to guarantee the reliability with which the heart and the circulatory system work, and with which neurons in the visual cortex detect edges. Even here, however, the brain must acquire these patterns at a certain point in its development.14

13 It turns out, for instance, that there is a specific region of the visual cortex that is responsible for spelling, which certainly is not an innate capacity (cf. Elman 1996, p. 242). Similarly, various studies show that there are areas of the cortex “that are uniquely active” in “skilled chess players at different points across the course of the game” (Elman 1996, p. 242). And chess playing is not an innate activity, either. 14 As Elman points out, “biologically plausible network models have been constructed which demonstrate that such specialized response properties do not have to be prespecified. They emerge naturally and inevitably from cells which are initially uncommitted, simply as a function of a simple learning rule and exposure to stimulation” (Elman 1996, p. 5). So, most likely, what is innate in these cases is that some neural patterns get hard-wired No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 155

With respect to conceptual mental representations15, it seems that the evolutionary advantage is the opposite: to have neurons, or neural networks, that are initially uncommitted, but which, when exposed to stimuli, learn various patterns to encode various representations. This solution may be costly with respect to the amount of time required for the acquisition of mental representations, but it allows for greater flexibility. There is no need to posit (very implausibly) any fixed-in-advance-by-natural-selection patterns of synaptic connections whose role it would be to represent, say, the concepts COMPUTER or RIPSTICK (a new kind of skateboard). Flexibility is what allows us to learn a basically infinite number of different concepts; also, because of it we are able to learn throughout our lives. Because of the brain’s flexibility with respect to mental representations, we are able to forget, or to get rid of, useless knowledge in order to make space for new knowledge. Improvement is also possible when some neural patterns get reinforced and other patterns disappear. This also puts a lesser burden on the genome. Genes are responsible for the complexity of the human brain, for the kinds and the number of neurons that we have at birth, for the initial connections between neurons, etc. There is no need for genes to also code for a specific neural pattern for every possible concept.16 At the brain level, to acquire an innate trait means to acquire a certain more or less complex set of neural patterns that is an evolutionary adaptation. In those cases where the possession of these specific patterns of synaptic connections is not an evolutionary adaptation, the traits that they are responsible for are not innate. (When I learn how to rollerblade and new patterns of synaptic connections are produced in my brain, the exact character of these patterns is certainly not pre-determined by natural selection.) What seems more likely is that it is the capacity to acquire concepts which is an evolutionary adaptation; but how particular concepts are realized very early in the development of the organism, and that they have a high level of priority in the allocation of neural resources. 15 I do not intend to take a stand concerning perceptual mental representations. It may well be that the basic representations involved in perception, such as edge and motion detectors, are evolutionary adaptations. If that is the case, nativism about basic perceptual categories could follow. 16 Cf. Elman (1996, p. 8): “There is simply too much plasticity in the development of higher organisms to ignore the critical effect of experience. …there aren’t enough genes to encode the final form directly; …genes don’t need to code everything.” 156 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes in the brain is not. The exact character of the new pattern that will stand for a given representation depends on various factors: the person’s genetic endowment, the stage in her development (or her age) at the moment when she acquires a given concept, the state of her brain at the moment of stimulation and a myriad of other factors from both external and internal environments. The new pattern most likely will not remain unchanged throughout the life of a given cognizer. If it is successful (if it turns out to be important and advantageous), it will get reinforced; if it is not successful, it will weaken, and the neurons involved in its occurrence will get hired for a new job.

5. Conclusion

Among the various explanations of innateness that we have seen, it is neural nativism that provides a plausible and at the same time substantial explanation of what it could mean for concepts as thought-parts to be innate. Neural nativism, however, is not plausible from a scientific point of view. Given the current state of scientific research, we can also conclude that concepts understood as thought-parts are not innate. The remaining task is to show that Fodor himself has actually no reason to hold on to his mad- dog nativism.

Implications of Fodor’s account of the architecture of the mind

The mind, according to Fodor, has three components—three kinds of cognitive systems: transducers, input systems and central processors.17 Transducers are mental mechanisms that link the cognizing subject to the external world. They register information from the external environment (they receive physical, non-symbolic input such as light, sound, scent, etc.), and transform it into a format that can be understood and used by input systems, i.e., into neural signals, pieces of brain-code, or some patterns of nerve impulses in the brain (cf. Fodor 1983, p. 41). While the role of transducers is to specify “the distribution of stimulations at the ‘surfaces’

17 The main role of central processors is the fixation of belief. Central processors are not relevant for the issue of concept acquisition and so they may be ignored. For a detailed presentation of Fodor’s account of the architecture of the mind, see his 1983. No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 157

(as it were) of the organism, input systems deliver representations that are most naturally interpreted as characterizing the arrangement of things in the world” (Fodor 1983, p. 42); they allow the subject to identify objects in its environment. On the basis of the information provided in symbolic form by the transducers, input systems—by means of computation—infer how the external world really is. As Fodor explains,

[i]nput analyzers are inference-performing systems. …Specifically, the inferences at issue have as their ‘premises’ transduced representations of proximal stimulus configurations, and as their ‘conclusions’ representations of the character and distribution of distal objects. (Fodor 1983, p. 42)

Together with transducers, input systems are responsible for “the realization of a function from stimuli onto primitive concepts” (Fodor 1981, p. 265). On Fodor’s account, sensory experience, external stimulation and properly functioning transducers are necessary for the acquisition of sensory concepts. These are architectural constraints on sensation. Of course, the fact that transducers require external stimulation does not yet imply that (sensory) concepts are not innate. It may well be the case, and Fodor thinks it is the case, that the output produced by transducers only triggers concepts that are ‘already there.’ On the other hand, Fodor’s account of transducers does not indicate any need for innate concepts. Concepts themselves do not yet enter the stage at this point in the process of cognition. All that the theory of transducers says is that there must be mechanisms which will transform physical stimulation from the external world into neural signals. The character of a particular pattern of neural activations that appears at the output of transducers does not have to be pre-specified. It is rather determined (mostly) by the pattern or shape of the sensory excitation that causes it. And so, while Fodor’s doctrine of transducers implies architectural nativism, it neither obviously requires nor precludes representational nativism. We find a more substantial nativist commitment in Fodor’s treatment of input systems. Each input system, for Fodor, is associated with a fixed neural architecture: “hardwired connections …facilitate the flow of information from one neural structure to another” (Fodor 1983, p. 98f). This is, again, architectural nativism. But then, Fodor also talks about input systems having ‘knowledge’ and ‘beliefs,’ and ‘making inferences.’ Each input system, he says, “comes with a database which is, in effect, what it innately believes 158 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes about its proprietary computational domain” (Fodor 2000, p. 1); “much of the information at the disposal of [input] systems is innately specified” (Fodor 1983, pp. 100–101). And so, Fodor states:

qua modularity theory, the kind of nativism we’re imagining …postulates features of innate cognitive content as well as features of innate cognitive architecture. (Fodor 2000, p. 91)

Input systems, according to Fodor, are useful in contributing to a creature’s fitness because the world in the end shapes what the mind believes. The beliefs that the mind holds to be true are shaped by experience; that is, they are formed by processes “that are sensitive to the way the world contingently is” (Fodor 2000, p. 95). If some among the beliefs that the mind holds were to be innate, they could be of any use only if they were true. And for this they would have to also have been shaped by experience. Based on this reasoning, Fodor infers that it only makes sense to assume that the innate beliefs in the input systems’ databases have been produced by natural selection (Fodor 2000, p. 94). Current innate beliefs in the input systems’ databases, according to Fodor, were previously acquired by experience. At some point, it turned out that those members of our species who had those beliefs were more likely to live long enough to reproduce. As a result, the holders of the right kind of innate beliefs became the majority. Eventually, the possession of those beliefs was fixed as an evolutionary adaptation.18 Still, nothing in the evidence Fodor cites supports his mad-dog representational nativism over an architectural nativism according to which input systems are innately disposed to produce certain representations given particular experiences. Fodor claims that there must be an innate database of input systems, but this may as well be understood as organism nativism, which is more architectural than representational. It is the kind of architecture of the mind that we have, plus the world in which we end up living, that together determine what ‘beliefs’ are needed for the proper functioning of mental modules. This does not require that concepts themselves are innate. Rather, it just seems irrelevant to Fodor’s argument for concept nativism.

18 Fodor considers an example of an innate module for avoiding visual cliffs. The module can function properly only because it has in its database an innate and contingent belief that there is a contingent regularity between differences of depth in the actual world and differences of visual texture (cf. Fodor 2000, p. 92). No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 159

Consider also Fodor’s account of reflexes. For Fodor, reflexes are a good example of an innate faculty. Their innateness can be explained in terms of how they know what proximal stimulus to respond to and what proximal response to make to it. If innate knowledge of modules is supposed to be similar to innate knowledge of reflexes, then there seems to be no reason to believe that concepts are an innate element of human cognition. There is certainly no propositional knowledge and no thought-parts to which reflexes have access. Their ‘knowing,’ therefore, is not literal. In his 1983, Fodor considers himself to be a faculty psychologist of the kind that holds that what is innate in human cognition are cognitive mechanisms of some sort. He clearly distinguishes his position from Chomsky, whom he classifies as an advocate of neocartesianism. Neocartesianism, Fodor explains, is a view according to which what is innate is “a certain body of information” (Fodor 1983, p. 4), or certain truths that “human beings innately grasp” (Fodor 1983, p. 7). This view, according to Fodor, is not plausible. He says:

It may be that the development of arms and the development of anaphora each critically involves the exploitation of a specific genetic endowment. And it may also be that what is innate can, in each case, be described as ‘information’ in the relatively uninteresting statistical sense that implies only nonrandomness. But there is, surely, no reason to suppose that the development of arms requires access to innately given propositional contents. There is nothing that growing arms requires one to cognize, innately or otherwise. (Fodor 1983, pp. 5–56)

According to Fodor, it is only the architectural kind of nativism that Chomsky’s views imply. Nothing suggests the need for innate concepts or innate representations. What we need, Fodor explains, is not some kind of “innately cognized rule,” but rather “a psychological mechanism—a piece of hardware …whose structure somehow imposes limitations upon its capacities” (Fodor 1983, p. 8). Fodor’s proposal against Chomsky is, therefore, to turn to:

a different notion of mental structure, one according to which a psychological faculty is par excellence a sort of mechanism. Neocartesians individuate faculties by reference to their typical propositional contents (so that, for example, the putative language organ is so identified in virtue of the information about linguistic universals 160 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes

that it contains). By contrast, according to the present account, a faculty is individuated by reference to its typical effects, which is to say that it is functionally individuated. (Fodor 1983, p. 10)

A similar reasoning, I believe, could be applied to Fodor’s own views on the innate databases of input systems, and more generally to his account of concept acquisition. As we said above, the account of both transducers and input systems certainly requires various innate architectural constraints. These cognitive faculties, like reflexes, have to be programmed to respond in specific ways to specific stimuli. This is a constraint regarding how they function, and not what output they produce. It just does not make sense to claim that these faculties are able to do their job only because what they produce as their output are innate mental representations. We do not know how exactly the mind acquires concepts, but this mystery does not imply that the representations that show up as the final product of the process of cognition have to be innate. Fodor’s input systems, as we said, are supposed to be ‘computational mechanisms’ whose role is to produce representations of distal objects. And so, Fodor explains, visual input systems, for instance, are innately programmed to apply the right kinds of algorithms to the data that they receive from the visual transducers. As a result, they produce visual representations of distal objects. If what we want to consider is the issue of concept acquisition, it seems that what we need to posit are also certain innate mechanisms that apply the right kinds of algorithms to the data received and produce mental symbols representing distal objects. It is plausible that it is simply the functioning of our cognitive modules that is an evolutionary adaptation, an innate trait, fixed by natural selection because of its survival advantage. It is advantageous for the human species to have fast and automatic mechanisms, that is, input systems, which produce (usually in a reliable way) representations of distal objects. The representations themselves need not be innate.

Implications of Fodor’s Account of Concepts

Similarly, as with the case of Fodor’s views on of the architecture of the mind, nothing in his account of concepts as thought-parts indicates that he is justified in supporting his mad-dog concept nativism. In virtue of his physicalism, Fodor thinks that concepts, which are parts of sentences of No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 161 the language of thought, must be physically embodied; they must be either identical to or constituted by states of the brain. Each different concept must correspond to a distinct state of the brain, to a distinct pattern of neural activation that encodes it. Concepts, therefore, are patterns of neuronal activity; they are symbols of the brain-code. Given that each concept is a distinct pattern of the neural code, the only way to make sense of Fodor’s idea that concepts are innate in the sense of being already there, waiting to be triggered is, as we have seen, to accept neural nativism. What Fodor would need is not only the kind of tissue nativism which negates multiple realizability, but also the kind of nativism according to which it is somehow predestined, programmed in the genes, that a given piece of the brain-code represents a given feature of the world. This is what would allow Fodor to claim, no matter how implausibly, that we have, for instance, an innate concept RIPSTICK, because there is in our brain some particular symbol, some particular neural pattern, produced by natural selection and destined to be a RIPSTICK symbol. We have seen above that this is not plausible: identity between individual concepts and specific neural patterns in specific locations in the brain is not an evolutionary adaptation. What I suggest is that Fodor himself has no reason to support such a position. If Fodor accepts the definition of innateness that I propose, he would only need to conclude that it is innate for humans—because it is a genetically determined evolutionary adaptation—to have a very complex brain, with a huge number of neurons, and a great potential for acquiring, storing and modifying new connections and activation patterns. He would not need to say that we have an innate RIPSTICK concept, an innately determined symbol of brain-code. Rather, he could hold a more plausible view according to which we are innately disposed to enlist some or other symbol of the brain-code to serve as a ripstick indicator (cf. Prinz 2004, p. 230). When I see a ripstick for the first time, a complex cognitive process gets activated. My sensory organs inform me about certain colors, shapes, textures, noises, etc.; my memory brings up images of skateboards and surfboards, and my past thoughts about picking up snowboarding one day; my language faculty assigns a new word to the newly cognized object. A new neural pattern is produced in my brain. The pattern does not remain unchanged through time. It gets modified the better I become at riding the ripstick. It also changes when I alternate between riding the ripstick, rollerblading and riding a regular 162 Justyna Japola-DesVergnes skateboard. What is innate in all this is the complex functioning of various cognitive mechanisms. There is no reason why Fodor should not agree that in addition to various innate architectural constraints (constraints on various cognitive mechanisms, the structure and functioning of sensory organs, etc.), evolution also endowed us with general-purpose detecting and tracking abilities. Because of these innate abilities, new patterns of neural activation (new symbols) are produced in our brains when we acquire a new concept. We do not have to be born with pre-specified symbols of the brain-code. It is enough that we have an innate capacity to ‘hire’ a neural pattern in response to a given kind of stimulus. We are a successful species because “perceiving objects in our environment” gives us “the concepts that enable us to think about them, and consequently to form beliefs and desires about them” (Davis 2003, p. 456).

References

Adams, R. M. 1975. “Where do Our Ideas come from?” In: S. Stich (ed.), Innate Ideas. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 71–87. Cowie, F. 1998. What’s Within? Nativism Reconsidered. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davis, W. 2003. Meaning, Expression and Thought. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. Elman, J. L., Bates, E. A., Johnson, M. H., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Parisi, D., & Plunkett, K. 1996. Rethinking Innateness. A Connectionist Perspective on Development (Neural Networks and Connectionist Modeling). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fodor, J. A. 1975. The Language of Thought. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. ______1981. “The Present Status of the Innateness Controversy.” In: J. Fodor, RePresentations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 283–292. ______1983. The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ______1984. “Observation Reconsidered.” Philosophy of Science 51, 23–43, reprinted in Fodor (1990), 231–251. ______1990. Theory of Content and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ______1998. Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong. Oxford: Oxford University Press. No more Mad-dog Concept Nativism 163

______2000. The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ______2008. LOT2: The Language of Thought Revisited. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Griffiths, P. 2002. “What is Innateness?”The Monist, 85 (1), 70–85. Hebb, D. O. 1949. The Organization of Behavior. New York: Wiley. Jackendoff, R. 1989. “What is a Concept, that a Person May Grasp It?” Mind & Language, 4 (1–2), 68–102. Khalidi, M. A. 2002. “Nature and Nurture in Cognition.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 53, 251–272. Locke, J. 1975. Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Maclaurin, J. 2002. “The Resurrection of Innateness.” The Monist, 85 (1), 105–131. Merritt, M. 2008. “Nativism and Neurobiology: Representations, Representing, and the Continuum of Cognition.” Review of General Psychology, 12 (2), 181–191. Pinker, S. 1997. How the Mind Works. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Prinz, J. 2004. Furnishing the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Samuels, R. 2004. “Innateness in Cognitive Science.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8 (3), 136–141. ______2002. “Nativism in Cognitive Science.” Mind and Language, 17 (3), 233–265. ______1998. What brains won’t tell us about the mind. Mind and Language, 13 (4), 548–570. Symons, D. 1992. “On the Use and Misuse of Darwinism in the Study of Human Behavior.” In: J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (eds.). The Adapted Mind. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 137–159. Tavuzzi, M. 1987. “Aquinas on the Preliminary Grasp of Being.” The Thomist, 51, 555–574.

„Analiza i Egzystencja” 24 (2013) ISSN 1734-9923

ALON SEGEV*

UNCOVERING THE TRUE “WEALTH” OF HAPPINESS —EXAMINING THE LIMITATIONS THAT GOVERN CRŒSUS’S QUESTION ABOUT HAPPINESS AND ARISTOTLE’S SUBSEQUENT REPLY

Abstract

The goal of the article is to present the context in which we, modern readers and scholars, make meaningful use of the words “happiness,” “luck,” and “fortune.” This discussion starts by examining Crœsus’s question to Solon, who is the happiest man on earth, and then continues by analyzing Solon’s reply that a man can only be called happy after his death. Next, it aims to show what is implied and meant in Solon’s obscure reply. As the article explores, it turns out that Solon is talking about the transient fortune (ευτυχιη) and the permanent fortune (ολβος), measured after the number of fortunate moments in one’s lifespan, and not about the subjective disposition of being happy, as the modern speaker uses this term. At this point, the article offers Aristotle’s reading of Solon and his alternative interpretation of Solon’s concept of happiness. According to Aristotle, happiness is more a matter of character, of quality rather than quantity. The article continues by isolating the term “happiness” from the quantitative

* Alon Segev, PhD—Fordham University and the University of Illinois Springfield. Book: Thinking and Killing (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/NYC, September 2013), new book in preparation on Descartes as political figure in the 19th and 20th century. E-mail: [email protected]. 166 Alon Segev factor which still plays a role for Aristotle. In conclusion, the article presents a paradox that stems from conceiving happiness as a quantitative matter; that is, that not even death can serve as an ultimate final stage after which we could conclusively declare someone to have been happy or not.

Keywords: Aristotle, Solon, Herodotus, happiness, luck, transient fortune, permanent fortune

As an undergraduate student I was struck by Solon’s response to the Lydian King Crœsus’ question, which asks who is the “happiest man” in the world? Solon contends that in order to state that one is blessed, the individual in question must already be dead, for as long as one is alive, his fortunate condition can change for the worse at any possible moment. Thus Solon tells us that until a man has arrived at the hour of his death, we can, at best, say that he is fortunate. I first encountered Solon’s peculiar reply in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics book 1, where Aristotle painstakingly aims to solve the problem of the “blessed dead.” I was a bit uncomfortable with Aristotle’s approach to this problem, although I could not identify what exactly made his response awkward. I then encountered the whole story in Herodotus’ Histories, which Aristotle refers to in the Nicomachean Ethics. My reoccurring uneasiness with how to interpret Aristotle’s interpretation of the “blessed dead” led me to examine how other scholars treat this text. In researching other responses to the conversation between Solon and Crœsus, I came to the conclusion that not only are Solon’s response and Aristotle’s argument insufficient in assessing the topic of happiness, but the question itself seems to be completely devoid of meaning. This lack of signification occurs when we translate the term “happiness” into our modern application, namely, as long as we take “happiness” as the sum of lucky moments in one’s life rather than a subjective disposition.1 In addition to my concerns about the question

1 David Asheri shows us that “happiness” and “good fortune” both have an innate reference to “luck” in any given case. This, however, does not render the meaning of happiness as a subjective disposition. Asheri explains: “The terms for human well- being that recur in the dialogue are four ολβος, ευτυχιη, ευδαιμονιη, μακαριζω, but the fundamental distinction is between permanent ‘happiness’ (ολβος) and transient good luck (ευτυχιη), see 32,7. In Herodotus, ολβος can also mean ‘wealth’ (30,1), and is not associated in any way with spiritual, subjective or mystical happiness, etc., as opposed Uncovering the True “Wealth” Of Happiness 167 itself, I was disappointed by the way other scholars approached the text. Their accumulative way to look at happiness was weak and lacked sufficient analysis.2 They treated the text as if “x” number of happy units (days, minutes, seconds, etc.) have the capacity to make up the concept of complete bliss or happiness. According to this approach to the text, the “fragility of the goodness” stems from the swinging balance between these aforementioned good and bad units. In direct contrast to these scholarly interpretations of the text, I believe that, if we are to render this question to be meaningful in a modern context, we must first identify and flesh out the form and structure of the question put up by Crœsus before we can point our attention to any other aspect of the meaning behind this conversation between the two men. By commencing with an examination of the question, we realize that it can be only about luck and chance; a meditation on happiness is not the purpose of this initial question according to a more thorough examination of what specifically the question is asking.3 In this analytical approach, we achieve a meaningful distinction between “happiness” and “luck,” but the question to the material and objective pleasures of this world. The two terms, ολβος and ευτυχιη, are not mutually exclusive: the ‘lucky’ man can become ‘happy’ if he does not incur misfortune before his life ends in a glorious (Tellus) or a peaceful death (Cleobis and Biton). Both ευτυχιη and ολβος signify the sum of the same series of material goods: good health, good children, good looks, physical strength and a good income. The only significant distinction is that between a temporary state of well-being and a secure, permanent one, immortalized in the memory of future generations.” D. Asheri, A. Lloyd, A. Corcella (2007), A Commentary on Herodotus, Books I–IV. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 97–98. 2 For an example of this textual approach, see R. C. Solomon’s (1976), “Is there Happiness after Death?” Philosophy 196: 189–193. The common type of argument that states that the value of a series is not simply achieved by going through all of episodes in one’s life succeeds only in ultimately degrading itself to an accumulative discussion. For a further example, see A. Kenny’s (1992) Aristotle on the Perfect Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 23ff. On page 27, he discusses the strange example of the best breakfast to illustrate his claims. For a further treatment of this matter, see the discussion in N. P. White’s (2006), A Brief History of Happiness. Malden: Blackwell, 75–115. 3 In his masterful study of the text, Christopher Pelling points out the need for indirect language which stems from the uneasiness involved in speaking to a despot with the implicit intention of educating him. Solon’s purpose is to instruct Crœsus about his υβρις and the dangers caused by it as these factors have the capacity to lead to his destruction. This is the lesson that Crœsus passes forward to Cyrus, who is about to execute him on the pyre. Ch. Pelling (April 2006), “Educating Crœsus—Talking and Learning in Herodotus’ Lydian Logos”. Classical Antiquity 1: 141–177. 168 Alon Segev originally posed by Crœsus transpires as a question about two sorts of objective fortune—one permanent (ολβος) and the other transient (ευτυχιη), but not about the subjective happiness or the individual disposition of being happy.4 Alternatively, we can suggest another context in which the question can be applied to happiness as well, but then we distance too much from the original text. My aim is to avoid conflating the terms of happiness and luck and instead to illuminate what could be the true intent of the question posed by Crœsus, and how it can be understood in a modern context. In order to detail my proposition, I will start with a critical discussion of Solon’s response to Crœsus’ question. Then, I will move to a critical discussion of Aristotle’s interpretation of this conversation between Solon and Crœsus, concluding with my own interpretation and reading of Solon’s answer. There are two methodological difficulties that I encountered in treating this subject. There is, first of all, the question about the Greek origin of the text and how meaning is dependent on the original text and its subsequent translations. For this purpose, I rely on philological studies of the text. Contrary to the Continental trend that started with Heidegger and was continued in Gadamer, Derrida and Agamben, for example, I do not think that hyperbolized etymological efforts lead to an ameliorated understanding of ancient texts for our modern times. The second methodological difficulty concerns theunity of “happiness.” Are we speaking about one united phenomenon when we say “happiness,” or rather are we referring to several phenomena? And if it is several phenomena, are they related to each other, and if they are, by what means? A great deal of philosophical literature has been dedicated to the question about the equivocalness and simultaneous precision of Aristotle’s use of ευδαιμονια in the Nicomachean Ethics.5 This difficulty is a serious one, because it

4 For the purposes of this article, objective means something that is public. Subjective means an individual or unshared disposition, such as a headache, happiness, depression, etc. 5 See A. Kenny, “Happiness”. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. New Series (1965–1966) 66: 93–102; J. L Ackrill, “Aristotle on Eudaimonia”. In: A. Oksenberg Rorty (ed.). (1980). Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, 15–33; T. H Irwin, “The Metaphysical and Psychological Basis of Aristotle’s Ethics”. In: Rorty (1980), 35–53; J. McDowell, “The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle’s Ethics”. In: ibid., 359–376. Uncovering the True “Wealth” Of Happiness 169 threatens the validity of any potential interpretation.6 I believe, however, that it does not undermine the core of my project, which is to shed light on both the meaningful and meaningless uses of “happiness” and “bliss,” even if its subject be a potentially ambiguous one.7

Solon

In the first book of hisHistories , Herodotus unfolds the story of Crœsus, the King of Lydia. Having lead Solon through his palace’s treasuries, Crœsus asks Solon who is the happiest man he has ever seen, expecting to hear Solon tell him that he himself is the happiest one. Solon, however, turns him down in telling him the story of Tellus, who was far less rich than Crœsus. Tellus was prosperous in his native state, saw his sons and grandsons doing well, and ended his life with a glorious death in the battlefield. In response to Crœsus’ subsequent inquiry about “who is the second happiest man,” Solon tells the story of two brothers, Cloebis and Biton, who were not as rich as Crœsus. They were financially stable and of good health. Both brothers were endowed with bodily strength and gained prizes at the games in which they participated. Solon continues by explaining that at the feast for Hera, their mother had to be brought to the temple by a cart. But because the oxen were nowhere to be found, the brothers put themselves under the yoke and carried their mother to the temple. The crowds accepted them with extol and honor for their devotion. After they sacrificed and feasted in celebration of Hera, they went to sleep in the temple and never woke up, dying in their sleep. Solon concludes that while living, a man can only be said to be fortunate, assuming he has had a prosperous life. Since fortune is as volatile as the crops of any given year, one can be said to be blessed or happy only after

6 This problematic prompted Kant to remove happiness from the scope of morality, for happiness is an empirical and hence ambiguous concept, while the idea of morality should be conceived a priori. See I. Kant (2008), Grundlagen zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Stuttgart: Reclam, 49ff. 7 Related to this topic is the question of whether any feeling following the satisfaction of need, desire, etc. can justly be called happiness. An example of this is the feeling of “happiness” that a drug addict feels immediately following the use of his drug of choice. As Plato sarcastically describes in Gorgias: “Tell me now whether a man who has an itch and scratches it and can scratch to his heart’s content, scratch his whole life long, can also live happily” (494d). See N. P. White (2006), A Brief History of Happiness. Malden: Blackwell, 9. 170 Alon Segev his death. Hearing Solon’s response, Crœsus sent him away as worthless, since he had not declared the King to be the happiest of all men, referencing instead the genuine happiness of men who were not judged according to their material wealth.8 Herodotus continues to explain how Crœsus’ fortune turned over, beginning with the loss of his son, Atys, at the hand of his guard, Adrastos.9 Shortly thereafter the ill-fated Crœsus loses his kingdom to Cyrus, the king of Persia and is nearly executed on the pyre.10 He was saved after he told Cyrus about the response he once received from Solon.11 Herodotus details that these disasters are Gods’ retribution for Crœsus’ ridiculous claims that he is the happiest man.12 At the end of the story of Crœsus, Herodotus confirms his belief in fate and the mythological gods, straying away from a more historical interpretation of the story. For the modern reader, the first and main concern that arises from Herodotus’ description of Crœsus’ life stems from the accumulative approach toward happiness. Solon explains this through a detailed description of man’s lifespan: “The limit of life for a man I lay down at seventy years. These seventy years give twenty-five thousand and two hundred days.”13 We can of course measure person’s lifespan by counting the temporal units of month, day and minute. However, in determining a person’s quality of life, the modern reader would never primarily refer to temporal unity to define this person as vicious, happy or extravagant. In order to say, for example, that Orson Welles’ career was glamorous one does not need to know how many years he has lived. Furthermore, in saying that his career knew ups and

8 Herodotus (2004), The Histories. Introduction and notes by D. Lateiner. Trans. by G. C Macaulay. New York: Barnes & Noble, §§ 29–33. See Pelling (2006: 146–147): “In telling Crœsus of Tellus and of Cleobis and Biton (1.30–31), Solon deploys a variety of Greek ideals to set against Crœsus’ own estimation of himself: values which center on parenthood and children, on a simple sufficiency, on avoiding the disasters which hang over any human, on a good death in the service of one’s city (Tellus) or one’s family and the gods (Cleobis and Biton), on the desirability of a long and contented life (Tellus) or—not quite so good—of an early death (Cleobis and Biton).” 9 Herodotus (2004), §§ 34–43. 10 Ibid., §§ 46–94. 11 Ibid., § 86. 12 Ibid., § 34. 13 Ibid., § 32. Uncovering the True “Wealth” Of Happiness 171 downs, one does not necessarily feel obliged to count days, months or years in order to determine these fluctuations in his lifespan. The same holds for every quality, such as hubris: Crœsus being hubristic cannot be traced back to the number of days or years in which he was considered to be arrogant. (All the same, we can still say that in his old age he became humble.) Similarly, there arises the following question: How many moments of good fortune are required to signify happiness at the time of a person’s death? That is, how could moments of good fortune accumulate in order to indicate happiness? From Herodotus’ text, one gathers that there can never be a complete lifespan, as far as happiness is concerned. As Herodotus puts it: “And Crœsus paid the debt due for the sin of his fifth ancestor, who being one of the spearman of the Heracleidai driven by the treachery of a woman, and having slain his master.”14 In other words, fate stretches in both directions beyond the lifespan of the individual. To the modern reader, the main difficulty lies in the accumulative approach toward happiness. There is hence need to enhance Solon’s description of happiness.

Aristotle

Long before modern scholars and readers were concerning themselves with Solon’s response to Crœsus’ question, Aristotle was disquieted by Solon’s accumulative approach to happiness and offered his own alternative. His is only a partial alternative, for in his Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle supports Solon’s accumulative approach.15 In the Nicomachean Ethics, on the other hand, Aristotle only partly endorses Solon’s accumulative approach as he brings forward his alternative reading of Solon’s description of happiness, which criticizes Solon’s beliefs. Let us begin with his alternative and then see how he wants to integrate Solon’s accumulative approach into this present argument. For Solon, happiness depends on external factors and their constancy during one’s lifespan. External factors immediately yield an impression of fragility, as the individual himself is not in control of the forces that can potentially affect his happiness. Aristotle, conversely, wants to disconnect the concept of happiness as much as possible from external factors, making

14 Ibid., § 91. 15 Aristotle (1973), Ethics. Trans. with introduction J. L Ackrill. London: Farber, 198. 172 Alon Segev it immune to the shifts of fate and independent of the external factors of wealth, honor and fame.16 Happiness is willed for its sake, Aristotle claims, and not for the sake of something else. Thus, it is defined as a condition of self-sufficiency.17 Aristotle explains: “Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action.”18 Human essence, or reason, is the most independent of and the least threatened by external changes.19 Now, in the case that happiness does not consist in contemplative solitude alone—as Aristotle sometimes implies20—then reason or state of mind alone is not enough to distinguish between the happy and unhappy man.21 The most independent and thus stable action turns out to be virtue, for virtue is supposed to be done for its own sake, and not for the sake of something else: “For no function of man has so much permanence as virtuous activities.”22 Hence, “happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with perfect virtue.”23

And yet, being virtuous also implies the external factors of resources, friends, abilities, good physical condition, social surrounding, etc.; in one word—good fortune. This is the quantitative facet in Aristotle’s teaching: “… the happy man can never become miserable—though he will not reach blessedness, if he meet with fortunes like those of Priam.”24

By shifting the emphasis from fate and the quantity of moments of good-fortune to virtue and character, Aristotle succeeds in finding a much

16 See Aristotle (1969), Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. and introduced by D. Ross. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 11f. For this matter see T. H Irwin. “Permanent Happiness— Aristotle and Solon”. In: N. Sherman (ed.) (1999), Aristotle’s Ethics—Critical Essays. USA: Rowman & Littlefield, 1–33. 17 Aristotle (1973), 12. 18 Ibid. From here stems the ambiguity of Aristotle’s concept of happiness, that is, whether it is something completely spiritual—as book 10 and parts of book 1 of the NE as well as the EE suggest—and can therefore be completely independent, or whether it is rather a matter of virtue and practical attitude, implying its dependency on and reference to material reality and other people. 19 Aristotle (1973), 12ff. 20 See footnote 18. 21 Aristotle (1973), 16. 22 Ibid., 20. 23 Ibid., 24. 24 Ibid., 21. Uncovering the True “Wealth” Of Happiness 173 more appropriate and meaningful way to relate to happiness as an example of quality rather than quantity. “Happiness” is no longer a product of the sum of moments of good fortune. It is rather a matter of meaning, a core around which one’s whole life is arranged.25 Aristotle explains that even in hard times and struggles with life’s misfortunes, “nobility shines through, when a man bears with resignation many great misfortunes, not through insensibility to pain but through nobility and greatness of soul.”26 The happiness of the good man, Aristotle believes, is not made up of “x” fortunate moments in his lifespan, but rather of his character and deeds. Aristotle offers the following explanation:

If activities are, as we said, what determines the character of life, no blessed man can become miserable; for he will never do the acts that are hateful and mean. For the man who is truly good and wise, we think, bears all the chances of life becomingly and always makes the best of circumstances.27

Character and meaning cannot be quantitatively measured, as Aristotle shows in NE book 10, chapter 4. He concludes with the following, explaining how happiness cannot be measured as one would measure time:

… of pleasure the form is complete at any and every time. Considered in simple terms, pleasure and movement must be different from each other, and pleasure must be one of the things that are whole and complete. This would seem to be the case, too, from the fact that it is not possible to move otherwise than in time, but it is possible to be pleased; for that which takes place in a moment is a whole.28

Here Solon’s accumulative approach proves to be completely meaningless, for happiness and pleasure cannot be measured. Statements of quality such as “I am pleased” or “I am happy” cannot be quantitatively measured, as Aristotle correctly claims, for they are experienced meaningfully and not as a sum of attributes. We must still explore whether it makes any sense at all to evoke a third person’s external

25 For this matter see Th. Nagel, “Aristotle on Eudaimonia”. In: Rorty (1980), 7–14. 26 Aristotle (1969), 21. 27 Ibid., 21. 28 Ibid., 255 (emphasis mine). 174 Alon Segev perspecftive in order to determine one’s personal condition. “To be pleased” looks grammatically similar like “to be pained” or “I have a headache,” in that they all refer to one’s subjective disposition and not to something that can be objectively and publically assessed. I do not learn about my headache, its intensity or its location from somebody else, and neither do I infer it. “I have terrible headache in the left side of my head” means that I am in this condition, I am conditioned by it, I am immersed in it. Could it then make any sense to ask somebody whether I have headache? As we have just seen, Aristotle claims that pleasure is not something that takes place within a span of time that is measured quantitatively. Would it then make sense to claim that the feeling of happiness arrives one second after I am told by, for example, a new age priest that I am the happiest man in the world, or would it be more plausible that he would gradually convince me that I am happier now than I was two weeks ago?

Critical discussion

We have just seen that Crœsus’ question apparently turns out to be meaningless; happiness and pleasure are not objective data that we infer from or learn about from a third party, but they are rather subjective dispositions. I will now demonstrate to what extent this question can be considered in a wholly logical way. Each one of the following alternatives reformulates the question about happiness and affects the basic presumption of Solon and Aristotle, thus illuminating a new and unique way to present Solon’s initial response to the question posed by Crœsus to the modern reader. Solon and Aristotle agree on three things: 1. They have no contention with Crœsus’ question; they do not find it meaningless and instead are willing to treat it as a valid starting point for a discussion on the meaning of happiness. 2. Aristotle (in the EE and partly in the NE) and Solon agree that luck can be measured or counted. 3. They both share the same contradicting perspectives on life. On the one hand, they consider life to be a whole and complete process; i.e. it begins with one’s birth and ends with his death. On the other hand, we have seen Solon claim that Crœsus pays for the sin of his fifth ancestor. Similarly, Aristotle claims: “It would be odd, then, if the dead man were to share in these changes and become at one Uncovering the True “Wealth” Of Happiness 175

time happy, at another wretched; while it would also be odd if the fortunes of the descendants did not for some time have some effect on the happiness of their ancestors.”29 Herodotus’ Solon and Aristotle disagree, however, about the nature of happiness. Solon argues that happiness consists of an “x” number of fortunate events and zero unfortunate events during the whole lifespan. On the contrary, Aristotle claims in the NE that happiness is a matter of character which persists continuously throughout hard and misfortunate times, although it is not entirely indifferent to them, as we have seen. As this article has already suggested, there is normally no purpose in asking somebody else about the state of my own happiness, for it is not a matter we learn of or infer from what somebody else tells us, from external perspective, but rather a condition in which a person finds himself, similar to the physical ailment of a headache or that of depression. There exists, on the other hand, the need to inquire about one’s luck or good fortune, such as if he has just been the recipient of the free trip giveaway that his employer was offering, for example. I can, in other words, collect information about events that have meaning for me. And yet, when we inquire about happiness in a different context, the question receives a completely separate meaning. We can ask, for example, whether the American people were happy under President Bush Jr., happier under President Bush Sr., and happiest under President Clinton. This formulation obliterates the distinction between luck and happiness. We are no longer considering the state of happiness as it relates to the entire lifespan of the individual, but rather submitting it to the fluctuating and endless change of luck. The same question about the level of satisfaction among Americans according to these three presidents could be posed again in the next millennium, and furthermore it could be referred to an infinite number of American presidents and citizens. Now, it is very unlikely, but if this is what Solon implies when referencing the three dead happy people (Tellus, Cloebis and Biton), then their “happiness” can still change along with the context in which they will be considered. This does not seem, however, to be the case based on the limitations that Solon puts on his consideration of the state of happiness, for he states that the person can be conclusively called

29 Ibid., 20. Glorious and peaceful deaths are indispensible for what would be dubbed in the ancient times as a “happy life.” See Asheri et al. (2007), 97–98. 176 Alon Segev

“happy” only after he has terminated. Thus, he must have been forced to abandon the question of happiness as a futile and meaningless effort. Ultimately, the problem is not with the answer, as Aristotle contends, but rather with the question itself. By working out this question as we have done in this article, we realize that we can treat Crœsus’ original question in two ways: We can either pose it in such a way that the distinction between luck and happiness is lost (i.e., both become subjected to fluctuating and endless changes of differing contexts and perspectives), or alternatively, we can declare Crœsus’ question meaningless while still maintaining the distinction between happiness and luck. That is to say, happiness in the principal sense—as a kind of psychical or psycho-physical condition akin to being in the condition of depression, headache, etc.—cannot be learnt or inferred by asking a third party about it, as Crœsus does in posing his question to Solon. Thus, Crœsus’ inquiry cannot refer to the principal sense of “happiness.” On the other hand, in its secondary sense, happiness can be inquired after, as for example when we ask about the “happiness” of the American people under certain presidents. As Asheri demonstrates, Herodotus’ Solon talks here about permanent and transient happiness (ολβος and ευτυχιη).30 This means that the question about the subjective disposition of happiness does not occur here at all. If Asheri is correct, we are still left, however, with the problem of “happiness” being interpreted as either transient or permanent. That is, how could somebody ever be called happy if the context and perspectives are always changing? Happiness as a subjective disposition can serve as a solution to this paradox. But if happiness is more understood in terms of reputation, namely, the way a person appears through the eyes of others, it seems that this aforementioned paradox is unavoidable.

30 Asheri et al. (2007), 97–98. „Analiza i Egzystencja” 24 (2013) ISSN 1734-9923

DONALD MORRIS*

THE CIVIC DUTY TO PAY TAXES AND THE FAIR-SHARE CALCULATION

Abstract

In its 2009 Taxpayer Attitude Survey, the U.S. IRS Oversight Board asked taxpayers: “Is it every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes?” Respondents strongly believe it is, with 70 percent claiming they “completely agree” and 25 percent that they “mostly agree.” On very few public issues is it possible to obtain 95 percent agreement and any such broad consensus should be met with skepticism. The near-unanimous response may mean no more than that people recognize that the functions of government must be paid for and that each person should pay a certain part. But in light of the reported $450 billion annual U.S. tax gap and evidence of declining taxpayer compliance, this paper raises questions about what taxpayers understand by “fair share” and the duty

* Donald Morris—Professor of Accounting, University of Illinois Springfield, Department of Accountancy, College of Business and Management, UHB 4064, One University Plaza, Springfield, IL; CPA, CFE, PhD Philosophy and MS in Taxation. Prior to his teaching career, he was the owner-manager of an accounting practice in Chicago serving entrepreneurs and other small business owners for 18 years. He is the author of Opportunity: Optimizing Life’s Chances (2006, Prometheus Books), and Tax Cheating: Illegal—But is it Immoral, (2012, SUNY Press). He has published a number of articles in tax journals as well as articles on business ethics, investing and management. E-mail: [email protected]. 178 Donald Morris to which it gives rise. In this paper, I argue that the key to understanding how there can be a growing problem of tax cheating and yet a preponderance of taxpayers acknowledging a civic duty to pay their fair share, lies in taxpayers’ calculation of their fair share.

Keywords: civic duty, fair share (of taxes), tax cheating, tax complexity, tax gap

In Cheating the Government, Frank Cowell refers to tax cheating as “an intrinsically interesting economic problem with profound implications for the fiscal relationship between government and the citizen” (1980, 195). Taxpayers in the United States are thought to be more compliant than taxpayers in many other countries (Walter 1990, 84).1 However, the amount of noncompliance or tax cheating in the U. S. is still significant, with the shortfall equal to 20 percent of the taxes actually collected. Issues that influence this lack of compliance are instructive as they involve fundamental questions in moral and social philosophy. In its 2009 Taxpayer Attitude Survey, the United States Internal Revenue Services’ IRS Oversight Board asked taxpayers: “Is it every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes?” Respondents strongly believe it is, with 70 percent claiming they “completely agree” and 25 percent that they “mostly agree.”2 On very few public issues is it possible to obtain 95 percent agreement; and any such broad consensus on such a contentious issue as taxation should be met with at least some degree of skepticism. In this paper, I argue that the key to understanding how there can be a growing problem of tax cheating and yet 95 percent of taxpayers acknowledging a civic duty to pay their fair share, lies in taxpayers’ calculation of their fair share. These calculations are affected by a number of factors, including: 1) growing taxpayer awareness of the tax gap and its implications for honest taxpayers who are subsidizing and enabling the

1 Ingo Walter reports that tax compliance in the United States has traditionally been high: “Whether because of patriotism, a sense of fairness, the need to finance the functions of government generally approved of, or fear of criminal or civil prosecution, Americans have on the whole paid a significantly higher share of taxes legally owed than the citizens of most other countries” (84). 2 No definition ofcivic duty is provided by the IRS Oversight Board; thus, its meaning is assumed to be its most common: “the duty of a citizen.” The Civic Duty to Pay Taxes and the Fair-Share Calculation 179 growing problem of tax cheating; 2) the model employed by the United States tax code that pits taxpayers’ civic duty against their self-interest, leaving taxpayers with a moral dilemma; 3) the complexity of the tax code, blunting taxpayers’ ability to understand how the amount determined to be their tax due is also their fair share; and 4) the dramatic differences between tax-accounting income and economic or spendable income, aggravated by what are called tax expenditures.

The Tax Gap

To grasp the extent of disconnect between what taxpayers believe is their civic duty to pay and the current level of non-compliance (cheating), an overview of the “tax gap” is helpful.3 The tax gap is “the difference between what taxpayers should pay and what they actually pay on a timely basis” (IRS Fact Sheet 2005-38). An Internal Revenue Service report estimated the tax gap for 1985 at between $68.9 and $70.4 billion (IRS Pub. 1415, Rev. 4-96). According to one source, “[T]he extent of tax evasion for the major income and consumption taxes in the U.S. is substantial, more than 20 percent for the federal income taxes” (Netzer 1998, 124). The IRS’s most recent estimate of the tax gap was for 2006. The amount of tax paid for that year was $2.2 trillion. For 2006, the IRS projected the tax gap at over $450 billion,4 20 percent of the amount actually paid (IRS 2012).5 In The Great American Tax Dodge, Bartlette and Steele report that if tax cheating were a business, it would be the nation’s largest corporation (2000, 13). One experimental study even found that 17 percent of taxpayers intend to cheat on their tax returns (Grasmick and Bursik Jr. 1990). Former

3 I use the term ‘tax cheating’ in a generic sense to include tax evasion and tax fraud, but more importantly to include the causes of the elements of the tax gap (underreporting income, not filing tax returns or not paying taxes owed). Thus, tax cheating is comprised primarily of negligence, which may be intentional or unintentional, and which involves violating the rules and benefiting as a result. 4 Note that the original estimate of a tax gap for a particular year is reduced in subsequent years as the IRS manages to collect part of the unreported or unpaid taxes originally due. This results in a gross tax gap and a net tax gap. 5 Some of the concepts and arguments in this paper have been expanded and applied in a book entitled, Tax Cheating: Illegal—But is it Immoral? SUNY Press, 2012. 180 Donald Morris

IRS Commissioner Lawrence Gibbs noted, “There will always be a gap— some would say an ever-widening gap—between the compliance level that the law requires of taxpayers and the level of compliance that the IRS can obtain through its compliance and taxpayer assistance programs” (IRS News Release 88-77). Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., wrote that “taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”6 In light of the reported $450 billion annual United States tax gap and evidence of declining taxpayer compliance and growing taxpayer dissatisfaction with the current U. S. system, this paper raises questions about what taxpayers understand by “fair share” and the duty to which it gives rise, and ultimately how they view the “civilized society” for which they are paying. Specifically, if 95 percent of taxpayers believe they have a civic duty to pay their fair share, does this mean the tax-gap problem is restricted to the remaining five percent of taxpayers who do not acknowledge such a duty; or is it more likely that while taxpayers overwhelmingly believe they have a duty to pay their fair share, they do not see the current tax code as capable of determining what that fair share is? It is this second alternative which forms the focus of this paper and for which I will provide conceptual evidence.

Noncompliance and the Tax Gap

In its 2007 Reducing the Federal Tax Gap, the IRS reports that “estimates of the tax gap are associated with the legal sector of the economy only … Although they are related, the tax gap is not synonymous with the ‘underground economy.’” “The greatest area of overlap between these two concepts,” the IRS reports, “is sometimes called the ‘cash economy,’ in which income (usually business in nature) is received in cash, helping to hide it from taxation.” One writer tells us that “as many as 43 percent of Americans do not pay the full amount of tax they owe” (Walter 1990, 85). Part of the problem, according to researchers, is that “evaders and participants in the underground economy perceive a lower probability of detection than others” (Hessing et al. 1992). Because the estimated tax gap is based on non-filing,

6 In his dissenting opinion in Compania General De Tabacos De Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue, 275 U.S. 87, 100, (1927). The Civic Duty to Pay Taxes and the Fair-Share Calculation 181 underreporting and underpaying, and does not include unpaid taxes on illegal income (illegal drugs, embezzling and other forms of fraud, prostitution, illegal gambling and so on) or whatever additional taxes might be due from the cash or underground economies, or on unreported income from tax- haven investments, it makes a final estimate of unpaid taxes problematic, though certainly the amount is much larger than the IRS’s 2006 estimate. In the present political climate, the IRS has little incentive to provide a more accurate tax-gap estimate; and its methodology for calculating unreported income does not allow for the inclusion of these missing components. In the United States, individuals pay the majority of the income tax, so it is not surprising that the majority of the IRS’s $450 billion annual tax gap estimate is generated by individual taxpayers as well. Specifically, $437 billion (97 percent) of the total gap is attributed to individuals who either: failed to file ($25 billion); filed, but underreported their income ($235 billion); or filed but failed to pay the amount owed ($36 billion). These are annual figures and, again, exclude undocumented criminal, cash and underground economies and unreported tax-haven incomes. IRS data shows that individuals operating small businesses account for the single largest portion of the tax-gap at $122 billion (52 percent of the individual underreporting gap and 27.2 percent of the total tax gap) (IRS 2012). This is not a new phenomenon: Field research by Schwartz and Orleans (1967) shows differences between the income-reporting propensities of the self-employed and those of employees. According to the IRS, understated income, not overstated deductions, produces over 80 percent of individual underreporting, while business activities, not wages or investment income, generate most of the understated individual income (IRS 2005a). Research on tax compliance by economists Slemrod and Bakija (1996, 149) finds that the complexity of the law and the particular circumstances of the taxpayer have increased the variety of opportunities available for tax evasion. So the question addressed here is how this known taxpayer behavior can be reconciled with the survey results noted at the outset showing that 95 percent of taxpayers believe they have a civic duty to pay their fair share. 182 Donald Morris

Taxpayer Knowledge of Noncompliance

Perceptions of widespread tax cheating make it difficult for taxpayers to believe they are paying only their fair share and not their share plus part of someone else’s (Loftus 1985; Cialdini 1989; Cords 2005). This perception has at least two important components. The first is the contagious effect of cheating. Psychologists who study the influences of social trends on individual behavior recognize that cheating begets more cheating. Presenting the results of empirical research on trust theory, Kahan (2001) tells us, if taxpayers “believe that others are morally motivated to comply, they reciprocate by complying in turn, whether or not they believe they could profitably evade” their tax obligations. On the other hand, the same writer reports, when taxpayers believe others are cheating, they “behave like amoral calculators posited by the conventional theory.” As a result, Cialdini writes, “[i]f taxpayers believe there is even a significant minority of tax cheaters, they may be inclined to cheat as well because the act would have acquired some social validation” (1989, 215). The ethical admonishment, “What if everyone cheated?”, begins to lose its force as more people engage in cheating. In a book on tax reform, Slemrod and Bakija write, “human nature being what it is, it won’t work to just announce how to calculate the tax base and what tax rates to apply, and rely on taxpayers’ sense of duty … Some dutiful people will undoubted pay what they owe, but many others would not. Over time the ranks of the dutiful will shrink, as they see how they are being taken advantage of by the others” (1996, 145). The second consequence of taxpayers’ perception that others are cheating is the belief that if some people cheat it creates a greater tax liability for other taxpayers. This argument claims that if one taxpayer cheats on his or her income taxes, more of the tax burden is shifted onto the rest of the taxpayers—a pecuniary externality. Expressing this tautology, John Stuart Mill observed, “[i]f any one bears less than his fair share of the burden, some other person must suffer more than his share” (1884, 539). Here, taxation is viewed as a zero-sum process. The amount others are being asked to pay (which may or may not be their fair share in any event) is being increased by the actions of someone else who is cheating on his or her income taxes and thereby paying less than the rules require.7 In a public poll, 62 percent

7 For additional versions of the fair share argument, see McGee (1998, 18–19). The Civic Duty to Pay Taxes and the Fair-Share Calculation 183 of taxpayers reported believing that if others cheat it increases their taxes (Eicher, Stuhldreher, and Stuhldreher 2007). But is it literally true that if one individual pays less tax than the rules require, this shortfall will have to be made up by someone else? “Other things being equal,” Slemrod and Bakija inform us, tax cheating “means higher tax rates and a heavier burden for the many people who are honest and who have little opportunity to cheat” (1996, 3). In her testimony before Congress in 2007, Nina Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate, reported on this “extraordinary burden to ask our nation’s compliant taxpayers to bear every year,” and which she estimated at “an average ‘surtax’ [per household] of about $2,680 to subsidize noncompliance” (Olson 2007). Though it may not literally be true that non-compliance by some, at least immediately, increases the rate of taxation imposed on others—which requires many intervening events—the perception can lead to the belief that the amount of tax we are required to pay cannot be our fair share.8

Civic Duty and Self-interest

Cicero, in On Obligations, wrote, “This is the aim and purpose of laws, to keep intact the unifying bonds between citizens” (92). The growing problem of the tax gap represents the severing of these bonds and a sign of civil distrust, which spells trouble for tax collectors. Callahan (2004, 178–179) reports that, “Research across nations has found that tax evasion is higher in societies with lower levels of trust between people. People must want to pay taxes at some level, believing not only that their tax bill is fair, but that their destiny is bound up with that of their fellow citizens.” Scholz (1998, 137) tells us, “Without trust, there is little basis for social cooperation and voluntary compliance with the laws that could potentially benefit everyone.” I do not see a great deal of trust or a sense of common destiny—especially in matters involving Congress—and even less trust in the fairness of the tax laws. “If we do not trust Congress’s behavior in general,” Fox notes,

8 It is for this reason that one observer asserts, “[o]ne common bit of nonsense published by the tax bureau is that the evader forces the honest taxpayer to pay more. But tax burdens that are evaded or avoided are not assumed by others. If my neighbor operates off the books and pays no tax, my tax rates do not increase. … The less tax paid, the less the government has to spend”. (Adams 1993, 398). 184 Donald Morris

“we cannot be expected to embrace the tax system by which it conducts its affairs” (2001, 4). More ominously, as trust breaks down, this calls the law’s legitimacy into question as well. David Callahan, author of The Cheating Culture, reports, “[s]cholars who have examined ‘the psychology of taxation’ say that a tax system is in big trouble if it lacks legitimacy. Here we are advised to heed Aristotle’s warning in the Politics:—‘In all well-attempered governments there is nothing which should be more jealously maintained than the spirit of obedience to law, more especially in small matters: for transgression creeps in unperceived and at last ruins the state’” (bk. V. ch. 8). Ruining the state, in the context of tax compliance, implies an economic dimension that may exceed Aristotle’s original meaning. At present, however, over twenty percent of the nation’s income tax goes missing—as noted earlier—and the problem has grown over recent decades (IRS 2007). In recapping the problems caused by lax or inefficient enforcement, legal scholar Lon Fuller echoes Aristotle’s warning concerning the spirit of obedience to law and its resulting civic duty:

Government says to the citizens in effect, ‘these are the rules we expect you to follow. If you follow them, you have our assurance they are the rules that will be applied to your conduct.’ When this bond of reciprocity is finally and completely ruptured by government, nothing is left on which to ground the citizen’s duty to observe the rules. The citizen’s predicament becomes more difficult when, though there is no total failure in any direction, there is a general and drastic deterioration in legality (1964, 39–40).

In terms of tax compliance, the increasing tax gap and growing special- interest control of the tax code are early warning signs of this breakdown. From the point of view of some economists and psychologists, the decision between tax cheating and our civic duty to pay our fair share is characterized as a problem of intertemporal choice. Intertemporal choice is a term used in decision theory to describe choices made between costs and benefits occurring at different points in time. “Someone may smoke heavily,” according to Frederick et al, “but carefully study the return on various retirement packages. Another may squirrel money away while at the same time giving little thought to electrical efficiency when purchasing an air conditioner. Someone else may devote two decades of his life to The Civic Duty to Pay Taxes and the Fair-Share Calculation 185 establishing a career, and then jeopardize this long-term investment for some highly transient pleasure” (2003, 66). Loewenstein et al (2003, 2) contend that, “[s]o broad is the domain of intertemporal choice that it is difficult to think of a consequential decision that is not an intertemporal choice.” Many such choices may also be characterized as moral problems, reflecting the role of moral values in their evaluation. John Dewey defined a moral problem not as a choice between good and bad or right and wrong, but as a struggle “between values each of which is an undoubted good in its place but which now get in each other’s way” (1932, 174). As Dewey also noted, moral problems may arise because of conflicting duties or loyalties or incompatible ideals or goals (1932, 174), or because a nearby goal is seen as conflicting with a far-off goal (1932, 200). In the case of a civic duty to pay our fair share of taxes, the moral struggle is between the immediate good for the taxpayer and the more remote good for the society of which the taxpayer is a member and so an indirect beneficiary. Compounding the navigation of this intertemporal choice is the contextual substructure of the income tax system, comprised of three major elements. The first is the political process by which the specific provisions of the Internal Revenue Code have come into existence. Without a central theme or master plan, the diverse code sections have been clumsily spliced together under the watchful eye of special-interests and opposing political and economic ideologies. It is telling that Webber and Wildavsky (1986, 534) predict, “even if the tax code in its entirety were not supported by a single individual, the odds are against radical change.” This is a reflection of the code’s genesis in compromise and trading favors, resulting in a product no one is pleased with but also that no one wants to reopen for debate for fear of losing a pet exemption, credit or deduction. The second contextual element in the tax substructure is the federal budget and how the tax money is ultimately spent. It represents many of the same forces at work that created the code. Among national defense, health care, education, foreign aid, disaster relief, bailing out failed institutions of capitalism, interest on the national debt and space research, the best we can hope for is a compromise with which no one is particularly happy. This is the result of the Constitution’s wording in justifying taxation “to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare” (Art. 1, sec. 8). On this point, Justice Learned Hand wrote, “[t]here is indeed no great difficulty in deciding whether a tax is ‘to pay the debts’ of the United States; 186 Donald Morris but at times it is hard to say whether a statute is a tax to ‘provide for the … general Welfare’” (1979, 13). It is this latter problem that also frustrates taxpayers’ calculation of their fair share of the tax burden. These first two contextual elements are grounded in ethical values and social and political priorities. The third element involves the process of executing and administering the tax code. As Slemrod (1992, 1) observes, “[i]t is impossible to understand the true impact of a country’s tax system by looking only at the tax base and the tax rates applied to that base. A critical intermediating factor is how the tax law is administered and enforced.” In stark contrast to the processes of raising and spending taxes, which depend for their very existence on moral, social and political values, the execution of the income tax system is designed to operate independently of what is fair or just, or helps this group or hurts another. The execution of the tax system is based on disinterested examination of taxpayer records by the IRS, disregarding the values that determine where the tax dollars should come from and where they should go. We should never know whether the IRS auditor assigned to our case is a progressive or conservative, rich or poor, Jew or Muslim. Cheating on the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), for example, is not viewed more leniently by the IRS because the cheater is poor and the credit was meant to benefit taxpayers in the lower economic strata. When it comes to administering the tax law, the IRS is constrained by the limits Congress has placed on its powers and authority. In general, IRS authority in enforcing and collecting taxes does not include personal considerations regarding a taxpayer’s economic status or condition, educational background, medical history or existing medical conditions, mental health, moral standing in the community, stress factors, family circumstances, employment or unemployment, criminal record or other factors otherwise considered relevant to fairness in other arenas of life.9 The fact of the IRS’s administrative neutrality in applying the tax code should bolster a civic duty, because we believe the law is fairly applied. However, it also serves to highlight the importance of the elements on either side—the sources of revenue and their uses. The law that is administered

9 It should be kept in mind that I am discussing the process of assessing the proper amount of taxes due, where personal circumstances have no bearing. This is in contrast with IRS collection procedures which do allow for installment payments and offers in compromise which do take the taxpayer’s ability to pay into consideration. The Civic Duty to Pay Taxes and the Fair-Share Calculation 187 neutrally was not borne of neutrality but of the partisan forces that have shaped the tax code. Over the years, a number of studies have found that perceptions of the tax code’s fairness are directly related to tax compliance; the more fair the system, the less reasons for tax cheating (Schwartz and Orleans 1967; Mason and Calvin 1978; Scott and Grasmick 1981; Loftus 1985, Forest and Sheffrin 2002; Henderson and Kaplan 2005; Cords 2005). Recent psychological research on why people obey the law indicates that the fairness of a legal system is not judged by its final outcome so much as by the formula employed to reach that outcome. “Within the general framework of fairness,” Tyler reports, “procedural concerns consistently take precedence over distributive concerns” (2006: 97). In the case of an income tax, this implies that the absolute amount of tax owed is not as significant in judging the fairness of the tax as the system used to compute the tax, and whether the same system is uniformly applied to all taxpayers.

Complexity, Self-interest, and Civic Duty

Complexity in the case of the tax code is a symptom of numerous factors, including: 1) a lack of congressional planning and coordination based on a central goal (raising revenue has become only one of many—and often competing—agenda items for tax legislation); 2) the wedging in of new tax provisions among the old in incremental policy making, with little thought to compatibility or wholeness of design; 3) counteracting measures aimed at making the tax fairer to specific constituent groups; and 4) the political market forces that create the law, including horse trading and purchasing votes with promises (Forrest and Sheffrin 2002).10 The perception of the law and respect for its integrity are important aspects of the law’s moral

10 Forest and Sheffrin (2002) citing Warskett, Winter and Hettich (1998). According to Alan Feld, “[b]oth the lobbyist and the member commit a felony if the former pays the latter to vote in a particular way on a pending matter. In some cases, however, a high correlation exists between contributions from a particular source and legislative action favorable to that source. Do lobbyists contribute to the campaign funds of members who support their clients’ positions, or do members support the clients’ positions because they have received campaign contributions? Each must leave the connection sufficiently vague and must trust the other to perform as expected.” (Feld 2001). 188 Donald Morris standing, and hence its ability to command respect resulting in a civic duty. “Laws perceived to be poorly conceived or downright foolish,” we are told, “can lead to lowered respect for law generally and greater willingness to flout it” (Nadler 2005). But tax complexity is a problem and its resolution requires understanding what kind of a problem it is. In a seminal paper on complexity in the sciences, Warren Weaver (1948) identifies two types of complexity: organized and disorganized. By organized complexity, Weaver understands problems that involve “dealing simultaneously with a sizable number of factors which are interrelated into an organic whole.” As examples, he offers: “On what does the price of wheat depend?” and “What is a gene, and how does the original genetic constitution of a living organism express itself in the developed characteristics of the adult?” In contrast, a problem of disorganized complexity is one in which “the number of variables is very large, and one in which each of the many variables has a behavior which is individually erratic, or perhaps totally unknown.” “In spite of this helter- skelter, or unknown, behavior of all the individual variables,” he explains, “the system as a whole possesses certain orderly and analyzable average properties.” The techniques of probability theory and of statistics are used to solve problems of disorganized complexity. As examples, he offers the motion of atoms and the operations of a life insurance company that does not know which of its many policy holders will die next, but does know, on average, the frequency of deaths within the population of which its policy holders are members. Tax complexity, in the sense in which people speak of it as a problem, is neither an example of organized nor disorganized complexity, for it lacks organic principles and will not yield to statistical analysis. The complexity of the Tax Code is what I call accretive complexity caused by the patchwork approach used by legislators. As if filling potholes after a winter’s onslaught, the congressional approach to tax legislation frequently involves no more than adding a subsection here or extending or modifying another one over there. The complexity of the tax code is frequently cited as a problem for both taxpayers and the IRS. But rarely mentioned is the effect of the code’s complexity on our civic duty to pay our fair share of the tax burden. In one study, researchers report, “there is no necessary theoretical link between the complexity of the tax system and its perceived unfairness” The Civic Duty to Pay Taxes and the Fair-Share Calculation 189

(Forest and Sheffrin 2002). One reason for the tax code’s complexity is the attempt by lawmakers to take account of numerous differences between taxpayers. Kaplow states that an income tax “involves the use of a substantial and complex set of rules imposing significant compliance costs on taxpayers and administrators for the purpose of assessing each taxpayer’s circumstances more accurately in terms of some notion of their equitable tax burden” (1996). Much of the tax code’s complexity is thus due to attempts by Congress to inject localized elements of fairness applicable to specific constituencies. Whether these efforts level the playing field or make it more uneven is a contentious question, for as Friedrich Hayek warns, “[t]here is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal” (1948, 16). At the same time that some elements in the tax code are designed to render the rules fair to specific constituencies, other elements of the code are charged with instilling fiscal discipline through changes in depreciation rules, providing incentives through targeted credits or delivering some vision of distributive justice, as well as raising revenue. The result is a heterogeneous coagulate of opposing claims to fairness, producing uncertainty in the minds of taxpayers as to their fair share. This kind of uncertainty is antithetical to a civic duty to pay taxes, if that obligation rests on each individual paying his or her fair share. According to Adam Smith, “The certainty of what each individual ought to pay is, in taxation, a matter of so great importance, that a very considerable degree of inequality … is not near so great an evil as a very small degree of uncertainty” (1991, bk. 5, chap. 2, pt. 2). Knowing how our share of the tax burden was arrived at—even if the amount is determined unfair—is thus preferable to the uncertainty of our current system, which results in any two taxpayers with the same economic or spendable income likely paying different amounts of tax but for no explicable reason. In 2000, then-IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti stated, “[f]ew issues have generated as much discussion in recent years as tax-code complexity.” This complexity becomes “even more burdensome” to taxpayers and the IRS, according to Rossotti, “when there are frequent changes, or when changes are made effective shortly in the future or retroactively” (WSJ 7/26/2000). In a telling statement regarding its increasingly frustrating position as enforcer of the Internal Revenue Code, the IRS made the following eye- opening admission: 190 Donald Morris

The complexity of the tax code makes it difficult for taxpayers to understand their tax obligations and for the IRS to administer the tax law. Special rules, subtle distinctions in the tax law and complicated computations add to this complexity and foster a sense of unfairness in our tax system which ultimately discourages compliance. Notwithstanding an increasing awareness of the discrepancy in taxes due and taxes paid, the tax law continues to move in a direction of increasing complexity, which frustrates efforts to reduce the tax gap. In 2006 alone, Congress passed six items of legislation that affected the tax law. Within these bills, 223 provisions required over 1,200 actions by the IRS to implement the new requirements. These changes to the tax law further increased complexity and, therefore, lessened the IRS’ ability to increase voluntary compliance (IRS Reducing the Federal Tax Gap, 50).

The importance of complexity of the tax code is magnified by the fact that the U.S. employs a system of self-assessment, sometimes referred to as a voluntary system. Fox (2001, 15) notes, “[t]he more incentives Congress creates that pit our self-interest against the national interest, the more dysfunctional tax laws become.” Such incentives are ubiquitous in our current system. Asking taxpayers to objectively assess their own tax liability employing a complex set of rules is therefore enabling tax cheating and fostering disrespect for the rule of law. When the complexity of these rules provides no reason to think the end-product will be a taxpayer’s fair share, hoping patriotism and civic duty will carry the day amounts to congressional negligence. John Stuart Mill observed, regarding voluntary tax systems, “[t]he main reliance must be placed, and always has been placed, on the returns made by the person himself. The tax, therefore, on whatever principles of equality it may be imposed, is in practice unequal in one of the worst ways, falling heaviest on the most conscientious” (1884, 556). According to Mill, those most concerned with paying their fair share will invariably end up paying more than they should, resulting in an unfortunate paradox. If we believe we are being asked to pay more than our fair share—though we can never be sure what that share is because of the code’s complexity—and the means for adjusting our share is left within reach through self-assessment, even the most conscientious taxpayers may eventually succumb. As a result, if it is impossible to know whether each of us is paying our fair share, any civic duty to comply with the income tax laws based on the fair-share principle is doomed. The Civic Duty to Pay Taxes and the Fair-Share Calculation 191

According to the IRS, “[a] wide range of factors influence voluntary compliance, although there is little empirical confirmation as to the most important of these factors or their magnitudes” (IRS 2007, 17). Among the assumed factors, the IRS lists the economy, demographics and socio-political factors such as swings in patriotic sentiment. As to the IRS’s own level of influence, it admits, “[i]t is very difficult to determine the impact that any IRS activity has on voluntary compliance” (IRS 2007, 17). It is my experience that fear and intimidation are generally its greatest weapons. “There seems to be a problem,” Torgler advises, “with a tax system that the majority of the public consider as complicated and unfair.” (2007, 75). While the arithmetic involved is generally not complex, the reasons for many of the calculations are inexplicable: Why are apartment buildings depreciated over 27.5 years? Why are criminals permitted to deduct the cost of their tools and their travel? Such serial arbitrariness leads to unanswerable questions of fairness. In the end, the code is a black box: We process our tax data through the system and our tax liability is the end result. It could be argued that in a democracy, tax laws passed by duly elected representatives are fair by definition and therefore each taxpayer’s computed tax must be his or her fair share. For Webber and Wildavsky (1986, 534), this notion is tautological and the tax process is “an accurate reflection of public opinion” by definition. This claimed outcome is countered by the practical effects of special-interest lobbying which greatly impacts our tax laws: While lawmakers represent those who vote for them they also represent those who support their campaigns financially. According to Scholz (1989, 19), “members of tax-writing committees, and particularly the chairmen, receive considerably greater contributions than the average congressman.” Although there is ancient wisdom advising that no one can serve two masters, our congressional representatives appear un-dissuaded. Some of what are popularly called earmarks are tax laws affecting a few or only one taxpayer. Though special-interest tax legislation is nothing new, the closet where the bodies are hidden was opened for a brief period in the late 1990s. The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 contained 79 items that applied to 100 or fewer taxpayers (Title XVII sec. 1701). The reason we know this is the result of a short-lived law aimed at bringing some transparency to the tax-legislation process. The Line Item Veto Act (P. L. 104–130), subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Clinton v. City of New 192 Donald Morris

York,11 required the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation to prepare a statement identifying each “limited tax benefit”—earmark directed at 100 or fewer taxpayers—“contained in a bill or resolution.” One of these measures, and a target of the President’s veto, affected only one taxpayer. Its cost was estimated at “$84 million over five years, allowing for deferral of taxes on the sale of a sugar beet processing facility owned by Dallas businessman Harold Simmons to a farmer-owned cooperative” (Dallas Morning News 8/8/97).12 The inclusion of this narrow rule and others like it—what one writer calls “‘special interest’ provisions buried within the arcane language of the income tax code” (Pollack 1996, 4)—weakens the force of a civic duty to pay our fair share. To engender a civic duty, laws must be general. A law designed to apply to anyone in a particular class—but where that class has been so narrowly defined as to circumscribe a very few taxpayers— abuses the spirit of the principle of generality. This principle—that like cases be treated alike—depends on the moral relevancy of the criteria used to determine likeness. Congress has frequently violated this requirement; without it, however, the civic duty to the tax law is eroded. If the sugar beet plant noted earlier were an isolated incident, it might be excused. But the fact that we had a law requiring disclosure of tax items affecting 100 or fewer taxpayers indicates a general problem with the tax code and its ability to foster a civic duty.

Tax-Accounting Income vs. Spendable Income

In the previous section I described why the complexity of the tax code clouds a taxpayer’s vision of what a fair share might be. The civic duty problem is

11 Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417. In its syllabus of the case, the Supreme Court writes, “[t]he President exercised his authority under the [Line Item Veto Act, 2 U.S.C. §691 et seq.] by canceling §4722(c) of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which waived the Federal Government’s statutory right to recoupment of as much as $2.6 million in taxes that the State of New York had levied against Medicaid providers, and §968 of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which permitted the owners of certain food refiners and processors to defer recognition of capital gains if they sold their stock to eligible farmers’ cooperatives.” 12 Act Section 1175. This provision was subject to the President’s line item veto and was in fact vetoed. However the veto was subject to a constitutional challenge to the Line Item Veto Act itself in Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417. The Civic Duty to Pay Taxes and the Fair-Share Calculation 193 due in part to the inability of any taxpayer to know with any assurance that what he or she is paying represents a fair share of the national tax burden. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the very notion of income—the base to which the income tax is applied—is not intuitively clear and excludes almost as much spendable income as it includes. With a real estate tax, for example, we understand generally how our house is valued and also that if our house is smaller than our neighbor’s we should be paying less tax. But our income tax system allows two people (or ten or a hundred) with the same spendable income to pay different amounts of tax. An individual who collects Social Security and invests in municipal bonds, for example, may have the same number of dollars coming in as her neighbor who works a full-time job for $12 an hour. Yet the first may pay no tax and the second may pay a 15 percent tax or pay nothing and receive the Earned Income Tax Credit. In this limited example, each component (limiting the tax on Social Security, exempting municipal bond interest from taxation, graduated tax rates and the Earned Income Tax Credit) may have been introduced originally to ensure each taxpayer pays his or her fair share. But in combination with one another—and multiplied by the vast array of other special provisions, each also designed to make some aspect fairer to some constituency—the sum precludes taxpayers’ recognition of what amount of tax represents their fair share. Adam Smith expressed a moral intuition regarding the fairness of taxation. He wrote that “[t]he subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state” (bk. 5, chap. 2, pt. 2). In general terms, a tax on income could accomplish this, though Smith’s words do not necessitate the countless refinements inserted in the code to ensure “even greater fairness” for specific constituencies. These modifications to Smith’s fundamental insight attempt to redefine fairness from opposing perspectives. To counterbalance an item designed to please small-business, for example, another measure is inserted to benefit the working poor. While I do not believe that complexity alone is the reason for our lack of a civic duty to pay our taxes, one aspect of our system’s complexity, as noted, is its obfuscation of the fair-share calculation. A major source of this problem is the congressional decision to bifurcate income into what is 194 Donald Morris taxed and what is not, rather than taxing all income “from whatever source derived” as permitted by the Sixteenth Amendment. In a book entitled, If Americans Really Understood the Income Tax, Fox (2001) explores the relation between tax rates and the percentage of income available for taxation: “Because the tax laws currently allow massive amounts of income to be siphoned away from taxable income”— approximately 46 percent of the total available—“[p]rogressive tax rates … apply only against the remaining 54 percent” (49). Part of Fox’s point is that while government authorities may spend time and resources chasing the untaxed-unreported income—comprising the tax gap—the amount of income legally excluded from taxation for various political reasons is almost equal to the amount available to be taxed. This produces a distortion of the progressive tax rate régime. While those benefiting from this distortion may not care, the integrity of the system is compromised if its intended effect is easily circumvented by propitious tax planning. “[S]pecial income exclusions and deductions, as drafted by Congress,” Fox reports, “are anti-egalitarian. They operate regressively: The great bulk of the tax savings from special social and economic programs in the tax laws redound to the benefit of more able taxpayers” (40). Further:

[T]he link between tax rates and the rules determining taxable income is undeniable. Tax rates can produce tax revenue only from income within their reach. Having placed so much income beyond the government’s reach, Congress adopts much higher tax rates than would otherwise be necessary to raise a given amount of tax revenue (12).

This phenomenon occurs through the use of what economists refer to as “tax expenditures.” As Burman explains, “[t]he term ‘tax expenditure’ refers to departures from the normal tax structure designed to favor a particular industry, activity, or class of persons” (2003). Effectively, these represent the cost in lost tax revenue from deductions or items excluded from taxation for special groups of taxpayers. According to Fox, “Congress undermines the effectiveness of progressive tax rates by allowing so much income of middle and upper-income taxpayers … to escape status as taxable income” (2001, 39). More than 45 percent of the income potentially available for taxation is legally excluded, although this untaxed income is not spread proportionately among taxpayers in relation to their taxable incomes The Civic Duty to Pay Taxes and the Fair-Share Calculation 195

(Fox 2001, 49).13 Income which illegally escapes taxation is also concentrated among certain taxpayers as well, further distancing the tax system from Adam Smith’s goal noted earlier. Credits and deductions are peppered throughout the Code in an attempt to encourage certain activities and discourage others, though this further blurs our vision of a fair share. The result, as noted, is that any two taxpayers with the same amount of economic income will rarely pay the same amount of tax. Thus, there is little reason to believe the end-result of the code’s machinations is our fair share. Only if we possessed a uniform and all-inclusive definition of income and knew that everyone was paying a certain percentage of their income into the Treasury, could we even know what share we were paying, and possibly whether it was also our fair share. The use of tax expenditures greatly complicates the tax code and, combined with our knowledge of the growing tax gap, makes the notion of a fair share and thus a civic duty to pay our share a distant dream.

Conclusion

This article is a response to and evaluation of the results of a survey question reported by the IRS Oversight Board indicating that the vast majority of taxpayers feel a civic duty to pay their fair share of the national tax burden. The article focuses primarily on two aspects of this question. One aspect involves the contrast of the widespread claim of a civic duty to pay taxes (95 percent of respondents) against the growing problem of tax noncompliance and the resulting $450 billion annual tax gap. The second is the difficulty encountered in ascertaining the basis for a civic duty by determining what is meant by a taxpayer’s fair share, given the complexity of the current tax code and its piecemeal approach to achieving fairness based on isolated constituent needs without the benefit of an overall vision. Thus, while the IRS Oversight Board may take comfort that 95 percent of the taxpaying public believes that they have a civic duty to pay their fair share, this finding should give pause for sober reflection. As noted, any consensus that broad regarding an otherwise contentious issue should be met with skepticism. The near-unanimous response may mean no more than that people recognize that

13 For a full explanation of this feature of our income tax system see Fox (2001). 196 Donald Morris the functions of government must be paid for and that each person should pay a certain part. Understood in these terms, the survey findings should be seen as hollow and primarily a function of how the question was framed. I believe tougher and more probing questions would serve the IRS Oversight Board’s mission more effectively by seeking to uncover authentic areas of concern upon which the Board could then make recommendations. As noted at the outset, the problems faced by the U. S. income tax system are fundamentally problems of moral and social philosophy. Understanding how citizens view their connection to the state and to other citizens is central to dealing with problems of tax compliance and tax cheating. Recognizing this connection is critical to modifying the existing system or designing a more effective tax system.

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