In the thread on "propositions" on the philosophy group site I remarked that if grammar allows illimitable recombination, it is metaphysically possible to generate an infinite number of sentences – one could, for example understand a 'possible' sentence as "a sentence that is uttered in some possible world".
True to the 'nominalist turn' of the discussion on propositions, I'd like to anticipate the objections of a David Lincicome that the introduction of possible worlds threaten yet another ontological proliferation. We've got problems enough with such notions as 'propositions' and 'states of affairs' – if our analysis calls for yet more ontological structure we might as well go the whole hog and start swinging Tarzan-like from one kind of 'entity' to another through an entire jungle of ontology.
My defence – if it stands as such – is that one's ontology is relative to one's theory. Commitment to a theory implies commitment to the ontology of that theory so, if we accept that possible world analysis (PWA) serves any purpose at all, we must accept the commitment WITHIN THE THEORY to 'possible worlds'. But the relativistic proviso is crucial to our understanding of the role of the theory: if we accept the weak claim that PWA "serves some purpose", then 'possible worlds' are NO MORE THAN theory-dependent entities. The metaphysical problem arises when we try to generalise the ontology of the theory to the ontology of unmodified quantification – when we pass from saying "it is possible that there such-and-such an entity" to "there is such-and-such a possible entity".
DE DICTO and DE RE MODALITY
This is no more than the classic distinction between de dicto and de re. In first-order modal logic, the distinction can be given thus:
i. ◊ [(∃x) x is Sherlock Holmes]
and
ii. (∃x) ◊ [x is Sherlock Holmes]
As far as the grammatical resources of our everyday language allow, we can give the metaphysical distinction between (i) and (ii) as being the distinction between (i) saying that it is possible "that Sherlock Holmes exists" and (ii) saying that Sherlock Holmes "existed possibly". The first does no more than say that it is not impossible that there could have been a Sherlock Holmes. This is acceptable enough – after all, if it was logically impossible to conceive of Sherlock Holmes existing, Conan-Doyle would have had a short career as a writer. The second makes a much stronger claim – it says that *there is* some thing that is a 'possible Sherlock Holmes': that is to say, the existential quantifier in (ii) ranges over the same domain as the existential quantifier in
ii*. (∃x) x is Nicolas Sarkozy
(the distinction being that (ii*) says some thing is a 'Nicolas Sarkozy' while (ii) says that some thing is a 'POSSIBLE Sherlock Holmes'). Ontologically, (i) says that it is possible that there be some entity while (ii) says that there is some possible entity. However, and if we reformulated (ii) in second order, we'd see that we're not really taking about a "possible entity", but about a "possible property" that some (real) entity has in the same way that (real) entities have 'actual' properties. Thus, (ii) claims that there IS a (real) entity which has the "possible property" of being Sherlock Holmes, and that this entity inhabits the same universe as an entity which has the 'real' property of being Nicolas Sarkozy. (ii) is making an ontological commitment over and above the theory-relative ontology of (i): the quantifier in (ii) is modally unmodified, and ranges over the same domain as the quantifier in (ii*) – and whatever that domain might be, it is the domain in which we usually make distinctions between 'real' and 'fictional' characters.
Let us imagine – as is indeed the case –that we know nothing about the bound variable 'x' in (ii) other than that this x is a "possible Sherlock Holmes". This implies that we are allowing into our ontology 'real' entities that have nothing but 'possible' properties – in layman's terms, we're saying that somewhere out there in the real universe there is a thing that is "a possible Sherlock Holmes". Furthermore, the ONLY property by which we can individuate this entity is that it is a 'possible Sherlock Holmes' – which implies that we are accepting as 'real' entities that have NOTHING BUT 'possible properties' (a more sophisticated argument could distinguish between the intrinsic and extrinsic properties of such entities, in which case we would remark that the strong de re thesis implies that such an entity would have *intrinsic* 'possible properties').
Whether or not we're willing to accept "possibilia" alongside the 'real' or 'actualised' entities that make up our everyday world is a matter of preference. The nominalist will prefer to hold that all such talk is nothing but talk; the realist will be more willing to extend his ontology if 'real' possibilia serve some explanatory end.
POSSIBLE WORLDS
Being of the nominalist turn myself, I'd defend use of PWA insofar as 'possible worlds' might perhaps be *no more than* a way of giving a semantics for 'meaningful counterfactuals' of the "if E had happened, F would have happened" kind. As such counterfactuals are common in our everyday talk, the interest of giving such a semantics is evident: for example, one conception of causation is commonly expressed by statements such as "if the first object had not been, the second never would have existed". For traditional semantics, such sentences are simply false – things are, or are not; and if they are not, there aren't any "different ways" in which they are not. Nonetheless, a lot of science (and of everyday talk about action and results) turns on such counterfactuals being at least meaningful; PWA gives us a way of getting to grips with that 'meaningfulness'.
All the same, I'd stress that it's one thing when, for the ends of linguistic investigation, we accept an axiomatisable system of semantic analysis and the quantification over domains relative to that system. As long as existential quantification is limited to a world W, then all we are accepting is that some thing 'x' exists RELATIVE TO W; unless we specify that W is, or includes, the 'actual world', we are making no claims about the "existence" of 'x' in 'the real world'. It is, however, quite another thing to hold that possible-world quantification ranges over a sub-universe of modally-unmodified quantification. In this second case, there is some 'real' thing 'x' in the universe of unmodified quantification, and this real thing has some property in some possible world W.
In other words, we can prefer a de dicto understanding of PWA to a de re understanding; this preference is given by avoiding situations in which quantification over possible worlds falls within the scope of a modally-unmodified existential quantifier. This is clear when we look at statements of 'possible existence': if we take a common-enough statement, such as "Sherlock Holmes could have existed", the de dicto PWA reading would be
iii. (∃w) [(∃x) x is in w & x is Sherlock Holmes]
while the de re reading would be
iv. (∃x) (∃w) [x is in w & x is Sherlock Holmes]
(iii) says that there is some possible world in which "there is a Sherlock Holmes" is true, while (iv) says that "there is a Sherlock Holmes in some possible world" is true. In (i), the existential quantifier binding 'x' is limited in its scope by the quantification over 'w' to 'w' alone; in (iv) it ranges over every kind of entity, whether that entity is in 'w' or outside 'w', and asserts that there is some entity that has (at least or at most) the property of being Sherlock-Holmes-in-w.
The analysis is slightly different when we imagine possible characteristics of real (historical) people. Take, for example, "Hitler could have been a pacifist". Allowing that "Hitler" names a unique individual, the de dicto reading follows (iii):
v. (∃w) [(E!x) (x is Hitler & x is in w) & pacifist, x]
and a strict de re reading following (iv) would give
vi. (∃ !x) (∃w) [(x is Hitler & x is in w) & pacifist, x]
Now, (vi) tells us that there is exactly one thing 'x' such that 'x' is Hitler in some world 'w' and that 'x' is a pacifist. Being "Hitler-in-a-world" sounds remarkably like counterpart theory: a more Kripkean view might be
vi*. (∃ !x) x is Hitler & (∃w) [(x is in w & pacifist, x)]
(vi) is a bit worrying as it says that, among all the things that make up our universe, there is exactly one which might have the property of being a "possible pacifistic Hitler" (and this is the same worry we get when faced with a realistic understanding of counterpart theory). But then (vi*) isn't any better, as it says of "our" Hitler – that is, the chap who thought WWII was a good political move - that he *is* a pacifist-in-w. For my part, I don't think we can talk of "our" Hitler and say that it's possible that he *is* a pacifist "somewhere else" – "our Hitler" is not a metaphysical essence but a physical object and series of events and processes which we know or infer from a certain set of evidence. On this understanding, the evidence for a historical personage such as Hitler is taken to be entirely 'documentary' (we would perhaps do better with "Napoleon", as there is little chance that anyone could have direct perceptual acquaintance with the putative object). For various reasons, I don't think Kripke's analysis works for grammatical objects for which we have no direct deictic evidence (that is, where there can be no 'initial deictic baptism' of the object for a person previously unacquainted with that object). Like the first St Thomas, I need to be able to see, touch, taste, hear, or smell in order to associate the name and its putative object – I can't take it on faith. The objects of deictic naming are different – it so happens that my friend Matthieu is tall; he could have been short. If "Matthieu" functions as a Kripkean constant and designates the same entity in every world, there's no need to quantify – I need only assert
vii. (∃w) [Matthieu is in w & short, Matthieu]
***
In conclusion, (iii), (v) - and for that matter, (vii) – allow for the "possible Sherlock Holmes", the "possible pacifistic Hitler", and the "possible short Matthieu" as 'beings in possible worlds', thus avoiding the stronger commitment to 'possible beings'. As for the possible worlds themselves, there's no reason why we shouldn't accept them as *narrative devices* or *narrative spaces*. Use of a possible world is something like the "suspension of disbelief" of Coleridge relativised to a coherent narrative - in the case of Sherlock Holmes, this is exactly what we do when we say that Sherlock Holmes was addicted to cocaine rather than opium, or that he didn't get the best of Irene Adler. While we "know" that Holmes doesn't exist in the 'actual' world, that Hitler wasn't a pacifist, and that Matthieu is tall, we can for the sake of whatever hypothesis we're testing admit that things "could be otherwise". But there's no reason why the "way things could be" should be any more than a linguistic construct.
Surely, the 'way things ARE', have *more* reason to be construed as a linguistic construct than postulating "the way things could be"? In my business analysis and modelling experience there are more difficulties in getting agreement on the current state of things (the way things are) than the ideal state (the way things could be).
More often than not, these difficulties involve *defining* realities rather than imagining them. Does it imply we (individually and collectively) have a better sense of 'what we want' and are unsure of quite what it is that 'we are'? Or perhaps the 'idea' of Change - modelling a reality based on possibilities - appeals to our own Individual Possibilities? Either way, I tend to get a touch nervous when focusing on a Desired-End-in-itself and not The-Means-to-That-End :)
But who am I to look Hope in its linguistically-constructed face?
can we please discuss Kendall Walton's make-believe theory of representation? i think it may give an answer to this possible worlds stuff, without inflating our ontology (which of course is not inflated if we accept possible worlds as fictional, but that's another matter)
Surely, the 'way things ARE', have *more* reason to be construed as a linguistic construct than postulating "the way things could be"? In my business analysis and modelling experience there are more difficulties in getting agreement on the current state of things (the way things are) than the ideal state (the way things could be).
More often than not, these difficulties involve *defining* realities rather than imagining them. Does it imply we (individually and collectively) have a better sense of 'what we want' and are unsure of quite what it is that 'we are'? Or perhaps the 'idea' of Change - modelling a reality based on possibilities - appeals to our own Individual Possibilities? Either way, I tend to get a touch nervous when focusing on a Desired-End-in-itself and not The-Means-to-That-End :)
But who am I to look Hope in its linguistically-constructed face?
i'm a bit confused. are our linguistic concepts in any way linked to the mind-independent world, or do we reject the assumption of a mind-independent world?
In my humble opinion, if substances do not have a natural potency to become what they are not, then nothing can change. Thus, possibility is as real as are the changes that flow from it.
On the other hand, there are some things that are simply impossible. I suspect, for example, that it may have been impossible for King Midas to change things to gold merely by touching them. When we speak of impossibilities as if they were possible, then we are considering what might be called a mere linguistic construct, mere make-believe.
It is sometimes true, of course, that we do not know what is possible from what is impossible.
i'm still confused. whose is this mind? is my mind (if i have one) and your mind the same? it seems that the best we can do is be sure that there is something out there, but be a sceptic as to our possibilities of knowing it. then we can move on to the social and the effective mind-dependence of our environment. ie since the only medium through which we can perceive the environment is our mind, then the only choice is mind-dependence of some sort. does this make any sense?
CJ: "So we have a structure of possibilities. In my opinion, when David Hirst speaks of a mere linguistic construct, he speaks of very probable ("real") or very unprobable ("unreal") possibilities, against which language is far more flexible. So we can "interpret" stable probabilities (!) by language and can change them by language only a little. The question is more about quantity then of yes or no."
I can not speak for David. I can, however, say that nominalism rejects universals. As David said: "The nominalist will prefer to hold that all such talk is nothing but talk; the realist will be more willing to extend his ontology if 'real' possibilia serve some explanatory end."
I consider myself a realist. Universals do serve to explain the way the world is. In that sense they are real. Thus when scientists propose laws they are doing more than just talking. In the same way, the natural potencies inherent in substances are real, as are the universals which correspond to them.
And, as I made quite clear, I ted to nominalism, I think my good namesake would also tend to this view...
So, David: I had a very interesting but entirely professional (= in the field of market modelling in financial analysis) discussion on this very point recently, and with particular reference to the recent 'crash'. When calculating high-risk situations with low probabilities, th market analysts tend to think in terms of probabilia and not possibilia (their ontology requires one or the other, inclusive). Something cannot be actualised at 5.7% - it either is, or it isn't. If the risk actualises, it actualises, and with 100% "effect"). The PWA angle is interesting, too: given a tendency to see market evolution in terms of Markov chains, the investors forget to take into account the notion of "accessibility": a range of worlds are accessible from our world, but planning should take into account the worlds accessible from THOSE worlds etc. etc. - the modal foundations are too weak to bear the supposed weight of representation (I haven't given this any technical consideration, but I imagine we'd find the weakness somewhere in the derivation of modal systems from the basic axioms).
Next: Haris
Yes, of course we can - what does Kendall Walton say? The "narrative space" interpretation seems as valuable in the field of temporal perspective as in the field of alethics (and the two are closely linked)
I've answered Claus's comment on the "naturalism" group board - please see: https://www.researchgate.net/group/9abab896aaab494830f65c58c232e6da/board/thread/3652_Possible_Worlds?c=14002#c14002
Natasha: a very telling comment!
Language is general, and therefore best suited to formulating generalities. Generalities tend to be norm-oriented.
First of all: the individual view. Let us imagine that "the world" (W) is the entire set of "descriptions" in each of the 'private languages' Claus' comment would require. The number of descriptions D that are rendered public in speech or writing is evidently less than the cardinality of W; whether D is a subset of W is a matter of our metaphysical preferences.
Now, D is a set of PUBLIC descriptions of the world. Let's imagine that we plot a graph such that any given description d∈D is related to the number of speakers who would assent to it. We'll evidently see a distribution between a certain number of descriptions to which a very large number of speakers will assent and a (probably far larger) number of descriptions to which very few would assent. If we reify the set of high-assertion descriptions, we have a "normative description of the world". The problem comes in setting the borders of this "normative description".
An ideal philosophical description of the world would consist only of descriptions that EVERY speaker would assent to; the way we actually do philosophy is more a matter of the descriptions to which an ideally-rational speaker would assent. Ahem....
CJ: "The question of interrelated minds as well as the differentiation of nominalism and realism needs a more comprehensive concept of "world" (to avoid the differentiation here), which I have suggested in the first 5 pages of "Dynamic Existence" in my profile."
I have no particular idea how interrelated minds have anything to do with what I posted. I consider myself a realist. I am certainly not a nominalist.
The reason I posted to this thread is that I reject certain ideas about 'possible worlds' based on naive set theory. I am thinking, in particular, of the idea that a 'possible world' is "a maximal, compossible conjunction of abstract propositions." (See http://bearspace.baylor.edu/Alexander_Pruss/www/papers/NewCosmo.html.) A world, possible or actual, is not a set of anything. It is certainly is not a set of propositions.
Claus: now, I know a lot about mind-expanding substances, but you would seem to be substantially extending Mind! Given the nominalist foundation of this thread (an answer to an imagined objection by David L), it's a bit difficult to change track and address an ontology which presupposes jungle luxuriance...
Beware that the "mind" you suggest doesn't just collapse into an omniscient God.
Pruss is entirely off-field, Bill. He's reading a hell of a lot of assumptions into the initial semantics, which is NOTHING MORE than a way of explaining the meaningfulness of counterfactuals. I intend using what I've said here to sharpen up my contributions to the "propositions" discussion, where I'll certainly take in Pruss-Worlds (so see ya there!)
And we can, if you wish, replace the use of naîve set theory with a mereological model - it'll make answering more complex, though; set-theoretical notions have become very implanted in analytic philosophy.
When a philosopher says "set", he means "class".
DH: "And we can, if you wish, replace the use of naîve set theory with a mereological model - it'll make answering more complex, though; set-theoretical notions have become very implanted in analytic philosophy.
DH: "When a philosopher says 'set,' he means 'class.'"
The problem I see in calling the world a set or class is that we do not know the members of that set or class. Indeed, the world we inhabit is largely unknowable. There may be some simple 'worlds' or 'possible worlds' which would be knowable. But who knows more than the smallest fragments of our world? I certainly can make no such claim. I fear I would be quite skeptical of any claims another may make.
If our world is largely unknowable I would not consider it to be a set or a class. Perhaps the word 'heap' as in a 'heap of stuff' would be closer to the mark.
Bill, your comments beg the question:
Why is a definition of some thing/non-thing seen as a declaration of it?
In my view, defining any abstract would be to present its 'property' - that which may make it [scientifically] the same (extension) - as well as different (intension). The represented definition would serve as its 'principle'. I don't think that sets or class really SAY anything about its object/non-object but does 'position' it in the scheme of things.
Furthermore, I see propositions as a basis of measurement, FROM which we can extract, compare and build as a *basis* for analysis with OTHER sets; but not for purposes of inference.
Does realism and nominalism [or any idealism] apply at this [very basic] stage? I wouldn't think so, considering that definition has no Meaning on its own. Realism may play its role in the next logical step however, where Language is used as a descriptive instrument in drawing meaning from the definition.
Which brings us back to a concept Q: Could we *define* the World or Possible Worlds as a preclude to awarding it Meaning?
As for Analytical philo, drawing on sets and frameworks is all good and well; yet providing explanations instead of interrelations remains the challenge. What comforts me in this world is knowing that proving something has Meaning may be easier to do than proving something is Meaningless. But what does that say for Possible Worlds?
David: Forgive me - in re-reading your introduction argument I may very well have not introduced anything new to my previous post, only restated the obvious. I shall return to my corner in humbled shame and reformulate.
"...is that one's ontology is relative to one's theory. Commitment to a theory implies commitment to the ontology of that theory so, if we accept that possible world analysis (PWA) serves any purpose at all, we must accept the commitment WITHIN THE THEORY to 'possible worlds'."
I DO have to say that I like this statement. It relates to the intensive meaning of words that are based on universal definitions. So, when abstracts are defined and statements/theories are formulated using such words, the meaning of the theory as a whole is affected [and effected] by the definition of the words/sets it contains.
Of course it boggles the mind: How can we ever come up with something remotely 'original'? Is that The Possible World? I once postulated: What if a universal law changed? Would all our theories and explanations be void?
Bill - I agree that a lot of philosophy either begs the question about or draws a veil over the extension of unmodified existential quantifiers. In answering your remark, and in continuing my "investigation" (read "monologue"), I'll draw on Wittgenstein's opening remark in the "Tractatus" (http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html).
Can any German speakers among you tell me whether "The world is everything that is the case" is a good translation of "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist", and whether "Tatsache" can be given as "fact"?
(the continuation will be in the "propositions" thread). As to the redefinition of what we're taling about here, I'd make one big distinction before handing the question over to the "so-called experts" of Wikipedia (read "pinko liberals")...
Possible worlds are hot stuff at the moment among highly-trained specialists like theoretical physicists or anyone who watches science fiction on TV... the QM notion (as in the "many-worlds interpretation") is an attempt to make sense of collapse (or rather, an attempt to make collapse unnecessary); any extra-theoretical interpretation of such physics strays onto the territory mapped out in philosophy by David Lewis on the basis of Saul Kripke's semantics.
Anyway, here's the hot stuff straight from the horse's mouth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possible_world
NB: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possible_world#Comparison_with_the_many-worlds_interpretation
Hi David, you're literally right in both cases. I am not quite comfortable with "The world is everything that is the case", though. Maybe I need more context.
The world is a load of hailstones?
I'd love to see what Carnap would have done with THAT...
Thanks for the comments, fellas
As you've obviously gathered, my German is non-existent... "le monde est tout ce qui tombe" would give an nice French equivalent for David's riff on "Fall". I can understand why the 'classic' French translation of the Tractatus starts with "le monde est tout ce qui arrive" - "les choses qui arrivent" being slightly more 'formal' that "les choses qui tombent". Unfortunately, the classic French translation retranslates to English as "the world is everything that happens". While for my part I'm perfectly happy with an ontology of events, I don't really think that was what St Ludwig was getting at....
Is there a notion of co-extension in the German?
'WHAT IS THE CASE', 'FACTS', 'STATES OF AFFAIRS'… POSSIBLE WORLDS?
Evidently "everything that is the case" is not "one thing" (this would resemble the slingshot - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingshot_argument), so we should understand this as "all those things which are the case". Wittgenstein's initial statement would therefore suggest that the world is the "sum of all those things that are the case". For the first Wittgenstein, "a thing that is the case" is a 'fact', and a 'fact' is an "existing state of affairs".
'States of affairs' are interesting here, as they would seem to constitute a superclass of which 'facts' are a subclass. Of course, 'existing' could be given a restrictive sense, but in that case 'state of affairs' would simply reduce to 'fact'; and this leads to two very interesting questions:
1. If 'facts' are a subclass of 'states of affairs', what is the status of those states of affairs which are NOT facts?
2. What is it that makes a given 'state of affairs' into a 'fact'?
A fact cannot be isolated as an individual entity, it is a fact given a connection to other things like an observation or an experience. So how does one look at not-fact? Then it becomes something that cannot rely on anything that has appeared prior to substantiate itself, it is alone, and sometimes it becomes a fact, because some observations/observers go aha, now I see what I have already seen. So my feeling is that one should concentrate on not-facts.
Several interesting observations, Mark…. we seem to be doing a fast-forward replay of the history of analytic philosophy here!
Firstly, on the interdependence of "facts" :
"Theories face the tribunal of experience as a whole" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_holism
A fact is not an individual entity if by "individual entity" we mean "some thing which has parts but is not itself a part of something else"; if Quine is correct about theory-dependence, a 'fact' is only a 'fact' because of the role it plays in some theory - no theory, no 'fact'. There is no "fact of THE matter"; there are just facts about CERTAIN matters, and no guarantee that any 'fact about' matter A can be generalised to matter B.
Nonetheless, we CAN individuate parts - your left hand is individuated by the expression 'your left hand'. If a fact is an 'individual', it's perhaps an individual in this sense: it is individuated by its relative position in some theory of that 'kind' of fact. These 'theories' don't have to be scientific – they can be naïve, pre-scientific, commonsense, or whatever you like.
So, while no fact can be taken in isolation, it'd be a mistake to think that they all correspond to some "Great Fact"; just as the truth of a given proposition doesn't mean that it designates "The True". The slingshot applies to facts as well as to propositions (for the logical POV, I'd back the argument based on Russell's understanding of definite descriptions -http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/facts/slingshot-argument.html )
If I can quote Mulligan, numbering his example sentences :
"Take the sentences
1. ιx[x = Socrates] = Socrates
and
2. ιx[x is John's favourite philosopher] = Socrates.
On Russell's view, the first is to be understood as:
1*. There is a unique object identical to Socrates, and whatever is identical to Socrates is identical to Socrates
and the second as
2*. There is a unique object identical to John's favourite philosopher, and whatever is identical to John's favourite philosopher is identical to Socrates."
As Mulligan points out, it's easier to accept substitution if descriptions are treated referentially (as if they were names): if the description D1 designates a 'thing', then any other description D2 which designates the same 'thing' is equivalent to D1. If, however, names are disguised quantifiers, then (1*) quantifies over "things that are identical to Socrates" and (2*) over "things that are identical to John's favourite philosopher". That Socrates is identical to himself is surely a different 'fact' from the 'fact' that Socrates is John's favourite philosopher.
If we hold that our domains of quantification are determined by our "theories"§, and that this has a bearing on 'facts', then (1*) corresponds to a 'fact' in a "theory" of Socrates (in the framework of a theory of self-identity), while (2*) corresponds to a 'fact' in a "theory" of John's favourite philosophers (in the framework of what? A "theory" of John's preferences? A "theory" of John?).
§The scare-quotes around "theory" indicate a pre-scientific or intuitive sense.
FROM 'WHAT IS THE CASE' TO A "PICTURE OF "THE WORLD"
"1. The world is everything that is the case
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things."
~Wittgenstein, "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" (Ogden's translation) - http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html
Is "everything that is the case" ONE thing, or many?
From its grammatical form, "the world" would seem to be 'one thing'. But this "one thing" is described or defined by a mereological sum – a "totality of facts". We can understand the relationship between "the world", "what is the case", and "the totality of facts" in two ways:
i. The world is everything that is the case, and everything that is the case is the totality of facts
ii. The world is all things that are the case, and all things that are the case are the totality of facts
Wittgenstein's development (1.21) would allow that a 'fact' is 'a thing that is the case' – and indeed, he treats facts as atomic. Nonetheless, even if the world "divides into" facts, it's still possible to understand the 'totality of facts' as giving precisely 'what is the case', and 'what is the case' as giving precisely the status of 'the world'. If this is the case, 'the world' is PRECISELY an entity which correspond to an unrestricted mereological fusion of 'facts'.
Wittgenstein holds that (true) propositions "give pictures of facts"; if 'the world' is PRECISELY the mereological fusion of 'facts', then the mereological sum of all true propositions gives a 'picture' of 'the world'.
However, there's a certain ambiguity in some of Wittgenstein's remarks: if, as he suggests in 1.21, that any fact "can either be the case or not be the case", then "the totality of facts" is GREATER THAN "everything that is the case", as there are some 'facts' that "are NOT the case".
Wittgenstein mitigates this slightly when he introduces the notion of a 'state of affairs' and of "possible facts"; but before this, we must consider the notion of "existing and non-existing facts" in its own right. If we take a reductionist view of existence, then any talk of "non-existent facts" reduces to "there is no fact such that A", in which case a non-existent fact is not a fact. If this is the case, then (1) is saved, as the totality of facts is no greater than "what is the case' – but "facts that are not the case" become a meaningless flourish.
To do justice to Wittgenstein, "existence" is certainly not the right term (my grasp of German is insufficient) – it should perhaps be given as "obtention", and more properly in this context as "the obtention of a state of affairs". Thus, the distinction between "existing" and "non-existing" facts is better given as the distinction between states of affairs that either do, or do not, obtain. What is the status of "states of affairs" that do not obtain?
A state of affairs, like a fact, corresponds to a proposition. However, the state of affairs does not determine the truth conditions of its associated proposition: there must be "something more" in order that the proposition be evaluated as true or false: using Wittgenstein's analogy, a proposition will allow us to "recognise" a state of affairs, but it doesn't tell us whether that state of affairs obtains or not.
In other words, a state of affairs is "a way the world could be" that is 'shown' to us by a (meaningful) proposition; a 'fact' would therefore be an ACTUALISED "way the world could be". It would be interesting to take this as a point of departure:
I. That which is the case is an actualised "way the world could be"
This allows for a reinterpretation of Wittgenstein's (1):
1*. Everything that is the case is the way the world is
However, (1*) now follows from (I); and (I) also allows
II. Everything that is the case is a way the world could be
So, our question is now reformulated as two questions: "what is the status of those 'ways the world could be' that are NOT actualised?" and "where do such non-actualised 'ways the world could be' come from?".
The second question is perhaps the most fundamental: if "the ways the world could be" don't come from "the world as it is", WHERE do they come from? Here, Wittgenstein's analogy – that propositions provide "pictures" of the world – can be enlightening. If we can borrow a notion from Peirce, a "picture" is an icon – it represents the 'formal structure' of its putative object, ***whether such an object actually exists or not***. A picture of something must obey certain 'formal conventions' if it is to function as (be accepted as) a picture; if it fulfils these criteria, it is a 'picture', whether or not the "thing it is a picture of" exists. To extend he Wittgensteinian analogy, the resources of pictorial craft are such that one can draw a picture of something even if that 'thing' has no reality outside the picture ("sometimes a picture is only a picture"). The 'non-actualised ways the world could be' are "pictures without objects", not "true portraits" but "pseudoportraits" – they are (to swap analogies somewhat brutally) "fictions".
A fiction is made possible by the resources of language. Language allows us to report not only what is the case, but also what is NOT the case. We can, I think, take it that I am not twenty-seven feet tall, and that – if Wittgenstein's views are correct – my not being twenty-seven feet tall is "what is the case", is a 'fact'. However, "I am not twenty-seven feet tall" is formed from the negation of another 'proposition', "I am twenty-seven feet tall". This proposition is also a picture of the world, save that what it depicts 'does not exist'. My being twenty-seven feet tall is 'a way the world could be' that is NOT actualised.
So, propositions provide 'pictures of the world' - or, to return to the term Wittgenstein employs, they describe 'states of affairs'. Some states of affairs are actualised, and these are 'facts' – others are not, and these are 'fictions'. A proposition that corresponds to a 'fiction' is, in the hard language of classic bivalence, simply 'false'.
However, the class of 'facts' is a subclass of the class of 'states of affairs'. This is made clear in (II): everything that is the case is *a* 'way the world could be'. Here, we are stating the obvious: evidently, if the world could not be the way it is, it wouldn't be the way it is. Yet (II) does not make the stronger assumption of (1*) – everything that is the case is THE way the world is. In (1*), there is one and only one way the world is, and nothing is said about ways the world could be. It's tempting to take this as the foundation of all knowledge – we know the way the world IS, and can therefore recognise any proposition that does not show 'the world as it is'. But language doesn't stand in a one-to-one relation with anything 'in the world', whether that 'anything' be a fact, an object, an event – language is a general tool which can be adapted to specific cases by an entire arsenal of 'referential' devices (quantification, deixis, specification of unique properties or unique combinations of properties…), some of which are 'direct' while others are more 'indirect'. But any linguistic item (including names – 'Aristotle' ALSO names Onassis) is first and foremost a general form applied to a particular end. Thus,
(II) allows that 'the way the world is' is one of a number of ways it 'could be'. Taking (I) as a point or departure, I think we can speculate that our ability to identify 'the way the world is' from a range of 'ways the world could be' might indeed be founded on the choice of ***the most likely candidate*** out of a whole range of 'ways the world could be'.
This would suggest a fundamental relationship between 'language' and 'states of affairs' – a Wittgensteinian 'state of affairs' is a logically-structured entity, and that 'logical structure' is given by (if not directly determined by) the grammatical and lexical resources of the language we're using. The logical relations obtaining between one part of language and another are not fundamental to language, but are rather a 'theory' of language.
Wittgenstein considers that there are 'atomic facts', and that these are 'combinations of entities' ("objects, things"), though the 'form' of an object or thing is its capacity to appear in atomic facts (things "in themselves" are whatever it is possible to say of them; and "what we say of them" are the states of affairs in which they can figure). This also resembles a theory of language rather than a theory of truthmakers for a language.
Language can only say what is not the case if it can say things that are not actually the case (such as my being twenty-seven feet tall). There are some pictures which are drawn for the sake of saying "this is not a true picture of the world".
The way the world is one of a number of ways it could be – and the way the world happens to be is one of a number of ways it could have been. Do these 'could have beens' have any reality outside language (or outside logic, to return to Wittgenstein)?
States of affairs are perhaps 'atomic' in Wittgenstein's sense (or in an allied sense), but can we really say as much of 'facts'?
Thank you David for your time, effort and scholarship in your answers, I will try to do them justice and digest them as best I am able.
An observation from an artist using the intuitive to discuss 'possible worlds, facts and states of affairs'.
When I am painting I may place a line, colour, shape etc in a certain place, step back, consider and think and then decide it is not what I want, so I remove it and replace it, and so I continue my work with this artwork. When I have completed this work does another painting exist in some place in which the line/colour/shape has not been removed? Does the other painting exist in reference to the actual 'fact' of the painting that now exists with the change because without it the present 'fact' painting could not exist, ie the decision to remove a certain aspect of a pre-existing form is the reason the present existing form is.
[...Do these 'could have beens' have any reality outside language (or outside logic, to return to Wittgenstein)? ...]
This is such an interesting question David! By 'reality' I assume you mean 'existence of fact/set of facts' yes?
I'm thinking that things may exist irrespective of whether we interact with them or not. Yet their existence IN fact can only be considered at the point of our concious awareness/interaction/experience with it; and its existence AS fact can be confirmed by Language having attributed a description [and Truth] to it. So, 'reality', whether it is a 'Now' or a 'Could-have-been' is irrelevant in the light of concious experience of it.
Yet, it still raises the question that - as Time is also related to our experience of things - is it a possibility that we may not always be sufficiently intellectually/linguistically *positioned* at a particular point in a continuum of events to REALISE a fact or state of affairs as it exists?
I mean, if Truth is Fact, and Fact is Knowledge - Knowledge has come from *somewhere* - it can't be from a tabula rasa - so it has to be developed and progressed over Time. It may of course be easier to recognise non-truths than Truths as we have a form of measure/criterion for false statements - but can we say the same for Non-Facts? Which brings me back to my point that Facts may very well 'become' so in our experience of it, and then developed as Truth in our description of it.
Clearly the world consists of things, not facts. Facts about the world are facts. They would not ***be*** facts about the world were it not for the logically prior existence of those very things of which the world consists.
Mark: thanks !
The question you pose is important. One understanding of the universe is that it explores every possible configuration in its phase space - in layman's terms, whatever can happen, does happen - 'somewhere'. There are as many universes as there are configurations. This view underlies both the physical theory (the Many Worlds interpretation of QM) and the metaphysical notion of 'counterparts' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpart_theory).
The theory is tempting but - as I've remarked before - I'm a suspicious bastard. It seems to me that you can get the theory from the statement I gave as (I) above :
I. That which is the case is an actualised "way the world could be"
Now, my final remarks tended more to the view that this is a matter of 'language' rather than 'reality'... once again, a choice between de dicto and de re.
I shall return to this
Bill - Wittgenstein disagrees with you; I think 'facts' are derived from 'states of affairs'.
Wittgenstein suggests an 'ontology of facts' - therefore, in his theory 'facts' are 'things'. 'Thing' is a very tricky term (this is closely linked to your worries about nive set theory). What KIND of 'thing' do one's quantifiers range over?
"things may exist irrespective of whether we interact with them or not"
This is the basic intuitoin of mind-independence. The question is how to get to it from the kind of thing the first St Ludwig was banging on about.
DH: "Bill - Wittgenstein disagrees with you; I think 'facts' are derived from 'states of affairs'. "
Fine!! Let him disagree.
DH: "Wittgenstein suggests an 'ontology of facts' - therefore, in his theory 'facts' are 'things'. 'Thing' is a very tricky term (this is closely linked to your worries about nive set theory). What KIND of 'thing' do one's quantifiers range over?"
I believe that the senses have a natural object... they allow us to know what we need to know for the survival of the species. What we need to know is the way things really are, not empty propositions about things that don't exist apart from those same empty propositions.
BO: "I believe that the senses have a natural object... they allow us to know what we need to know for the survival of the species."
I think we may give our senses too much credit here. Wait, let me re-phrase: we may be attributing too much *value* to the role our senses play in our perception of reality. There may be more misperceptions occurring as a direct result of sensory experiences than not.
I'm uncomfortable at implying we are 'subject to this object' by sensory experience. I'd like to think we have more 'sensibility' than 'sense' in postulating and describing things of this world. Please don't misunderstand me: I am not 'entitising' or attributing meaning to the word 'fact' as it stands - it is what it is - a statement or declaration of a universal experience that contributes to truth and theory and of course states of affairs. Also, we must not make the assumption that these dynamics may be 'sequential' - their relation could be iterative as well as cyclic, as it is with all compounded knowledge.
OB: "What we need to know is the way things really are, not empty propositions about things that don't exist apart from those same empty propositions."
This is interestingly related [in opposition] to the point that Mark referred to about focusing on "...not-facts..."
If our knowledge is derived over time from a body of facts and experiences, who's to say that our considerations of as-yet-unrealised propositions are not based on some kind of 'informed intuition'? Didn't you make mention of this same abstract in another thread? (Forgive my not recalling right away.)
NVR: "I'd like to think we have more 'sensibility' than 'sense' in postulating and describing things of this world."
The senses tell us very little... generally, little more than is necessary for the survival of the species.
I suppose I may be the only one who has this experience: There are times when I may be looking at a scene before me, positively wondering what my poor eyes are telling me. What does this experience show me?
I take it to mean that the affective qualities which my senses record are not truths in themselves. If they were, there should be no possibility of my misunderstanding them. But there are more steps required for the truth to be revealed... I must abstract phantasms from those affective qualities. But those phantasms are themselves not truth either... they are mere virtual images of what is before me... to come to a proposition I must somehow connect the image before me to something else. It is that linkage which may be said to be true or false... that I may believe to be a fact or an illusion.
Should I believe the propositions which I derive from my senses? I would go back to the words of C. S. Peirce...
"We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial skepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt; and no one who follows the Cartesian method will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in form he has given up. It is, therefore, as useless a preliminary as going to the North Pole would be in order to get to Constantinople by coming down regularly upon a meridian. A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts. "~"Some Consequences of Four Incapacities;" ***Journal of Speculative Philosophy*** (1868) 2, 140-157.
The senses don't necessarily ***tell*** anything - "tell" is a transitive verb.
'Ware Cartesianism!!!
The pasage from 'sensory impression' to 'fact' passes by 'theory'...
DH: "The pasage from 'sensory impression' to 'fact' passes by 'theory'..."
Animals are able to learn from experience without knowing any theory. So I would agree. It does bypass theory --- though I suspect I would replace the word 'fact' with 'belief.'
Once again..."Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."
It is questionable, of course, whether any animals actually come to understand truths, per se. Perhaps some of the higher ones do. Even men may see something without forming a true or false proposition regarding it. I may see a dog and interact with it without forming any proposition about it.
It would be unusual, however, for one to enter into a complex interaction without forming some sort of proposition in one's mind --- unusual, because men are creatures of habit --- and the habit to form propositions is deeply ingrained in us.
I suppose that to deny the impressions of the senses probably does require one to form a proposition. And it is likely that one would not deny such an impression without some 'theory' to justify the rejection.
But simple acceptance of an impression would not seem to require either that a proposition be formed or that any theory be invoked.
Bill: as to the earlier message - exactly.
We saw that the difference between 'facts' and 'states of affairs' is that a fact is an ***obtaining*** state of affairs - a state of affairs that is actualised. What is it that distinguishes between an actual and a possible state of affairs?
Many would say that a state of affairs is 'actual' if it corresponds to 'the world'. On Wittgenstein's view, this is equivalent to saying that an actual state of affairs corresponds 'what is the case' (rather than to 'what could be the case)'. But 'some thing that is the case' is a 'fact' - that is, an actualised state of affairs. This seem rather circular.
Can we find another candidate for a "criterion of actualisation"? Let's take a very simple situation: a lamp L in a windowless room R. At any time, the lamp is either "on" '(N') or "off" (F) - that is, at any time there is either one or the other of two states of affairs, N and F, that can obtain, and tertium non datur). If we are in R at some given time T, what might serve as a criterion by which we could judge whether N obtains at T or whether F obtains at T?
I suppose that from a 'god's eye' view it would be immediately apparent what is possible and what actual --- and exactly what it means one way or another...
There is no reason that a true statement in the real world might not have some equivalent statement (either true or false) in another world (either actual or possible). For example, the statement "Bill Overcamp is in Georgia" may have an analog somewhere else. I recognize only one Bill Overcamp to be myself, however, and I exist in the world I exist in. So if there is some analog to myself in another world it would not be me.
As it is I know of no theory that can help me to overcome the problems involved when we consider what is possible. For us men it seems to be a veiled reality at best.
Bill, you're trying to run before we even know what "walk" means. You're still hanging on to the idea that there IS some "fact of the matter" that could be known to some Godlike being. Whatever it is that allows us to decide whether N is actualised at T, or whether F is actualised at T, is available ***at T***.
You were closer when you were talking about "beliefs" - what happened to pragmatism?
DH: "You were closer when you were talking about "beliefs" - what happened to pragmatism?"
I suppose we keep coming up against my belief that the world we live in is more than a set of propositions. All propositions can give us is an approximation to reality.
But you are not content with the world we live in, but wish to construct propositions about possible worlds, when the best we can come up with are mere analogs of what might exist in such a world, possible Bill Overcamps and possible David Hirsts.
When we do this, are we not like the men lost in the 'Myth of the Cave' --- looking at the merest shadows?
I accept the fact that real substances have a natural potency, a dynamic inherent in their being to become what they are not. That potency is not a matter of propositions, but of the ***life*** within them. The tiniest particles of matter have a share in that dynamic.
When I speak of possibilities I am speaking about that natural potency. I am not speaking of possible worlds of which I know nothing.
I refuse to go where Alexander Pruss and company would take us. The map is not the territory. I do not wish to confuse the two.
David:
I will try to make my objections clear. It seems to me that the concept of potency is a relatively simple one. Real substances have a natural potency to become what they are not. Call it energy, or power --- if you please. Real possibility --- as opposed to merely logical possibility --- is but a generalization of that inherent potency.
What you seem intent on is logical possibility... true propositions should not contradict one another. That's fine for what it is worth, but it is not good enough... it doesn't establish real possibility.
Your idea of possible worlds doesn't impress me. I don't know what such a world is. It seems to be no more than science fiction. Science fiction makes for good entertainment. I truly have enjoyed my hours watching Dr. Who battle evil across galaxies far and near. But Dr. Who doesn't have to contend with real forces. He can always pull out his 'sonic screwdriver' to do what needs to be done. I wish it were always that easy in real life.
You complain "You're still hanging on to the idea that there IS some 'fact of the matter' that could be known to some Godlike being."
It is you who is forcing it upon me. You keep invoking these possible worlds. I have no idea what you mean --- unless it is that there is some such being. Otherwise you are just invoking magic. For that is what these possible worlds seem to be... a slight of hand trick, nothing more. Where is the substance in them?
I suppose our real world may be one of your possible worlds. Fine. Show me that something is possible in this world. That something may be possible in some other world tells me nothing at all about this world... because nothing from another world is real in ours. Nothing transfers from another world to ours. If you tell me that there is a 'Bill Overcamp' in another world, I would not recognize him as myself. Nor would I even recognize that he is a man --- even if you tell me that he is one. Since the word ***man*** does not transfer from another world to ours. Nor would I even accept him as an animal... or that he has any real substance in our world. He is just so many words, nothing more.
What can transfer real meaning between these worlds unless it is some being who transcends each of them?
Bill: please forgive me if my answers are somewhat summary.
Before starting, I must admit that I'm rather surprised that you didn't respond to the thought experiment I suggested – perhaps you are unfamiliar with the method?
BILL "I suppose we keep coming up against my belief that the world we live in is more than a set of propositions. All propositions can give us is an approximation to reality."
"the world we live in" is a term; it implies "there is some world W such that we live in W". This is a proposition (whatever a proposition is). The world can be "something more than a set of propositions" if (1) there are more 'things' in the world than just propositions or (2) if propositions designate, determine, or reflect the world. A third way would be to claim that there is a world but that there are no propositions. Which do you favour? It would seem to be (2)…
If we set aside the slingshot, a true proposition designates "some thing in the world" – or, going beyond propositional calculus, it designates some thing that has some property or asserts that some property is instantiated. So, we can hold (contra Wittgenstein) that the world is composed of 'things' or of 'properties', thus propositions can only give us an approximate understanding of what things there are or what properties are instantiated. The problem of reference, designation, or denotation rests intact – as does the difficulty of defining what "reality" might be. A commonplace question suggests itself – is it possible to show reality without recourse to language? If "yes", how – and if "no", does this imply that "reality" is only accessible to private experience?
"But you are not content with the world we live in, but wish to construct propositions about possible worlds, when the best we can come up with are mere analogs of what might exist in such a world, possible Bill Overcamps and possible David Hirsts."
How am I supposed to identify the world WE live in from the entire range of worlds we COULD live in? I have direct experience of the world ***I*** live in, but none whatsoever of the worlds others live in. My friend Mike's world contains God the Father, Son, & Holy Ghost and the Blessed Virgin Mary; mine does not. Which of these worlds – his or mine – is the "real" world? The answer is "it's a matter of belief".
I have no particular "desire" to construct "propositions about possible worlds", save perhaps of the "I doubt that possible worlds have any extralinguistic reality" or "possible worlds provide a semantics for counterfactual propositions" kind. I happen to think that possible world analysis is a useful tool, but a tool doesn't demand that one reify its "use" (as if "hammering" founded hammers).
BILL "the best we can come up with are mere analogs of what might exist in such a world, possible Bill Overcamps and possible David Hirsts"
This implies that the "counterpart" theory of Lewis is the case; there are other views – Kripke's for example (cf. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rigid-designators/). Or one can simply deny that "possible worlds" are anything more than linguistic devices, in which case "ways the world could be" is equivalent to "ways the world could be described".
A more meaningful question: is a "possible world" no more than a "state of affairs"?
BTW, there is no requirement that a "possible Bill Overcamp" be a counterpart of Bill Overcamp – the name "Bill Overcamp" could designate the same entity in every possible world.
BILL " When we do this, are we not like the men lost in the 'Myth of the Cave' --- looking at the merest shadows?"
The merest shadows of WHAT? If a "possible world" is a shadow, then it must be cast by some thing. Let's imagine that W is a world in which Hitler was a pacifist. W cannot be the shadow of "our" world, as in "our" world Hitler is NOT a pacifist. So, if it's the shadow of anything at all, it's the shadow of a "real" world in which Hitler is a pacifist. This is extreme modal realism.
Plato's Cave is a typical example of the paucity of Plato's thought. Enough of such puerile devices!
BILL "I accept the fact that real substances have a natural potency, a dynamic inherent in their being to become what they are not. That potency is not a matter of propositions, but of the ***life*** within them. The tiniest particles of matter have a share in that dynamic."
Not to mince words, this strikes me being closer to the Nicene Creed than to philosophy. Firstly, it depends entirely on unanalysed notions ("real", "substance", "natural", "potency"). Secondly, it assumes "becoming", and that this "becoming" is a "dynamic process" (which I would hold is ultimately indefensible).
Let us, for the sake of argument, agree that one can quantify over substances (over quantities of substance). If substances have a 'natural potency' to become what they are not, and this is "inherent in their being", then it is an intrinsic property of any substance to "become" that which it is not. The only way we can give this is
i. (∀x) (∀tn) x is F at tn → (∃t>n) x is ~F at t>n
This, of course, assumes that "change" is a matter of objects gaining or losing properties, and is not a distinction between the properties of different parts of an object.
(i) states that no object has unchangeable properties – evidently, the range of properties must be limited to exclude such things as "being self-identical". This implies that we should also quantify over properties: there are some properties such that (i) does not hold of those properties. If we hold that ALL substances have the potency to become what they are not, then
ii. (∀x) (∀tn) (∃F) x is F at tn → (∃t>n) x is ~F at t>n
(ii) is closer to your intuition, but still doesn't express the notion that it is a property of x that if it has F at tn then it has ~F at t>n: this can be given as follows
iii. (∀x) (∃G) Gx ↔ ((∀tn) (∃F) x is F at tn → (∃t>n) x is ~F at t>n)
"G" is the property of having F at tn and ~F at some t≠n. However, you ask that x have G at tn, thus
iv. (∀x) (∀tn) (∃G) x is G at tn ↔ ((∃F) x is F at tn → (∃t>n) x is ~F at t>n)
The universe of "changeable objects" can now be given by
v. (∀x) Gx
(v) does not disallow that there might be unchangeable objects; in Russellian terms, (v) gives a "class". The "changeability" of objects is a reification of the intension of G.
There are numerous problems with the analysis as I've given it – firstly, it disallows that some changeable object might be ~F at t(tn)
This blocks the earlier/later objection, but doesn't express the idea that at tn x has the "potency" of being ~F – it only says that x is G at tn iff if it is ~F "at some t≠n". The "dynamic" can be given thus
vi. (∀x) x is G ↔ ((∃tn) (∃F) x is F at tn → (∃t>n) x is ~F at t>n)
and this "dynamic" IS dependent on change taking place after tn (there is a "passage" from F at tn to ~F at t>n).
You also hold that G is an intrinsic property of "real substances" (this, by the way, forbids "unchanging real substances", if your system requires such things). This could perhaps best be given by
vii. (∀x) x is G ↔ ((∃F) x is F → ◊[x is ~F])
(and we can reintroduce sequence by time-indexing :
vii*. (∀x) x is G ↔ ((∃tn) (∃F) x is F at tn → ◊[(Et>n) x is ~F at t>n])
The "natural potency" of substances "to become what they are not" can only be given by saying that some thing with a given property at some time CAN have some other property at a later time – in other words, your argument assumes possibility (a stronger version could assume necessity). Furthermore, if G is an essential property, then given that
viii. (∀x) ((∃F) x is F at tn & ~◊[(∃t≠ n) x is ~F at t≠ n]) → ~Gx
there are no unchangeable real substances.
Your "dynamic" depends on the possibility of change. It is therefore susceptible to analysis using possible worlds.
BILL "I refuse to go where Alexander Pruss and company would take us. The map is not the territory. I do not wish to confuse the two."
Pruss-worlds are an interpretation of PWA. A Pruss-world is a full description of some state of affairs (and is therefore a series of conjoined propositions). If the Pruss-world under consideration is the actual world, then it is the conjunction of all true propositions concerning that world.
While one can hold that the "real' world does not reduce to the equivalent Pruss-world, one can hold that it is AT LEAST that Pruss-world. My argument against Pruss is that he holds that non-actualised possible worlds are ALSO conjunctions of propositions.
BILL "I will try to make my objections clear. It seems to me that the concept of potency is a relatively simple one. Real substances have a natural potency to become what they are not. Call it energy, or power --- if you please. Real possibility --- as opposed to merely logical possibility --- is but a generalization of that inherent potency."
I've already dealt with the confusion behind "real substances have a natural potency to become what they are not" - you are assuming both "change" and "becoming". I have no idea what "real possibility" might be - you would seem to be implying that when some thing has some property F, then in some "real" way it also has "the possibility of being ~F". You would seem to be mistaking the map (that is, the resources of language) for the territory (that is, the extralinguistic world).
I would consider that if anyone thinks that possibility is anything more than de dicto, that person has fallen into magical thinking. The best we can say about the "real world" is that "things are" - we can't even say that things "are not", as a true negation requires that we describe a state of affairs that is not the case. Possibility is, as far as I'm concerned, not something "in the world" but something "in our descriptions".
BILL "Your idea of possible worlds doesn't impress me."
It would be difficult for MY conception of possible worlds to impress you as I haven't actually formulated that conception. The remarks I've made so far have been based on other people's notions of possible worlds (primarily those of Kripke and Lewis); all I've said about "my" conception is that I prefer de dicto to de re - that is, that I'm not a "realist" about possibilia.
Why, Ven? I think I can see what you mean, but could you develop the idea?
DH: "Bill: please forgive me if my answers are somewhat summary."
Oh, don't worry about that. You are far too verbose for me. I shall have to answer in segments....
DH: "Before starting, I must admit that I'm rather surprised that you didn't respond to the thought experiment I suggested – perhaps you are unfamiliar with the method?"
Which thought experiment?
DH: "The world can be "something more than a set of propositions" if (1) there are more 'things' in the world than just propositions or (2) if propositions designate, determine, or reflect the world. A third way would be to claim that there is a world but that there are no propositions. Which do you favour? It would seem to be (2)…"
(1) There are things which I perceive (imperfectly) through the senses which are not propositions.
(2) Some propositions seem approximately to describe the things I perceive through the senses. Others seem to express general truths.
Regarding the first point... As I indicated earlier, I believe that the senses have a natural function of telling us about external reality --- as is necessary for the survival of the species. The senses inform us of affective qualities --- things such as red or hot or hard --- belonging to substances about us. The mind takes those affective qualities and creates phantasms, virtual images of those same substances.
Neither the affective qualities perceived nor the substances which underlie those qualities are propositions. Propositions are formed in the mind when the mind links one thing to another. Thus if the mind links the affective quality "black" and the substance perceived, "the stove" the proposition "The stove is black" is formed.
If --- as is typically the case --- I have no reason to doubt the testimony of my senses or the existence or properties of the substances underlying them, I do not doubt them. I realize, however, that we see things darkly, as mere shadows of what they truly are.
OK. I wouldn't agree with all your assumptions, but they are reasonable.
BILL: "You complain "You're still hanging on to the idea that there IS some 'fact of the matter' that could be known to some Godlike being."
It is you who is forcing it upon me. You keep invoking these possible worlds. I have no idea what you mean --- unless it is that there is some such being. Otherwise you are just invoking magic. For that is what these possible worlds seem to be... a slight of hand trick, nothing more. Where is the substance in them?"
If I might give my thought experiment again:
Let's take a very simple situation: a lamp L in a windowless room R. At any time, the lamp is either "on" '(N') or "off" (F) - that is, at any time there is either one or the other of two states of affairs, N and F, that can obtain, and tertium non datur).
If we are in R at some given time T, what might serve as a criterion by which we could judge whether N obtains at T or whether F obtains at T?
Here, we have a world that is limited to two states of affairs which are such that if at any time one obtains, the other doesn't. My question is: how can know at a given time T which state of affairs obtains?
Wittgenstein's answer is based on "what is the case" at T – if it is the case that the lamp is on, then the state of affairs N obtains; and if it is the case that the lamp is off, then the state of affairs F obtains. I find this unsatisfactory because, in my eyes, it's circular: by Wittgenstein's own definition, some thing that is the case is a 'fact', and we've already seen that a Wittgensteinian 'fact' is an obtaining state of affairs. Thus, Wittgenstein's 'answer" is that "if it is a fact that the lamp is on, then the state of affairs N obtains", which can further be given as "if the state of affairs of the lamp's being on obtains, then the state of affairs N obtains". However, "N" is ***just*** "the state of affairs of the lamp's being on – and therefore Wittgenstein's "answer" reduces to the tautology "if the state of affairs N obtains, then the state of affairs N obtains".
The 'fact' does not determine which state of affairs is actualised – the fact IS "the actualised state of affairs". Facts don't precede and found states of affairs – facts ***require*** states of affairs. We don't need any "direct access" to the actualised state of affairs at T (a "Godlike being who could know facts-in-themselves"), we need reasons to BELIEVE that that state of affairs obtains at T. In the context of my thought experiment, these would be reasons to believe that the lamp was on (or off) in an otherwise unlighted room – and these 'reasons' would depend on a wider set of beliefs about lamps, light, and the 'sense' of certain perceptual states.
Wittgenstein is an atomist; I'm a holist.
DH: "If we set aside the slingshot, a true proposition designates "some thing in the world" – or, going beyond propositional calculus, it designates some thing that has some property or asserts that some property is instantiated. So, we can hold (contra Wittgenstein) that the world is composed of 'things' or of 'properties', thus propositions can only give us an approximate understanding of what things there are or what properties are instantiated. The problem of reference, designation, or denotation rests intact – as does the difficulty of defining what "reality" might be. A commonplace question suggests itself – is it possible to show reality without recourse to language? If "yes", how – and if "no", does this imply that "reality" is only accessible to private experience?"
I suppose I would say that men know enough of what is real to insure the survival of the species.
Ven - there are several accounts of how the world 'came to be' (as well we know). The trouble is that different kinds of account (religious, philosophical, scientific...) aren't necessarily talking about "the same thing" when they talk about 'the world' or about what it means for something to 'come to be'.
We can only evaluate the different accounts by our own preferences and by the criteria we set for "reasonable evidence". At present, there is no experiment we could perform that would allows us to decide irrevocably which account is 'correct', as even if we were able to push energy levels up to the level of the BB (which would seem physically impossible accroding to current knowledge) it's highly unlikely that this would account for, for example, 'Mind', thus leaving a door open for non-physicalist philosophy and certain versions of supernaturalism.
though we might believe that this or that
Anyhow, I more specifically asked whether we can "show" reality without recourse to language...
This implies that the "need to survive" can determine the course of events. A large number of commentators would suggest that the "need to survice" is at best an epiphenomenon accompanying "the course of events".
That we act in certain ways for certain "reasons" is a manifestation of the regularities structuring the universe (of "the distribution of matter and energy in spacetime"). The zen story illustrates precisely this (and is a defense of "action" in the face of "determinism")
DH: "How am I supposed to identify the world WE live in from the entire range of worlds we COULD live in? I have direct experience of the world ***I*** live in, but none whatsoever of the worlds others live in. My friend Mike's world contains God the Father, Son, & Holy Ghost and the Blessed Virgin Mary; mine does not. Which of these worlds – his or mine – is the "real" world? The answer is 'it's a matter of belief'."
I would say that you, Mike and I live in the same world... but we may have differing beliefs about that world. Indeed, since nothing can be transferred between worlds... it is clear that you could not know your friend, Mike unless you both occupy the same world. Nor could we exchange messages.
DH: "I have no particular "desire" to construct "propositions about possible worlds", save perhaps of the "I doubt that possible worlds have any extralinguistic reality" or "possible worlds provide a semantics for counterfactual propositions" kind. I happen to think that possible world analysis is a useful tool, but a tool doesn't demand that one reify its "use" (as if "hammering" founded hammers)."
It seems to me that this 'tool' is fairly useless. One needs to know whether something is possible in this actual world of ours... whether it is physically possible. What happens in another world is of no interest to me.
DH: "This implies that the 'counterpart' theory of Lewis is the case; there are other views – Kripke's for example (cf. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rigid-designators/). Or one can simply deny that 'possible worlds' are anything more than linguistic devices, in which case 'ways the world could be' is equivalent to 'ways the world could be described.'"
"A more meaningful question: is a 'possible world' no more than a 'state of affairs?'"
I do not know what a possible world might be. I understand what Alexander Pruss said: "A possible world is a maximal, compossible conjunction of abstract propositions."
I see many problems in that formulation. For one thing it seems to me that the real world seems to be continuous. As such the points existing in space would be uncountably infinite. Yet there are only countably many propositions. Thus any such world would be full of holes, quite literally.
Oops!! I got to go. I shall continue later...
Bill - has it occurred to you that Pruss' views on possible worlds are not the only available views - and that Pruss' view is determined by an extra-philosophical agenda?
What do you mean when you say "the real world seems continuous"? That it seems imperfective, or that it is a continuum?
DH: "What do you mean when you say "the real world seems continuous"? That it seems imperfective, or that it is a continuum?"
Good question!! I was in a hurry when I wrote that and left my thoughts incomplete. I mean that physical space and time are --- or seem to be --- continuous... the Dedekind cut Axiom holds with regard to time and to each line (or geodesic arc) through space.
I do accept the possibility that physical space may be discontinuous. I do not, however, see any ***a priori*** reason to say that it must be discontinuous. And even if physical space were somehow discontinuous, I would certainly see no reason why mathematical spaces existing in those worlds must be discontinuous --- in other words, why the Dedekind cut Axiom is false. Supposing it to be false would invalidate a great deal of mathematics.
How can the advocates of possible worlds get around the problem?
I would suggest that one might suppose that a possible world is a sequence of sets w1, w2, w3... of compossible abstract propositions converging in some --- as yet undefined --- way.
That would be essentially the same technique that mathematicians use to go from the rational numbers (a countably infinite set) to the real numbers (an uncountable set).
I have no idea how such a sequence might be said to converge to a world. That is critical to such a notion... filling in what is left undefined...
Oh, I should not in passing that the same problem exists in supposing that an actual world is a set of propositions. The Dedekind cut Axiom would be false and great deal of mathematics would be invalidated. For there are simply not enough propositions to account for the real numbers.
DH: "Bill - has it occurred to you that Pruss' views on possible worlds are not the only available views - and that Pruss' view is determined by an extra-philosophical agenda?"
Explain to me how you account for the Dedekind cut Axiom.
The whole notion of extending convergence to sets of propositions gives me pause. I see enough logical problems in just extending it to propositions, to say nothing about sets of propositions. consider the following sequence...
... The number Π is not 3.
... The number Π is not 3.1.
... The number Π is not 3.14.
... The number Π is not 3.141.
... The number Π is not 3.1415.
... The number Π is not 3.14159.
... ...
The sequence might seem to converge to the following...
... The number Π is not Π.
If so, we have a sequence of true propositions converging to a false proposition!! How can that be?
I suppose I should point out that the problem posed by the real numbers is only the first problem I see in the whole idea of equating sets of propositions with reality. I had, however, mentioned my other objections earlier... making everything into a mathematical construct renders the world into a set of empty propositions about things which do not exist...
DH: "BTW, there is no requirement that a "possible Bill Overcamp" be a counterpart of Bill Overcamp – the name "Bill Overcamp" could designate the same entity in every possible world."
You might be perfectly content imagining an army of David Hirsts going about their lives in different worlds. I, however, do not recognize myself in any such imaginary Bill Overcamps. Such a thing would be a mere analog of myself... but nothing real.
I did look at the article you mentioned about rigid designators. My primary objection to it is not the subject presented, but the whole idea of possible worlds which is essential to draw any meaning from it. I see no need to respond to an idea which is founded on a false assumption.
DH: "The merest shadows of WHAT? If a 'possible world' is a shadow, then it must be cast by some thing. Let's imagine that W is a world in which Hitler was a pacifist. W cannot be the shadow of 'our' world, as in 'our' world Hitler is NOT a pacifist. So, if it's the shadow of anything at all, it's the shadow of a 'real' world in which Hitler is a pacifist. This is extreme modal realism.
"Plato's Cave is a typical example of the paucity of Plato's thought. Enough of such puerile devices!"
Have you never heard of metaphor? There are many philosophers who would have no problem understanding Socrates' meaning... and not only philosophers, but scientists, such as Bernard D'Espagnat, who took the Myth seriously as an metaphor applicable even to Quantum Mechanics.
DH: "Not to mince words, this strikes me being closer to the Nicene Creed than to philosophy. Firstly, it depends entirely on unanalysed notions ('real', 'substance,' 'natura', 'potency'). Secondly, it assumes 'becoming', and that this 'becoming' is a 'dynamic process' (which I would hold is ultimately indefensible)."
You can certainly reject the terms for whatever reason you please. From my viewpoint, analysis can only get one so far. There is a point at which synthesis is necessary.
"Let us, for the sake of argument, agree that one can quantify over substances (over quantities of substance). If substances have a 'natural potency' to become what they are not, and this is "inherent in their being", then it is an intrinsic property of any substance to "become" that which it is not. The only way we can give this is
" i. (∀x) (∀tn) x is F at tn → (∃t>n) x is ~F at t>n"
I do not know that I would agree with your analysis. I must admit that I always consider symbolic logic suspect. I was taught to avoid it as a graduate mathematics student at Auburn University. It frequently serves to disguise what one is really aiming at.
You may chalk that comment up to my poor education, if you like. It doesn't matter to me.
In any event, I do not recall saying that all substances change. Material forms certainly have a natural potency to change. But that potency does not imply actual change --- only potential change.
Your ultimate conclusion after many intervening steps: "there are no unchangeable real substances" would seem to follow immediately from the initial assumption. Why bother with all those intermediate steps, when the conclusion is simply a restatement of what you initially assumed?
What am I missing?
VS: "i guess it again boils down to the physics principle of
'nothing in this universe can be created or destroyed but only transformed ' - atomic physics"
As I pointed out in another thread, there are scientists who would disagree, who believe that creation is a natural process occurring continuously. They call this the Steady State theory...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state_theory
Other scientists believe in the Big Bang theory...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
Others, like Aristotle would agree with you.
DH: "I might give my thought experiment again:
"Let's take a very simple situation: a lamp L in a windowless room R. At any time, the lamp is either 'on' '(N') or 'off' (F) - that is, at any time there is either one or the other of two states of affairs, N and F, that can obtain, and tertium non datur).
"If we are in R at some given time T, what might serve as a criterion by which we could judge whether N obtains at T or whether F obtains at T?
"Here, we have a world that is limited to two states of affairs which are such that if at any time one obtains, the other doesn't. My question is: how can know at a given time T which state of affairs obtains?"
Since you say we are in the room... I suppose I might look to see if the lamp is on.
Exactly. The 'fact' is determined by a more general collection of beliefs ("that if the lamp is on we can see the room", "that if a lamp is on it emits light"; "that we can effectively see the room" etc etc.)
My point is that a 'fact' might perhaps be the "best-candidate state of affairs" given our more general beliefs about a given situation and about given "kinds' of situation.
dear Bill, i am a bit puzzled by your convergence series of pi. i thought that pi is irrational, in the sense that it doesn't ever end. so you would never reach your limit. this 'convergence' business seems to break downg for irrational numbers.
as regards your answer to ven, i think that mainstream physicists all over the world agree with ven on the conservation of energy, not only Aristotle. the existence of some physicists who believe otherwise doesn't say much, does it?
HS: "dear Bill, i am a bit puzzled by your convergence series of pi. i thought that pi is irrational, in the sense that it doesn't ever end. so you would never reach your limit. this 'convergence' business seems to break downg for irrational numbers."
I am not sure where you would find a flaw in what I wrote. There is an infinite sequence of true propositions which might seem to converge to a false proposition.
I would emphasize the words, ***might seem.*** Personally I do not believe that convergence works for logic. Convergence is an arithmetic concept. It works for real numbers because we accept the Dedekind Cut Axiom. But there is no similar principle regarding logic.
Mathematical theorems are always finite in scope. They begin with a definite proposition, known as the hypothesis. There follows a finite sequence of intermediate steps derived from the hypothesis leading to a definite conclusion. At times a mathematician may use the Dedekind Cut Axiom to establish the existence of a number having certain properties. But the logic used is finite, nevertheless.
In computer science a similar question is whether a given computer program will ever stop. A program is only useful if it produces a result in finitely many steps.
Kurt Gödel made all this evident in his Incompleteness Theorem. His techniques are ***almost painfully*** finite. Mathematical formulae are coded into integers which can be manipulated arithmetically to prove theorems. He then showed that there is a specific integer which in effect says "this theorem can not be proven." He proves that if the axioms of arithmetic are consistent the theorem is true. It is an amazing argument, all based on finite techniques.
dear bill, it seems to me that what you say in the last post does not apply to irrational numbers, since by definition they never end nor ever repeat themselves. so the decision about an ultimate step in the convergence series is an arbitrary one and propebly a simplification for pragmatic purposes (ie calculation of things to arbitrary accuracy)
Irrational numbers can not be written out as decimal fractions. But some can be described in finite terms. For example, the number Π is the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle. All that we know about Π comes from that definition.
It can be proven that there is a sequence of decimal fractions which converge to Π. I understand that its decimal expansion has been calculated to 2,576,980,377,524 decimal places. Here are the first 50...
3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Π
I believe that there are numbers which can not be described by any proposition, whatsoever... numbers which are simply unknowable to a finite mind.
In fact, I suspect that only countably many numbers are knowable in the sense that there is a finite logical description for them...
dear bill, what you tell me doesn't add anything to your argument, because as far as we're concerned, there is an infinity of decimal places after those that you mention of pi. that's what it means to be an irrational number. my argument is that no amount of calculation of decimal places will turn an irrational number into a rational one. and you seem to agree with that in your post before the last. but then that seems prima facie to contradict your earlier stance, and your own argument (the one you gave about true propositions converging to false ones). i'm still puzzled.
HS: "dear bill, what you tell me doesn't add anything to your argument, because as far as we're concerned, there is an infinity of decimal places after those that you mention of pi. that's what it means to be an irrational number. my argument is that no amount of calculation of decimal places will turn an irrational number into a rational one. and you seem to agree with that in your post before the last. but then that seems prima facie to contradict your earlier stance, and your own argument (the one you gave about true propositions converging to false ones). i'm still puzzled."
The Calculus has been puzzling men since the time of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz --- and that other guy...
BILL "I would say that you, Mike and I live in the same world... but we may have differing beliefs about that world. Indeed, since nothing can be transferred between worlds... it is clear that you could not know your friend, Mike unless you both occupy the same world. Nor could we exchange messages."
Exactly, Bill. These beliefs ***justify*** holding the belief that there is a world which is occupied by you, my friend Mike, and I. Common sense would hold that THIS kind of belief about the world is prior to more specific epistemic systems, such as mine or Mike's.
***
BILL "It seems to me that this 'tool' is fairly useless. One needs to know whether something is possible in this actual world of ours... whether it is physically possible. What happens in another world is of no interest to me."
[My reply to this will be long – forgive me. I'll break at the end and return to the question of "propositions" in a later message]
What is "possible" in this world is evidently not just what is actual. A gold ring may be cold, but we know that it is "possible" to heat it. The actual ring is cold – what is the status of the "possible warm ring"? You can (and I think you do) argue that it is inherent in the nature of the ring itself that the ring has the 'potential' to be warmed: it is in the nature of gold that gold will become warmer if heated.
If we look clearly, we see that this "nature' is not some property inherent to 'gold', but is rather a universally-quantified conditional, something along the lines
i. If anything is gold, then if it is heated, it will become warmer
(i) is interesting for two reasons. First of all, it gives the 'potential of becoming warmer' as a nested conditional – "if it is heated, then it will become warmer". This is not a statement about the ring itself – the ring is actually cold, and we have no access to any part or stage of the ring that is NOT cold – but a statement about the 'nature' of the ring – or, to be more precise, about the 'nature' of gold. But we're not talking about the gold of THIS ring, either: we have no direct access to any part or stage of any part of THIS gold that is NOT cold.
We could argue that it is an essential property of gold that it have the potential to warm when heated. This is the 'philosophical' path: one can talk about dispositions or propensities, or the supervenience of macroproperties on microproperties, or whatever one prefers. We could also argue that a closer investigation of the physical properties of the ring would identify parts that were in a state such that a higher-energy state was one of their possible outcomes. But in either case, we'd be talking about our ***beliefs*** about gold, not about "This Actual Ring" ("TAR"). That we believe the ring to be made of gold PERMITS the belief that it will warm if heated, but it doesn't establish any 'inherent fact' whatsoever about TAR .
I quoted a number of 'solutions' to the question of how TAR could have the 'potential' of being warm. Investigation of any one of these solutions requires that we consider how some thing which actually has one of a pair of mutually exclusive properties can 'possibly' have the other. Investigation of THIS problem is, in my eyes, facilitated by possible-world analysis.
PWA is a logical tool; any defence of PWA is thereby a logical defence. TAR's 'potential' to become warm is given by a version of the subcondition in (i) (from which it follows syllogistically):
ii. if TAR were heated, TAR would warm up
If we restrict our domain to the actual world, (ii) is either false or meaningless. The language of logic allows that we say of what is, that it is; and of what is not, that it is not, but it doesn't allow us to say what something "would be" if it "were". In the world of "actuality", TAR ***is*** cold and TAR ***is not*** being heated.
(ii) is, of course, a counterfactual. The analysis of dispositions, propensities and what have you require that we construct counterfactuals about certain kinds of thing (gold, for example). If we're going to hold that (ii) is "true", we need a semantics that can handle "would bes" and "weres". PWA provides that semantics.
You can (and I imagine would) reject the relevance of logical analysis to philosophical investigation. For my own part, I don't think we can get very far without it. But whether it is relevant or not, PWA is a formal interpretation of modal logic, which is an axiomatised system. Whether or not those who prefer a pre-Fregean logic would agree with its interest, it does allow us to define the conditions under which certain kinds of sentence could be (or are necessarily) true.
For those who think such things matter, PWA is interesting because it employs quantification over worlds. Some think that this is merely an analogy to non-modal quantification, or that the domain over which modal quantifiers range is not the unrestricted domain of non-modal quantification (that of 'actual entities'), but is rather a domain of 'fictive entities'. Others are more realist, and would hold that "there are possible worlds" is true for the widest possible range of the existential quantifier. In certain respects, the disagreement resembles the disagreement we saw between presentists and eternalists: if you remember, eternalists hold that the conjunction "there are dinosaurs" is true, while presentists hold that it is false. Similarly, modal realists hold that "there are possible worlds" is true in the sense that these 'worlds' are as real as THE world, while modal anti-realists would hold that they are no more than convenient fictions.
Every theory determines its ontology, and PWA determines an ontology of possible worlds. The disagreement I've sketched out above (between modal realists and anti-realists) is a disagreement about the interpretation of this ontology, and its relation to the ontologies determined by non-modal quantification. Evidently, my characterisation of the debate is so brief as to be caricatural (this message is long enough), but it allows us to draw the main lines of debate.
So, this is the context, and these are the positions. In my further replies (and please be aware that I appreciate this debate very much, as it's forcing me to clarify the very problems I wish to address!!!), I'll try and distinguish between remarks concerning PWA as a formal interpretation and those concerning the ontological or "metaphysical" debate. As far as my own position is concerned, I tend more to the anti-realist stance, and from pure intuition, I'd say that my stance on THIS debate is determined by my stance on the presentist-eternalist debate, but more of this elsewhere). As far as ontology is concerned, so far I've followed as scrupulously as possible the observation that all theories determine some ontology; I have, however, remained silent over the parallel observation that any ontology requires some theory.
Forgive the sometimes gnomic tenor of my remarks, Bill; I'm feeling towards a "synthesis" here but I don't want to be too specific until I know what it is…
Thanks!
David
Bill: at the beginning of my last message, I remarked that the 'potential' of a gold ring (which I called TAR) to be warmed depends not on some property inherent to the ring but on the universally-quantified conditional
i. If anything is gold, then if it is heated, it will become warmer
I remarked that (i) was interesting for two reasons, the first being that the property or disposition of "having the potential of becoming warmer" is given as a nested conditional. The second point of interest is that both (i) and the nested conditional are, or can be described as, "propositions".
If, as I have suggested, our beliefs about TAR play a large part in our determining whether it is a "fact" that TAR is cold, then these beliefs have, in the jargon, "propositional content". The theory that belief has "propositional content" sits well enough with pragmatism (or with pragmatism of the behaviourist school) – the only way we have of verifying whether someone believes something is to ask them, or otherwise get them to affirm that thing, and their answer will take the form "I believe that p". If "p" happens to be the case, then their belief fulfils two of the traditional criteria for knowledge; if they hold that "p" because certain conditions are satisfied that support "p", then they would appear to fulfil the third condition.
What makes it the case that p? If "TAR is cold" is true, what makes it the case that "TAR is cold"? If we return to Wittgenstein's "Tractatus" (which provides a good midway point between pre-analytic and analytic or post-analytic views),
1. The world is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.
1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case [, and also whatever is not the case].
Gutenberg translation, (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-h/5740-h.htm#2H_4_0002)
Following Wittgenstein, if there is something that makes it the case that "TAR is cold", it is the 'fact' that TAR is cold. Before going further, let's examine this 'fact' and its relation to the observation sentence "TAR is cold".
In the actual world, TAR is cold. That is the only 'fact' we have – and even this "fact" might better be expressed as "TAR feels cold" or "the thermometer attached to TAR reads 4°C". If it's expressed as a phenomenal observation, it depends on a number of physiological and psychological factors allowing the belief "this feels cold"; if it's expressed as an observation of empirical evidence, then it depends on the beliefs relating thermometer readings to temperature. Either way, we're expressing beliefs about the world that determine the 'fact' of TAR's being cold. We could say that the "coldness" of TAR is directly accessible to experience, but here we'd be talking about a quale, and we have only approximate evidence that qualia-designating terms have any public sense (in which case there would be a difference in the sense of the term "cold" when used in "TAR feels cold" and in "TAR is cold"). If we take the two belief-determining processes – phenomenal experience or empirical investigation – both determine the fact-related proposition "TAR is cold" by a process of inference: The inference from phenomenal experience would be something like
iii. TAR provokes *that feeling*. If something provokes *that feeling*, then that thing is cold. TAR is therefore cold.
(the term *that feeling* is entirely illegitimate, as it "indicates" the 'contents of experience'. (iii) is intended only as a model of how such 'evidence' could "enter language" in order to form the basis of an observation sentence. The "that" might be something like Kaplan's "dthat" – cf. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/indexicals/#KapTheInd)
while the inference from empirical evidence would be
iv. The thermometer in contact with TAR registers 4°C. If something is a thermometer, it measures the temperature of things with which it is in contact. "Temperature" is a range of quantitative values which can be assigned to material entities and which depends largely on the mean molecular motion of those entities. TAR is a material entity, therefore TAR can have "temperature". In "everyday situations", the range of quantitative "temperature" values correspond largely to such terms as "hot", "warm", "tepid", "cool", and "cold". Therefore, if a thing in an everyday situation has "temperature", it will have a certain value on a certain scale which will correspond largely to the everyday determination "hot", "warm", "tepid", "cool", or "cold". If a temperature falls in the range of around 4°C it is, in everyday situations, usually considered to be "cold" or "cool", depending on the context. TAR is in an everyday situation, therefore it is either "cold" or "cool". Rings are usually at ambient temperature, and an ambient temperature of 4°C is usually described as "cold". Therefore, the descriptive "cold" is more apt for TAR.
While (iii) required the perhaps illegitimate term *that feeling*, (iv) requires a number of subsidiary or supporting beliefs – that thermometers give temperature, that temperature is something to do with the energy of a material object, that TAR is a material object, that TAR is in an "everyday situation" – and some of these beliefs concern normative rather than nomological values. Either way, the "fact" that TAR is cold cannot be seized directly unless that "fact" is nothing more than the content of some experience (as with (iii) above) - (iv) is an inference from evidence, and requires familiarity with various norms.
All this is rather bothersome for those who would seek a one-to-one correspondence between a 'fact' and our apprehension of that fact – and a one-to-one correspondence is the only way to counter weak or local holism. If the fact under consideration is F – "the fact that TAR is cold" – then either F is available to direct experience or F is the result of a process of inference. If F is the result of a process of inference, it depends on language ("we can only know it through language"), and this raises the question of whether F is *anything more than* a 'linguistic entity'. So far, we've agreed (or at least, no-one's argued the contrary) that our ontologies are theory dependent; a corollary of this is that, as our theories are language dependent (in both the trivial and the non-trivial sense), then our ontologies are also language dependent (and again, in both the trivial and the non-trivial sense). If F is this kind of entity, then it's as much a result of a "theory of facts" as elementary particles are the result of a "theory of elementary particles" or matter and energy are part of "a theory of matter and energy".
I'm perhaps addressing a Straw Bill here, but I rather get the feeling that you're rooting for 'facts' that are something more than the entities quantified over in some theory of facts (ToF) – you're looking for 'facts' that are "in the world" rather than "in language". Now, while such "facts in the world" might or might not constitute the extension of the quantifiers in some ToF, what is primordial for "facts in the world" is that they have "language-independent reality". What's more, Straw Bill's view requires not only that facts-in-the-world have language-independent reality, but that we can have access to them (for if we had no access, how would we know what the facts were?). Can we defend an account in which there are 'facts in the world" which are available to experience but which do not depend on language?
Let's imagine that there is a "fact-in-the-world" F about TAR and that F corresponds to the proposition "TAR is cold". On touching TAR, an agent Amanda has *that feeling* and is therefore aware of F. She might never consciously formulate the sentence "TAR is cold" or some equivalent, yet her subsequent behaviour could be such that someone could say "Amanda knows that TAR is cold". In this respect, Amanda could "know" the fact that TAR is cold without knowing the corresponding proposition – ***but in this case only***. We can only verify that Amanda "knows" that TAR is cold by asking her – and if her reply is affirmative, then it concerns the proposition "TAR is cold" rather than the fact. "F".
Of course, there's a big problem with this – the 'fact' of which Amanda is aware is only available to her. Let's imagine that Amanda has just come into the room and has found TAR. She picks it up and is aware of F. Even if she has "direct access" to F, can anyone else have direct access to F? The "coldness" of TAR is only available to her as the content of an experience. Can the content of Amanda's experience be directly available to anyone else? Once again, we're dealing with a "Wittgenstein's Beetle" situation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_language_argument#The_sensation_S). We can easily imagine that Amanda drops TAR, that Bill picks it up and that he has "direct access to F". Now, while it might be the case that both Amanda and Bill have access to the same F, how could we possibly ***verify*** that it is indeed "the same F"? F might indeed be such that anyone touching TAR would have direct access to it. If this were the case, then each person's access to TAR would be given by or in an "experience of coldness". Thus, F is given in a certain experience, E, such that for any person, if that person touches TAR, then that person has E. Evidently, if we want to hold that every person has the same experience, we would either have to specify that there is exactly one E, or hold that E is a reified property (that of "experiencing coldness"). Now, if experiences are "things", it would seem very unlikely that each person could have "the same" experience. So, either we must accept that are multiple experiences of coldness, or we must accept that there are multiple instances of the property of "experiencing coldness". As the contents of either "an experience of coldness" or "experiencing coldness" are opaque to public scrutiny, we have to accept that there might well be as many different experiences of coldness, or as many different understandings of experiencing coldness, as there are agents who touch TAR.
Any person who touched TAR would have access to F, but this access might well be unique and different for each. There is no way we can separate the 'fact' that TAR is cold from the ***impression*** that TAR is cold, and impressions are opinions rather than facts. This is already a telling objection against Straw Bill's view, but there is an even more telling objection: however we turn it around, the content of an experience E of F is ***propositional***. The 'fact' that TAR is cold corresponds to the proposition "TAR is cold" and, for a realist about propositions, THIS is what Amanda has seized when she is "aware of F".
Amanda's relation to the proposition "TAR is cold" is similar to the relation that could be ascribed by a third party if, on picking up TAR, Amanda shivers and goes "Ooh!" The third party could say that Amanda "has realised" or "knows" that TAR is cold, even though Amanda's reactions were not accompanied by the assertion "that's cold!". Similarly, if Amanda is aware that TAR is cold, her awareness has 'propositional content', even though she doesn't formulate a corresponding sentence (those who believe in a "language of thought" would hold that her awareness IS a sentence of "mentalese – cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_thought). Even if we set the Fodorian view aside, we can only block the realist about propositions if we have a deflationary account of propositions (that they are "nothing more" that sentences or thoughts that could possibly be uttered).
If we can't block the realist about propositions, it's bad news for Straw Bill's hopes for a correspondence between 'facts' and experiences: Imagine that Amanda has access to F on touching TAR and that this access corresponds to the proposition "TAR is cold". Now, if F is some language-independent reality, it not only founds or determines the truth of "TAR is cold" but also founds or determines the truth of "TAR is at 4°C". However, on touching TAR Amanda does NOT have access to "TAR is at 4°C". She is aware of one fact about TAR – that it is cold – but she is NOT aware of another fact about TAR – that it is at 4°C. Yet the fact that TAR is cold is surely the same fact as the fact that it is at 4°C. So, either Amanda doesn't have full access to F – the only fact of which she is aware is that TAR ***feels*** cold – or there is a difference between the fact that TAR is cold and the fact that it is at 4°C.
Here, we can see why I've evoked a "Straw Bill". Evidently,. Amanda IS only really aware of the fact that TAR ***feels*** cold, and if there were a proposition which corresponded to THIS, it would be "TAR feels cold". If it is a fact that TAR feels cold to Amanda – and Amanda should know if anyone does – then Amanda can apprehend THIS fact directly in experience. But this is a fact about Amanda, not about the world - and Straw Bill wants "facts about the world".
Of course, Straw Bill can't have his "facts-about-the-world that are given in experience" unless he holds "TAR feels cold" is a fact about the world (in which case, the fact INCLUDES Amanda). If he wants direct access to the fact that determines both that TAR be cold and that it be at 4°C, then he's going to keep on wanting. Access to THIS fact would allow not only that Amanda be aware that TAR is cold, but also that she be aware that it is at 4°C. Of course, Straw Bill could play the causal ace: the fact-in-the-world causes both Amanda's experience and the thermometer reading of 4°C. But if this is the case, what Amanda grasps is the ***result*** of TAR's being cold, not the "being cold" itself (unless, once again, "TAR's being cold" is exactly the same fact as "TAR's feeling cold to Amanda").
The realist about propositions would hold that there is a proposition P which corresponds to the 'fact' F that TAR is cold, and that all can experience or know about F is given by P. On such a view, we can have no "direct access to F" because our access to F is ***precisely*** P. On such a view, "all that is the case" reduces to the class of true propositions and 'facts' either reduce to 'true propositions' or are assigned as an interpretation of our semantics ("P is true iff there is some fact F such that F is the truthmaker of P"). As far as the Real Bill is concerned, I'd imagine the former is unsatisfactory as it suggests that the world is ***no more than*** the class of true propositions (that it is, in other words, a "Pruss-world"), while the second requires facts as 'entities' (truthmakers) yet says no more about them than that they "correspond to true propositions". While this second account might seem more acceptable to Straw Bill, it is certainly not satisfactory to Real Bill: on the second account, "facts" are postulates of a theory of propositions – that is, 'facts' depend on 'propositions'. Now, unless I'm very much mistaken, Real Bill once again wants "facts" that stand in and of themselves, and not facts that are the putative denotata of propositions (and even this depends on us avoiding the slingshot).
To conclude this part of my discussion: the observation sentence "TAR is cold" is true iff TAR is cold. This implies that TAR is cold iff the observation sentence "TAR is cold" is true – which, for a realist about propositions, implies that TAR is cold iff "TAR is cold" expresses a true proposition. Straw Bill wants to avoid propositions, because propositions lead to Pruss-worlds.
I'm not at all sure what REAL Bill wants, but I don't think he'd go so far as to argue that apprehension of "the fact that TAR is cold" doesn't have propositional content. His problem is not with the propositional content of "TAR is cold", but with the propositional content of "TAR could be warm". There might well be some fact-in-the-world F that founds "TAR is cold", but what fact-in-the-world could found "TAR could be warm"? I shall address this question in the next instalment.
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