(Anti-)Realisms: the Metaphysical Issue

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12-1 | 2008 (Anti-)Realisms: The Metaphysical Issue

Roger Pouivet et Manuel Rebuschi (dir.)

Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/philosophiascientiae/195 DOI : 10.4000/philosophiascientiae.195 ISSN : 1775-4283

Éditeur Éditions Kimé

Édition imprimée Date de publication : 1 avril 2008 ISSN : 1281-2463

Référence électronique Roger Pouivet et Manuel Rebuschi (dir.), Philosophia Scientiæ, 12-1 | 2008, « (Anti-)Realisms: The Metaphysical Issue » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 01 avril 2008, consulté le 19 janvier 2021. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/philosophiascientiae/195 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ philosophiascientiae.195

Roger Pouivet & Manuel Rebuschi L.H.S.P. – Archives H. Poincaré (UMR 7117)

The fundamental question of Metaphysics is “What is reality?” And the most fundamental question about this fundamental question is “Can we answer this question?” Full realists think we can. They are convinced that the world is independent of our minds and that we can know it as it is independently of us. Half realists think that the world is independent of us (ontological realism), but that we cannot know it as it is independently of our minds (epistemological anti-realism). Full anti-realists think that both the world and our knowledge of it depend on our minds, thoughts, languages, categories, conceptual schemes, ways of worldmaking, intellectual habits, social practices, political organization, gender, sexual preferences, and so on. For them, “reality” is a deeply relative word; and reality is something we make, not something we ﬁnd. It is a construct, not a ready-made. The realism/anti-realism debate is clearly meta-metaphysical. It is a way to ask whether metaphysics is merely possible, and if the anti-realist stance is a kind of metaphysics or a way to reject metaphysics. The realism/anti-realism debate takes many forms in metaphysics, where it gets its full generality, in philosophy of science, where it op- poses scientiﬁc realists and instrumentalists, in philosophy of perception, where one can distinguish perceptual realism from many forms of repre- sentationalism, in ethics, where the question at stake is to know if there

Philosophia Scientiæ, 12 (1), 2008, 1–5. 2 Roger Pouivet & Manuel Rebuschi are moral facts, in aesthetics, when one wonders whether aesthetics properties are real and projected, and so on. Some philosophers think that this debate takes too many forms to be completely serious and honest. One can be realist in one domain and not in another. Even a realist in aesthetics, for example, is not obliged to accept the thesis that Mrs Bo- vary or any ﬁctional character is real. Many scientiﬁc realists would say that non-natural properties, such as moral properties if they are such, are not real, and hence would also be moral non-realists. The question of modality has often been at the core of the realism/ anti-realism debate. We speak about what is possible or not, what is necessary or not, what ought to be the case or ought not to be the case, and so on. What do we speak about by using such formulas? Realia or simply what we think and speak about, something whose existence is only mental and/or linguistic? The question of truth is also very sensitive to the realism/anti-realism debate. Proposed in 1742, Goldbach’s conjecture claims that every even integer greater than two is the sum of two primes. When we write this preface, it has not been proven in full generality. Realists in mathematics think that Goldbach’s conjecture is either determinately true or determinately false. Perhaps we will never discover if it is true or false, but for sure it is one or the other. Anti- realists think that we constructed numbers. Goldbach’s conjecture could be neither determinately true not determinately false. Our construction of numbers does not perhaps contain the solution of such a conjecture. In the glorious heyday of Logical Positivism, it was possible to describe Analytical philosophy as anti-metaphysical. Since, through the work of Russell, Quine, Strawson, Chisholm, Dummett, Armstrong, D. Lewis, van Inwagen, and others, metaphysics regains slowly but surely its central position in analytic philosophy. This could be the meaning of the current importance of the realism/anti-realism debate. Metaphysics is back again. It is back not only because some philosophers are realists – a lot are not. It is back because philosophers think that it makes sense to enter this debate, and not simply to claim that realism is a philosophical illusion, logocentrism, or the result of some social constraint. They do not think that metaphysics is dead but they like to discuss the question if we can understand the notion “the reality as it is in itself”, and eventually know something about it. The following papers examine realism pro and contra. They have been presented, under this form or another, at the (Anti-)Realisms Con- ference held at the University of Nancy 2 at the end of June and beginning of July 2006. This conference was organized by our research group “Archives Henri Poincaré”. This is the opportunity to remark that the Preface 3 realism/anti-realism debate is clearly in the heritage of Poincaré. Indeed, even though Poincaré defended his famous conventionalist doctrine he has always been worried by the threat of loosing contact with the conception of reality as something independent from our mind.

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The volume is divided into four parts. In the first part, The Metaphys- ical issue, three papers are gathered which are all concerned with general issues of realism: realism against conceptualism, moderate against strong realism about properties, realism about axiological properties. In his paper “Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism, and the Errors of Conceptualism”, E. Jonathan Lowe defends strong realism about essences, i.e., the idea that entities have both general and individual essences and that these are knowable. He claims that such a position is a consequence of any consistent realism, and that conceptualism about essences is an incoherent doctrine. Moreover, Lowe wants to account for the cognitive role of concepts within his strong essentialism. Sandrine Darsel’s paper “A Realistic and Non Reductionnist Strat- egy with respect to Properties” supports the project of a fostering ontology involving non-physical properties such as aesthetic ones, on a basis independent of their causal account. The author puts forward a meta- ontological argumentation in order to shift our existential criteria for properties: according to her, we should retain an explicative criterion and get rid of the more usual causal one. Darek Łukasiewicz’s contribution, entitled “Metaphysics of Axiolog- ical Realism”, is a presentation of the Czeżowski’s account of values and axiological sentences. According to the great member of the Lvov- Warsaw School, values are not properties but should nevertheless be conceived of as real. Values are to be thought of as modi essendi, which are transcendental concepts. Such a kind of realism about values thus avoids the reduction of axiological sentences to naturalistic sentences. The second part of the volume is devoted to Modal (Anti)Realism, and more specifically to the philosophical disputes about the ontological status of possible objects. Frédéric Nef, in his paper “Which Variety of Realism? Some Assev- erations on the Dependence of Abstracta upon Concreta", sketches a discussion about metaphysical and ontological nihilisms. The first one holds that there could be no concrete objects, hence that there could be at most abstract objects, while according the second one there could be 4 Roger Pouivet & Manuel Rebuschi nothing at all. Lowe argued that in order to avoid nihilism one should consider that abstracta depend on concreta. Nef thinks it is untrue, and claims that realism is better preserved by a moderate form of Platonism compatible with modal realism. Scott Shalkowski’s “Blackburn’s Rejection of Modals” is a critical discussion of Simon Blackburn’s argument against truth-conditional accounts of modalities. The author convincingly argues that one could escape the critics of circularity grounding her ontology on basic primitive modal facts. The third part, Truths, is mainly concerned with what is known as semantic or alethic realism, i.e. the idea that the truth-value of sentences or thoughts is built up independently from our recognition. Alternatively the antirealistic view holds that there are no truth-conditions independent of our grasping. In his paper “Three Forms of Pluralism about Truth”, Michael P. Lynch shows the advantages and limitations of three pluralistic accounts of truth: simple alethic pluralism, and two kinds of functionalism, a reductive one grounded on basic properties (realizers), and a non-reductive one based on truth-roles. Michael P. Lynch argues that none of these conceptions is completely satisfactory. In his conclusion, he draws the perspective of a new account based on immanency. Tommaso Piazza’s paper, “Truth and Warranted Assertibility”, examines Alston’s critique of truth as warranted assertibility, one of the main accounts about truth in an anti-realist stance. The paper provides an up-to-date perspective on the realism/anti-realism debate, especially concerning its alethic aspects. In “Mind-Dependence, Irrealism and Superassertibility” Daniel Lau- rier gives a systematic exploration of the relationship between fact- realism and Dummett-like accounts of judgements. He proposes to en- large the independence-claims of realism about facts, usually restricted to knowability, to an independence from other attitudes such as conceivability. The conclusion is, against Wright, that truth being dependent upon knowability does not entail that truth should consist in superassertibility. In the fourth and last part of the volume, Radical Construc- tivism?, two papers present philosophical disputes about strong anti- realism. In the paper “Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist?”, Peter van Inwagen considers the debate between Winson and O’Brien in Orwell’s 1984 as a debate between a realist and an anti-realist, hence Orwell’s 5 position as a standing up for realism about truth. Van Inwagen rejects Conant’s criticisms against this interpretation as a case of nonsense in philosophy. Furthermore, the author draws a general defense of an alethic realistic doctrine. Tom Burke’s paper, “(Anti)Realist Implications of Pragmatist Dual- Process Active-Externalist Theory of Experience”, proposes a pragmatic-cum-realist account of knowledge. The author reaches a position labeled as ecological realism, which avoids radical constructivism albeit including constructivist components. The paper thus gives new insights on the pragmatic stance about reality.

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To conclude, we wish to thank the authors for their contributions to this collection which, we hope, should oﬀer a nice overview of contemporary research about the realism/anti-realism debate in analytic metaphysics. We also thank Prosper Doh for his patient work and help to manage the technical editorial process of the whole volume. 6 Part I The Metaphysical issue

Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism, and the Errors of Conceptualism

E. Jonathan Lowe University of Durham

Résumé : Le réalisme métaphysique est la conception suivant laquelle la plupart des objets qui peuplent le monde existent indépendamment de notre pensée et possèdent une nature indépendante de la manière dont nous pouvons éventuellement la concevoir. A mon sens cette position engage à admettre une forme robuste d’essentialisme. Beaucoup des formes modernes de l’anti- réalisme tirent leurs origines d’une forme de conceptualisme, suivant laquelle toutes les vérités que nous puissions connaître au sujet des essences sont en dernière analyse fondées sur nos concepts, plutôt que dans les choses « en elles-mêmes ». Mon but est de montrer que l’anti-réalisme conceptualiste est une doctrine incohérente, et comment nous pouvons soutenir le réalisme mé- taphysique et l’essentialisme robuste, tout en reconnaissant clairement le rôle cognitif des concepts en tant qu’intermédiaires dans notre appréhension de la nature de la réalité indépendante de l’esprit. Abstract: Metaphysical realism is the view that most of the objects that populate the world exist independently of our thought and have their natures independently of how, if at all, we conceive of them. It is committed, in my opinion, to a robust form of essentialism. Many modern forms of anti-realism have their roots in a form of conceptualism, according to which all truths about essence knowable by us are ultimately grounded in our concepts, rather than in things ‘in themselves’. My aim is to show that conceptualist anti-realism is an incoherent doctrine and how we can support metaphysical realism and robust essentialism, while still properly acknowledging the cognitive role of concepts in mediating our grasp of the nature of mind-independent reality.

1 Metaphysical Realism versus Conceptual- ist Anti-Realism

Metaphysical realism is the view that most of the objects that populate the world exist independently of our thought and have their natures independently of how, if at all, we conceive of them. Metaphysical realism

Philosophia Scientiæ, 12 (1), 2008, 9–33. 10 E. Jonathan Lowe is committed, in my opinion, to a robust form of essentialism, that is, to the doctrine that there are mind-independent facts about the identities of most objects. ‘Identity’ in this sense means individual essence, which John Locke aptly characterized as ‘the very being of any thing, whereby it is, what it is’. Many modern forms of anti-realism have their basis in a form of conceptualism, according to which all truths about essence knowable by us are ultimately grounded in our concepts — that is, in our ways of thinking about things — rather than in things ‘in themselves’. This view has its historical roots in Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy, so that contemporary conceptualist anti-realism may, without undue dis- tortion, be described as ‘neo-Kantian’ in spirit. This is despite the fact that one important way in which its adherents diﬀer from the historical Kant is in their emphasis upon language as the medium of thought, as a result of the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ in philosophy that occurred in the early-to-mid twentieth century. My aim in the present paper is to show that and why conceptualist anti-realism is an incoherent doctrine and why and how we can and must support metaphysical realism and robust essentialism, while still properly acknowledging the cognitive role of concepts in mediating our grasp of the nature of mind-independent reality. I shall begin with a sketch of the version of essentialism that I favour — a version that I call serious essentialism — and in the course of doing so I shall identify its three key principles. Then I shall try to explain why I think that conceptualism can provide no adequate substitute for this form of essentialism and inevitably collapses into an incoherent variety of global anti-realism.

2 Serious Essentialism

It is vital for my purposes in this paper that the doctrine of essentialism be suitably understood. I say this because many contemporary possible- worlds theorists readily describe themselves as essentialists and propose and defend what they call essentialist claims, formulated in terms of the language of possible worlds. They will say, for instance, that an essential property of an object is one that the object possesses in every possible world in which it exists. And they will typically claim that some, but not all, of an object’s actual properties are essential to it in this sense. But a doctrine of this sort is not serious essentialism in my sense, because it attempts to characterize essence in terms of antecedently assumed notions of possibility and necessity and thus — in my view — puts the cart before the horse. It is at best ersatz essentialism. So what is Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism . . . 11 serious essentialism? To pursue this query, one might seek to ask what essences are. However, this question is already potentially misleading, for it invites the reply that essences are entities of some special sort. And, as we shall see, I want to deny that essences are entities. According to serious essentialism, as I understand it, all entities have essences, but their essences are certainly not further entities related to them in some special way. So, what do we or, rather, what should we mean by the ‘essence’ of a thing — where by ‘thing’, in this context, I just mean any sort of entity whatever? We can, I suggest, do no better than to recall John Locke’s perceptive words on the subject, which go right to its heart. Essence, Locke said, in the ‘proper original signiﬁcation’ of the word, is ‘the very being of any thing, whereby it is, what it is’ [Locke 1975, III, III, 15]. In short, the essence of something, X, is what Xis, or what it is to be X1. In another locution, X’s essence is the very identity of X — a locution that I am happy to adopt, provided that it is clearly understood that to speak of something’s ‘identity’ in this sense is quite diﬀerent from speaking of the identity relation in which it necessarily stands to itself and to no other thing. However, in order to avoid potential confusion about the meaning of locutions such as these, I think that it is important to draw, from the very start, a distinction between general and individual essence2. The key point to be emphasized in this connection is that any individual thing, X, must be a thing of some general kind — because, at the very least, it must belong to some ontological category. Remember that by ‘thing’ here I just mean ‘entity’. So, for example, X might be a material object, or a person, or a property, or a set, or a number, or a proposition, or whatnot — the list goes on, in a manner that depends on what one takes to be a full enumeration of the ontological categories to be included in it3. This point being accepted, if X is something of kind K, then we may say that X’s general essence is what it is to be a K, while X’s individual essence is what it is to be the individual of kind

1The historical source of this view lies, of course, with Aristotle, whose phrase τo τι ην ειναι (‘to ti en einai’) is standardly translated as ‘essence’: see Aristotle, Metaphysics Z, 4. Its more literal meaning is ‘the what it is to be’ or ‘the what it would be to be’. 2I do not attempt to oﬀer here a semantic analysis of expressions such as ‘what X is’, ‘what it is to be X’ or ‘the identity of X’, though that is no doubt an exercise that should be undertaken at some stage in a full account of what I am calling serious essentialism. I assume that our practical grasp of the meaning of such expressions is adequate for a preliminary presentation of the approach of the sort that I am now engaged in. 3For my own account of what ontological categories we should recognize and which we should regard as fundamental, see [Lowe 2006], especially Part I. 12 E. Jonathan Lowe

K that X is, as opposed to any other individual of that kind. Before I proceed, however, an important complication must be dealt with. It should be evident that we cannot simply assume that there is only ever a single appropriate answer to the question ‘What kind of thing is X?’. For instance, if ‘a cat’ is an appropriate answer to this question, then so will be the answers ‘an animal’ and ‘a living organism’. So too, of course, might be the answer ‘a Siamese cat’. It is important to recognize, however, that some, but not all, of these answers plausibly announce the fact that X belongs to a certain ontological category. In my own view, ‘X is a living organism’, does announce such a fact, but ‘X is a cat’ does not. I take it that the substantive noun ‘cat’ denotes a certain natural kind and consider that such kinds are a species of universal. Thus, as I see it, natural kinds, such as the kind cat, are themselves things belonging to a certain ontological category — the category of universals — but such a kind is not itself an ontological category, because ontological categories are not things at all, to be included in a complete inventory of what there is (see [Lowe 1998, ch. 8] and [Lowe 2006, ch. 2]). One upshot of all this is that I want to maintain that a certain sort of ambiguity may attach to questions concerning a thing’s general essence, as I shall now try to explain. An implication of what I have said so far is that if ‘a cat’ is an appropriate answer to the question ‘What kind of thing is X?’, then we may say that X’s general essence is what it is to be a cat. But, while I don’t want to retreat from this claim, I do want to qualify it. I should like to say that if X is a cat, then X’s fundamental general essence is what it is to be a living organism, because that — in my view — is the most narrow (or ‘lowest’) ontological category to which X may be assigned. The reason for this is that it is part of the individual essence of the natural kind cat — of which X is ex hypothesi a member — that it is a kind of living organisms. Now, there are, I believe, certain essential truths concerning X which do not issue from its fundamental general essence but only from the fact that it belongs to this particular natural kind. These are essential truths concerning X which are determined solely by the individual essence of that natural kind4. Accordingly, I

4I want to maintain that X’s fundamental general essence determines what is absolutely metaphysically necessary for X, whereas the individual essence of the natural kind cat determines only what is metaphysically necessary for Xqua member of that kind. Thus, in my view, being a cat is not an absolute metaphysical necessity for any individual living organism that is, in fact, a cat. To put it another way: I believe that it is metaphysically possible — even if not biologically or physically possible — for any individual cat to survive ‘radical’ metamorphosis, by becoming a member of another natural kind of living organism. See further [Lowe 1998, 54–6]. Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism . . . 13 want to say that what it is to be a cat, while it is not X’s fundamental general essence, is nonetheless what we might appropriately call X’s specific general essence, on the grounds that the kind cat is the most specific (or ‘lowest’) natural kind to which X may be assigned5. How- ever, I readily acknowledge that the distinction that I am now trying to draw between ‘fundamental’ and ‘specific’ general essence in the case of individual members of natural kinds is a controversial one that needs much fuller justification than I am able to give it here. Hence, in what follows, I shall try as far as possible to prescind from this distinction, hoping that the simplification involved in doing so will cause no damage to the overall thrust of my arguments6.

3 Why are Essences Needed?

I have just urged that all individual things — all entities — have both general and individual essences, a thing’s general essence being what it is to be a thing of its kind and its individual essence being what it is to be the individual of that kind that it is, as opposed to any other individual of that kind. But why suppose that things must have ‘essences’ in this sense and that we can, at least in some cases, know those essences? First of all, because otherwise it makes no sense — or so I believe — to say that we can talk or think comprehendingly about things at all. For if we do not at least know what a thing is, how can we talk or think comprehendingly about it? 7 How, for instance, can I talk or think comprehendingly about Tom, a particular cat, if I simply don’t know what cats are and which cat, in particular, Tom is? Of course, I’m not saying that I must know everything about cats or about Tom in order to be able to talk

5I take it here, at least for the sake of argument, that there are ‘higher’ natural kinds to which X may be assigned, such as the kinds mammal and vertebrate, but that Siamese cats — for example — do not constitute a distinct natural kind of their own. 6One consequence of this simplification is that I shall often continue to speak of ‘the’ kind to which a thing belongs, without discriminating between ‘kind’ in the sense of ontological category and ‘kind’ in the sense of natural kind, and without explicit acknowledgement of the fact that the question ‘What kind of thing is X?’ may be capable of receiving more than one appropriate answer. 7Note that I ask only how we can talk or think comprehendingly about a thing if we do not know what it is — not how we can perceive a thing if we do not know what it is. I am happy to allow that a subject S may, for example, see an object O even though S does not know what O is. Seeing, however, is not a purely intellective act. Indeed, of course, even lower animals that cannot at all plausibly be said to understand what objects exist in their environment, may nonetheless be said to see or feel or smell some of those objects. 14 E. Jonathan Lowe or think comprehendingly about that particular animal8. But I must surely know enough to distinguish the kind of thing that Tom is from other kinds of thing, and enough to distinguish Tom in particular from other individual things of Tom’s kind. Otherwise, it seems that my talk and thought cannot really fasten upon Tom, as opposed to something else9. However, denying the reality of essences doesn’t only create an epistemological problem: it also creates an ontological problem. Unless Tom has an ‘identity’ — whether or not anyone is acquainted with it — there is nothing to make Tom the particular thing that he is, as opposed to any other thing. Anti-essentialism commits us to anti-realism, and indeed to an anti-realism so global that it is surely incoherent. It will not do, for instance, to try to restrict one’s anti-essentialism to ‘the external world’, somehow privileging us and our language and thought. How could it be that there is a fact of the matter as to our identities, and the identities of our words and thoughts, but not as to the identities of the mind-independent entities that we try to capture in language and thought? On the other hand, how could there not be any fact of the matter as to our identities and the identities of our words and thoughts? Everything is, in Joseph Butler’s memorable phrase, what it is and not another thing. That has sounded to many philosophers like a mere truism without significant content, as though it were just an affirmation of the

8Perhaps, indeed, all I need to know about cats is that they are animals or living organisms and perhaps, likewise, all I need to know about Tom is which animal or living organism he is. 9Of course, it is fashionable at present to suppose that our talk and thought have, in general, their referents in the ‘external’ world secured through the existence of appropriate causal links between certain constituents of our talk and thought — certain of our linguistic and mental ‘representations’ — and various extra-linguistic and extra-mental entities belonging to that world: links that can, and mostly do, obtain without our needing to have any knowledge of them. On this sort of view, it may be supposed, my talk and thought can fasten upon Tom because there is an appropriate causal link between the name ‘Tom’, as I have learnt to use it, and Tom — and an analogous causal link between a certain ‘mental representation’ of mine (perhaps a certain ‘symbol’ in the putative ‘language of thought’ supposedly utilized by my brain) and Tom. I will only say here that I cannot begin to understand how it might seriously be supposed that a linkage of this sort could genuinely suﬃce to enable me to talk and think comprehendingly about Tom, even if it is conceded that there is a (relatively anodyne) notion of ‘reference’ that could perhaps be satisfactorily accounted for by a causal theory of the foregoing sort. I should emphasize, then, that I am not presently concerned to challenge the so-called causal theory of reference, much less to defend in opposition to it some sort of neo-Fregean theory of reference as being mediated by ‘sense’. Rather, I am simply not interested, at present, in semantic questions or rival semantic theories, but rather in the purely metaphysical question of how it is possible to be acquainted with an object of thought: my answer being that it is so through, and only through, a grasp of that object’s essence — that is, through knowing what it is. Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism . . . 15 reﬂexivity of the identity relation. But, in fact, Butler’s dictum does not merely concern the identity relation but also identity in the sense of essence. It implies that there is a fact of the matter as to what any particular thing is — that is, as to its ‘very being’, in Locke’s phrase. Its very being — its identity — is what makes it the thing that it is and thereby distinct from any other thing. Essences are apt to seem very elusive and mysterious, especially if talked about in a highly generalized fashion, as I have been doing so far. Really, I suggest, they are quite familiar to us. Above all, we need to appreciate that in very many cases a thing’s essence involves other things, to which it stands in relations of essential dependence. Consider the following thing, for instance: the set of planets whose orbits lie within that of Jupiter. What kind of thing is that? Well, of course, it is a set, and as such an abstract entity that depends essentially for its existence and identity on the things that are its members — namely, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Part of what it is to be a set is to be something that depends in these ways upon certain other things — the things that are its members. Someone who did not grasp that fact would not understand what a set is. Furthermore, someone who did not know which things are this set’s members, or at least what determined which things are its members, would not know which particular set this set is. So, someone who knew that its members are the planets just mentioned would know which set it is, as would someone who knew what it is to be a planet whose orbit lies within that of Jupiter10. This is a simple example, but it serves to illustrate a general point. In many cases, we know what a thing is — both what kind of thing it is and which particular thing of that kind it is — only by knowing that it is related in certain ways to other things. In such cases, the thing in question depends essentially on these other things for its existence or its identity. To say that X depends essentially on Y for its existence and identity is just to say that it is part of the essence of X that X exists only if Y exists and part of the essence of X that X stands in some unique relation to Y (see [Lowe 1998, ch. 6], or [Lowe 2005a]). Knowing a thing’s essence, in many cases, is accordingly simply a matter of understanding the relations of essential dependence in which it stands to other things whose essences we in turn

10There are, broadly speaking, two diﬀerent views of what a set is: one which takes a set simply to be the result of — as David Lewis [1991, vii] puts it — ‘collecting many into one’, and another which takes a set to be the extension of a property or of a concept. I see no compelling reason why, in principle, our ontology should not accommodate sets in both of these understandings of what they are. But since I am using the example of sets only for illustrative purposes, this is a matter on which I can aﬀord to remain agnostic here. 16 E. Jonathan Lowe know.

4 Essences are not Entities

I said earlier that it is wrong to think of essences as themselves being entities of any kind to which the things having them stand in some special kind of relation. Locke himself unfortunately made this mistake, holding as he did that the ‘real essence’ of a material substance just is its ‘particular internal constitution’ — or, as we would now describe it, its atomic or molecular structure11. This is a mistake that has been perpet- uated in the modern doctrine, made popular by the work of Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam, that the essence of water consists in its molecular make-up, H2O, and that the essence of a living organism consists in its DNA — the suggestion being that we discover these ‘essences’ simply by careful scientific investigation of the things in question (see, especially, [Kripke 1980] and [Putnam 1975]). Now, as we saw earlier, it may well be part of the essence of a thing that it stands in a certain relation to some other thing, or kind of things. But the essence itself — the very being of a thing, whereby it is, what it is — is not and could not be some further entity. So, for instance, it might perhaps be acceptable to say that it is part of the essence of water that it is composed of H2O molecules (an issue that I shall return to shortly). But the essence of water could not simply be H2O— molecules of that very kind — nor yet the property of being composed of H2O molecules. For one thing, if the essence of an entity were just some further entity, then it in turn would have to have an essence of its own and we would be faced with an infinite regress that, at worst, would be vicious and, at best, would appear to make all knowledge of essence impossible for finite minds like ours. To know something’s essence is not to be acquainted with some further thing of a special kind, but simply to understand what exactly that thing is. This, indeed, is why knowledge of essence is possible, for it is a product simply of understanding — not of empirical observation, much less of some mysterious kind of quasi-perceptual acquaintance with esoteric entities of any sort. And, on pain of incoherence, we cannot deny that we understand what at least some things are, and thereby know their essences. 11Thus, at one point Locke remarks: ‘[W]e come to have the Ideas of particular sorts of Substances, by collecting such Combinations of simple Ideas, as are by Ex- perience ... taken notice of to exist together, and are therefore supposed to flow from the particular internal Constitution, or unknown Essence of that Substance’ [Locke 1975, II, XXIII, 3]. Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism . . . 17

Here it may be objected that it is inconsistent of me to deny that essences are entities and yet go on, as I apparently do, to refer to and even quantify over essences. Someone who voices this objection probably has in mind W. V. Quine’s notorious criterion of ontological commitment, encapsulated in his slogan ‘to be is to be the value of a variable’ [see, for example, Quine 1969]. I reply, in the first place, that I could probably say all that I want to about my version of essentialism while avoiding all locutions involving the appearance of reference to and quantification over essences, by paraphrasing them in terms of locutions involving only sentential operators of the form ‘it is part of the essence of X that’ — where ‘the essence of X’ is not taken to make an independent contribution to the meaning of the operator, which might be represented symbolically by, say, ‘EX ’ in a sentential formula of the form ‘EX (p)’. The latter is a kind of locution that I certainly do want to use and find very useful. However, I think that effort spent on working out such paraphrases in all cases would be effort wasted. If a paraphrase means the same as what it is supposed to paraphrase — as it had better do, if it is to be any good — then it carries the same ‘ontological commitments’ as whatever it is supposed to paraphrase, so that constructing paraphrases cannot be a way of relieving ourselves of ontological commitments. We cannot discover those commitments simply by examining the syntax and semantics of our language, for syntax and semantics are very uncertain guides to ontology. In other words, I see no reason to place any confidence in Quine’s famous criterion.

5 Essence Precedes Existence

Another crucial point about essence is this: in general, essence precedes existence. And by this I mean that the former precedes the latter both ontologically and epistemically. That is to say, on the one hand, I mean that it is a precondition of something’s existing that its essence — along with the essences of other existing things — does not preclude its existence. And, on the other hand — and this is what I want to concentrate on now — I mean that we can in general know the essence of something X antecedently to knowing whether or not X exists. Otherwise, it seems to me, we could never find out that something exists. For how could we find out that something, X, exists before knowing what X is — before knowing, that is, what it is whose existence we have supposedly discov- 18 E. Jonathan Lowe ered?12 Consequently, we know the essences of many things which, as it turns out, do not exist. For we know what these things would be, if they existed, and we retain this knowledge when we discover that, in fact, they do not exist. Conceivably, there are exceptions. Perhaps it really is true in the case of God, for instance, that essence does not pre- cede existence. But this could not quite generally be the case. However, saying this is perfectly consistent with acknowledging that, sometimes, we may only come to know the essence of something after we have discovered the existence of certain other kinds of things. This is what goes on in many fields of theoretical science. Scientists trying to discover the transuranic elements knew before they found them what it was that they were trying to find, but only because they knew that what they were trying to find were elements whose atomic nuclei were composed of protons and neutrons in certain hitherto undiscovered combinations. They could hardly have known what they were trying to find, however, prior to the discovery of the existence of protons and neutrons — for only after these sub-atomic particles were discovered and investigated did the structure of atomic nuclei become sufficiently well-understood for scientists to be able to anticipate which combinations of nucleons would give rise to reasonably stable nuclei. Here it may be objected that Kripke and Putnam have taught us that the essences of many familiar natural kinds — such as the kind cat and the kind water — have been revealed to us only a posteriori and consequently that in cases such as these, at least, it cannot be true to say that ‘essence precedes existence’, whatever may be said in the case of the transuranic elements13. The presupposition here, of course, is

12Notoriously, Descartes is supposed to have claimed, in the Second Meditation, to know that he existed before he knew what he was — that is, before he grasped his own essence. But it seems to me that any such claim must be construed as being either disingenuous or else intended non-literally, if it is not to be dismissed as being simply incomprehensible. It might, for instance, be taken to imply merely that Descartes was certain that the word ‘I’ had a reference, before knowing what that reference was. To be accurate, though, what Descartes actually says is ‘But I do not yet have a sufficient understanding of what this “I” is, that now necessarily exists’: see Descartes 1986, 17. That is consistent with saying that Descartes does already grasp his own essence, but needs to clear his mind of confused thoughts concerning it. Query: might we not come to know what X is neither before nor after discovering that X exists, but simultaneously with that discovery? Well, I see no reason to deny this possibility in some cases. But that concession need not be taken to undermine the claim that, in general, we can know the essence of something X before knowing whether or not X exists. 13The extent to which the Kripke-Putnam doctrine has become a commonplace of contemporary analytic philosophy is illustrated by the following remark of Frank Jackson’s, which he makes simply in passing and without acknowledging any need to Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism . . . 19 that Kripke and Putnam are correct in identifying the essence of water, for example, with its molecular make-up, H2O. Now, I have already explained why I think that such identifications are mistaken, to the extent that they can be supposed to involve the illicit reification of essences. But it may still be urged against me that even if, more cautiously, we say only that it is part of the essence of water that it is composed of H2O molecules, it still follows that the essence of water has only been revealed to us — or, at least, has only been fully revealed to us — a posteriori. In point of fact, however, the Kripke-Putnam doctrine is even more obscure and questionable than I have so far represented it as being. Very often, it is characterized in terms of the supposed modal and epistemic status of identity-statements involving natural kind terms, such as ‘Water is H2O’, which are said to express truths that are at once necessary and a posteriori. In such a statement, however, the term ‘H2O’ is plainly not functioning in exactly the same way as it does in the expression ‘H2O molecule’. The latter expression, it seems clear, means ‘molecule composed of two hydrogen ions and one oxygen ion’. But in ‘Water is H2O’, understood as an identity-statement concerning kinds, we must either take ‘H2O’ to be elliptical for the definite description ‘the stuff composed of H2O molecules’ or else simply as being a proper name of a kind of stuff, in which case we cannot read into it any significant semantic structure. On the latter interpretation, ‘Water is H2O’ justify it: ‘[W]e rarely know the essence of the things our words denote (indeed, if Kripke is right about the necessity of origin, we do not know our own essences)’: see Jackson 1998, 50. Yet, I would urge, it should strike one as being odd to the point of paradoxicality to maintain that we can talk or think comprehendingly about things without knowing what it is that we are talking or thinking about — that is, without grasping their essences. The charitable conclusion to draw would be that philosophers like Jackson do not use the term ‘essence’ in what Locke called its ‘proper original signification’. Now, of course, Locke himself says that the ‘real’ essences of material substances are unknown to us — and the Kripke-Putnam doctrine is recognizably a descendent of Locke’s view, to the extent that it identifies the ‘real essences’ of material substances with their ‘internal constitutions’, many of which are certainly still unknown to us and may forever continue to be so. But Locke, at least, concluded — unlike modern adherents of the Kripke-Putnam doctrine — that ‘the supposition of Essences, that cannot be known; and the making them nevertheless to be that, which distinguishes the Species of Things, is so wholly useless. . . [as] to make us lay it by’ [Locke 1975, III, III, 17] and he accordingly appeals instead to what he calls nominal essences. The correct position, I suggest, is neither Locke’s nor that of the Kripke-Putnam doctrine, but rather (what I take to be) Aristotle’s: that the real essences of material substances are known to those who talk or think comprehendingly about such substances — and consequently that such essences are not to be identified with anything that is not generally known to such speakers and thinkers, such as the ‘particular internal constitution’ of a material substance, or a human being’s (or other living creature’s) ‘origin’ in the Kripkean sense. 20 E. Jonathan Lowe is exactly analogous to ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’ and its necessary truth reveals nothing of substance to us concerning the composition of water. If we are inclined to think otherwise, this is because we slide illicitly from construing ‘ H2O’ as a proper name to construing it as elliptical for the definite description ‘the stuff composed of H2O molecules’. Now, when ‘Water is H2O’ is understood on the model of ‘Hesperus is Phos- phorus’, its necessary a posteriori truth may in principle be established in a like manner — namely, by appeal to the familiar logical proof of the necessity of identity14, together with the a posteriori discovery of the co-reference of the proper names involved — but not so when it is construed as meaning ‘Water is the stuff composed of H2O molecules’, for the latter involves a definite description and the logical proof in question notoriously fails to apply where identity-statements involving definite descriptions are concerned. Thus far, then, we have been given no reason to suppose that ‘Water is H2O’ expresses an a posteriori necessary truth that reveals to us something concerning the essence of water. The appearance that we have been given such a reason is the result of mere sleight of hand15. There is, in any case, another important consideration that we should bear in mind when reflecting on the frequently-invoked analogy between ‘Water is H2O’ and ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’. It is all very well to point out that the discovery that Hesperus is Phosphorus was an empirical one. But it was not purely empirical, for the following reason. The identity was established because astronomers discovered that Hesperus and Phosphorus coincide in their orbits: wherever Hesperus is located at any given time, there too is Phosphorus located. However, spatiotemporal coincidence only implies identity for things of appropriate kinds. It is only because Hesperus and Phosphorus are taken to be planets and thereby material objects of the same kind that their spatiotemporal coincidence can be taken to imply their identity. But the principle that distinct material objects of the same kind cannot coincide spatiotemporally is not an empirical one: it is an a priori one implied by what it is to be a material object of any kind — in other words, it is a truth grounded

14See [Kripke 1971]. I express doubts about the cogency of this proof in [Lowe 2005b]. However, for present purposes I set aside these doubts. 15 Here I note that it might be thought that ‘Water is the stuff composed of H2O molecules’ follows unproblematically from the supposed empirical truth ‘Water is H2O’ (construed as an identity-statement involving two proper names) and the seemingly trivial, because analytic, truth ‘H2O is the stuff composed of H2O molecules’. But the latter, when the first occurrence of ‘H2O’ in it is interpreted as a proper name, is no more trivial than ‘Water is the stuff composed of H2O molecules’ — and this is how it must be interpreted for the inference to go through. Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism . . . 21 in essence. It is only because we know that it is part of the essence of a planet not to coincide spatiotemporally with another planet, that we can infer the identity of Hesperus with Phosphorus from the fact that they coincide in their orbits. Thus, one must already know what a planet is — know its essence — in order to be able to establish by a posteriori means that one planet is identical with another16. By the same token, then, one must already know what a kind of stuff is — know its essence — in order to be able to establish by a posteriori means that one kind of stuff is identical with another. It can hardly be the case, then, that we can discover the essence of a kind of stuff simply by establishing a posteriori the truth of an identity-statement concerning kinds of stuff — any more than we can be supposed to have discovered the essence of a particular planet by establishing a posteriori the truth of an identity- statement concerning that planet. So, even granting that ‘Water is H2O’ is a true identity-statement that is both necessarily true and known a posteriori, it does not at all follow that it can be taken to reveal to us the essence of the kind of stuff that we call ‘water’. Be all this as it may, however, we still have to address the question of whether, in fact, we ought to say that it is part of the essence of water that it is composed of H2O molecules. So far, we have at best seen only

16Here it may be asked: did astronomers know which planet Hesperus is — that is, know its individual essence — before knowing that it is identical with Phosphorus? It might seem that the answer must be ‘No’: for if they did, it may be wondered, how could they have been in any doubt as to its identity with Phosphorus? However, here we need to bear in mind that it is clearly not part of the essence of any planet that it has the particular orbit that it does: a planet can certainly change its orbit, and indeed could have had a quite different one. But what led to the discovery that Hesperus is the same planet as Phosphorus was simply that their orbits were plotted and found to coincide. And since one can know which planet a planet is without knowing what its orbit is, it is therefore perfectly explicable that astronomers should — and did — know which planet Hesperus is and which planet Phosphorus is without knowing that Hesperus is the same planet as Phosphorus. So how, in general, does one know which material object of kind K a certain material object, O, is? Well, one way in which one can know this, it seems clear, is through perceptual acquaintance with O that is informed by knowledge of the general essence of objects of kind K. (Recall, here, that perception of an object O does not in itself presuppose knowledge of what O is, so that the foregoing claim does not beg the very question at issue.) That is to say, it very often happens that one perceives an object O in circumstances that enable one to know thatwhat one is perceiving, O, is a particular object of kind K. In such circumstances, one is thus in a position to know which object of this kind O is — namely, that one (the one that one is perceiving). And one can retain this knowledge by remembering which object it was that one perceived. I should emphasize, however, that this does not at all imply that it is part of O’s individual essence that it is the object of kind K that one perceived on a particular occasion — for, of course, it will in general be an entirely contingent matter that one happened to perceive it then, or indeed at all. 22 E. Jonathan Lowe that the Kripke-Putnam semantics for natural kind terms have given us no reason to suppose that we ought to. I am inclined to answer as follows. If we are using the term ‘water’ to talk about a certain chemical compound whose nature is understood by theoretical chemists, then indeed we should say that it is part of the essence of this compound that it consists of H2O molecules. But, at the same time, it should be acknowledged that the existence of this compound is a relatively recent discovery, which could not have been made before the nature of hydrogen and oxygen atoms and their ability to form molecules were understood. Consequently, when we use the term ‘water’ in everyday conversation and when our forebears used it before the advent of modern chemistry, we are and they were not using it to talk about a chemical compound whose nature is now understood by theoretical chemists. We are and they were using it to talk about a certain kind of liquid, distinguishable from other kinds of liquid by certain fairly easily detectable macroscopic features, such as its transparency, colourlessness, and tastelessness. We are right, I assume, in thinking that a liquid of this kind actually exists, but not that it is part of its essence that it is composed of H2O molecules. At the same time, however, we should certainly acknowledge that empirical scientific inquiry reveals that, indeed, the chemical compound H2O is very largely what bodies of this liquid are made up of. In fact, the natural laws governing this and other chemical compounds make it overwhelmingly unlikely that this kind of liquid could have a different chemical composition in different parts of our universe. But the ‘could’ here is expressive of mere physical or natural possibility, not metaphysical possibility17. Only an illicit conflation of these two species of possibility could reinstate the claim that water is essentially composed of H2O molecules. But, it may be asked, what about our supposed ‘intuitions’ in so- called ‘Twin-Earth’ cases — for example, the supposed intuition that if, on a distant planet, a watery stuff was discovered that was not composed of H2O molecules, then it would not be water? In answer to this question, I would remark only that these supposed intuitions need to be interpreted in the light of the fact, just mentioned, that the natural laws governing chemical compounds in our universe almost certainly render such scenarios physically impossible. The supposedly ‘watery’ stuff on Twin Earth would be like fool’s gold (copper pyrites): it would at best be casually mistakable for water and that is why it would not be water. The chemical explanation for this would be that it is not composed of

17For extended discussion of the need to distinguish between these two species of possibility, see [Lowe 2006, ch. 9 & ch. 10]. Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism . . . 23

H2O molecules. But we cannot turn this perfectly legitimate chemical explanation into a logico-cum-metaphysical argument that genuine water is of metaphysical necessity composed of H2O molecules — unless, once again, we conﬂate physical with metaphysical necessity.

6 Essence is the Ground of All Modal Truth

So far, I have urged that the following two principles must be endorsed by the serious essentialist: that essences are not entities and that, in general, essence precedes existence. But by far the most important principle to recognize concerning essences, for the purposes of the present paper, is that essences are the ground of all metaphysical necessity and possibility (compare [Fine 1994]). One reason, thus, why it can be the case that X is necessarily F is that it is part of the essence of X that X is F . For example, any material object is necessarily spatially extended because it is part of the essence of a material object that it is spatially extended — in other words, part of what it is to be a material object is to be something that is spatially extended. But this is not the only possible reason why something may be necessarily F . X may be necessarily F on account of the essence of something else to which X is suitably related. For example, Socrates is necessarily the subject of the following event — the death of Socrates — because it is part of the essence of that event that Socrates is its subject, even though it is not part of Socrates’s essence that he is the subject of that event. It is not on account of what Socrates is that he is necessarily the subject of that event but, rather, on account of what that event is18. This is not to say that Socrates could not have died a different death, only that no one but Socrates could have died the death that he in fact died. And what goes for necessity goes likewise, mutatis mutandis, for possibility. I venture to affirm that all facts about what is necessary or possible, in the metaphysical sense, are grounded in facts concerning the essences of things — not only of existing things, but also of non-existing things. But, I repeat, facts concerning the essences of things are not facts concerning entities of a special kind, they are just facts concerning what things are — their very beings or identities. And these are facts that we can therefore grasp simply in virtue of understanding what things are, which we must in at least some cases be able to do, on pain of being incapable of thought 18 Note that analogously, then, it could be conceded that H2O molecules necessarily compose water without it being conceded that it is part of the essence of water to be composed of H2O molecules — for the necessity may be explained instead as arising from the essence of H2O molecules. 24 E. Jonathan Lowe altogether. Consequently, all knowledge of metaphysical necessity and possibility is ultimately a product of the understanding, not of any sort of quasi-perceptual acquaintance, much less of ordinary empirical observation. How, for example, do we know that two distinct things of suitably different kinds, such as a bronze statue and the lump of bronze com- posing it at any given time, can — unlike two planets — exist in the same place at the same time? Certainly not by looking very hard at what there is in that place at that time. Just by looking, we shall not see that two distinct things occupy that place. We know this, rather, because we know what a bronze statue is and what a lump of bronze is. We thereby know that these are different things and that a thing of the first sort must, at any given time, be composed by a thing of the second sort, since it is part of the essence of a bronze statue to be composed of bronze. We know that they are different things because, in knowing what they are, we know their identity conditions, and thereby know that one of them can persist through changes through which the other cannot persist — that, for instance, a lump of bronze can persist through a radical change in its shape whereas a bronze statue cannot. These facts about their identity conditions are not matters that we can discover purely empirically, by examining bronze statues and lumps of bronze very closely, as we might in order to discover whether, say, they conduct electricity or dissolve in sulphuric acid (see further [Lowe 2003] and [Lowe 2002], the latter being a reply to [Olson 2001] ). Rather, they are facts about them that we must grasp antecedently to being able to embark upon any such empirical inquiry concerning them, for we can only inquire empirically into something’s properties if we already know what it is that we are examining..

7 Essentialism and Conceptualism

At this point I need to counter a rival view of essence that is attractive to many philosophers but is, I think, ultimately incoherent. I call this view conceptualism19. It is the view that what I have been calling facts about

19Who, it might be asked, is really a conceptualist in the sense that I am about to articulate? That is difficult to say with any assurance, since most conceptualists are understandably rather coy about proclaiming their position too explicitly. However, amongst major analytic philosophers of the twentieth century, Michael Dummett very plausibly counts as one, in virtue of his apparent endorsement of the view that reality is an ‘amorphous lump’ that can be ‘sliced up’ in indefinitely many different but equally legitimate ways, depending on what conceptual scheme we or other thinkers Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism . . . 25 essences are really, in the end, just facts about certain of our concepts — for example, our concept of a bronze statue and our concept of a lump of bronze. This would reduce all modal truths to conceptual truths or, if the old-fashioned term is preferred, analytic truths. Now, I have no objection to the notion of conceptual truth as such. Perhaps, as is often alleged, ‘Bachelors are unmarried’ indeed expresses such a truth. Let us concede that it is true in virtue of our concept of a bachelor, or in virtue of what we take the word ‘bachelor’ to mean. But notice that ‘Bachelors are unmarried’ very plausibly has a quite different modal status from an essential truth such as, for example, ‘Cats are composed of matter’. In calling the former a ‘necessary’ truth, we cannot mean to imply that bachelors cannot marry, only that they cannot marry and go on rightly being called ‘bachelors’. The impossibility in question is only one concerning the proper application of a word. But in calling ‘Cats are composed of matter’ a necessary truth, we certainly can’t be taken to mean merely that cats cannot cease to be composed of matter and go on rightly being called ‘cats’ — as though the very same thing that, when composed of matter, was properly called a ‘cat’ might continue to exist as something immaterial. No: we must be taken to mean that cats cannot fail to be composed of matter simpliciter, that is, without qualification. Cats are things such that, if they exist at all, they must be composed of matter. The impossibility of there being an immaterial cat is not one that merely concerns the proper application of a word: it is, rather, a genuinely de re impossibility. That, I contend, is because it is one grounded in the essence of cats, inasmuch as it is part of the essence of a cat, as a living organism, to be composed of matter. In contrast, it is not part of the essence of any bachelor to be unmarried, for a bachelor is just an adult male human being who happens to be unmarried — and any such human being undoubtedly can marry. So, it seems clear, ‘Cats are composed of matter’ is certainly not a mere conceptual truth, and the same goes for other truths that are genuinely essential truths — truths concerning or grounded in the essences of things. They have, in general, nothing to do with our concepts or our words, but rather with the natures of the things in question. Of course, since concepts and words are themselves things of certain sorts, there can be truths concerning their essences. Indeed, what we could say about ‘Bachelors happen to deploy: see [Dummett 1981, 563, 577]. So might David Wiggins, who calls his position ‘conceptualist realism’ and acknowledges, as the only admissible notion of individuation, a cognitive one which takes this to be a singling out of objects by thinkers: see [Wiggins 2001, 6]. And so, indeed, might Hilary Putnam, on the evidence of such papers as Putnam 1983, whose flavour seems distinctly different from that of earlier work of his cited previously. 26 E. Jonathan Lowe are unmarried’ is that it is, or is grounded in, a truth concerning the essence of the concept bachelor, or of the word ‘bachelor’. We could say, thus, that it is part of the essence of the concept bachelor that only unmarried males fall under it, and part of the essence of the word ‘bachelor’ that it applies only to unmarried males. At this point, I anticipate the following possible response from the conceptualist, challenging my attempt to distinguish between the modal status of the statements ‘Bachelors are unmarried’ and ‘Cats are composed of matter’. Both statements, the conceptualist may say, express conceptual truths, and the difference between them lies only in the fact that, while the term ‘cat’ is a so-called substance sortal, the term ‘bachelor’ is only a phase sortal (for this distinction, see [Wiggins 2001, 28-30]). This, he may say, adequately explains why it makes no sense to suppose that something, by ceasing to be composed of matter, could cease to qualify as a cat and yet go on existing — for a substance sortal is precisely a term that, by definition, applies to something, if it applies to it all, throughout that thing’s existence. To this I respond as follows. We need to ask, crucially, what determines whether or not a given general term should be deemed to be a substance sortal. If this is taken simply to be a matter of what concept it expresses for speakers of the language in question, rather than a matter of what manner of thing it applies to, then deeply anti-realist consequences immediately ensue. To see this, suppose that there is a community of speakers who speak a language very like English in most ways, except that in place of the term ‘bachelor’ they deploy the term ‘sbachelor’, where ‘sbachelor’ in their language is (supposedly) a substance sortal rather than a phase sortal, so that they would deem ‘Sbachelors are unmarried’ to be on a par, modally, with ‘Cats are composed of matter’ — the implication being that, for these speakers, a sbachelor ceases to exist if he undergoes a marriage ceremony and is replaced by a numerically different being, called (let us say) a ‘shusband’. So, where ordinary English speakers would describe a certain situation as being one in which a certain man survives the transition from being a bachelor to being a husband, speakers of our imaginary community would instead describe the very same situation as being one in which a certain sbachelor ceases to exist and is replaced by a shusband. As far as I can see, the conceptualist cannot say that we ordinary English speakers describe this situation rightly and that the imagined speakers describe it wrongly: for the only standard of correctness to which the conceptualist can appeal is that provided by the actual conceptual repertoire of the speakers of any given language. That being so, since the two speech communities clearly differ over the question as Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism . . . 27 to whether or not, in the envisaged situation, something has ceased to exist, the conceptualist seems committed to the conclusion that there is no mind-independent fact of the matter concerning such existential questions — and this position is blatantly anti-realist20.

But I said that conceptualism is ultimately incoherent. Indeed, I think it is. For one thing, as we have just seen, the proper thing to say about ‘conceptual’ truths is, very plausibly, that they are grounded in the essences of concepts. That being so, the conceptualist cannot maintain, as he does, that all putative facts about essence are really just facts concerning concepts. For this is to imply that putative facts about the essences of concepts are really just facts concerning concepts of concepts — and we have set out on a vicious inﬁnite regress. No doubt the conceptualist will object that this complaint is question-begging. However, even setting it aside, we can surely see that conceptualism is untenable. For the conceptualist is at least committed to aﬃrming that concepts — or, in another version, words — exist and indeed that concept-users do, to wit, ourselves. These, at least, are things that the conceptualist must acknowledge to have identities, independently of how we conceive of them, on pain of incoherence in his position. The conceptualist must at least purport to understand what a concept or a word is, and indeed what he or she is, and thus grasp the essences of at least some things. And if of these things, why not of other kinds of things? Once knowledge of essences is conceded, the game is up for the conceptualist. And it must be conceded, even by the conceptualist, on pain of denying that he or she knows what anything is, including the very concepts that lie at the heart of his account. For, recall, all that I mean by the essence of something is what it is.

I recognize, however, that conceptualism is deeply entrenched in some philosophical quarters and that conceptualists are consequently unlikely to relinquish their views very readily in the light of objections of the sort that I have just raised. Hence, in the remaining two sections of this paper, I shall endeavour to undermine conceptualism in two further ways: ﬁrst, by exposing the unholy alliance between conceptualism and scepticism and, second, by developing a more general argument to show how conceptualism leads to global anti-realism and why it is ultimately incoherent.

20In any case, it is relatively easy to think of other examples of necessary truths which, even less controversially, cannot sensibly be taken to be merely conceptual truths — for example, ‘Socrates is not divisible by 3’. 28 E. Jonathan Lowe 8 Conceptualism and Scepticism

Why is anyone ever even tempted by conceptualism, if it has such deep flaws as I maintain? My own view is that this temptation is the legacy of scepticism, particularly scepticism concerning ‘the external world’. The sceptic feels at home with himself and with his words and concepts, but expresses doubt that we can ever really know whether those words and concepts properly or adequately characterize things in the external world. He thinks that we can know nothing about how or what those things are ‘in themselves’, or indeed even whether they are many or one. According to the sceptic, all that we can really know is how we conceive of the world, or describe it in language, not how it is. But by what special dispensation does the sceptic exclude our concepts and our words from the scope of his doubt? For are they not, too, things that exist? There is, in truth, no intelligible division that can be drawn between the external world, on the one hand, and us and our concepts and our language on the other. Here it may be protested: But how, then, can we advance to a knowledge of what and how things are ‘in themselves’, even granted that the sceptic is mistaken in claiming a special dispensation with regard to the epistemic status of our concepts and our words? However, the fundamental mistake is to suppose, with the sceptic, that such an ‘advance’ would have to proceed from a basis in our knowledge of our concepts and words — that is, from a knowledge of how we conceive of and describe the world — to a knowledge of that world ‘as it is in itself’, independently of our conceptual schemes and languages. This ‘inside-out’ account of how knowledge of mind-independent reality is to be acquired already makes such knowledge impossible and must therefore be rejected as incoherent. But what alternative is there, barring a retreat to some form of anti- realism? Again, knowledge of essence comes to the rescue. Because, in general, essence precedes existence, we can at least sometimes know what it is to be a K — for example, what it is to be a material object of a certain kind — and thereby know, at least in part, what is or is not possible with regard to Ks, in advance of knowing whether, or even having good reason to believe that, any such thing as a K actually exists. Knowing already, however, what it is whose existence is in question and that its existence is at least possible, we can intelligibly and justifiably appeal to empirical evidence to confirm or cast doubt upon existence claims concerning such things. By ‘empirical evidence’ here, be it noted, I emphatically do not mean evidence constituted purely by the contents of our own perceptual states at any given time, as though Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism . . . 29 all that we had to go on is how the world in our vicinity looks or otherwise appears to be. That, certainly, is not the conception of ‘empirical evidence’ that is operative in scientific practice, which appeals rather to the results of controlled experiments and observations, all of which are reported in terms of properties and relations of mind-independent objects, such as scientific instruments and laboratory specimens. The growth of objective knowledge consists, then, in a constant interplay between an a priori element — knowledge of essence — and an a posteriori element, the empirical testing of existential hypotheses whose possibility has already been anticipated a priori. This process does not have a foundational ‘starting point’ and it is constantly subject to critical reap- praisal, both with regard to its a priori ingredients and with regard to its empirical contributions. Here we do not have a hopeless ‘inside-out’ account of objective knowledge, since our own subjective states as objective inquirers — our perceptions and our conceptions — are accorded no special role in the genesis of such knowledge. Those subjective states are merely some amongst the many possible objects of knowledge, rather than objects of a special kind of knowledge which supposedly grounds the knowledge of all other things. But, to repeat, it is crucial to this account that knowledge of essences is not itself knowledge of objects or entities of any kind, nor grounded in any such knowledge — such as knowledge of our own concepts.

9 Conceptualism and Anti-Realism

Recall that ‘conceptualism’, as I am using this term, is the view that, to that extent that talk about essences is legitimate at all, essences are purely conceptual in character. On this view, the essence of a kind of entities K is simply constituted by ‘our’ concept of a K — or, if not by ‘our’ concept, then at least by some thinking being’s concept. But what exactly is a ‘concept’? Well, ‘concept’ in the current context is a philosophical term of art, so it is partly up to us as philosophers to stipulate how we propose to use it. As I have already indicated, I myself regard a concept as being a way of thinking of some thing or things, and I take it that conceptualists can agree with me about this. However, as a metaphysical realist, I also want to say that not all of our ways of thinking of things — not all of our conceptions of things — are equally good. Because I am a metaphysical realist, I believe that our conceptions of things may be more or less adequate, in the sense that they may more or less accurately reﬂect or represent the natures — that is, the essences 30 E. Jonathan Lowe

— of the things of which we are thinking, or at least attempting to think. Thus it is open to me to stipulate further that, in my usage, a ‘concept’ is precisely an adequate conception of some thing or things, which accurately reflects the nature or essence of the things in question. For example, I can say that a child who conceives of a triangle merely as being a three-sided shape does not yet fully grasp the concept of a triangle, as a planar figure with three rectilinear sides. Clearly, however, it is not then open to me to say that the essence of Ks is constituted by our concept of a K, because this would leave no room for me to say, non-vacuously, that the concept of a K is a conception of Ks that accurately reflects the essence of Ks. Essences, on my account, must be mind-independent, if the question can sensibly be put as to whether or not a conception of Ks adequately reflects the essence of Ks. But what can be said on behalf of the rival view — conceptualism as I call it — that essences are always constituted by concepts? First, it should be clear, if it isn’t clear already, that conceptualism is a strongly anti-realist view. Second, I want to press home my complaint that conceptualism is a view that is ultimately incoherent. Let us deal with the first point first. The following question, it seems to me, must be a deeply embarrass- ing one for the conceptualist: in virtue of what, according to conceptualism, can it truly be said that there exist entities that fall under, or satisfy, our concepts — including, most centrally, our sortal or individuative concepts? That is to say, what does it take for there to be Ks, on this view? This is simple enough, it may be replied: there must be entities that possess whatever features they are that we have built into our concept of a K. So, for example, if K is lump of bronze, conceived, let us say, as a maximal connected aggregate of bronze particles, then there must be just such things. This will be the case if, sometimes, some bronze particles adhere to one another so as to form a maximal connected whole. Well and good: but remember that conceptualism is the doctrine that all essences are constituted by concepts. So, in particular, the doctrine must be taken to extend to the essence of bronze particles — what it is to be a bronze particle. (It must also extend to the essence of the relation of adherence, but I won’t dwell on that equally important fact for the moment, for the concept of adherence is not an individuative concept.) Bronze particles, on this view, exist just in case there are some things that possess whatever features we have built into our concept of a bronze particle. However, either the concept of a bronze particle is rel- evantly similar to that of a lump of bronze, in that it characterizes the nature of such an entity in terms of properties and relations of entities Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism . . . 31 of other kinds, or it is not. If it is, then the next question is just pushed back one stage. If it is not — and this is the next question — then what does it take for the world to contain entities falling under the concept? What, in this case, must the world contribute to the fact that entities of this putative kind exist? Since, according to conceptualism, all essences are constituted by concepts — where concepts are understood to be ‘ways of conceiving’ deployed by thinkers — the conceptualist cannot suppose that how the world is, in respect of what kinds of entities it contains, is something that is the case independently of what concepts thinkers deploy. On this view, what it is for the world to contain entities of a kind K just is for the concept of a K to have application, or be applicable. Consequently, an adherent of this view cannot cash out what it is for such a concept to have application in terms of there being in the world entities answering to the concept. For, as I say, on this view, there being in the world such entities just is a matter of the concept’s ‘having application’. So a quite different understanding of ‘having application’ must at least implicitly be in play. What is this alternative understanding? I think that it can only be something like this: the concept of a K ‘has application’ just in case thinkers find it useful, or convenient, to conceive of the world as containing Ks. This may require the concept in question to be logically consistent — thus ruling out, for example, the applicability of such concepts as ‘round square cupola’ — but otherwise the constraints would seem to be purely pragmatic. This, it seems clear, is a deeply anti-realist view. It is a view according to which, in Hilary Putnam’s well-known words, there isn’t a ‘ready-made world’ [Putnam 1983] — or, if you like, there isn’t any truth about ‘what is there anyway’, to use Bernard Williams’s equally familiar phrase [Williams 1978, 64]. Or, yet again, it is a view according to which, to employ Michael Dummett’s somewhat less felicitous metaphor, reality is an ‘amorphous lump’ — one that can be ‘sliced up’ in indefinitely many different but equally legitimate ways, depending on what ‘conceptual scheme’ we or other thinkers happen to deploy [Dummett 1981, 563]. It may also be the view to which David Wiggins is committed, willy-nilly, by the doctrine that he calls ‘conceptualist realism’ — committed in virtue of the fact that the only notion of individuation that he admits is a cognitive one, whereby individuation is a singling out of objects by thinkers [Wiggins 2001, 6]. Not only is this view deeply anti-realist: it is also, as I have said, doubtfully coherent. For those who philosophize in these terms rarely stop to think about how their doctrine is supposed to accommodate thinkers, their thoughts, and the concepts that they deploy. For these, too, are putative kinds 32 E. Jonathan Lowe of entities, whose essences, according the conceptualist doctrine, must like all others be constituted by ‘our’ concepts of them. It is at this point that the conceptualist manifestly paints himself into a corner from which there is no escape. There simply is no coherent position to be adopted according to which all essences are constituted by concepts, because concepts themselves are either something or else nothing — they either exist or they do not. If they don’t, then conceptualism is out of business. But if they do, then they themselves have an essence — what it is to be a concept. The conceptualist, to be consistent, must say that the essence of concepts is constituted our concept of a concept. But what could this mean? And what could it mean, according to conceptualism, to say that the concept of a concept ‘has application’ — that there are concepts? I don’t believe that conceptualism has any intelligible answer to such questions. The lesson, I take it, is that at least some essences must be mind-independent, in a way that conceptualism denies. Serious essentialism, as I call it, is my attempt to provide such an account of essence.

References

Descartes, René 1986 Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. J. Cottingham, Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press. Dummett, Michael 1981 Frege: Philosophy of Language, 2nd ed., London: Duckworth. Fine, Kit 1994 Essence and Modality, in James E. Tomberlin (ed.), Philo- sophical Perspectives, 8: Logic and Language, Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview. Jackson, Frank 1998 From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analy- sis, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kripke, Saul A. 1971 Identity and Necessity, in M. K. Munitz (ed.), Identity and Individuation, New York: New York University Press. 1980 Naming and Necessity, Oxford: Blackwell. Lewis, David 1991 Parts of Classes, Oxford: Blackwell. Essentialism, Metaphysical Realism. . . 33

Locke, John 1975 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nid- ditch, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lowe, E. J. 1998 The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002 Material Coincidence and the Cinematographic Fallacy: A Re- sponse to Olson, The Philosophical Quarterly 52, 369–72. 2003 Substantial Change and Spatiotemporal Coincidence, Ratio, 16, 140–60. 2005a Ontological Dependence, in E. N. Zalta ed., The Stanford En- cyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu. 2005b Identity, Vagueness, and Modality, in J. L. Bermúdez ed., Thought, Reference, and Experience: Themes from the Philosophy of Gareth Evans, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2006 The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Olson, Eric T. 2001 Material Coincidence and the Indiscernibility Problem, The Philosophical Quarterly, 51, 337–55. Putnam, Hilary 1975 The Meaning of ‘Meaning’, in his Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1983 Why There Isn’t a Ready-Made World, in his Realism and Rea- son: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press. Quine, W. V. 1969 Existence and Quantiﬁcation, in his Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York: Columbia University Press. Wiggins, David 2001 Sameness and Substance Renewed, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press. Williams, Bernard 1978 Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, Harmondsworth: Pen- guin. 34 A Realistic and Non Reductionist Strategy with respect to Properties

Sandrine Darsel L.H.S.P. - Archives H. Poincaré (UMR 7117)

Résumé : Peut-on et doit-on admettre des propriétés non physiques ? Une ontologie minimale accepte seulement la réalité des propriétés physiques. Elle prend appui sur un critère d’existence restreint : le critère causal. A l’inverse, une ontologie d’accueil aﬃrme la réalité d’au moins certaines propriétés non physiques, et conteste par là la validité du critère causal. Le but de cette investigation est de défendre une version modérée du réalisme par rapport aux propriétés non physiques et de proposer un nouveau critère d’existence : le critère explicatif. Abstract: Is it possible and necessary to admit of non-physical properties? A minimal ontology accepts only the reality of physical properties. It is based on a restrictive existential criterion, namely the causal criterion. On the contrary, a fostering ontology insists that at least some non-physical properties are real, and therefore denies the validity of the causal criterion. The purpose of this investigation is to defend a moderate version of realism with regard to non- physical properties and to suggest a new existential criterion for properties: the explicative criterion.

Properties, that are features, attributes, qualities and characteristics of things, play an important explanatory role: they are not only meant to explain how general terms apply, but also to take into account the epistemological phenomena such as recognition or classiﬁcation of new entities, as well as notions such as recurrence, objective resemblance and identity of nature within the ontological domain. How one conceives the explanatory role of properties depends upon how one answer the following three questions that may be raised regarding their nature:

1. What is the condition for their existence? 2. Can we determine an identity criterion for properties? 3. What kinds of properties should we accept?

Philosophia Scientiæ, 12 (1), 2008, 35–55. 36 Sandrine Darsel

The opinions suggested here focuses on this last question. From a general realistic point of view which claims the existence of properties1, we will ask ourselves which ontological option of the various kinds of properties is the most consistent: a minimal ontology based on a restrictive existential criterion or a fostering ontology that contests the validity of this criterion. If we consider ordinary speech, declares attributes to objects, persons and situations, which typically denote the properties (from a realistic point of view) are various: “being a dog”, “being rectangular”, “being virtuous”, “being delicate”, “being sad”, “being straight”, “being blue”, “being elastic”, “being beautiful”. . . But do we have to assume the existence of these different types of properties, or is it better to restrict the properties to one family? Should we and could we do without non-physical properties (set of properties not admitted by physics)? Is an ontology that accepts only physical properties (set of properties admitted by physics or reduced to these properties) sufficient to account for concrete familiar entities? Can non-physical statements be truly objective? If so, what are their truth conditions? And finally, can we say that there are non- physical properties that explain the meaning of non-physical statements? A minimal ontology is a localised form of anti-realism: only some properties — physical properties — exist. Thus, no entity is beautiful, virtuous, coherent or frightening... This anti-realistic strategy is based upon a causal criterion of existence according to which the quantification of properties is necessary only in causal contexts: to assert the existence of an entity, it is necessary and sufficient that this entity is included in causal interactions; non-physical properties which by definition are not reduced to physical properties, do not have any part in causal explanations; therefore, it is ontologically excessive and uncon- vincing to accept non-physical properties. From a semantic point of view, anti-realism assumes either the non-descriptivist hypothesis that non-physical statements are only the expression of subjective attitudes, or the descriptivist hypothesis that such statements have a propositional content. This idea is combined with a theory of general error — all non-physical statements are false — or with a reductionist theory — physical properties are the truth conditions of such statements — or with a subjectivist and relativist theory — non-physical predicates have a private meaning. Whereby the epistemological consequence: our ordinary discussions about non-physical topics (moral, axiological, aesthetic, psychological. . . ) are meaningless and useless.

1Realism with regard to properties is opposed to nominalism, which does not accept the existence of properties. A Realistic and Non Reductionnist Strategy. . . 37

Against anti-realism about non-physical properties, we will argue the objective reality of them: non-physical statements, if they are true, refer to properties of entities and expose fundamental aspects of the world. The line of argumentation for such a realistic strategy will be divided into two steps. The first part will be an evaluation of the anti-realist claim of the truth. Their semantic and ontological presuppositions will be examined. In the second part of this thinking, we will be defending a realistic and non-reductionist strategy about non-physical properties: objects, to which we correctly give attributes, possess these properties. The descriptivist hypothesis that non-physical statements have truth conditions will be articulated with a moderate version of non-reductionist realism: revision of the existential criterion of properties, affirmation of the principle of instantiation — properties ontologically depend on particular objects to which they belong —, relational analysis of non- physical properties, and finally acknowledging of the supervenience of non-physical properties on physical properties. The aim of this paper is not to put forward a complete metaphysics of properties, but to stress the consistence and advantages of a realistic and non-reductionism conception with regard to non-physical properties. By endorsing this ontological option, it is possible to overcome the difficulties of anti-realism (whether it being reductionist or not) about non-physical properties. It leads to a vast ontological investigation regarding mental, moral, aesthetic and axiological properties.

1 Minimal ontology and localised anti-realism

Physicalism according to which irreducible non-physical properties are pseudo-properties, can be based on two diﬀerent arguments:

a) A semantic argument: non-physical statements are devoid of descriptive function. They don’t have any truth conditions.

b) An ontological argument: even if non-physical statements are descriptions, non-physical properties are not what make them true. 38 Sandrine Darsel 1.1 The semantic argument

When a subject S says “The Prelude n◦2 op.28 of Chopin expresses ange”, this statement does not describe the musical work and does not predicate any properties to it. This type of statement cannot be true in the same way as factual statements like “The musical performance by Samson François lasts 3 minutes and 12 seconds”. A non-physical statement is like an interjection (“hurrah!”): it has no propositional content and tells nothing about the world. This hypothesis could be supported in two diﬀerent ways: either on the basis of the emotivist conception2, or on the basis of the prescriptivist conception3. According to the ﬁrst version, the syntactical form of non-physical statements masks their real function: they function primarly to express emotion (considered as a non-cognitive mental state) and also to arouse similar emotions in others. Non-physical statements do not have any truth conditions: they do not describe any of the world’s aspects4. And when an emotivist says that a non-physical statement expresses an emotional attitude, he means that this sentence expresses an attitude without saying that we have the attitude. Thus, Simon Blackburn distinguishes the description of things by means of natural factual statements from their evaluation (in a wide sense) in terms of what is good, bad, funny and delicate. . . A moral statement such as “This action is generous” does not describe the action, or the agent, or the speaker, but it is simply the expression of the speaker’s feelings. Far from describing features of the world, non-physical statements are the expression of our feelings and emotions [Blackburn 1998, 49]. And these emotions are mental events devoid of cognitive content. In the previous case, non-physical statements prescribed, called for some feelings or attitudes about the considered entity. A seemingly non-physical declarative statement expresses in reality a preference with universal vocation that takes the form of an imperative. This analysis is called “normative-expressive” and was developed by Allan Gibbard [Gibbard 1990, 8–10]: to say that something is frightening is not to assert a fact but to accept the stipulated norms in that situation, which is fear. The norms constitute a system of permissions and demands. The main argument in favour of prescriptivism is:

2A.J Ayer and C.L Stevenson developed emotivism in ethics. 3R.M. Hare defends prescriptivism in ethics. 4Stevenson distinguishes about axiological predicates a primary meaning, which is purely evaluative, and a secondary meaning, which is descriptive. But the primary meaning is the real function of axiological predicates. A Realistic and Non Reductionnist Strategy. . . 39

i Descriptivism leads to relativism because the meaning of the aﬀective terms is not rigid: it varies from one person to another, from one society to another and from one time to another. ii But, relativism must be denied. iii So, descriptivism is false: it must be replaced with prescriptivism [Virvidakis 2004, 102].

These two conceptions admit that non-physical statements have some strength, but they diverge about how to specify this strength: emotional function or prescriptive function. The non-descriptivist hypothesis emphasis the descriptivist illusion carried by non-physical statements. It has three consequences. Firstly, non-physical statements have emotional inﬂuence, a form of magnetism: there are stimuli that have the causal disposition to provoke some emotions [Adams 1950, 315]. Secondly, non- physical disagreements are simulated: they are not disagreements about the considered entity but are disagreements between non-cognitive attitudes. Thus, no non-physical statement is false: these kinds of judgements in their capacity of non-cognitive attitudes do not contradict each other. As a consequence, a resolution of the disagreement does not consist in exchanging arguments but in successful attitude shifting [Dreier 1999, 563]. Finally, the given cognitive reasons — for example, an explanation of musical expression in terms of the tonality, tempo, structure, etc. of a musical piece — are causally but not logically linked with non- physical judgements. The given reasons do not make these judgements more or less correct [Stevenson 1950, 303]. Nevertheless, the non-descriptivist hypothesis is based upon an inde- fensible semantics and epistemology: the assumption of a semantic dualism between factual statements and axiological statements5, the claim that non-physical judgements cannot be mistaken6, so the problem of relativism, and lastly, the identiﬁcation of emotions with private mental events devoid of cognitive content. Moreover, the non-descriptivist

5Various features of the way we think and talk support the idea that axiological statements are genuinely truth-evaluable. In fact, it is clear that people do generally regard their axiological claims, and the axiological claims of others, as purporting to report facts. Thus, the contrast between axiological and factual statements cannot be drawn in terms of whether the claims are truth-evaluable. The non-descriptivist must explain why axiological claims mimic so well factual claims, and offer an alternative account of the difference between axiological and factual statements. In the absence of such an explanation, the non-desciptivist has no distinctive thesis. 6It is semantically appropriate for someone to utter a non-physical judgement whenever he wants to express a non-cognitive attitude. 40 Sandrine Darsel conclusions as well as its premises are weak. In the first place, rational explanation is confused with causal explanation: the reasons that allegedly justify or revise a non-physical judgement are not what causes it. To maintain that murder is not morally good is to take on a commitment to this assertion. And so, it is possible to give logical reasons connected with this judgement. Secondly, the non-descriptivist hypothesis faces the “Frege-Geach problem”: it cannot explain why non-physical statements may take a non-assertive form (interrogative, conditional, negative). Consider the following line of argumentation: i If murder is wrong, then letting your little brother murder people is wrong. ii Murder is wrong. iii Then letting your little brother murder people is wrong. The problem for the non-descriptivist is that he must accept a difference of status between premises (i) and (ii): it assigns two different semantic functions to the same statement according to the context (whether assertive or not). Thus, premise (ii) must work (for the non-descriptivist) as the arousal of an attitude — to be ashamed — and not as the assertion of a statement. But premise (i) doesn’t assume the arousal of an attitude: it has a propositional content. This contradiction contests the validity of this reasoning that is based upon the principle (exposed by Frege) of identity for conditional or asserted propositions. Therefore, in order to avoid these difficulties, we must accept that non-physical statements have a descriptive function. Nevertheless, it might be suggested that deflationism about truth can ride to the rescue of anti-realism. In fact, according to the deflationary theory of truth, non-physical statements have a content — at the contrary of non-descriptivism — but their content are not true or false in a robust sense : they can be true or false in a deflationary sense, that is to assert that non-physical statement is true is just to assert the statement itself. For example, to say that “Fred is generous” is true is equivalent simply to sayins that Fred is generous. Deflationism can be understand by contrast with the correspondence theory of truth according to wich truth consists in a relation to some portion of reality (to be specified) — for example, the truth of the statement that Fred is generous consists in its correspondence to the fact that Fred is generous. Deflationism could bypass the above objection, the Frege-Geach problem, because it generates a minimal truth condition for any meaningful indicative sentence. But deflationism with regard to non-physical statements impli- cates that minimal truth conditions for non-physical statements can be A Realistic and Non Reductionnist Strategy. . . 41 distinguished from more robust truth conditions: there is to be a justified division of discourse into minimal truth-pat conditions and robust truth-apt conditions. But, no justification is furnished for this division. Moreover and much more broadly, deflationism is inconsistent with the correspondence intuition that explains the notion of truth with regard to physical and non-physical statements, by appeal to the notions of correspondence and fact. Finally, it is difficult for a deflationary theory of truth to consider truth as a norm of assertion.

1.2 Ontological argument

In the framework of a robust theory of truth, descriptivism does not imply realism about non-physical properties. Anti-realism of non-physical properties could take three diﬀerent forms: a Theory of general error Every non-physical statement is false.

i In fact, this type of statement attributes some non- physical properties to the objects. ii But these properties do not exist: only physical properties are real. iii So, every non-physical statement is systematically and uniformly false.

Consequently, there is nothing in the world answering to our non-physical statements: no facts or properties render these judgements true. Psy- chological, aesthetic, axiological and moral (etc.) propositions, all of them are false; and only physical judgements can be true. According to a defender of the theory of general error, this theory does not necessarily have consequences for the practice of making axiological judgements. But, as Wright’s argument shows [Wright 1996, 2], this theory considers that axiological discourse is bad faith: it is not consistent combining the idea that axiological discourse is serious and useful, with the negative claim of the error-theory. b Physicalist reductionism Some non-physical statements are true. But the true conditions of these statements are, in fine, physical properties. For example, the mental disposition “to be sad” is reducible to a disjunctive set of physical properties (cerebral states or bodily states). So, non-physical statements do not give specific information about the considered entity: it is possible to replace non-physical statements by physical statements. 42 Sandrine Darsel c Subjectivism and relativism All non-physical statements are true because they denote the way the considered entity looks for us. Non-physical statements attribute phenomenal and subjective properties to the object. Then, the real subject of the description is not the considered entity but the speaker, his feelings, his ideas, etc. It is important to consider the difference between subjectivism and emotivism: the second admits that non-physical statements express feelings, the first that they describe feelings. A non- physical statement like “X is A′’ where X is an object, and A a non- physical predicate, means, “S feels the A when he looks at X”: the non-physical property attributed to X is a psychological property attributed to the subject S. So, the proposition “X is A” is true if and only if a subject which perceives or conceives X, feels A or a matching emotion. Non-physical properties are relative; and subjective projections and non-physical terms have private meanings7. Due to the (supposed) first person’s authority, no non-physical statement can be revised: they are incorrigible. Consequently, non-physical argumentations and disagreements are simulated. The validity of these conceptions8 is based upon an ontological presupposition: physicalist monism according to which only physical properties are real and objective properties. But what is “physicalist monism”? Physicalist monism adopts a causal criterion of existence: quantification of properties is necessary in causal contexts [Shoemaker 1980, 234–235]. i In order to accept the existence of a property, it is necessary and sufficient that this property is integrated in causal interactions. ii Irreducible non-physical properties are causally inert. iii So, it is ontologically excessive to accept non-physical properties. What is a causally relevant property? Real properties have two characteristics: they are natural and intrinsic. For property F to be a natural 7The words of the non-physical language are to refer to what only can be known to the speaker, which is to his immediate and private sensations. Thus, it is a language comprehensible only to its single originator: the characteristics, which define its non-physical vocabulary, are inaccessible to others. So, another speaker cannot understand its language. But, there cannot be such a language: sharability is necessary to meaning. The concept’s meaning is not reducible to an internal mental state of the concept’s user. 8It is not a necessary presupposition for the subjectivist conception, though widely held. A Realistic and Non Reductionnist Strategy. . . 43 property, it is sufficient that F is part of causal laws. A property is intrinsic (or non-relational) if the entity has this property regardless of its relation with anything else. The true value of an authentic judgement is independent of human classification. Thus, this realism about properties is selective and minimalist. It is an a posteriori scientific realism articulated with physicalism: the complete inventory of real properties is established by (achieved) physics, which is the science of natural laws having natural properties for relata. Does localised anti-realism combined with descriptivism constitute a good alternative to non-descriptivism? Firstly what of the strategy by elimination? Non-physical properties are projections of the mind. They are not properties of objects. Erroneous attributions of non-physical properties are reducible to social practices, that is to vocabulary’s learning in a specific language. Thus, nothing in the world legitimises the attribution of this non-physical predicate rather than another. Only the projection frequency of that predicate explicates the attribution of this predicate rather than another [Goodman 1954, 12]. However, no justification is given in favour of the idea that moral, aesthetic and psychological (etc.) experiences are constitutively illusory: the strategy by elimination has to split (arbitrarily) perception in a neutral relation - for example, to look at a tree - and a relation of quasi-fascination - to see that tree as beautiful. But, to perceive a tree as beautiful is one and only one perception, which is a fine aspectual perception: there is not a perception and an illusory interpretation, which is added to this perception. This aesthetic perception is genuinely a perception, which requires that an aspect — the beauty of the tree — is really perceived9. Moreover, this anti-realistic strategy makes two questionable reductions. Firstly, that the attribution of non-physical properties is based on a command of language game does not entail that non-physical properties are not real. Secondly, real properties are not necessarily intrinsic properties10, but the eliminative assumes without justification that the distinction between real property and pseudo-property coincides with the distinction

9And if for exemple, I see a tree as beautiful and after as reassuring, it is two different aspectual perceptions and not one perception interpreted in two different ways. 10For example, it is possible to consider that the authenticity of a work of art is a real extrinsic property: a passport is authentic under an attribution, then authenticity is not an intrinsic property; authenticity is not a simili-property that is a relative, exclusively phenomenal property; authenticity is not reducible to an intrinsic property (if there are two passports, one authentic and the other a copy, and it is impossible to distinguish between the two an extrinsic property makes one the original and the other a fake). I will defend the possibility of real extrinsic properties in the next chapter. 44 Sandrine Darsel between intrinsic property and extrinsic property. Does the strategy by reduction avoid these difficulties? According to this hypothesis, real non-physical properties are reducible to physical properties. The identity between real non-physical properties and physical properties is either type-identity or token-identity. To consider the consistency of reductionist strategy, it’s necessary to examine the notion of reduction: what is reduction of non-physical properties? The first way to understand the notion of reduction is that the relation of strong supervenience guarantees reduction. Strong supervenience entails that there is no difference in supervenient properties without difference in basic properties: a set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference, that is if and only if a difference in A-properties requires a difference in B-properties11. Nevertheless, supervenience is consistent with emergence: from the supervenience of M upon P , we cannot conclude to the reduction of M to P , though reduction, as such, requires supervenience. In fact, reduction requires property identity (identity of non-physical properties with physical properties), so even supervenience with logical necessity is not sufficient for reduction of non-physical properties. In order to save the naturalization of non-physical properties, another constraint is introduced: reduction of non-physical properties consists in explanation of non-physical properties in terms of physical properties and not only in property identity; reduction is the explanation of a set of higher-order properties by a set of basic properties. The logical deriva- tion of the former from the latter requires two formal conditions: con- nect ability and derivability [Nagel 1961, 353–354]. Then, a defender of anti-realism with respect to non-physical properties has to establish explanatory bridge laws, which should be considered to express some kind of identity relation. But, difficulties with reduction arise because of singular limits [Berry 2002, 10–11] the idea that non-physical descriptions could (and must) be replaced with physical descriptions is questionable: it is possible that some non-physical descriptions have a new explanatory role, and that the higher-order properties are not fully explainable in terms of basic properties. The fundamental set of properties (physical properties) can be self explanatorily deficient: there are phenomena whose explanations require reference to a set of non-physical properties. Nevertheless, reduction could be analysed in terms of causal identity. A property is realised by a basic property if and only if the set of the potential causal powers of the superior property is a subset of the po-

11Thus, supervenience claim has modal force. A Realistic and Non Reductionnist Strategy. . . 45 tential causal powers of the basic property [Wilson 1999, 42]. So, the reduction of M to P is possible because M’s extension is identical to P ’s extension. But the condition of co-extension isn’t sufficient for an ontological reduction: when ontological reduction is an assertion about what is real and what is not real, the relation of co-extension, as a symmetrical relation, does not entail a difference of status. If the properties M and P fulfil the condition of co-extension, how do we determine, between M and P , the reduced term and the reductionism term? It is often a prejudice in favour of physicalism that determines physical properties as basic properties, combined with the idea of multiple realisability12. The last option, for the localised anti-realist, is to conceive reduction as a relation between the whole and its parts. Reduction is a relation of composition, which is not symmetrical: the parts of the whole are more fundamental than the whole; the whole can be reduced to its parts. This option defends a mereological conception of composition, which supposes extensionalism13 and mereological atomism14. But two objections against this solution emerge. First, the idea of composition’s ontological innocence according to which the whole is identical to its parts, is questionable. A structure cannot be reduced to its constitutive material: for example, a musical structure cannot be reduced to its parts (sounds) and its parts cannot be identified without the structure (a tonal change modifies the part’s function). Second, this option makes confusion between a real entity and a fundamental entity (i.e. a basic entity which is ontologically independent with respect to another entity of the same type)15. But what is real is not necessary fundamental: a real entity could ontologically depend of a fundamental entity; and ontological dependence is not sufficient for ontological reduction. 2. An economical and non-reductionist strategy The failure of physicalism calls for a revision of the existential criterion of properties and a reconsideration of the first question: how can we determine the nature of real properties? The purpose of metaphysics of properties, as a metaphysical theory, is to describe what kinds of properties there are and to give a conceptual analysis of ordinary concepts. This analysis is constrained by common sense beliefs. Thus, metaphysics is a modest discipline, which takes as an object our ordinary beliefs of

12Many diﬀerent physical properties could underlie the same non-physical property. 13Two entities are identical if their extensions are identical. 14The parts are ﬁrst with regard to the whole. 15For example, a physical property is fundamental because it doesn’t depend on other properties (though it depends of a substantial particular); a non-physical property is not fundamental because it has to have existential condition to supervene on physical properties. 46 Sandrine Darsel what things are, their essential or accidental way of being. If we start with common sense, causal explanation is not the only reason to believe in the existence of properties: it is an inference to the best explanation. Thus, the explanatory criterion can replace the causal one as an existential criterion of properties.

i Properties are accepted to explain from a semantic point of view, the applicability of general terms, but also epistemological phenomena like identiﬁcation or classiﬁca- tion of new entities and lastly, in the ontological domain, recurrence, objective resemblance or identity of nature. ii At least, some irreducible non-physical properties like aesthetic, psychological and moral properties play an important role in those three domains. iii So it is necessary to accept (at least) the reality of some irreducible non-physical properties.

Thus, if we want to explain the meaning of ordinary discussions, we need a large selection of properties. In fact, properties not only explain causation and laws of nature, but they also have other explanatory roles. According to the existential criterion supported here: for properties, to exist is to have an authentic role with a view to the best explanation of the nature of entities. The explanatory criterion, unlike the causal criterion, is ontologically neutral and could take common sense into account. The explanatory criterion doesn’t tell us what types of properties are real: it is necessary to wonder every time if a type of property is irreplaceable. Therefore, the explanatory criterion requires to determine a posteriori what is a relevant and necessary explanation: when the distinctive nature of a phenomena cannot be directly characterized and explained in terms of the resources of the basic physical theory and requires us to make use of a set of non-physical properties, these non- physical properties must be known as real properties. This existential criterion is combined with a coarse-grained criterion of individuation: properties are not individuated as finely as linguistic terms, which denote them. Each predicate does not correspond to a property. For example, the property being red and square is not distinct from the property being square and red. Two alleged properties are identical just in case they give exactly the same explanation, that is they confer the same explanatory roles on their instances. The argumentation in favour of a realistic but economical strategy connects these criteria with the following principles: the principle of A Realistic and Non Reductionnist Strategy. . . 47 instantiation [Armstrong 1978], the possibility of a relational analysis [Pettit 1991 587–626], and the non-reductionist supervenience of non- physical properties16. 2.1 The principle of instantiation Only properties, which are instantiated by particulars, exist. For properties, to exist is to be instantiated. The principle of instantiation maintains that there are no transcendent properties. There is an ontological dependence of properties with regard to particulars and a semantical dependence of particulars with regard to properties. Instantiation is like the fulfilment of a function by an argument: it is not a relation. It’s a metaphysical adhesive: it is not necessary to introduce another term to “affix” the properties and the particular object which instantiates them. Concreta particulars are ultimate constituents of the world. Due to the ontological dependence of properties with regard to particulars, real non-physical properties do not introduce an ontological difference of the ultimate constituents: a description of the world which does not refer to aesthetic, psychological or moral properties, passes over some essential or accidental ways of being of entities but no entity.

1.3 The relational analysis

A real property is not necessarily intrinsic: it could be extrinsic or relational. An intrinsic property is a property, which an entity possesses independently of its relations with other things. An extrinsic property is a property that an entity possesses in virtue of its relations with other things. The relational characteristic of a property does not implicate its subjectivity or its unreality. This idea is due to confusion of what we mean by “intrinsi”. This term can take two diﬀerent meanings: either, in a loose sense, an intrinsic property is a property possessed by the considered entity (it’s a property of its own); or, in the strict sense, an intrinsic property is a property possessed by the considered entity independently of its relations with other things. Relational or extrinsic properties are “intrinsic” one in the loose sense but not in the strict sense. Consider for example the aesthetic property “to have a pastoral fea- tur” granted to Goldberg Variation n◦22 of J.S Bach. The terms of the relation are some physico-phenomenal properties of the musical work on the one hand, and a person having some dispositions (beliefs, emotions, etc.) in standard conditions of perception (related to the kind of musical work in question) on the other. The Goldberg Variation n◦22 possesses

16For moral properties, see Ogien, 1999; for aesthetic properties, see Pouivet, 2006. 48 Sandrine Darsel the aesthetic property “to have a pastoral characteristic” if this work is perceived as having this property by a listener (actual or hypothetical) in appropriate conditions of perception. The conceptual link between this property and the fact, to be understood as such does not implicate the reduction of the aesthetic property to the experience of the listener. Aesthetic properties do not transcend our cognitive capacities; nevertheless, they are real. So we have to distinguish between the two types of objectivity [John Mcdowell 1985, 253]: a strong objectivity, which impli- cates independence from every human response and a weak objectivity, which only requires independence from particular human responses. Standard conditions of perception, which are subjected to public criteria, guarantee the correction of perception. They include a set of concepts, some historical and cultural knowledge, an education of the senses, and a familiarity with this kind of work, etc. It is diﬃcult to determine these standard conditions of observation, hence the diﬃculty to guarantee the attribution of non-physical properties and the epistemological distinction between non-physical properties and physical properties: it is easier to attribute physical properties than non-physical properties.

1.4 The non-reductionist supervenience

That some non-physical properties are irreducible does not mean they have no connection with physical properties. The irreducibility of some non-physical properties does not implicate the absence of link between physical and non-physical properties. Non-physical properties supervene globally on physical properties and emerge from them17. In this sense, supervenience is not ontologically innocent: non-physical properties are something over and above physical ones; it is a global supervenience because it is impossible to determine a set of basic properties from which we could predict the instantiation of a non-physical property. Thus, it is impossible to determine a set of suﬃcient basic properties from which we could predict the instantiation of a non-physical property. For example, the possession of the property “being frightening” could depend on various subvenient properties and from the knowledge of the subvenient properties, it is not possible to know the supervenient property. The supervenience of non-physical properties on physical properties does not entail their ontological reduction: they are qualitatively diﬀerent. But emergent properties are not mysterious: they result from an interaction between subvenient properties.

17As I have shown on page 10-11, supervenience doesn’t entail reduction and is consistent with emergence. A Realistic and Non Reductionnist Strategy. . . 49

In summary, a real property is an authentic property, which really exists and is irreducible to another property or a set of properties. A real property is not necessarily fundamental (independent of other properties): there are basic or subvenient properties and supervenient properties. Moreover, a real property is not necessarily intrinsic: there are intrinsic and extrinsic properties. And lastly, a real property is a property, which plays an irreplaceable explanatory role.

2 Conclusion

We have good reasons to believe in the existence of at least some non- physical properties. In fact, the anti-realistic hypothesis under its various forms, encounters several difficulties. Moreover, the realistic hypothesis is a coherent option. It explains the descriptive content of non-physical statements and the fact that such statements could be asserted, denied, or reappraised. It takes into account the normativity of non-physical statements. Notions of correctness and truth are implied in ordinary non-physical judgements: it is not possible that two opposite moral judgements are at the same time true; a moral judgement can be false. Moreover, non-physical disagreements, like scientific disagreements, can really be resolved: the question “Is this action [torture] morally good?” has the same status as the question “Is the theory of evolution better than creationism?” Consequently, the realistic non-reductionist strategy explains two ordinary beliefs. On the one hand, we take part in discussions; we make some argumentations and give justifications when we talk about moral, aesthetics, etc. On the other hand, some discussions are easier to resolve than others. Lastly, the anti-realistic objection that non-physical properties are epiphenomenal, that is causally inert, is not radical: it can be assumed that it is a categorial error to attribute to properties causal powers. What has causal powers is an object in virtue of its properties. This problem is due to a reification of properties; but properties cannot be separate to their object which in turn instantiates them. So, properties do not have causal powers but only the objects of which properties ontologically depend on do. The realistic strategy defended here is distinct from dualism (hypothesis according to which two incommensurable realities exist) and naturalism (hypothesis which progressively eliminates non-physical properties). Against dualism, this strategy accepts that non-physical properties depend on physical properties. Against naturalism, realism maintains that some non-physical properties have an irreplaceable explanatory role. 50 Sandrine Darsel

This strategy avoids a problematic ontology (there are two separate realities) and an impoverished epistemology (only physical descriptions of the world are valid)18. It is also distinct from radical realism. Realism can take various forms. It depends on two variables: the kind(s) of non-physical properties which are accepted and the way of being of these properties.! Radical realism with regard to non-physical properties is the thesis according to which 1) every non-physical predicate corresponds to a real non-physical property, and (or) 2) non-physical properties are real because they are intrinsic. A radical realist can admit the proposition (1) and deny (2), or vice versa. On the contrary, moderate realism with regard to non- physical properties is the thesis of 1’) a coarse-grained criterion of individuation for properties and in particular non-physical properties, and 2’) a diﬀerence between intrinsic and extrinsic properties. The line of argumentation defended in this investigation articulates 1’) with 2’). To conclude, realism about some non-physical properties does not entail an ontological profusion of properties, or a misrepresentation of the relations between physical properties and non-physical properties.

18According to Fodor, “emergence” is an epistemological and not metaphysical category (though it does not use the language of emergence, it defends this view): emergent properties are features of systems governed by generalizations within a special science irreductible to physical theory. Therefore, it is possible to defend an epistemology not reduced to physics in another version than to defend this one. Nevertheless, the advantage of the latter from the former is that it does not reduce explanation to causal explanation. A Realistic and Non Reductionnist Strategy. . . 51 A Synoptic View relativism Subjectivism & Physicalist Anti-realism reductionism Deﬂationism Descriptivism Theory of general error Robust theory of truth Moderate version Semantics of non-physical statements Realism Prescriptivism Non-descriptivism Radical version Emotivism 52 Sandrine Darsel References

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Dariusz Łukasiewicz Kaziemierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz (Poland)

Résumé : L’article présente les propositions principales de la métaphysique du réalisme axiologique de Tadeusz Czeżowski, l’un des représentants éminents de l’École de Lvov-Varsovie. La thèse soutenue par Czeżowski est que les valeurs ne sont pas des propriétés de n’importe quel genre, mais qu’elles constituent des notions transcendentales au sens de Duns Scot (et pas au sens de Thomas d’Aquin). Une des conséquences de cette position est que le réalisme de Czeżowski a la forme d’un non-naturalisme. La position prise par Czeżowski n’est pas tout à fait claire ni élaborée en détails ; pour des raisons discutées dans le présent texte, il est possible de considérer les valeurs comme des sortes d’états de choses non-naturels, qui sont les correspondants des phrases axiolo- giques pertinentes. Abstract: The paper presents the main assumptions of the metaphysics of axiological realism of Tadeusz Czeżowski, one of the eminent representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School. Czeżowski’s major thesis is that values are not properties of any kind, but they are transcendental concepts in the understanding of Duns Scotus (and not that of Thomas Aquinas). One of the consequences of such a view is that his realism has a form of non-naturalism. Czeżowski’s position is not completely clear and elaborated in all details; it is possible, for some reasons discussed in the text, to regard values as a kind of non-natural states of aﬀairs which are correlates of relevant axiological propositions.

1 Introduction

The aim of this paper is to present the application of Czeżowski’s metaphysics to the defense of axiological realism understood as a form of metaphysical realism1. Axiological realism held by Czeżowski is an original combination of the medieval metaphysics, Brentanism and non- naturalism. Axiological realism is a view which can be deﬁned as a negation of axiological antirealism. Axiological antirealism claims that

Philosophia Scientiæ, 12 (1), 2008, 57–74.

1Tadeusz Czeżowski ( 1889-1981) was one of the closest pupils of Kazimierz Twar- dowski, the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School. For more information on the Lvov- Warsaw School see [Woleński 1989]. 58 Dariusz Łukasiewicz axiological propositions: evaluations and norms do not have any logical values or that they are always false (as error-theory claims), and that values are not in the things of themselves, but they are rather mere projections; they are just feelings that we project onto the world. Axiological realism has two forms: naturalism and non-naturalism. Axiological non-naturalism was for Czeżowski the only possible option since he was convinced that axiological propositions are true or false, and it is impossible to infer axiological propositions from natural propositions, that is propositions representing natural facts (in other words it is not possible to “deduce” values from being).

2 The reasons of realism and non-naturalism

The evidence that axiological propositions have one of two logical values is delivered by the analysis of language and the usage of the expressions representing logical values; ‘it is true that. . . ’ and ‘it is false that. . . ’. Czeżowski made a very simple observation that the propositions ‘Truth- fulness is good’ and ‘It is true that truthfulness is good’ are meaningful [Czeżowski 1989, 144]. It is also worth noting that the best known explanation of the existence of inferences in the domain of axiological discourse consists in the assumption that axiological sentences have logical values whose bearers are propositions. As an example of the inference in the domain of axiological discourse may serve the following reasoning [Czeżowski 1989, 107]:

(P1) If truthfulness is good, then one shall tell the truth. (P2) Truthfulness is good. Then: (3) One shall tell the truth.

Since Czeżowski, like the whole tradition to which he belonged, rejected the deflationist conception of truth and approved of the classical definition of truth, he could not neglect the linguistic facts previously mentioned, and he had to find an adequate truth-maker for axiological sentences. Thus, it is clear that Czeżowski was perfectly aware of “Frege’s point” or “Searle’s problem”2 Czeżowski, like many other thinkers, was persuaded by Moore that correct deduction of axiological propositions

2Peter Geach made it clear that we believe that the status of an argument as valid Metaphysics of Axiological Realism 59 from natural ones is impossible. The crucial thing here was Moore’s warning against ‘the naturalistic fallacy’ based on his famous ‘open question argument’3. Czeżowski never analyzed that argument but he accepted it without reservation. However, Czeżowski could not accept the metaphysics of axiological realism defended by Moore because for Moore expressions relevant to axiological discourse, for example ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘beautiful’, ‘valuable’ and their synonyms, are predicates denoting simple, indeﬁnable, and, in Brentanian terms, ‘unpresentable’ object’s properties, that is properties which, as Hume and Kant would say, ‘make no addition’ to the object.

3 The concept of property

Let us note that there is no standard understanding of property in the Brentanist metaphysics, for example, Meinong distinguishes properties in an object (Sosein) (object’s constituents or parts, in terms of classical metaphysics: ‘accidents’) and properties of an object (Sein) or, in Findlay’s and Parsons’ terms, “nuclear” properties (like for example green, round) and “extranuclear” properties like existent/non-existent, simple/complex, possible/impossible. Brentano himself rejected properties as an ontological category altogether [Chrudzimski 2004]. A property in the Czeżowskian psycho-ontology is understood as a depends, at least in part, on the words not shifting in meaning as we move from premise to premise. However, if there is no common thing predicated by relevant sentences, it is hard to see what their meanings have in common in the context of a given argument. This is what Geach has called The Frege Point, but it has been also called Frege/Geach/Searle Problem in honor of its earliest discussants [Lenman 2004]. Geach also observed that “A thought may have just the same content whether you assent to its truth or not; a proposition may occur in discourse now asserted, now unasserted, and yet be recognizably the same proposition” [Geach 1965, 449].Geach provided the following example of reasoning: (1) If tormenting the cat is bad, getting your brother to do it is bad. (2) Tormenting the cat is bad. And, hence, (3) Getting your little brother to torment the cat is bad.

3Moore reasons: if axiological properties were identical with natural properties, then it would be odd to ask: “I know this activity is pleasurable, but is it morally good?” After all, if being pleasurable just is the property of being morally good, then to ask this would be like asking, “I know this activity is pleasurable, but it is pleasurable”. Since the original question is ‘open’ rather than silly or self answering, the identity must not obtain. Since exactly the same point can be made regarding any putative identity between a moral property and a natural property, Moore concludes that no such identity is possible [Lenman, 2004]. 60 Dariusz Łukasiewicz constituent of an object, which is distinguished in an object by the process of abstraction (abstraction is the process of the mental analysis of an object). It can be thought of an object (represented) by a subject, or we may also say that a property is a presentable constituent of an object [Czeżowski 1938, 31]4. The picture below illustrates Czeżowski’s classiﬁcation of properties.

properties

sensorial non-sensorial

simple complex simple, (gree, (red and (equality, complex white) white) duration) (relation, square)

The ontology of properties is, as has been mentioned above, closely related to the ontology of mind defended by Czeżowski, and the crucial role is played here by the notion of presentation. In Czeżowski’s view, a presentation may be a sense perception, which directly brings object’s natural properties before the mind (an intuitive act), or it may be a discursive and abstract act bringing a given property before the mind by for example a deﬁnition [Czeżowski 1959, 35–36]5. The domain of presentations may be illustrated as follows.

4It does not mean that a property is a kind of entia rationis, a fiction or only a product of mental operations. However, the concept of property and the concept of individual (substance) are not absolute metaphysical categories but they are rather relative concepts. A substance is, according to Czeżowski, the referent of a sentence’s subject (proper names, definite description or deictic expressions). Thus, a property of a substance is a constituent of the referent of a specific linguistic expression. A substance is not, however, a linguistic construction (and hence a property is not such a construct either). The essential role in the determination of which entity is the referent of a relevant linguistic expression is played by the spatial-temporal position of the entity which candidates to the role of the substance. A substance does not lack its own immanent constituents and, therefore, it is not a thing in Brentano’s reistic sense, but it is not a class of qualities as Mach held, either. A substance is a whole composed of constituents which can be grasped by means of mental analysis. 5Concepts are symbolic, which means that they present objects indirectly by means of signs of a natural or a technical language. Concepts are abstract: they result from the act of distinguishing of an object’s parts. The division of an object into its parts (mental division) is necessary to build a concept of an object by a description or by a definition. Concepts are discursive, which means that they consist of parts mentioned in description or in definition. Analytic concepts are produced by abstraction; they are derived from ideas of objects (the concepts concerning objects of everyday life experience), and synthetic concepts are constructed in an arbitrary way from parts of analytic concepts (for example the golden mountain). Metaphysics of Axiological Realism 61 synthetic analytic concepts (symbolic, discursive & abstract) presentation imaginations: based on creativity derivative recollections: based on memory ideas (intuitive, concrete) complex simple primitive: based on perception 62 Dariusz Łukasiewicz

It follows from this that a property of an object which does not belong to the object’s description is impossible6. If Czeżowski is right at this point (concerning the nature of property), then, axiological realism in the form defended by Moore (in Poland Tatarkiewicz held the same view [Tatarkiewicz 1971, 269]) is impossible because all sentences containing axiological predicates would be false (since, as will be demonstrated below, there are no properties which would be denoted by these predicates). Therefore, it is extremely important for a Brentanist like Czeżowski (sensitive to language analysis) to ﬁnd metaphysics which could serve as a ground for axiological realism.

4 Non-predicative, propositional and transcendental concept of values

The arguments against the predicative conception of values are similar to the reasons of non-predicative notion of existence therefore I will present them together. The first reason is based in principle on Hume’s and Kant’s views. An existent object and a non-existent object do not differ in content, or as Meinong would say: they do not differ with regard to the nuclear properties, the same may be said about values, and, hence, a judgment about existence and a judgment about values make no addition to the description of an object [Czeżowski 1938, 4]. Therefore, existence and values are not properties. The argument in this form seems to be valid in spite of the fact that there is a difference in content between a presentation of an existent object and a presentation of a non-existent object (the point was observed by Jaquette [Jaquette 1986, 435]7.

6But someone may object here and insist that there is a clear difference between ‘being presented’ by a conscious subject and ‘characterizing an object’, ‘making addition to an object’ or to its description. It is still possible — one may argue — that something characterizes an object but we are not able to percept or think of it in any way because of the limited capacity of presentation. Then the question arises: how is it possible that a property (the corresponding predicate) makes no addition to the object’s description (if it made any addition, one could present it) but it characterizes an object? Some Brentanists would rather say that if a property makes an addition to the object (to its description) and it is possible that someone presents it, then such an entity characterizes an object, and conversely. 7Jaquette observes that “Thinking about the round square is undoubtedly different than thinking about the existent round square. But this does not mean that the existent round square is a different intentional object than the round square. Meinong following Twardowski, distinguishes between the act, content, and object of psychological presentations. The content of an assumption about the round square Metaphysics of Axiological Realism 63

The second reason is that since axiological sentences are true or false (as Czeżowski claimed), then they are, according to the Brentanian psycho-ontology, expressions of axiological judgments. The nature of judgment is explained by Czeżowski in terms of the so called ‘idiogenetic theory of judgment’, which embraces two essential claims [Łukasiewicz 2006, 188]:

(1) each judgment is reducible to the existential judgment; that is to the judgment asserting the existence of an object (2) no judgment is a combination of a subject and a predicate.

The axiological judgment does not satisfy (1) because it asserts the value of an object (as will be demonstrated below), and not its existence, but it satisﬁes (2): the axiological judgment as a judgment is not a combination of a subject and a predicate. It follows from this that the judgment ‘a is good’ does not contain any predicate. The word ‘good’, according to the idiogenetic theory of judgment, is only an apparent predicate (the same may be said about the word ‘beautiful’ and their synonyms). The third reason was delivered by the analysis of the syntactic structure of expressions composed of such words as ‘true’, ‘good’, ‘necessary’ and ‘beautiful’, and according to this analysis, existence and values are not any properties because they are not symbolized in language by predicates. Such words as ‘true’, ‘good’, ‘necessary’ and ’beautiful’ are only morphologically similar to predicates but, in fact, they are not predicates. They are sentential functors because they occur in such construc- tions as, for example, ‘It is necessary that. . . ’, ‘It is good that. . . ’, ‘It is beautiful that. . . ’, or ‘It is true that. . . ’. It is of course permissible to say: ‘The blue sky is beautiful’ as it is possible to say: ‘The sky is blue’ But the sentence ‘The blue sky is beautiful’ is equivalent to the sentence: ‘It is beautiful that the sky is blue’. or to the sentence ‘It is beautiful that for some x: (x is a sky) and (x is blue)’. is diﬀerent than the content of an assumption about the existent round square. The lived-through psychological experience of each of these assumptions is phenomeno- logically distinct. But the intentional object of the assumptions may be identical.” [Jaquette 1986, 435]. 64 Dariusz Łukasiewicz

However, it is not possible to interpret ‘The sky is blue’ in the same way because the linguistic construction ‘It is blue that. . . ’ cannot result in any sentence [Czeżowski 1965, 38]. More generally, we say that the sentence ‘a exists’ may be translated into the sentence: ‘It is true that for some x: x is a’ or into: ‘It is true that there is such an x that x is a’ 8.

5 Modi essendi

Let me now following Czeżowski introduce the concept of modi essendi which is crucial for his metaphysics. Czeżowski says that:

In all these examples there occurs a sentence composed of modus and dictum (if we use the classical terminology); modus is the expression: ‘It is necessary that. . . ’, ‘It is true that. . . ’ etc., dictum is the sentence following modus. Today we call modus a sentential functor. The circumstance that modal functors (necessary, possible), the functor of assertion (it is true that. . . ) and the functor of evaluation (good, beautiful) do require as their complement a sentence (and not a name, as other adjectives do when they play the role of an attribute) shows that these modi cannot be given in presentations but that they are asserted by propositions. Anyway, it has been well known for a long time — Hume and Kant were conscious of it — that they (modi) cannot be given in any presentation, and even that these expressions are ’contentless’; they express only someone’s reaction to a certain state of aﬀairs. [Czeżowski 1965, 38-39, my translation]

According to these considerations, I think that the sentence: ‘a is valuable’ means ‘It is valuable that a exists’. And the last sentence means the same as the sentence 8The word ‘is’ occurring in the expression ‘Some x is a’ denotes the relation of membership if ‘a’ is a general term, or the relation of identity if ‘a’ is a singular term. Metaphysics of Axiological Realism 65

‘It is valuable that for some x: x is a’. Thus, Czeżowski’s view is that such expressions as ‘exists’, ‘valuable’, ‘good’, ’beautiful’ but also ‘necessary’ and ‘possible’ are not predicates (of the first level at least), and, therefore, they do not denote any properties of things or individuals. However, sentences containing them are not necessarily false because they assert that what was called in the Middle Ages ’ways of being’ (modi essendi) . But it is not clear what modi essendi are. The above quotation says that modi essendi are represented by sentential functors but also that they are asserted by propositions. Therefore, we may ask: if they are not properties what might they be? Are they correlates of sentences which are built by means of relevant sentential functors — axiological functors — i.e., are they states of affairs or facts of a special kind or are they only correlates of sentential functors? If they (modi essendi) are correlates of sentential functors, then they cannot be states of affairs because expressions representing states of affairs (sentences) can be transformed by such an operation as, for example nominalization made by the word ‘that’, and sentential functors cannot be transformed in that way. The result of the nominalization of the sentence ‘Peter is truthful’ is the expression ‘that Peter is truthful’ which can be the subject of a sentence, for example, ‘that Peter is truthful is good’, but the result of the nominalization of the functor ‘it is true that. . . ’ is the meaningless expression ‘that it is true that. . . ’, which still is in need of completion. Therefore, let us assume that modi essendi including values are correlates of sentences, that is that values (and existence) are facts. Then, however, complex sentences would presumably have their own propositional correlates. This would also concern the sentences: ‘It is true that Peter is truthful’ and ‘It is good that Peter is truthful’. Let us represent the sentence ‘Peter is truthful’ as ‘p’. And now, one may argue that, if modi essendi are really states of affairs, then the correlates of sentences ‘It is good that p’, ‘It is good that it is good that p’ and ‘It is good that it is good that it is good that p’ and so on are states of affairs as well. Then, however, one may pose the question: what is the difference between two sentences ’It is good that p’ and ‘It is good that it is good that p’? If there were no difference between the sentences in question, then it would mean that they do not have their own correlates either because they have no correlates at all, and then 66 Dariusz Łukasiewicz there are no values, or, because they have one and the same correlate and a candidate for such a correlate could be p9. But it would mean that there are no values either since p is a natural fact and we excluded from the very beginning that axiological propositions can be inferred from natural propositions; that is from propositions related to natural facts. I think that there are at least two possible answers to the above question10.

(1) One can render the sentence ‘It is good that it is good that p’ (this sentence also may be read as ‘It is good that p is good’) as a metalanguage sentence saying something about the first level sentence ‘It is good that p’ (‘p is good’), but it is not clear what in fact the second level sentence “It is good that ‘it is good that p’” says about the first level sentence ‘It is good that p’. Let us note that in the case of ‘truth’ in the complex metalanguage sentence such as for example “It is true that ‘today is Friday’ is true” the situation is a little bit different and more understandable than in the case of ‘good’. The first occurrence of truth in the last sentence would be objectual, and, according to the classical conception of truth, would concern the existence of the state of affairs: Today is Friday, and the second occurrence of truth would refer to the metalanguage concept of truth, and would concern the first level sentence. The case of truth, however, is insufficient for making clear the point with regard to values (goodness): the second level sentence “It is good that ‘It is good that p’ ” would say that the first level sentence ‘It is good that p’ is good. The second occurrence of ‘good’ in the considered metalanguage sentence

9I’m grateful to Manuel Rebuschi for his remark that if the expression ‘it is good that. . . ” were interpreted as a modal functor (see also note 10 and 15 below), then there would obtain the equivalence between Gp and GGp (Gp means ‘it is good that p’); such a logical relation is valid in the modal systems S4 and S5. However, these systems do not admit the equivalence between both formulas and p, because it would be a case of the collapse of modalities. 10I do not exclude, in principle, a third possible answer to the question discussed; modi essendi (axiological functors) could be interpreted as usual modal functors (@, ♦), that means not only as sentential functors, but as intensional functors. If we interpret modi essendi in this way, we automatically get the irreducibility of axiological sentences to natural sentences because of intensionality of modal logic. However, Czeżowski himself, could not accept such an interpretation because of his reservations to intensional logic. That reservation to intensional contexts was typical of the Lvov- Warsaw School. But, the interpretation of axiological functors in terms of intensional logic might enable us to see the true originality of Czeżowski’s account of values and axiological sentences. Metaphysics of Axiological Realism 67

would apply to the fact p. Whatever the word ‘good’ may stand for, certainly the concept of good related to a sentence has no moral or, more generally, axiological sense, and that would concern not only the second level concept of good but also higher level concepts resulting from the progressing iteration of the ﬁrst level sentence (to be more precise: of the functor ‘it is good. . . ’).

(2) The metalanguage interpretation of the word ‘good’ occurring in complex sentences is not the only possible one. There is a clear diﬀerence between the sentence ‘Peter’s truthfulness is good’ and the sentence ‘It is good that Peter’s truthfulness is good’. It seems that in the last case we do not say something about the sentence but about the world which is such that Peter’s truthfulness is good in it, perhaps, even we say that the world is good since it contains as its constituent a given good state of aﬀairs.

Therefore, in my view, the very possibility of iteration of axiological propositions (or facts) is not a sufficient reason to eliminate the propositional interpretation of values regarded as states of affairs. I think that the above analysis shows also that it is at least possible that there is a difference between iterated axiological sentences of different levels, and hence it is at least possible that they have their own correlates11.

11Another possible reason why modi essendi can be regarded as states of affairs may be the following one. Modi essendi are ways (perhaps one may say ’forms’) in which object’s properties are bound together. For example green can be related to other properties of an object in such a way that it will be evaluated as a beautiful one. Pleasure can be related to other properties (of an object’s behavior) in such a way that the behavior will be evaluated as a good one [Wiśniewski 1992, 143]. The way in which objects are related one to another is sometimes called a ’state of affairs’. But I think it is not a correct view. True, the way in which properties are related one to another in a given object may be regarded as a state of affairs, but it is not identical with an object’s value, say, with its beauty because beauty is that what an aesthetic sentence asserts about the way in which properties are related one to another. For example, the way properties are related one to another is asserted by the sentence ‘White contrasts with black in Rembrandt’s painting’, but the beauty of the relation between the colors is asserted in the sentence ‘It is beautiful that white and black are in relation one to another in Rembrandt’s painting’ or in the sentence ‘The contrast between white and black colors in Rembrandt’s painting is beautiful’. If the relation between properties in a given object were identical with its value, then, arguably, the two sentences mentioned above, would not be different in meaning and the first one might have been replaced by the second one. The result that modi essendi are not the ways in which properties or objects are related one to another does not preclude that modi essendi are states of affairs; modi essendi can be higher axiological facts which supervenes on an inferior natural fact (a way properties are related one to another). 68 Dariusz Łukasiewicz 6 Transcendental concept of values

The conclusion that values are facts or can be regarded as facts could not, however, be accepted by Czeżowski because he very seriously treated his statement that the functor of the assertion ‘it is true that. . . ’ is a functor of existence, and that the functor of evaluation ‘it is valuable that. . . ’ is the functor of value [Czeżowski 1965, 69]. This was the direct consequence of the definition of truth, according to which, a proposition is true if there exists a referent of the subject that the proposition is about. Since existence and values are not properties and cannot be presented, then they cannot be states of affairs (facts) because the latter can be presented. A state of affairs is just a complex object of a presentation upon which a relevant judgment is based, and it usually has the form aRb (where ‘R’ stands for a relation which in principle is thinkable: can be defined in terms of the set theory) 12. Thus, the existence of a fact and not the fact of existence is asserted by an assertoric proposition, and, similarly, the value of a fact and not the fact of value is asserted by an axiological proposition. However, if values are not individuals, not properties (and not facts), and expressions representing them in language are contentless (meaningless), then, one may suppose that there are no values at all, and that axiological antirealism is right13. To avoid such a conclusion and to defend realism Czeżowski resorts to transcendental concepts and regards modi essendi as transcendentalia. Transcendentalia do not belong to the description of an object, that is: they do not determine universals and cannot be defined, (in Brentanian terms: they cannot be presented) and, hence, they are no properties in Czeżowski’s psycho-ontology. However, one should add that they are not nothing. Since existence and values are not properties either, then — Czeżowski might have concluded — they can be regarded as transcendentalia [Czeżowski 1977, 2004]14 .

12Of course someone may postulate unthinkable facts lying beyond the capacity of presentation but it would make Czeżowski’s psycho-ontology incoherent (a fact which does not make any addition to the description of objects involved in it cannot be presented, and hence cannot be regarded as a fact). 13In Poland Ossowska stressed this point strongly: axiological propositions intend to assert something but they fail, and, therefore, they all are false [Ossowska 1966, 124]. 14Czeżowski followed, however, not Thomas Aquinas but Duns Scotus by claiming that transcendentalia are disjunctive. But he denied also Duns Scotus theory when he was saying that existence and values are disjunctive because they can be negated; the negation of goodness is evil and the negation of beauty is ugliness. He suspended also the thesis that transcendental concepts, for example existence and goodness are convertible. The question about convertibility of transcendental concepts may be Metaphysics of Axiological Realism 69

In sum, the essential role in the controversy between non-naturalistic realism and antirealism is played by the claim that values (goodness, beauty) are not object’s properties (and not facts). Therefore, goodness and beauty cannot be identical with any natural property or with any natural fact. Truthfulness, kindness, sacrifice, justice, lie, faithfulness, harmony etc. are not values but they are natural properties, and, as Czeżowski calls them, they are ‘criteria of goodness’, ‘criteria of evil’, ‘criteria of beauty’, or more generally, ‘criteria of values’ [Czeżowski 1989, 107]. I think that the relation between sentence, value and state of affairs might be as follows: a state of affairs is the correlate of a sentence and the value (or existence) of a state of affairs is asserted by a complex sentence built by the sentential functor ‘it is valuable that. . . ’ (or ‘it is true that. . . ’).

7 Some possible objections against Czeżowski’s axiological realism

Values can be regarded as modi essendi provided that it is possible to demonstrate that the sentence:

It is valuable that Σx(x = a) (*) is a faithful translation of the sentence

a is valuable. (**)

A faithful translation is to be understood as a synonymous and, hence, a logically equivalent translation. If we read the particular quantiﬁer occurring in the sentence (*) in the existential way, then the sentence (*) will be false if ‘a’ stands for a ﬁctional object, and, therefore, the proposed translation will not be faithful [Gorzka 1991, 21–22]. However, this objection can be removed, if we relate existence to a model. We may say about each (non-contradictory) object that it exists in a certain model but, of course not always that the model will be the real world15. answered empirically by means of experience and not a priori by means of deduction. Jan Woleński gave the analysis of the relation between Duns Scotus and Czeżowski’s approach to the problem of transcendental concepts [Woleński 2004]. 15Such a move implies a change in the understanding of the Brentanist concept of 70 Dariusz Łukasiewicz

Next, someone may argue: it does not matter whether axiological expressions are predicates or sentential functors because it is still possible that they only express mental attitudes or emotions, and they do not refer to any reality. The response to this objection is that since axiological knowledge is possible (in the sense that its theoretical model is not inconsistent, and Czeżowski provided such a model), then the class of referents of axiological expressions, whatever they might be, is not necessarily empty, and that it is better for some reasons (the best explanation of the existence of inferences in the domain of axiological discourse) to claim that axiological expressions have referents in the reality than to claim that they have no referents. One may also say that axiological expressions regarded as sentential functors are only apparent sentential functors because in fact they are predicates, and one should translate the sentence: ‘It is good that Peter is truthful’ into the sentence: ‘Peter’s truthfulness is good’. The response from Czeżowski’s position would be that if ‘good’ were a predicate, then it could be deﬁned in terms of natural predicates or being (ens) and makes it more similar to the Tomist concept of ens, according to which, an object or being is that what exists (and not only that what is given in a (re) presentation). An object which exists in the real world will not exist in a world of ﬁction, and conversely, but since it exists somewhere and somehow, it is a being. The

relativisation of existence to a model allows to preserve the validity of the principle of È existential generalization obtaining in the ﬁrst level predicate logic (Pa → xPx) in intentional discourse as well. The last fact is an additional argument for making such a step. Czeżowski himself made such a move in his later works [Łukasiewicz 2004]. The negation of existence in the sentence ‘a does not exist’ would amount to the exclusion of an object from the domain of a model. However, it is also worth noting that if axiological functors were interpreted as usual modal operators (Note 9), then it would be possible to claim that

Σx (it is valuable that (x = a)) (***) is the faithful translation of (*). One could then choose between a dicto and a de re interpretation of (*). Moreover, if modi essendi were interpreted as modalities, then a standard ‘objectual’ interpretation of the quanifier È x would not imply that ‘a’ refers in the actual world. If one would consider ‘it is valuable that...’ as a modal operator, let us say [ν], one could use Kripke’s possible worlds semantics to account for it: [ν]ϕ is true at a world w, iff ϕ is true in every world w’ reachable from w. One need not postulate that if [ν]ϕ is true in the actual world, then ϕ is true in the actual world: some valuable facts might be non actual (like: soldiers stopping wars). It means that the actual world is not reachable from itself along the ‘[ν]-lines’. Then, one could consider valuable worlds with other beings than the actual ones (fictional beings included). Metaphysics of Axiological Realism 71 properties. But it is not the case, and hence the word ‘good’ is an apparent predicate. The next problem is that Czeżowski regards for example justice, truthfulness or faithfulness as natural properties, and by doing it he is not able to recognize axiological (normative) character of these expressions. He himself would have responded, I suppose, that these natural properties retain axiological nature because they may be criteria of values. Axiological realism is based on some assumptions concerning the structure of language; language is understood as containing expressions belonging to different syntactic categories: namely to predicates and sentential functors. However, such an assumption is not true for all natural languages, and therefore, at most, we may speak about realism in relation to a certain type of language. I think that the objection is right. The only possible form of axiological realism, if we may call it in that way, is ‘internal axiological realism’.

8 Conclusions

Czeżowski’s conceptions of values reconstructed above can be considered both from historical and systematic points of view. From the historical point of view, Czeżowski’s proposal is above all a development of Twar- dowski’s ideas. Twardowski was a metaphysical and axiological realist, but he virulently defended Brentano’s idiogenetic theory of judgment and treated values as the object’s properties. However, it seems that the acceptance of the following three propositions:

(1) Axiological sentences are true or false; (2) Judgment is not a combination of a subject and a predicate; (3) Values are properties is logically impossible. The acceptance of (1) and (2) entails the rejection of (3), and Czeżowski accepted propositions (1) and (2) but replaced (3) by its negation: Values are not properties. Thus, his revision of Twardowski’s views makes them coherent and at least logically tenable. It is interesting from the systematic point of view to which extent Czeżowski’s proposal meets one of the most vividly discussed issues in the filed of contemporary metaphysics of axiology, that is the problem of supervenience. According to Czeżowski, values and the object’s natural 72 Dariusz Łukasiewicz properties are ontologically distinct because modi essendi are regarded as transcendentalia, and, hence not as properties16. However, at the same time values depend on the object’s natural properties; it is not possible that the natural properties do not change if the values do change. In other words, values (in Czeżowski’s case modi essendi) supervene on properties. The problem is that a non-naturalist is not able to explain this fact: the fact of an ontological dependence of values upon natural properties and the fact of an ontological difference between values and properties. A naturalist can explain supervenience by the assumption that values are reducible to natural (non-axiological) properties. This kind of explanation is not accessible to Czeżowski since values and properties belong to different ontological categories. Czeżowski never considered the problem of supervinience, and, hence, we may only speculate what he would have responded to the problem in question. He could have argued that the naturalist’s reasoning must be unsound because it proves too much. It is so becasue the form of the argument seems to generalize into an argument that no class of entities can supervene on another class of entities unless the former are reducible to the latter in some way. But this cannot be a correct view in all cases of supervie- nience. According to the idiogenetic theory of judgment, a judgment supervenes on a presentation but a judgment cannot be reduced to any presentation, and the same have to be said about values and properties. Irrespective of whether such an approach to the problem of superve- nienice is satisfactory, Czeżowski’s solution based on the medieval metaphysics and the Brentanian psycho-ontology provides a bold enrichment of the metaphysics of axiology, and constitutes an original achievement of Brentano’s school and in particular of the Polish Brentanism.

References

Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz 2004 Die Ontologie Franz Brentanos, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

16Since Czeżowski holds that values are not properties and axiological predicates are only apparent predicates, which do not refer (as predicates) to anything in the reality, his positions is similar to the error theory with regard to the non-predicative nature of values. Of course, Czeżowski’s views diﬀer signiﬁcantly from the error theory because in his opinion axiological propositions are not always false; they can be sometimes true, and their truth-makers are axiological modi essendi. Metaphysics of Axiological Realism 73

Czeżowski, Tadeusz 1938 Propedeutyka filozofii. Podrecznik dla II klasy wszystkich wydzi- ałów w liceach ogólnoksztalcacych, Lwów: S. Jakubowski. 1948 O metafizyce, jej kierunkach i zagadnieniach, 1st ed., Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, T. Szczesny. 1959 Główne zasady nauk filozoficznych, 3rd ed., Wroclaw: Zaklad Narodowy im. Ossolińskich. 1965 Filozofia na rozdrozu, Warszawa: PWN. 1969 Poj¸ecie prawdziwości w odniesieniu do utworów literackich, in Odczyty Filozoficzne, 2nd ed., Toruń: Towarzystwo Naukowe w Toruniu, 224–226. 1977 Transcendtentalia — przyczynek do ontologii, Ruch Filozoficzny 1–2, 54–56. Repr. in Czeżowski 2004, 188–192. 1989 Pisma z etyki i teorii wartości, Wrocław/Warszawa: Osso- lineum. 2004 O metafizyce, jej kierunkach i zagadnieniach, 2nd ed., K¸ety: Wydawnictwo Antyk. Geach, Peter 1965 Assertion, in Philsophical Review, 74. Jaquette, Dale 1986 Meinong’s doctrine of the modal moment, in Non-Existence and Predication, Haller Rudolf (ed.), Amsterdam: Rodopi, 423–438. Lenman, James 2004 Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism, in http:/plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/. Łukasiewicz, Dariusz 2004 Tadeusz Czeżowski’s Approach to the Intentionality and On- tology of Fiction, Reports on Philosophy, 22, 142–161. 2006 Tadeusz Czeżowski on Existence, in A. Chrudzimski and D. Łukasiewicz (eds.) Brentano and Polish Philosophy, ontos verlag/ Frankfurt/Lancaster, 183–215. Ossowska, Maria 1966 Podstawy nauki o moralności, Warszawa: PWN. Tatarkiewicz, Władyslaw 1971 Droga do filozofii i inne rozprawy filozoficzne, v.1., Warszawa: PWN. 74

Wiśniewski, Ryszard 1992 Możliwość probabilizmu etycznego, Toruń: Wydawnictwo UMK. Woleński, Jan 1989 Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School, Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2004 Malum, Transcendentalia and Logic, in Arkadiusz Chrudzim- ski, Wolfgang Huemer (eds.) Phenomenology and Analysis, Frank- furt/Lancaster: ontos Verlag, 359–370. Part II Modal (Anti-)Realism

Which Variety of Realism? Some Asseverations on the Dependence of Abstracta upon Concreta

Frédéric Nef EHESS Institut Jean-Nicod (CNRS-EHESS-ENS)

Résumé : La critique du nihilisme par Lowe est soumise à une évaluation. Le nihilisme semble impliquer un engagement à l’existence d’entités abstraites et Lowe utilise le principe de dépendance (P D) — les abstraits dépendent des concrets — pour bloquer la référence à des entités abstraites : les nombres sont dits dépendre de concrets. On défendra l’idée que cette forme de ﬁctionnalisme n’est pas innocente et que nous devons sérieusement envisager l’alternative que constitue le platonisme. On défendra une forme de platonisme, le platonisme particularisé. En conclusion on proposera de renoncer au P D. Abstract: Lowe’s criticism of nihilism is discussed. Nihilism seems to involve a commitment to abstract entities and Lowe used recently the Dependence Principle (DP ) — abstracta depend upon concreta — in order to block reference to abstract entities: numbers are said to depend upon concreta. It will be argued that this form of arithmetical ﬁctionalism is not harmless and that we have to evaluate the respective coast of the Platonist alternative. I will defend a form a particularized Platonism. In conclusion it will appear that we can give up the DP .

Introduction

Could there be a diﬀerent world from ours? Could there be a reality with a radically diﬀerent structure, e.g., without events? Could there be only abstract things, like numbers? Could there be absolutely nothing? These questions belong to metaphysics, the core of philosophy; they systematically relate to each other. To be a realist, or an antirealist, and to belong to one sort or another inside one of these two persuasions

Philosophia Scientiæ, 12 (1), 2008, 77–91. 78 Frédéric Nef asks one to respond to these questions. Realism does not imply a strong belief in the necessity of our world, as it is, nor a strong disbelief in the existence of an ontological structure of the world, which we can at least partly apprehend though perception, language and science. What is called metaphysical or ontological nihilism1 is always opposed to realism. I want nonetheless to defend the view that there exists a harmless form of nihilism compatible with realism, because in fact what is bad in nihilism is a strong form of fictionalism asserting that everything is fictional, viz. all truthmakers are mere fictions and that therefore everything said or written is in fact pretended, false. J. Lowe thought that even a moderate form of nihilism (what I call “harmless nihilism”) is a threat to realism and proposes again and again an argument against it, based on an ontological Principle of Dependence, saying that there is no abstractum which does not depend upon a concretum. I will argue that this principle has in fact hidden fictionalist consequences. Usually metaphysicians defending this principle say that to give it up is to endorse Platonism. I will explore the consequences of this annulment of the principle and I will argue that Platonism is much less detrimental than fictionalism concerning mathematical objects, and therefore that it is reasonable to give up the Dependence Principle (DP ). In that case one objection could be that endorsing even a moderate form of Platonism (that there are genuine abstract objects) implies accepting too strong a case for universalism. I will give reasons rather than sketching out an argument in order to show that the very idea saying that reality is fundamentally particular is compatible with the form of Platonism I am ready to endorse. My final proposal will be then both to particularize Platonism and to relax possibilism. In many respects I will stand clear off immanent realism, and probably one of the reasons is the weight I give to the ontology of abstract objects, with, at the first rank, mathematical objects and structures. An important reason, among several others, being that in the interplay between singularity and regularity, I am more baffled by the first and therefore, ready to make some concessions to universalism in order to explain the deep ontological singularity of everything constitutive of our world. The main question in the modal realism debate is about possible worlds: are they concrete, abstract or empty? Modal realists call them concrete, ersatzists call them abstract and fictionalists call them empty.

1I shall use only that sense of ‘nihilism’ and never the other sense, forged by Nietzsche and Dostoievski. Which Variety of Realism? 79

I will not discuss how fictionalism entails nihilism. I assume this en- tailment, without explaining it. I propose to give an argument against nihilism and to show that this argument is also in favor of realism. Be- fore giving this argument, I have to recall what sense is given to the concept of nihilism. I will propose a distinction between two types of nihilism. Nihilism affirms that there are no concreta. We currently distinguish three types of entities: concreta, abstracta, ficta. They are defined in the following manner:

1) x is a concretum iﬀ x is spatiotemporal and x is endowed with a causal potential.

2) x is an abstractum iﬀ x is non spatiotemporal and is deprived of causal potential

3) x is a ﬁctum iﬀ x is neither a concretum, nor an abstractum

This categorization is not indexical, whereas the distinction between possible and actual is indexical. Therefore the distinction between possibilia and realia is also indexical. Abstracta are neither possibilia, nor realia. Metaphysical nihilism is therefore deﬁned as:

The set of possible worlds could have contained only abstract objects. There could have been only abstracta, sets and mathematical structures.

Ontological nihilism is deﬁned as:

There could have been absolutely nothing, there could have been no possible world.

In [Lihoreau & Nef 2007] we have discussed ontological nihilism and we have given an argument against it, saying that it is necessary that there is something, that it is impossible that there is nothing. This argument is founded on the impossibility of an empty world. I will reformulate this argument: a) the property of self-identity must exist in every possible world. b) if there is an empty world, its elements must be self-identical (by a) c) an empty world is an empty set 80 Frédéric Nef d) an empty set is composed of an element non identical to itself, z (by b,c) i.e. ∅ = z = z { 6 } e) There is no empty possible world (in virtue of b and d)

Statement (c) is based on a principle: if a is an expression like “e is a set of F ”, then e is a set. For example a set of chairs is a set. It is somewhat similar to the distinction between pure and impure sets, between “sets” and “sets of F ”. It is only somewhat similar, because a pure set is also a set of F , but considered as a set, not as an extension of the set. This distinction is important, because metaphysical nihilism is in fact the negation of the existence of impure sets. Statement (e) cries out for clarification of what is an empty set. As there is no element non-identical to itself, the empty set does not contain any element. This argument is problematical in many regards. It is not clear accepting statement (d) as equivalent to the definition “an empty set is a set containing no element”. What is not clear is deciding that the empty set disobeys the self-identity principle. This relative obscurity has led J. Lowe to introduce a Dependence Argument applied to abstracta and concreta. Lowe says that if there are abstracta, there are concreta: all abstracta are founded at least ultimately on concreta. This argument has been discussed by Rodriguez Pereyra and defended by its author (cf. Lowe 1998, 2005). This argument is connected to our argument: the empty set is as a pure set, an abstractum, but it must be a set of something. Therefore, there cannot be an empty set. Lowe reduces in fact the empty set to a fiction, when he says that the empty set does not exist. His dependence argument is reinforced by a foundation principle: according to him, a set must be founded — there cannot be ad infinitum set of sets, ad infinitum hierarchy of sets. There must be a foundation stopping the dependence process. In the same way universals have to be founded on particulars instantiating them. Ontological dependence of abstracta relative to concreta is implied by a principle of instantiation of universals: if there were not instantiated universals, there would exist abstracta, viz. universals, which do not depend on concreta, viz. particulars. The line of argument is the following: if the Platonism of universals were true, then the principle of necessary instantiation of universals, would be not valid and if this principle were not valid, then there would be no necessary dependence of abstracta on concreta. The eventual admission of abstract objects is here perhaps the most important ontological decision. The choice between immanent realism Which Variety of Realism? 81 and Platonism is derivative in relation to this eventual admission. To be or not to be a realist, to be a realist of such or such obedience depends on the conception we have of abstract objects. Abstract objects are of several types: numbers, and more generally mathematical objects, properties, propositions. For the moment we can leave aside numbers. Realists consider properties as abstract objects. Properties are of two types: universals (or general properties) and tropes (or individual properties). We know that tropes are abstract particulars. Particularism possesses the advantage compared to immanent realism of avoiding the opaque and abstruse mechanism of instantiating abstract objects into concrete ones. A particularist considers a concretum as a collection of abstracta, which is much easier to grasp, even if it is perhaps more difficult to assent. Two questions now: Is ontological particularism compatible with Pla- tonism? Does ontological particularism imply a form of fictionalism? I will defend the view that particularism and Platonism are compatible and that particularism implies an harmless form of weak fictionalism, without undermining authentic realism. If I succeed in showing that it is true, I will be successful in demonstrating that metaphysical nihilism is not a serious threat against realism.

1 The Elements of the Problem

In a recent paper, “Against metaphysical Nihilism — Again”, Jonathan Lowe upholds immanentist realism against metaphysical nihilism. He argues for the universality and necessity of the dependence principle (DP ) saying that abstract objects depend upon concrete ones. He considers the case of numbers as paradigmatic abstract objects and affirms they obey to DP . This leads him to the conclusion in that zero and the empty set are fictions, which in turn implies that numbers do not exist in the true sense of “exist”. I do not want to discuss the relevance and the weight of the concessions we are ready to endorse towards fictionalism. This would lead us probably to wonder if fictionalism, like realism, is modular or not. But, anyway, I see in that concession towards fictionalism something that concerns the very reality of numbers, an important piece in the ontology of quantities. According to Frege and Lowe, numbers are properties of concepts. Lowe declares himself a Fregean, for he considers numbers as formal properties, like identity and existence. Zero is a property of the concept “non identical to itself”. Nothing is non identical to itself and 82 Frédéric Nef therefore the extension of this concept is empty. The empty set is the set that contains zero members. Zero plays an important role in the construction of numbers, as the empty set in set theory. For every set E, E = (E, ∅). To consider that zero and the empty set are fictions could bring back towards a conception of numbers as concrete properties of collections — “3” is then the property of the concrete collection of three flowers I have picked. In that conception an empty set is not a set, because to be a set is to join under a concept a plurality of things. I will not discuss the problems linked to a fictionalist account of numbers and sets. I observe only that this concession towards fictionalism lets me doubt about DP ’s universality and wonder if it is not possible to do without it. To keep DP has obviously an epistemic cost: more or less to give up Fregean conception of numbers. To give up DP ’s universality has a, ontological cost: to admit in our ontology non-instantiated universals. However, from an epistemic point of view, Platonist realism towards numbers is not deprived of several advantages over immanent realism, as soon as we disregard natural numbers and turn our attention towards rational and real ones. In order to argue for a non-universal application of DP , I shall have to determine consequences of this qualification. Among the consequences figures the possibility to be led to accept a world with only abstract objects, what is commonly dubbed “metaphysical nihilism”. I shall retain the traditional distinction between ontological and metaphysical nihilism, the first one asserting that it is possible that there is nothing, or that there could have been nothing. I shall make an additional distinction between weak and strong version of fictionalism and two main forms of nihilism, in order to be very accurate about the relation connecting fictionalism and nihilism. Radical fictionalism says that everything is false, that therefore there is nothing, and as it is obviously a danger for realism, I will have to decide if Platonism does or does not lead to this extreme form of fictionalism. We may see some strong analogy between the aforementioned discussion concerning numbers and the particularly heated debate between realism and fictionalism in the metaphysics of modalities. What are possible worlds? Are they either abstract or concrete? Do empty possible worlds exist? We call usually modal realists people saying that possible worlds are concrete and ersatzist or nihilist those extensionalist philosophers who proclaim that they are in fact abstract. Fictionalists would say they are neither abstract nor concrete. A brief remark about the opposition between fictionalism and modal realism: The modal realist interprets typically a sentence like “it is pos- Which Variety of Realism? 83 sible that p” in the following manner: “in w, p” where w in the operator “in w” represents a possible world and “in w” as a whole is an existential quantifier on worlds. Fictionalists interpret this very same utterance, “in w, p”, in a different manner: w is an expression of fiction, such that “in w, p” means “according to the fiction w, p”. p is a belief, or a sentence, not a proposition, because a proposition is an abstract object — it is a concrete object, either psychological or linguistic. According to the modal realist this utterance means: “there is at least a possible world, w, which is concrete and existent, in which it is true that p”, where w is a world variable, whereas the fictionalist considers “in w” as an operator moving the truth conditions of p, w having no special sense outside the expression “in w”, which is an abbreviation for “in a fiction called a world w”. Moreover, if fictionalism does not imply nihilism, it is completely contradictory with modal realism, which denies the possibility of an empty possible world, in so far as David Lewis conceives of possible worlds as mereological sums.

J. Lowe’s Argument Against Nihilism : the Depen- dence Principle

J. Lowe’s argument of dependence stipulates that if there are abstracta, there are concreta too, because abstracta depend upon concreta. This argument has some connection with the one we have discussed. The empty set is an abstract entity as far it is a set, but it must be a set of something, and in that case F = 0. Therefore there cannot be an empty set — Lowe complains that the empty set is a ‘reified fiction’. Lowe’s argument implies then both to use DP and to reject the existence of empty set, reduced to a fictional status. The DP is reinforced by a principle of foundation. A set must be founded and there cannot be ad infinitum a set of sets; at a certain point there must be a foundation of the elements. This implies that a universal must be ultimately founded upon particulars which are instantiating it. DP as we have seen implies a principle of necessary instantiation of universals: if there are non-instantiated universals, there could be abstracta, namely universals that would not depend upon concreta, namely occurring particulars. Lowe’s argument is then the following: if Platon- ism of universals is true, then the principle of necessary instantiation of universals is not valid any more and if this principle is not valid, then there is not any more a necessary dependence of abstracta upon concreta because universals are abstract. If there is not this necessary dependence, then it could be possible that there are only abstract ob- 84 Frédéric Nef jects. In short, according Lowe, Platonism does imply the possibility of metaphysical nihilism. However the inverse is obviously not true and therefore Platonism is not equivalent to metaphysical nihilism.

Abstract Objects

There are several sorts of abstract objects: numbers, more generally mathematical objects and structures, properties (if any), propositions. Lowe is obliged to assert that numbers do not exist. The Fregean conception of numbers as abstract objects, that is to say types of properties, seems to be a rigorous point of departure. Lowe’s position combines therefore an arithmetical fictionalism and an immanent realism of properties. He rejects the existence of zero and of the empty set; he considers numbers are different from concrete objects and affirms they do not exist strictly speaking, for he defines them as formal concepts, not as objects. According to Lowe arithmetical truths are therefore truths without truthmakers. Realists usually consider properties and monadic or non-monadic relations are abstract objects. In general anti-realists reduce them to predicates (for difficulties of this reduction, cf. [Nef 2006]). Properties are of two sorts: universals, or general properties and individual properties, possibly tropes or abstract particulars. This phrase, “abstract particular”, is in fact ambiguous. “A is abstract relatively to B” means: “A is separated from B by a mental act and A is founded upon B”. For example a blue sheet of paper exhibits this particular color as an accident and depending moment. It is an aspect of the sheet of paper abstracted, separated by the mind, but that in fact depends upon things and therefore cannot exist without it.

Particularism

Particularism is in some respect superior to immanent realism, in so far as it does not consider ontological particularity as the product of an instantiation process. This instantiation of abstract universals in concrete particulars, conceived of as ontologically grounded, is mysterious. The resemblance relation, even if it is also primitive is less mysterious than the one of instantiation. From a particularist point of view a concrete object is a collection of abstract objects. From a realist point of view, I adopt here, the resemblance relation is founded upon a resemblance of essences relative to collections of concrete objects. Which Variety of Realism? 85 Our Argument in Favor of Particularized Platonism

The argument is an argument of compatibility and in that sense it is not a very strong one. It says that it is not contradictory to admit non- instantiated universals and abstract particulars if we wish to confute only ontological nihilism and if we are neutral towards metaphysical nihilism. It says only that there is nothing concrete, but if we have non- instantiated universals and abstract particulars, there is nothing concrete and then the aforementioned compatibility is proved. Particularized Platonism does not imply radical fictionalism. In that case the universe is composed with abstract objects, either non-instantiated universals or abstract particulars. It is non-contradictory to admit non-instantiated universals and abstract particulars, which do no depend upon concreta. The conclusion may seem paradoxical, because Platonism in general implies that there could have been no particular and not only no concrete thing. “Particularized Platonism” as we could call it, is a Platonism reduced to the possibility that there is no spatiotemporal abstractum, but stipulating at the same time that there are indeed abstract particulars. This Platonism is therefore compatible with the weak metaphysical nihilism. Here two problems claim our attention. In the first place is this ontological particularism really compatible with Platonism, or this choice of a particularist option independent with the choice between immanent realism and Platonism? In the second place does ontological particularism imply a form of fictionalism or contingentism in the sense we have defined concerning the different types of nihilism? I shall support the view that Platonism and particularism are in fact compatible and that particularism implies indeed weak fictionalism. This view, I shall maintain is in no way contradictory with genuine realism. If I would be able to give some convincing reasons to think in that way, I would succeed to show that moderate metaphysical nihilism is not a threat for the realism.

2 Compatibility Relations between Ontolo- gies

Let us outline our ontological background. I shall contemplate the compatibility relations between these four ontologies, immanent realism, modal realism, particularized Platonism and nihilism. Modal realism affirms there are concrete possible worlds, particularized Platonism that 86 Frédéric Nef there are non-instantiated abstract universals and abstract particulars, nihilism that there could be only abstract objects. There are first-order abstract objects; i.e., abstract particulars and concrete objects are composed with abstract particulars. There are also second-order abstract objects, i.e. resemblance classes of first-order particulars. The Aristotelian intuition of the basic character of particulars is thereby confirmed. But these abstract particulars may not constitute concrete objects and in that case the second-order abstract objects do not depend upon concrete objects. We have here to stress that the definition of the term “abstract” used for example in the phrase “abstract particular” is not equivalent to the one given by immanent realism, which identifies something abstract with something abstracted from a concrete particular by an intellectual operation of separation. For example the mass “m” of a body “c” is an abstract particular according to an immanentist realist, because m is separated from c by the mind. An immanent realist does not accept the radical particularist thesis that affirms that m is an ultimate ontological constituent of c. In that case the act of separation itself is founded upon the very ontological structure of concrete particular. In that respect is the Platonist point of view close to the particularist stance; it does not accept abstract objects which are not necessarily separated aspects of reality by an empirical process of abstraction, it has a conception of abstracts hospitable to abstract particulars, even if Platonism in general admits only universal abstracta.

Objections Against Immanent Realism

This accounts for the non-actualized dispositional properties. These properties can be actualized in a world different of the actual world. In that case second-order objects relative to these properties do exist, but do not depend upon anything in our world. For example it could be possible that no man is good — in the case of a general corruption of moral intuition —, but however this dispositional property of goodness could be actualized in a possible world in which conditions are not similar — if the corruption of moral intuition has not taken place, or is not universal. In that case therefore the Platonist intuition that there exists a non-instantiated abstract universal is correct. It is also correct if there does exist a world where there exists only even collections of concrete objects. Let us figure out a Borges’ world in which reigns the superstition of oddness and in which are annihilated all individuals whose presence in a collection means that this collection becomes even. In that world in which exist only even collections of concrete objects — let us call Which Variety of Realism? 87 that world an even world — the odd numbers are not depending upon concrete objects, or classes of concrete objects, but still do exist at least as sums of even numbers (for example 7 + 3 = 10). It would be still worse if a world would not contain collections of objects whose cardinal is identical to prime numbers, as we know the important role of them in the theory of numbers. Our line of argument is then the following: laws of arithmetic are necessary and therefore it is contingent that concrete objects do or do not instantiate such or such sort of property and then DP is susceptible of being breached, there can be worlds only filled with abstract objects. In a world in which all collections are even ones it is possible that there is an odd number of even collections. There is another range of perhaps more convincing counter-examples to DP : irrational numbers, like π, imaginary numbers like √ 1, transfinite numbers as 0. . . Upon − ℵ what depends √ 1, π or 0? Upon what depends -1 or 1/3? This kind of argument goes− the oppositeℵ way. Large cardinals cannot depend upon concrete objects or collections of concrete objects: upon which collection would depend the number 0, the smallest cardinal? To consider numbers as fictions is coherent,ℵ even more than to consider them as abstract objects depending upon concrete objects. But this respectable opinion is nonetheless an important concession towards fictionalism. Numbers and sets possess strong connections and to fictionalize numbers would probably entail a fictionalization of sets. Would it be possible then to assert the existence of depending universals non-equivalent to sets? Or more precisely: if sets are extensions of universals (for example the set of green things is the extension of the universal “green”) is it not disturb- ing to think that these extensions are fictions? Extensions of universals are sets; would it be possible to preserve then universals from radical fictionalization?

In Defense of Platonism

The Platonist alternative seems then to be more enticing. The objection we often addressed to Platonism not to feel concerned by analysis of ontological structure of particulars (artifacts, organisms and even persons) is destroyed if we are able to show that DP is not necessary and anyway compatible with particularism, if we want to retain it. The question now becomes: how to conciliate these two affirmations, first that there exists abstract universal objects and second that concrete objects are composed of particular abstract objects? This difficulty is as considerable as the one linked to immanent realism, difficulty we have described a moment 88 Frédéric Nef ago, but it possesses an advantage over immanent realism: to surrender what is possible to cede and not to give up what is reasonable not to cede. We accept there could have been only abstract objects and in the same time we maintain there could not have been absolutely nothing. The particularized Platonism is incompatible with ontological nihilism, if we give up the necessarily universal existential dependence of the abstract upon the concrete. However, since ontological nihilism — and not metaphysical nihilism — is a threat towards realism, in attributing to what there is an absolute contingency, it is not completely unthinkable to make the choice of a reformed Platonism.

About Modal Realism

According to Lewis modal realism is the doctrine saying that there can exist concrete possible worlds. We distinguish commonly genuine modal realism from actualism. Modal realism says that there are concrete possible worlds whereas actualism considers only abstract possible worlds, for example sets of propositions, concepts. . . (Cf. [Divers 2002, 229]). This cautious formulation of modal realism aims to not exclude a possibility that possible worlds would be composed of abstract objects. According to the deﬁnition of metaphysical nihilism given above, modal realism is not a metaphysical nihilism, for the latter says that all possible worlds are composed with abstracta, even our actual world. In order to trans- form stricto sensu Lewisian modal realism into a metaphysical nihilism, we should have to extend in all worlds an eventual composition with abstracta alone.

Modal realism seems then at first sight compatible with Platonism, in so far as it does not a priori exclude that abstracta do depend upon concreta. D. Lewis moreover seems to admit that tropes are genuine abstracta, on the same footing as universals and equivalence classes thereof. We have defined abstracta as non-spatiotemporal, but the tropes appear at first sight at least to be spatiotemporal. Apparently the mass of a body has spatiotemporal coordinates. Socrates’ wisdom is not spatiotemporal, it is in virtue of its moral character, not in virtue of its particularity. Is it however certain that the man of a body possess spatiotemporal coordinates? A body fills a piece of space-time and this is because it fills this piece of space-time that he possesses its mass. It is not only for this reason, but also for that reason, in virtue of the relations between the mass and the geometry of space-time. But mass as such is not spatiotemporal: in its definition we have no spatiotemporal coordinates, even if these coordinates of the body play a role in its determination. The volume of a gas is a function of its pressure, but it Which Variety of Realism? 89 does not mean that the pressure has a volume. It seems more difficult to sustain that kind of argument concerning an event trope like Marilyn Monroe’s smile. However on further consideration shows that spatiotemporal determination is not self-evident. Which region, or which field does this smile fill? From when to when is this smile occurring? A smile is not comparable to the trajectory of a solid along an axis, or the dilatation of a metal, caused by heath. It is a singular and complex event, which is not assignable to a face in a certain occasion, but the mass did not inherit its spatiotemporal characters from the weighty body, even without, having by it spatiotemporal coordinates. The smile inherits also its coordinates through the face it is depending upon.

Towards a Compatibilist Ontology: Particularized Pla- tonism and Modal Realism

The combination of Platonism and particularism that I recommend, for reasons given above, is perhaps not adverse to modal realism. Modal realism entails distinct affirmations: there are spatiotemporally discon- nected worlds (otherwise we would have only a Big World), each possible world is actual relatively to itself. In order to give a qualified answer to this question, it is useful to recall D. Lewis’ views about concreta and abstracta. Modal realism puts on the same footing our world and possible worlds. D. Lewis affirms possible worlds are concrete like ours, that is to say composed with concreta. However, the possible worlds do not have necessarily the same ontological structure as ours. We may figure out abstract possible worlds in which there were only no conglomerate of tropes and therefore no concrete particulars. As the ontology of abstract particulars is not a fancy, it is conceivable and therefore possible to admit abstract worlds. If orphaned tropes belong to the equivalence classes of properties, these classes themselves would be abstract ones and this world composed only with abstracta would be an abstract world. There is then apparently a difficulty to characterize Lewisian possible worlds as concreta, to consider concreteness as an intrinsic property of possible worlds. It is true that a Lewisian possible world may be a concretum, but it is not necessary and the difference between actualists and modal realists cannot be identified with the difference between concrete and abstract possible worlds. The ontology of modal realism and the particularized Platonism do not then conflict. The problematical distinction between abstractness and concreteness is not a cause of conflict. It is possible that abstract 90 Frédéric Nef possible worlds exist according to modal realists, as to Platonists. It seems that modal realism is not strongly committed towards ontological DP . The basic ontology of modal realism — tropes, properties, and universals — is compatible with Platonism. D. Lewis would apparently prefer to shun non-instantiated universals, but he has apparently no decisive argument against their existence. Like Platonists, he considers properties are abstract beings. The truthful objection against the bringing together of modal realism and particularized Platonism does not result from an incompatibility of the two doctrines. It results from the neutrality of modal realism towards fictionalism, a doctrine deeply opposed to Platonism, either particularist or not. We are faced to two forms of fictionalism. The first form is the moderate one. According to this version concreta are in fact abstracta and then appear to be fictions, for concreteness is purely fictional. The second form is the radical one. According to this version it is not necessary that there is something; perhaps there is absolutely nothing. Being or beingness is purely fictional. Modal realism is incompatible with strong fictionalism: it is necessary that there are worlds for there is something in our world and counterpart relations bring about something in other worlds, without to say anything about aliens. But modal realism is compatible with weak fictionalism: in a certain way we may affirm concreta are made with abstracta, if properties are indeed abstract and if the worlds are sets or collections of properties.

Conclusion

It seems to me that immanentist realism has nothing to gain in the defense of DP at any cost. If for a similar epistemic cost we would have a choice between immanent realism and Platonism, it would be legitimate to choose the first, because the ontological cost is lower. There is something offensive in fictionalism towards numbers: our intellectual intuition, both epistemic and metaphysical, is choked and it is not surprising that radical nominalists generally sustain this fictionalism, as long as they are coherent. We may conclude there is not from one side a metaphysical re- spectability consisting to postulate or presuppose the existence of concrete particulars, on the basis of which mind would by separation processes create abstracta and from another side an ontological extrava- ganza, admitting beings as contradictory as abstract particulars, non- instantiated universals or existing possibilia. Which Variety of Realism? 91 References

Baldwin, T. 1996 There might be nothing, Analysis, 56.4, 231–238. Coggins, G. 2003 World and Object: Metaphysical Nihilism and Three Accounts of Worlds, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 103, 353–60. Divers, J. 2002 Possible Worlds, Londres: Routledge Kegan. Lewis, D. 1986 The Plurality of Worlds, Oxford: Blackwell. Lowe, E. J. 1998 The Possibility of Metaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005 Against metaphysical nihilism — again (Modality Workshop, University of St Andrews, 2–3 December 2005). Nef, F. 2006 Les propriétés des choses, Paris : Vrin. Nef, F. & Lihoreau, F. 2007 Il n’ y a pas de monde vide, in Wolﬀ, F. (éd.) Pourquoi y a-t-il quelque chose plutôt que rien ?, Paris : PUF, 157–186. Pasau, A. 2002 Why the subtraction argument does not add up, Analysis, 62 (1), 73–75. Rodriguez-Pereyra, G. 1997 There might be nothing: the subtraction argument improved, Analysis, 57 (3), 159–166. 2000 Lowe’s argument against nihilism, Analysis, 60 (4), 335–340. 2002 Metaphysical nihilism defended: reply to Lowe and Pasau, Analysis, 62 (2), 172–180. 92 Blackburn’s Rejection of Modals

Scott Shalkowski University of Leeds

Résumé : Dans cet article je présente le dilemme de Simon Blackburn pour les théories vériconditionnelles de la modalité, et je discute de ses limitations. Je discute la nature de circularité conceptuelle et argumentative, j’argumente que la circularité conceptuelle ne s’applique pas à toutes les théories véricon- ditionnelles de la modalité et que, de plus, la circularité argumentative ne s’applique pas. Il n’y a rien d’erroné, en principe, avec les théories de la mo- dalité en termes non modaux, mais les questions épistémologiques présentes sont significatives et ont été trop peu traitées. Je conclus que le dilemme de Blackburn est insuffisant pour défricher le terrain pour sa propre conception quasi-réaliste de la modalité. Abstract: In this paper I present Simon Blackburn’s dilemma for truth conditional theories of modality and discuss its limitations. I discuss the nature of conceptual and argumentative circularity and argue that conceptual circularity does not apply to all of the main truth conditional theories of modality and that, likewise, argumentative circularity does not apply. There is nothing wrong, in principle, with theories of the modal in non-modal terms, but attending epistemological issues are significant and have been given too little attention. I conclude that Blackburn’s dilemma is insufficient for clearing the way for his own quasi-realist account of modality.

Introduction

Simon Blackburn is a quasi-realist about both moral and modal discourse. His position is realist because he accepts that we sometimes speak truly when we say that some things are right and others wrong. Likewise when we say that some things are possible and others not. It is “merely” quasi-realism, though, because he parts company with many realists regarding what it is for a claim regarding morals or modals to be true. Realists typically want the truth of claims about subject matters

Philosophia Scientiæ, 12 (1), 2008, 93–106. 94 Scott Shalkowski regarding which they are realists to be a matter of something “objective”, something “out there”, something not wholly about us and our beliefs, or our conceptual capabilities or linguistic practices. Blackburn eschews this portion of typical realist ideology for moral and modal claims. We can have truth, but there is no “out there” about it. The facts that make for the truth or falsity of various utterances in moral or modal discourses are facts about us; they are our own attitudes/commitments that we project onto the world and this projection gives us an illusion of a certain kind of fact-based objectivity. Moral and modal truth is not about moral or modal facts; it is about our attitudes regarding actions, events, objects, and the like. Developing a projectivist theory of the modal is all very well. Suppose that it were done. It would have little force in warranting the acceptance of the theory. A developed theory is nothing more than a philosophical Just So story. Might be; might not be. What separates a Just So story from a theory that has some claim on rational assent is some ground for thinking the theory true—either reasons in favour of the theory or reasons against the going alternatives. Blackburn produces an argument that purports to show that realist theories that are any more than “quasi-” lead us to think that there are facts of certain kinds when there are none. It is this argument regarding modals that will be the subject of the remainder of this paper.

The Argument

Blackburn’s argument works at a very high level of generality. He is not concerned with some paradox that is peculiar to David Lewis’s specific realism about modality, which involves the claim that there is a plurality of concrete worlds that are the truth conditions for true modal claims. Nor is he concerned with the deficiencies of theories of possible worlds that are likewise realist and truth conditional in their semantics but with possible worlds of some different kind. Blackburn’s argument is supposed to show that there is something fundamentally misguided about any theory of the modal that is an articulation of the view that the truth and falsity of various modal claims is a matter of truth conditions. He claims that some modal claims are true and some modal claims are false, just not that their truth/falsity consists in some conditions, however complex and wherever located. Not only is Lewis’s truth conditional theory rejected, but so are theories that claim that the truth conditions are conditions of us, whether psychological or linguistic. The entire truth Blackburn’s Rejection of Modals 95 conditional programme for the modal is misguided. His argument, then, is intended as a silver bullet argument against all forms of realism about modals. The argument is as follows. Consider a theory of the modal, a theory that specifies the truth conditions for some claim regarding necessity. Its form would be a bi-conditional stating that it is necessary that A if and only if some fact, F , obtains.1 Consider the fact F . Is this fact modal in character or not? If it is necessary, then the theory is that it is necessary that A if and only if some necessary fact obtains. Such a theory is inadequate because “there will be the same bad residual ‘must’ ” [Blackburn 1993, 53]. Suppose, then, that F is not a modal fact. Then there is a mismatch between the sides of the bi-conditional. On the one side is the claim that something is necessary; on the other, a fact with no modal force. Consequently, “there is strong pressure to feel that the original necessity has not been explained or identified, so much as undermined” [Blackburn, 1993, 53]. A fact with no modal force is patently inadequate as the truth condition for a claim involving necessity. If neither modal facts nor non-modal facts are adequate for a theory of the modal, then on the modest assumption that all facts are either modal or non-modal, no truth conditional theory of the modal is adequate.

The Purpose of a Theory

Blackburn is objecting to a certain kind of theory: one that purports to be both explanatory and truth conditional. Though he puts his concern in terms of judgements, truth, and truth conditions, he need not. He could simply frame things in terms of that in which necessity consists, with ‘A’ and ‘F ’ merely being dummies which, in the hands of diﬀerent theorists, might take diﬀerent things as substituends. If ‘A’ stands for some truth bearer or other, then the issue might be one of necessary truth and ‘F ’ might stand for some non-linguistic state of the world. Or, ‘A’ might do duty for states which are themselves taken to be necessary, such as four being twice two and ‘F ’ might stand for some other states of numbers or sets or structures. Blackburn does not separate meta- linguistic from object language issues. Following suit, I note only that there are subtleties that deserve further attention, but I leave those for another occasion. 1The appeal to facts is intended to be as uncontroversial as possible. I attribute to no party any more than appeal to worldly conditions, like the cat’s being on the mat. Whether these conditions have anything to do with universals, for example, is something on which I can remain neutral here. 96 Scott Shalkowski

The fundamental problem that Blackburn thinks he has identiﬁed is the inevitable failure of explanation that will attend any “direct” theory of modality. A dilemma akin to the Euthryphro dilemma is posed. On one horn is a problem something like circularity. On the other is the problem that the theory remains unsatisfying, even if not circular. It is not question begging to suspect that something is awry, since one advocating this argument gives the appearance of being impossible to satisfy. Blackburn takes the argument to show not that no theory of the modal whatever is adequate but only that no truth-conditional, non- projectivist, theory is adequate. In setting his own quasi-realist alternative against all truth conditional approaches, Blackburn needs his argument to work against rather diﬀerent understandings of the point of a truth-conditional theory of the modal.

“Within this conception of the philosopher’s quest, there is room for disagreement over detail—for instance, whether the description of the state of affairs finally fixed upon as making true the original modal judgement has to be synonymous with that judgement; whether one range of arguments or another succeeds in showing some concepts to be defective, or over what would count as an admissible reduction class for the modal claims.” [Blackburn 1993, 53]

With the remainder of this paper I will argue that closer attention to these details is necessary for assessing the effectiveness of the dilemma posed by Blackburn. Since the first horn of the dilemma is a circularity- like problem, I will begin by examining when circularity is a problem. First, to what sort of theory is circularity even so much as relevant? Certainly, any theory that purports to be an illuminating conceptual analysis is a failure if the analysans uses the very concept to be analysed. Circularity in analyses, like circularity in arguments, is not a simple, straightforward matter though. One might say that an argument is circular if the conclusion appears as a premise in its own proof. This account of circularity expresses at least a sufficient condition for a kind of circularity in argument that undermines the effectiveness of the argument. It is most dubious, though, as a statement of conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for circularity. One would be hard pressed to find any argument proposed by a reputable philosopher that failed because its proponent failed to spot the conclusion hiding, explicitly, among the premises. Likewise, analyses rarely, if ever, fail because the very concept to be analyzed was used in the analysis. Blackburn’s Rejection of Modals 97

In an argument, it is much more likely that circularity is present when one introduces a premise for which one would be hard pressed to provide adequate grounds without appealing to the conclusion of the circular argument. In analyses, it is more likely that one concept is analysed in terms of others and the crucial concepts in the analysandum and the analysans form a tightly-knit family of concepts and, furthermore, the legitimacy of the entire family is the matter of philosophical dispute. Given that Blackburn’s task is to provide grounds for a non-truth- conditional, projectivist understanding of modal discourse and given that this argument for the general untenability of truth conditional accounts is to provide some of those grounds, it is this reliance on a tightly-knit family of concepts that is in question. To say that A is necessary if and only if it is not possible that not-A is certainly to avoid the ﬁrst, simple-minded, kind of circularity and it would be uncharitable to think that the circularity at issue was one so easily avoided. Since, however, necessity and possibility are so closely related and given the breadth of Blackburn’s overall project, it is the status of the entire family of alethic modal notions that is in question. So, if our theory of the modal is to be a conceptual analysis and if the issue is whether the entire family of modal concepts is philosophically respectable, then the standard analysis of necessity in terms of possibility and negation that one ﬁnds in textbooks is clearly inadequate.

The Purpose of Analysis

“Analytic” philosophers hark back to a time when Anglo-American philosophy took as its raison d’être the analysis of concepts. Though the explicit rationale for taking philosophy to be conceptual analysis was the elimination of metaphysics and all intellectual things insufficiently answerable to experience, the focus on metaphysics, ethics, and reli- gious belief obscured the primary value that was to be maximized via conceptual analysis, i.e., some epistemic value that I shall label “warrant". That there were metaphysicians who seemed to say unverifiable or unfalsifiable things was a problem only because the apparent lack of verifiability/falsifiability for metaphysical claims meant that one important means of providing warrant for a non-trivial claim was unavailable. Furthermore, one important means of gaining agreement to a metaphysical claim by way of rational persuasion was unavailable. Consequently, metaphysics gave the appearance of being unmoored, of being the project of constructing systems with no generally-accepted means of adjudicat- 98 Scott Shalkowski ing between them. Conceptual analysis promised to provide a means of securing warrant for philosophical claims. If philosophical claims are about the interre- lations among concepts, and if conceptual content is sufficiently transparent, then with the guidance of an expert philosopher we could come to see that some philosophical claims deserved our assent and others did not. The project of analysis was gradually replaced, partly because of critiques of the ideological foundations of conceptual analysis [Quine 1953] and partly, I suspect, because fewer issues were settled than one might have expected if conceptual content were sufficiently transparent to us. As a result, metaphysics was revived and other domains took on the appearance of metaphysics at least to this extent: philosophers gradually spoke less in terms of the meaning of ‘cause’, ‘natural right’, or ‘knowledge’; they spoke instead of what causation, natural rights, and knowledge are. It was no longer what the content of a concept was. Per- haps our concepts are not well-behaved, or they are poorly structured, or they are otherwise inadequate for all of our intellectual endeavours. No matter. We are really interested in what it is for two events or facts to be causally related, or what it is to have rights by nature, or what it is to know something. Whether the relevant information has ever been packed into our concepts is irrelevant, if upon investigation we could arrive at an acceptable theory of the relevant phenomenon. The pertinent question for us now is what kind of philosophical theory is it against which Blackburn presses his dilemma? If the offending theory is supposed by its proponents to be a conceptual analysis, then the charge of circularity is relevant. If the theory is not intended as a conceptual analysis and if it is to be a theory of what it is, in reality, for something to be necessary, then some further account of a different defect, perhaps so analogous to the two kinds of circularity canvassed above that it deserves the same name, must be given.

Conceptual Projects

Suppose the project is to legitimize the use of the family of modal notions that includes the notions of necessity, possibility, contingency, and impossibility. It is a commonplace now to concede that these notions form a family of inter-definable notions, so long as we have purely logical notions like negation to hand. Because of their inter-definability, it is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain that necessity is the conceptually fundamental member of the family while the others are defined in Blackburn’s Rejection of Modals 99 terms of it. If the task of a theory of the modal is to provide a route into understanding one concept in terms of others that can be understood prior to the concept analysed, then perhaps the phenomenon of inter-definability prevents success. One either has mastery of all members of that modal family or of none at all. Blackburn, however, is not concerned with the success of this project. He objects neither that he or others fail to understand the concepts nor that understanding does not begin with a single conceptual ancestor for the rest of the family. He takes for granted that we have the appropriate understanding, however it is achieved. His concern is the substance behind our sensible and competent use of the concepts, and for that he provides his quasi- realist alternative. So, while the dilemma he poses would be sufficient to prevent success in completing this kind of task, this task is not his target. A different metaphorical way of thinking about this particular task is to think that modal concepts are part of a conceptual structure. That structure is well-founded, if it has foundations, i.e., if there are fundamental concepts in terms of which all others are analysed. If it is assumed that the modal structure is a superstructure, then the modal superstructure requires non-modal foundations. On such a picture, the family of inter-definable concepts is inadequate to supply these foundations, since each member of the family is part of the superstructure. Continuing the metaphor, why should we think, that the modal structure is part of the conceptual superstructure? Why not, rather, think that it is part of the foundations of any sophisticated conceptual structure? If modal concepts are not definable in terms of non-modal concepts, that is evidence that when we reach those concepts we have reached conceptual bedrock. If so, then the inter-definability of modal concepts is unsurprising. Consider Euclidean geometry. Point, line seg- ment, line, plane. Pick one and with uncontroversial resources, the others can be defined. These four concepts form a tightly-knit family of inter- definable notions. No philosopher of mathematics, however, is exercised over the legitimacy over Euclidean geometry on the basis of the inter- definability of these concepts. Instead, all take the family to form part of the conceptual basis for geometry. It is an interesting question how one can come to grasp concepts that form a small conceptual circle, but the geometry case demonstrates that whether we provide a satisfactory theory of how this is done, the lack of such a theory in no way provides grounds for thinking that the phenomenon does not occur. It manifestly does and all parties find this so obvious in the case of fundamental geometric concepts that the issue is rarely raised. 100 Scott Shalkowski

The circularity horn of Blackburn’s dilemma not only may be grasped, but it is grasped by those who take modality, i.e., at least one modal concept, to be primitive. Modalists look at this horn and see not only nothing troubling, but they also see nothing surprising. Graeme Forbes, for instance, explicitly embraces modal concepts as basic to show that David Lewis’s possible worlds discourse provides no theoretical advantage when it comes to expressing truths about possibility [Forbes 1985]. This horn of the dilemma, then, is inadequate by itself. Were the horn supplemented with some further considerations, it might form part of an overall basis for rejecting modalism in particular and truth conditional theories of modality in general. Perhaps the considerations that motivated the early Analytic philosophers could be invoked here and arguments could be given that there is too little agreement on modal matters to think that we employ modal concepts to good effect for expressing truths. Perhaps, there is no good modal epistemology that could form part of an overall modalist framework. Perhaps our use of modal discourse fails to show the signs of the kind of truth and objectivity that the typical modalist wants [Wright 1993]. None of these, though, is Blackburn’s strategy. His dilemma is supposed to be sufficient to see off of any truth conditional theory of modality, even one that takes modal notions as enabling us to express basic features of the world. Once we were to have seen that there is something deeply misguided by the entire truth conditional approach, we were to be open to the quasi-realist alternative. Since the phenomenon given in the first horn is part of the modalist’s theory, it cannot be effective against the modalist’s theory. Were we to go no further, we have grounds for thinking that—so far as Blackburn has argued—there are at least two going alternatives in the theory of modality: modalism and quasi-realism.

Non-Conceptual Projects

Given the kinds of theories that Blackburn must have had in mind, it is clear that those theories were not really intended as conceptual analyses. David Lewis made clear that his project was not conceptual analysis [Lewis, 1986]. If it had been he would not have reliedashedidon inference to the best explanation as the main means of providing warrant for his version of the ontology of a plurality of concrete worlds. Lewis recommended using inference to the best explanation to justify his theory partly because it showed philosophical justification to be similar to the means of justification used by scientists. This parallel with scientific Blackburn’s Rejection of Modals 101 justification could not have been maintained plausibly had Lewis thought his project to be that of the conceptual analyst. Whereas conceptual analysis is the pursuit of a set of concepts that means precisely what that to be analysed means, inference to the best explanation is meant as an evidence-providing exercise that, if successful, raises the probability of the conclusion which articulates that which is to be the best explanation for the phenomena reported in the premises of the inference. If conceptual analysis was not the project for Lewis and others, then the relevance of Blackburn’s dilemma to the going theories of modality is not immediately obvious. Perhaps the circularity is not really conceptual, but metaphysical. Perhaps it is not that the concept of possibility can be defined only by way of other modal concepts that are part of the same conceptual family, but that in order for Lewis’s account to be correct, it must be the case that all and only the possible worlds exist. Not just any old set of worlds will do. Blackburn does not make this particular point explicitly, though something like it has been made in [Lycan 1979], [McGinn 1981], and [Shalkowski 1994]. I will not pursue this consideration further both because it is not Blackburn’s and because it seems to inhabit some middle ground between conceptual and argumentative circularity. If conceptual circularity is not at issue for many contemporary truth conditional theories of the modal, perhaps the arguments given for the relevant theories are circular. Perhaps, for example, Lewis’s theory that something is possible if and only if it occurs or exists in some concrete world can be accepted as extensionally adequate only if one has some prior justification for accepting that there really is a plurality of all and only genuinely possible concrete worlds. If there were impossible concrete worlds or if the plurality were missing some worlds that are possible, then the analysis would not be extensionally adequate. Ruling out such states of the plurality, perhaps, could be done only after one had accepted the general Lewis-style account. If this is the problem, we can make some progress if we ask what is supposed to be so bad about argumentative circularity. “It is necessary that A if and only if necessarily A” is not false, even if wholly useless as an illuminating analysis. Likewise, inferring that it is necessary that A from the premise that it is necessary that A will never lead one from truth to falsity. So, what is the problem supposed to be? The faulty analysis need not be false and the faulty argument need not lead to a conclusion that is false. Argumentative circularity is troublesome because it prevents an advocate of that argument from persuading one of the conclusion on its basis. A necessary condition for an argument being persuasive is that 102 Scott Shalkowski one believes the premises and understands that the premises provide good grounds for the conclusion. Acceptance of the conclusion needs to be on the basis of a prior acceptance of the premises. A circular argument prevents this priority condition on rational persuasion from obtaining. Hence, circularity is an argumentative defect and the defect is epistemic. A circular argument fails to impart entitlement to embrace the conclusion to one who accepts the conclusion on the basis of that argument. Against the modern metaphysician, as contrasted with the conceptual analyst, Blackburn’s dilemma becomes this: by virtue of not being a conceptual analysis, the form of the theory does not, by itself, generate sufficient confidence in the theory. The schematic theory is that it is necessary that A if and only if F , for some non-modal F . Any defence of this theory will either make plain that F is sufficient for the necessity of A by way of circularity, or else the argument will fail to demonstrate that A really is necessary in virtue of F . For metaphysicans wary of framing their theory in terms of “in virtue of”, an exactly parallel problem can be posed regarding the extensional adequacy of the theory: either the argument that the non-modal F is extensionally adequate for the necessity of A is circular or else the argument will fail to demonstrate the adequacy of the non-modal F for the necessity of A. Lewis, at least, took great care to avoid any charge of circularity in his use of inference to the best explanation. The strategy was to specify things for which philosophers want theories, show that if the thesis about a plurality of worlds were true, we could provide a single, unified theory of those things. Certainly, there are competing theories for the truth conditions of modal claims, the semantics for counterfactual conditionals, the natures of properties and propositions, etc. Each of those competing theories is, however, a single-issue theory. Lewis’s theory provides a single framework within which one can provide theories of all of these things. As scientists take theoretical unification as a mark of scientific truth, so Lewis takes philosophical unification as a mark of philosophical truth. The inference to the best explanation generates no more circularity for metaphysical theories than it does for physical theories. So the first horn of our new dilemma can be avoided, if inference to the best explanation is legitimate in metaphysics.2 Consider now the second horn, according to which there is no residual “must” but a fugitive “must”. Any theory stating that the truth conditions for a necessary A in terms of some non-modal F inadvertently

2I argue that inference to the best explanation is not legitimate in metaphysics in Inference to the Best Explanation and Metaphysical Projects [Shalkowski forthcoming]. Blackburn’s Rejection of Modals 103 renders the A unnecessary. The A is supposed to have modal force, but the F is not. Thus, any theory of the necessity of four’s being twice two will, in effect drain four’s being twice two of all modal force.3 The mistake of this inference can be seen by focusing on reductive theories in science, since Lewis models the justification of his own view on the justification for these theories. Let us bracket any question of the modal status of scientific reductions, since scientists may or may not think that the scientific reductions they propose are necessary. When asked what lightning is, we are told that lightning is the discharge of static electricity either between clouds or between clouds and the surface of the earth. Here we have a theory of lightning in non-lightning terms. No problem. If there is a problem for theories of modality that are given in non-modal terms, it is not that they are theories of A-things in terms of non-A-things, where we categorize A-things and non-A-things on the basis of the concepts we use to specify them. If it really is the case that something is possible if and only if it occurs/exists in some concrete world that is just one among many, why is that any less adequate than the modern theory of lightning? The troublesome difference is epistemic. In the scientific case, the theory identifying lightning with the discharge of static electricity is not even accepted unless investigators are in a position to identify occur- rences of lightning and discharges of static electricity independently of each other. I, being rather incompetent as an experimenter about all things electrical, am capable of identifying times and locations of lightning strikes. Someone else who is well schooled in the fine art of detecting discharges of static electricity can set up the relevant devices to measure such discharges. I can keep my log about where and when I see strikes of lightning during a storm and the intrepid weather scientist can likewise keep a log of discharges. Later, we can compare notes. We repeat the procedure at other times and with other investigators. At some stage we might reasonably conclude that lightning is nothing but discharges of static electricity because we have never confronted cases where we were in a position to observe both the phenomenon as lightning and the phenomenon as a discharge of static electricity and where the time and location of the lightning was not also a time and location of a discharge of static electricity. We may be well aware that an inference from this

3This is not to say that the account renders it contingent that four is twice two. If four is twice two but might not have been, then four’s being twice two is contingent. The second horn of the dilemma is that for any non-modal F, A has no modal force at all. 104 Scott Shalkowski unbroken correlation among observations is not conclusive grounds for thinking that these phenomena are identical, but at some point we take the grounds to be more than sufficient. The problem with metaphysical theories of modality is not their form; it is their means of justification. What is missing from typical metaphysical theories—not just metaphysical theories of modality—is independent access to phenomena described using different vocabulary. We can observe that some things are red and some green. What we do not observe independently is the universals of redness and greenness being instantiated or the presence of the trope of this gown’s redness and that ball’s greenness. Our access to the universals or the tropes is solely by way of philosophical theory. This is the same kind of problem that those who pursued semantic analysis as the proper task of philosophers sought to avoid and the problem to which metaphysicians need to devote more attention. Suppose we were in a position regarding possibilities and the states of the plurality of worlds as we are regarding lightning and discharges of static electricity. What could the problem be? It might be somewhat surprising that possibility really is just existence. We had not expected that because we had been thinking that there is only one world and, consequently, we had been thinking that what exists does not exhaust what is possible. We had also been thinking that the possible was not co-extensive with the necessary. If we keep the latter but give up the former, then we lose our resistance to thinking that existence somewhere is really what possibility comes to and that existence everywhere (suitably qualified) is what necessity comes to. Blackburn is right regarding the second horn of his dilemma to this extent: so long as we keep in place all of our initial, metaphysically-naïve assumptions, a theory of the modal in non-modal terms will appear inadequate. If, to continue to use Lewis’s theory as our example, it turns out that every warranted judgement we make about possibility is correlated with existence in some world, then we should not take our initial surprise as a philosophical trump card any more than believers in Zeus’s hurling lightning bolts at the earth when angry should take their initial surprise that Zeus might have nothing to do with lightning as a trump card against scientific accounts of lightning. Initial intellectual surprises can be overcome with sufficient grounds. The problem, then, is mis-diagnosed by Blackburn in the second horn of his dilemma. There is nothing wrong, in principle, with giving a theory of A-things in terms of non-A-things, assuming that it is not intended as a conceptual analysis. If there is a problem with a theory of the modal in terms of the non-modal, it is not the initial “pressure” we feel to think that the theory fails. It is a matter of wider epistemic issues that the Blackburn’s Rejection of Modals 105 dilemma does not touch.

Conclusion

Blackburn’s generalisation of the Euthyphro dilemma is inadequate to the task to which he wanted to put it. It is insufficient as grounds for casting aside all forms of truth conditional accounts of the modal. If all such accounts of the modal required both that the theory be a conceptual analysis and that the analysis permit one to break into the circle of modal concepts and attain mastery of modal concepts, then the dilemma would effectively show all truth conditional theories to fail. On might take the project to be that of providing a conceptual analysis, but not one that is sufficient to gain competence with all modal vocabulary. Any such semantic account would assume some modal competence and would serve only to characterise relations among different modal concepts and could not legitimize the entire domain of our modal conceptual framework. A conceptual analysis of the modal in non-modal terms does fail for the reason Blackburn suggests: the analysis does not wear its adequacy on its sleeve the way conceptual analyses should. Most truth conditional theories of the modal, however, are not intended as conceptual analyses of either sort. There are modalist accounts according to which some modal concepts are fundamental, i.e., for which there are no non-modal equivalents. Unless one holds the thesis that every concept is subject to an analysis in terms more basic concepts, there must be some basic concepts at which conceptual analysis stops.4 Why not some modal concept or other? The dilemma does nothing to answer this question. There are other, more metaphysical, theories that may not even address the issue of the meaning of modal concepts, but only the truth conditions of modal claims. Since they do not even pretend to express the meaning of modal concepts, then the fact that understanding an account of the modal in terms of the non-modal does not bring warrant for believing the account is itself insufficient to show that account really to be inadequate. Such a theory must, surely, fit with some suitable account not only of how one can come to have warranted belief about particular modal claims—like the claim that four is twice two— but also how one could come to have warranted belief in that particular

4If there are analyses “all the way down”, then one must confront the question of how it is that one can begin the process of concept acquisition, if the process continues inﬁnitely, or the question of why large conceptual circles are philosophically adequate, but small ones are not. 106 truth conditional theory of modality. These epistemic issues are important and too-little addressed in the philosophy of modality. That these deserve more attention than they have received does nothing, however, to undermine the contention of this paper: that Blackburn’s dilemma fails to show something wrong with all truth conditional theories of modality. It fails to show that we have a philosophical itch that should be dealt with in some way other than by ﬁnding a truth conditional theory that reaches the itch so that it can be scratched.

References

Blackburn, Simon 1986 Morals and Modals, Fact, Science and Morality, Graham Mac- Donald (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, 119–141. Citations from Simon Blackburn, Essays in Quasi-Realism, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, 52–74. Forbes, Graeme 1985 The Metaphysics of Modality, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lewis, David 1986 On the Plurality of Worlds, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Lycan, William 1979 The Trouble with Possible Worlds, The Possible and the Actual, Michael J. Loux (ed.), Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 274–316. McGinn, Colin 1981 Modal Reality, Reduction, Time and Reality, Richard Healey (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 143–188. Quine, W.V.O. 1951 Two Dogmas of Empiricism, The Philosophical Review, 60, 20– 43. Reprinted in W.V.O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View 2nd ed., New York: Harper & Row, 1961: 20–46. Shalkowski, Scott A. 1994 The Ontological Ground of the Alethic Modality, The Philo- sophical Review, 103, 669–688. Forthcoming Inference to the Best Explanation and Metaphysical Projects, in Bob Hale, Ross Cameron, and Aviv Hoﬀman (eds), The Logic, Epistemology, and Metaphysics of Modality, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, Crispin 1993 Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Part III Truths

Three Forms of Pluralism about Truth

Michael P. Lynch University of Connecticut (USA)

Résumé : Le pluralisme aléthique est la conception suivant laquelle il y a plus d’une manière pour des propositions d’être vraies. Cet article étudie trois manières de comprendre cette idée et argumente que chacune a des faiblesses significatives. Je conclus en suggérant une issue au pluraliste qui lui permette de construire une position plus plausible. Abstract: Alethic pluralism is the view that there is more than one way for propositions to be true. This paper examines three ways of understanding this idea and argues that each has significant flaws. It concludes by suggesting a way for the pluralist to construct a more plausible position.

1 Introduction

Traditional theories of truth, such as the correspondence or coherence accounts, assume there is something substantive in common between all truths, no matter what the subject, and they endeavor to say what that something is. Such theories, in other words, are monist: truth is identical to some single first-order property of propositions; and the truth concept univocally expresses that property. A persistent problem for alethic monism is that it is exceedingly difficult to find that common property in the face of the sheer diversity of our thought. Theories that seem plausible when applied to propositions about the physical world around us (such as the correspondence theory) are less plausible when applied to propositions about norms. And theories that seem plausible when applied to the propositions about norms (such as, perhaps, the coherence theory) seem much less convincing when applied to propositions about the physical world. Indeed, and as a number of philosophers have suggested, the history of the debate over truth suggests that for any sufficiently robustly characterized truth property

Philosophia Scientiæ, 12 (1), 2008, 109–124. 110 Michael P. Lynch

F, there appears to be some kind of propositions K which lack F but which are intuitively true (or capable of being true). This can be called the scope problem [Lynch, 2001]1. Philosophers generally adopt one of two strategies in response to this problem. Those adopting the first strategy hold fast to their favored theory of truth and deny that various troublesome propositions are true, or even capable of being true. This is the strategy favored by expressivists, error-theorists, fictionalists and so on. The second strategy dismisses the whole project of giving a metaphysical theory of truth, and declares that all propositions are equally apt for truth in a uniform but entirely thin sense. This is the deflationary strategy. In this paper, I want to examine the prospects for a third response, namely that propositions can be true in different ways. This is alethic pluralism. Pluralism has been getting an increasing amount of attention, and perhaps it is not hard to see why2. If the pluralist position can be made coherent, then there is more to say about truth than the deflationist believes, but the more there is to say depends on the type of proposition in question3. Moral propositions, for example, might be true by being part of a coherent moral theory, while propositions about physical objects might be true by corresponding to the facts about those objects. If so, then we might be able to both heed Wittgenstein’s command to mind the differences between forms of thought and yet still hold onto the idea that we can have true beliefs about morality or economics or mathematics. We would have semantic diversity and our cognitivist cake too. So much for motivation; in this paper I am interested not so much in proving (or disproving) alethic pluralism as understanding it. I will be particularly concerned with whether there is a plausible metaphysical theory underpinning the pluralist’s intuition that there is more than one way for propositions to be true. I will examine three different ways of giving such a theory and argue that each has significant flaws. Nonethe- less, I end on a hopeful note: from the flaws of the above theories the

1Sher [2004] calls it the “disunity challenge”; she argues that Kant was the ﬁrst to see the problem. 2See, for example, [Wright 1992], [Sher 2004; 2005]; [Cory Wright 2005]; [Pedersen 2006]; [Vision 2004]; [Tappolet 1997]; [Beall 2000] and [Lynch 2000; 2001; 2004; 2005; 2006]. 3In what follows, I will use “proposition” as my favored term for whatever bears the property of truth, but will occasionally speak indiﬀerently of “assertions”, “statements”, “beliefs” and the like. When doing so, I should be taken to be talking about the content of the assertion, statement or belief — that is, the proposition expressed by it. Three Forms of Pluralism about Truth 111 pluralist can at least extract the seeds of a more realistic position.

2 Simple Alethic Pluralism

There is more than one way to interpret “there is more than one way for x to be F ”. One way is to see it as advocating that “F ” is simply ambiguous, or that the word conveys different concepts in differing contexts. Applied to the present case, the thought is that “true” is ambiguous: sometimes it picks out one of the traditionally cited properties (e.g. correspondence), sometimes we use it to pick out another (e.g. coherence). Call this simple alethic pluralism (or SAP). I’m not sure anyone actually advocates SAP, but lots of folks seem to think alethic pluralists must be committed to it. They’re wrong, and it’s a good thing too; SAP is a non-starter. There are three reasons to think so: they range from something of a cheap-shot to the level of profound problem. The cheap-shot is that, to quote Kripke: “it is very much the lazy man’s approach in philosophy to posit ambiguities when in trouble” [Kripke 1977, 19]. It just seems too easy a way to get out of the vexing counterexamples to traditional theories of truth to claim that “is true” means, for example, “corresponds to the facts” when dealing with propositions about physical objects and “is a member of a coherent system of propositions” when dealing with moral propositions. The suggestion smells of having all the virtue of grand theft auto over gainful employment. It is fun, but crime doesn’t pay. This is not to say that positing ambiguity is never helpful in philosophy. But it is justified only on the basis of serious theoretical pressure. I don’t feel any such pressure here. Indeed, what pressure there is goes in quite the opposite direction, as others have noted [see Tappolet 1997], [Pedersen 2006]. In particular — and the second reason that SAP is a non-starter — is that it ignores the fact that a generally applicable concept of truth fulfills some important logical needs. Consider, for example, truth’s role in a ’mixed inference’ like:

If you jail a person without charge, you have violated his rights. This person has been jailed without charge. There- fore, this person’s rights have been violated.

On a standard account of validity, an inference is valid when it pre- serves a single property — truth — from premises to conclusion. But 112 Michael P. Lynch the propositions forming this particular argument are from diﬀerent domains — the conclusion is normative while one of the premises is not. Naturally then, one would expect the advocate of SAP to hold that the premises and the conclusion are true in literally diﬀerent senses. If so, then contra the standard account of validity, there is no single property being preserved from premises to conclusion. We not only need a univocal concept of truth to explain the validity of mixed inferences: we also need it to explain mixed compounds [Lynch, 2004], [Tappolet 1997]. Consider the conjunction that two and two make four and murder is wrong. If “true” is ambiguous, in what sense is this conjunction true? A mixed “mathematical/moral” sense? Even more simply, SAP makes nonsense of blind generalizations involving truth [Lynch, 2004]. Suppose a devout believer says that “everything God believes is true”. She is not intending to say that “everything that God believes is true in one sense or another”. Her claim about God is not like my claim that “Everything Bush says is funny”—where I inten- tionally trade on the fact that “funny” is ambiguous between “comedic” and “suspicious”. She means that everything God believes is true period. The third point I’ll make about SAP is in some ways the simplest but also the most important. SAP isn’t even pluralist view of truth at all. It is a pluralist view of the meaning of the word “true”. As such, one might wonder if it even counts as a way of unpacking the basic pluralist intuition that there is more than one way of being true — since taken seriously, it simply denies this claim. Seen clearly, SAP would seem to fall victim to Nietzsche’s remark that, “there are many kinds of eyes — even the Sphinx has eyes. And there are many kinds of truth, and therefore there is no truth” [Nietzsche WP: 540]. In other words, simple pluralism about truth is really a disguised form of truth nihilism. If we really took it seriously, we’d just stop talking about what is true and talk about the various properties the word ambiguously picks out.

3 Alethic Functionalism: the Basic Idea

Nietzsche, that old rascal, seems to have been right. So far, it seems like if you say there are many types of truths, you are really just saying there are none. Can we do better? That is, can we sympathizers to the basic pluralist intuition — that there are different ways in which propositions can be true — do better in explaining that intuition? I think we can. The key is to acknowledge that there is a unity to truth — that the truths form a kind, and therefore all share something in common. I suppose Three Forms of Pluralism about Truth 113 this means we can’t be pluralist all the way. But we can preserve what is worth preserving in the pluralist intuition. As is common in philosophy, our stance toward the nature of truth is somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, we are puzzled by the question of what truth is, one the other, there is quite a bit about truth that is common knowledge. The philosopher’s favorite examples of these commonly held beliefs are instances of the T -schema, such as the proposition that grass is green is true if and only if grass is green. But there are others. These include, for example, that it is good to believe what is true; that what is true can’t be false; that believing doesn’t make it so; and that what is justified may not be true and what is true may not be justified. So, on the one hand, we think that truth is deep, and on the other, we seem to already know what it is. This needn’t be puzzling. We can see these intuitive beliefs as being about truth’s job, or the role of true propositions in our cognitive economy. Seen this way, it is not surprising that we have some intuitive beliefs about truth that are common knowledge while remaining clueless about its nature. For it is a familiar fact that we can know about the job of something, what it does, without knowing much about how it gets that job done. And more to the present point, it is an even more familiar fact that one job can be done differently depending on the context. What I’ve elsewhere called alethic functionalism [Lynch 2004] begins with this thought. The basic idea is that to be true is to have a property that does a particular job or plays a particular role. That role is what is specified by our intuitive beliefs about truth. These beliefs form a theoretical structure — a folk theory of truth if you will. Some of these beliefs illustrate the connections between truth and related semantic properties, including e.g. “the proposition that p is true if and only if p” and “the negation of a true proposition is not true”; “to assert is to present is true” and so on. While others relate truth to other sorts of properties, such as: “Other things being equal, it is good to believe that which is true”; and “if a proposition is justified it may not be true”, and even “an honest person typically says what is true” and so on. Specifying the extent and limits of these folk beliefs, and determining which, if any, are more centrally weighted than others, is an important further project for the alethic functionalist, just as it is for functionalists in the philosophy of mind. But however those questions are decided, the basic functionalist idea is that these folk beliefs about truth to jointly constitute a job-description so to speak for truth: they specify the truth- role. Consequently, we can then say that a property plays that role just when it meets the conditions laid out in that job-description, and that a 114 Michael P. Lynch proposition is therefore true just when it has a property that plays that role. One obvious advantage of this general approach, and the one I’m highlighting here, is that it would seem to allow us to capture, in a very straightforward and familiar way, the basic intuition behind pluralism. That basic intuition is that there is more than one way for propositions to be true. The functionalist framework obviously allows for this: it allows for the possibility that truth is multiply realized. Problem solved: propositions could be true in more than one way because it might turn out that there is more than one way to realize the truth-role. Moreover, the metaphysical picture here, as opposed to SAP, seems abundantly clear: multiply realizable properties, after all, are a dime a dozen, and not mysterious.

4 Reductive Alethic Functionalism

But of course this isn’t quite right. As anyone who has paid attention to the philosophy of mind over the last three decades knows, there is a lot more to say about how to understand the metaphysics of functionalism. Of particular relevance to our discussion is whether the alethic functionalist should identify truth with the realizer of the truth-role or the role property itself. To see the point here, note that so far, the alethic functionalist has suggested is essentially this:

(1) A proposition in some domain is true just when it has the property T that plays the truth-role in that domain.

And we’ve deﬁned that role relationally, by saying that something like this:

(2) For any domain, < p > has a property T that plays the truth-role just when to assert < p > is to present it as T , the negation of < p > is not T ; it is good, other things being equal to believe < p > when T and avoid believing it when not. . .

Principles (1) and (2) state the conditions under which “x is true” is true, according to the functionalist. But they do not tell us what the property of truth is. This is because (1) can be read in more than one way. Three Forms of Pluralism about Truth 115

One way of reading (1) is to see it as claiming that truth is identical to whatever property plays or realizes the truth-role. If there was only one such property and it was correspondence say, then on this interpretation, (1) tells us that truth is correspondence. But if we are sympathetic to pluralism, we’ll want to leave open the possibility that the truth-role can be occupied by more than one property. Accordingly, we’ll take it on this view that “x is true” functions as a non-rigid definite description, one which can be satisfied by propositions have very different properties. In short hand: one descriptive concept: many properties picked out by that concept. This is the easiest way to understand how Crispin Wright looks at truth. Wright argues that we can give an account of the concept of truth by laying out those few basic principles or “platitudes” which seem to describe the most fundamental facts about truth. These principles are included among the folk beliefs about truth I mentioned above4. Together, Wright says, these and similar principles provide “a body of conceptual truths that, without providing any reductive account, nevertheless collectively constrain and locate the target concept and sufficiently characterize some of its relations with other concepts and its role and purposes” [Wright 2001, 759]. Nonetheless, this account of the concept is consistent with the idea that there may be more to say about truth, and “that the more there is to say may well vary from discourse to discourse [Wright 1992: 38]. Thus in some discourses or domains, the concepts we employ therein impose what Wright calls an evidential constraint: that is, that it is impossible for truth in that domain to out- run all evidence available in principle. In such domains, he suggests, a proposition might be true just when it is superassertible, or “justified by some (in principle accessible) state of information and then remaining justified no matter how that state of information might be enlarged upon or improved” [Wright 2001,771]. In other, more unrestrained domains, “the structure of truth is best conceived as by correspondence” [Wright 1999, 225]. Early commentators took Wright to be advocating SAP. Wright rightly protested that this was a mistake. For on his account as I’ve just described it, there obviously is a single concept that “admits of a uniform characterization wherever it is applied — the characterization given by the minimal platitudes. . . [Wright 1996, 101]. The form of pluralism relevant to his position, Wright contended, was therefore not SAP, but one that allowed that there is one concept of truth, but that concept picks

4For a fuller account of the relevant principles, see [Wright 1999, 227; 2001, 759– 761]. 116 Michael P. Lynch out more than one property. Seen through the clarifying light of functionalism, Wright’s suggestion amounts to our first interpretation above. On this view, “is true” is more like “is the color of the sky at noon” than “is magnetic”. It is a disguised definite description of a property. But unlike “the color of the sky at noon”, which picks out different properties in different environmental contexts, as it were, “truth”, on Wright’s view, refers to different properties in different propositional domains. Thus when saying it is true that acts of cruelty are wrong we ascribe one property; when saying that it is true that there is a book on the table, we ascribe another. Nonetheless, in both cases —as with “the color of the sky at noon”— we employ a single concept, even though what property we pick out with that concept differs. Seen this way, Wright’s pluralism is reductive in nature, and thus akin to other reductive functionalisms, such as those championed by David Lewis [1980] and more recently, by Jaegwon Kim with regard to psychological properties [1998]. On this sort of view, there is no fact about whether, e.g., x is in pain over and above whether x has some physical property P , and so “there is no need to think of [pain] itself as a property in its own right” [Kim 1998, 104]. A reductive alethic functionalism is parallel: there is no fact of the matter whether a proposition is true over and above whether it has some lower-level property like superassertibility or correspondence. Consequently, “truth” does not name a property shared by all truths. Is reductive alethic pluralism an improvement over SAP? I don’t see that it is. To my ear, it is prima facie implausible that “truth” functions in this way — that it does not rigidly pick out the same property in every possible domain. Admittedly using my own intuitions as a guide, it certainly feels like I’m talking about the same property when I talk about the truth of moral propositions and the truth of mathematical propositions. My semantic intuitions, in other words, don’t lead me to think that “truth” is like “the color of the sky at noon”. Further, reductive functionalism/pluralism is hard to distinguish from deflationism about truth. Deflationists take our concept of truth to be a mere logical device for making generalizations: it is a handy conceptual tool for generalizing over potentially infinite strings of propositions. In particular, appeals to the property of truth serve no explanatory purpose: we don’t need to appeal to it to explain any philosophically important phenomena. Nonetheless, the leading contemporary deflationists can and often do grant there is a “property” of truth in an honorific sense [Horwich, 1998], [Field, 2001]. True propositions all have the property of Three Forms of Pluralism about Truth 117 falling under the concept of truth or being correctly called “true”. But for deflationists, to admit this is to admit nothing important: the honorific property of truth is explanatorily inert and metaphysically transparent: it does nothing over and above the logical work done by the concept, and there is nothing to say about it. Reductive functionalism is quite close to this position: there is no property picked out by “truth” that is shared by all and only the true propositions. Rather, there is simply a uniform concept — shorthand for the truth job description. Of course, like the deflationist, the reductive functionalist could admit that there is an honorific property of falling under the description that all truths share in common. But — and this is the important point — the reductive functionalist about truth is barred from identifying even this wafer-thin property with the property of truth. For the property of being a property that falls under the descriptive concept of truth doesn’t itself fall under that description. At least not obviously. But if not, it is not itself a realizer of the truth-role. Hence a view which identifies truth with whatever property realizes the truth- role must hold that the honorific property is distinct from truth: call it truth*. And this in turn makes it hard to see how realizer functionalism really avoids the problems incurred by SAP. There is a property preserved by valid mixed inferences, yes, truth*, but it isn’t truth5. Truth itself becomes an idle wheel. For antideflationists like me, this couldn’t be more wrong: truth is a very useful explanatory property indeed. Among other things, we think that we need to appeal to truth, for example, to explain the normative facts of assertion and belief — why some assertions and beliefs are correct and others not. Moreover we need it to explain intentionality — how our mind represents the physical world around us. Deflationists obviously disagree that we need a substantive property of truth to explain these things, and I won’t get into those debates here. My point is that if Wright wants to avoid deflationism — and he does — then he shouldn’t hold Wright’s view of truth. For deflationism is what Wright’s minimal pluralism essentially is; it is more minimal than pluralist. Like SAP,

5Wright can point out that there remain at least two senses in which his view is not deflationary. First, even if there isn’t a single property shared by all and only truths, there are properties shared by mathematical truths, moral truths, physical truths and so on are. Second, Wright’s view of the concept is also more robust than the deflationists’. For the average run of the mill deflationist, all we have to say about the concept of truth is captured by one principle: the T -schema (or its instances). In contrast, Wright, as we noted above, thinks that the concept is fixed by a number of principles. But as argued in the text, the fact remains that there is no unique explanatorily potent property shared by all and only the truths. 118 Michael P. Lynch

Wright ends up less of a pluralist about truth then he seems.

5 Role Alethic Functionalism?

So if alethic functionalism is going to make sense as a genuine alternative view of truth, not to mention the best chance for unpacking the intuition behind pluralism, then realizer functionalism is not the way to go. It will come as no surprise to hear that I think a somewhat better route is the more traditional functionalist one: identify truth with the role property not the realizer. If we do so, we can still endorse (1) and (2) above. But we give them a diﬀerent metaphysical gloss. What we conclude is that

RF: The property being true just is the property having a property that plays the truth-role.

Truth, in other words, is what is sometimes called a 2nd order property: a proposition has the property truth when it has the property of having a property that plays the truth-role. A full-dress account of this position, as I’ve given elsewhere, is of course more complicated [Lynch 2001], [Lynch 2004]. But even so bluntly put, we can see that there are clear advantages to role functionalism. First, it keeps what is good about monism. What the monists have right is that the word “true” is a rigid predicator; it neither changes its meaning or reference from context to context. If truth is the role property, then there is a single property that all true propositions share, and “truth” rigidly designates that property in every domain and every world. Consequently, it is that single property that is preserved in valid inferences and ascribed in blind generalizations involving truth. Second, it also keeps what we want in pluralism. Indeed, it explains the pluralist über-thought — there is more than one way to be true — better than the above views by far. It takes that thought literally: by showing how one property — truth — can be realized in distinct ways. Third, it therefore avoids the Nietzschean worry: there is such a property of truth — it is the role property. There is, alas, trouble in paradise. RF has its attractions; but contrary to what I’ve suggested elsewhere [Lynch 2004], I don’t think that role functionalism is the best way of capturing the core pluralist thought. Three worries count against it. Three Forms of Pluralism about Truth 119

The first worry concerns characterizing the relevant relation between truth and its bases as realization. We typically think of the relation between a realizing property and its associated role-property as contingent. The fact that a particular piece of metal realizes the cork-screw role is not metaphysically necessary. It is contingent on, among other things, the make-up of corks and the laws of nature. Of course, if we hold these facts fixed, then it will be necessary, relative to those facts, that being that hunk of metal realizes the being a cork-screw. But these further facts are themselves contingent. So it remains an a posteriori physical necessity that the hunk is a corkscrew. But now the problem is apparent: whatever relationship truth as such has to specific properties that play the truth-role — that is, however we understand property dependency in this case— that relationship is not contingent. It isn’t a natural fact — if it is fact at all — that, for example, superassertibility is a way of being true. Nor is it plausibly a posteriori. We aren’t going to determine whether some property is a way of being true in the lab. The second worry concerns thinking of truth as a 2nd order property. 2nd order or “role” properties face familiar problems concerning explanatory power. Of course, whether truth is itself an explanatory property is a vexed issue. But assume for the moment that it is: that, for example, we need to appeal to truth to explain the success of our actions (by appealing to the fact that to succeed, I need to have true beliefs about how to get what I want). According to the present idea, whenever x has the role-property of truth, it also has the realizer property. So one might naturally wonder: if in a particular domain, truth is correspondence with fact, won’t appealing to our beliefs that do so correspond be an equally good explanation of the success of our relevant actions? Indeed, might it not be better, given that this is how truth is realized in that domain? And shouldn’t that make us suspicious of the reality of the role property? The third worry is simplest, and is an echo of one of the complaints we raised against Wright’s view above. The role functionalist says, in effect, that truth is the property of having some property that has certain features. But does the role property itself have those features? That is, it seems that we want to say that truth itself is objective and a goal of inquiry. But the property of having a property that is a goal of inquiry a goal of inquiry? Not obviously; indeed, obviously not. This point brings to light a flaw in the whole 2nd order property approach to functional properties. The basic functionalist strategy looks to identify a property via certain features the property is said to have by 120 Michael P. Lynch our folk understanding of the property. Together, we take these features to be analogous to a job-description, and we then set off to find out what in the world does that job. This, it seems, gives us a choice: we can either identify the original property we were interested in with the things or properties in the world which do its job, or we can identify it with the job itself. In the case of truth, I’ve argued, the latter route is preferable, since we need to respect the intuition that there is one property shared by all and only true propositions. So far, so good. The problem comes when we characterize the second route as the view that truth, or whatever property we are concerned with, is a 2nd order property. For doing so flies in the face of the original strategy. That strategy says that the property of F is the property that has the F -ish features specified in our folk theory of F . But the property of having a property that plays the F -role doesn’t have those F -ish features. So by adopting the 2nd order property approach, one seemingly undermines the original thought behind the functionalist strategy.

6 Conclusion and Future Prospects

The above considerations imply that the pluralist is in the unenviable position of having to meet two distinct and seemingly incompatible demands. The ﬁrst demand, suggested by the problems faced by SAP and reductive alethic functionalism, is that the pluralism must still respect:

Truth is One: there is a single property named by "truth" that all and only true propositions share.

Nonetheless if the pluralist is still going to be pluralist in any sense she must maintain:

Truth is Many: there is more than one way to be true.

Is a view that answers both these demands possible? One reason to be optimistic — which I can only sketch here — comes to light by considering the following fact. The pluralist wishes to say that propositions can be true in diﬀerent ways. At a minimum, this suggests that truth is dependent on these diﬀerent ways of being true. That is,

ST: Necessarily, for any proposition of domain D, if it is true, then it has some property F such that, necessarily, if a proposition of D is F , it is true. Three Forms of Pluralism about Truth 121

What ST proposes is that truth is a supervenient property, in that it strongly co-varies with other properties, such as correspondence with fact or superassertibility, that propositions may have. And ST is compatible, clearly, with two further thoughts: ﬁrst, that truth not just co-varies with these further properties but that it is metaphysically dependent in some way on those properties; and second, that which property determines truth can vary across context. That is, not only:

Necessarily, if x is F , then it is T but

It is possible that x is T without being F .

The natural thought, in short, is that truth is a single 1st order property which is asymmetrically dependent on other properties. Which property? The simplest answer, overlooked above, is to fall back on our truisms: to be true is to have the features picked out by the truisms, whatever they are. If, for example, our folk truisms tell us that truth is objective a norm of belief, and the property had by beliefs at the end of inquiry, then

Being true = being objective and normative of belief and had by beliefs at the end of inquiry.

Thus, far from being a disjunctive property, according to this suggestion, truth is a complex conjunctive property. Since it identifies truth with a single property, this thought respects commonality. But since that property has multiple subvening bases, it holds out a promise that we might be able to understand how there can be more than one way for a judgment to be true. Obviously this is just a sketch. What the pluralist needs is (a) a fuller account of the features picked out by the truisms; and (b) an account of the dependency relation. We’ve already seen that this second demand can’t be unpacked by saying that truth is realized by more than one underlying property. As the reflections of the last section suggest, the relation between the ways of being true and truth as such would have to be much stronger and more intimate than the relation between mental states and brain states. What the pluralist needs is not realization but metaphysical determination. To invoke an overtly Aristotlean way of putting the point, rather than thinking of truth as multiply realized in some other properties, the 122 Michael P. Lynch pluralist should see truth as immanent in those properties. Specifying the nature of immanence is difficult, but at the very least, we can say that that a property X is immanent in property Y , where Y is a member of some set of base properties B, just when necessarily, X cannot be instantiated unless some member of B is instantiated; and to instantiate Y just is, in part, to instantiate X. One type of immanent property is a determinable property. The determinable property redness for example, is immanent in its determinates scarlet and crimson. It is a priori that to be red one must be red in some way. And it is similarly a priori that scarlet is one way of being red, and being red is part of what it is to be scarlet. Immanence, like identity, is therefore a metaphysically intimate relation, but unlike identity, it is, like realization, asymmetric. Determinables are not the only type of immanent property. Nothing bars us from holding that certain functional properties are also imma- nent6. A functional property is defined by certain features, in particular its relational features. Intuitively then, some functional property F will be immanent in some other property Y just when it is a priori that the features definitive of F are a part of the features of Y . More carefully: a given functional property F is immanent in Y when it is a priori that the features and relations something has in virtue of its being F are a subset of the features and relations something has in virtue of being Y . Where this is the case, we could say that being F is manifested by being Y . Were the pluralist to see truth in this way, she would hold that a proposition is true if, and only if, it has some property Y that manifests truth. Intuitively put, a particular relation of correspondence would manifest truth were playing the truth-role — having the features picked out by the folk theory of truth — part of what it is for a proposition to correspond to objects and properties in the world. Whether these suggestions can be developed remains to be seen [see Lynch forthcoming]. Much more needs to be said. What is clear is that should alethic pluralism be made coherent, it must make sense of the thought that truth is neither one nor many but many and one7.

6Determinable immanent properties are distinct from manifested immanent properties in at least three ways. First, determinants generally diﬀer from one another along some linear ordering. Second, determinable properties cannot determine themselves; but the deﬁnition of manifestation allows, if it does not require, that manifestable properties can manifest themselves. Third, determinants of a determinable mutually detest one another, to paraphrase Armstrong. That is, nothing that is scarlet at some point and time can be crimson at that same point and time. Not so with a manifestable immanent property. 7This paper was originally presented at the (Anti)Realisms Conference in Nancy, Three Forms of Pluralism about Truth 123 References

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France. Thanks to the organizers and participants at the conference, and to two anonymous referees for this journal. 124

Nietzsche, F. 1968 Will to Power, W. Kaufmann (ed.); Kaufmann and Hollingdale (trans), New York: Vintage. Cited according to standard citation convention. Pedersen, Nikolaj 2006 What can the problem of mixed inferences teach us about alethic pluralism The Monist 89, 103–117. Sher, Gila 2004 In Search of a Substantive Theory of Truth, Journal of Philos- ophy, 101, 5–36. Tappolet, Christine 1997 Mixed Inferences: A Problem for Pluralism about Truth Pred- icates, Analysis, 57, 209–210. 2000 Truth Pluralism and Many-valued Logics: A Reply to Beall, The Philosophical Quarterly, 50, 382–385. Vision, Gerald 2004 Veritas, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wright, Cory D. 2005 On the Functionalization of Pluralist Approaches to Truth, Synthese 145, 1–28. Wright, Crispin 1992 Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1996 Replies to Critics, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (4). All pages numbers refer to the version reprinted in Wright 2003. 1999 Truth: A Traditional Debate Reviewed, Truth, S. Blackburn and K. Simmons (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 203– 238. 2001 Minimalism, Deﬂationism, Pragmatism, Pluralism in The Na- ture of Truth, M. P. Lynch (ed.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 751–789. 2003 Saving the Diﬀerences, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Truth and Warranted Assertibility

Tommaso Piazza Salzburg Universität

Résumé : Cet article soulève la question de savoir si le réaliste sémantique doit soutenir le principe selon lequel : (R) toute raison de penser qu’un énoncé est vrai est une raison de penser que l’énoncé est soutenable de manière garantie. A l’inverse de ce qui est proposé par W. Alston, qui dit que l’acceptation de (R) impose l’identiﬁcation de l’extension du « vrai » et du « soutenable de manière garantie », l’article soutient que (R) peut être dérivé de l’hypothèse neutre entre le réalisme et l’antiréalisme selon laquelle il faut accepter toute illustration par des exemples non-pathologiques du shéma d’équivalence ES (il est vrai que p ssi p) pour comprendre le prédicat « vrai ». En outre, l’article argumente en faveur de la thèse selon laquelle le réaliste a des motivations positives pour accepter (R), car ce principe est la prémisse d’un argument très général pour la thèse que la signiﬁcation d’un énoncé ne peut pas être donnée par les conditions dans lesquelles l’énoncé est soutenable.

Abstract: The article addresses the question whether the semantic realist should accept the principle (R) according to which every reason to think that a statement is true is a reason to think that the statement is warrantedly assertible, and vice versa. As against W. Alston’s suggestion, according to which the acceptance of (R) commits one to regarding “true” and “warrantedly assertible” as having the same extension, it is argued that (R) just follows from the neutral assumption, also shared by Alston, that the acceptance of all non-pathological instances of the Equivalence Schema (it is true that p iff p) provides a necessary condition for understanding the truth-predicate. So, it is argued, (R) is open both to the realist and to the antirealist. In addition, in the final part it is sketched a general argument against the anti-realistic identifica- tion of meaning with assertibility conditions, which is essentially premised on (R). With this it is shown that the realist has also good dialectical motivations to accept (R).

Philosophia Scientiæ, 12 (1), 2008, 125–141. 126 Tommaso Piazza Introduction1

The alethic debate on realism and antirealism characterizes these two positions as ones concerning the nature of truth: the realist holds that truth is an evidentially unconstrained property. She argues that the extension of the predicate is ﬁxed independently of what humans actually know, will know and would know, were their epistemic powers and/or the epistemic conditions an idealization of some sort of ours. The antirealist holds that truth is an epistemically constrained property; so she argues that the extension of “true” coincides with that of a (complex) epistemic predicate, like “warrantedly assertible”, “warrantedly assertible under idealized epistemic conditions”, “incontrovertibly warrantedly assertible”, etc. The realist is committed to denying that (R*) it is true that p if and only if it is warrantedly assertible that p. (R*) asserts that “true” and “warrantedly assertible” coincide in extension. The realist is committed to rejecting it because of her endorsement of a non-epistemic conception of truth, according to which the existence of truths for which a warrant is even in principle unavailable constitutes a possibility. Now consider the following claim:

(R) Every reason to think that a statement is true is a reason to think that the statement is warrantedly assertible, and vice versa.

Apparently, (R) does not entail that “true” and “warrantedly assertible” coincide in extension. It just says that, as a matter of conceptual necessity, every reason to think that a statement is true is a reason to think that the statement is warrantedly assertible, and vice versa. This means that the statements “it is warrantedly assertible that p” and “it is true that p” are cognitively equivalent; which simply means that “it is warrantedly assertible that p” and “it is true that p” have the same conditions of assertibility. So, it would seem, the realist is not committed to rejecting (R) as she is to rejecting (R*). In A realist Conception of Truth W. Alston has claimed that endorsing (R) presupposes endorsing (R*). Since (R*) voices a commitment inconsistent with the realist identiﬁcation of truth with a non-epistemic

1I am indebted to the following persons for very helpful comments and observations on previous versions of this paper: Sergio Bernini, Nicola Ciprotti, Michael Lynch, Teresa Marques, Luca Moretti, Marco Santambrogio, and an anonomous referee. Truth and Warranted Assertibility 127 property, Alston has claimed that the realist must also reject (R). Ac- cording to Alston, (R) is in good standing only if one presupposes that “what ES [the Equivalence Schema, according to which every instance of “it is true that p iﬀ p” holds necessarily] says to be equivalent to the truth of p is some positive epistemic status of the assertion of p” [Alston 1996, 219]. If one reads (ES) in this way—Alston insists—one immediately gets to (R*). So, as long as the meta-linguistic reading of (ES) is required to have (R), the acceptation of (R) cannot be divorced from the acceptation of (R*). As against Alston’s suggestion, I will show (i) that (R) can be derived without endorsing the so-called meta-linguistic reading of (ES). On the contrary, I will show that (R) can be derived by uncontroversial assumptions concerning the role performed by—rather than the correct reading of—(ES). As a consequence, I will show that the realist is not prevented from accepting it. Finally, I will argue (ii) that the realist had better accept it; for (R) can be used by the realist to put forward an argument against the antirealist. The ﬁnal part of the paper will be devoted to outline this argument.

Cognitive Equivalence, Implicit Deﬁnition

Recall an old-fashioned piece of philosophical exemplification. There is a person, Caroline, who knows that the first planet she sees in the sky after the sunset is Venus. She learned that the expression “the evening star” is a quite common label people uses to denote the planet, and, upon being consulted on matters of astrophysical identity, is always prone to maintain that the evening star is indeed Venus. An unlearned friend of Caroline, Tom, heard something about the existence of a star commonly referred to as the “morning star”, in virtue of the fact that it is the least star to disappear before the sunrise. Tom asks Caroline the weird question whether, because of the similarity between the two labels, the heavenly body denoted by “the evening star” and the star denoted by the “morning star” are one and the same star (actually Tom does not know which planet that “star” would be). Carolina, who does not know that the “morning star” too denotes Venus, unintendedly delivers the false answer that Venus is not the morning star. Though perhaps this is not its most interesting achievement, the philosophical literature has unanimously granted that there is nothing wrong in Caroline’s answer, nothing at least concerning her rationality (a rational agent has the right, at times, to ignore something of the world she rationally inhabits), nor 128 Tommaso Piazza her linguistic competence (the example works on the presupposition that the expression “the morning star” can be understood without mastering a full theory concerning its denotatum). If one asked what fault could have been attributed to Caroline be- side or instead her (partial) ignorance, consider the following case (nothing wrong if, again, the reader’s mind is surfaced by the suspicion of a philosophical déjà-vu). Caroline is well aware of the fact that Tom, her unlearned friend, is not married, and is used to tell her female friends this fact, in the hope that one might get interested in the poor Tom (normally no one does). However, one day Laura—unexpectedly driven by her interest for Tom—asks Carolina whether Tom is still a bachelor. This could be a good occasion for Tom; unfortunately, Carolina delivers the false answer that he is not anymore. As before, Carolina wanted to be sincere. So, if she is guilty of something, this is not to be found in her propensity to tell the truth. However she is not ignoring that Tom is a bachelor: she knows that he is not married. What is wrong? As more than one reader might have guessed, we are faced by an alternative: either Carolina does not know the meaning of the expression “bachelor”, or, if she does know it, she is being logically faulty: she does not seem to appreciate that if S has the property A, and the property A = the property B, then S has the property B. In both cases Caroline tells a falsehood. The second time, however, we have the strong intuition that more than ignorance is involved. We do not stay content with the supposition that she just ignores the fact that Tom is still a bachelor. What is the difference between the two cases? Why is Carolina faulty in the second case differently than in the first case? The difference, though arguably not its most interesting explanation, is that the statements

(1) The evening star is Venus, and

(2) The morning star is Venus, contrary to

(3) Tom is not married, and

(4) Tom is a bachelor, are not cognitively equivalent. Two statements are cognitively equivalent whenever “for any context c, nobody who fully understands them can take one of them to express Truth and Warranted Assertibility 129 a truth with respect to c without immediately being ready to take the other to express a truth with respect to c as well”2. The idea is that some statements, for reasons which have to do with the meaning of the expressions they feature, are such that no one, unless excusable for a lack of semantic competence or of logical capacities, can take a different attitude toward them: if one accepts the first, then one accepts the second; if one doubts the first, then one doubts the second, etc. The second example pivots on the identity of meaning between “bachelor” and “unmarried man”. Since they mean one and the same thing, (3) and (4) are cognitively equivalent. No one can accept the first and reject (doubt, simply weight, etc.) the second, and vice versa, unless falling sort of being a competent user of both expressions (henceforth I shall drop the second alternative concerning logical mistake, and shall maintain that whenever two statements are cognitively equivalent, S’s failure to take the same attitude toward both statements signals her semantic incompetence, i.e. her inability to understand what either the first or the second statement says). The first case, on the contrary, differs because (1) and (2) are not cognitively equivalent: “the morning star” and “the evening star”, though coincide in extension, have a different meaning. So that a thinker who accepts the first and rejects the second needs not be charged of something like incompetence in the use of either expression. Identity of meaning (as it is arguably the case for “bachelor” and “unmarried man”) does not constitute a necessary condition for cognitive equivalence. It arguably supplies a sufficient condition for it, if the relevant statements are of the form “S is p” and“S is q” and the meaning of “p” is the same as the meaning of “q”: in such case, no one understanding both statements can, for instance, believe the first and disbelieve the second. However, consider a biconditional B, whose left-hand side and whose right hand-side are not of the indicated form. Suppose that B performs a definitional role of a devised form of one of the expressions, say “#”, featured either by B’s right-hand side or by B’s left-hand side. In this case B would be what is commonly called an implicit definition of “#”, much in the same way Hilbert thought that Euclid’s axioms are implicit

2Künne, who has recently re-called the philosophical attention to Frege’s notion of cognitive equivalence, adds the clause concerning a fixed context in order to exclude cases of equivocation. Consider the word “bank”, and the statements “there is a bachelor on the bank” and “there is not an unmarried man on the bank”: there would be nothing amiss, were they uttered, respectively, in the public garden and in front of a big building down in the City, if the same person on either occasion accepted both. See [Künne 2003, 42]. 130 Tommaso Piazza definitions of geometrical expressions like “point”, “line”, etc. Roughly, an implicit definition is supposed to work as follows: suppose that the expression “#” is undefined, and that it is introduced within a language by the stipulation that it means whatever makes true a (partially unin- terpreted) formula featuring the expression “#” among its sub-sentential constituents. According to the theory, the acceptance of the formula as true affects that “#” acquires the intended meaning, in that whoever thinks that the formula is true is thereby affecting that the content the formula conveys is true, and so that “#” receive the intended meaning. Accordingly, “point”, in Hilbert’s story, means whatever makes true the axioms which feature among their constituents that very expression. Suppose, as more than one does, that the meaning of some expression is successfully introduced by means of an implicit definition. Suppose further that our B is indeed a implicit definition of “#”. If B is an implicit definition, acceptance of B constitutes a necessary condition for being a competent user of “#”. Since “#” means whatever makes B true, falling short of appreciating the truth of B is to fall short of understanding the meaning of “#”. Now remember that B is of a biconditional form. So it is of the form p iff q, where “#” is either a constituent of “p” or a constituent of “q”, no matter whose constituent it is. If it is so, failure to accept the transition from p to q and from q to p is a failure to count as competent user of the expression “#”. Acceptance of a bi-conditional may in fact be broken down into the unconditional acceptance of the transition from its left-hand side to its right hand, and of the transition from its right hand-side to its left-hand side. So, whoever accepts p and rejects q, or accepts q and rejects p, falls short of being a competent user of “#”. Moreover, what the implicit definitional status of B seems to rule out is the consistency of a difference in attitude toward its left-hand side and its right-hand side, and the supposition that this difference is not to be attributed to one’s linguistic incompetence. For every attitude φ, a different attitude ξ is ruled out by the acceptance of B, whose bi-conditional form guarantees p’s and q’s covariance in truth-value. Whoever accepts B, and takes the attitude φ toward p is thereby committed to taking the same attitude toward q (and vice-versa). Accordingly, if B is a biconditional, and performs the semantic role of an implicit definition, its left-hand side and its right- hand side are cognitively equivalent: the acceptance of B constitutes a necessary condition for understanding “#”, and the acceptance of B rules out the possibility of a difference in attitude toward B’s left-hand and right-hand sides, so that whoever takes different attitudes toward them falls short of being competent with “#”. Which is what the cognitively equivalence of a pair of statements requires. Truth and Warranted Assertibility 131 The Equivalence Schema as a (partial) implicit definition of “true”

Does (ES) plays an implicit definitional role along the lines of the preceding section? Assessing the question whether a context “B” is to be regarded as an implicit definition of one of its constituting expressions “#” arguably requires assessing two distinct sub-questions: whether mastery of “#” can be credited independently of the doxastic attitude one is disposed to take toward “B” (i.e. whether acceptation of “B” constitutes a necessary condition on the understanding of “#”), and whether mastery of “#” is entailed by the acceptation of “B” (i.e. whether acceptation of “B” constitutes a sufficient condition on the understanding of “#”). To say that acceptation of “B” provides a necessary condition on the understanding of “#” is to say that every case in which one is reluctant to accept “B” is to be regarded as a case in which one does not understand “#”. Acceptation of (ES) seems, in light of the following example, to possess this feature. Tom (again) tells Caroline an unbelievable story concerning his relationship with Laura: “We have been to New York for the week-end”. Caroline is not convinced because she knows that both Tom and Laura live in Austria. So she asks Tom whether it is true that they have been to New York. Tom apparently weights the question, and delivers the answer that it is not true. However, he finally adds: “but as I already told you, we have been to New York”. What should we think of Tom? His linguistic performance reveals that he fails to appreciate the fact that “We have been to New York” does entail “it is true that we have been to New York”. Differently than before, however, we are not disposed to treat Tom’s defiance as immaterial to the question whether he understands the predicate “true”: he is not sensitive to the fact that to assert is to present as true, so that his asserting that p commits him to assert that it is true that p. So, we are disposed to treat Tom as one who fails to grasp the concept of truth. It would seem that this example could be easily generalised to every p. So that, it might be suggested, the acceptation of (ES) seems to provide a necessary condition for the understanding of the truth-predicate. As against the foregoing suggestion, it might be argued that having the disposition to accept every instance of (ES) provides too strong a condition on the understanding of “it is true”. After all, it might be suggested, no rational thinker can be disposed to accept the transition from “what I now say by uttering this sentence is false” to “it is true that what I now say by uttering this sentence is false”. Such transition 132 Tommaso Piazza would entail the utterance of a paradoxical claim, which never seems to be possibly true. If what I say is true — that is to say if I what I now say by uttering the first sentence is false — then what I say when uttering it is false. If false, however, than what I say is true. This rejoinder can seemingly be dealt with by imposing the constraint that it is the disposition to accept all non-pathological instances of (ES) that constitutes a necessary condition on the understanding of the truth predicate. However, once such constraint is in place, it seems that understanding the truth predicate requires having the disposition to recognise as such all pathological instances of (ES). Can the latter observation be made compatible with the claim that the qualified acceptation of (ES) provides a necessary condition on the understanding of the truth predicate? A negative answer is plausibly enforced by the observation that if one is in a position to comply to the qualified condition, one must already be in possession of the concept of truth (as constituted by the acceptation of the claim that if a statement is true, then it is not false). If one reads the “already” in a logical manner, then the possession of the concept of truth must be constituted much independently of the qualified disposition to accepting every non-pathological instance of (ES). Accordingly, the acceptation of every non-pathological instance of (ES) cannot constitute a necessary condition for understanding the truth-predicate. However, it might be suggested that the concept of truth has an holistic nature, such that its possession is constituted by several conditions, of which the condition that if something is true, then it is not false, and the condition that every non-pathological instance of (ES) hold good constitutes just two different instances. Were it so, possession of the concept of truth would be constituted by the joint acceptation of all the basic conditions. What about the sufficiency condition? If we allow for the holistic nature of the truth concept — i.e. if we allow the acceptation of more than one principle to constitute the possession of the truth-concept — it hardly constitutes a possibility that one of those principles, besides providing a necessary condition, also provides a sufficient one for possessing the truth concept. For if a condition for possessing a concept is both necessary and sufficient, then meeting the condition is all that is required to possess the concept. Accordingly, if we salvage the contention that the acceptation (ES) provides a necessary condition for understanding the truth predicate by constraining the range of the instances one is to be disposed to accept just to its non-pathological instances, then it must be at the cost of denying that acceptation of (ES) also provides a sufficient Truth and Warranted Assertibility 133 condition for the possession of the truth concept.

Does this result impede the characterisation of (ES) as an implicit definition of the predicate “it is true that”? According to the foregoing provisos, this question deserves an affirmative answer. Acceptation of (ES) does in fact not provide a necessary and sufficient condition for understanding the truth predicate. However, it resulted from the foregoing considerations that the qualified acceptation of (ES) does indeed provide a necessary condition. If we allow that a context partly constitutes the understanding of an expression if accepting the context constitutes a necessary condition for understanding it, we can then propose to regard (ES) as a partial implicit definition of the truth predicate.

Nothing significant happens concerning the relation between the notion of implicit definition and that of cognitive equivalence if partial implicit definitions are allowed as legitimate implicit definitions of an expression. It remains true that if a (partial or non-partial) implicit definition has a biconditional form, its left-hand side and its right-hand side are cognitively equivalent.

Let us illustrate the point by concentrating on the case most interesting for us, that is to say on (ES). Along with the foregoing considerations, suppose that the acceptation of every (non pathological instance) of (ES) constitutes a necessary (though non-sufficient) condition of the possession of the concept of truth. That the qualified acceptation of (ES) constitutes a necessary condition to possess the truth concept guarantees that whoever falls short of the disposition to accept all (non- pathological) instances of (ES) does not possess the concept of truth. Accordingly, for any arbitrary p that does not give rise to a pathological instance of (ES), acceptation of “p” and rejection of “it is true that p” is not consistent with the possession of the concept of truth. Conversely, whoever possesses the concepts necessary to grasp both what “p” says and what “it is true that p” says cannot but be disposed to take the very same propositional attitude towards both statements. For if she has the concepts to understand both “p” and “it is true that p”, a fortiori she possesses the concept of truth, and the possession of concept of truth, so long as it is also constrained by the qualified acceptation of the covariance in truth value of “p” and “it is true that p” encapsulated by (ES), guarantees the necessary convergence of propositional attitudes. 134 Tommaso Piazza Alston’s Commitment

In Alston’s own terminology, the Equivalence Schema is referred to as the T -schema. Accordingly, every statement that derives from the uniform substitution of “p” with a declarative sentence, is, in Alston’s terminology, a T -statement. Does Alston attribute to the acceptation of every T -statement the role of constituting the understanding of the truth- predicate? This would be equivalent to attributing a constitutive role to the acceptation of (ES). Given the result of the preceding section, an affirmative answer to this question would then show that Alston is committed to the claim that ‘p” and “it is true that p” are cognitively equivalent. The following quotation from A Realist Conception of Truth seemingly provides promising evidence as to Alston’s endorsement of the implicit definitional role of (ES): The suggestion is that if we understand that any T-statement is conceptually, analytically true, true by virtue of the meaning of the terms involved, in particular the term ’true’, then we thereby understand what it is for a proposition to be true. [Alston 1996, 27] However, there is one difficulty in construing Alston as endorsing the conception that (ES) implicitly defines “true”. The problem is that Al- ston seemingly requires one to appreciate that every T-statement (every instance of (ES)) is conceptually true for her to understand the predicate “true”. However, the attribution of an implicit definitional role to (ES) just requires a thinker to accept every instance thereof, much independently of the recognition that every such instance is conceptually, not to say analytically true. More than this, Alston is quite explicit in declaring that the T -schema is not a definition, not even a contextual definition, of “true”. The reason is that, unlike in a proper definition, the right-hand side and the left- hand side of (ES) are not synonymous. The meaning of “The proposition that lemons are sour is true” cannot be the same as that of “Lemons are sour”. The former has conceptual content absent from the latter. One could understand “Lemons are sour” perfectly well without having any concept of truth whatever. [Alston 1996, 34] Two considerations are in order. The first one concerns the role Al- ston attributes to (ES). If my reading of the foregoing quotation is correct, Alston is implausibly making the capability to understand the truth-predicate depend on the capability of entertaining propositional Truth and Warranted Assertibility 135 attitudes of the form “it is conceptually true that —” and “it is analytically true that —”. The implausibility stems from the fact that Alston’s account of the way the understanding of the truth-predicate can be im- parted circularly requires, on the part of those who still lack the linguistic resources to understand it, the capability of entertaining complex attitudes toward — and therefore of understanding — contents featuring the very concept expressed by the predicate. Where the understanding of “true” to depend on the satisfaction of Alston’s condition, no one could understand that predicate. Second observation: both the claim that the truth-predicate “is the only predicate such that, when one appreciates that the statement gen- erated by that insertion [within the schema: for any p, p is iff p] is conceptually true, one is thereby in possession of the concept expressed by that predicate” [Alston 1996, 54], and the claim that (ES)’s left-hand side and right-hand side are not synonymous, are consistent with the cognitive equivalence of the left-hand side and right-hand side of (ES). As to the first contention, consider, as Alston seemingly suggests, that S is able to understand every statement of the form “it is true that p”, only if S understand that every instance of (ES) is conceptually, analytically true. If it is so, for every S possessing that capability, we might derive the consequence that S knows, for every p, that if it is true that p, then p, and that if p, then it is true that p. Knowledge that every instance of (ES) is conceptually, analytically true certainly entails knowledge that the transition from its left-hand side to its right-hand side, and vice versa, holds good. As to the second contention, if “p” and “it is true that p” are not synonymous, then one being in a position to understand “p” can plainly be in a position not to understand that “it is true that p”. For in addition to possessing the conceptual resources necessary to understand that p, she also has to possess the conceptual resources necessary to understand that is true that . However, once it is granted that, for some S, S does possess both kinds of conceptual resources, and once it is granted that the conceptual resources necessary to understand the truth predicate are acquired in the indicated way, it follows that “p” and “it is true that p” are cognitive equivalent. No one understanding both of them can take one of them to express a truth (a falsehood, or whatever) without at the same time being ready to take the other one to express a truth (a falsehood, whatever) as well. I conclude this section by maintaining that Alston’s stance toward (ES) does indeed commit him to the view that “p” and “it is true that p” are cognitively equivalent. Therefore, the following argument, tak- 136 Tommaso Piazza ing as its first premise the claim that both statements are cognitively equivalent, is acceptable by Alston’s own lights.

Vindicating (R)

To say that “p” and “it is true that p” are cognitively equivalent is to say that

(i) R is a reason to believe that p iﬀ R is a reason to believe that it is true that p.

The cognitive equivalence thesis ensures that no consideration possibly enjoins acceptance of p unless it also enjoins acceptance that it is true that p, and vice versa. Existed an R whose substitution within (i) gave rise to a false statement, there would be circumstances under which a thinker fully understanding both sides of (ES) would be rationally required (permitted) to take diﬀerent propositional attitudes toward them; which is inconsistent with the statements’ cognitive equivalence. Now consider the following premise:

(ii) R is a reason to believe that p iﬀ R is a reason to assert that p.

(ii) should be taken to be a deﬁnitional truth. With this I mean that (ii) just codiﬁes the purely epistemic sense in which the notion of “reason for an assertion” is referred to within the debate over semantic realism and anti-realism3. By substituting (i)’s left-hand side with (ii)’s right-hand side we yield

3(ii), as a consequence, excludes as reasons for an assertion prudential considerations, or motivational considerations. If I think of someone that she is very impolite, and I attach much value to politeness, I may find my self with strong reasons to believe that she is impolite (imagine I saw her many times being impolite with someone else, and that some trustworthy witness told me the same), but with no (motivational) reasons to assert it. Did I say to this person that she is impolite, I might run the risk of being impolite in turn, and I am not willing to be so. This does not change that when I have reasons to believe that she is unpolite the assertion that she is would be justified under the relevant respect. Wright emphasized the same point where, by commenting on Putnam’s Deweyan use of the label “warranted assertibility” instead of that of “rational acceptability”, he says: “Naturally, there can be conversational or social reasons why a belief which one is warranted in holding had better not be expressed in a particular context. But if we are concerned only with epistemic justification, then each of one’s warranted beliefs corresponds to a justified possible assertion and vice versa”, [Wright 1987, 37]. Wright also writes: “we may take it that this [i.e., rational acceptability] is the notion which is now standardly called assertibility”, [Wright 2000, 337]. Truth and Warranted Assertibility 137

(iii) R is a reason to assert that p iff R is a reason to believe that it is true that p. If every reason to assert is a reason to believe, and vice versa, and every reason to believe in a proposition is a reason to believe that the proposition is true, and vice versa, then every reason to assert a proposition is a reason to believe it true, and vice versa, that is to say (iii). As a last premise consider now the following one: (iv) R is a reason to assert that p iff R is a reason to believe that it is warrantedly assertible that p (iv) too holds true on conceptual grounds. It just spells out the iterative nature of the reasons for an assertion. If one has a reason to assert a proposition, then one has a reason to believe (assert) that the proposition is assertible. Conversely, if one has a reason to believe (assert) that a given proposition is assertible, then one has a reason to belie (assert) the proposition4,5. It suffices to substitute (iv)’s right-hand side for the 4(iv) involves no commitment as to the contents a thinker must be prepared to accept if she is to count as a rational epistemic agent. The case of a lay-man L who lacks the concept of warranted assertion but still shows in his linguistic practice, for most of the p expressible in her language, the ability to tell apart the circumstances which are germane to the assertion of p constitutes no counterexample to (iv). For L would falsify the left-to-right transition of a slightly modified principle, according to which (iv*) S has a reason to assert that p iff S believes that it is warrantedly assertible that p. The L under consideration has possibly reasons to assert that p, yet it is arguable that L cannot meet the right-hand side condition stated by the principle; for she lacks the relevant conceptual repertoire. So (iv*) is arguably false. Contrary to (iv*), however, (iv) does not impose any condition on what a thinker must (be in a position to) believe of a proposition in order to (be in a position to) have a reason to assert it; it just signals that whatever counts as a reason to assert that p automatically turns into a reason to believe that it is warrantedly assertible that p (much independently of the fact that any thinker who is able to appreciate reasons to assert that p actually believes or possesses the concepts necessary to believe that it is warrantedly assertible that p whenever it is the case). 5It must also be noted that “reason” and “warrant” are not used in this context as synonymous. This can be appreciated by considering cases in which R counts as a reason to accept that p, at the same time failing to warrant the belief (or the assertion) that p. To generate such cases it suffices to consider bad reasons. It might then be argued that “reason” is to be contrasted with “warrant” in that the former characterises the subjective epistemic property of taking oneself to have a warrant, and the latter the objective epistemic property just referred to within the scope of the intensional operator. I do not think that this characterisation impugns the status of (iv). As before, to differentiate reasons from warrants along the subjective-objective axis is problematic only if one accepts a different principle, (iv**), according to which R is a reason to assert that p only if R warrants the assertion of p. The original principle just exploits the following conceptual link between subjective and objective reason: if one has a (subjective) reason to assert that p, one takes oneself to have a(n objective) warrant to assert it, and vice versa. 138 Tommaso Piazza left-hand side of (iii) to yield

(iv) R is a reason to believe that it is warrantedly assertible that p iﬀ R is a reason to believe that that it is true that p, which is the very condition (R)6.

Conclusion 1

In the light of the foregoing argument, it should be clear that acceptance of (R) does not presuppose the acceptance of the meta-linguistic reading of (ES). So, also if one accepts Alston’s claim that such reading is false, acceptance of (R) is not inconsistent with the acceptance of (ES) (in its correct reading). For (R) derives from the further principle (i) that is consequent upon the supposition — arguably shared by Alston — that acceptation of (ES) is indeed necessary to grasp the concept of truth. Contrary to Alston’s suggestion, then, (R) does not beg the realist’s question. Its acceptation does not depend on the further claim,

6In his recent Conceptions of Truth Wolfgang Künne offers a new version of Fitch’s argument against every form of alethic antirealism: it is based on considering as a candidate for truth the following pair of sentences: Σ0 “The number of my hairs is odd and nobody can be justified in believing that it is odd”, and Σ1 “the number of my hairs is even and nobody can be justified in believing that it is even”. His argument shows that the joint assumption of the truth of Σ0 (respectively of Σ1) and of the rational acceptability of Σ0 (respectively of Σ1) leads to a contradiction. Since either Σ0 or Σ1 is true, one of them constitutes the premise of a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that every truth must be in principle rationally acceptable. I mention this result just to dispel the impression that it enjoins any kind of consequence for (1*). The impression to the contrary might arise as a consequence of the correct observation that sentences like Σ0 or Σ1 are such that any belief in their truth is inconsistent with any belief to the effect that their assertion would be warranted. They constitute a clear counterexample to (1*) — one might wish to conclude — in that it is also clearly the case that having any reason to believe in the truth of either Σ0 or Σ1 does not imply having any reason to believe that either Σ0 or Σ1 is warrantedly assertible. For the latter belief is inconsistent with the former. The reason I take sentences like * Σ0 or Σ1 to be neutral with respect to (1 ) is however that they are built in a way that no belief to the effect that they are true, nor any belief to the effect that they are warrantedly assertible can ever be as much as justified. So that neither the transition * from-left-to-right nor the transition from-right-to-left of (1 ) — when either Σ0 or Σ1 is substituted for p — can ever be falsified: as a matter of conceptual necessity, both transitions can never deploy a truth to be preserved in the first place. Künne himself, in a different context, observes that “a biconditional is false (as understood in classical logic) if one of its branches is true and the other false”; and in (1*), when either Σ0 or Σ1 is substituted for p, “such a divergence in truth value cannot arise”, [Künne 2003, 188]. Truth and Warranted Assertibility 139 unacceptable to the realist, that “it is true that p” and “it is warrantedly assertible that p” are extensionally equivalent. Before concluding, I would like to stress an important respect under which the realist should welcome this result. The next section is in fact devoted at outlining a very general argument against the semantic anti-realist, taking as its main premise (R).

(R) and Meaning Antirealism

As it is commonly suggested, “the essence of an anti-realist conception of meaning [is] given by the thesis that a sentence’s meaning or content is given in terms of its assertion conditions” [Skorupski 1993, 133]. Such conception straightforwardly derives from the antirealist identiﬁ- cation of truth with an epistemic notion: understanding meaning is in fact held both by the realist and by the antirealist to consist in grasp of truth-conditions; if, along with the antirealist, truth is (some kind of) assertibility, then understanding meaning is to grasp conditions of assertibility. Let us state the antirealist claim in the following form:

(a) Meaning is assertibility conditions.

If meaning is assertibility conditions, then two sentences having the same assertibility conditions have the same meaning. Now (R) says that if R is a reason to assert that it is true that p, then R is a reason to assert that it is warrantedly assertible that p. This claim can be put equivalently as a claim to the eﬀect that “it is true that p” and “it is warrantedly assertible that p” have the same assertibility conditions. In fact, (R) guarantees that every reason in the light of which “it is true that p” is assertible is a reason in the light of which “it is warrantedly assertible that p” is assertible, and vice versa. So, acceptation of (a) commits the antirealist to accept that

(b) “it is true that p” and “it is warrantedly assertible that p” have the same meaning.

Now consider a given p which, under an available body of information E, is still undecided (where agnosticism is the right epistemic attitude toward p). In this case, it is both assertible that it is not the case that it is assertible that p and it is not the case that it is assertible that p. If it is assertible that it is not the case that it is assertible that p, then¬ it is not assertible that p is true. The antirealist is in fact committed¬ to the ¬ 140 Tommaso Piazza claim that p’s truth consists in (some form of) warranted assertibility enjoyed by¬ p. Accordingly, when p is undecided it can be assertible that it is not¬ the case that it is assertible that p, and at the same time it can fail to be assertible that it is not the case that p is true (equivalently, that p is true). So, ¬ (c) “it is not the case that it true that p” and “it is not the case that it is warrantedly assertible that p” have not the same assertibility conditions, hence they do not have the same meaning

(b) and (c) are actually inconsistent with

(d) The meaning of a complex sentence is a function of the meanings of its constituents.

The statements mentioned in (c) result form embedding the statements mentioned in (b) with the phrase “it is not the case that”. According to (b), the constituent statements have the same meaning. Therefore, (d) entails that also the complex statements they constitute should have the same meaning7.

Conclusion 2

If the ﬁrst conclusion is sound, then the antirealist is committed to accepting premise (b) of the foregoing argument. Accordingly, the only options available to her seem to reduce either to reject, along with (d), the compositionality of meaning, or to reject the very premise (a), voic- ing her essential commitment to an epistemic conception of meaning. This is not the right place to press the intuitive point that the latter alternative does not look as much as available to the antirealist. The compositionality of meaning doesn’t seem to be a negotiable belief: its rejection in fact threatens to make language learning an impossible task. The main conclusion I want to draw is rather the following: so long as the foregoing argument is intuitively appealing, it apparently forces the antirealist to recede from her commitment to the epistemic nature of meaning. Since the argument essentially features premise (R), its very existence constitutes good reason, in contraposition with the worries voiced by Alston, for the realist to accept it.

7The argument, in its essential lines, is already sketched in [Skorupski 1993]. Truth and Warranted Assertibility 141 References

Alston, William P. 1996 A Realist Conception of Truth, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Horwich, Paul 1998 Truth, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Künne, Wolfgang 2003 Conceptions of Truth, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skorupski, John 1993 Anti-Realism, Inference, and the Logical Constants, in J. Hal- dane & C. Wright (eds.), Reality, Representation, and Projection, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 133–164. Wright, Crispin 1987 Realism, Meaning, and Truth, 2nd edition, Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. 1992 Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. 2000 Truth as Sort of Epistemic: Putnam’s Peregrinations, Journal of Philosophy, 97, 335–364. 142 Mind-Dependence, Irrealism and Superassertibility

Daniel Laurier Université de Montréal

Résumé : Dans la section 1, j’explique pourquoi une conception Dummet- tienne du réalisme n’a de pertinence que dans certains cas particuliers. Dans la section 2, j’indique qu’il est raisonnable de penser que Crispin Wright soutient que la vérité de certains jugements dépend de notre capacité de la connaître (si et) seulement si leur vérité consiste dans le fait qu’ils sont superassertables. Dans la section 3, je souligne qu’insister, avec Dummett et Wright, sur la connaissabilité, nous empêche de voir qu’il y a d’autres formes légitimes de réalisme. Je propose une réfutation de la thèse attribuée à Wright dans la section 2, ce qui m’amène à suggérer que c’est une erreur de penser que la question du réalisme concerne essentiellement la nature de la vérité. Abstract: In section 1, I explain why a speciﬁcally Dummettian conception of realism will be relevant only in a restricted range of cases. In section 2, I suggest that Crispin Wright could be read as holding that the truth of certain judgements depends on our capacity to know it (if and) only if their being true consists in their being superassertible. In section 3, I point out that insisting on knowability, as both Dummett and Wright do, prevents one from seeing that their are other legitimate forms of realism. I argue against the claim attributed to Wright in section 2, which leads me to suggest that it is a mistake to construe the realism debates as being essentially concerned with the nature of truth.

The purpose of this paper is to explain and criticize a conception of realism which is suggested by the general approach to the realism debates which Crispin Wright has developed, mainly in his Truth and Objectivity [Wright 1992]. This book largely contributed to restructuring the whole problematic of realism, along what might be called post-Dummettian lines, inasmuch as it remains in keeping with the idea that the question whether truth must be seen as epistemic in nature should be at the heart of the controversies. The main thrust of the discussion will be to cast

Philosophia Scientiæ, 12 (1), 2008, 143–157. 144 Daniel Laurier doubt on this idea (and by the same token, to show that a certain prima facie plausible way of understanding Wright’s approach would turn it into an unacceptable view and is thus likely to be wrong). But ﬁrst, I propose what I take to be fairly standard characterizations of the main sorts of realism/irrealism.

1 Standard vs Dummettian Realism

So, let’s start with the nearly trivial observation that one may be a realist either about things (in the widest sense, including properties) of certain kinds, or about facts of certain kinds (or both). The realist about things of a certain kind will typically claim (i) that there are things of this kind and (ii) that all (or perhaps, some) of them exist independently of ourselves. The realist about facts of a certain kind will typically claim (i) that there are states-of-affairs of this kind, (ii) that some of them obtain and (iii) that all (or perhaps, some) of those which obtain do so independently of ourselves. Alternatively, Thing-realism could also be expressed, in the semantic mode, by saying that some terms of some corresponding kind are such that they denote or apply to existing things, all (or some) of which exist independently of ourselves. Likewise, Fact- realism could be expressed by saying that some judgements of a certain corresponding kind represent obtaining states-of affairs, all (or some) of which obtain independently of ourselves. This, in turn, could be rephrased as the claim that some judgements of the given kind are true, and all (or some) of them are true independently of ourselves. This suggests that any form of Thing-realism is a conjunction of two claims: an existence-claim and an independence-claim, while any form of Fact-realism is a conjunction of three claims: an existence claim, an actuality claim and an independence claim. Accordingly, there are two ways to oppose any Thing-realist claim, and three ways to oppose any fact-realist claim. That is to say, one can oppose realism about facts of kind K, not only by denying either that any state-of-affairs of kind K do obtain, or that the obtaining states-of-affairs of this kind obtain independently ourselves, but also by denying that there is any state-of- affairs of kind K at all. Likewise, one can oppose realism with-respect-to judgements of kind K∗, not only by denying either that there is any true judgement of this kind, or that the true judgements of this kind are true independently of ourselves, but also by denying that there is any judgement of kind K∗ at all. It seems however to be a fairly common practice, in Dummettian circles, to understand realism with-respect-to judgements of a certain kind K∗ (what is often called realism about a certain region of discourse) to Mind-dependence, Irrealism and Superassertibility 145 be the claim that (some or) all judgements of this kind have a determinate truth-value “independently of ourselves”, or are such that their being either true or false is “independent of ourselves” (in some relevant sense of this phrase, to be discussed later). Somewhat more perspicu- ously, this can be rephrased as the claim that (some or) all judgements of kind K∗ are such that if they are true, then they are true independently of ourselves and if they are false, then they are false independently of ourselves. Even though this has just been (and is usually) put in the “semantic mode”, it should be obvious that the same sort of view could have been expressed in the material mode, by saying that (some or) all states-of-affairs of a certain kind K are such that their obtaining or failing to obtain is independent of ourselves (i.e., such that if they obtain, then it is independent of ourselves that they do and if they fail to obtain, then it is independent of ourselves that they do). From what I take to be a standard perspective, this looks like a very peculiar way of characterizing realism/irrealism. Such a claim is obviously weaker, in one respect, than what I have described as Fact- realism, since it doesn’t entail the truth (or falsity) of any judgement of the relevant kind (i.e., it doesn’t include an actuality claim). But it is stronger in another respect, since it entails that certain judgements can be false only if they are false independently of ourselves, and in the form in which it was introduced, Fact-realism doesn’t say anything about being false (or failing to obtain). But now suppose that negation is understood in such a way that the negation of a judgement is true if and only if this judgement is false (not true). Then it would seem that if any judgement is true independently of ourselves, then its negation will have to be false independently of ourselves, and conversely. Thus, if the kind of judgements under consideration is closed under negation (and negation is construed in this standard way) then all judgements of this kind will be such that if they are true, then they are true independently of ourselves, if and only if they are such that if they are false, then they are false independently of ourselves. In other words, (on these assumptions) the claim that all judgements of kind K∗ are such that if they are true, then they are true independently of ourselves and if they are false, then they are false independently of ourselves will boil down to the claim that all judgements of kind K∗ are such that if they are true, then they are true independently of ourselves. It will then turn out to be strictly weaker than what I have identified as realism with-respect-to judgements of kind K∗. For the latter is the claim that there are true judgements of kind K∗ and all of them are true independently of ourselves, which entails that if any judgement 146 Daniel Laurier of kind K∗ is true, then it is true independently of ourselves. Thus, (on the assumptions mentioned above) the sort of realist thesis singled out by Dummett and Co. turns out to be nothing but a restricted form of Fact-realism, one which dispenses with the actuality claim to keep only the existence and independence claims. However, things are less straightforward when the relevant kind of judgements is not closed under negation, or negation fails to satisfy the condition that the negation of a judgement is true if and only if this judgement is false (not true). In that case, the sort of realist thesis Dummett seems to have in mind introduces something new, namely the claim that certain judgements are such that if they are false, then they are false independently of ourselves. There will then be cases where a Dummettian style realist thesis will have to be expressed by saying that all (or some) judgements of a certain kind K∗ are such that if they are true, then they are true independently of ourselves and if they are false, then they are false independently of ourselves. The corresponding Independence-irrealist (as I call the irrealist who wants to oppose the realist’s Independence-claim) will then hold that not all (or none of) the judgements of the given kind are such that they are true independently of ourselves if true, and false independently of ourselves if false, and there are obviously many different ways in which this could turn out to be true. For example, it could be true because not all (or no) true judgements of this kind are true independently of ourselves, or because not all (or no) false judgements of this kind are false independently of ourselves, or because some combination of these claims is true. I must confess, however, that I’ve never seen an irrealist trying to make his/her case by arguing that no false judgement of a certain kind is false independently of ourselves. The important thing is that it will always be sufficient, in order to establish a Fact-irrealist thesis as against some corresponding Fact-realist thesis (whether or not of the Dummettian variety), to show that all (or some) of the true judgements (obtaining states-of-affairs) of the relevant kind are not true (do not obtain) independently of ourselves. Indeed, it seems to be both the most natural strategy, and the most likely to be favored by the Independence- irrealist. Moreover, it must be kept in mind that it is only in a fairly restricted range of cases that the Dummettian approach would seem to have any chance of being of special relevance. When the realist claims that something exists/obtains independently of ourselves, he/she (most often) means to be saying that it exists/obtains independently of the fact that we have some specific mental feature or power M (with respect to the thing in question). As far as I can see (and historically, at least), there are three main candidates for playing Mind-dependence, Irrealism and Superassertibility 147 the part of the designated mental feature M: (i) our capacity to know, (ii) our capacity to think or conceive and (iii) our capacity to perceive or experience. I have just pointed out that one special feature of a Dummett-style realist thesis is that it doesn’t include any actuality claim and is restricted to an existence claim and a pair of independence claims. Another is that Dummett and his followers have a fairly definite idea of what it is, in such contexts, to be “independent of ourselves”, according to which for something to be independent of ourselves is for it to be independent of our having the capacity to know it. More precisely, since Dummett is essentially concerned with Fact-realism, the guiding idea is that the truth or falsity of a judgement is independent of ourselves when it is independent of our having the capacity to know it1. One consequence of reading the independence claim as a claim that something is independent of our having a certain mental feature M (in this instance, a capacity to know), is that such a claim can be true either because we don’t have any such mental feature, or because we have it and the thing in question is independent of our having it. This means that, just as the irrealist has the option of opposing the realist by rejecting his/her actuality claim, the realist has the option of opposing the Independence-irrealist by rejecting his/her commitment to our hav-

1Putting it in this way may reveal an asymmetry between truth and falsity. The claim that the truth of the judgement that P is independent of our having the capacity to know it could be understood either as saying that it is independent of our having the capacity to know that P , or as saying that it is independent of our having the capacity to know that it is true. On the other hand, the claim that the falsity of the judgement that P is independent of our having the capacity to know it could be understood as saying that it is independent of our having the capacity to know that it is false (not true), but obviously not as saying that it is independent of our having the capacity to know that P . It could however, be construed as saying that it is independent of our having the capacity to know that not-P, on the assumption that a judgement is false if and only if its negation is true. This doesn’t, in itself, requires that the judgement that not-P itself belongs to the kind under consideration, but it would seem hard to deny that one cannot have the capacity to know that not-P without having the capacity to know that the judgement that not-P is true (assuming one possesses the concept of truth). The upshot seems to be that only in cases where the falsity of a judgement is equated with the truth of its negation, could the Dummettian realist conceive of the capacity to know that something is false as being essentially the same as the capacity to know that something (else) is true. I will here be assuming that we are dealing with such cases, and thus that the Dummettian realist claim can be expressed by saying that (some or) all judgements of kind K* are such that if they are true, then they are true independently of our having the capacity to know them and if they are false, then they are false independently of our having the capacity to know their negation. 148 Daniel Laurier ing the relevant mental feature. Now, this is exactly the kind of realist position that Dummett has had a tendency to present as the only possible (or interesting) form of realism. For he often writes (at least in his early papers) as if the realist was the one who holds that certain judgements have a determinate truth-value, despite the fact that we are “in principle” unable to determine which. This is the case where, to use the celebrated formula, it is held that truth “transcends our capacities of recognition”. But as Wright was one of the ﬁrst to observe, and as should be clear from what we have been saying, there are many areas of discourse for which one might be inclined to grant that truth doesn’t transcend our capacities of recognition, while still wanting to interpret them in a realist way (moral and “comic” discourses are Wright’s stock examples), i.e., while still wanting to hold that the truth of the relevant judgements is independent our having the capacity to know them. Much of Wright’s eﬀorts can be seen as an attempt to make room for realist/irrealist disputes in cases where it is agreed on both sides that we do have the capacity to know the judgements under consideration (or their negation).

2 Some Central Features of Wright’s Approach

According to Wright’s approach, any predicate which satisﬁes, within a certain area of discourse, certain familiar platitudes such as the disquo- tational schema (“p” is T if and only if p) thereby counts as a truth- predicate for judgements of the relevant kind, or more accurately, it counts as a predicate whose extension coincide with that of the truth- predicate, for the given area of discourse. Wright holds further that there is, for each area of assertive (or truth-apt) discourse, at least one predicate which satisﬁes the relevant platitudes and thus works as a truth-predicate (in this area of discourse). On his view, if a given area of discourse includes only decidable judgements (i.e., judgements whose truth-value we are in principle capable of recognizing2) then the truth-predicate for this area will be coextensive with what he calls the predicate of “superassertibility” (for this area). One could give a rough explanation of this rather controversial and ambiguous notion by saying that a judgement is superassertible if and only if

2These are, in other words, the areas of discourse satisfying the knowability principle, according to which p if and only if it is possible (for us) to know that p. Mind-dependence, Irrealism and Superassertibility 149 there is a state of information which would justify it, and some justification for it would survive any improvement on this state of information3. I will fortunately have no need to scrutinize this notion in any detail here; the only thing that matters for my purpose, is that this is an epistemic notion (which corresponds more or less closely to the notion of undefeasible justifiability) which, according to Wright, has the potential for playing the role of a truth-predicate, in any area of discourse for which truth doesn’t transcend our capacities of recognition. It goes without saying that this also is a controversial claim, but I’m not going to discuss it either4. On the contrary, I will be assuming that there is at least one epistemic notion which actually has the potential for satisfying the relevant platitudes in certain areas of discourse, and pretend that this is the notion of superassertibility. What Wright calls his “minimalism” about truth, is the claim that any predicate satisfying the relevant platitudes in a certain area of discourse is coextensive with the truth-predicate for this area of discourse, and therefore is a candidate for expressing what the truth of a judgement of the relevant kind consists in, or amounts to. The view is, in effect, that while the concept of truth is unique and applies accross the board over all areas of discourse, what truth consists in, the nature of truth, may vary from one area to another, giving rise to what he calls his “pluralism” about truth. What matters here, is that since an epistemic notion of truth cannot be coextensive with a transcendent notion of truth (as Wright himself argues), if it turns out that there is even a single area of discourse for which truth transcends our capacities of recognition, then it will have been shown not only that global weak realism is true (i.e., that the truth-value of at least some judgement is independent of our having the capacity to know it), but also that (contrary to what Wright sometimes suggests) the notion of superassertibility is not to be confused with that of “minimal truth” (or with what he sometimes calls the “minimal” notion of truth). That the truth-value of judgements of a certain kind transcends our capacities of recognition thus is a sufficient condition for their being true (or false) independently of our having the capacity to know them (or their negation), and hence, to vindicate realism with-respect-to judgements of this kind. But (as I have already said) one of Wright’s most important contribution was to observe that this isn’t a necessary condition. This is to say that, even when it has been shown that the true

3This notion looms large in Wright’s works. As far as I know, it was first introduced in [Wright 1987a]; it is further discussed in [Wright 1992, 48–61, and 66–70]. 4See [Kvanvig 1999] for a penetrating criticism of this claim. 150 Daniel Laurier judgements in a certain area are exactly the superassertible ones, the question can still arise, whether these judgements’ being true consists in their being superassertible, or in something else. The obvious and natural suggestion being that if it does, then their truth depends on our capacity to know it and they have to be construed in an irrealist manner, and that if it doesn’t (if their being true consists in anything other than superassertibility), then their truth is independent of our capacity to know it (even though we do have this capacity) and they must accordingly be construed in a realist manner. Since it is precisely (the second half of) this suggestion that I will be arguing against, it seems fair to add that it is not absolutely beyond doubt that Wright is actually committed to it, though as far as I can see, the views put forward in [Wright 1992], are at least consistent with this interpretation. My reason for focusing on this suggestion (apart from the fact that I do think it is a plausible interpretation of Wright’s view) is that explaining why it could not be sustained will help to dispel the impression that the realism/irrealism debates essentially have to do with the nature of truth. Wright’s official position seems to be that since (in his view) one knows a priori that for any area of discourse, the corresponding superassertibility predicate could be defined, it is the realist who has the burden of showing, for any given area of discourse, that being true is not (in this area) to be identified with being superassertible. To establish her doctrine, the realist may either try to show that, in the given area of discourse, truth transcends our capacities of recognition, or grant that the judgements in this area are true if and only if they are superassertible, and argue that they nonetheless satisfy further conditions which entail that being true, in this area, doesn’t consist in being superassertible. On the interpretation I want to consider, this, in turn, is held to entail that the truth of these judgements doesn’t depend on our having the capacity to know them. The second half of [Wright 1992] precisely aims at identifying what these further conditions might be. Several such conditions are pro- pounded, but they need not be mentioned here, since the only point that matters is that they are not meant to provide alternative characterizations of what realism consists in5. On the view I am considering, they should be seen only as necessary or sufficient conditions for it to be the case that the truth of judgements of certain kinds doesn’t consist in

5It is quite clear from [Wright 1992, 147–148], for example, that what Wright calls “cognitive command” cannot be seen as providing an alternative characterization of realism, since it is explicitly introduced as a necessary but not suﬃcient condition for realism about a given area of discourse. Mind-dependence, Irrealism and Superassertibility 151 their being superassertible. This is admittedly not exactly how Wright introduces them. He refers to them as conditions for it to be the case that the truth predicate (in a certain area) has features “which go beyond the minimal constraints and in some way, without necessarily having any direct bearing on the relationship between that predicate and superassertibility, serve to clarify and substantiate realist preconceptions” [Wright 1992, 82]. Now, to show that a truth predicate has features which go beyond Wright’s minimal constraints is to show that it doesn’t stand for superassertibility; but it is not clear that every such “supplementary feature” is bound to “substantiate realist preconceptions”. Indeed, I will, in eﬀect, be arguing that there must be such features which fail to do so, and thus that there must be room for the possibility that the truth of certain judgements depends on our having the capacity to know them, without their being true consisting in their being superassertible. If this is correct, then perhaps charity would require that Wright’s approach be interpreted as being consistent with this possibility. It would then have to be concluded that he didn’t provide us (at least in this book) with any other way of characterizing realism than as the claim that certain judgements are such that their truth is independent of our having the capacity to know them.

3 Two Problems with This View

It should be clear that with such a conception of realism (and whether or not the notion of superassertibility is to be given center stage) Wright is following in Dummett’s footsteps. On this approach, since the truth of a judgement could depend on its being knowable only if it actually is knowable, the claim that a certain judgement is knowable will be a necessary ingredient of any Independence-irrealist claim (with-respect-to this judgement). But this is a serious limitation, in that it leaves no room for any form of realism/irrealism which would take the relevant mental feature to be, e.g., our capacity to make (i.e., to think, entertain, or conceive) certain judgements, instead of our capacity to know them (or their negation). Both sorts of claim, it would seem, are equally plausible rendering of the intention behind classical expressions of realism in terms of something’s being “independent of ourselves”, and no reason has been given so far to give precedence to knowability over conceivability. Quite obviously, a judgement can be true independently of one’s capacity to conceive it only if it is true independently of one’s capacity to know it (for one can know only what one can conceive, and think about), but the converse is far from evident: nothing seems, prima facie, to indi- 152 Daniel Laurier cate that a judgement could not be true independently of one’s capacity to know it without being true independently of one’s capacity to conceive it. This is of course why Dummett, for one, went to great lenghts to establish the opposite, i.e., that one cannot have the capacity to conceive what one cannot know. Needless to say, this is a highly controversial thesis, but it is at least understandable that one who, like Dummett, endorses it should decline to pay any special attention to the possibility of framing realist theses in terms of conceivability instead of knowability. But as far as I can see, Crispin Wright doesn’t have that excuse, since he is not committed to the claim that something is conceivable only if it is knowable, as is shown by the fact that he seems happy to grant that one could coherently, or at least intelligibly, hold that certain judgements are unknowable, i.e. that they “transcend” our cognitive powers. One could obviously not accept this while holding that we can conceive only what we can (in principle) know. Thus, unless it can be shown that we cannot conceive what we cannot know, any form of conceivability realism will be strictly stronger than (entail) the corresponding form of knowability realism; and conceivability irrealism will accordingly be strictly weaker than (be entailed by) knowability irrealism. In other words, knowability realism will be compatible with conceivability irrealism. Now consider the proposal that a judgement is true independently of our having the capacity to know it if and only if its being true doesn’t consist in its being superassertible. It should be obvious in light of what has just been said that even if this were an adequate characterization of knowability realism, it would still have nothing to do with conceivability realism. In any case, there are reasons to doubt that it provides a faithful rendering even of knowability realism, as I will now try to show. It will help here to observe that realism about facts of a certain kind seem to entail realism about all the things involved in such facts6. This rests on the intuition that if a state-of-aﬀairs obtains independently of ourselves, then all the things involved in its obtaining, and thus all its constituents, must similarly exist independently of ourselves. And if this intuition is sound, then it would also seem that a judgement can

6But the converse does not (or at least not obviously) hold: all the things involved in the obtaining of some fact may exist independently of ourselves, without this fact obtaining independently of ourselves. To see this, consider one trivial example: my cat exists independently of ourselves, and (let’s suppose) the property of being green exists independently of ourselves, but my cat’s being green could nonetheless depend on our having painted it green. This suggests that a form of Fact-irrealism does not (as such) entail the corresponding forms of Thing-irrealism. Mind-dependence, Irrealism and Superassertibility 153 be true independently of ourselves only if each of its constituent term denotes something which exists independently of ourselves; or in other words that realism with-respect-to judgements of a certain kind should entail realism with-respect-to all the terms involved in such judgements. Let’s encapsulate this thought by saying that when the realist claims that something is independent of ourselves, he/she means to be claiming that it is completely independent of ourselves, but when the irrealist claims that something is dependent on ourselves, he/she may mean to be claiming only that it is partly dependent on ourselves. This means that one can be an irrealist with-respect-to judgements of a certain kind without being an irrealist with-respect-to all the terms involved in such judgements. It is not quite obvious exactly how this should be applied to Wright’s or Dummett’s knowability framework, because it is unclear how a form of Thing-realism will have to be expressed in such a framework, and neither of them have said much about Thing-realism. Consider the claim that the truth of the judgement that the sky is blue is (completely) independent of our having the capacity to know it. According to what has just been said, this should entail corresponding realist theses with-respect to the terms “the sky” and “is blue”. The trouble is that nothing has been said about how the latter Thing-realist theses are to be understood, in this context. The most natural way of construing them would probably be as saying something like: each of these terms denotes something which exists independently of our having the capacity to know it (where “to know it” may mean either to know this thing or to know that this thing exists). But this particular choice may not be forced upon us. It would seem, furthermore, that if the alleged equivalence between the truth of a judgement’s being independent of our capacity to know it and its truth failing to consist in its being superassertible is to be of any use/significance, then there will have to be some concept N, standing to superassertibility just as denotation stands to truth, and allowing us to say that a certain term denotes something which exists independently of our capacity to know it if and only if its denoting this thing doesn’t consist in its being N. But it is unclear what such a concept might be. In any case, I will not need to go further into this, since I think I can make my point without resorting to the contrast between Thing-realism and Fact-realism. For just as realism with-respect-to a given judgement entails realism with-respect-to all its constituent terms and irrealism with-respect-to a given judgement doesn’t entail irrealism with-respect- to all its constituent terms, it would seem that realism with-respect-to some conjunction of two judgements should entail realism with-respect- 154 Daniel Laurier to each of them and irrealism with-respect-to some conjunction of two judgements doesn’t entail irrealism with-respect-to each of them7. Now suppose that the truth of the judgement that P and Q depends (in part) on our having the capacity to know it. This is compatible with the possibility that the truth of the judgement that Q doesn’t depend at all on our having the capacity to know it. On the proposal before us, this would mean that while the truth of the judgement that Q doesn’t consist in its being superassertible, that of the judgement that P and Q does. In other words, it must be possible, on this view, that the conjunction of a judgement whose being true consists in its being superassertible with a judgement whose being true doesn’t consist in its being superassertible should yield a judgement whose being true nonetheless consists in its being superassertible. Yet it would seem, intuitively, that a judgement whose being true consists in its being superassertible should be one whose truth is somehow “constituted” by our capacity to know it; and it is hard to see how its truth could then be even partly independent of this same capacity. The trouble is not that a judgement whose truth is partly (or even completely) independent of our capacity to know it could not be superassertible, but that I fail to see how such a judgement’s being superassertible could “constitute” or somehow be identical to its being true. If this objection is sound, then it must be denied that if the truth of some judgement depends (in part) on our having the capacity to know it, then its being true consists in its being superassertible; or in other words, that the truth of a judgement fails to consist in its being superassertible only if its truth is (completely) independent of our having the capacity to know it (though the converse implication can still be re- tained). Moreover, since this objection doesn’t obviously depend on any specific way of construing the notion of superassertibility, but only on the assumption that it is an epistemic notion which satisfies the truth- involving platitudes, it would seem to warrant the conclusion that the Independence-Irrealist, as such, is not committed to truth’s being epis-

7Does the same hold for the other propositional connectors? If not, then the statement that realism with-respect-to a given judgement entails realism with-respect- to all its constituent terms will obviously have to be restricted to “logically simple”, predicative judgements. As far as I can see, the main point will remain unaffected, since it doesn’t need more than the assumption that if the truth of a conjunction is independent of our capacity to know it, then so is the truth of each conjunct, which is plausible enough. However, there may also be some plausibility to the claim that if the truth of the negation of a judgement is independent of our capacity to know it, then so is the truth of this judgement itself. If so, then it will follow that any truth-functionally complex judgement is independent of our capacity to know it only if all its constituent judgements are. Mind-dependence, Irrealism and Superassertibility 155 temic, and that the disputes over realism need not be seen as disputes over the nature of truth. It could be replied that instead of assuming that the truth of a judgement consists in its being superassertible if and only if it is partly dependent on our capacity to know it, we should assume that it consists in its being superassertible if and only if it is completely dependent on our capacity to know it, or in other words, that the truth of a judgement fails to consist in its being superassertible if and only if it is at least partly independent of our capacity to know it. The trouble with this suggestion is that the resulting position runs a serious risk of trivializing the realist’s claims. For consider, e.g., the claim that the truth of the judgement that the sky is beautiful is not completely dependent on our having the capacity to know it. On the hypothesis we are contemplating, this amounts to the realist claim that the truth of this judgement doesn’t consist in its being superassertible. For this claim to be true, it suffices that the sky exists independently of our having the capacity to know it; yet it is unlikely that the irrealist who held that the judgement that the sky is beautiful is not true independently of our having the capacity to know it would thereby want to deny that the sky exists independently of our capacity to know it. Two options present themselves, at this point. Either one takes the hard line and maintains that irrealism with-respect-to judgements of a certain kind is equivalent to the claim that the truth of judgements of this kind consists in their being superassertible. One is then forced to accept that the truth of a judgment consists in its being superassertible if and only if its truth completely depends on our capacity to know it; thus subscribing to a very demanding intuitive conception of what irrealism amounts to, and a correspondingly lenient conception of realism. Or one opts for the soft line and insists that irrealism with-respect-to judgements of a certain kind must be equivalent to the claim that the truth of judgements of this kind at least partly depends on our capacity to know it; thus subscribing to a relatively lenient conception of what irrealism amounts to, and a correspondingly demanding conception of realism. One is then forced to reject (the left-to-right half of) the claim that the truth of a judgement depends on our having the capacity to know it if and only if it consists in its being superassertible. Now why should anyone prefer the soft line? In a sense, it doesn’t matter which line we choose, as long as we all agree exactly what is going on. But the foregoing discussion at least suggests that opting for the hard line would make it too easy to be a realist, and correspondingly too hard to be an irrealist. Either way, it can be seen that to substitute the 156 Daniel Laurier question whether being true, in some area of discourse, consists in being superassertible, to the question whether the judgements in this area can be true independently of ourselves, merely masks the real structure of the debates and is liable to be misleading. But, again, why prefer the soft line? Well, nothing exists unless all its parts or aspects exist, i.e., unless it “wholly” exists; and similarly nothing obtains or is true unless it “wholly” obtains or is “wholly” true. To say that the existence/obtaining/truth of something X depends on its being the case that P (e.g., on our having the capacity to know/conceive it) is at least to imply that X wouldn’t exist/obtain/be true if it were not the case that P . For this to be true, it suffices that some part of X is such that it would not exist/obtain/be true if it were not the case that P . Thus, my preference for the soft line rests on what I take to be a natural reading of the claim that the existence/obtaining/truth of X depends on its being the case that P . Taking the hard line requires that this same claim be read as implying that no part of X would exist/obtain/be true if it were not the case that P , and I find this unnatural. Observe further that something which is not completely independent from our capacity to know/conceive it would seem to be at least less than fully real. By the same token, it could be said, something which is not completely dependent on our capacity to know/conceive it would seem to be less than fully unreal. There is admittedly an unavoidable part of arbitrariness in the way one chooses to describe the status of something (the existence/obtaining/truth of) which is both partly dependent on and partly independent from our capacity to know/conceive it. There is a lot of space between the “fully real” and the “fully unreal”, which suggests that the simple contrast between realism and irrealism should eventually be replaced by some graded notion of reality/irreality, allowing one to acknowledge that some things/facts are more (or less) real than others. This is not the place to explore this idea in any detail, but since truth is not a graded notion, this may be a further indication that any attempt to reduce the Fact-or-Judgement realism debates to disputes concerning the nature of truth is fundamentally misguided. Mind-dependence, Irrealism and Superassertibility 157 References

Kvanvig, Jonathan L. 1999 Truth and Superassertibility, Philosophical Studies, 93, 1–19. Laurier, Daniel 2005 Davidson, Mind and Reality, Principia, 9, 125–157. Wright, Crispin 1987a Can a Davidsonian Meaning-Theory be Construed in Terms of Assertibility?, cited from [Wright 1987b, 403–432]. 1987b Realism, Meaning and Truth, Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd ed. 1992 Truth and Objectivity, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard U. Press. 2003 Saving the Diﬀerences, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard U. Press. 158 Part IV Radical Constructivism?

Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist?

Peter van Inwagen The University of Notre Dame/Notre Dame, Indiana (USA)

Résumé : Le coeur de la nouvelle de George Orwell, 1984, est le débat entre Winston Smith et O’Brien dans les cellules du Ministère de l’Amour. Il est naturel de lire ce débat comme un débat entre un réaliste (concernant la nature de la vérité) et un anti-réaliste. Je présente quelques passages représentatifs du livre qui démontrent, je crois, que si ce n’est pas la seule manière possible de comprendre le débat, c’est une manière très naturelle de le faire. Abstract: The core of George Orwell’s novel 1984 is the debate between Winston Smith and O’Brien in the cells of the Ministry of Love. It is natural to read this debate as a debate between a realist (as regards the nature of truth) and an anti-realist. I oﬀer a few representative passages from the book that demonstrate, I believe, that if this is not the only possible way to understand the debate, it is one very natural way.

The core of George Orwell’s novel 1984 is a debate—if the verbal and intellectual component of an extended episode of brainwashing can properly be said to constitute a debate—, the debate between Winston Smith and O’Brien in the cells of the Ministry of Love. It is natural to read this debate as a debate between a realist (as regards the nature of truth) and an anti-realist. I oﬀer a few representative passages from the book that demonstrate, I believe, that if this is not the only possible way to understand the debate, it is one very natural way. I begin with some thoughts that passed through Winston’s mind as he was writing in his diary long before his arrest:

. . . the very notion of external reality was tacitly denied by [the Party’s] philosophy. . . . His heart sank as he thought of . . . the ease with which any Party intellectual would over- throw him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he

Philosophia Scientiæ, 12 (1), 2008, 161–185. 162 Peter van Inwagen

was in the right! They were wrong and he was right! The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Tru- isms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward the earth’s centre. With the feeling that . . . he was setting forth an important axiom, Winston wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.1

Let us now look at the debate. Here is an exchange between O’Brien and Winston.

“Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence? . . . You are no metaphysician, Winston . . . Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?” “No” “In records. It is written down.” “In records. And—?” “In the mind. In human memories.” “In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?”2

And here is a second exchange:

“But the world itself is only a speck of dust. . . the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach for ever.” “What are the stars ? . . . They are bits of ﬁre a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot

1Part 1, Ch. vii. (Since there are many editions and printings of 1984, I will cite passages from the book only by part and chapter.) As early as 1939, ten years before the publication of 1984, in a review of Russell’s Power: A Social Analysis, Orwell had written, “It is quite possible that we are descending into an age in which two and two will make ﬁve when the Leader says so.” [Orwell 1939, vol. I, 376] 2Part 3, Ch.ii. Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist? 163

them out. The earth is the centre of the universe. The sun and stars go round it. . . . For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When we navigate the ocean or when we predict an eclipse, we often ﬁnd it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometres away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them . . . .” . . . a faint smile twitched the corners of O’Brien’s mouth as he looked down at [Winston]. “I told you, Winston,” he said, “that metaphysics is not your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Col- lective solipsism, if you like. But that is a diﬀerent thing; in fact, the opposite thing . . . .”3

These passages, I think, show that it is natural (which is not to say that it is right) to read 1984 as a defense of realism. I have myself read the book this way. (And, of course, as part and parcel of reading it that way, I regarded Winston as representing the author’s point of view.) In my book Metaphysics—a book whose intended audience was readers who came to the book with no clear idea of the meaning of the word ‘metaphysics’—I wrote,

Before we leave the topic of Realism and anti-Realism, however, I should like to direct the reader’s attention to the greatest of all attacks on anti-Realism, George Orwell’s novel 1984. Anyone who is interested in Realism and anti-Realism should be steeped in the message of this book. The reader is particularly directed to the climax of the novel, the debate between the Realist Winston Smith and the anti-Realist O’Brien. In the end, there is only one question that can be addressed to the anti-Realist: How does your position diﬀer from O’Brien’s? [Van Inwagen 2002,84–85]

There is one thing about this passage that I must apologize for. When I posed the question “How does your position diﬀer from O’Brien’s?,” I thought (I must confess this) that no answer to it would be forthcoming— or no honest answer, no answer that was not a transparent evasion. But when I re-read 1984 in preparation for writing this paper, I discovered

3Part 3, Ch. iii. 164 Peter van Inwagen something that I ought not to have had to discover—something that I ought to have remembered: that there is an obvious way for the anti- realist to answer this question. This obvious answer, though I think it would in the end be an evasion, turns on a very interesting point that went right past me when I was writing the above passage: that in whatever sense O’Brien may be an anti-realist, he is in the same sense a realist. To see why this is so, let us consider O’Brien’s belief that the Party invented the airplane. (The Party’s claim to have invented the airplane is mentioned repeatedly in 1984 ; Winston thinks of it frequently, since he can remember very clearly having seen airplanes before the Rev- olution.) O’Brien believes that the Party invented the airplane because the Party says it invented the airplane and because all the records of the past (which are under the Party’s control) say the Party invented the airplane—as do the memories of everyone whom O’Brien regards as sane. And this “because” is the “because” of formal, and not of merely efficient, causation: in O’Brien’s mind, it is a fact that the Party says it invented the airplane and it is a fact that the Party invented the airplane and they are the same fact. “The Party says it invented the airplane but the Party did not invent the airplane” is not, for O’Brien, a thinkable thought. (That is, it is not a thought he is capable of entertaining. He is, nevertheless, perfectly capable of understanding what Winston is thinking when the thought “The Party says it invented the airplane but the Party did not invent the airplane” is present in his mind.) O’Brien, then, certainly appears to accept a form of anti-realism. After all, solidarity, an appeal to what his peers will let him get away with, has replaced truth in O’Brien’s conceptual scheme, as it has (so he claims, and if he says so, I suppose we must believe him) in Richard Rorty’s—not the same sort of solidarity (or the same peers), I grant, but a sort of solidarity, nevertheless, and a very well defined class of peers indeed. But all this, while it is accurate as far as it goes, is not a complete account of what O’Brien believes about truth, for he also believes in objective truth, just as Winston does, and he believes in it in the same sense. Just as Winston believes that the pre-Revolutionary existence of airplanes is something that is, so to speak, sitting there in the past, so O’Brien believes that the Party’s post-Revolutionary invention of the airplane is sitting there in the slightly-less-recent past. He believes that the Party is an infallible reporter of a truth that exists independently of it and all its decrees. (After all, is its propaganda ministry not called the Ministry of Truth?) The Central Committee of the Soviet Commu- nist Party called its official organ Pravda, and the Committee did not Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist? 165 mean that title to be understood as implying that the paper published a truth created in its editorial offices; they meant it to be understood as stating, emblematically, that the statements and descriptions that were published in its pages were the objective truth (unlike what was to be found in capitalist or fascist or Trotskyist papers). And what was true under Soviet Communism was true under English Socialism: an Ingsoc goodthinker like O’Brien must believe in objective truth; how can there be no such thing as objective truth when the Party claims to be an infallible (and the only reliable) source of it? How is O’Brien’s belief in objective truth to be reconciled with his anti-realism? If by ‘reconcile’ is meant ‘demonstrate the logical consistency of’, it isn’t. If by ‘reconcile’ is meant ‘be able to hold both propositions in one’s mind simultaneously and without intellectual discomfort’ the answer is doublethink—“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” (Why do O’Brien and the rest of the Party’s inner circle retain their allegiance to the existence of objective truth? Why do they not achieve logical consistency—doublethink requires effort; gratuitously embracing contra- dictions is a waste of effort—by simply eliminating the idea of truth and replacing it with English-socialist solidarity? This is a very interesting question; I will return to it.) I now see (I am finally getting to the end of my parenthetical confes- sion) that I made a tactical mistake when I confronted the anti-realist with the question “How does your position differ from O’Brien’s?”. This was a mistake because the anti-realist has an obvious answer to my question that obscures the real difficulty it was meant to raise—that answer being, “O’Brien believes in objective truth, in a kind of truth that’s independent of what our peers will let us get away with—and I don’t.” The question I ought to have asked is, How does your position differ from the position that would be O’Brien’s if one, as it were, subtracted from his actual position the thesis that there is a status, truth, that beliefs can have that is logically independent of the Party’s approval of them. That question allows no such evasion. Enough of my apologetical digression. Let us return to the question of Orwell and metaphysical realism. If I did not say, in the passage I have quoted (which is the only thing I have even written that pertains to Orwell and realism), that Orwell was a metaphysical realist, I certainly strongly suggested that I regarded him as one, and I will now explicitly say that I do regard Orwell as a metaphysical realist. In a much more nuanced way, Richard Rorty has also drawn a connection between Orwell and realism4. At any rate, Rorty does not approve of the vocab- 4In “The Last Intellectual in Europe: Orwell on Cruelty,” [Rorty 1989, ch. 8, 166 Peter van Inwagen ulary that Orwell uses when he defends what he, Orwell, calls “objective truth”—that phrase itself being one of Rorty’s least favorite items in anyone’s vocabulary. It is not my purpose in this paper to examine Rorty’s way of reading 1984 —that is, his attempt to rescue what he regards as valuable in the book (its depiction of a social order dedicated to the infliction of pain as an end in itself) from its entanglement with Orwell’s unfortunate conviction that the idea of “objective truth” needed to be defended and was worth defending. (At one point Rorty compares the way he approaches 1984 to the way he would, as an atheist, approach Pilgrim’s Progress—another book he thinks can be read with profit by those who do not share its presuppositions.) I simply call attention to the fact that both Rorty and I see some connection between Orwell and realism. In a very long essay in the volume Rorty and His Critics [Conant 2000], James Conant has contended that it is wrong to read 1984 as an attack on anti-realism and wrong to read the debate between O’Brien and Winston Smith as a debate about the nature of truth5. According to Conant, Rorty and I are both obsessed with the realism/anti-realism debate, and our common obsession has led us to ignore the fact that Orwell’s purposes in defending “objective truth” were political and in no way philosophical6. Orwell (Conant maintains) had been repelled by the kind of thought-control that British left-intellectuals of the 1930s had applied to one another with respect to the history of their time—for example, with respect to the events of the Spanish Civil War and the arrests and trials in the Soviet Union during the Yagoda and Yezhov eras. Orwell’s purpose in writing 1984 —Conant tells us—was to depict a society in which this thought-control had been taken to its logical conclusion. (I will remark that I agree with Conant’s judgment that Or-

169-188]. 5I should point out that Conant did not miss the point about O’Brien that I missed. He is aware that anyone who says that O’Brien is a consistent defender of anti-realism must ignore several passages in which he seems to presuppose realism. 6I wonder why Conant thinks that I am obsessed with anti-realism. I know of no evidence of this (other than my interpretation of 1984 ). I don’t know whether the fact that Rorty’s contribution to the literature on anti-realism comprises many hundreds of thousands of words should be taken as evidence that he is obsessed with anti-realism. But if it does, there is certainly no corresponding evidence in my case. Not counting collections of my essays, I have published four books. One chapter of one of the four—an introductory textbook—is devoted to anti-realism, and the topic is not mentioned, even in passing, in the others. I have published about 130 essays, of which only one [“On Always Being Wrong,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 12 (1987) pp. 95–111] is about anti-realism. The topic is not mentioned in any of the others—with the possible exception of “The Number of Things,” Philosophical Issues, Vol. 12: Realism and Relativism, 2002, pp. 176–96. Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist? 167 well wanted to depict a state in which certain intellectual habits current among the British intelligentsia at the time of writing were demanded, on pain of torture and death, of everyone but the Lumpenproletariat. It is entirely possible that the title 1984 is an allusion to the year of the novel’s composition—1948.) There is nothing philosophical, nothing metaphysical in this purpose, Conant says. But because van Inwagen (a realist) is obsessed with the realism/anti-realism debate, he is led to read the novel as a defense of a metaphysical thesis—and to see it as a stick with which he can beat anti-realists. Because Rorty (an anti- realist) is obsessed with the realism/anti-realism debate, he misreads Orwell’s purely political use of vocabulary like ‘objective truth’ and ‘the solid world’ as something that calls for a philosophical response from anti-realists—not a refutation, of course, but a reading of the novel that de-emphasizes or re-interprets such phrases and thereby makes what is valuable in the novel accessible to anti-realists.

I’ll let Rorty defend himself against Conant’s charge. (He has, in [Rorty 2000].)

Rorty, I may say, wrote a long essay on 1984. My own remarks were con- fined to a single paragraph (quoted above). I suspect that Conant would not have mentioned my passing remark about 1984 if it had not suited his dialectical purposes to have at his disposal a metaphysician whom he could present to Rorty as his mirror image: “Don’t you see, Rorty? You and that metaphysician are equally obsessed with realism and your common obsession makes it impossible for either of you to understand the novel—and you, Rorty, are the philosopher who claims to offer us a way of doing philosophy that will free us from our obsessions with philosophical doctrines!” (Conant’s strategy resembles that of someone who, in debate with a Marxist, persistently characterizes Marxism as a religion.) Still, whatever Conant’s motives for mentioning my paragraph may have been, I want to defend what I said in it. Conant says that Orwell is not interested in the realism/anti-realism debate. But what does Conant mean by realism and anti-realism? He has not neglected this question. Far from it. His answer is both lengthy and subtle. He lays out eight “realist theses,” and declares that anyone who accepts even one of them is a realist of some sort. ‘Realism’, according to Conant, is as much genre-term in philosophy as it is in art or literature. Realism is not a philosophical doctrine or thesis, but rather a genre to which certain philosophical doctrines and theses belong. Some among his eight realist theses are in fact inconsistent with some of the others (a fact that Conant lays some stress on), and that implies that two 168 Peter van Inwagen philosophical doctrines that contradict each other can be equally good examples of the genre “realism.” I certainly agree with Conant’s contention that 1984 is not a polemic against theses like the eight theses that (he says) define the philosophical genre realism. At any rate, I agree with it as a judgment about certain words Conant has written, the words that he has used to formulate the eight realist theses. (I agree that if Orwell were had opened a book that started with words like those, he would have very quickly proceeded to close it.) I can’t agree with it as a judgment about theses, however, because there are no such theses. That is to say, the words Conant has written formulate no theses at all. They are mere words— although, since they consist of syntactically correct declarative sentences, they have the appearance of words that express theses. I am sorry if I have begun to sound like a logical positivist talking about Hegel or Hei- degger. I do not, like Carnap and Neurath and the rest, have a theory according to which all philosophy but my own and that of a few like- minded colleagues is meaningless. Nor do I have a theory according to which everything that has been said by the practitioners of some major division of philosophy—metaphysics, for example—is meaningless. I repudiate any general theory that classifies some large part of philosophy as nonsense, and I shrink from sounding as if I were offering one. Never- theless, I insist that philosophers do sometimes say meaningless things, things that (to borrow the words that Wolfgang Pauli applied to a conjecture presented by a fellow physicist) are not even false. For example: “Being is; not-Being is not” (Parmenides); “The world is a progressively realized community of interpretation” (Royce); “A self is a logical construct out of sense experiences” (Ayer). Since I have no general theory of meaninglessness in philosophy—since I repudiate the possibility of such a theory—, if I wish to show that some piece of philosophical text is meaningless, there is nothing I can do but examine it sentence by sentence (even clause by clause) and try to show that there’s just nothing there, nothing but words: that in that piece of text there are no theses and no questions, that what might appear to be theses and questions are only words. I cannot go through Conant’s eight “realist” theses sentence by sentence, examining the meaning of each sentence and enquiring as to its meaning. I will illustrate my point by examining just one piece of text, his statement of the first of the eight theses:

The thesis that the Thing-in-Itself is a condition of the possibility of knowledge. All our experiences of the world are of Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist? 169

appearances, views of it from some particular point of view. The only sorts of truths we are able to formulate are truths about the world under some description. But we should not mistake the limitations of our knowledge, imposed on us by our finite cognitive capacities, for limitations that are in- herent in the nature of reality as such. The idea that our experience is of the world (that appearances are appearances and not mere illusions)—that is that there is something which our descriptions are about—presupposes the further idea that there is a way which is the way the world is in itself. For the world to be a possible object of knowledge, there must be such a way that it is, apart from any description of it—a way the world is when “viewed from nowhere”, that is from no particular point of view (or, alternatively, from a God’s- eye point of view). Moreover, though such knowledge of the world (as it is in itself) is in principle unobtainable for us, we are able to think what we cannot know: we are able to grasp in thought that there is such a way the world is, apart from the conditions under which we know it. It is only by postu- lating the existence of such a noumenal reality that we render coherent the supposition that all our apparent knowledge of reality is indeed knowledge of a genuinely mind-independent external reality [Conant 2000, 271–272]. These words simply bewilder me. They should bewilder anyone. How shall I (in Quine’s fine phrase) evoke the appropriate sense of bewil- derment? I can do nothing to that end but provide a clause-by-clause commentary on this passage, and I have no time for that. I’ll content myself with an examination of the clauses comprised in a single sentence from this passage: “For the world to be a possible object of knowledge, there must be [a way that the world is in itself], apart from any description of it.” “For the world to be a possible object of knowledge.” Presumably this means, “for anything to be a possible object of knowledge” (or “anything except the contents of the knower’s own mind”?; I don’t know: one’s mind is certainly a part of “the world”). The modern science of cosmology treats the physical world—if not “the world”—as a single, unified object and attempts to gain knowledge of it (something that Kant said couldn’t be done). But I don’t think that Conant means this phrase to bring to the reader’s mind the issue of treating the world as a whole as an object of knowledge. I think that the phrase should be understood as introducing a general thesis about possible objects of knowledge. Let’s 170 Peter van Inwagen pick a particular object—the Arc de Triomphe will do. What does the following sentence mean?

For the Arc de Triomphe to be a possible object of knowledge, there must be a way that it is in itself, apart from any description of it.

I suppose that ‘the way the Arc de Triomphe is’ is an oblique way of referring to the properties (attributes, characteristics, features, qualities, choose what word you will) of that monument. If so, our task is to understand this sentence:

For the Arc de Triomphe to be a possible object of knowledge, there must be properties that it has in itself, apart from any description of it.

In this sentence, there are two puzzling adverbial phrases: ‘in itself’, and ‘apart from any description of it’. I do not understand these adverbial phrases. Let’s take them in their turn. What does this mean

The Arc de Triomphe has, in itself, the property of being in the center of the Place de l’Étoile?

How does saying this differ from saying that the Arc de Triomphe has (without qualification) the property of being in the center of the Place de l’Étoile? There are all sorts of adverbs and adverbial phrases that can meaningfully be used to qualify ‘has’ when its object is a property: ‘apparently’, ‘essentially’, and ‘according to popular belief’, for example, but ‘in itself’ is not one of them. If something has a property, it is of course it that has that property—I just said so. The only use of ‘in itself’ that I know of in the history of philosophy that brings anything at all to my mind has to do with secondary qualities. Thus: ‘The Arc de Triomphe is said to be white, but, really, it doesn’t have that property in itself; whiteness is simply a quality that exists in the minds of its observers’. I consider that statement to be a boring sophistry, long exposed. But suppose I’m wrong. Suppose it’s the sober truth. Then there’s no sense in which the Arc de Triomphe has the property of being white. It just isn’t white. Things in our minds are white (or perhaps whiteness is a free-floating quality that exists in our minds but is not a quality of anything), but the Arc de Triomphe isn’t white, and there’s an end on’t. But if it isn’t white, it nevertheless has other properties: it has at least such properties as not being white and being colorless. Does it have those properties “in itself”? The question makes no sense. Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist? 171

Let us turn to ‘apart from any description of it’. What does this sentence mean? The Arc de Triomphe has, apart from any description of it, the property of being in the center of the Place de l’Étoile.

An adverb or adverbial phrase is supposed to answer a question of some sort. In this case, the question, whatever it may be, would pertain to the Arc de Triomphe’s possession of a certain property. Here is a straightforward example of an adverbial phrase in this position:

The Arc de Triomphe has, all the guidebooks tell us, the property of being in the center of the Place de l’Étoile.

In this case, the question the adverbial phrase answers is “According to whom (does it have that property)?” But what question does ‘apart from any description of it’ answer? None is apparent. None is apparent because there is none. The adverbial phrase, although it violates no rule of syntax, has no semantical connection with the words that surround it. I might compare this sentence with these two sentences (also syntactically unobjectionable):

James Conant has, apart from any visits he has made to San Francisco, the property of being the editor of The Cambridge Companion to John Dewey The Earth has, apart from any Serbian traﬃc regulations, the property of orbiting the sun.

I suppose I could imagine outré conversational circumstances in which there would be a point to uttering sentences like these, but, apart from some vastly improbable context of utterance, they are simply puzzling. They are puzzling because, owing to the lack of any discoverable connection between the adverbial phrases ‘apart from any visits he has made to San Francisco’ and ‘apart from any Serbian traﬃc regulations’ and the other parts of the sentences in which they occur, one can discern no question about Conant’s editorship or the orbit of the earth for them to supply answers to. The role of ‘apart from any description of it’ in the sentence ‘The Arc de Triomphe has, apart from any description of it, the property of being in the center of the Place de l’Étoile’ is therefore a puzzle. It is, in fact, a puzzle without a solution. Anyone who thinks that this sentence means anything is under an illusion. What is the source of this illusion? Could it be some argument along these lines? 172 Peter van Inwagen

To say that the Arc de Triomphe has the property of being in the center of the Place de l’Étoile is to describe it; therefore, it does not have that property apart from any description of it. More generally, for no property that we ascribe to any object does that object have that property apart from any description of it. Anyone who finds this argument persuasive will no doubt go on to contend that it is only those properties that are never ascribed to the object x that x has apart from any description of it. Perhaps, indeed, that person will want to say that ‘apart from any description of it’ means ‘apart from any possible description of it’, and will go on to say that it is only those properties of x that are inexpressible in principle, inexpressible in any possible language, that x has apart from any description of it. Is the thesis that objects have some their properties apart from any description of them then the thesis that some properties of each object are inexpressible in any possible language? That is an interesting thesis. I have no idea whether it’s true, but, true or not, it does not seem to be the thesis that Conant means to be putting forth as one example of the genre realism. That thesis, after all, is supposed to have some connection with the idea of the thing-in-itself, and the thesis that there are things- in-themselves is simply not the thesis that things have properties that cannot be expressed in any language. I have no real understanding of the words ‘the doctrine of the thing-in-itself’ but I have a certain negative grasp of the phrase, and that is sufficient for me to be sure that no one who claims to understand it would say that the thesis that things had inexpressible properties entailed (much less was identical with) the thesis that there were things-in-themselves. To say that the Arc de Triomphe has properties that it is impossible in principle to ascribe to it (and if that were true, how could anyone possibly know that it was true?) tells us nothing about what it might mean to say that it has those (or any) properties ‘apart from any description of it’—not in any sense that is relevant to understanding the beliefs of realists, at any rate. It is of course true that ex hypothesi no reference to any linguistically inexpressible property will figure in any description any possible speaker applies to the Arc de Triomphe, but, supposing there to be realists who say that the Arc de Triomphe has those (or any) properties apart from any description of it, that fact does not tell us what they mean by ‘apart from any description of it’. What then do these (perhaps fictional) realists mean by this phrase? The answer is the obvious one: they don’t mean anything by it. It is just words. “Words, words, words,” as Hamlet says. Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist? 173

In the end I have to say that I feel not the slightest temptation to believe that language like ‘If our experience of the world constitutes knowledge, then there must be a way the world is in itself, apart from any description of it’ makes any sense at all. And I feel the same about most of the sentences that make up Conant’s other “realist” theses. (I understand bits and pieces of some of them, but the bits I understand all pertain to two rather special topics, morals and history. I don’t think that the bits of his eight theses that I understand, taken individually or taken together, can be said to provide a statement of a general doctrine, a doctrine that applies to human thought and discourse in general, a doctrine that could be called “realism full stop” and not simply “realism concerning X”. I should say, too, that, although I call myself a realist, I don’t find the bits I understand particularly plausible.) Nevertheless, I say, I call myself a realist. But what do I mean by calling myself a realist if I understand almost none of the sentences that comprise Conant’s characterization of realism—if I suppose, as I do, that this characterization is without sense? Well, I mean just what I said I meant in the early bits of the chapter on realism in my book Metaphysics, the chapter that ends with my challenge to the anti-realist to say how his position differs from O’Brien’s. I’ll briefly repeat what I said—but in different words, and with some additions. Speakers often make assertive utterances. That is to say, speakers utter declarative sentences of languages they understand in the standard or central circumstances for the uttering of declarative sentences. (Some non-standard or non-central circumstances: a phonetician asks you to read the written sentence ‘Mary wants to marry a merry man’ aloud; playing a minor character in Macbeth, you utter the sentence, ‘The queen, my Lord, is dead’.) When we make assertive utterances we often say things. When, a moment ago, I uttered the sentence ‘I call myself a realist’ I thereby said that I called myself a realist. (But we do not always say things when we make assertive utterances. When Royce uttered—or inscribed—the sentence ‘The world is a progressively realized community of interpretation’ he said—or wrote—nothing. If what I have been saying up to this point is true, philosophers discussing realism and anti-realism often make assertive utterances without saying anything.) When we say things, when we say something, what we say is often true or false. (But not always. Sometimes what we say falls between the two stools of truth and falsity. If you say that Alfred is tall, and if Alfred’s height is 181.5 cm, then what you say is neither true nor false—since Alfred is a borderline case of a tall man.) If I told you this 174 Peter van Inwagen morning that I had not come to Nancy directly from the US but rather from Italy, what I told you is true—since I came to Nancy from Italy and not directly from the US. If I told you this morning that I came to Nancy from Latvia, then what I told you was false, since I have never been in Latvia. And what is it that I say of a thing someone has said when I say that it is true (or false)? Let us say that the things people “say” (“assert,” “affirm”) are propositions. But the things that people say, actually say, are only some among the things I am calling propositions, for not everything that someone can say is something that actually is said. No one—I am fairly confident of this—has ever said that Richard Rorty has lectured on anti-realism at San Francisco State University and the College of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary on the same day. Nevertheless, that is something that could be said; that is something that it’s perfectly possible to assert; that is to say, there is such a proposition as the proposition that Richard Rorty has lectured on anti-realism at San Francisco State University and the College of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary on the same day. I expect it’s a false proposition (if it’s true no doubt someone has asserted it), but then lots of propositions are false—roughly half of them, in fact. Am I then a platonist—a “small-’p’ platonist” at any rate? Well, yes, but I think everyone is. I don’t see how to avoid being a platonist. Everyone says things that imply the existence of things like numbers and possibilities and attributes—and propositions. You have yourself asserted the existence of propositions if you have ever said, “Some things are better left unsaid.” Now someone may want to tell me that such everyday assertions do not commit those who make them to platonism. This is not the place to enter into a discussion of that issue. I will say only that if such everyday assertions as “Some things are better left unsaid” do not commit those who make them to platonism, then neither does my assertion (in a philosophical lecture, to be sure, but I don’t see what difference that makes) that some of the things people assert are true commit me to platonism. If you don’t like platonism, therefore, you have as much reason to excuse me from allegiance to the doctrine you don’t like as you have to excuse the utterer of “Some things are better left unsaid” from allegiance to it. Make nothing of the fact that I call the things that are true or false (or the things that are better left unsaid) propositions. That’s only a word. Obviously, if the things can be referred to as “things that are true or false” or “things that are better left unsaid,” one is not going to commit oneself to any substantive philosophical thesis by calling them by any name. “But,” the reply Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist? 175 comes, “the word ‘proposition’ is loaded with all sorts of metaphysical baggage.” I doubt that. But if it is true, I hereby unload it: in this lecture, ‘proposition’ means only ‘thing that is either true or false (or indeterminate as between truth and falsity)’. All right. There are all these propositions. Some are true and some are false. (From now on, I’ll ignore the tertium datur, indeterminacy.) Are truth and falsity properties of propositions? I would say so, and I would say that this is a harmless thing to say. If a proposition is a thing that is true or false, a property is a thing that is true or false of something. If a proposition is something one can assert, a property is something one can assert of something. The proposition that Paris is the capital of France is something that one can assert. “That it is in France” is something that one can assert of things: it can be asserted truly of Paris and Nancy and the Arc de Triomphe, and falsely (only falsely) of Rome and Bergamo and the Arch of Janus. “That it is in France” is therefore a property, or at least it is what I am calling a property. And truth and falsity are certainly properties in that sense, for “that it is true” is something that can be said of propositions—truly of the proposition that Paris is the capital of France and falsely of the proposition that Nancy is the capital of France. What properties are truth and falsity? I would restate the question this way: can the open sentences ‘x is true’ and ‘x is false’ be given useful definitions? (If they can, the definitions will in effect be statements of what it is that we are saying of a thing when we say that it is true or say that it is false.) I think that the answer to this question is No. Truth and falsity are indefinable properties of propositions. I say this because I have a certain view of quantifiers and variables—essentially Quine’s view of quantifiers and variables. According to this view, the only variables are nominal variables, variables that occupy nominal positions. If this is so, then what Dorothy Grover and others have called propositional quantification (I prefer “quantification into sentential positions”) does not exist. That is to say, expressions like

p q(p q) ∀ ∃ → make no sense. If Quine is right about the nature of quantiﬁcation— as I suppose him to be—the meaningful sentence that comes closest to saying the thing this meaningless sentence is trying to say (I hope you understand that) must contain nominal variables whose range is the bearers of truth-value (sentences Quine would say; propositions I say) and a truth-predicate. The meaningful sentence that comes closest to 176 Peter van Inwagen saying the thing this meaningless sentence is trying to say is this one:

x y(the conditional with antecedent x and consequent y is true) ∀ ∃ Now why is this thesis of Quine’s about the nature of quantification relevant to the issues we are discussing? Why should it be of interest to philosophers whose concern is the realism/anti-realism debate? The answer is not far to seek. If there were such a thing as quantification into sentential positions, then, every schoolboy knows, it would be possible to define truth and falsity. Here’s the definition of truth (assuming that the bearers of truth-value are propositions; let those who say that the bearers of truth value are sentences modify this definition in such a way that it exhibits truth as a property of sentences).

x is true =df p(p&x = the proposition that p). ∃ But this definition is not available to anyone who (like Quine and me) finds no sense in the idea of variables that occupy sentential—or any non- nominal—positions. The definiens, we say, is a meaningless sentence. And what do we say is the meaningful sentence that comes closest to saying the thing this meaningless sentence is trying to say? We say it’s this sentence

y(y is a proposition & y is true & x = y). ∃ And to say that a proposition is true if it is identical with some true proposition is hardly to provide an adequate definition of truth! It is for just this reason that I say that no definition of truth is possible. I have, of course, examined only the sort of definition of truth that is in some sense a generalization of sentences like ‘The proposition that Paris is the capital of France is true if and only if Paris is the capital of France’. I concede that there are other possibilities7 . For present purposes I will say only that I doubt whether truth can be defined and that I certainly don’t want to accept any position that depends on the assumption that truth can be defined. Truth and falsity, then, are properties, indefinable properties of many of the things we say and write and of many things that have never been said or written. (Consider the grammatical sentences of English that contain twenty or fewer words. The linguists tell us that there are

7For a detailed discussion of issues related to those my brief remarks on this subject have raised, see my essay “Generalizations of Homophonic Truth-sentences” in Richard Schantz (ed.) What is Truth?, (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2002), pp. 205–222. Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist? 177 about1080 of them, a number comparable to the number of electrons in the observable universe. Most of these sentences, obviously, have never been spoken or written and never will be.) Though these properties are indefinable, we have a perfect grasp of them. That is, we understand perfectly the predicates that express them. If you understand what someone is saying when he utters the English sentence, “Some of the things Dean said about Nixon were true and some weren’t,” then you understand the predicate ‘. . . is true’. If you understand the predicate ‘. . . is true’, you know what someone speaking English is saying about something when he says that it’s true. And if you know that, you grasp the property truth, for the property truth is just that thing that someone says about something when he says that it’s true. Just as being in the center of the Place de l’Étoile is a property of the Arc de Triomphe, truth is a property of the proposition that the Arc de Triomphe is in the center of the Place de l’Étoile. And in these two statements, ‘is a property of’ has exactly the same sense. If truth and falsity are properties of propositions, it seems reasonable to classify them as relational properties of propositions (at least in the case in which they are properties of contingent propositions). But I hes- itate so to classify them because there are problems about how to define ‘relational property’. I do regard the analogy with the accuracy and inaccuracy of maps as having some power to convince me that truth and falsity are relational properties. Accuracy and inaccuracy are properties of maps (among other things). That is, “That it is accurate” and “That it is inaccurate” are things that you can say about maps. And it seems that a map that was accurate can become inaccurate (a river changes its course; the coastlines change because the polar caps are melting) and that its becoming inaccurate is normally a “mere-Cambridge” change in the map. Similarly—the analogy suggests—, the proposition that Paris is the capital of France may one day become false, and if it does, that will be a mere-Cambridge change in that proposition, a change that is due entirely to a real change in France and her political structure. If one is not altogether happy with this way of talking (as I am not), this will be because one regards oneself as pretty much ignorant in the matter of the nature of propositions and thus as not in a position to make judgments about which changes in them are mere-Cambridge changes and which aren’t. (I know what propositions do but not what they are.) Nevertheless, one of the things you can say truly about the proposition that Paris is the capital of France is that it’s a contingent proposition and another is that it’s a true proposition. And there’s an important difference between these two things: even God can’t do anything about 178 Peter van Inwagen the first, and the second is something that even human beings have the power to change. And, if they wished to change it, they would change it by altering matters in France and not by somehow working directly on the proposition—words that are either meaningless or express a metaphysical impossibility. Whether you describe this difference by saying that contingency is an intrinsic and truth a relational property of the proposition that Paris is the capital of France or describe it in some other way, the difference is there to be described. And this difference from contingency in this way is an important feature of truth. Despite the fact that no conceptual confusion is involved in the statement that someone has caused a certain proposition to be true (I remind you that one causes the proposition that one smokes to be false by stopping smoking, not by somehow operating directly on the proposition that one smokes), the truth of many true propositions (and the falsity of many false ones) is causally independent of any human activity. We may cite the proposition that Mt Everest is 8849.87 meters high, the proposition that somewhere on Mars there are the ruins of an advanced civilization that flourished millions of years ago, and the proposition that the dinosaurs were mam- mals. The first is true and the second false; the third is one or the other (unless borderline cases are involved), although I don’t know which. As to my contention that the first is true independently of all human activity, I hope no one is going to tell me that the proposition that Mt Everest is 8849.87 meters high would not be true if the metric system of linear measure had never been devised or if Mt Everest had been named after Colonel Lambton instead of Colonel Everest. And I hope no one is going to tell me that the height of Mt Everest is inherently and inescapably a matter of convention—owing to the fact that geographers have agreed that the height of a mountain is to be the distance from the center of the earth of its highest point minus the average distance of the surface of the sea at the latitude of the mountain from the center of the earth. If anyone does tell me this thing I hope no one is going to tell me, I shall reply as follows. There is indeed such a convention. And it does indeed have something to do with what it is that English-speakers say (and say truly) when they utter the sentence ‘Mt Everest is 8849.87 meters high’. For that matter, it has something, and exactly the same thing, to do with what they would say if for some bizarre reason they uttered the sentence ‘Mt Everest is five meters high’. But consider the thing that English-speakers in fact say when they utter the former sentence—and not what they would say when they uttered that sentence if some possible alternative convention concerning the heights of mountains were in force. That thing is true, and its truth has every- Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist? 179 thing to do with the topography of the Earth’s crust and nothing to do with anything else—and, most emphatically, it has nothing to do with human beings and their conventions. I call that thing by the name ‘the proposition that Mt Everest is 8849.87 meters high’. (At any rate, that’s the name I call it by when I’m speaking to an audience of philosophers.) If different conventions about the use of ‘height’ were in force, that name might well be a name for a different proposition. But they aren’t and it isn’t. And the thing the name in fact names is true no matter what anyone calls it. And it would be true in any counterfactual circumstance in which the topography of the Earth’s surface was as it in fact is, even if that counterfactual circumstance were so remote as not to include the existence of human beings. And that’s what I call realism: the thesis there are true propositions— contingently true propositions—that would be true no matter what human beings had ever done and even if human beings had never existed. (And, of course, this point about truth applies, mutatis mutandis, to falsity.) And I expect Orwell would agree with me on that point—although he might think it a matter of some importance that I should add to what I have said a clause that said explicitly that a certain class of propositions belonged to this category, viz. propositions about the past. Although it is a nice philosophical question what it is for a proposition to be about the past (see any philosophical debate about divine foreknowledge and freedom), it is certainly true that there are many, many propositions that are uncontroversially about the past. For example, that Elizabeth I died in 1603 or that Trotsky was murdered by an NKVD agent in 1940. Orwell would say, and I would agree, that any proposition of this sort— any proposition that is what I have called “uncontroversially about the past”—is either true or false (unless it is indeterminate; the proposition about Trotsky’s murder would be neither true nor false if, e.g., Ramón Mercader’s relation to the NKVD was ambiguous and he could not be said without qualification to have been an agent of the NKVD or not to have been an agent of the NKVD). And if it is now true that ElizabethI died in 1603, it will continue to be true even if everyone should somehow come to believe that she died in 1605 or that she was immortal and still lived or that she had never lived at all. I do not see how anyone could disagree with me about this, could dispute either my general thesis or the codicil I have imagined that Orwell might want to add to it. I do not see how anyone could maintain that there is no such property as truth, and I do not see how anyone could maintain that there is such a property but whether something has it is in every case causally dependent on the actions of human beings. I do 180 Peter van Inwagen not see how anyone could think that “Elizabeth I died in 1603” might have been true in 1955 and have become false at some point in the tumultuous 1960s. I do not think anyone does disagree with me about these things. At any rate, I do not think that Conant disagrees with me. (O’Brien would disagree—but he would also agree. Doublethink makes that possible.) Suppose someone—I do not say “Conant,” just “someone”—were to reply as follows. “Yes, no one would disagree with you about any of that stuff (or no one but an Ingsoc doublethinker who also agreed with you). And, yes, those are just the theses Orwell wanted to defend, even if his vocabulary was not quite the same as yours. But they’re not metaphysical theses.” I suppose I’d have to ask that person what he thought a metaphysical thesis was. Some at least of the theses I have put forward are certainly not empirical theses. (Small-p platonism, for example.) When I advance these theses, what I say cannot be refuted by observation or experiment. They thus have the feature that the logical positivists used as the touch- stone of metaphysics. They are, moreover, theses about a concept, truth, that is as general a concept as there could be. If I tell you that everything Professor X says in his new book is true, that will give you no clue whatever as to what the book is about. Is it about number theory, epistemology, geology, tax law, the history of public finance in Tuscany . . . ? The word ‘true’ is like the words ‘and’ and ‘whether’ and ‘is’; it is what the Oxford philosophers of the fifties called a topic-neutral word. (If someone blots out all the words in a treatise but the topic-neutral words, a reader who examines the defaced text will have no way of knowing what the subject of the treatise is.) A predicate that is formed from a topic-neutral adjective like ‘true’ is as general a predicate as a predicate can be. A property that is, like truth, expressed by a predicate of this sort seems to be at least a good candidate for the office “property of interest to metaphysicians.” Does this mean, then, that Orwell was interested in metaphysics? Well, certainly not as a discipline, not as an area of theoretical enquiry. But he was interested in and accepted certain theses that I, at any rate, insist are metaphysical theses, and he thought that what people believed about these theses was tremendously important—which is not to say that he would have been at all interested in the arguments metaphysicians have used to attack or defend them. (If you summarized a page of Rorty to him, he would very likely have said something along the lines of, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist? 181 man could be such a fool.”8) Here is something that Orwell once said that illustrates how a person with no theoretical interest in metaphysics can have beliefs about matters that metaphysicians dispute about—and can find reason to appeal to these beliefs in an essay on politics. This is from Orwell’s “The Lion and the Unicorn;” his topic is the historical continuity of England:

What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of ﬁve whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person [Orwell 1940, 57].

The last sentence presupposes a view of personal identity that has been disputed by great philosophers. Many metaphysicians would follow Hume and say that the adult reader of “The Lion and the Unicorn” and the child of ﬁve were simply not identical with one another; a modern, scien- tiﬁc philosopher like Reichenbach who took more or less the Humean line would say that the adult reader and the child were two distinct temporal segments of an four-dimensional “space-time worm.” (I am sure that Orwell knew, in a purely intellectual sort of way, as a matter of obscure historical fact, that Hume and other philosophers had had various things to say about personal identity across time, but I don’t suppose that any thoughts about Hume or philosophy were in his mind when he wrote the words I have quoted.) Other metaphysicians would agree with Orwell in his contention that the adult and the child were the same person—but these metaphysicians fall into several camps and, when they can spare time from arguing with the Humeans, argue endlessly with one another about what it is to for a person who exists at one time to be identical with a person who exists at another time. Orwell would certainly not have been interested in their interminable debate. (“The subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer”? Despite what some have said, I’m sure he was able to understand them, insofar as there is anything in them susceptible of being understood. It’s just that he would have considered it a waste of his time to try to understand them.) But although he would not have been interested in the debate, he did in fact accept at least one of the theses the debate was about.

8I concede that that famous remark (usually misquoted) was actually directed at a straightforwardly political thesis—that “American troops had been brought to Europe not to ﬁght the Germans but to crush an English revolution.” [Orwell 1945, 379]. 182 Peter van Inwagen

Or so I say. Other philosophers will insist that none of the theses that would figure in a four-way dispute about personal identity among Derek Parfit, Roderick Chisholm, David Lewis, and myself were theses that Orwell either accepted or rejected or had so much as entertained. They will say that when Orwell said “you happen to be the same person,” what he was saying was something that the four metaphysicians were in agreement about. And someone—I do not say “Conant,” just “someone”—might say the corresponding thing about what Orwell was saying when he said, “Facts exist independently of us and are more or less discoverable”: that this statement is something that all the parties to the realism/anti-realism debate agree on, and that the points on which they disagree would have been of no interest to Orwell. Well, perhaps so. All I can say is, if realism is not the thesis that facts (some facts, at any rate) exist independently of us, I do not know what realism is. (I take “Facts exist independently of us” to be another way of saying that truth exists independently of us. In other words, words a philosopher might use, “Truth is radically non-epistemic.”) And if anti- realism is not the denial of the thesis that facts exist independently of us, I do not know what anti-realism is. And if the question whether facts exist independently of us is not a metaphysical question, I do not know what a metaphysical question is. I wish to end with a discussion of a question I raised earlier: Why does O’Brien retain his allegiance to the existence of objective truth? Why does he not achieve logical consistency by simply eliminating the idea of truth and replacing it with Party solidarity? Or, if you like, why does Orwell not represent O’Brien as achieving logical consistency by refusing to affirm the existence of objective truth? The answer to both questions, I believe, lies in this fact: it is not possible consistently to reject the existence of objective truth. It is indeed possible to deny the existence of objective truth—I’ve seen it done—, but it is not possible not to affirm the existence of objective truth. And, therefore, anyone who denies the existence of objective truth will also affirm its existence. And why do I say that it is not possible not to affirm the existence of objective truth? Because, I say, it is not possible to go through life without asserting things, and everyone who asserts anything thereby affirms the existence of objective truth. Consider this sentence, which could certainly be used to make an assertion:

The Arc de Triomphe is in the center of the Place de l’Étoile.

I’ll call this sentence the “core sentence.” Each of the following four sentences is a logical consequence of the core sentence: Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist? 183

It is true that the Arc de Triomphe is in the center of the Place de l’Étoile

It is objectively true that the Arc de Triomphe is in the center of the Place de l’Étoile

The proposition that the Arc de Triomphe is in the center of the Place de l’Étoile corresponds to reality

The Arc de Triomphe is in the center of the Place de l’Étoile even if everyone believes that the Arc de Triomphe is somewhere else.

If anyone doubts whether the second of these sentences is a logical consequence of the core sentence, I would ask him whether he thinks that there is or could be something that is true but not objectively true—and I hope that if he says there is, he will provide me with an example. To explain the distinction between “true” and “objectively true” is a problem for rhetoric or pragmatics, not for logic or semantics. (If anyone is interested in discussing Kierkegaard’s “Truth is subjectivity,” I’d be happy to do so. For the present, I’ll record my conviction that this interesting thesis has nothing to do with the realism/anti-realism debate.) If anyone doubts whether the third sentences is a logical consequence of the core sentence, I would ask him how he would define ‘The proposition that p corresponds to reality’. I would offer him either of two definientia for this schema: he may choose between ‘The proposition that p is true’ and, simply, ‘p’. If “corresponds to reality” is not be understood in either of these ways, I don’t know how it is to be understood. As for the fourth and final sentence, note that

If the Arc de Triomphe is in the center of the Place de l’Étoile, then the Arc de Triomphe is in the center of the Place de l’Étoile even if everyone believes that the Arc de Triomphe is somewhere else is equivalent to

If the Arc de Triomphe is in the center of the Place de l’Étoile, then, if everyone believes that the Arc de Triomphe is somewhere else, the Arc de Triomphe is in the center of the Place de l’Étoile, 184 Peter van Inwagen which is an instance of a theorem of sentential logic (If p, then if q then p). If one asserts something, one commits oneself to the truth of its logical consequences—or at any rate one does if one knows that they are logical consequences of what one has asserted. Logical consequences of the sort I have set out are, I think, suﬃciently obvious that if someone makes an assertion, any assertion whatever, he commits himself to the truth of that assertion, to the objective truth of that assertion, to that assertion’s corresponding to reality, and to its being true (and objectively true and in correspondence with reality) no matter what anyone else may believe. It is for this reason that even the Party cannot dispense with the idea of a truth that exists independently of its decrees. The Party must make assertions (that it invented the airplane; that Oceana is at war with Eastasia and has always been at war with Eastasia) and cannot forbid its servants to make assertions (it must insist that they make the same political assertions it does; and, in any case, it is not possible for people to conduct the simplest aﬀairs of everyday life without making assertions). And making assertions commits one to realism: to say that the Party invented the airplane is to say that it is the objective truth that the Party invented the airplane and would be the objective truth even if everyone believed that the Party had not invented the airplane.

References

Brandom, Robert B., (ed.) 2000 Rorty and His Critics, Oxford: Blackwell. Conant, James 2000 Freedom, Cruelty, and Truth: Rorty versus Orwell, in [Bran- dom 2000, 268–342]. Orwell, George 1939 Review of Bertrand Russell, Power: A Social Analysis, cited according to [Orwell & Angus 1968, vol. I, 375–376]. 1940 The Lion and the Unicorn, cited according to [Orwell & Angus 1968, vol. II, 56–109]. 1945 Notes on Nationalism, cited according to [Orwell & Angus 1968, vol. III, 361–380]. Orwell, Sonia & Angus, Ian (eds.) 1968 The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Or- well, 4 volumes; New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Was George Orwell a Metaphysical Realist? 185

Rorty, Richard 1989 Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2000 Response to James Conant, in [Brandom 2000, 342–350]. Van Inwagen, Peter 2002 Metaphysics, 2nd ed. Boulder CO and London: Westview Press and Oxford University Press. 186 (Anti)Realist Implications of a Pragmatist Dual-Process Active-Externalist Theory of Experience

Tom Burke University of South Carolina

Résumé : Les questions relatives à l’opposition réalisme/antiréalisme sont abordées à la lumière d’une philosophie pragmatiste de l’esprit. On élabore une philosophie pragmatiste de l’esprit dans les termes d’une théorie ‘externaliste- active’ de l’expérience vue comme double processus. Cette théorie pose en principe deux types d’expérience tels que la ‘mentalité’ (en tant que capacité à penser, émettre des hypothèses, formuler des théories, raisonner, délibérer) constitue l’un des deux types d’expérience. La correspondance formelle de la théorie avec les faits est caractérisée en termes de correspondance fonctionnelle entre ces deux types d’expérience. On discute alors les aspects réalistes et constructivistes de cette conception. L’externalisme-actif garantit une sorte de réalisme écologique, qui permet à la théorie d’éviter le constructivisme radical ou l’irréalisme. Abstract: Realism/antirealism issues are considered in light of a pragmatist philosophy of mind. A pragmatist philosophy of mind is cast in terms of a dual-process active-externalist theory of experience. This theory posits two kinds of experience such that mentality (as a capacity for thinking, hypothe- sizing, theorizing, reasoning, deliberating) constitutes one of the two kinds of experience. The formal correspondence of theory with facts is characterized in terms of a functional correspondence between these two kinds of experience. Realist and constructivist aspects of this view are then discussed. Active- externalism guarantees a kind of ecological realism that allows the theory to avoid radical constructivism or irrealism.

The pragmatist philosophy of mind outlined in the ﬁrst half of this paper is designed to shed light on what William James and John Dewey were concerned with a century ago in their wholesale rejection of traditional epistemology and metaphysics. What they took to be a viable alternative, if comprehensible at all, may seem irrelevant if not entirely

Philosophia Scientiæ, 12 (1), 2008, 187–211. 188 Tom Burke foreign to contemporary philosophy of mind. Nevertheless, contemporary philosophy of mind at least in some quarters is beginning to echo views proposed by James and Dewey. These latter views, of course, have implications ranging beyond the philosophy of mind as such. The second half of the present paper looks at issues of realism and antirealism, discussing ways in which a pragmatist theory of experience incorporates both constructivist and realist tendencies and thus works toward resolving conﬂicts between hardcore realism and equally hardcore antirealism. In his introduction to Consequences of Pragmatism, Richard Rorty makes the following interesting statement:

On the account of recent analytic philosophy which I oﬀered in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [Rorty 1979], the history of that movement has been marked by a gradual “pragmaticization” of the original tenets of logical positivism. On the account of recent “Continental” philosophy which I hope to oﬀer in a book on Heidegger which I am writing, James and Nietzsche make parallel criticisms of nineteenth-century thought. Further, James’s version is preferable, for it avoids the “metaphysical” elements in Nietzsche which Heidegger criticizes, and, for that matter, the “metaphysical” elements in Heidegger which Derrida criticizes. On my view, James and Dewey were not only waiting at the end of the dialectical road which analytic philosophy traveled, but are waiting at the end of the road which, for example, Foucault and Deleuze are currently traveling. [Rorty 1982, xviii]

What Rorty means by that last sentence is that James and Dewey man- aged to do early on what analytic and “Continental” philosophy would both eventually do, namely, “find a way of setting Philosophy to one side” [xxi] in favor of plain everyday “philosophy.” On this view “the best hope for philosophy is not to practice Philosophy”—neither to give in to the Platonic urge to “believe more truths or do more good or be more rational by knowing more about Truth or Goodness or Rationality” [xv], nor to make Philosophy scientific, as the logical positivists hoped for—but to adopt a naturalistic, behavioristic stance towards language, knowledge, and related matters of common human interest [xxi]. That may all be true; but Rorty’s last sentence above rings true in another sense that he perhaps would not acknowledge. The naturalization of philosophy has progressed at a brisk pace over the hundred-plus years that pragmatism has been a going concern. Riding the wave of Darwinism in the latter half of the nineteenth century and witnessing (Anti)Realist Implications. . . 189 the rise of the new physics and its affects on epistemology at the beginning of the twentieth century, classical pragmatists also contributed not only to the professionalization of philosophy in the U.S. but to the emergence of psychology as a science distinct from philosophy or logic. Yet it would seem that pragmatism disappeared from sight in the latter half of the twentieth century just as we began to see momentous developments in mathematics, statistics, logic, linguistics, and the sciences generally. These latter developments supplied many of the basic tools, topics, and issues of analytic philosophy, taking American philosophy in directions that James and Dewey never imagined. Are they indeed waiting at the end of that dialectical road? Well, yes. Rorty’s characterization of analytic philosophy as eventually finding ways to set Philosophy aside does not easily accommodate the fact that analytic philosophy in the twentieth century was as much “technicalized” in particular ways as it was naturalized or “pragmati- cized” in the course of assimilating methods from neighboring disciplines. Such developments have not always been so much “in favor of everyday ‘philosophy’” as Rorty would have us believe. Pro-Philosophical twists and turns in that technicalization easily explain why pragmatism largely receded from view for much of the last half of the twentieth century, as if analytical philosophy balked and refused to go where its dialectical trav- els were taking it. Indeed, it is not often thought that James or Dewey might have something to contribute to the more technical developments that characterized this new dialectic. Nevertheless, where James and Dewey are waiting lies in a direction allowing greater technicalization but without a regressive Philosophy. By advocating substantive ideas and methodologies better suited for a comprehensively naturalized philosophy free from having to bear Philosophical loads, James and Dewey anticipated much of where analytic philosophy should have headed much earlier than it now seems to be heading. In particular, Dewey developed conceptions of experience, learning, inquiry, and intelligence that are supposed to hold up to scrutiny not only in science or only in the classroom but generally in any phase or aspect of human life. Minimally, recent work in the philosophy of mind (despite previous detours) provides an interesting perspective on what Dewey was attempting to do. Work in the cognitive sciences has matured sufficiently in the last few decades so that certain recent developments can with only minor modification be incorporated into Dewey’s theory of experience without compromising either of the two in any significant way. The benefits go both ways in that Dewey’s theory of experience can positively contribute to these recent developments while the em- 190 Tom Burke pirical and explanatory strength of the latter may help to render more comprehensible the contrarian approach to epistemology and metaphysics that James and Dewey were advocating.

1 A Pragmatist Philosophy of Mind

By pragmatist lights, a major obstacle to progress in the philosophy of mind even to the present day is a faulty conception of the relation of mind to the head and to the world outside the head. This is evident in characterizations of the so-called “easy problems” of consciousness— problems, for example, of explaining the role of intentional states in con- trolling behavior, the reportability of mental states, the discrimination and categorization of stimuli, the focus of attention, and so on (versus the “hard problem” of accounting for the qualitative, phenomenal, subjective what-it’s-like nature of experience). Allegedly, the “easy” problems can be handled by neurobiology and computation theory [Chalmers 1995], [Chalmers 2002]—as if cognitive science only (or primarily) needs to ﬁg- ure out how the computer inside the head works. The problem here is neither with neurobiology nor with computation theory, of course, but with the uncritical assumption that the relevant locus of computation is exclusively inside the head. The “easy” problems thus are not being solved precisely because proposed solutions are based on a neuro-centric orientation to various basic distinctions—between mind and world, ideas and things, theories and facts. This neuro-centric bias by itself is enough to make the easy problems impossible to solve.

1.1 Folk Psychology and a Pragmatist Alternative

A generic though simplistic version of this way of thinking is depicted in Figure 1. In this view, everything is essentially aligned with an inner/outer brain/world distinction, including causal linkages going from outer to inner and vice versa. In particular, experience (sensation, perception) involves causal relations whereby the world impresses itself upon the mind. Conversely, the action arrow depicts causal relations in the opposite direction, often rationally mediated, whereby the external environment is manipulated according to the mind’s dictates. Representation (a relation by which the mind and/or brain mirrors the world as well as its own workings) and intentionality (a relation of directedness toward an object, whether external or internal, real or unreal) are often cited in explanations of the internal (ir)rational processes (Anti)Realist Implications. . . 191 that mediate experience and action. There are many versions and reﬁne- ments of this basic perspective. So far, none of it works, as conﬁrmed by any recent philosophy-of-mind reader. For what it is worth, we may contrast the foregoing folk perspective with a pragmatist theory of experience. A preliminary formulaic claim utilizing contemporary terminology goes as follows: a pragmatist theory of experience = active externalism + a dual process theory of rationality + some additional tweaking. It is assumed that what follows the “=” is known to the reader, though a quick summary may be useful. On one hand, active externalism is the view that the environment external to the brain and nervous system plays an active role in constituting and driving cognitive processes [Clark 1997], [Clark 2001], [Clark 2003], [Clark & Chalmers 1998], [Noë 2004], [Rockwell 2005]. This is a fairly radical refashioning of the semantic externalism of [Putnam 1975] and [Burge 1979], embracing a form of cognitive externalism and, respectively, a version of epistemic externalism that does not presuppose cognitive internalism. Epistemic externalism in particular relies on notions of epistemic deference consistent with Burge’s conception of semantic deference or what Putnam calls the linguistic division of labor. In this case knowledge encompasses material artifacts [Baird 2004] and is socially distributed [Hardwig 1985], [Hutchins 1995], [Longino 2006]. Granted, this version of epistemic externalism is just the relatively uncontentious though nonstandard view that an individual’s knowledge includes factors external to the individual’s head and brain without being external to the individual’s range of possible experience, requiring no commitments either way concerning what may be altogether beyond the individual’s ken.

‘‘OUTER’’ / EXTERNAL WORLD / ENVIRONMENT / FACTS / KINDS / THINGS /…

EXPERIENCE ACTION

‘‘INNER’’ / BRAIN / ORGANISM / THOUGHTS / CONCEPTS / IDEAS

Figure 1: mind vs world = brain vs environment? 192 Tom Burke

On the other hand, dual-process theories of rationality posit two complimentary cognitive systems: (1) an evolutionarily older system that is fast, associative, automatic, unconscious, parallel, implicit, intuitive, instinctive, compulsory, affective, impulsive, rigid, involuntary; versus (2) a more recently evolved system that is slow, rule-based, controlled, conscious, serial, explicit, rational, reflective, deliberate, symbolic, verbal, flexible, pliable [Frankish 2004], [Stanovich 1999], [Stanovich 2004]. We can combine these two views to obtain a pragmatist theory of experience if two other insights from James and Dewey are also included. First, we have to reformulate the notion of experience not to embrace traditional empiricism but, more interestingly, so that thinking (reasoning, reflecting, deliberating, theorizing) are cast as one of two kinds of experience. In effect, this means that we should work primarily in terms of a dual-process theory of experience, rather than of cognition or mind or rationality. Second, we need to peel various distinctions apart, introducing two ninety-degree shifts in perspective. Specifically, (1) distinctions between things and ideas, facts and theories, or perceiving and reasoning are to be regarded as orthogonal to an inner/outer distinction, being aligned instead with the two kinds of experience just mentioned (fast vs slow); and (2) intentionality, contrary perhaps to what has been made of Brentano’s original conception of it [Brentano 1874], is to be regarded primarily as a kind of directedness towards maladjusted situations requiring resolution, where the breakdown/resolution distinction is itself orthogonal to both the inner/outer and the theory/fact distinctions. So, instead of aligning everything in parallel with an inner/outer distinction as in Figure 1, we would have an array of (at least) three independent (orthogonal) sets of distinctions. Detailed textual evidence will not be presented here; but the key ideas outlined in the preceding paragraphs are present in William James’s Es- says in Radical Empiricism [James 1912], The Meaning of Truth [James 1909], Principles of Psychology [James 1890], and elsewhere. Likewise, these ideas can be found in John Dewey’s Essays in Experimental Logic [Dewey 1916], Reconstruction in Philosophy [Dewey 1920], Experience and Nature [Dewey 1925], The Quest for Certainty [Dewey 1929], and elsewhere. These texts deserve careful scrutiny, particularly in light of their contributions to the philosophy of mind. The point here is that some important recent developments in the philosophy of mind are actually not so recent. Among the classical pragmatists, Dewey in particular characterized an inner/outer distinction in objective biological and ecological terms of organisms and their environments. Moreover, instead of (Anti)Realist Implications. . . 193 associating thinking or reasoning exclusively with the organism, he proposed (1) an ecological form of active externalism where experience is an interactive temporal process taking place in arenas of organism/environment transactions, (2) a dual-process theory of experience where thinking/reasoning/deliberating are cast as one of two kinds of experience (instinctual vs deliberate), and (3) a view that experiences (in a count sense of the term; both fast and slow) are situated and episodic, directed towards accomplishing resolutions of breakdowns. In particular, Dewey’s distinction between primary and secondary experience in Experience and Nature [Dewey 1925, 15–17] is orthogonal to a distinction between what is outside versus inside the head, though it par- allels distinctions between things and ideas, facts and theory, perceiving and reasoning. Meanwhile, the breakdown/resolution distinction that characterizes the situated, episodic “intentional” nature of experiences is Dewey’s generalized version of a doubt/belief conception of inquiry. On this account, the breakdown/resolution distinction—orthogonal both to an inner/outer distinction and to a primary/secondary distinction—is part of a theory of experience such that inquiries make up a particular class of experiences, that is, such that inquiries are experiences. In other words, one does not posit an independent conception of experience and only then address breakdown/resolution processes (for example, problem-solving that sooner or later must “face the tribunal of sense experience”) but rather the latter processes are constitutive of a proper conception of experience to begin with. On this view, intentionality is indeed what distinguishes us as living creatures—that is, creatures capable of what Dewey calls psycho-physical activity [Dewey 1925, 198]—though that notion has to be coupled with a dual-process theory of experience to account for what distinguishes us as thinking psycho-physical creatures “capable of that organized interaction with other living creatures which is language, communication” [198]. These distinctions are depicted in Figures 2 and 3. In contrast with Figure 1, Figure 2 depicts a distinction between two kinds of experience that is orthogonal to an inner/outer distinction. As Dewey explains it, primary experience is a kind of organism/environment interaction that is instinctive and habitual—yielding “gross, macroscopic, crude subject-matters” that constitute apparent things and facts as they are directly encountered. Primary experience furnishes brute data for secondary experience. Conversely, secondary experience is a kind of organism/environment interaction that is reflective, deliberate, speculative— utilizing ideas, hypotheses, theories, and the like in efforts to explain and regulate the ongoing course of primary experience. 194 Tom Burke

This distinction between facts and theories (and thus between primary and secondary experience), again, is orthogonal to one between an environment (outer) and an organism (inner). Nevertheless the distinction between primary and secondary experience is the basis for an account of representation in the sense that theories represent facts. Con- sequently, issues concerning truth and the like would have more to do with correspondences between two kinds of organism/environment interaction (both of which are equally accessible) and not so much between an inner mind and an outer world (each by itself being mysterious and essentially inaccessible by all current accounts). Figure 3 depicts a second ninety-degree shift away from a simple inner/outer distinction, pertaining in this case to the directedness of experiences (in the count sense of the term). The breakdown/resolution distinction that determines the direction of an experience is thus orthogonal to each of the former two distinctions. (View Figure 3 as being rotated ninety degrees into and out of the page from Figure 2.) Intentionality (at least as immediately occurrent directedness toward an inexistent object; not in every sense of aboutness, e.g., in the sense that representations of facts are about facts) may be identified with this directedness of experience with regard to a maladjusted situation in need of resolution—such that the ongoing course of experience tends to be both situated and episodic in nature, always involving primary experience (driven by instinctual, habitual responses to discordant circumstances) and often involving secondary experience (proceeding as deliberate reflective regulative inquiry) in various efforts to regain some kind of equilibrium in organism/environment transactions. Putting all of this together, we obtain the following revised formulaic

‘‘OUTER’’ / EXTERNAL WORLD / ENVIRONMENT

PRIMARY EXPERIENCE SECONDARY EXPERIENCE

‘‘INNER’’ / BRAIN / ORGANISM

◦ Figure 2: one 90 shift: primary vs secondary experience. (Anti)Realist Implications. . . 195 claim: a pragmatist theory of experience = active externalism + a dual- process theory of primary versus secondary experience + an account of experiences as situated, episodic equilibrations + an arrangement of these three independent factors into a multi-dimensional epistemological and psychological framework.

1.2 Two Challenges

The latter formula does not say as much as we should want, though it works against folk-psychological intuitions if it works at all. There are, of course, two obvious questions about active externalism in particular— two challenges—that highlight what is at issue here: (I) How exactly are worldly objects or facts inner as well as outer? (II) How exactly are thoughts or theories outer as well as inner? How would a pragmatist answer these questions? There are two complimentary ways to reply to these questions (not that the present paper will pursue either way in any detail). On one hand, we might look to philosophy. On the other hand, we might try to do some cognitive science. In the ﬁrst case, besides the works of James and Dewey, we could recite numerous well-known arguments and examples from the philosophical literature in favor of various kinds of externalism. This kind of reply should give at least some plausibility to a pragmatist theory of experience. Question (I) is thus answerable by arguing for a kind of operational externalism. Namely, by virtue of the interactive coupling of organisms and their environments, primary experience is operationally projective and perspectival [Hanson 1958], [McDowell 1994], [Noë 2004], [Wittgen-

OUTER, ETC RESOLUTION

‘‘INTENTIONALITY ’’ BREAKDOWN

INNER, ETC

◦ Figure 3: another 90 shift: breakdown and resolution. 196 Tom Burke stein 1953]. This is not to claim that perception or perceptual facts are “theory-laden.” That is a different point that is specific to perceivers capable of entertaining “theories” whereas the present point is intended to cover all perceivers in general. The present point pertains not to theoretical but to operational perspectivity. The point is that primary experience is laden by operational capabilities, and these capabilities depend as much on the organism’s constitution as on environmental conditions under which they are implemented. For instance, perceptual illusions clearly exemplify ways in which our perceptions are geared (beyond our deliberate control) to the workings of our sensory machinery, not solely to how and what things are independently of our perceiving them. Thus: outer objects are also inner in the sense that their direct presentation in primary experience is a function of the organism as much as of the environment. Question (II) can be addressed using concepts and arguments associated with semantic externalism [Putnam 1975], [Burge 1979], [Lunt- ley 1999], cognitive externalism [Clark & Chalmers 1998], [Clark 1997], [Clark 2001], [Noë 2004], [Rockwell 2005], and epistemic externalism [Baird 2004], [Hardwig 1985], [Hutchins 1995], [Longino 2006]. These arguments will not be recounted here, but their cumulative upshot is that the supervenience base of secondary experience is extended into the world beyond brains or body surfaces. This larger supervenience base includes spatio-physical structures particularly as they are involved in the technological, cultural-linguistic, and social-institutional complexes in which those brains and bodies are embedded. Thus: inner thoughts are also outer in the sense that their direct occurrence in secondary experience is a function of the environment as much as of the organism. On the other hand, one should also respond to questions (I) and (II) by trying to do some cognitive science. The aim in this case is to build and test working models to try to fathom how far one can run with such ideas. Primary and secondary experience will call for different kinds of modeling techniques that nevertheless must be mutually compatible and subject to some kind of synthesis. A number of existing research programs and modeling techniques may be useful here, though we will only speculate about such prospects. In response to question (I): it is not unreasonable to think that primary experience may be modeled (i) using subsumption architectures [Brooks 1990]; (ii) using artificial-life simulations, genetic algorithms, “constrained generating procedures,” and complexity science [Beer & Gallagher 1992], [Clark 1997], [Holland 1998]; more generally, (iii) by way of dynamical systems theory, including but not limited to neural (Anti)Realist Implications. . . 197 network or connectionist models [Port & van Gelder 1995], [Clark 1997]; or more specifically (iv) drawing on conceptual and methodological aspects of ecological psychology [Gibson 1979], [Heft 2001]. Regardless of how we might employ any of these modeling strategies, the challenge in all such efforts is to model perception and object-recognition processes that are fast, robust, and reliable. In particular, if we take the ecological active-externalism premise seriously, we can only base an account of primary experience on the idea of elementary ecological interactions of some sort. Ecological psychology suggests that we start with a primitive notion of active invariant- extraction or invariant-detection as this elementary form of organism/environment interaction. We could construct a generic notion of a program from that of invariant-extraction (that is, an atomic program in this setting would be the implementation of a given invariant-extraction capability so as to extract a specific invariant, or a specific instance of an invariant, as it were—not unlike an assignment of a value to a variable, though not exactly like it either). We are then able to utilize a respective multi-modal dynamic logic to model “computational” features of primary experience [Burke 2002]. Perceivable objects (or kinds of perceivable objects, more precisely) would have to be cast in terms of frames or models defined over such logics, thus providing one way to capture the Gibson- ian idea that objects are essentially systemic bundles of affordances. The fact that the details of such models would be ecological in nature “all the way down” (and all the way up, for that matter) would explain how it is that any perceived object is as much a function of the organism as of the environment and hence is as much inner as it is outer. In response to question (II): it is reasonable to speculate that modeling secondary experience would focus especially on the role of languages and cultures in human experience, these being the media of slow and deliberate experience. This emphasis would have to include social- institutional structures (economic, political, etc.) as external sources of constraints on individual rational choice [Clark 1997, chap. 9–10], [Satz & Ferejohn 1994]. More generally, this modeling task calls for a thorough reconsideration of the nature and role of language in human experience. It will almost certainly require (i) that we rethink semantics. For example, set theory is not a good place to begin insofar as “objects” are real enough but are neither fundamental, elementary, nor primitive, no matter that they may be as real as anything is real. But if set theory is suspect, so are traditional (Tarski-style) approaches to semantics, particularly as the latter are geared to formal languages that (if only intuitively) regard 198 Tom Burke nameable objects as ontologically fundamental. The question then is how to proceed if we instead take invariant-detection capabilities to be fundamental and proceed as above with a constructed notion of objects and kinds of objects. One cannot simply do business as usual so far as formal semantics goes. Focusing on language and culture in models of secondary experience similarly requires (ii) that we seriously rethink logical syntax. If “objects” are not fundamental, then we should not blindly adhere to a logical syntax that takes them to be so. It is also necessary (iii) to rethink pragmatics—for example, to re- construct relevance theory [Sperber & Wilson 1995], first, by dispens- ing with Fodor’s computational theory of mind and opting instead for a pragmatist view informed by Mead’s social psychology [Burke 2005] and, second, by supplementing the idea of relevance with one of utility so as to accommodate the intentional breakdown/resolution dimension of experience [Burke ms]. Otherwise, on other fronts, (iv) Lakoff and Núñez [Lakoff & Núñez 2000] may help to explain how the present framework can accommodate mathematical cognition, where mathematical ideas are constituted by way of metaphor though they are grounded in bodily activities and thus rooted in primary experience. What is particularly significant about their conception of the role of metaphor in the growth and development of mathematical cognition is that it may help to explain the distinction and connection between primary and secondary experience in general, namely, not as mirroring but as a layering of schematic metaphors, constituting a coupling and/or clutch mechanism of sorts (see below). Also, (v) we might employ models of bounded rationality that focus specifically on “fast and frugal heuristics” [Gigerenzer, Todd, & the ABC Research Group 1999], [Gigerenzer & Selten 2001], [Clark 1997]. Some of the work being done along these lines may be pertinent to modeling primary experience directly (for example, catching a fly ball on the run) while other work seems to deal with fast but deliberate choices (for example, choosing which of two or more gambles one is willing to take). In any case, (vi) all such modeling has to be informed by evolu- tionary accounts of the emergence not just of symbol-use but of full- fledged compositional languages capable of handling sentences, propositions, concepts, and the like in secondary experience—as opposed to creatures’ dealing directly with things, kinds, facts, and so on in primary experience [Burke 2002], [Burke 2005]. To summarize: We do not have to look far to find existing modeling techniques that may be used to fill out a pragmatist theory of experience. The one key idea is to take the ecological interactional premise seriously and begin with a primitive notion of active invariant-detection. On that (Anti)Realist Implications. . . 199 basis we may attempt to apply various modeling strategies so as to clarify and render testable the pragmatist theory of experience outlined above.

2 (Anti)Realism?

The preceding discussion is only a preliminary survey of strategies one may use to model and test a pragmatist theory of experience. But clearly a lot of work can be done to try to (in)validate that theory. The remaining half of the present paper deals with the less ambitious task of examining realist and antirealist features and commitments of this theory. Historically, a major impetus for a pragmatist theory of experience has been the felt need to avoid long-standing conundrums associated with an apparent chasm between mind and world as envisaged by folk psychology. The pragmatist remedy to these conundrums is the use of a strategy by which both facts and theories straddle that apparent chasm. A defense of such a view must answer allegations that it inevitably leads to idealism, subjectivism, solipsism, or other dire consequences of radical constructivism. We can approach these issues by way of the notion of representation. Representation is of course a key factor in the operations of human mentality; but it is not at all obvious how best to characterize the representation relation. The relevant distinction in the present view is one not between brain versus external world but between secondary versus primary experience. In the present framework, the latter distinction is the best if not only way to talk about mind representing the world, or about thoughts representing facts. Several points can be made straightaway about the nature of representation if we cast it as a relation between secondary and primary experience. This view suggests that representation is not essentially a mirroring relation, and it is something other than the adaptation of neural systems to environmental conditions. Instead, representation involves operational correspondences or couplings between two kinds of organism/environment interactions and thus between two kinds of adap- tations of neural systems to environmental conditions. As opposed to inner representations mirroring the outer world, the important relation here is a functional, operational coupling of fast and slow interactive processes. In this view, secondary experience requires the equivalent of a “clutch mechanism” as part of this coupling, making it possible for one to disengage from instinctive, habitual transactions with the world and otherwise to slow things down (when possible) in response to trouble- 200 Tom Burke some circumstances where we may need to switch gears (as it were) and redirect ongoing activities.

How to account for this disengagement capability as a feature of secondary experience (and thus as characteristic of representation) is not straightforward, but it has already been suggested above that one approach might be to generalize the conception of metaphorical correspondence that Lakoff and Núñez have used to account for the growth and development of mathematical cognition. For example, at least 43,000 years ago humans developed systems of gift-exchange perhaps as a form of favor-tracking or to serve as an external “memory” of kinship relations or other forms of reciprocal altruism. It is thought that such giving originally may have worked as a kind of insurance or social security among groups with limited, precarious, specialized resources, as with present day !Kung San hunter-gatherer groups in Botswana. The point is that the giving or sharing of ostrich-eggshell jewelry, for instance, is a representation of the giving or sharing of life-sustaining resources in the sense that (1) the giving of jewelry corresponds metaphorically to the giving of life-sustaining resources and (2) the giving of jewelry, as a hedge against hard times, is more or less abstract and symbolic in the sense that it pertains to possible givings of valuable food or water in different not-yet- existent circumstances. Jewelry does not exactly mirror food and water, and the giving of jewelry does not exactly mirror the giving of food or water; but schematic metaphorical correspondences in such instances in the way that Lakoff and others characterize such correspondences are not difficult to imagine [Lakoff & Núñez 2000], [Lakoff & Johnson 1980]. The question, of course, is whether (iterations of) this kind of analysis can serve as the basis for a full many-layered account of representation.

In any case, the claim here is that secondary experience as such allows us to stop and think (or at least to coast and think) about what is happening in given circumstances and how best to react—versus acting on mere impulse alone. A pragmatist theory of experience thus distinguishes facts versus theories, things and ideas, and so forth, so as to incorpo- rate these distinctions into a single conception of experience consisting of an operational coupling of two kinds of experience: fast-and-instinctive versus slow-and-deliberate. A key point here is that representations constitute the warp and woof of slow-and-deliberate secondary experience and thus are not essential as such to fast-and-instinctive primary experience. Representations bear on primary experience only in the sense that features of the latter are “represented” in secondary experience (whatever that may mean) such that the latter may influence the course of (Anti)Realist Implications. . . 201 primary experience. Obviously, this account construes the representation relation as being orthogonal to an organism/environment distinction. It is instructive to contrast this view with Quine’s holism [Quine 1951]. Specifically, Quine’s brand of holism fails to accommodate a perspective whereby various epistemological distinctions are orthogonal to a physical-spatial inner/outer distinction. The central and peripheral parts of a Quinean “web of belief” correlate exactly with what is inside versus outside the brain, with experience being characterized in terms of irritations of nerve endings at the interface between the two [Quine 1960], [Quine 1981]. Quine’s metaphors involving webs of belief and man-made fabrics of science clearly illustrate a common problem with many treatments of realism/antirealism issues, whether one espouses metaphysical realism, scientific realism, epistemological constructivism, conventionalism, irrealism, or what have you. It is the problem, again, of uncritically assuming a folk-psychological perspective that (1) positions mind, ideas, theories, beliefs, and the like inside the head, (2) places the world, things, facts, reality, and such outside the head, and (3) casts experience as some kind of flow of information from the latter to the former by way of various orifices and membranes at the head’s and/or body’s extremities. Alternatively, a pragmatist theory of experience explicitly rejects the latter folk-psychological perspective and therefore lies nowhere in the standard spectrum of positions one may take on realism/antirealism issues. Nevertheless it bears some kind of relation both to metaphysical realism and to radical constructivism given that it attempts to accommodate what is right in either extreme view while avoiding the pitfalls of a schizoid folk psychology. We would want to say that a pragmatist theory of experience is in some sense both constructivist and realist rather than neither, though it is neither if one insists that realism and constructivism are absolutely and irrevocably inconsistent with one another. The positive claim that a pragmatist theory of experience is both constructivist and realist is, of course, the more interesting of the two positions one might take in this regard.

2.1 Constructivism

Constructivist aspects of a pragmatist theory of experience are fairly obvious consequences of the fact that it is a dual-process theory of primary and secondary experience that turns the fact/theory distinction ninety degrees sideways so as to be orthogonal to a biophysical inner/outer 202 Tom Burke distinction. In this view, to check theories against facts (ideas against things, mind against the world) is to check one (slow) kind of experience against another (fast) kind of experience. Thus, on one hand, things and facts are involuntary upshots of primary experience, whereas ideas and theories are products of a different (secondary) kind of experience— requiring more recently evolved experiential capabilities that are rule- based, controlled, and deliberate. Again, the notion that facts are “theory-laden” is not the crucial point here. Rather, we should first note that facts and objects in themselves are necessarily constituted in part by the automatic, instinctive, impulsive ways in which we access the world. That facts (as products of primary experience) are practice-laden is the fundamental sense in which a pragmatist theory of experience leans toward constructivism. Notice, nevertheless, that facts (things, realities) are indeed brute facts (things, realities), being what they are independently of what we may think them to be, even if they would not be independent of our modes of primary experience. This is a rather weak form of constructivism that is not unpalatable if one can appreciate the robustness of the epistemic objectivity that it allows. The different issue of how and whether hypotheses and theories (as features of secondary experience) bear on the reality or non-reality of the entities they make claims about, whether observable by “unaided” perceptual capabilities (e.g., rocks) or not (e.g., electrons), is a recurrent practical issue that nevertheless should not present particularly deep philosophical mysteries. There is after all not a huge difference in principle between rocks and electrons insofar as instances of either of these kinds of things are present to our perceptual systems only as they are filtered through perceptual activities. We might try to peer behind this veil of practices into an alleged bare reality of things, but we would then lose any grasp of what a given thing may be as a real object insofar as it has any accessible bearing on us. It is as if the sensible effects of perceptual practices constitute a veil in which reality is shrouded but such that what is behind the veil immediately evaporates in the very act of lifting that veil. For a pragmatist theory of experience, if sensible effects of preceptual practices indeed constitute a veil, then attending to the fabric and flux of this veil in reactive contact with the world is precisely how we discern the contours of reality. This veil is not to be lifted but rather pressed, prodded, and molded against anything that offers resistance, whether the results be rocks, electrons, or whatever. Of course, quite a bit more theory accompanies experiences of electrons than that of rocks, for most of us, which is to say that our ex- (Anti)Realist Implications. . . 203 periences of electrons are considerably more theory-laden than are our experiences of rocks. The fact that this difference is so pronounced may seem to support a kind of instrumentalism which holds that electrons “exist” only to the extent that they work within this or that theory of physics or chemistry (and that is all that need be said about their ontological status). But this ignores the fact that the last one hundred years of science and technology has rendered their sensible effects so familiar in primary experience—so that they “work” concretely within primary experience, not just formally within this or that theory—that we regard electrons as somehow real independently of any particular theory or even independently of admitting that our current theories are probably inadequate. Ultimately we may be wrong in thinking them to be real in this way (as happened, for instance, with “celestial spheres”); but for now there is no point in insisting that they are only useful fictions—just as there would be no point in saying such a thing about rocks.

2.2 Realism

To question whether a pragmatist theory of experience is realist or not presupposes some prior effort to clarify what is meant by “realism” in the first place. In particular, the style of realism that is compatible with a pragmatist theory of experience is significantly constrained by the fact that an active-externalist ninety-degree-shifted dual-process theory of experience cannot reasonably regard “things” or “objects” as primitive denizens of an external universe. The idea of a “thing-in-itself” independent of primary experience is vaguely meaningful but largely useless here. Likewise, the question-begging practice of taking domains of first-order quantification to be domains of things (with the full-fledged ontological commitments this is supposed to entail) is especially questionable—in which case the entire edifice of mathematical logic in its present form becomes suspect. A pragmatist theory of experience and its consequent style of realism have to be formulated and otherwise grounded in some other way. The way to do it, again, is to take seriously the active-externalist assumption, literally, that neither primary nor secondary experience can be located exclusively inside or outside the head. Each kind of experience occurs rather in a field of inner/outer (organism/environment) interactions, the point being that any primitive elements to which we might appeal in psychological modeling must be elementary modes of such interaction. Anything else will almost certainly slippery-slide us back into some form of folk psychology. 204 Tom Burke

As outlined earlier, “objects” or “things” in this view are easily accom- modated as instances of kinds. Kinds, in turn, may be cast as (classes of) models of multi-modal dynamic logics based on the notion of elementary programs as implementations of invariant-detection abilities. There are, of course, “easy” problems of primary experience as well as the “hard” what-it’s-like problem of primary experience, and this way of computationally modeling primary experience only addresses the easy problems. But this theory is clearly not idealist or otherwise radically anti-realist insofar as (1) the constitution of “kinds” depends on regu- larities in the external world as much as on established abilities of the organism, where (2) neither of these two factors depends in any essential way on how or what the experiencer does or might think. The notion that facts are necessarily constituted in part by the world that we often access in automatic and yet reliable ways is the fundamental sense in which a pragmatist theory of experience is realist. Further details are hard to summarize, especially since they have yet to be worked out to any acceptable degree. But if elementary modes of interaction are indeed where we should ground a pragmatist theory of experience, any elaboration of details would have to include a number of things that have already been mentioned or else are clear consequences of what has been discussed so far. In particular, state-of-the-art physics and biology, on their own terms, will always set the stage informally (or meta-theoretically) for how we distinguish organisms versus environments and thus how we characterize so-called active externalism. Of course, this stage-setting will always be tentative. Fortunately there are bodies of physical and biological facts and concepts (that the earth is more or less spherical, that the gravita- tional constant at place X is such and so, etc.) that, regardless of the fate of various cutting-edge developments, will pretty much remain in- tact and thus provide a stable vocabulary for talking about what is inside and outside of brains and heads, at least in physical and/or biological terms. Be that as it may, the cognitive sciences do not fall squarely within the purview of physics and/or biology. We are thus going beyond mere physics or biology when we draw on ecological psychology as a way of modeling primary experience. In particular, elementary modes of interaction and thus primitive features of primary experience would be characterized generically as abilities to extract or detect invariant information in the midst of ambient fluxes of activity; and each instance of such detection has an elusive what-it’s-like quality that escapes merely physical or biological explanation. In this basic sense, it is fairly clear that we are already assuming something like a live creature as an agent (Anti)Realist Implications. . . 205 capable of having experiences in which qualitative invariant-detection plays a fundamental role. We have also seen, at least briefly, how to give an account of things or objects in primary experience as instances of ecological systems of affordances. Of courses, affordances are always affordances for one or another live creature. Any manner of modeling primary and secondary experience, to be successful, must be able to make sense of this notion of affordances, especially if the latter is the key to making sense of objects and kinds of objects. The claim here is not that things or objects do not actually exist but only that they are not suitable as psychological (or logical/semantic) primitives when regarded as being wholly independent of any particular perceiving agent. An object or substance that we regard as debris may be perceived as nutriment by some other creature. That one-and-the-same stuff, if it is real at all, is fully real. But what it is real as depends essentially on who is perceiving it. At the same time, the fact that it is compost material to a given human being and the fact that it is food to a given earthworm are two equally factual facts. For this reason alone, a pragmatist theory of experience does not easily lend itself to nominalism insofar as there are no objects to speak of except as instances of kinds; and there are no kinds, for that matter, except with respect to this or that live creature. It may help to compare this affordance-based notion of facticity with the formal-semantical notion that sentences are not simply true or false absolutely but are only true-in-a-model or false-in-a-model. This rela- tivization of truth to models in no way weakens the notion of truth but only clarifies what it means to say that a claim is true. The idea of relativizing object-hood and kind-hood to specific living organism/environment systems is a more complicated idea in need of substantial clarification; but it is designed not to compromise the notions of actuality or facticity but to clarify what it means to say that a given object actually exists or that a given possible fact is indeed an actual fact. That is what the notion of affordances is all about. We should also keep in mind as well that the preceding discussion is to be couched within a theory of experience that accommodates the situated nature of experiences as episodes of resolution of breakdowns. Objects occur as instances of this or that kind only as they might occur in such situations, or so the theory goes. Something worth noting here is the fact that such situations are not locatable anywhere except within fields of interactions that constitute living organism/environment systems. Situ- ations initially are breakdowns or maladjustments in such interactions. 206 Tom Burke

It is only in that sense that they are “parts of the world.” Nevertheless they are indeed parts of the world, not just subjective states. The bottom line is that a pragmatist theory of experience is realistic in the sense of Gibsonian ecological psychology—not so much with regard to individuals or universals in any traditional sense, but with regard to ambient fields of organism/environment interactions and to engrained abilities of respective live creatures to detect invariants in the flux of those interactions and thereby to perceive things as systemic bundles of affordances. Such things are indeed as real as anything gets. But realism/antirealism issues have been recast in such a way that invariant- extraction abilities are what a pragmatist theory of experience may take to be fundamental and thus what it may take to be fundamentally real. Perhaps the more important point is not just that we can attribute reality to what we take to be fundamental but rather that a pragmatist theory of experience calls for different commitments as to what we should take to be fundamental.

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