Quantifier Variance and Realism This page intentionally left blank Quantifi er Variance and Realism Essays in Metaontology Eli Hirsch Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2011 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hirsch, Eli Quantifi er variance and realism : essays in metaontology / Eli Hirsch. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-19-973211-1 (alk. paper) 1. Ontology. 2. Object (Philosophy) 3. Language and languages—Philosophy. 4. Metaphysics. I. Title. BD336.H57 2010 110—dc22 2009043573 ISBN-13: 9780199732111 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Pam This page intentionally left blank acknowledgments The essays reprinted here have not been altered except for a few necessary adjustments of citations. I thank the original publishers for permi ssion to reprint. 1. “A Sense of Unity,” The Journal of Philosophy 74, September 1978 2. “Basic Objects: A Reply to Xu,” Mind & Language 12, September 1997 3. “Objectivity Without Objects,” in R. Cob b-Stevens (ed.) World Congress of Philosophy, Volume 5: Epistemology, 1999 4. “The Vagueness of Identity,” Philosophical Topics 26, 2000 5. “Quantifi er Variance and Realism,” Philosophical Issues 12, 2002 6. “Against Revisionary Ontology,” Philosophical Topics 30, 2003 7. “Comments on Theodore Sider’s Four Dimensionalism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68, May 2004 8. “Sosa’s Existential Relativism,” in J. Greco (ed.), Ernest Sosa and His Critics, Blackwell, 2004 9. “Physical-Object Ontology, Verbal Disputes, and Common Sense,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70, January 2005 10. “Ontological Arguments: Interpretive Charity and Quantifi er Variance”, in T. Sider, J. Hawthorne, and D. Zimmerman (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics, Blackwell, 2008 11. “Language, Ontology, and Structure,” Nous 42, September 2008 12. “Ontology and Alternative Languages,” in D. Chalmers, D. Manley, and R. Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics, Oxford University Press, 2009 I thank Brandeis University for the award of a Norman Grant that helped with the preparation of the book. vii This page intentionally left blank contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction xi 1. A Se nse of Unity 3 2. Basic Objects: A Reply to Xu 27 3. Obje ctivity Without Objects 36 4. The Vagueness of Identity 45 5. Quantifi er Variance and Realism 68 6. Against Revisionary Ontology 96 7. Comments on Theodore Sider’s Four Dimensionalism 124 8. Sosa’s Existential Relativism 132 9. Physical-Object Ontology, Verbal Disputes, and Common Sense 144 10. Ontological Arguments: Interpretive Charity and Quantifi er Variance 178 11. L angu age, Ontology, and Structure 197 12. Ontology and Alternative Languages 220 Index 251 ix This page intentionally left blank introduction c C C This volume bears the name of its most central essay. All of the c essays here are in one way or another discussions of what is implied by the idea of quantifi er variance. Let me in this Introduction make a few comments about that idea. J. O. Urmson wrote: “If two sentences are equivalent to each other, then while the use of one rather than the other may be useful for some philosophical purposes, it is not the case that one will be nearer to reality than the other. We can say a thing this way and we can say it that way, sometimes. But it is no use asking which is the logically or metaphysically right way to say it.”1 By “equivalence” Urmson evidently meant some coarse-grained relation that I’ll assume might be defi ned as follows: two sentences are truth-conditionally equivalent if, relative to any (actual or possible) context of utterance, they are true with respect to the same possible worlds. (In other words, relative to any context of utterance, they express the same coarse-grained proposi- tion.) Urmson’s dictum is that even if sentences diff er radically in logical form, so long as they are truth-conditionally equivalent, it makes no sense to say that one of them is metaphysically more right than the other. Urmson’s real target is the comparison of whole lan- guages rather than isolated sentences. Let’s say that two languages are truth-conditionally equivalent if, for any sentence in one, there is a 1. Urmson (1956), p. 186. xi xii introduction truth-conditionally equivalent sentence in the other. Urmson’s dictum, then, is that truth-conditionally equivalent languages are of equal metaphysical merit. This seems on the face of it plausible. If two languages are truth- conditionally equivalent then, in any context, speakers of either lan- guage can assert sentences (with respect to a possible world) that hold true just in case the sentences asserted by speakers of the other lan- guage hold true. It’s not clear what sense it could make for the speakers of one language to consider its true assertions to be closer to reality than the true assertions made in the other language. (Notions of fi ne- grained facts do not seem to negate this point, according to my argu- ment in essay 11.2) The doctrine of quantifi er variance might be viewed as simply a corollary of Urmson’s dictum. When two philosophers X and Y are engaged in an ontological dispute it will often (perhaps not always) hap- pen that we can conceive of two possible languages, the X-language and the Y-language, such that these languages are truth-conditionally equivalent and, in any context of utterance, speaker of the X-language can both reasonably and truthfully assert the same (phonetically indi- viduated) sentences (with respect to a possible world) that the X-philos- ophers assert, whereas speaker of the Y-language can both reasonably and truthfully assert the same sentences that the Y-philosophers assert. For obvious reasons (that nothing profound ought to be read into) we can call these languages diff erent “ontological languages.” The meanings of such quantifi er expressions as “there exists something” (and many related expressions) vary from language to language. (The idea of “quantifi er variance” is not meant to imply that in diff erent ontological languages only the meanings of quantifi er expressions vary; obviously the truth conditions of singular sentences must vary from one ontolog- ical language to another.3) Urmson’s dictum implies that truth-condi- tionally equivalent ontological languages are of equal metaphysical merit. That is the doctrine of quantifi er variance. The doctrine says that there is no uniquely best ontological language with which to describe the world. Quantifer variantism has to be distinguished from two claims that I think follow from it. Some critics might accept quantifi er variantism but deny that the two claims really follow. (The two claims might also 2. Two highly relevant discussions of fi ne-grainedness are Hawthorne (2009) and McGrath (2008). 3. This point is apparently missed in the objection to quantifi er variance posed in Hale and Wright (2009), p. 184. introduction xiii be defended independently of quantifi er variantism.)4 The fi rst is that ordinary language is a perfectly good ontological language in which common sense judgments about the existence and identity of objects are strictly and literally true (see especially essays 6 and 9). The second is that many (perhaps not all) ontological disputes are merely verbal, with each ontological camp asserting truths in its own ontological language (see especially essays 9, 10, and 12). These claims, especially the second, have drawn a great deal of critical attention. Perhaps I can briefl y restate them here. If we are addressing two disputing revisionary ontological camps, say, mereological essentialists and four-dimensionalists, we can make the following speech to them: “Either you are both speaking plain English, in which case you are both asserting trivial falsehoods, or each of you is in eff ect asserting trivial truths in your own ontological lan- guage, in which case your dispute is verbal.” I certainly have no stake in pressing for the second disjunct over the fi rst. Once we understand that those are the only two options, the dispute has been thoroughly defl ated; there is nothing of substance left to it. (And shifting to “philosophy- room English” does not help, according to my argument in essay 11.) Sider, the most prominent opponent of quantifi er variantism, holds that (a) the world contains a natural quantifi cational structure, and (b) there is a uniquely best ontological language. (See the discussion of Sider especially in essays 7, 9, and 11.) Since he takes (a) and (b) to stand or fall together, he sometimes characterizes quantifi er variantism as denying (a) and sometimes as denying (b). Although I’m skeptical about (a), I want to defi ne quantifi er variantism as the denial of (b), not as the denial of (a). I need to keep (a) and (b) separate because (as I have argued throughout Hirsch 1993) I don’t see any obvious connection between saying that an objective phenomenon is natural and saying that there is some virtue in representing it with a particular form of language; for example, there is no obvious connection between saying that a property is natural and saying that there is some virtue in expressing it with a word rather than a complex term.