Gospel truth

In my last post, I mentioned two fundamental differences between the account of fiction I have defended here, and the account given by Peter van Inwagen in "Creatures of fiction". The first is that, according to me, sentences in fiction have a truth value. They are typically false (although works of fiction may contain many true statements, such as that Napoleon was short, that Paris is a city in France, that Baker street is in London etc). The second is that fictional names refer. Van Inwagen, by contrast, holds that (i) sentences in fiction typically assert nothing at at all and (ii) fictional names do not refer.

Taking the first point first. Van Inwagen's position is essentially the neo-Fregean view of assertion, namely that the same thought or proposition may occur now asserted, now unasserted, that I have criticised in many places, particularly here, arguing that assertion is part of the semantics of a sentence, and that every complete sentence (i.e. one that is not a subordinate or noun clause) can be analysed into a sign for the content of the sentence - that which it states or expresses, usually signified by a 'that' clause, and a sign for assertion or denial.  Thus "Snow is white" = "It is the case / that snow is white".  If this is correct, then even fictional sentences contain an assertoric component, and hence are capable of truth or falsity, independent of what the narrator means or intends when he or she utters them.  This is exactly what Van Inwagen denies, and it is, of course, why he calls sentences vehicles of assertion. 

The same view is defended by Alvin Plantinga (The Nature of Necessity, Oxford, 1974, Ch. VIII, pp. 153-163 especially), who cites a famous passage by the English poet Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586).

Now for the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth. For, as I take it, to lie is to affirm that to be true which is false; so as the other artists, and especially the historian, affirming many things, can, in the cloudy knowledge of mankind, hardly escape from many lies. But the poet, as I said before, never affirmeth. The poet never maketh any circles about your imagination, to conjure you to believe for true what he writeth. He citeth not authorities of other histories, but even for his entry calleth the sweet Muses to inspire into him a good invention; in troth, not laboring to tell you what is or is not, but what should or should not be. And therefore though he recount things not true, yet because he telleth them not for true he lieth not; without we will say that Nathan lied in his speech, before alleged, to David; which, as a wicked man durst scarce say, so think I none so simple would say that Aesop lied in the tales of his beasts; for who thinketh that Aesop wrote it for actually true, were well worthy to have his name chronicled among the beasts he writeth of.

This is not right. For it is not true, as Sidney implies, that there is absolutely no gap between saying something false, and lying. There are at least two things in between. The dictionary definition of ‘to lie’ is ‘to utter something that is false with the intention to deceive’. Thus (1) in the case of stories, the narrator utters something he knows to be false, but with no intention to deceive. There is a compact between the narrator and his audience. The audience knows that these are falsehoods, the narrator knows that they know this, and both sides agree the same. This does not change the fact that the things said are (typically) falsehoods. And (2) in many cases a person uttering falsehoods does not know they are false, but rather believes sincerely in their truth, and so does not intend to deceive either. For example, a story about some miracle that (we will assume) cannot be true, but which the teller genuinely and sincerely and believes, and which, to paraphrase Sidney “he telleth for true”.

Someone who is not a Biblical fundamentalist must deal with the possibility that some or all of the events recounted in the Gospel are not literally true. If so, then according to Inwagen’s neo-Fregean view of assertion, one who recounts the Gospels is not asserting anything, and is not saying anything true or false. Clearly not: the fundamentalist, for one, will strenuously defend the literal truth of everything that is stated there. The ‘truth’ of the Resurrection is fundamental to Christian belief, and is even something a Christian has to publicly state they believe in.

Nor can Van Inwagen exclude such texts from his account. For his account is designed to explain the truth and falsity of statements of textual criticism, in which Biblical criticism must be included. For example, in “Discipleship and minor characters in mark's gospel” Joel Williams writes.

The main character groups in Mark's Gospel are the disciples, the opponents of Jesus, and the crowd. In addition to these groups, a number of individual characters are included in Mark's narrative. Some of them, such as Andrew or Peter, are disciples, while others, such as the high priest or Pilate, oppose Jesus. Also a number of minor characters function neither as Jesus' disciples nor as His opponents.

The statements are clearly true, and they include the sort of quantification (“some of them … others…”) that Inwagen’s account is designed to explain. But they are inconsistent with one of his key assumptions, which is that ‘textual criticism’ statements are vehicles of assertion, whereas the sentences in the texts they are criticising are not.

I will discuss the second point about 'reference' later.

Vehicles of assertion

I read Creatures of Fiction* more carefully over the break, and I now see I have fundamentally misunderstood Inwagen's position. I had assumed that he saw no fundamental difference between sentences like this

(i) She was a fat old woman, this Mrs. Gamp, with a husky voice and a moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up, and only showing the showing the white of it (Martin Chuzzlewit, XIX)

and sentences like this:

(ii) Mrs. Sarah Gamp was, four-and-twenty years ago, a fair representation of the hired attendant on the poor in sickness (From Dickens's preface to an 1867 edition of Martin Chuzzlewit)

The first is a sentence from the novel itself, and so belongs in English literature. The second is from an essay about the novel, and so belongs in English literary criticism.  It turns out (p. 301) that while Van Inwagen regards the second type of sentence, i.e. the sentence belonging to the genre of literary criticism, as being the vehicle of assertion and thus capable of truth and falsity (the second one is probably true, for example), he does not regard the first type as being a vehicle of assertion.  He writes:

There is no point in debating what sort of thing Dickens was writing about when he wrote (i) or debating what sort of fact or proposition he was asserting, since he was not writing about anything and was asserting nothing. Sentence (i) does not represent an attempt at reference or description.

He mentions (in a footnote) that this is an important point and that the reader who does not concede it will get little out of reading further.  He says that the arguments establishing it will be found in Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford, 1974) Ch. VIII, pp. 153-163 especially, and J. O. Urmson, "Fiction," American Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 4 13 (1976), pp. 153-157.  Much of what Plantinga says is visible on limited preview here.

Thus the two positions that I have defended in many places here, namely (a) that sentences in fiction are the vehicles of assertion, and that what is asserted is mostly false and (b) that proper names refer even in a fictional context, are inconsistent with Van Inwagen's position.  For he says in the passage cited above that an author of fiction asserts nothing, and he says that there is no attempt at reference. And later (p.307) he says that we can only denote fictional characters, by means of descriptions which are true only of them.

How it is we are able to use the proper name "Mrs. Gamp" to refer to a certain creature of fiction ? Normally, an object gets a proper name by being dubbed or baptized. But no one ever dubbed or baptized the main satiric villainess of Martin Chuzzlewit "Mrs. Gamp."There is no corresponding problem about how it is this creature of fiction is denoted by "the main satiric villainess of Martin Chuzzlewit," for this is a quite straightforward definite description that names what we also call "Mrs. Gamp" for the same reason that "the tallest structure in Paris in 1905" names what we also call "the Eiffel Tower" : in each of these cases, a definite description denotes a certain object in virtue of a certain property that that object has uniquely. I think that if we are to have a satisfactory theory of how it is that we manage to refer to particular creatures of fiction, this theory will have to treat such descriptions as "the main satiric villainess" as the primary means of reference to these objects, and proper names as a secondary (though more common) means of reference.

 In subsequent posts, I will clarify and add to my earlier views on the two positions (a) and (b) above.

* Page references that follow are to American Philosophical Quarterly 14, October 1977.

More Holmes

There's a in-some-way-similar discussion about fiction over at Peter Smith's residence.  In this case, in relation to the truth of mathematical statement and the, er, 'ontological status' of numbers and thingies.  I've only just caught hold of it, and now Easter looms.

5 Myths About the 'Information Age'

A lovely article here.

"We have entered the information age." This announcement is usually intoned solemnly, as if information did not exist in other ages. But every age is an age of information, each in its own way and according to the media available at the time. No one would deny that the modes of communication are changing rapidly, perhaps as rapidly as in Gutenberg's day, but it is misleading to construe that change as unprecedented.

And see my own ramblings, e.g. here.

To have and to hold

Thanks to the link that Peter van Inwagen sent, I was able to look at his paper “Creatures of Fiction”* which has a much clearer explanation and justification of his thesis that fictional characters can be such and such without having the property of being such and such. Caution: the paper was written in 1977, 34 years ago, and I don’t know if van Inwagen still holds the views expressed there.

The distinction is motivated by the problem of sentences such as “Some fictional characters are witches”. Van Inwagen holds that such sentences are true, and because he is an anti-Meinongian (or rather, as I have argued, because he holds Brentano’s Thesis), he holds that it is equivalent to ‘Fictional characters that are witches exist’, and so implies ‘Witches exist’. But witches don’t exist. Inwagen gets round the difficulty by asserting that predication has different senses. “Witches don’t exist’ has the conventional sense, meaning that nothing has the property of being a witch.  But “Some fictional characters are witches” has a non-standard sense, and does not imply that anything does have the property of being a witch, and so is consistent with "witches don’t exist".

He justifies this by an argument from analogy. His example is a Cartesian who holds that people are immaterial substances. Hence Jake, who is a person, is an immaterial substance. But the sentence “Jake is 6 feet tall” can’t be literally true, for an immaterial substance is unextended, and can’t be 6 feet tall. The Cartesian can get round this by claiming that in ordinary speech we often say "is" when strictly speaking we should say "animates a body that is": the predicate ‘is F’, when predicated of a person, really and strictly means "animates a body that is F". Thus what looks like predication in ordinary speech is not always predication. And so “Alexandra Medford is a witch”, said of the witch played by Cher in The Witches of Eastwick, does not imply that anyone has the property of being a witch. Thus (as I interpret Inwagen) there is no inconsistency between his view that Alexandra Medford exists, but that witches do not, for the following syllogism is invalid:

No one is a witch
Alexandra Medford is a witch
No one is Alexandra Medford

It is invalid because ‘is’ is equivocal in the major and the minor. In the major, it means ‘nothing has the property of being a witch’. In the minor, it is not the ‘is’ of predication, and thus is not equivalent to “Alexandra Medford has the property of being a witch”. Fallacy of equivocation. Thus we can consistently claim that Alexandra Medford exists, i.e. that someone is Alexandra Medford, that she is a witch, although she does not have the property of being a witch, and that no one has the property of being a witch.

My only reply to this (although I am sure there will be more to say), is to invoke Ockham’s other razor, which I discussed some time ago. To one who claims that the verb 'to be' is ambiguous in certain arguments, he objects that this is completely irrational, he says "for it amounts to destroying every argument form. For whenever it pleases me, I will say that 'to be' is equivocal in the premisses, and I will ascribe at will a fallacy of equivocation to every syllogism".

* American Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 14, Number 4, October 1977

More papers by van Inwagen

Peter writes to me to say that a lot of his papers are online here.  His most comprehensive paper on fictional entities is in "Existence, Ontological Commitment, and Fictional Entities.", which is not on that site.  But the site does contain two older papers: "Fiction and Metaphysics" and "Creatures of Fiction."

Van Inwagen on existence

I had a brief correspondence with Van Inwagen earlier this week, but he came up with nothing that resolved some of my other puzzles about his theory.  Here is one. From what he says, Inwagen seems committed to the following:

(1) 'Some x is A' is equivalent to 'some x-that-is-A exists'. 

(2) 'Holmes does not exist' is equivalent to 'no one has all the properties Sherlock Holmes holds'.

(3) Someone, namely Holmes, holds all the properties held by Sherlock Holmes

(4) No one has all the properties held by Holmes.

But this leads to a contradiction, as follows.

(5) Holmes does not exist (from 2, 4).

(6) Someone, namely Holmes, who holds all the properties held by Sherlock Holmes, exists (from 1, 3).

(7)  Holmes exists (from 6, elimination)

(8) Contradiction (5, 7)

Spelling it out.  Van Inwagen is trying to get over the problem of 'someone' having the properties ascribed to Holmes, through his distinction between 'having' and 'holding'.  No one has the properties that Holmes holds, and so Holmes does not exist.  But this does not evade the problem.  By the very same reasoning, someone holds the properties that Holmes does not have.  And there is still 'someone', and so Holmes does exist.  Van Inwagen can evade this by dropping his commitment to the equivalence of 'some thing' with 'some existing thing'.  But that would commit him to the variety of Meinongianism to which he is so fundamentally opposed.

More testing

http://www.logicmuseum.com/index.htm

This used to be a philosophy blog.

More link testing

Link 1 and link 2 posted yesterday were immediately indexed by Google.  So let's try with the original link, to see if the power of Blogger will cause it to be recognised.  (One advantage of Blogger is that any post, and hence any link, is instantaneously processed by Google*).

Also, a link to a copy of De Civitate Dei.

*As proof of this, I Googled the words "were immediately indexed by Google", within seconds of posting this, and lo, this post came up in the search.

More facts about fiction

There is a nice preprint of a paper here by Inwagen where he discusses different theories of being, and particularly the 'neo-Meinongian' theories such as those held by Terry Parsons and Colin Mcginn.   He writes

When I say that everything exists and the neo-Meinongian denies that everything exists, we’re not talking past each another—not, at any rate, because we mean different things by ‘everything’. It is precisely because the neo-Meinongian knows that I mean just what he does by ‘everything’ that he indignantly rises to dispute my contention that everything exists.

This is not a hundred miles from what I argued here.  Maverick philosopher also discusses Inwagen's paper here, though I confess I don't understand his objections to it.  The force of Inwagen's paper is neo-Meinongianism is a theory about the meaning of 'exists', rather than a theory about what exists.

I also found a paper by Amie Thomasson about fictional entities.  She mentions, but rejects, the explanation of discourse about fiction by the use of a 'fiction operator'.

Internal discourse by readers can still be held to be true even though it involves non-referring names, since these claims are plausibly held to be implicitly prefixed with a fiction operator, where “According to the fiction, Holmes solved his first mystery in his college years” may be true even if the simple claim “Holmes solved his first mystery in his college years” would be false. Cross-fictional statements can be handled similarly by taking them to fall in the context of an ‘agglomerative’ story operator that appeals to the total content of the relevant stories, taken together, e.g. “According to (Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary [taken agglomeratively]), Anna Karenina was more intelligent than Emma Bovary”

Fictional operator theories are attractive, and I will try to discuss them next week.

Logic Museum links

Work so far on the Ockham translation:

Chapter or section	Description
Index	The division of terms
Book I chapters 1-4	The division of terms
Book I chapters 5-9	Concrete and abstract terms
Book I chapter 10	The definition of 'connotative' and 'absolute' terms
Book II chapter 7	Truth conditions of past and future tense propositions
Book II chapters 12 & 14	Negative and non-referring propositions
Book III.2 chapters 4-7	Of the division of propositions required for demonstration

Chapters 11-17, including Ockham's arguments against the reality of universals, to follow one day.

Also there is Book I question I of the Summa on its own. This is part of a test to understand why Google does not index certain pages, together with a modified translation (in case Google is ignoring it because on other sites).

Ghost writing in Latin

Holiday time, so I am amusing myself by reading the ghost stories of M.R. James again.  As Wikipedia correctly notes, James' protagonists are usually naive scholarly gentlemen, who through the discovery of some antiquarian object attract (generally unwelcome and unpleasant) attention from the other side of the grave.  Naturally there is plenty of Latin.  James went to Eton College and the King's College Cambridge, where he began a distinguished academic career, becoming Director of the Fitzwilliam museum, then Provost of King's.  He is well-known to medievalists through his Descriptive Catalogue of the manuscripts in the Library of Gonville and Caius College.

Here is some of his made-up Latin (with his own translation) from the story "The Treasure of Abbott Thomas".

Latin	English
Verum usque in praesentem diem multa garriunt inter se Canonici de abscondito quodam istius Abbatis Thomae thesauro, quem saepe, quanquam ahduc incassum, quaesiverunt Steinfeldenses.	Up to the present day there is much gossip among the Canons about a certain hidden treasure of this Abbot Thomas, for which those of Steinfeld have often made search, though hitherto in vain.
Ipsum enim Thomam adhuc florida in aetate existentem ingentem auri massam circa monasterium defodisse perhibent; de quo multoties interrogatus ubi esset, cum risu respondere solitus erat: ‘Job, Johannes, et Zacharias vel vobis vel posteris indicabunt’; idemque aliquando adiicere se inventuris minime invisurum.	The story is that Thomas, while yet in the vigour of life, concealed a very large quantity of gold somewhere in the monastery. He was often asked where it was, and always answered, with a laugh: ‘Job, John, and Zechariah will tell either you or your successors.’ He sometimes added that he should feel no grudge against those who might find it.
Inter alia huius Abbatis opera, hoc memoria praecipue dignum indico quod fenestram magnam in orientali parte alae australis in ecclesia sua imaginibus optime in vitro depictis impleverit: id quod et ipsius effigies et insignia ibidem posita demonstrant.	Among other works carried out by this Abbot I may specially mention his filling the great window at the east end of the south aisle of the church with figures admirably painted on glass, as his effigy and arms in the window attest.
Domum quoque Abbatialem fere totam restauravit: puteo in atrio ipsius effosso et lapidibus marmoreis pulchre caelatis exornato. Decessit autem, morte aliquantulum subitanea perculsus, aetatis suae anno lxxii(do), incarnationis vero Dominicae mdxxix(o).	He also restored almost the whole of the Abbot’s lodging, and dug a well in the court of it, which he adorned with beautiful carvings in marble. He died rather suddenly in the seventy-second year of his age, A.D. 1529.

Ockham's arguments against universals

I am reading, and having a stab at translating, chapters 15-17 of Ockham's Summa Logicae.  This is one of a number of places where Ockham argues against the view that a universal is something really existing outside the mind (one of the important others being questions 4-6 of Dist. 2, Book I of his commentary on the Sentences**).  I have copied one of his arguments is below, in the original Latin, with the translations by Loux*** and Boehner****.

Neither of the translations exactly reflects the Latin - perhaps because of the difficulty in making sense of the Latin.

Latin*	Loux	Boehner
Item, sequeretur quod aliquid de essentia Christi esset miserum et damnatum, quia illa natura communis exsistens realiter in Christo et in damnato esset damnata, quia in Iuda. Hoc autem absurdum est.	Again, it follows that something of the essence of Christ would be miserable and damned, since that common nature really existing in Christ would be damned in the damned individual; for surely that essence is also in Judas. But this is absurd.	Furthermore, it follows that something of the essence of Christ would be miserable and damned; since that common nature which really exists in Christ, really exists in Judas also and is damned.Therefore, something is both in Christ and in one who is damned, namely in Judas. That, however, is absurd.

* Opera Philosophica I - Summa Logicae, St. Bonaventure, N.Y. : Editiones Instituti Franciscani Universitatis S. Bonaventurae, 1974. 899 p., eds Boehner, Philotheus, Gál, Gedeon, 1915- Brown, Stephen.
** Opera Theologica II - Scriptum in librum primum sententiarum, Franciscan Institute, 1967-79, pp. 99-224.
*** Loux, Michael J. 1974. Ockham's Theory of Terms: Part I of the Summa Logicae. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.
**** In Ockham: Philosophical Writings, a selection, Philotheus Boehner, Stephen F. Brown, 1990.

Obscure objects: Bouquet and Molina

Here is another scene from the film I discussed earlier. Mathieu and Conchita [Carole Bouquet] are sitting at a table in the garden. Conchita says "I have something to say, but not here". Mathieu gets up, and she follows him up a short flight of stairs, into the house. Mathieu shows her through the door. [Cut to interior of house] Mathieu accompanies Conchita [Angelina Molina] into the living room, where she says "Mathieu, I'll explain what happened last night".

Thus the identity is expressed by the context. We see a woman walk through a door in the exterior.  We cut to a woman walking through a door into the interior.  Therefore we assume it is the same door, and the same woman.  It is all fiction - there is no woman, and no identity.  But the film is telling us there is a woman, and it is telling us there is an identity.

Individuation in perception

I argued earlier, e.g. here and here, that 'verbal' individuation, where we have only linguistic information about a set of characters, and where we use proper names or pronouns to learn which character is being talked about, is object independent.  No F actually has to exist, for us to be told which thing is F.  There are no hobbits, yet Tolkien can tell us which hobbit carried the ring into Mordor, which hobbit was his gardener, and so on.  Is the same true about 'perceptual individuation'? This is where we tell which individual is being pointed to, or who is the reference of a demonstrative proposition, or simply which person we are seeing or hearing.  Can we understand the demonstrative 'this rose' without there being an actual rose that is pointed to? Can you draw my attention to something, if there isn't a something?

Let's begin with films.  We can tell a story in a film, and usually the story begins in a verbal format, a screenplay.  Here, as I have argued, individuation is object-independent.  In That Obscure Object of Desire, (Luis Bunuel, 1977), the two main characters are Mathieu, a middle-aged wealthy Frenchman, and Conchita, a beautiful Spanish dancer, who ensnares Mathieu.  You can read the synopsis in Wikipeda, where the proper names 'Mathieu' and 'Conchita' tell us which character is the subject of each proposition in the synopsis.

The same story is told, in somewhat more detail, in the film itself. This scene here, for example, visually expresses the proposition "Mathieu is talking to Conchita, dressed in a maid's uniform, against the background of a flowers on a table etc.".  But we don't use proper names to individuate.  Rather, we use the images projected on the computer screen.  One image resembles a man with certain features, the other a woman with certain features.  These images are what some philosophers (such as Reid, although the medieval philosophers had the same idea) called natural signs.  We individuate each character in the film by a combination of facial features and (particularly in this film) by the context in which the features occur.  Bunuel's film is peculiar in that the same character is played by two different actresses.  Carole Bouquet (above left) plays Conchita in the scene linked to above.  In a scene shortly afterwards,  Angela Molina plays her.  Even though the actresses do not actually look that similar, the context - the uniform, the action and the logic of the scene - express the identity.  Famously, many people sat through the film without realising there were different actresses (I plead guilty).

So, a film can express a complex proposition involving many different characters. We can tell which characters is which by visual, verbal and contextual cues.  But no such character has to exist, for the story to tell us this.  At least some demonstrative reference is object-independent.

Ockham on semantic independence

In chapter 43 of Summa Logicae, on the properties of substances, Ockham gives a curious argument to support the nominalist view that truth and falsity are not real properties of propositions.  He begins with Aristotle's discussion of contraries, and of the puzzle that the very same proposition (i.e. declarative sentence) can admit of both truth and falsity.  The sentence 'you are sitting' is now true, for you are sitting. But then you stand up, and the sentence is false.  But the sentence hasn't changed.  How can it both be true and false?

Ockham argues that the truth and falsity of propositions are not some sort of quality inhering in them.   Otherwise, it would follow that a proposition was truly altered by the fact that a fly was flying.  And certain heresies would also follow - and here comes the curious argument (my translation).

For if the truth and falsity of propositions are qualities of propositions as whiteness and blackness are qualities of bodies, then whenever some truth exists, ‘this truth exists’ will be true, just as whenever some whiteness exists, ‘this whiteness exists’ will be true. And in the same way of any falsity. Then I accept the falsity of the proposition “God newly creates something”, which according to that opinion is a single quality of the proposition, inhering in it, and as a consequence is something other than God.

Then I ask whether that thing can be created by God, or not. If it cannot, then it is something other than God which cannot be created by God, which is against the Evangelist, who says “All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made.” [John 1.3]. But if it can be newly created by God, let it be given. Then “this falsity is newly created by God” will be true, and “this falsity is newly created by God, therefore something is newly created” will follow, and further “therefore it is true that something is newly created by God”, and as a consequence it is not false, and furthermore “therefore this falsity of the proposition does not exist”, and further still “therefore it is not newly created by God”.

Locke on substance

In previous posts, I have argued that the semantics of individuation is object-independent.  To understand which individual is being discussed or mentioned does not depend on any relation between our mind and external reality. Real objects do not 'get through' to our understanding, and individual or singular thoughts remain the same whether or not there exist objects corresponding to them.

Someone will object that 'demonstrative reference' is the paradigm of true reference, and that demonstrative reference is necessarily dependent on objects.  We cannot understand the demonstrative 'this rose' without there being an actual rose that is pointed out.  The word 'demonstrate' is from the Latin demonstrare: to point out/at/to, draw attention to.  You cannot draw my attention to something, if there isn't a something.

Before I go on, I will  quote a famous passage from Locke*.  When we point to something, what is it we are pointing to?

Our obscure idea of substance in general. So that if any one will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities which are capable of producing simple ideas in us; which qualities are commonly called accidents. If any one should be asked, what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres, he would have nothing to say, but the solid extended parts; and if he were demanded, what is it that solidity and extension adhere in, he would not be in a much better case than the Indian before mentioned who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on; to which his answer was- a great tortoise: but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied- something, he knew not what. And thus here, as in all other cases where we use words without having clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children: who, being questioned what such a thing is, which they know not, readily give this satisfactory answer, that it is something: which in truth signifies no more, when so used, either by children or men, but that they know not what; and that the thing they pretend to know, and talk of, is what they have no distinct idea of at all, and so are perfectly ignorant of it, and in the dark. The idea then we have, to which we give the general name substance, being nothing but the supposed, but unknown, support of those qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist sine re substante, without something to support them, we call that support substantia; which, according to the true import of the word, is, in plain English, standing under or upholding.

* Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II. xxxiii. 2.

Reference, truth and fiction

David Brightly perceptively writes

Can we take a closer look, then, at the Ockhamist theory of proper names? One implication appears to be that, for understanding and deciding the truth of a set of sentences, eg, the Dido and Aeneas story, we can do without the notion of reference altogether. The story can be thought of as a pattern or template or specification with blank spaces or empty slots. The pattern is to be offered up to the world and if we can find objects that fit the slots then the story is true. Names serve merely to label the slots and convey what relations between the slot occupiers are to hold. There is a strong whiff of circularity here which will need to be addressed. Basically, the pattern matching has to be done non-linguistically. But the upshot appears to be that the finding of the objects that satisfy the story is what makes them the referents of the names, under the usual understanding of 'reference'. So we had things backwards all along. This makes some sense to me but it doesn't seem to gel with your 'proper names are descriptive, signifying 'haecceity''. Could you expand on that?

First point: we aren’t doing without the notion of reference. As I pointed out here, we sometimes need to ask which fictional character is being referred to. A GCSE paper may ask which character is being referred to, and the answer might be

(*) Shakespeare is referring to Gertrude.

This means that ‘refers to’ is logically instransitive. We can refer to a dragon by name, and we can grasp which dragon is being referred to, even though nothing is a dragon.

It follows that the truth-conditions of sentences like ‘Shakespeare is referring to Gertrude’ involve nothing in the world, at least as far as ‘Gertrude’ is concerned. The ‘reference’ in question is not some mysterious semantic relation between Shakespeare and some mysterious, non-existing fictional object. There is no such object and no such relation. “Shakespeare is referring to Gertrude” clearly has truth-conditions, but these can only involve word-word relations, and possibly authorial intentions. More about that later.

David’s second point is more problematic. What determines the truth of a set of sentences, such as in the Dido and Aeneas story? According to classical logic, the sentence ‘Fa’ is true when the logically proper name ‘a’ individuates or identifies or locates or ‘refers’ to a really existing object, and when the predicate ‘F-' is satisfied by that object. It is this account that David is probably alluding to when he says “The pattern is to be offered up to the world and if we can find objects that fit the slots then the story is true”. It means we must countenance semantic relations between proper names and the world, and between predicates and the world. I have denied the existence of any such relations. Understanding the meaning of a sentence cannot be dependent on the existence of any objects except language and the mind. Meaning is object independent. But then how do we explain truth? More later.

Do fictional characters exist?

David Brightly asks whether there is really any problem with Van Inwagen’s position that Sherlock Holmes ‘holds’ the property of being a detective rather than ‘having’ such a property. Surely there is. Inwagen’s position is inconsistent with the three main theses he puts forward in the paper. First, he holds that certain kinds of statements about fiction are true. For example, ‘There is a fictional character who, for every novel, either appears in that novel or is a model for a character who does’, or just ‘there are fictional characters’. Second, he holds that ‘there is’ is equivalent to ‘there exists’. Thus, it is true that fictional characters exist. Finally, there is a simple correspondence between the predicate calculus and ordinary language. For example, ‘There are fictional characters’ translates to ‘for some x, fictional_character(x)’ and back.


This is inconsistent with his position that ‘Sherlock Holmes does not exist’ is true, and that he holds, but does not have, the property of being a detective. If it is possible to translate between ordinary language and predicate calculus and back, it follows that any valid inference in predicate calculus is also valid for the corresponding ordinary language statements, and conversely, and that anything true we can say about the predicate calculus statements, is true of the ordinary language ones. So take ‘Some fictional characters are detectives’, which Inwagen (presumably) holds to be true. Thus at least one fictional character is a detective, and thus has, rather than holds that property. Furthermore, if the corresponding predicate calculus statement ‘Ex, fictional_character(x) & detective(x)’ is true, there must be at least one object a in the domain such that fictional_character(a) & detective(a). For example a = sherlock Holmes. But the predicate detective() expresses the property of having, not holding the property of being a detective, so Inwagen’s claim that Holmes (or whatever x satisfies the predicate) does not have that property, is false.


Furthermore, Inwagen holds that 'All fictional characters exist’ is true, and clearly holds that Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character. And he holds that these can be simply translated into predicate calculus, so – according to him - the following are true.


(x) fictional_character(x) implies exist(x)
fictional_character(Holmes)


But these together imply exist(Holmes). This translates back into ‘Holmes exists’, and so his claim that ‘Holmes exists’ is false is contradictory.

Traditional logic at the Mises Institute

"Jake" writes to me at the Logic Museum saying that David Gordon at the Mises Institute recently held an online logic course in which he used Joyce's Principles of Logic as the class's primary text. "Very intriguing and delightful to see that text being used for a 250-plus-person class in 2011". I doubted Jake for a second, but it seems absolutely genuine. Why would anyone teach a subject that appears outdated and outmoded ever since the famous developments of Frege and Russell and Godel and all the rest? Perhaps the key is Gordon's remark that "The course will emphasize ordinary language reasoning rather than mathematical logic". And he writes

It was not always this way. Logic used to be a key component [of] liberal education: it was part of the classic “trivium”. Being able to masterfully wield logic in debate enabled Peter Abelard to advance medieval philosophy past the Neoplatonic rut it was mired in, and made him the closest thing in his day to a rock star. The School of Salamanca used scholastic logic to give birth to economic theory. Even after scholasticism was unfairly discredited, logic was still widely studied by schoolboys throughout the west. The Austrian School used logic to rigorize and advance economic science. However, the rise of positivism rang the death knell for the widespread study of logic.

And rightly so. While mathematical logic is excellent mathematics, it doesn't capture everything about human reasoning using ordinary language. In particular, as I have emphasised repeatedly here, it captures hardly anything of the interesting and difficult bits. Thank you Dr Gordon.

Some of Joyce's Logic is available at the Logic Museum here.

Does Sherlock Holmes exist?

Earlier I discussed Peter van Inwagen's view of quantification in fiction. Van Inwagen holds that the existential quantifier expresses the meaning of 'there is' and 'there exists' in ordinary English. Since he holds that some existentially quantified sentences involving fiction are true, including 'Ex, x is a fictional character', it follows that he holds the paradoxical thesis that fictional characters exist. But what, he asks (p. 246), about our firm conviction that Tom Sawyer and Sherlock Holmes do not exist?

His answer involves distinguishing between properties that fictional characters 'hold', and those which they 'have'. Sherlock Holmes 'holds' the property of being a detective. He does not 'have' that property. The only properties that fictional characters have are existence and self-identity. Thus one interpretation of 'Sherlock Holmes does not exist' is 'no one has all the properties the fictional character Sherlock Holmes holds'.

This is not a comfortable solution for a few reasons. Here are two. (i) The distinction between 'have' and 'hold' is arbitrary and the only reason for making seems to be to avoid a serious difficulty with his theory. (ii) The primary motive for Inwagen's theory was the principle that formal logic is simply a regimentation of ordinary English. But then it turns out we cannot express perfectly arguments in ordinary English such as

Fictional characters exist, Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character, therefore, Sherlock Holmes exists

by any simple translation or 'regimentation'. Indeed, according to Inwagen, the argument above should not even be valid.

Longest article in Wikipedia

List of moths of North America. See also second longest article - Line of succession to the British throne. And the third longest article is of course List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters *. Happy reading.

*Thanks to Eric Barbour for this titbit.

Meinongians who aren’t Meinongians

To explain the apparent paradox of the title, there are at least two senses of the term ‘Meinongian’. In the first sense, a Meinongian affirms the reality of fictional characters (by saying for example that there is such a person as Sherlock Holmes, or Sherlock Holmes exist). In the second sense, a Meinongian denies Brentano’s thesis and thus drives a wedge between ‘thing’ and ‘existing thing’: some things are fictional characters, but those things do not exist.

Peter van Inwagen is an example of the first kind of Meinongian, but not the second. He argues* (p. 237 ff) that the correct way, and the only way, to understand the use of variables and quantifiers is to show how they can be translated into expressions of ordinary English that we already understand. He gives a few examples to show how it is clear that the formal predicate calculus is simply a regimentation of the ‘all’ and ‘there are’ of ordinary English. He concludes (p.239) “The existental quantifier therefore expresses the sense of ‘there is’ in ordinary English. (As an opponent of any form of Meinongianism, I would say that the existential quantifier is appopriately named – for the reason that, in expressing the sense of ‘there is’ in English, it thereby expresses the sense of ‘exists’ in English).” To the objection (p.242) that this account of the meaning of a sentence containing quantifiers does not tell us the conditions under which it would be true, he neatly replies that “the conditions under which a sentence would be true, are not the first thing about the meaning of a sentence. The first thing about the meaning of a sentence is what the sentence means” – which is just what his account tells us about sentences containing quantifiers, he says.

This has an important consequence for fictional discourse (meaning not the discourse you find in works of fiction, but rather what is spoken or written about works of fiction, such as found in literary criticism). Such discourse can potentially include complex quantification. Inwagen’s example is

(1) There is a fictional character who, for every novel, either appears in that novel or is a model for a character who does.

This involves apparent existential quantification and a complex quantificational structure, as well as the ability to generate all the inferences licensed by quantifier logic. For example, we can deduce

(2) If no character appears in every novel, then some character is modelled on another character.

If the quantification is real, and given Inwagen’s rejection of the second kind of Meinongianism (i.e. the kind that accepts existential quantification but not existential commitment) then we must accept the reality, indeed the real existence, of fictional characters. If the quantification is not real, we must explain (p.244) how to paraphrase the two sentences above, show whether the second sentence follows from the first, and if not, why it does not. In summary:

*The existential quantifier expresses the sense of ‘there is’ and ‘there exists’ in English.

* ‘For some x, x is a fictional character’ is true.

* There are fictional characters, i.e. fictional characters exist.

Thus Inwagen is a Meinongian in the first sense. He affirms the reality of fictional characters in the most direct way, claiming that they exist. But he is not a Meinongian in the second sense. For he upholds the Brentano thesis - ‘For some x, x is a fictional character’ = ‘There are fictional characters’ = ‘Fictional characters exist’.

Van Inwagen recognises he must explain the apparent truth of sentences like ‘Sherlock Holmes does not exist’. I will discuss his explanation tomorrow.

* "Quantification in fictional discourse", in Empty Names, Fiction and the Puzzles of Non-existence, Stanford 2000, pp. 235-247.

Quinean and non-Quinean quantification

In a short paper published in 2000, Thomas Hofweber discusses an attempt to defend Meinong by distinguishing what he calls Quinean and non-Quinean quantifiers. A Quinean quantifier (or a Quinean occurrence of a quantifier) is where we can modify it with 'who/which exists' without change of truth conditions of the proposition in which it occurs. Thus in

(a) Something is eating my cheese, probably a mouse.

the occurrence of the quantifier 'something' is Quinean. Clearly 'something which exists' is intended. By contrast, the occurrence of the same quantifier in

(b) Something is keeping me awake at night, namely the monster I dream about.

is non-Quinean. Monsters don't exist, so nothing which exists is keeping me awake at night. Therefore modifying 'something' with 'which exists' would change the truth conditions of the second sentence, therefore the occurrence of the quantifier is non-Quinean.

This is pretty close to the thesis of Peter Lupu's that I was moaning about earlier. The idea is that we can explain the consistency of the conjunction 'Tom is thinking of a mermaid, but nothing is a mermaid' by interpreting the 'nothing' as a Quinean quantifier. That is, the conjunction really means Tom is thinking of a mermaid, but nothing which exists is a mermaid. However, the 'something' in the claim 'there is something Tom is thinking of' is non-Quinean, since it is false that there is something which exists which Tom is thinking of.

I have given enough objections to this sort of thing for now. Enough to say that it can be true that Tom is thinking of a mermaid even if absolutely nothing whatever is a mermaid, i.e. where non-Quinean quantification for 'absolutely nothing' is intended. I have another fundamental objection to this idea, namely the use that Meinongians put it to.

Even if we buy the distinction between Quinean and non-Quinean quantifiers, a further problem is the way Meinongians persistently make inferences from contexts that involve non-Quinean quantification, to contexts that unambiguously require Quinean quantification. I already gave an example here of a move such as this:

Tom is thinking of something, therefore Tom's thinking is directed towards something.

This is illegitimate because (in my terminology) 'is thinking of' is a logically intransitive verb, whereas 'is directed towards' is logically transitive. In Hofweber-speak, even if the first 'something' is non-Quinean, the second is unambiguously Quinean. Nothing can be 'directed towards' something unless it is something which exists. The Meinongian makes these illegitimate moves all the time. Example: he argues (p. 255, my emphasis) that Quinean quantifiers are restricted to things that exist, and so

since non-Quinean quantifiers don't have such a restriction this shows that the domain of quantification really is what the non-Quinean quantifiers range over. Quinean quantifiers range over a subdomain of this domain, namely over all or some of the things in the domain that exist. Thus the true domain of discourse contains non-existent objects ...

Note the verb 'contains'. This verb is unambiguously logically transitive, i.e. 'a contains an F' is always inconsistent with 'nothing is an F'. Thus the quantifier 'an F', as it occurs as the accusative of 'contains', is Quinean. Even if we buy the distinction between Quinean and non-Quinean, the quantifier 'everything' in 'everything that the true domain of discourse contains' is Quinean. Thus everything the Meinongian wants to talk about, he cannot talk about. Therefore he should remain silent. Another example of language on holiday tomorrow.

* "Quantification and non-existent objects", in *Empty Names, Fiction and the Puzzles of Non-existence*, Stanford 2000, pp 249-273.

Nothing fails to exist

David Brightly asks whether my claim that "The meaning of the proper name is simply to tell us which individual is the subject of the proposition, and it can tell us this without there being any such individual. " comes perilously close to saying that there are non-existent individuals? Close, maybe, but not perilously close. When I say that there may be no such individual, I mean just that. The range of my quantifer 'no' covers absolutely everything. Not just everything that exists, for that would allow the Meinongian to drive a wedge between 'something' and 'some existing thing'. I mean: absolutely everything. So long as my quantifier ranges over absolutely everything without qualification, I am not committed to non-existing individuals. Hence I am fundamentally opposed to anything like this:

(*) Tolkien tells us which hobbit carried the ring to Mordor, but nothing (at least, nothing real or existing) is a hobbit,

where the bracketed qualification opens the door to something unreal or non-existing being a hobbit. This reminds me of something that Thomas Hofweber says, which I will discuss tomorrow.

An interesting net

Bill Vallicella mentions another argument for non-existent objects here. He writes

Imagination of a mermaid is not consciousness of a mental image or other content
of consciousness but precisely consciousness of a mermaid. Consciousness of a
mermaid is just as outer-directed and revelatory of a material item as
consciousness of a dolphin. But mermaids do not exist. Therefore, some objects
do not exist.

Here is the argument expressed in numbered statements. I have added some additional premisses and logical steps

1. (A) Tom is conscious of a mermaid
2. (A) Consciousness of a mermaid is just as outer-directed and revelatory of a material item as consciousness of a dolphin.
3. (interpreting 2) If Tom is conscious of a mermaid then Tom is conscious of some object which is a mermaid.
4. (from 1, 3) Tom is conscious of some object which is a mermaid.
5. (A) 'Is conscious of' is a logically transitive verb.
6. (from 4, 5) some object is a mermaid.
7. (A) Mermaids do not exist.
8. (from 6, 7) Therefore, some objects do not exist.

The questionable assumption is (5). I argued earlier that a 'logically transitive verb' Ø is such that the truth of 'a Ø's an F' is inconsistent with the truth of 'nothing is an F', and so implies 'something is an F'. Bill needs to justify the assumption that 'is conscious of' is logically transitive. This is questionable. 'Bill is conscious of a mermaid' is clearly consistent with 'nothing is a mermaid'.

"A clever man got caught in this net of language! So it must be an interesting net. "

Historical names and the Jesus Myth

I argued earlier that fictional names individuate, by telling us who the subject of the proposition is the same as. All reference in a story is relative to the story. ‘Aeneas was a survivor of Troy’ tells us that someone called ‘Aeneas’ was a survivor of Troy, ‘Aeneas was shipwrecked at Carthage’ tells us the the same person was shipwrecked at Carthage, i.e. the two propositions tell us that someone called ‘Aeneas’, who was a survivor of Troy, was shipwrecked at Carthage, and so on. The proper name is no more than a label for tying separate propositions together.

You will make the natural and reasonable objection that such story-relative reference is a word-word relation. Story-reference is intra-linguistic: it is a semantic relation between different names of the same type within the same narrative. This may be acceptable as an account of fictional semantics, but as an account of history, where there is reference to real people, it is inadequate. Genuine reference is word-world: a relation between language and the world outside the mind.

I reply by asking: what difference does the truth of the narrative make to the semantics of the proper name? The semantics of the following brief history* are no different from a story.

Jesus Christ was born in Israel 2000 years ago. Jesus lived a traditional
Jewish life until his twenties. Then Jesus began his public teaching and display
of recorded miracles, although he never travelled more than 200 miles from his
birthplace. Over a three year period, Jesus' reputation spread nation
wide. Jesus' most controversial act was that he repeatedly claimed to be
God. Because of this, the religious leaders asked the Roman government to
execute Jesus. Jesus was crucified and died, although (according to many
witnesses) Jesus returned from the dead three days later.

The story is considered to be more or less factual by most historians, yet some have questioned whether Jesus existed at all. If the semantics of non-fictional names were fundamentally different from the semantics of fictional ones, the ‘Jesus Myth’ problem would have been resolved. We could simply work out from the meaning of the name ‘Jesus’ whether there really was such a person. But we cannot, therefore the semantics of non-fictional names are not fundamentally different from the semantics of fictional ones.

Therefore the names of historical characters individuate in just the same way as fictional ones. The meaning of the proper name is simply to tell us which individual – whether in a story or in the historical narrative – is the subject of the proposition, and it can tell us this without there being any such indidividual. A story can tell us which F is G, without anything actually being an F.

* Adapted from here

More fiction turns to fact

I reported here about erroneous information in Wikipedia being used in reference works, thus becoming what Wikipedia calls a ‘reliable source’, and so turning a previously unreliable source into a reliable one. There is another excellent example being discussed on William Connolley’s talk page. William corrects the absurd claim that Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi was the first to discover the derivative of cubic polynomials, but is immediately challenged by another Wikipedia editor, who says

You chose the wrong example. "In the 12th century, Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi found
algebraic and numerical solutions to cubic equations and was the first to
discover the derivative of cubic polynomials." is in the Encyclopedia
of Ancient Egypt at Google Books, and it took me just 0 seconds to found it
out. Please DO NOT DELETE contents because of your POV. Please, use inline
templates instead. Cheers. –pjoef 20:10, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

William points out that the source for this disputed statement - the Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt which at first sight looks as reliable as you could get – had itself used Wikipedia as a source. He goes on to say that “the source is therefore clearly worthless as a citation to support statements made in Wikipedia”. Yes, although I question his ‘clearly’: it may have been obvious in this case, but as more secondary sources use Wikipedia as a primary source, the problem will continue, and will be increasingly difficult to spot.

Crowdsourcing again

A problem that I discussed earlier has now been escalated to Wikipedia’s ‘Arbitration Committee’. An editor called 'Jagged 85' had been systematically falsifying material in Wikipedia since he (or she) joined in 2005. The editor had a clear and consistent anti-Western agenda, systematically distorting source material in a way that untruthfully promoted Islamic and other non-Western intellectual achievements, usually by claiming that a scientific developments or invention or discovery was made or anticipated by some non-Western philosopher or scientist. A large amount of material was affected in Wikipedia, which is widely used as a reference work by millions of people, who trust it as a reliable source. The editor contributed to 8,115 pages, making 63,298 edits. Much of the problematic material seems still to be there.

The ‘case for the prosecution’ cites another example of this style of editing. The article “List of inventions in medieval Islam” contains the following assertion:

Central heating through underfloor pipes: The hypocaust heating system used by
the Romans continued to be in use around the Mediterranean region during late
Antiquity and by the Umayyad caliphate. By the 12th century, Muslim engineers in
Syria introduced an improved central heating system, where heat travelled
through underfloor pipes from the furnace room, rather than through a hypocaust.
This central heating system was widely used in bath-houses throughout the
medieval Islamic world.

The claim is cited, but the cited author Hugh N. Kennedy however writes something rather different:

In one respect, however, the early Islamic bath had more in common with the
classical one than with the later Islamic. Late antique and Umayyad bath
builders continued to use the hypocaust, though on a reduced scale, for
heating the hot chamber, whereas later Muslim baths used a simpler
system of underfloor pipes from the furnace room.

One of the arbitrators expressed surprise at the request, having been under the mistaken impression that Jagged 85 had been banned. “Who could have known that someone could get away with such behaviour on Wikipedia with only a single 24 hr edit-warring block”, he says. Yet there seems little chance that the committee will do something about the problem. Its terms of reference do not include ‘content dispute’. And there seem as many friends and supporters of the disputed editor as there are people who are concerned about the situation. On Wikipedia, which sources material from the crowd, anyone’s view counts the same as any other. Wikipedia: the encyclopedia that anyone with an agenda can edit.

The snows have scattered

It's almost a Spring day here in London, sun, birds chirping and shopping at Sainsbury's. So here is an attempt at translating Horace's poem (IV.7) on the transience of human life and ambition. I have tried to preserve the word order as far as possible, so I don't know whether it makes much sense.

There is another (very non-literal) translation here. Another set of translations here.

Latin	English
VII.	Ode VII
1 Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis Arboribusque comae; Mutat terra vices et decrescentia ripas Flumina praetereunt;	The snows have scattered, and back comes grass to fields And leaves to trees. Earth changes seasons, and declining [between their] banks Rivers flow.
5 Gratia cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus audet Ducere nuda choros. Immortalia ne speres, monet annus et almum Quae rapit hora diem.	The Grace with the Nymphs and her twin sisters dares To lead, naked, the dance. Lest you hope for immortal things, the year warns you, and the hour, That hurries away the kindly day.
Frigora mitescunt Zephyris, ver proterit aestas 10 Interitura, simul Pomifer autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox Bruma recurrit iners.	Frosts grow mild in the western winds; Summer tramples Spring, Who will herself perish once Fruitful Autumn has poured out fruit; and soon Fruitless Winter returns.
Damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae ; Nos ubi decidimus, 15 Quo pater Aeneas, quo dives Tullus et Ancus, Pulvis et umbra sumus.	Yet the moons are fast to make good their heavenly losses; We, when we have fallen to Where good Aeneas and wealthy Tullus, and Ancus [have] Are dust and shadow.
Quis scit an adiciant hodiernae crastina summae Tempora di superi ? Cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis, amico 20 Quae dederis animo.	Who knows whether [they] will add to the sum of to-day,to-morrow's Time - the gods above? All will escape the greedy hands of your heir, Which you gave to your dear soul.
Cum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos Fecerit arbitria, Non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te Restituet pietas.	But when once you have fallen, and on you Minos Has made majestic judgment, Neither, Torquatus, shall family or eloquence Or loyalty restore you.
25 Infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum Liberat Hippolytum, Nec Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro Vincula Pirithoo.	For neither from the shadows below does Diana virtuous Hippolytus set free; Nor can Theseus break Lethe's Chains from [his dear] Pirithous

On the revival of Latin

On the revival of Latin, by Hillaire Belloc, at Michael Gilleland's website.

His main theme is the need for a common language. "The necessity of some common language is seen in the fantastic attempts to create one artificially. You will find enthusiasts for stuff like Esperanto, which is about as much like a human language as a jig-saw puzzle is like a living face." He was writing just before the internationalisation of English. He does not mention at all the importance of Latin to philosophers, namely that the philosophical language of thought - its vocabulary and to a large extent its syntax - is essentially Latin.

His characterisation of what we now call The West is interesting. "There is one unmistakable thing which, in spite of a badly diseased and divided social state, is still in the main the common descendant of the old Christian culture. Its dress, its manner of living, its main social ideas are the same".

The encyclopedia that anyone can be paid to edit

There is an incredible fuss over here about the American company Koch Industries employing a public relations firm (New Media Strategies) that specialises in “word-of-mouth marketing” for major corporations. This included editing the Wikipedia pages for “Charles Koch,” “David Koch,” “Political activities of the Koch family,” and “The Science of Success” (a book written by Charles Koch). The best part of the article is the comments. Vituperative, abusive, almost unanimous in their condemnation of this ‘unethical’ approach to editing.

What is unethical about it? Wikipedia is branded as the ‘encyclopedia that anyone can edit’, and it permits this because of the theory of ‘crowdsourcing’. Just as the crowd at the country fair guessed the weight of the bull better than any expert, so (supposedly) a crowd of people editing Wikipedia will arrive at the truth better than any expert. So why can’t employees of Koch Industries edit? Logic suggests that the range of ‘anyone’ covers them too.

The paid editing merely exposes the fallacy of crowdsourcing. No one edits Wikipedia for free. As I pointed out here, everyone has an interest of some sort. Pedophiles write on Wikipedia to get the pedophile point of view across. Proponents of the fraudulent ‘Neurolinguistic programming’ edit to promote their view on NLP. Brahma Kumaris edit to promote Brahma Kumarism or whatever. Because they don’t get paid for it doesn’t mean they are not being rewarded in some way. So what’s the problem with a financial reward? Presumably if Charles Koch had the time to edit the article about him, he would do that. Being a busy man, and a rich one, naturally he pays someone to do it.

In summary: if you believe in crowdsourcing, you have no problem with paid editing.

Consequens autem falsum, ergo antecedens.

Indiscernibility of Identicals

One of the assumptions in the substitution problem was the indiscernibility of identicals:

Fa and a=b implies Fb

Is this always true? A slightly different way of expressing the law is that if Fa, and if 'a' denotes exactly what 'b' denotes then Fb. But in this form the law is clearly not valid. Suppose there is a shortage of red paint, and that only Ferraris are red. Then it follows that if Ferraris are fast, then red cars are fast, and conversely. But it does not follow that if John thinks Ferraris are fast, then he thinks that red cars are fast – perhaps he is imagining a red reliant Robin that he once saw. I.e. F = ‘John thinks that every – is fast’ and a = ‘Ferrari’ and b = ‘red car’. Then Fa and the fact that ‘a’ denotes everything that ‘b’ denotes does not entail Fb.

You will object that indiscernibility of identicals applies only when a and b are proper names. Proper names are referring terms, not common terms like ‘Ferrari’ or ‘red car’. I reply: what is a referring term? If it is defined as something to which indiscernibility of identicals necessarily applies, then the ‘Shakespeare’ arguments in the previous posts suggest that indiscernibility of identicals does not apply to ordinary proper names at all.

On discovering what we already knew

A priori textual analysis continues to amuse. David Brightly has objected that indiscernibility of identicals (Leibniz II) applies only to names, not to descriptions like 'the murderer' or 'Shakespeare', when used in the sense of 'the man who wrote the plays'. Nishadani has objected that 'Shakespeare' is not the name of a single person.

I will discuss these objections later. Meanwhile, another puzzle. If Leibniz II is correct, we can substitute any two proper names so long as they are names for the same person, salva veritate. Thus, if Shakespeare and Edward de Vere (another contender for the identity) were the same person, it follows that

• We have always known that Shakespeare was De Vere, since we have always known that Shakespeare was Shakespeare, a logical truth.
• We could never discover that Shakespeare was De Vere, since you cannot discover what you already know.

And so on.

Story relative reference

Bosanquet says*:

In a chronicle of remote date, we might conceivably identify the unknown
possessor of some name as figuring in several scences or incidents without being
sure what he, she or it might be; whether man or a woman, or a favourite
horse. In this sense the judgment that deals with a proper name is merely
particular.

I'm not sure about the horse part, and I shall argue this is true only for the first occurrence of a proper name or singular term, but this is roughly right. By 'particular judgment' Bosanquet means the judgment opposed to the universal judgment - a general existential judgment 'Some A is B'. In respect of the first occurrence of a name in a fictional narrative, where we have no means of identifying or individuating the character except through the story, he is right. When you first encounter the name - say 'Aeneas groaned', which is the first time we meet him in the Aeneid, the sense of the proposition is no more than "someone called Aeneas groaned".

For subsequent occurrrences, as I argued here, the proper name has a stronger sense. Later on we learn that Aeneas was shipwrecked off Carthage. But the conjunction 'Someone groaned and someone was shipwrecked off Carthage' does not tell us that someone who groaned was subsequently shipwrecked, for it could be true of different people. Repeating the proper name (in the right context) tells us that the person who was shipwrecked was the same person as the one who groaned. And so for the following sequence of propositions:

Aeneas fled his home
Aeneas was shipwrecked
Aeneas came ashore at Carthage
Dido was the queen of Carthage
Aeneas met Dido
Dido died of grief
Aeneas sailed to Italy

These tell us that for some x and some y, x fled his home, was shipwrecked off Carthage, y was queen of Carthage, x met y, y died of grief, x sailed to Italy, and so on. Overall, the sense is perfectly general. We cannot locate x or y in history, i.e. in the narratives we call 'history'. But we can locate them in the story, and this is how the proper name individuates. The name 'Aeneas' signifies the subject of the proposition as being the same as x, without signifying it to be the same as y. The name 'Dido' signifies the subject to be the same as y, without signifying it to be the same as x.

Is this the entire sense of a fictional name? Is it the entire sense of any proper name?

* Logic, Bk I ch. 5, Oxford 1888 p. 208

Textual analysis using pure logic

I have been having an amusing conversation with 'Nishadani' on his Wikipedia talk page. Nishadani is one of those tireless defenders of orthodoxy on Wikipedia, fighting the battle against (in his case) all sorts of interesting theories that 'the man from Stratford' did not write the plays published in his name. There is more about the whole issue on Wikipedia here, although the article misses the interesting fact that the great mathematician Georg Cantor (the transfinite man) spent much time and money trying to prove that Bacon was the author of the Shakespeare plays. He writes (to Dedekind, 28 July 1899)

The big question was whether, besides the alephs, there are also other powers of
sets; for two years now I have been in possession of a proof that there are no
others; so that, for example, the arithmetic linear continuum (the totality of
all real numbers) has a determinate aleph as its cardinal number.
The Bacon-Shakespeare question, on the other hand, is for me completely
finished; it cost me a great deal of time and money; to pursue it further I
should have to make much greater sacrifices, travel to England, study the
archives there, etc. With warm greetings to you and your sister [etc.]

It's interesting because Cantor made one of the greatest contributions to mathematicians and logic in the whole history of the subject (e.g Godel's proof and much else ultimately depends on the insights of Cantor's elegant diagonal argument), and yet here he is spending 'much time and money' on something generally regarded as, well, a bit cranky.

But enough of that. The aim of this post to is show 'Nishadani' and his like that we can prove the falsity of Baconian, Oxfordian Marlovian theories etc. etc., without any tedious recourse to textual analysis, biography or any other such un-philosophical considerations. We can prove it by pure logic. Let ‘Shakespeare’ denote whoever it was that wrote the plays attributed to the man of that name.

1. Shakespeare and Bacon were one and the same person.
2. There is no doubt as to whether Shakespeare wrote The Tempest
3. There is some doubt as to whether Bacon wrote The Tempest
4. If a=b and Fa then Fb (Indiscernibility of identicals)

Since the four propositions are aporetic, i.e. jointly yield a contradiction, one of the premisses must be false. The first is a mere assumption. Clearly the second is true: obviously the man who wrote the 'Shakespeare' plays called himself 'Shakespeare', just as 'Nishadani' calls himself 'Nishadani'. That is pure logic. The third is true - there wouldn't be so much arguing and gnashing of teeth on Wikipedia if there were no doubt at all. And the fourth (from Leibniz) is beyond all doubt. If Shakespeare and De Vere (or Marlow or whoever) were one and the same person, and De Vere was accused of pederasty, then so was Shakespeare. If De Vere died in 1604 (or whenever) then so did Shakespeare, assuming the identity.

But all four imply a contradiction. By substitution of 'Bacon' for 'Shakespeare' in proposition (2), and by indiscernibility of identicals (4), we have

(*) There is no doubt as to whether Bacon wrote The Tempest

But this proposition contradicts (3) above. It cannot be true that there is some doubt that Bacon wrote the Tempest (even a tiny bit of doubt) and that there is no doubt. Contradiction. Therefore the weakest of the four propositions above must be rejected, namely that Bacon and Shakespeare were the same person.

So forget the historical and textual crap. By purely logical and philosophical methods we can clarify all manner of difficult questions like this.

Object-independent semantics

Vallicella alludes here to a distinction originally made by Gareth Evans between ‘Russellian’ and ‘Fregean’ understanding of propositions. He says (to Peter Lupu)

Your understanding of Kaplan is excellent. But for him propositions are
Russellian, not Fregean. If 'Mt Blanc is snow-covered' expresses a Russellian
proposition, then Mt Blanc itself, that massive physical object, together with
its snow fields and subterranean gopher tunnels, etc. etc. is a constituent of
the proposition. But I can't swallow the Russellian view; how could a finite
mind wrap itself around such a monstrous object?

On the Russell-Kaplan view (although Russell himself probably never consistently held such a view), the semantics of singular thought is ‘object dependent’. A thought about Mont Blanc actually contains Mont Blanc – with all its snow fields. That seems absurd for a number of reasons. How can a thought contain a physical object? How can a thought even be internally related to an object when the thought remains the same whether or not the object exists? Does the proposition ‘Etna is a volcano’ cease to be meaningful even if Etna is completely destroyed in an eruption? Surely not. Is the proposition ‘Caesar was a man’ meaningful even though Caesar does not exist? Surely it is.

The problem is to explain individuation. The name ‘Mont Blanc’ individuates. It tells us which large object is the subject of the proposition 'Mt Blanc is snow-covered'. It distinguishes that object from other similar objects such as Ben Nevis, Kilimanjaro, Everest and the rest. How do we give an object-independent account of the semantics of individuation?
The key, as I shall argue, is to explain the semantics of fictional names. The name ‘Aeneas’ distinguishes a character in Virgil’s epic from all the other characters mentioned in the Aeneid. If we can explain how that is possible, it will be possible to explain individuation in general, I believe.

You will be Marcellus

In his gloss on Porphyry (Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge, edited by Bernhard Geyer in Beitraege zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 21 (1). Aschendorff: Munster 1919), Peter Abelard quotes from Virgil's Aeneid, book VI line 865. 'Who is that, father, marching at the side of Marcellus?'. Virgil is referring to Marcellus the younger (42 BC – 23 BC) who was the eldest son of Octavia, sister of Augustus Caesar. He died young, at the age of 19, rumoured to have been poisoned by Livia, Augustus' wife.

Marcellus was one of those future Romans whom Aeneas sees in the underworld in Book VI of the Aeneid. The passage from 865-885 recounts Marcellus's life and laments his early death. The line at 882 'tu Marcellus eris', 'you will be Marcellus' supposedly caused Octavia to faint with grief when it was read to her and Augustus, and inspired many bad paintings.

Why does Abelard mention this here? The context is a discussion of Boethius' account of individuation, that individuation comes about by a set of properties that are unique to each individual. Socrates is individuated because the collection of properties ‘bald’, ‘snub-nosed’, ‘old’, ‘son of Sophroniscus’ is found in no other person except Socrates. (Saul Kripke famously criticised a very similar theory in Naming and Necessity).

Abelard says that the reply was ‘Marcellus’ not because of the substance which he was seeing, but because of the unknown quality which could not be perceived by sense - which Boethius seems to agree with when he gives the made up name of 'Platonity' (platonitatem) to the whatever property it is that individuates Plato (Non propter substantiam quam videbat, responsum est 'Marcellus' sed propter ignoratam qualitatem quam sensu percipere non poterat. Cui etiam Boethius consentire videtur in editione secunda super Perihermeneias, ubi proprietatem Platonis ficto nomine platonitatem appellat).

Perhaps Abelard also has in mind how the future Romans are those whose souls are owed a second body. It is Mind that sets all matter in motion, by infusing the material bodies with spirit. When some people die, their spirit is not wholly freed from the ills and miseries of the body. Some of these souls are stretched out to dry in the winds, or are sent over the plains of Elysium until the days remove the ingrained corruption of the body and leaves them pure ethereal sense. They are drenched by God in the river of Lethe, which removes all their memories so that they go back for a second bodily life. In that case, their identity cannot consist in any perceptible property. Perhaps Abelard is alluding to this.

What is individuation?

Later on, I shall be arguing that empty names individuate just as well as non-empty ones, and that since individuation is the primary semantic function of a proper name (as well as any other singular term), the semantics of empty names is no different from semantics of non-empty names. But what is individuation?

The concept (as with so many philosophical concepts) goes back to the medieval period. It is clearly articulated by Henry of Ghent (Quodlib. 5. quest. 8) as being a 'double negation', and by Scotus (Ordinatio II. iii. q2) as 'privatio divisionis in se et privatio identitatis ad aliud' - the privation of division, and the privation of identity with another.

Taking the first of these negations (I will discuss the second elsewhere), what does 'a privation of division' mean? It is where we get the word 'individual' - literally, the undivided or undividable. What is meant is that the division of genus into species, the division of the species into sub-species, and so on, comes to a halt when we reach the individual. We can divide a genus (e.g. animal) into different species of the same genus, such as giraffe, koala, swan, man, and so on. A species such as man can be divided into individuals of the same type, such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and so on. But there it ends. You cannot divide Plato into different things of the type Plato.

This is all rather medieval, but it has a simple logical consequence. It means that the inference

A man is white and a man argues, therefore something that argues is white

is invalid, for Socrates might be the only person who is white, and Plato the only person who is arguing, and so no one individual is both arguing and white. The inference fails because there can be always be different things of the same kind, for anything above the 'most specific species' (i.e. the individual). But on the other hand

Socrates is white and Socrates argues, therefore something that argues is white

is valid, for there cannot be one Socrates who is white, and another different Socrates who is arguing (at least when 'Socrates' is understood in the same sense). A name, taken in the same sense, cannot be verified of different individuals. Or rather, what we mean by 'individual term' is such that inferences of the type above are valid. If 'A is B and A is C' implies that some B is C, i.e. if it cannot be true that A is B and A is C, without it also being true that some B is C, then 'A' must be a singular or individual term. The semantics of the singular term is defined - I will argue wholly defined - by this feature.

Contemplation and logical transitivity

Some verbs may be logically transitive or intransitive, depending on sense or context. 'Contemplate' has a number of different senses, including

(1) To think about intently
(2) to look at thoughtfully
(3) to have in mind as a possibility.

The first sense is clearly logically intransitive - you can intently think about a mermaid without there being a mermaid. The second sense by contrast is (logically) transitive. You cannot look thoughtfully about a mermaid without there being a mermaid you are looking at. With the third sense, we are back to logically intransitive. God can contemplate creating a mermaid, even though there are no mermaids.

But, pace Vallicella, this doesn't entail there are any 'incomplete beings'. How?

Is reference logically intransitive?

In its strict technical sense (i.e. as used by philosophers of language) the verb phrase ‘refers to’ is logically transitive. If ‘London’ refers to London, then something is the referent of ‘London’ and ‘refers to’ is therefore logically transitive in the sense defined here. Thus the following conjunction is inconsistent when ‘refers to’ is taken in its technical sense.

(*) Tom is referring to a winged horse, but there are no winged horses.

Informally and in ordinary use, however, it seems to be logically intransitive. For example, you might get the following question in a multiple choice exam:

(**) Who is Shakespeare referring to when he says “the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness”? (see here for a real example)

Clearly the answer will be right or wrong, and thus true or false. Indeed, the a generally accepted answer is that Shakespeare is referring to Hamlet’s mother Gertrude, and so ‘Shakespeare is referring to Gertrude’ is true. But Gertrude being a fictional character, there is no such person as Gertrude. Thus

(***) Shakespeare is referring to Gertrude, but there is no such person as Gertrude

is not inconsistent. thus, in its ordinary sense (for example in GCSE exam questions about Shakespeare and Dickens), the verb phrase ‘refers to’ is logically intransitive.

In the posts that follow I will be exploring the concept of Story relative reference – reference to an individual within a text (or group of texts) such that the individual is identifiable within that text, but not outside it, and I will demonstrate its connection with the subject I began with, namely the intentionality of singular thoughts.

Wikipedia: fiction becomes fact

A fascinating example of how erroneous information on Wikipedia leaks out into the web, turns into citable information that can then be recycled as verifiable back to Wikipedia. A Wikipedia editor in February spotted the following strange edit made in November 2002 – nearly 10 years ago - mentioning a scientist’s claim that the Van Allen belt is the result of volcanic activity. Which is of course nonsense. The editor Googled for this and got plenty of hits, and it nearly went unchallenged. However, suspecting that the age of the Wikipedia entry had caused this claim to become accepted fact, he emailed the scientist, who confirmed it was nonsense, and the edit was finally reverted on 18 February 2011.

The ensuing discussion is on the Wikipedia Astronomy project page.

Logically intransitive verbs

I looked at the posts for January and February and while there are many passing references to the distinction between ‘intentional’ and ‘non intentional’ verbs, there is no specific post about it. So I’m writing one now. I’m going to use a new terminology and distinguish between ‘logically transitive’ and ‘logically intransitive verbs. A logically transitive verb is one which takes a logical as well as a grammatical accusative, such that there must be an object that verifies the accusative. That is, if ‘S V O’ is true, there must be an object corresponding to the accusative noun phrase ‘O’. All the verbs in the following propositions – note the last – are logically transitive.

1. Tom owns a house in the desert
2. Tom is building a house in the desert
3. Tom / has / a thought about a house in the desert

That is, if Tom owns a house in the desert, at least one house (Tom’s) is in the desert. So ‘owns’, in this context, is logically transitive. If he is building a house in the desert, there must be at least one house in the desert that he is building. And if he has a thought about the house, there must be at least one thought that he has, namely the one about a house in the desert. The verb ‘has’ is logically transitive in this context.

A logically intransitive verb is one which may have a grammatical accusative, but does not need a logical accusative to verify it. I.e. ‘S V O’ may be true without there being any object that satisfies 'O'. Thus all the verbs in the following are logically intransitive.

4. Tom wants a house in the desert
5. Tom is looking for a house in the desert
6. Tom / has a thought about / a house in the desert

If Tom wants or is looking for a house in the desert, it does not follow there is any such house. The verbs ‘want’ and ‘looking for’ are logically intransitive. Note well that proposition (3) is the same as proposition (6). But there are two different verb phrases: ‘has’ and ‘has a thought about’. The object of ‘has’ is ‘a thought’, and that must exist in order for there to be a thought. The object of ‘has a thought about’ is ‘a house in the desert’, but no such house has to be in order for there to be such a thought. So ‘has a thought about’ is logically intransitive.

Tomorrow, as we approach the problem of proper names, I will talk about verbs of reference and individuation.

Intentionality and Proper Names

The Maverick Philosopher has an insightful post on modes of being, haecceity and proper names. Proper names are the real difficulty for a theory of intentionality. We can express the difficulty by means of the following ‘aporetic tetrad’. (I define ‘empty name’ as a proper name that does not signify an existing object).

1. An empty name signifies something
2. Every thing is an existing thing
3. A name does not signify a concept
4. A (significant) term signifies a concept or an object.

Taken together, the four are inconsistent. If (1) an empty term signifies something, and if (2) every thing is an existing thing, then an empty term signifies an existing thing. But (3) that existing thing is not a concept, so (4) an empty name signifies an existing object. But (from the definition of ‘empty name’) an empty does not signify an existing object. Contradiction.

Yet each of the four propositions has a strong claim to our acceptance. (1) Surely the semantics of an empty name are no different from a non-empty one. We can’t tell whether there was such a person as John the Baptist by analysing the meaning of the name as used in the New Testament. (2) There is plenty of evidence for the ‘Brentano thesis’ that I have discussed frequently. (3) There are plausible arguments against proper names signifying concepts – see Maverick’s argument, for example. (4) The distinction between concept and object is practically a given. No contemporary philosopher of language has seriously challenged it, as far as I know.

There are three known resolutions to the tetrad, according as philosophers have denied proposition 1, 2, or 3 respectively. Direct reference theorists deny (1). They hold (implausibly, to my mind) that an empty name does not signify. To the argument that we cannot tell whether a name (e.g. ‘John the Baptist’) is empty from its semantics alone, they reply that this is ‘Cartesianism’. If there is no such person as John the Baptist, direct referentialists claim that we know this, even though we utter things like ‘we do not know whether the name ‘John the Baptist’ signifies or not’. The Maverick and other Meinongians-in-denial deny (2), by driving a wedge between being a thing, and being a thing that exists. And (3) people like Mark Sainsbury, and indeed Edward Ockham himself, argue that proper names signify ‘singular concepts’.

In posts for this month (March 2011), I will put forward some arguments in defence of singular concepts. More later!