Why Are You You?

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.

A Posteriori Necessities & Natural Kinds

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.