The primacy of proper names

Bill Vallicella argues here that a pronoun inherits its referent from the noun of which it is the antecedent. I say ‘John left the party saying he was ill.’ My use of ‘John’ makes an extra-linguistic reference to some person who is not a part of speech or a bit of language. ‘He’ also refers extra-linguistically. But the pronoun ‘he’ inherits its referent from John. It has no independent referential role to play, no role independent of that of ‘John.’

The scholastics might have expressed his point by saying that the proper name refers per se, ‘through itself’, whereas the pronoun refers per alium, or ‘through another’, i.e. through the proper name ‘John’.

I am not sure. There is a strange passage in Mark 14:51-2 about a man who is not mentioned anywhere else in Mark, nor in the other gospels.

[51] And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, [52] but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.

If Vallicella is right, i.e. if the reference of the pronoun is always per alium, through another, and if the ‘another’ is always a proper name, it follows there must be some proper name that ‘he’ (intralinguistically) refers back to. But there isn’t. The man is never mentioned by name, and there is no other reference to him anywhere in the New Testament. Absolutely everything we know about him is from these two verses. The pronoun seems to inherit its reference from the indefinite description ‘a young man’.  I shall discuss the reference of such indefinite noun phrases later.

What if Mark had given the man in the linen cloth a proper name, as Luke does to Zacheus in chapter 19 of his gospel?

[2] And behold, there was a man named Zacheus, who was the chief of the publicans: and he was rich […] [5] And when Jesus was come to the place, looking up, he saw him and said to him: Zacheus, make haste and come down: for this day I must abide in thy house.

Yet there is still the problem that Zacheus is introduced via the indefinite description ‘a man named Zacheus’.  Why shouldn’t the pronoun in ‘he was rich’ and the proper name in ‘Zacheus, make haste’ both inherit their reference from the indefinite description. What is so special about proper names?

Sometimes Mark, like the other gospel writers, introduces people without such an indefinite introduction. Mark 15:40 says “There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.

But what is the sense of the very first occurrence of a proper name in a narrative? Does it tell us which individual its predicate is true of? Not at all. ‘Simon the leper’ is mentioned only once in Mark 14:3. ‘While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard’. What information does the first and only use of the name convey about Simon? Nothing at all, beyond the fact that he was called ‘Simon’, and that he presumably suffered from leprosy. The passage could have read ‘reclining at the table in the home of a man called “Simon the Leper”‘ without loss of meaning.

In summary, in a narrative context there is nothing special about proper names that distinguishes them from pronouns. Both have to identify an individual in order for them to have their full sense, but they can only identify an individual by inheriting their reference from a previously occurring noun phrase. They cannot refer per se, only per alium.  And ultimately they can do this only through indefinite noun phrases. These alone, by their very nature, are unable to inherit reference.  That suggests that they refer per se, but this raises the question of whether ‘a man’, ‘a certain woman’, ‘one of the disciples’ can refer at all. I shall discuss this in the next post.

This useful page itemises all the characters, both named and anonymous, who are mentioned in Mark.

Are logical truths empirical?

Anthony mentions in his comments here that he holds that logic itself is empirical, whereas I holds (he believes) that knowledge of logic is innate.

Well, I wouldn't exactly describe my position the way he does. I lean towards the Wittgensteinian position that there are no 'logical truths' as such, but rather principles like the Contradiction and Excluded Middle are built into the 'scaffolding' of our language, so that we can't describe them using language, but only show them, as it were. On the idea that 'logic itself is empirical' – by which I assume he means that logical truths are empirical – I don't know what to say. What does 'empirical' mean? If the idea is absurd, how would we demonstrate its absurdity?

Aristotle discussed the problem in book 4 of the Metaphysics. Aquinas' commentary on it is in the Logic Museum here. It includes links to Aristotle's original text.

Burley on empty names

I have been reading the early fourteenth century writer Walter Burley. He was working at the same place (Oxford) and the same time (late 1290s) as Scotus, and I wanted to understand how Burley approaches certain questions mentioned by Scotus. In his Questions on the Perihermenias, written in 1301, edited by Stephen Brown (Franciscan Studies 34 (1974) 200-295), question 4, Burley considers the question of whether existence is the same as essence, and in part of that question (4.44) he considers whether propositions like 'Caesar is a man' and 'a man is an animal' are eternally and necessarily true (even if Caesar no longer exists, and even if no man were existing).

He claims that nothing is actually in a real genus, unless it actually exists (nihil est in genere reali actualiter nisi actu exsistat). This (he says) follows from what Aristotle says in Metaphysics 6 at the end, where he divides being into being outside the mind, and a sort of diminished being in the mind, which he excludes from consideration. True being is divided into the ten categories, and so every category of being is true being outside the mind. Thus 'Caesar is a man' is false. He also mentions an argument that Scotus considers in his questions on the Perihermenias, namely Averroes' dictum that in substantial change, a thing loses its name and definition.

He considers the objection (4.54) that every proposition in which genus is predicated of species is necessary, such as 'A man is an animal' and 'a rose is a substance'. He replies that such propositions do not have to be necessary, nor true, unless the species necessarily has being. If 'man exists' is necesary and always true, then 'a man is an animal' is necessary and always true. Otherwise not.

This is opposite to the Scotus' conclusion. Scotus finds that 'Caesar is a man' is true, and he holds that essential propositions (which are sort of our 'analytic propositions') are eternally and necessarily.

Whether the two men met, we do not really know. One source (article "Walter Burley", by Mary Sommers, Blackwell Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages) claims that Walter attended Scotus' lectures in 1298, but does not identify her source (beyond the three secondary sources mentioned in the article, I am following these up).

On the question of whether existence and essence are the same, Walter agrees with the opinion of Godfrey of Fontaines (a writer that Scotus was certainly familiar with). Perhaps more about Godfrey later, when I finally track down the elusive De Wulf editions of his work.

Locke on Truths of Reason

And here is Locke on the distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact, from Bk 4 ch xi, 13 ' Of our Knowledge of the Existence of Other Things'

13. Only particular propositions concerning concrete existences are knowable. By which it appears that there are two sorts of propositions:—(1) There is one sort of propositions concerning the existence of anything answerable to such an idea: as having the idea of an elephant, phoenix, motion, or an angel, in my mind, the first and natural inquiry is, Whether such a thing does anywhere exist? And this knowledge is only of particulars. No existence of anything without us, but only of God, can certainly be known further than our senses inform us. (2) There is another sort of propositions, wherein is expressed the agreement or disagreement of our abstract ideas, and their dependence on one another. Such propositions may be universal and certain. So, having the idea of God and myself, of fear and obedience, I cannot but be sure that God is to be feared and obeyed by me: and this proposition will be certain, concerning man in general, if I have made an abstract idea of such a species, whereof I am one particular. But yet this proposition, how certain soever, that “men ought to fear and obey God” proves not to me the existence of men in the world; but will be true of all such creatures, whenever they do exist: which certainty of such general propositions depends on the agreement or disagreement to be discovered in those abstract ideas.

The distinctions that Locke makes (see previous post) are therefore as follows:

1. propositions which are truths of reason, but merely trifling or verbal;

2. propositions which are truths of reason, but where the predicate is not actually contained in the subject, but is a necessary consequence of it;

3. propositions which are simply matters of fact, not deducible by reason alone.

Locke on Analytic vs Synthetic

Here is a passage from the Essay (Bk IV, c. viii, 8) that is suggestive of the Analytic / Synthetic distinction.

8. … We can know then the truth of two sorts of propositions with perfect certainty. The one is, of those trifling propositions which have a certainty in them, but it is only a verbal certainty, but not instructive. And, secondly, we can know the truth, and so may be certain in propositions, which affirm something of another, which is a necessary consequence of its precise complex idea, but not contained in it: as that the external angle of all triangles is bigger than either of the opposite internal angles. Which relation of the outward angle to either of the opposite internal angles, making no part of the complex idea signified by the name triangle, this is a real truth, and conveys with it instructive real knowledge.

Hume's Fork

Spur writes here

Leibniz and Hume have the same basic distinction in mind, between those truths which are necessary and can be known a priori, and those which are contingent and can only be known a posteriori. The two philosophers use slightly different terminology, and Leibniz would balk at Hume's use of 'relations between ideas' in connection with truths of reason only, but the basic distinction seems to me to be the same.

But the question is more difficult, and is related to a change in logic that happened at the very beginning of the early modern era. The scholastic logicians said that in a proposition (which for them meant a sentence) the predicate is affirmed or denied of the subject. 'Subject' and 'predicate' here are objectively existing things.

Influenced by Descartes, Antoine Arnauld argued that it is not one THING that is predicated of another thing, but one IDEA that is predicated of another idea. Locke (who studied Arnauld's logic carefully) introduced this to the English world (Book IV of the essay is the locus classicus). For example, he sets its down as a principle, that all our knowledge consists in perceiving certain agreements and disagreements between our ideas.

There you have Hume's fork. Before, there was the difference between accidental and essential propositions. An essential proposition is where the predicate belongs in the subject by right, as it were. An accidental proposition is whether the predicate belongs in the subject, but possibly may not. It is not relevant whether this can be known or not. There are (as Aquinas notes) essential propositions which cannot be known because mere humans cannot understand the true meaning of the word which signifies the subject. But the notion of a proposition true in itself but unknowable because the 'subject' is unknowable, is impossible where the proposition consists of ideas stuck together.

In summary: Hume's fork is a consequence of the early modern view of the proposition. The scholastic view was that the proposition connects things. The early modern view is that it connects ideas. The distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact only makes sense on the latter view.

There a number of passages which support this argument & I will make a posting in due course.

Praedicatum inesse subjecto verae propositionis

'The predicate is included in the subject of a true proposition'. Leibniz says this (in a letter to Arnauld) but of course his use of Latin signals that he is quoting an orthodox principle of the schools.

And the principle has nothing to do with the analytic/synthetic distinction. It has to do with the true/false distinction. If Socrates is the subject, and the subject is bald, and if the proposition states that the predicate 'is bald' is included in the subject (Socrates) then the proposition is true. Otherwise it is false.

What, then, is the analytic/synthetic distinction?