ABSTRACT Quantifier Variance and Interpretive Charity John J. Giannini
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ABSTRACT Quantifier Variance and Interpretive Charity John J. Giannini, Ph.D. Mentor: Alexander R. Pruss, Ph.D. The ontological literature contains several ongoing discussions which seem not to be advancing: incompatible theories of what there is are energetically defended, but these defenses do not lead to consensus. Some have suggested that the explanation for this situation is that contemporary ontology pretends to more profundity than it possesses such that in many of these debates what is at issue is not in fact some deep truth about the world, but rather which linguistic convention to use in describing it. Many ontological debates are thus shallow. Eli Hirsch is a prominent defender of this view. He propounds a thesis called Quantifier Variance according to which there are multiple superficially similar languages which are equally good at describing reality, but which differ in their semantics, especially in the meanings they assign their quantifier terms. Speakers of two of these languages might appear to disagree about ontology when in fact they are having a merely verbal dispute. Hirsch further contends that the principle of interpretive charity obliges us to interpret various ontological camps as speaking different of these “ontological languages.” To do otherwise would be uncharitable, for it would be to assign error to some party on clearly insufficient grounds. It would follow that some debates in metaphysics are shallow, and inescapably so, for we would always need to interpret their participants at talking past one another. I aim to show that Hirsch’s contention is false, and that interpretive charity will not motivate such deflation. My first chapter lays out the interrelated theses of Hirsch’s position, including quantifier variance, and holds that even though there is good reason to reject some of these theses, Hirsch still provides a potentially powerful argument that certain debates are merely verbal and shallow, the argument from interpretive charity. It is to rebutting that argument I turn in my second chapter. My third chapter turns to the principle of charity itself, contending that it is doubtful we should accept a principle which would motivate the Hirschean argument. In my final chapter, I develop a semantic hypothesis which facilitates interpretive charity to speakers without quantifier variance. Quantifier Variance and Interpretive Charity by John J. Giannini, B.A., M.A. A Dissertation Approved by the Department of Philosophy Michael D. Beaty, Ph.D., Chairperson Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Baylor University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved by the Dissertation Committee Alexander Pruss, Ph.D., Chairperson Todd Buras, Ph.D. Trent Dougherty, Ph.D. John Haldane, Ph.D. Will Brian, Ph.D. Accepted by the Graduate School May 2017 J. Larry Lyon, Ph.D., Dean Page bearing signatures is kept on file in the Graduate School. Copyright © 2017 by John J. Giannini All rights reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Dedication x CHAPTER ONE: Making Deflation Precise 1 1.1 Deflation 4 1.2 Merely Verbal Disagreement 8 1.3 The Significance of Deflation 14 2.1 Quantifier Variance 16 2.2.1 The Importance of MOL to ontological deflation 18 2.2.2 Stating MOL Precisely 23 2.2.3 The Scope of Semantic Variance 27 2.2.4 Conceptual Variance 30 2.3 Expressive Equivalence 34 2.3.2 Difficulty Formulating EE 37 3.1 The Shape of Things 38 3.2 The Shortcomings of EE 39 3.3 Deflation without EE 43 CHAPTER TWO: The Argument from Interpretive Charity 47 1.1 The Argument from Interpretive Charity 50 1.2 What is the Principle of Charity? 53 1.2.2 The Defeasibility of Charity 58 1.3 Which Principle of Charity? 60 v 1.4 Hirsch’s Version of the Argument from Interpretive Charity 61 1.4.2 Refining AFIC 69 2.1 Deficits of the AFIC 70 2.1.2 Evaluating AFIC.2 70 2.2 From Charity to Metaphysical Possibility 73 2.2.2 Reasons to be mistaken about ontology 78 2.2.3 A different way of taking AFIC 80 2.3 Radical Tools for Practical Projects 87 2.3.2 The Desiderata for Correct Interpretation 89 2.3.3. To What Ought We Be Most Charitable? 93 2.3.4. Practical Interpretation 98 2.3.4.2 Shared Language in the Philosophy Room 101 3.1 Conclusion 103 CHAPTER THREE: Whither Charity? 106 1.1 What We Talk About When We Talk About Charity 108 1.2 The Basis for the Constitutive Principle of Charity 110 1.2.2 Radical Interpretation 111 1.2.3 Theory of Meaning 115 1.3 The Content of Davidson’s POC 117 2.1 But Is There Really a Constitutive Principle of Charity, Though? 120 2.2 Arguments from the Possibility of Radical Interpretation 122 2.3 Arguments from the Holism of Content 127 2.4 Argument to the Best Explanation 131 vi 2.5 Arguments from Triangular Content Externalism 132 2.6 Empirical Arguments 135 2.7 Taking Stock 139 3.1 The Scope of Possible Error 140 3.1.2 The Scope of Logical Error 141 3.1.3 The Scope of Empirical Error 144 3.1.4 Dependence on Epistemology 147 3.2 Ontological Error and DPOC 147 3.2.2 Acceptable Inconsistency 150 3.2.3 Acceptable Disconnect 153 3.2.4 Generalizing the Result 158 4.1 Conciliatory Options 159 4.2 QV among the C theories 161 5.1 Conclusion 163 CHAPTER FOUR: Simulated Domain of Discourse 165 1.1 Observable Phenomena 168 1.2 Ontological Opacity of Ordinary Discourse 169 1.3 Ontological Malleability of Ordinary Discourse 171 2.1 Explaining the Phenomenon 173 2.1.2 Explanation One: Taking Malleability at Face Value 173 2.1.3 Explanation Two: Limited Domain of Discourse 174 2.2 Explanation Three: Simulated Domain of Discourse 178 2.2.2 Semantics of a Simulated Domain 181 vii 2.2.3 Grouping and Predicating 184 2.2.4 Loose Speech 185 2.3 Ontological Commitment 188 2.4 An Intuitive Appeal 192 3.1 Actual QV vs. Simulated Domain 194 3.2 Theoretical Virtue 195 3.3 The Problem of Language Switching 197 4.1 Summing Up 199 Bibliography 201 viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the Baylor philosophy department for all of their support, instruction, and camaraderie during my time there. Thanks also to the members of my committee for their involvement and feedback, and especially to Trent Dougherty for the interest he took in my success. Above all, thanks to Alex Pruss, my director, for guiding me through this project. His careful attention is evident throughout, for he devoted a good deal of it, and I am at many points indebted to his insight. My family was also a great help to me in completing my work. My wife, Heidi, has been a constant encouragement, and frequently a valuable perspective on my writing as well. My father has ever reminded me of what must be done, and then provided the encouragement and confidence to help me to do it. My mother and brothers, likewise, have supported me greatly along the way. And finally my daughter Gloria, unborn as I wrote, nonetheless did much to motivate this project’s conclusion. ix To my first, best, writing teacher, my mother, and to my father, who taught me to ponder hard questions x CHAPTER ONE Making Deflation Precise “We can say a thing this way and we can say it that way, sometimes; if we can it may be helpful to notice it. But it is no use asking which is the logically or metaphysically right way to say it.” –J.O. Urmson1 When gazing at certain long-standing debates in the recent ontology literature some philosophers are gripped by the conviction that these debates contest nothing at all. Faced, for example, with debates over special composition, the question of when some things compose a further thing2, they are convinced they’re seeing great effort and ingenuity being spent to establish nothing at all substantive.3 One can contest whether there are any composite things until one turns blue, but one will not succeed in saying anything truly interesting or contentious about the nature of reality. The entire discourse is metaphysically shallow—imbued with the pretense of profundity but none of the substance. 1 J. O. Urmson, Philosophical Analysis, Writing in Book edition. (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), 186. 2 For example, we usually take an attached wooden handle and metal head to compose a hammer. The handle and head each are a part of some further thing, a hammer. However, if I accidentally glue that same wooden handle to my hand, we don’t usually think there is some further thing that I and the handle are both parts of: there is still just myself and the handle, now unfortunately stuck together, but they do not seem to compose a whole. The special composition question is the question of what criterion governs such cases: what condition must be met in order for some things to compose a further thing. See Peter van Inwagen, Material Beings (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1990). 3 Eli Hirsch describes the reaction as an “immediate intuitive feeling.” Eli Hirsch, “Ontological Arguments: Interpretive Charity and Quantifier Variance,” in Quantifier Variance and Realism (Oxford : New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 178 1 Let us call philosophers who take this impression to be accurate superficialists, and specifically ontological superficialists. Much ontological superficialism seems to be motivated by a conception which Matti Eklund has termed “the picture of reality as an amorphous lump.”4 This is the idea that reality can be comprehended and described by us in many different ways depending on the language and set of concepts we employ.