Vita Quaerentis

The Nature of Necessity: Triviality?

2010-08-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

In a recent article by Ross Cameron in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, it is argued that every necessary truth is necessary in virtue of it being trivially true. The discussion begins with the 'truths of mathematics' and attempts to show that these are truths that are trivially true in the following sense: their truth-conditions do not depend upon "the way the world is". The truth of <2+2=4> doesn't depend upon the way the world is, so it is a trivial truth in that, no matter which way the world happened to be (read: no matter which world turned out to be contingently actual), <2+2=4> would be true.

I've often had this kind of thought about truths of mathematics, logic and the like. I cannot find the claim that the truths of mathematics are contingent coherent simply because I would only count a truth contingent if there is some way the world might be such that the truth-value of a particular mathematical proposition would be made false (or true, if the proposition is @-false). In other words, I subscribe to the most limited and plausible form of the Truthmaker Theory. And because I have no understanding of what it would be like for the world being a certain way that would falsify mathematical truths (eg. <2+2=4>), I can't countenance mathematical truths as contingent. So far then, I am completely on board with the hypothesis that necessary truths are necessary in virtue of being trivially true.

Now, a natural way to understand what is going on in the case of mathematical truths being necessary in the aforementioned sense is that it's truth "places no demand on the world" - in other words, it's truth (or falsity) does not demand that the world be any which way at all; simply because, it's truth-value does not depend upon the world making it true in any particular way.

But things don't seem to be so simple when we begin to consider substantial metaphysical truths about concrete objects, dispositions, natural kinds, etc. When he comes to a discussion of these kinds of truths, the notion of a necessary truth placing "no demand on the world" takes a different form. Consider the stock example of a purportedly (a posteriori) necessary truth: ; Cameron rephrases this a bit as "If there is Water, there is H20". Surely here the notion that the proposition places no demand on the world seems a bit unsettling. Doesn't it, at the very least, make the claim that 'Water' and 'H20' are referentially co-extensive?; eg. that the set of all of the things picked out by 'Water' is in one-to-one correspondence with the set of all things picked out by 'H20'?

In discussing these substantial metaphysical truths, Cameron's new gloss on the notion of a necessary truth being trivially true in virtue of placing "no demand on the world" is that the two elements, say of an identity statement or a predication (as in <x is F>), make the "exact same demands" on the world. Cameron states:

"Since the truth of the antecedent places the same demands on the world as the truth of the consequent, the truth of the conditional itself places no demands on the world, and so this sentence is trivially true"

In other words, the "demand" that a particular world contain Water is exactly the same "demand" that that world contains H20. This seems, for the most part, right on target in explaining why a proposition is either necessarily true or false: is necessarily true because whenever you have Water, you have H20 and there is no way a world could be such that you have one but not the other.

But even so, I cannot agree with Cameron's conflation of "two terms placing the same demand upon the world" with "placing no demand upon the world". And I can't agree with equating the two notions simply because of the banal fact about extensional semantics that I pointed out above. It seems to me that mathematical propositions place "no demand on the world" in two ways: (1) in the aforementioned sense that there is no way the world could be such that it might alter the truth-value of the proposition and (2) in the sense that the proposition does not concern concrete existents. Now I am of the opinion that only concrete entities exist and that therefore, a world is to be identified with a possible configuration of concrete entities. But once you accept that assumption about ontology and (2), then it is rather easy to accept the truth of (1); in fact, (1) seemingly just follows from (2) with the 'concrete assumption' about world ontology.

But notice that substantial metaphysical truths, such as , do not place "no demand on the world" in the sense of (2), as mathematical truths do. I agree that it places "no demand on the world" in the sense of (1), simply because, as Cameron says, "when you have one, you have the other".

So perhaps it would be better to say that the sense of "placing no demand on the world" would be better characterized simply by (1) alone. Cameron begins his paper by dismissing the claim that necessary truths commit one to a particular ontology, so he would presumably not be happy with the claim that <2+2=4> is necessary because "when you have one, you have the other", as it plausibly commits one to at least having worlds where '2', '4', and the relation of addition all exist. I'm not pleased with the thought that mathematical truths commit us to an ontology either, but I don't think that the sense of "no demand" given by (1) needs to be interpreted existentially.

It seems to me that the "no demand" reading of triviality is to be understood as "when you have one, you have the other" without a necessary corollary to be interpreted existentially. In this way, we can claim that <2+2=4> is trivially true in the sense that, no matter which would happened to be actual, if you had 2 sets of 2 things there, you would have 4 things. Surely no possible world could alter the truth value of this claim - plausibly, not even a completely empty world could alter this truth. And, without being interpreted existentially, we can say also that is trivially true in the sense that, no matter which world happened to be actual, if you have Water there, you have H20 there.

A Thought Experiment against Humean Supervenience: Conceivability & Intuitions

2010-04-09T07:12:00.000-07:00

One thought experiment that objectors against Humean Supervenience are quick to suggest is that of two possible worlds which both contain only one existing material object that always moves in a constant velocity. The thought experiment goes: in the first world, the particle is governed by the law that all particles move with constant velocity and in the second world, the particle is governed by the law that all particles obey Newton's Second Law; in other words, in the second (and not the first) world, if another particle had existed there, they may have had an effect on one another's velocity.

Is this a good counterexample via thought experiment? In a recent paper, Ned Hall tries to construe this counter-example as relying on the 'Conceivability entails Possibility' principle. And he therefore dismisses it. It is certainly true that the set-up of the thought experiment involves the (C-->P) principle, insofar as it must be committed to it being possible that there could be a world with only one particle and a world differing from another in only its modal facts.

But although I whole-heartedly dismiss the (C-->P) principle, I'm not so sure that a counterexample wherein two different objects in two distinct possible worlds are intrinsic duplicates and yet differ in their nomic-profiles is to endorse a possibility only on the basis of conceivability. Why is this such a leap in conceivability? I think the non-reductionist example is meant to (or at least, should aim to) exploit a seperate intuition; not the C-->P intuition. The intuition is: how a particular object (or kind of event) has been, is, or will be says nothing about ways it might have been.

It won't do to simply dismiss the non-reductionist thought experiment on the basis that it assumes that one world could differ in its laws while another one does not. For while this is assumed, and while it is an assumption that tips the scales, so to speak, it is not an altogether unwarranted assumption. And the onus is on the Humean to explicate the ways in which this thought example goes wrong. It won't be enough for the Humean to claim that the two worlds differing in their Laws is just impossible, any more than it will do for the non-reductionist to claim that it is possible. The non-reductionist position exploits an intuition, one that, for all I can tell, is fairly plausible, while the Humean position combats this intuition, but with no reason other than the fact that it does not accord with his theory.

Dawkins, Functional Complexity & Divine Ideas

2010-01-25T14:00:00.001-08:00

I just returned from a great little talk at the Oxford Graduate Christian Union, being held at the Mitre Pub on High Street, where a Reverend Dr. Patrick Richmond gave a talk entitled "Swinburne vs. Dawkins: Is God Simple or Complex?" The talk was quite fascinating, as it covered Dawkins' argument against the probability of there being a God of any sort. The basic argument is this: any mind that could create the immense complexity in the world must itself be immensely complex. And we know from the world that any immensely complex thing cries out for an explanation as to how it was constructed, due to the fact that the more complex something is, the more improbable is its existence. Compare: the probability of complex molecules being created is quite low, due to the fact that millions and billions of elementary causal interactions between more fundamental particles could occur without such molecules being created.

In short, the argument is pretty bad. As Swinburne points out, God is not complex at all - He is actually infinitely ontologically simple. Not only this, but Dawkins' argument only extends to the statistical improbability of various material things coming together to create some materially complex thing. Any attempt to extend this to some sort of complexity in the Divine Mind (think: God's infinite knowledge of all possible worlds) yet seems rather ad hoc. As Richmond nicely pointed out in his talk, God's accumulated mass of ideas isn't a kind of complexity that seems to cry out for analysis - not, at least, by Dawkins' standards. According to Dawkins, only 'functional complexity' is in desperate need of explanation - things like watches and the human eye - but things that are complex but nevertheless functionally inert do not. Richmond's insight was to hold that the Divine Ideas are complex, but not for all of that forming a kind of system that cries out for explanation of their design; although, calling them 'non-functional' is probably quite the misnomer.

But I did ask a question of Richmond that I thought to be particularly sanguine to the discussion, one that may put the leverage back on the Dawkins side of things. To be clear, the original argument that Dawkins proposes is ghastly unacceptable. But if we explain things in the manner that Richmond and Swinburne opt for, we may yet be in a position that is open to more "But who designed that!?"-type criticisms. Consider, for example, the account that the Theist needs to give of God's knowledge of the possibilities of things. Presumably, this will come about in the classical form of God's knowledge of the essences of things - that is, God knows all of the possibilities of things in virtue of having a perfect knowledge of the essences of all things.

But although this is a seemingly acceptable answer, consider what kinds of things essences must be. They must be the objects of Divine Thoughts - or, alternatively, just the Divine Thoughts themselves. They must be simple things. But they must also somehow contain an exhaustive list of the entirety of the possible properties of the thing whose essence they are. For instance, God peers into the essence of me and notices that I could have been a fisherman or could have died in my infancy and the rest of the lot of potential world-careers I might have pursued or not pursued. Now all of this is fine, theologically speaking.

But there may yet be the further worry that although we have posited a simple object of Divine Knowledge, we have yet introduced another kind of complexity that itself cries out for explanation. For the essences of things are not only infinitely complex, but they also involve certain limits for possible values. Consider the essence of Adam - that is, the first man. Is it not part of the essence of Adam to eat of the fruit of the tree? Perhaps someone will deny this. But then, why do they deny it? It can only be denied on pain of a certain criteria for the essence of Adam. But then, we are still at the same problem - namely, the essences of things have certain innumerable facts about them that are somehow considered primitive; not just facts about possible futures, but also potential futures, possible pasts and -importantly - the limitations of all of these.

Essences, as objects of Divine Thought, on the face of it, seem to be both complex and functional in an attenuated sense - for they contain all kinds of specifications on which values are acceptable, which are not and which values will produce which values in which situation (cf. Molinistic 'Middle Knowledge'). But that kind of functionality is certainly functionality enough for the inquisitive atheist to question further: "What then, explains this precise (functional) complexity?"

An obvious move - and the one I eventually favour - is to opt for Primitivism. To ask why an essence is as it is is to ask a fundamentally misguided question - essences are themselves the things which explain why any contingent state of affairs is as it is, but they are no such state of affairs in need of explanation. However, there is the further nagging worry that this explanation is worth all the weight of Anslem offering the Fool the Dictionary entry for "God"; ie. arguing that "It's just in the very Definition of 'God' that He necessarily exists" is just not a very good argument for God's necessary existence. And if that's the best the Theist can do, he isn't doing very well at all.

But, as Quine once remarked, "there are primitives, and then there are primitives". Ontology must bottom-out in primitives, to be sure. But it's well to remember that the Theist still has the problem of arguing for primitives. Maybe he has argued away the primitiveness of Design in physical systems, but he hasn't, for all of that, done away with his need to find a better, more suitable primitive.

Compositional Vagueness in Material Objects

2009-12-19T12:02:00.000-08:00

I recently attended a conference in Nottingham entitled 'New Directions in Metaphysics', hosted by the University of Nottingham. The venerable Dean Zimmerman was there, giving a talk on property dualism. His talk didn't excite me too much, but when he brought up the well-known problem of the vagueness of composition, it got me thinking again on these questions.

To refresh your memory, the problem of the vagueness of composition arises if we consider a reasonable definition of a material object - say, a human being. Suppose that a human being is defined as being that object that is composed of all of these material elements - say elements a1-an. This seems fairly straightforward, until we consider that it is very hard to, as it were, draw a line around those elements that compose us and those that do not. In fact, when we get a very detailed, close-up view of these elements, it becomes more and more obvious that there are many different elements that are just as entitled to be a part of an object as the ones that we at first chose to countenance. That is, there are many different sets of elements that are up to the task. Or consider another analogous problem: take all of the elements that one might say composes a particular human being (a1-an) and ask yourself whether or not it would be acceptable to define this human being by excluding merely one of these elements - say a3. Repeat and repeat the thought experiment until you reach absurdity.

This seems like a fairly important problem for defining material objects - for once the thought experiment is carried out, there seems to be an extremely large group of acceptable candidates, none of which seem to have any special claim to being the set that defines a particular material object.

An interesting response to this problem is the one given by Peter vanInwagen, who claims that the only material objects that exist are those that are biological - and they are individuated by being a particular group of elements all participating in the biological functioning of an object. Any of those fringe elements that made-up other candidates won't be acceptable then, as they are not aiding in the biological functioning of the object in question - they are, as it were, just idly floating about. Of course, a well known problem for this kind of view is that it entails that things like 'tables' and 'chairs' don't exist. It's a bullet that not many have particularly wanted to bite.

For my part, I think vanInwagen's response is on the right track in a certain respect, in that it individuates material objects using a certain dynamic criterion. It seems to me that the reason that the 'many candidate' problems all get started by assuming that the individuation of a material object must be a merely static - in the case of Lewisian examples, a particular set of elements. There is, of course, something to be said for wishing one's identity criterion remain stable - for instance, you don't want it to be the case that the identity criterion for a material object is constantly changing full stop. But the set-theoretic element identifications are inadequate, I think, because they fail to have any dynamic qualities at all.

I suppose the reason for this is mostly historical . Couple the fact that analytic philosophical methods have always wanted identity to be a stable, unchanging primitive fact with the further fact that the concepts of mathematics have always been considered the most unchanging facts and there's good reason to follow this kind of idea through. But it's hard for me to take any of this seriously in light of the current state of metaphysics, physics and the developments in quantum mechanics. As far as I can tell, all the evidence in quantum mechanical physics points towards defining physical objects as dynamical - the wavefunction is certainly, if anything at all, a dynamic representation of reality. If the wavefunction does represent something physical, it represents something that is not merely 'categorical', and certainly doesn't represent it as simply a set of particular elements; think here only of the fact of wave-particle duality! And metaphysics too, riding the crest of scientific discovery, is edging more and more towards an ontology of dispositions and propensities. So why should we be persuaded by thought experiments involving 'candidates' that are unchanging, static sets of elements?

There's every reason to believe that a better criterion of material object individuation can be given by something that is unchanging and yet has a dynamical aspect - perhaps dispositionally, via (Lorentz) invariant mass; cf. Leibniz, who once defined substance as 'a principle of action and passion'. Under this general criterion, we may define a material object by picking out its fundamental dispositional properties. This kind of analysis certainly has no concern for which elements 'belong' to to an object and which do not and makes the rival candidates of Lewis' thought experiments seem much less interesting.

It might still worry one that this kind of individuating technique leaves open the question of which elements of a set truly belong to a material object and which do not. But I'm not so sure that this is much of anything to truly be worried about. If a material object is defined by (and perhaps, is essentially) a set of fundamental dispositions, asking which material elements belong to it and which do not is not asking anything very interesting about it - unless, of course, one thinks that the contingencies of the moment-to-moment career of the object in question is of any real importance; it certainly isn't important for scientific inquiry at any rate.

Why Are You You?

2009-10-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

I just attended a lecture by Stephen Priest, a lecturer here at Oxford, where he discussed what he took to be philosophical questions that needed theological answers. He had three such questions to discuss, the first of which was "Why are you you?".

Of course, he dismissed the fact that this was a silly question and defended that it has a non-trivial meaning. He then went on to tell a story about how what 'you' really are is a 'subjective viewpoint' or 'absolute interiority' (can you say Continentalist?) - in short, a unique phenomenological perspective. And so, being that this is the case, what 'you' really are isn't a physical body or a set of mental phenomena. He concluded therefore, that the question "Why are you you?" is an interesting one because of the disconnect between the 'subjective viewpoint' and a 'psycho-physical object'. Fair enough, perhaps.

As far as I can tell, either the question (a) expresses a tautology and so is useless or (b) can't be given any meaningful answer. (a) and (b) correspond to how one chooses to have the sentence refer. If the the word 'you' is a rigid designator for what 'you really are' (according to Preist), then the question "Why is this subjective viewpoint this subjective viewpoint?" is a pointless one: it expresses a tautology and has told us absolutely nothing.

If the word 'you' is not rigidly designating - and this is the option that Priest is opting for - then the real question is "Why is this subjective viewpoint inherent in this psycho-physical object?" If this is the question that Priest means to be asking, then it looks like this won't be such a trivial question; at least, not on the face - I suppose it could be questioned whether the two aren't interconnected in a deep way that constitutes a FAPP-identity.

But if that's the question Preist means to be asking, then that is the question to which Priest supposedly has an educated answer to; when I raised this concern during the Q&A, he responded that he did in fact have an answer: more or less "read my new book". But I am seriously skeptical of the very possibility of giving a meaningful answer here. What could one say about why this subjective viewpoint is associated with this psycho-physical object that was informative?

Now, Priest does invoke God in his discussion. But he is a Deist, not a Theist. And as this is the case, I can't see any move that would make such a connection (between a viewpoint and a psycho-physical object) explained. The Theist may say "this subjective viewpoint is with this psycho-physical object because God knew that having it arranged thusly would produce the most faithful and holy person possible". But this kind of answer certainly isn't available for Priest. And short of this kind of (seemingly ad hoc) answer, I don't see how one could answer the question meaningfully in such a way that the answer didn't turn out trivial in one sense or another.

The Status of 'Brute Facts'

2009-10-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Disregarding any theory that posited 'brute facts' - excepting 'identity' - used to be a common thread throughout my philosophical career. As any good Leibnizian, I am deeply committed to some form of the Principle of Sufficient Reason afterall. But as my thinking about metaphysics becomes more and more naturalized, I find myself not only denying this practice but also finding it just plain mistaken metaphysics.

Granted, it would be lovely if we could do away with 'brute facts'. But not only are there philosophical reasons for thinking this an impossible project - think: first mover - but there are good reasons for thinking that primitives ought to be had at a much 'higher level' of ontology. I for one, as a sortal essentialist, think that explanation stops at natural kind identities. So asking questions like "but why is this object this natural kind?" are not pointless, but metaphysically meaningless. You might as well be asking "but why is x identical to x?"

At the recent 'Philosophy of Cosmology' conference at St. Anne's College at the University of Oxford, Paul Davies gave an interesting talk. The gist was: we can always ask 'why' and physics may not always provide an answer. I approached him after his talk and asked him if he would ever be happy with primitives in physics, or philosophy for that matter. He insisted that the questions he raised were valid and important questions for physicists to ask themselves. Now, I agree with that, but I also recognize that there are primitives and then there are primitives. If we have a proposed primitive that is capable of theoretical reduction, then we have no primitive at all. But looking for contrastive reasons for every proposed primitive is, more often than not, a futile effort. In particular, Davies asked, "but why this law, rather than some other?"

I have recently been re-reading sections of Richard Swinburne's 'The Existence of God'. An amazing book to be sure, and there's no doubt that Professor Swinburne has done much to make theological belief intellectually credible. But in his chapter on 'The Nature of Explanation', he insists on these kinds of questions. In discussing the causal powers view of natural laws, he complains that '...the law does not explain why these substances have those powers'. But if these powers are the foundations for the natural laws - there just isn't any worth in asking such questions. If Swinburne is looking for an answer to "why negative charge repels negative charge, rather than attracting it", he is simply assuming that nature has available to it all of the content of the span of logically possible worlds. This is the only thing that can be going on in these types of questions: one must be a Humean about possibility.

If you think there's a meaningful answer to the question "why does negative charge repel negative charge, rather than attract it?", you must think that it is in fact possible that negative charge might have attracted other negative charges. But why think this? As far as I can tell, one would only think this by assuming that logical possibility is the possibility-space for the concrete world. But on a dispositional conception of possibility - to ask such a thing is to be asking a rather ad hoc question. For on this view, the causal powers themselves demarcate what is possible and what is not.

So there is simply no room to ask for any contrastive explanation as to why these powers are as they are. The short answer is: this is a brute fact about reality. And if you think that it is genuinely possible that like negative charges might have attracted, the onus is on you to explain why it is that purely logical possibilities should be countenanced as true de re possibilities for objects in the concrete world. And so you must make the dreaded conceivability entails possibility link.

Counterparts & Primtivism

2009-07-21T12:25:00.000-07:00

Counterpart theorists argue that they can avoid an unwarranted primitivism about de re modality because they can explain why it is that objects have the de re modal properties they have. Other positions, such as Sortal Essentialism and/or Dispositional Actualism, must declare de re modal properties to be primitive facts. The Counterpart theorist however, can explain why x is possibly F: x has at least one counterpart that is F in some possible world.

L.A. Paul is concerned that the actualist who is not a Counterpart theorist must posit a spooky "Modal Force" inherent in objects that governs their de re modal properties.

But note that the Counterpart theorist has an even more disturbing primitive: Possible Worlds!; even more so, if - following the originator of Counterpart theory - you hold that these worlds are concrete entities.

I am more concerned about spooky "Other Worlds" that exist as a matter of primitive fact. Which primitive am I to prefer? I say the one that causes the least ripples throughout our current conceptual scheme and which is least capable of reduction. I therefore prefer the spooky Modal Force: it's adoption not only doesn't change the character of physics, but it is instead supported and perhaps suggested by modern physics; so it causes less ripples than the posit of an infinity of possible worlds. And such a concept does not, unlike possible worlds (abstract or concrete), cry out for conceptual reduction.

A Posteriori Necessities & Natural Kinds

2009-06-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

A new article by Nigel Leary ('Natural Kinds: Thick Essentialism or Promiscuous Realism?') suggests to me that Kripkean kind identities may or may not be true a posterori necessary statements. I don't think Leary's argument is incorrect per se, but I do think that perhaps he makes an incorrect equivocation.

The point that Leary makes is that Kripkean identity statements like "Water is H2O" are necessary statements only if we think that 'the essence of a chemical element is its chemical structure'. In short, these identity statements are only necessary insofar as we grant some form of essentialism. But then, the idea that such statements are necessary collapses, since we must assume a form of necessity (namely, essentialism) in order to have necessary statements. "Water is H2O" is a necessary statement iff an object's chemical structure is essential to it.

(Or perhaps the necessity fails because 'Twin Earth' thought experiments aren't wholly out of line, in the sense that they might really show something that is possible in the case of 'Water' being composed of 'XYZ'. But this is more questionable, so I won't get into it here.)

I suppose the pertinent question is: is an object's chemical structure necessary to it? I'm not so sure that it is. And to this extent, I agree with Leary that the Kripkean strategy for deriving a posteriori necessary truths might be, to a large extent, a circular, and so ultimately unsucessful strategy.

But I will say that I think that broadly construed Kripkean a posteriori necessary identity statements are mostly true, at least the ones that concern natural kind identities. This is because, as far as I'm concenred, natural kinds are correctly defined dispositionally. 'What it is to be' a natural kind is just to have a certain dispositional nature. If this is correct - and I do think it is - it is easy to see why I can allow that statements like "Water is H2O" might not be necessary, though they certainly concern natural kinds.

However, Leary is equivocating a bit. To say that a natural kind has a chemical structure essentially could mean that it has a categorical property as a matter of necessity. But it could also mean that it has a certain dispositional nature of necessity - namely, the dispositional nature proper to the pertient mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. If having this particular mixture brings along (or better yet, just is) a certain dispositional nature, I should think that the statement "Water is H2O" expresses a necessary truth.

Imagination & Logical Possibility

2009-05-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

One has to entirely avoid committing to an argument that features the use of a free-reign imagination process. Unfortunately, it is a historical matter of fact that metaphysics is the discipline in which these kinds of arguments get accepted and are taken as decisive.

The imagination is not limited to the actual world, since we can imagine and conceptualize that some other set of propositions correctly matched-up to the world. But in sober metaphysics, we ought not to judge the limits of the concrete world based upon the limitation (or lack thereof) of our imagination about the world.

Conceivability entails possibility - logical possibility. And it is clear to see that its limits are only where the unthinkable appears. But to think that the world - the concrete world - could be in any way except in the ways it could not be is a simple tautology. So logical possibility and judgments utilizing logical possibility cannot give any informative content about the modality of the world itself. Of course, the concrete world could be only those ways that are not ways it could not be - but this does not tell us what the limits to these ways are or what it is that sets these limits.

There is nothing that is logically possible that depends on the actual world or the concrete world. Nothing has any say on the limits of logic. But the world is not like this. There is something that has a say to the limits of the world - namely, itself.

Logic tells us that once we have limits to modality in the world, we cannot consistently suppose that it overstep its limits. And this is all. And this is trivial and trivially true.

Dispositional InEssentialism's Implausibility

2009-02-04T14:07:00.000-08:00

Given dispositional realism, there are two main positions taken in the debate on whether or not dispositions are essential to their bearers*:

Dispositional Essentialism: Dispositions are the 'what it is to be' for the objects that have them and the existence of these objects is conditional upon their having these dispositions. An object having different dispositions than the ones it does is therefore impossible. Thus, different laws of nature, different objects. (Bird, Ellis & Lierse, Marcus)

Dispositional InEssentialism: Dispositions are contingent aspects of the objects that have them and the existence of these objects is not conditional upon their having these dispositions. An object having different dispositions than the ones it does is possible. Thus, different laws of nature do not imply different objects. (Armstrong, Lewis)

Now, importantly, the debate about dispositional essentialism is a debate about so-called fundamental entities; those 'natural' objects of scientific enquiry - quarks, leptons and electrons. The exemplar question is something like 'Is it possible for an electron to attract another electron'? - ie. could the dispositional nature of an electron have been different?

For the dispositional inessentialist, an electron possibly attracting another electron is accounted for by the fact that the laws of nature are contingent - the 'Contingency Thesis'. And since different laws of nature holding amounts to there being different ways things must act, it is possible that things have different constraints on the way they interact with one another and hence, different dispositional natures.

The problem with this view, I think, have been laid-out fairly successfully by Bird in his Nature's Metaphysics. For one, laws of nature understood as either regularities or nomic-necessitation generalizations both seem untenable; I won't go in to the intricacies here - suffice it to say that regularities supervene, not impose themselves on objects and nomic-necessitiation is seemingly ad hoc logic-chopping. And since an account of dispositional inessentialism entails that the laws of nature are extra-objectual and no such account of laws is plausible, neither is dispositional inessentialism.

Secondly though, and more importantly, is the charge that if the laws of nature are understood as extra-objectual (as I claimed that dispositional inessentialism presupposes), then one must be a quidditivist about properties. That is, one must hold that the dispositional nature of any property is not essential to it. Why is the dispositional inessentialist committed to property quidditivism? Firstly, she is an extra-objectual law theorist - so the laws of nature must determine dispositions, not vice-versa. Secondly, she must accept the following proposition:

(ep) An electron could be a positron.

Now, the dispositional inessentialist will protest: I would not dare say that an electron could be a positron! Rather than accepting (ep), I am making the weaker claim that an electron might have had the disposition to attract other electrons - ie. it could have been positively charged. I am not then, as you are claiming, attempting to make the claim that one kind of entity might have been another fundamentally different kind of entity - surely this is absurd.

But what does the acceptance of (ep) entail? Consider that an electron and positron share all of their structural properties and differ only in the value of their charge. The claim made by (ep) is then not simply that an electron could have had a positive charge. This is because, ex hypothesi, a positron just is an object having all of the structural properties an electron has and being positively charged. So the dispositional inessentialist is committed to (ep) afterall.

You might wonder what accepting (ep) has to do with property quidditivism, since the former concerns entities, the latter properties. But I suggest that the claim that the property 'being negatively charged' might have had the role of attracting negative charges is precisely the mistake that the dispositional inessentialist makes. Why? Because 'repelling negative charges' simply is what it is to be a negative charge. Similarly, 'being negatively charged' simply is what it is to be an electron. So, being a dispositional inessentialist entails the acceptance of (ep). And since (ep) is absurd, so is dispositional inessentialism; and, for that matter, property quidditivism.

*There is another, somewhat middle position that Mumford takes, which I call 'soft dispositional essentialism', according to which objects have their dispositions essentially, but their dispositions are relative to a world. Under soft dispositional essentialism, it is possible for an object to have different dispositions, but not different world-indexed dispositions. This account preserves the Contingency Thesis and dispositional essentialism, but is ultimately unacceptable. In short, it can't be claimed that an object such as an electron has different world-indexed dispositions since, as I suggest, what it is to be an electron is to have a particular dispositional nature. Therefore, any object with a different dispositional nature is conceptually barred from being an electron and so no electron could have different dispositions than the ones it does.

On 'The Limits of Contingency' & Metaphysical Possibility

2009-01-07T21:13:00.000-08:00

An article by Gideon Rosen entitled 'The Limits of Contingency' recently peaked my interest. Rosen makes an interesting distinction between two conceptions of metaphysical possibility - what he calls Standard and Non-Standard. According to the standard conception of metaphysical possibility, a property P is possible for an object x iff P can be possessed by x in a world whose 'form' is the same as the actual world. By form, Rosen means something like the fundamental laws of how objects are composed or how causation goes about - something broadly like 'ontological rules'. According to the non-standard conception of metaphysical possibility, a property P is possible for an object x iff P is logically coherent with the 'what it is to be' of x. That is, only if P does not logically conflict with x's 'individual nature'.

The first thing to notice is that the standard conception requires a certain checking against the conditions of the actual world - a position which I think represents a respectful speculative sobriety. The non-standard version of metaphysical possibility only requires that a property be compatible with the 'nature' of an object and presumably, since an object's nature might very well be intact while it does not exist in the actual world (think Plantingian Essences or Platonic Divine Idea Essences), metaphysical possibility is not constrained by the conditions of the actual world.

I think that the two positions - the standard and non-standard - are, as Rosen claims, very common notions of metaphysical possibility. Those who think that sortals are the de re governors of what is metaphysically possible for an object clearly fall into the non-standard camp, though this seems a rather standard position in modern philosophy. And those who think that metaphysical possibility has something to do with the laws of the actual world will, in most instances, fall into the standard camp; those who do often want to identify metaphysical possibility with physical possibility, broadly construed.

At the risk of being philosophically trite, my sentiments lie with the middle position. In general, I think that the non-standard version is correct - metaphysical possibility must be de re in a significant sense and this sense must have to do with the 'nature' of the object in question. On the other hand, however, the non-standard conception does not appropriately respect the privileged status of actuality - there are no merely possible worlds over which we might peer out and look down upon to inspect the natures of the objects within. Any considerations that we have of this kind - where we think we have real knowledge of the modality of non-existent objects - seem to me to be based solely on our powers of conceptualizing, not on the nature of these objects themselves.

Metaphysical modality, I think, must be about objects and so must also be about their 'definitional natures', but it cannot merely be a matter of logical non-contradiction without consideration of the actual world. On the other hand, it equally cannot concern the 'form' of the actual world, except insofar as 'form' is taken to mean the natures of the objects within it.

Bare Particular and Particularly Bare Ontologies

2008-10-26T02:15:00.000-07:00

I had a short conversation with Kevin Houser, a local philosophy graduate student, about conventionalism in matters of individuation. For some reason in the process of Kevin's studies, he ran into the question (which he apparently must have some answer for)of whether or not the world is, proverbially, 'carved at its joints'. In other words, do we, as cognizers, hoist our concepts upon the world, individuating it and picking out entities of our own accord, or do we find objects pre-individuated and merely form concepts to comprehend and categorize them?

Kevin seems to think that the former has intuitive pull to it - we divide the world into differing numerically distinct objects according perhaps to our physical capacities (our basic chemical composition, the way our ocular system is configured, etc.) or our particular interests - perhaps we wish to define objects as those spatio-temporal continuants which have a minimal amount of change over time, as Hirsch does.

Let me weigh in here. I think the view that the world is ontologically nothing in particular is rather ridiculous for the following reason: particulars being nothing in particular is absurd. The thought being that if it makes no sense to talk of objects that are nothing in particular and the world is made up of objects, it makes no sense to talk of a world that is nothing in particular. I think there are good reasons for thinking that objects must have a certain character without which they could not exist and so I think that there are good grounds for thinking, via generalization, that the world is that way as well.

There are a few common ways that one might initially object. One can make the principled denial that there simply are no ways that objects must be - or, anti-essentialism. Or, one might claim that the objects in the world have distinctive features such that they could not lack them and yet exist, but that these features are merely conceptual constraints which we impose upon them - or, conceptualism.

Let me take issue with the first of these, which I think sheds important light on the second. I think a rather simple way to go about the denial of anti-essentialism is to make it clear that objects have certain abilities. If one is a sortal-essentialist, for instance, one will take an object to have a set of abilities which are in accord with the sortal under which it falls. But notice that for an object to have an ability it must likewise have the proper 'vehicle' to acquire the ability - the octopus has the ability to live underwater and it is its physio-chemical make-up which is the vehicle for it having this ability. But notice also that no vehicle is had without it being able to have been had, since it is a necessary truth that if an object x has P, x is able to have P - or if P(x), then Possibly P(x). The point here is that, at ground floor, it cannot be the case that no object has any abilities necessarily, because the absence of some (basic) abilities will preclude the object from having any vehicles and/or abilities whatsoever. The suggestion being that the essence of an object is that which allows for any and all properties that it might possess.

Taking this as a rough argument against anti-essentialism, one might yet object: Sure, an object must have a certain feature that enables it to be anything at all, one that grounds it having any properties whatsoever, but we are the ones who give it such features by categorizing it under certain sortal terms. Here is how I would respond, ala Wiggins. It is true that we, as cognizers, conceptualize objects under certain sortals and make modal judgments based on their being so characterized. But, the modal principle remains - what is actual for an object is possible for an object. Why is this relevant to this question? Consider a pumpkin; it is, after all, that time of the year.

Suppose one carved out of a pumpkin a small square and held it in his hand declaring, "This object that I hold in my hand is defined purely by my own will - I decided upon its features, choosing ones which were relevant to my interests. The way this object is, since I have formed it, has nothing to do with the way the pumpkin is". What are we to say to this? I think the proper response is something like, "Look, you may have decided on the shape and the length and the breadth of this object, but you did not - and could not - decide on what it is, at root. Furthermore, the way this object is does say something about the way the pumpkin is - for one, that the pumpkin is such that it allows for you to form such an object from it."

The intuitive thought: even if it were the case that cognizers themselves decided upon the 'boundary' or individuating features of the everyday objects of experience, there are two things which no cognizer could, even in principle, decide upon: the limits - the possibility or contingency/necessity - of their being able to impose such categorizations of individuality and, consequently, whether or not the their decision reflects something about reality.

On Kant's 'One Possible Basis for a Proof of the Existence of God'

2008-10-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

I recently was sent an upcoming article by Andrew Chignell from Allen Wood about Kant's ontological argument. Here are some thoughts that I sent to Professor Wood about Chignell's article and a brief analysis of the seeming incoherency (or incompleteness) of Kant's account.

As far as I can tell, Chignell seems to think that Kant's proof doesn't end up working because he has yet to show that all of the 'fundamental' properties are 'harmonious' - ie. that their combination in a single subject is metaphysically possible, where metaphysically possible means that the properties in question actually do not conflict, rather than it being the case that one cannot concieve their non-conflict (this Kant takes to be the characteristic form of logical possibility). Of course, as Chignell states, Leibniz's proof is certainly merely logical in this sense, since he takes properties to express 'reality' or 'positive degrees of perfection' which cannot conflict with one another due to contradictions arising only 'through negation'. Chignell maintains that Kant does not (and cannot) prove the material coherence of all of the fundamental properties with one another and so his proof rests on the same shaky footing as Leibniz's.

I wonder though, about the status of Kant's assumption of real, metaphysical possibility being fundamentally conditioned by actuality. As you know, there are many philosophers who think that an actualist metaphysic fails because of singular existential statements involving non-existent entites - the worry is: how do you ground the fact that there might have existed some obect x, wholly distinct from every other actual object? Of course, I think Adams' "true at" and "true in" distinction of possible world semantics solves this problem well enough.

But there is another worry that I wonder about - so-called 'Aristotelian Actualism' (as laid out by G.W. Fitch) wherein what is possible is conditioned solely on what is (contingently) actual. Notably, in Plantinga and Adams' abstractionist possible world ontology, worlds exist necessarily in order to secure the (seemingly) infinite 'ways things might have been'; this is not to say that only actualists have such a populated ontology, certainly Lewis has not only population but crowdedness! The Aristotelian actualist though, claims that possible worlds are both abstract objects (propositional or otherwise) and that they exist according to how things happen to be in this world. 'Actual' here is not an indexical term (as it is for Lewis), nor is it a term picking out a world that 'obtains' (as it is for Plantinga and Adams), since, strictly speaking, other worlds' existence is contingent upon actuality - ie. actuality is a kind of primitive.

I think Kant's idea in 'One Possible Basis...' is something akin to Aristotelian actualism. Granted, the Divine Mind serves as a place wherein all properties are safely secured and in this sense, possible worlds (being, as Leibniz had it, so many compossible collections of properties) are necessary in a certain sense. And yet, there is the comittment that if it were the case, per impossible, that God was not an actual being, but instead merely possible, there could be no possible worlds either. It seems to me that if one is to be an Aristotelian actualist, one must eventually find a ground in a Necessary Being. Fitch seems to think that since it is the case that 'Socrates could have been a gymnast' would not be true in worlds wherein Socrates doesn't exist - such a proposition is only possibly possible. I tend to think though, that in an actual world wherein Socrates does not exist, it is still a necessary truth that there are some worlds wherein Socrates does exist and presumably wherein (at least one of these) he is a gymnast. In short, I think that possibly possible just collapses into possible simpliciter. And if one thinks such a thing with a strong comittment to S5, then eventually there will have to be something that is necessarily actual in order to house all of these de re possibilities.

Regarding Kant's proof, I wonder whether or not the onus is on someone who posits a Necessary Being to do the housing to show that all of the properties which go to make-up worlds have to be metaphysically compossible (in Kant's sense). Why think that the 'housing of properties' in the Divine Being has to be conjunctive between possible worlds? That is, why can we not say that God's Understanding contains many self-contained (metaphyiscally) possible worlds? I don't see the need for Kant to claim that all properties must be metaphysically compossible; even Leibniz thought that some concepts were incompossible with other concepts. And if he could claim that there are many self-contained metaphysically possible worlds, perhaps each with the same fundamental material make-up, there seems to be no need for him to show that any properties do not metaphyisically conflict with one another.

All one has to say, I think, is the following: "The possibility of any world that is actual obtaining - whichever world happens to be actual - is grounded in an actually necessary being wherein every metaphyiscally compossible world exists". One would not have to go on to attempt to prove that certain properties are metaphysically compossible - all he would have to say is: since this world is actual, it is clear that there is, in the Divine Mind, a certain world in which the properties (fundamental or otherwise) are not metaphysically inharmonious. Once Kant has shown that something like Aristotelian actualism is true - that what is metaphyiscally (or really) possible must have materially harmonious elements - then he can go on to present a picture of the Divine Mind as securing those truths by means of self-contained (metaphysically) compossible worlds.

The thought here is, I think, that if what Chignell calls the 'modal principle of sufficient reason' can be shown to be the correct analysis of possibility, why should Kant have to say anything on which properties are metaphysically possible and which aren't? There simply is actuality, revealing (some of the) possibilities which are metaphysically possible and, given that there must be an ultimate root - there is a Divine Being that is necessarily actual housing any possibilities that might turn out to be actual.

On Aristotelian Actualism

2008-07-16T11:33:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting appellation for a philosophical position! The initial question is: how could any philosophical tenet which claimed in any way to be Aristotelian fail to have actualist commitments? Aristotelian Actualism has such commitments in the expected way - this brand of actualism states that there are no de re modal facts about non-actual objects - ala Adams in 'Actualism and Thisness'. I find this claim theoretically sound - if one is an actualist that is. However, interestingly enough, note that even if one is a possibilitist, one still does not grant a modal profile to non-actual objects since, for the counterpart theorist (excepting here Paul perhaps, though I yet find her position to fall back into straight Lewisian counterpart theory), no object in and of itself has any modal features; not just the indexically-picked 'actual' objects of our world - but none simpliciter.

The more important claim of Aristotelian Actualism however, is the following: what is possible might have not been possible - or, put in another way, there are things which are not possible but which might have been possible. This claim stems from the facts that (i)no non-actual object has a modal profile and (ii)which world (and objects therein) is actual is a contingent matter. But if this is the case, how do we secure the modal claims which involve quantification over non-actual objects and their de re character? In his 'In Defense of Aristotelian Actualism', GW Fitch suggests that we use Adams' 'truth-at-a-world' distinction - these objects do not have a modal profile, but if they were actual, they would.

Now, as an actualist, I find the claim of Aristotelian Actualism intuitively plausible. But I do have a certain qualm with it - it must rely on the accessibility relation. I am deeply committed to an S5 system of modal logic wherein what is possible is necessarily possible - and this is something that the Aristotelian Actualist must deny. But must an actualist simpliciter deny it? I think not; Plantinga, to the extent that he is, as he claims, an actualist, accepts an S5 system of logic.

Firstly then, note that the accessibility relation that is said to hold between possible worlds collapses into incoherency when we note that each possible world contains every other in the following sense: what is possible in W is, no matter what world happens to be actual, still possible in W.That is, every possible world, being abstractions from the concrete world, contains facts about every other possible world. So certain facts about some object which exists in W, but not in W2, still are possible 'from' W2, since the object would have existed were W actual - and there are, furthermore, definitive facts about that object's existence in W2. So, the tenet that Aristotelian Actualism holds which rests upon the accessibility relation is incoherent because any object that is a possible existent is a possible existent 'from' any possible world; admittedly, there is a certain sense according to which certain objects are not possible from certain possible worlds, but this is not possibility per se, but rather some attenuated form of physical possibility.

How can one be an actualist and yet claim that there are certain de re facts about non-actual object? Well, firstly, I think that an actualist has a strong commitment to the denial of non-actual objects. But I also think that the actualist ought to have an equally strong commitment to the sufficiency of the concrete world to provide the basis for any and every object which might exist - that the furniture of the concrete world is large enough to seat any and all modal profiles of any possibly existing objects. This being said, I agree with the Aristotelian Actualist that there are no, as Mondadori puts is, distinct possibilities for non-actual (read: non-existing) objects, but I do not agree that when these objects come into existence, something is made possible which was not already so. Non-actual objects do have full modal profiles, but they are simply not 'present' in the concrete world.

This is the intuition behind the claim that, if these objects were actual, they would have such and such modal profiles. In other words, there is a definitive fact about non-actual object's modal characters, but it is a fact which is yet to obtain. There are, as Adams might put the matter, no propositions with them as constituents, but there would be a definitive set of such propositions, should they come into existence.

In short, I agree with Aristotelian Actualism to the extent that it claims that de re modal characters are applicable only to actual objects and that all other possibility claims about non-actual objects are merely 'generic'. But I do not agree that, had some other world been actual, and some other set of objects actual, that there would be things possible that were not previously. Rather, these de re distinct possibilities were always possible, since the objects themselves were always so, but they are now 'attainable' on account of them being present in the concrete world.

Why (Lewisian) Modal Realism is Absurd

2008-06-30T17:36:00.000-07:00

There are of course, the obvious objections - my personal favorite being the 'Humphrey' objection - also known as the 'irrelevant' objection. This is the familiar charge that, even if physically robust counterparts did exist in other spatio-temporally distant worlds, their existence and the properties they possess have no bearings on the existence of objects in this (read: 'our') world - more specifically, that their properties say nothing of the de re modal character of objects in this world; thus we might less affectionately call it the 'Who Cares?' objection.

Consider a further, related objection - what I like to call the 'depravity' objection. First, consider that modal realists, ala Lewis, refuse to grant transworld relational properties - something which, if granted, would at least secure some bind between counterparts; a bind which might plausibly be construed as parasitic in some modally important sense. Secondly, objects in any world have no properties which bespeak any sort of de re modality. There is nothing in the nature of an object, in and of itself, which is modal in character.

This of course stems from the fact that the project of the modal realist is, perhaps contrary to its name, to provide a reductive account of modality. The reduction is supposed to be (qualitatively) economical, where a de re fact about an object just is a quantification over a qualitatively similar object in another world. But that's not all - the modal realist takes himself to have reduced modality tout court. What need is there for modality when we have infinite amounts of worlds, all as concrete as our own with which to quantify over?

But, unfortunately, this is a case of theft over honest toil, and though it perhaps has advantages, it yet cannot accomplish its goal. For the modal realist must have as many worlds to secure all possibility and no more possible worlds as to admit impossibility - that is, he must have modal intuitions which are guiding his theoretical posits. Implicit modality anyone?

It gets worse when we ask: what are the rules for deciding whether or not such a certain world exists? The answer, of course, is that all of its parts (or 'members') must be compossible with one another. But how is this possibility explained? Surely not by reference to counterparts, lest there be no grounding for any world whatsoever. So, here we are again - back to primitive modality. And, unfortunately, to a modality-laden theory which grounds an attempt to explain away modality.

De Dicto Propositions Are Grounded in Concepts and De Re Propositions Are Grounded in Objects

2008-06-06T19:25:00.000-07:00

On the contrary, Forbes' In Defense of Absolute Essentialism: Necessary propositions of a de dicto form are necessary on account of de re facts about the objects which are constituents in the proposition - namely, the subject and predicates. So de re modality is fundamental, but de dicto is not therefore ranging over merely statements, rather it expresses de re modality in a different manner. Forbes states, "...even in simple de dicto neccesities, the source of the necessity is to be found in the properties to which the predicates of the de dicto truth refer" and, accordingly, "I deny that the source of de dicto necessity is in concepts."

I reply, though we may speak of the "properties" of the square and of right angles being the ground for such a de dicto truth, these are not objects and they are neither actual nor existents - they are objects and properties merely in conceptu. For any particular square, it is true, it will have right angles as a result of its own particular nature and its de re character. But this does not change the fact that the necessity of the proposition 'a square has right angles' is grounded in the concepts 'square' and 'right angle', not in any particular square or any particular right angles - and therefore, not in a de re fashion. This is why Leibniz stated in a letter to von Hessen-Rheinfels that "...we must philosophize differently about the notion of an individual substance than we do about the specific notion of a sphere".

On the other hand, perhaps it is the case that de re statements just are expressions of de dicto statements and therefore all modality is founded in conceptu. For a property P to be necessary to an object x just is for the proposition "if x has a certain set S of properties, x will have P" to be logically necessary. So, in the end, modality in the end is founded in and depends on dicta.

I reply that though such entailments might express necessary statements of de dicto modality, this does nothing to reduce de re modality. For this de dicto truth is truly founded in the de re character of the objects in question. S entailing P necessarily speaks of the modal character of the properties of S and the nature of x. For x must be such that it is able to posses all of the properties which are members of S and each property in S must be capable of being compresent with the others. There is then de re modality in both of these aspects - since presumably not all objects that have S will have to have P and not all properties are compossible with one another. These de re truths might have some de dicto translation but it is, at any rate, secondary and supervenient with respect to them.

Concretism and Abstractionism: Grounds of Possibility

2008-06-04T21:15:00.000-07:00

What exactly is the character of possible worlds and, more importantly, whence the ground of possibility for objects?

There are essentially two paths one might take of the character of possible worlds: concretism and abstractionism. The concretist, ala Lewis, understands possible worlds to be maximal collocations of spatio-temporally related objects. The abstractionist, ala Adams or Plantinga, understands possible worlds to be maximally consistent sets of propositions or states-of-affairs. Notice then that the abstractionist holds that there are two sorts of things in the Universe (where the term 'Universe' means the entirety of reality) - possible worlds and a concrete world to which these possible worlds might 'match-up'.

So, the concretist believes that all worlds are, so to speak, on the same playing field - each is just as 'real' as every other; hence the concretist's inherent commitment to an indexical analysis of actuality. The abstractionist however, believes that one possible world is privileged - only one world happens to match-up to the concrete world; of course, concretists have no need to have anything 'match-up' to anything else.

What then are these two conceptions' respective theories of the foundation of de re possibility? The concretists founds the de re possibilities of an object in its counterparts - those objects in different possible worlds which are qualitatively similar to the object in question. What makes it possible that an object x have a property P (one which it doesn't actually possess) is the fact that y, a qualitatively similar (but necessarily distinct) object existing in another possible world actually does have P.

The abstractionist, on the other hand, founds the de re possibilities of an object in a proposition which expresses a state of affairs containing the object actually possessing the property in question. What makes it possible that x possess P is that there (necessarily) exists a proposition which is part of a possible world of the form 'x has P'. This proposition being a part of a possible world just means, as Plantinga states, that if this possible world were actual (that is, if it did in fact match-up to the concrete world) then it would be the case that x would have P.

Now, although I think that there are plenty of problems for either view of possible worlds - I want to point out two pertinent ones here which I think go directly against our intuitional common sense.

The first is, why should we agree that the fact that some other object, wholly distinct from x and only related to it by way of it being merely qualitatively similar to it in certain respects, in virtue of it standing in some closed spatio-temporal relation to some other objects in another fully concrete world has any say whatsoever in the de re possibilities of x? The question is not the familiar objection to counterpart theory - namely "What's he got to do with me?" (though I think this is a valid and pertinent objection). Rather, the question is - what has concreteness and qualitative similarity in a counterpart have to do with grounding modal facts about objects?

Secondly, concerning abstractionism, why should we agree that a proposition in a 'Platonic Heaven' has any fundamental role in determining which things are possible for an object and which are not? The abstractionist seems to me rather to have things the wrong way around - it is the objects in the concrete world and their dispositional properties therein which ground whether or not there exist such propositions expressing states of affairs wherein they possess some certain property.

Besides this, why should we agree, with the abstractionist, that propositions which do not match-up with the concrete world even exist in any form whatsoever? Now, Plantinga certainly has independent motivation for holding this brand of abstractionism - his actualism entails, he thinks, the need to have an 'essence' which grounds the fact that there are propositions about non-existent individuals. But I am inclined to think, with Adams, that there are no singular propositions about non-actual individuals - these propositions supervene on actual existents. And I am also therefore inclined to think that propositions about an object x possessing a property P 'exist', but not, as it were, pre-objectually or extra-objectually.

The Plague of Predicative Essentialism

2008-04-11T01:25:00.000-07:00

I can't accept any theory that posits the essence of an object to be comprised of, or reducible to a set of properties.

The essence of an object is that from which all the properties of an object flow.

The following is an appropriate picture: An infinite amount of essences exist, none differing solo numero and all being in the company of one another. Their being present to one another results in each of them contributing to a relational situs wherein each of the essences exhibit some set of characteristics resulting from the relationship of it to every other essence in its presence. Each essence is, in virtue of its particular relationship to every other object, clothed in a certain quiddity comprised of a total set of properties. Objects are hylomorphic - equally essence and properties, haecceity and suchness, non-qualitative and qualitative, individual and communal, non-relational and relational.

Any account wherein properties are considered primitive must view the essence of an object as ineffectually inactive or else a derivative entity. But such an account cannot explain how these properties can be their own de re foundation or how they can set a non-trivial limit to and specification of the property possession of an object. In short, the effects of primitivising properties is that all investigation of the nature of objects must be left to logical analysis. Possibility will be nothing more than non-contradiction between the predicates of an object and the predicates comprising some conceptual context. Necessity will be merely the impossibility of non-contradiction between the predicates of an object and the predicates comprising some conceptual context. But diamonds and boxes are only conceptual aids.

Real possibility flows from the essence of an object - it declares a property possible just in case the property is compossible with every other property in some conceptual context and there is some property that the object has from which, if it were to be included in this context,it would follow that the property in question would be exemplified. This is the real character of Leibnizian worlds - one which respects the pregnancy of properties with determinate properties founded in the relationship of the 'concept' of the object in respect to every other object.

Kantian Derivitives, pt. 1

2007-12-28T15:03:00.000-08:00

It seems that we may agree with the Kantian thesis in a certain manner; that is, conceived in much the same way that Aristotle viewed the truth in Platonism. For it seems most correct in a general sense that the perceived, or experienced world is as it is perceived on account of the perceiver - that the individual has its own unique relationships to others on account of its individuality. And in this sense the "subject conditions the object".

But viewing the matter more closely, we may observe, as Aristotle did, that this conditioning is not generally encompassing - in the way that the 'Form of Beauty' encompasses and conditions all beautiful things, but rather that it is inherent in every object. For every object may be understood to have both numenal and phenomenal aspects wherein its numenal aspect allows for and 'conditions' what it may express phenomenally; comparable then, to Aristotle's conception of 'substance' in particular beings as their ground and intelligible foundation.

It may be said then that what is true for one object, namely a particular man (and it seems the whole of mankind) is true for every other - that is, that he views the world as he experiences it through the relations which he bears to others on account of, or in the fashion of, his own unique perspective. For it may be said that his 'intuition' allows all 'experience', following Kant, but not in the general sense meaning that all subjects know others by means of themselves, but rather in that his uniqueness allows for and governs his experience. As it may perhaps be better stated, that each object's uniqueness is the foundation of and is the principle of allowance for its relationships it expresses in regards to every other object.

Just as Kant believed that the intuitional 'categories' were the 'transcendent concepts' by which experience is made possible, so Plato believed that the Forms were the immutable 'ideas' which all experience relied upon in order for it to be. So we may, following Aristotle, insist that this general conception of foundational allowance is inherent in every object and is proper to each of them in their own particular manner. There will then be understood that every object's form establishes and makes possible its material, for this is nothing more than saying that the subject conditions its object. In other words, an object's unchanging and limiting form determines the manner in which it may be related to others. The point being that man is no special case and that he follows the general manner of being.

Indeed, it seems absurd that man alone, by virtue of his intuitional 'categories' shapes and forms to himself the entirety of other object's being. This thesis is refuted by our understanding of rule-governed change in phenomenal experience - each object, though it be perceived by us, has its proper limits of representation. And we do not ourselves construct this, but it is required in order that the object be represented to us at all.

Therefore, every object has its own personal 'intuitional' aspect which is not common among all objects (as Kant's 'Space' and 'Time' categories are) which allows and conditions the manner in which it may represent itself; in man there is truly no difference. Kant's error then was to suppose an undifferentiated realm upon which we impose our own intutitional 'categories' - it seems more consistent and proper to regard our experience as governed by our own individuality and our experience of others according to their individuality and ours aligning with one another. That is, though our experience of objects depends on our uniqueness, it in the same regard depends on their own uniquenesses as well.

Kantian Derivitives, pt.2

2007-12-27T15:07:00.000-08:00

The Kantian thesis that if there is an external reality, in the objective sense, it must lie outside of our intellection and therefore be wholly unknowable; even to be known if it exists or not is impossible.

This thesis seems quite admissible, for everything which we experience is in some sense or another a manner of relation - that is, of ourselves to another. These relations are manifested in extension, wherein dimension and depth are functions of relations of perspective; in qualities of the senses in general, as the formerly termed secondary qualities, functions of relations between waves, particles, strings, etc.

So the correctness of the Kantian thesis might be stated: We never experience anything which is without relation. Or, what we experience must involve within it relations. This is the more metaphysical derivative of the thesis of Kant.

But we may all acknowledge this thesis, in fact, we do all acknowledge it. We might all accept it when restated as: Every being has a certain character of experience according to its manner of relation to other beings - ie. the manner in which it relates. The thought: Rose Glasses as perceivers, not veils. So then it seems unquestionably true that all of our experience is conditioned by the subject of the experience, namely us.

But we must realize that there is something over which the subject of experience does not have 'control' - the possibilities of what is experienced. That is, that it may appear to us in such a fashion. For the allowance of appearance is by no means dependent on our experience, which Kant recognized in positing our minds as that which makes experience possible - that is, what makes experience possible is not what is experienced.

An Intuitive Appeal to S5 Modal Logic

2007-12-05T02:30:00.000-08:00

One's net determines which fish one will catch, but not which fish are in the sea.