Essence and Modality: Kit Fine
Here's the article in which Fine provides his argument for reconsidering essence, and divorcing it from modality.
Esence and Modality
There's a clear setting up of the import and history of the issues involved before Fine gets to the argument, that while if an individual has a certain property essentially, it must have it necessarily, it may have a property necessarily that is not a part of its essence; that we must distinguish between the essence of an object and those properties which are necessarily true of it.
The argument proceeds roughly as follows. The set {Socrates} has exactly one member, Necessarily, if this set exists, it has Socrates as a member, and conversely, Socrates has the necessary property of being a member of {Socrates}. If the essence of Socrates is considered to be exactly the necessary properties of Socrates, then part of the essence of Socrates is being a member of {Socrates}.
But that seems unwieldily. It does not seem to be part of what Socrates is, that he be a member of such a set.
The modal account of essence captures more than is needed.
The article goes on to defend the notion of essence in terms of definition rather than modality. For Fine it seems the essence of an object is found in providing a definition rather than setting otu necessary properties.
For me, what is salient here is the failure of the modal account of essence.
This thread is about the paper. Have a read. There's more, since Fine is a staunch defender of essence.
Esence and Modality
There's a clear setting up of the import and history of the issues involved before Fine gets to the argument, that while if an individual has a certain property essentially, it must have it necessarily, it may have a property necessarily that is not a part of its essence; that we must distinguish between the essence of an object and those properties which are necessarily true of it.
The argument proceeds roughly as follows. The set {Socrates} has exactly one member, Necessarily, if this set exists, it has Socrates as a member, and conversely, Socrates has the necessary property of being a member of {Socrates}. If the essence of Socrates is considered to be exactly the necessary properties of Socrates, then part of the essence of Socrates is being a member of {Socrates}.
But that seems unwieldily. It does not seem to be part of what Socrates is, that he be a member of such a set.
The modal account of essence captures more than is needed.
The article goes on to defend the notion of essence in terms of definition rather than modality. For Fine it seems the essence of an object is found in providing a definition rather than setting otu necessary properties.
For me, what is salient here is the failure of the modal account of essence.
This thread is about the paper. Have a read. There's more, since Fine is a staunch defender of essence.
Comments (174)
Regarding the bolded part, what's the difference? Is it again the de re/de dicto distinction?
Am I reading this accurately, @Banno?
In contemporary mereology, a simple is any thing that has no proper parts. Sometimes the term "atom" is used, although in recent years[when?] the term "simple" has become the standard.
Simples are to be contrasted with atomless gunk (where something is "gunky" if it is such that every proper part has a further proper part). Necessarily, given the definitions, everything is either composed of simples, gunk or a mixture of the two. Classical mereology is consistent with both the existence of gunk and either finite or infinite simples (see Hodges and Lewis 1968).
-Wikipedia
Quoting Shawn
Where's that?
I'm not seeing much that concerns simples.
But, that's an ambiguity introduced by not adhering to the de re de dicto distinction, yes?
Quoting Banno
Nevermind, I don't think it's relevant, what I said.
How?
De dicto, we can only state truthfully what is analytic about Socrates. However, the author seems to argue that Socrates can refer to his identity without being a singleton. Isn't this way of analyzing obscuring the de re-de dicto distinction.
Quoting Banno
He does refer in the quoted part in my response to your OP as a singleton.
A singleton being a set with exactly one element.
So, what is your opinion of what was said in my post above. I'll quote it again here:
I don't quite understand the difference here ...
So, roughly, Socrates is necessary for there to be a {Socrates}, and vice versa. But there being a Socrates is essential to {Socrates}, but there being a {Socrates} is not essential to Socrates. Therefore necessity is different to essence.
{Socrates} being the singleton.
Socrates is necessary for the singleton, and vice versa. There being a Socrates is essential to the singleton, but there being the singleton is not essential to Socrates. Therefore necessity is different to essence.
What does existential quantification look like for singletons?
I know Quine is mentioned, so does Fine profess his 'no instantiation without existential quantification' belief?
I'm placing a passage here cause I might need to use it in another thread. :smile:
I'm trying to explain to my interlocutor that the below is more appropriate than any other means of explaining something as simple as thinking.
Yes, I read most of it. He seems to advocate a very trivial notion of ontology that if something to exist it should exist in reality. However, how does this differ from Quine in that we ought to have an existential quantifier to instantiate x in the domain of discourse.
Nice synopsis.
For my part I've expressed some distrust of definitions, so the argument instead serves to build on my prejudice that difficulties in working with the notion of essences renders them of little use. But it may be worth reconsidering this.
1. Provide a rigorous account of the appearances first before trying to discern the reality underlying them.
2. Focus on the phenomenon itself and not just how we represent or express it in language or thought.
3. Respect whats at issue by not allowing worries about what we can mean from preventing us from accepting the intelligibility of notions that strike us as intelligible.
4. Be patient with the messy details even when they resist tidying or systematization.
5. Dont allow epistemic worries about how we know what we seem to know interfere with or distract us from clarifying what it is that we seem to know.
As one who appreciates and practices later Wittgenstein philosophy, I am particularly suspicious of 1 and 2. And 3 looks like a pill for what some may say is a medication to treat Wittgensteinian brainwashing.
So, why shouldn't the response to this be simply 'so much the worse for "set theory"?'
Yes, I was thinking something similar. Fine begins the essay with The concept of essence has played an important role in the history and development of philosophy; and in no branch of the discipline is its importance more manifest than in metaphysics.
The key elements of his paper, essence, identity and property, are precisely what the later Wittgenstein shows to be confused concepts.
I think that this is an idealist principle which accounts for the assumed fact that an object is a creation of the human mind. The act of individualization, which distinguishes an object from its environment (Moore's internal/external mentioned in the article, for example), and properly gives an object its existence as an object, is a perceptual act. Therefore this act must be accounted for as a necessary part of the object.
Consider the following:
[quote= Kit Fine, Essence and Modality]It is not critical to the example that appeal be made to an abstract entity. Consider two objects whose natures are unconnected, say Socrates and the Eiffel Tower. Then it is necessary that Socrates and the Tower be distinct. But it is not essential to Socrates that he be distinct from the Tower; for there is nothing in his nature which connects him in any special way to it.[/quote]
In reality, in order that we understand Socrates to be "an object" ("object" implying a sort of self-contained wholeness, it is necessary that we do understand how Socrates is separated from the Eiffel Tower. External is just as "essential" as internal. Keeping this in mind, the prior statement is revealed as untrue:
[quote=Kit Fine, Essence and Modality]Strange as the literature on personal identity may be, it has never been suggested that in order to understand the nature of a person one must know to which sets he belongs. There is nothing in the nature of a person, if I may put it this way, which demands that he belongs to this or that set or which even demands that there be any sets. [/quote]
To understand the nature of a person we must know what sets the person off from the rest. This is the basis of the commonly touted claim, that to know what something is requires knowing what it is not.
So, if we remove the realist assumption of independent existence of the object, along with the law of identity, which recognizes the object's independent existence, and assume that the object's existence is dependent on being perceived (Berkeleyan idealism), we can represent this in the way you describe. The existence of the object called "Socrates" is dependent on the individualization and naming of something called "Socrates". Therefore having a set of things called "Socrates" is prior to, and a necessary condition of having a thing called Socrates".
The ontology here would be that things are not found by us, in the world, they are constructed by us. And in construction we produce the blueprint then create the object to match the blueprint. As you see, this ontology lends itself well to the idea that we can create an object (mathematical object for example) with a definition. But it opens up a gap as to how we are supposed to understand the real, or 'true' object. Platonism would say that the objects (even if composed of a definition) are real, eternal truths, which are discovered by us, while an anti-realist would say that the definitions are arbitrary, and there is no real grounding to our individualization and defining of objects.
The further issue addressed by the article is the one-way nature of necessity. If we make the set prior to the individual then the set is necessary for the individual, and if we make the individual prior to the set, then it appears like the individual is necessary for the set. In each case, reversal of the necessity cannot be carried out because the posterior is contingent. This allows that the introduction of a null set will provide for special powers, or potency. The null set assumes no base necessity, and allows necessity to flow in either direction.
Here are the two directions, start with a definition, and produce an object, or start from an object and produce a description:
[quote=Kit Fine, Essence and Modality]We have seen that there exists a certain analogy between defining a term and giving the essence of an object; for the one results in a sentence which is true in virtue of the meaning of the term, while the other results in a proposition which is true in virtue of the identity of the object.
[/quote]
The problem with the latter, is that it requires the assumption of an existing object with an identity (it requires the law of identity for support. Furthermore, we can produce imaginary objects which act as the basis for a set, without reference to an empirical object. So starting from the object, with an assumed identity, is somewhat faulty. Once we remove the necessity of the object (and the law of identity), as not a true necessity, then the latter becomes the same as the former, and the flow of necessity appears to be only from the definition to the object.
What is not covered by the author, which might resolve some of the issues brought up, is that when we assume a null set we are allowed to say what constitutes "an object". Then we can say either the object is supported by an empirical description, or the object is supported by a definition, allowing for both empirical objects and mathematical objects.
Of course, if you do not think that things have an essence, then you may not be interested in deciding whether essences are to do with definitions or necessities.
Quoting Wayfarer
There doesn't seem to be much amiss with talk of the set {Socrates}, and so if either essence or set theory must go, it seems essence is the one.
, your account does not match my reading of the article. but from experience I suspect that were I to attempt to address this you would simply double down, so I'll leave you to your own devices.
I've struggled with the discussion of definitions, starting at the bottom of p. 8.
'All bachelors are unmarried men' can be used to define either "bachelor" or "Unmarried" and "man", so there is an ambiguity inherent in the equation used to set out a definition. Fine rejects a holistic approach. too fast for my liking; presumably a rejection of Quine's first dogma.
After all, we do manage to learn the use of novel words from such definitions, so there must be some way in which they work. But is that sufficient to "revitalise" analyticity? I genuinely do not see what the argument is here.
That is, I cannot see how synonymy can be used to provide the meaning of a term, and hence it's essence, since any statement of synonymy must depend on our already having the meaning of the. terms involved. Providing definitions does not get started on providing meaning.
The circularity of this does not seem to make any progress towards the analysis of meaning.
Quoting IEP
I am puzzled about the meaning of 'modal logic', so I asked ChatGPT, which came up with:
So, applying that definition to the IEP excerpt. The experession 'by modal conception' is used to denote logical necessity (is this right?) So, if this set exists, then by necessity it has Socrates as a member. But it's not essential to Socrates that he is member of any set.
I'm struggling to understand why this is significant. After all, Socrates is ostensibly a real being, it could be any person whatever. But 'a set' is a concept. When he asks 'does this set exist', the question I would pose is, 'does any set exist?' - at least, does it exist in the same sense that a real person (e.g. Socrates) exists. This is why it seems a rather artificial example, but I could be missing something basic about it.
His point is, the terms "unmarried" and "man" cannot be used to define "bachelor". In that sentence, only "bachelor" can be analytic, but not "unmarried" and "man" -- remember the parts of a proposition? Or do you remember "concepts"?
But if we say "unmarried man" to define "bachelor", then we relativise the analyticity, (not "revitalise" as you seem to say), which he has no problem doing.
Quoting Banno
Then don't use synonyms. Define the concept or describe an object and you achieve the meaning of a word or essence of an object.
Here's the last line:
See the last line I posted above.
Oh, shit. I've been staring at the screen too long. I had it down as an attempt to "revitalise" essentialism post-Quine. :roll:
Isn't that the point of such a discussion, to explore the interpretations of others? If I don't "double down" (which really means explain why I interpret things the way I do) you would have no hope of any further understanding of my interpretation. If you simply want to ignore interpretations which do not jibe with yours, denying the relevance and implications of these interpretations, restricting yourself to an investigation of the implications of your own interpretation, then why do you even need to discuss the article? Can you not simply work out its implications on your own?
Doesn't this just say that definitions are meaningful because they state what the object in question is? And that knowing what things are is the basis for creating definitions?
how are these different?
My response is: so what? What is the point?
A real definition seems to be one supposedly setting out the thing, not just the word use, and the "more" seems to be somehow transcendent of the words used.
Which makes me suspicious.
It was a nice little place. Not so much anymore.
The {Socrates} singleton is just a set that has Socrates and only Socrates as a member. The asymmetry between Socrates essentially being a member of {Socrates} and yet being a member of {Socrates} not seeming to be an essential attribute of Socrates shows (according to Fine) that a things essence cannot be exactly its set of necessary attributes.
Does that seem OK?
\My issue is with understanding the second part of the article, where apparently he argues that instead of necessity, an essence is given by a definition.
My dear other hails from there. She has a number of bearded uncles resident there although none resembling Socrates. Anyway I think I am starting to see the point, thanks.
No. This is only half correct. The quote reads:
the activities of specifying the meaning of a word and of stating what an object is are essentially the same; and hence each of them has an equal right to be regarded as a form of definition...
He concedes this much: some things just cannot be defined as what they are in themselves. For example, what's the definition of 2? You can't really define it without implicating the existence of 1 or 3 or both. That's what a definition is when we really can't say the thing in itself. Or, we can say what is a water molecule, and that should suffice as a definition.
The singleton Socrates could be defined as Socrates in himself or provide a definition of a man. (Obviously, I am not as eloquent in elucidating this point).
Quoting Wayfarer
The point is, he is arguing against the strict analycity of meaning. He rejects that the derivation of truth in logical statement gives a meaningful definition. Just define what an object is directly. That's meaningful.
I know Fine is influenced by Aristotle, and he makes an allusion to him in the paper, but here are some places where Aristotle says similar things:
(Not only modal properties, but even convertible properties need not enter into the essence.)
He also talks about the difference in Posterior Analytics, for subtle logical mistakes can occur when one mixes up modal/necessary properties and essential properties.
The Medievals who followed Aristotle called this a "proper accident" (proprium accidens):
Quoting Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I.II.Q2.A6
The idea is that mortality and rationality belong to man's essence, whereas risibility (the ability to laugh) is always found in men but is not an essential property.
I don't have much background in Aristotle, but suspect that logic has come some way since his time.
I find that some of the older philosophers are more interesting than the newer ones. :razz:
This is really a large discussion, and I think the reason so many contemporaries believe that, say, Hare is superior to Aristotle is because they have not read Aristotle and they hold to a general belief in progress, which is strong in our culture. Yet Hare is no longer taught or recognized much after a couple of decades, whereas Neo-Aristotelianism is quite strong after a couple of millennia. There are lots of reasons for this, and that's for another thread, but I am happy to see Fine challenging the modern paradigm.
If Anthony Kenny's history of Western philosophy is to be believed, then logic had a strong start with Aristotle, progressed in the middle ages, regressed in the modern period, and progressed in the contemporary period. My concern is that logic after the 14th century began to be divorced from the rest of philosophy, and this is very obvious today. Aristotle keeps things connected and in perspective, which is one of his general merits.
Quoting Banno
I am probably as unfamiliar with Kripke as you are with Aristotle, but I am willing to explain Aristotle if you are willing to explain Kripke. In school we covered some of his contributions, such as rigid designators, but I don't remember covering this idea. Do you have a link or an explanation?
Quoting Leontiskos
My understanding of Aristotle's notion of essence is that it is a given something's definition.
The first thing that comes to mind is know-how. I know-how to hammer, regardless of what the hammer is pointed at (or even what the hammer is -- animal, vegetable, mineral, or familiar tool). I don't need to know the essence of a thing in order to manipulate it. And a lot of knowledge is at this level of manipulation rather than at a definitional level. The definitions come later when you're trying to put knowledge into some sort of form which can be shared to assist in spreading the knowledge.
At that point definitions are important. They're a wonderful tool for teaching someone differences that were picked up through practice, but would be much more slowly learned without the definitions.
But because definitions are developed from practice I'd say that definitions are not necessary. (What is the essence of "thingy" in "Hand me that thingy over there"?) And if it's not necessary we can conclude definitions are not essential to knowing-how.
But I'm not seeing the conclusion very well.
I think I'd just say: I got some unsatisfactory answers to your question.
I've written a bit about Kripke elsewhere.
The article here agrees that there is a distinction to be made between the essence of an object and those properties which are necessarily true of it. It follows that the essence of an object cannot be the properties it necessarily has. I think we can take this as read.
The article goes on to proffer a view of essence based on definitions. I gather you think this a better approach, whereas I remain unconvinced. It seems to me that we do not need definitions in order to "pick out" individuals - the classic case here being Donnellan's Thales. (Chosen as much because it has some novelty here as that it is appropriate).
, it seems to me that using definitions in the place of modality does not save essences based on definitions. I don't have satisfactory answers to give you.
So taking a bit more care, I am going to say that I do not know of a way of talking about essences that is of much use, and that I am quite confident that we do not need to be able to provide an account of a things essence in order to talk about that thing.
See how that works.
Quoting Moliere
An essence is what something is in virtue of itself, and the definition describes the essence. It will also be useful to note that for Aristotle the standard beings are substances: things which exist of themselves and which possess their own mode of being and acting. So hammering would be an act of a substance, in particular an act of a human substance.
Quoting Moliere
A hammer is an artifact, not a substance, but be that as it may, we still need to understand what a hammer is before we use it. For Aristotle definition is not restricted to a means by which one shares knowledge. To understand what something is is to have its definition, and to have partial knowledge about what something is is to have a nominal or partial definition.
So when you approach a hammer for the purpose of manipulation you have already formed a partial definition of it. It is a physical object (which can be manipulated physically). It is graspable by the hand. It possesses a kind of leverage. It has a hard head which can be used to hit things without incurring damage. All of this is part of the definition, and is already implicit in one who manipulates a hammer. For Aristotle it wouldn't make much sense to say that you manipulate a hammer without some understanding of what it is.
Neither am I, and a crucial point here is that dialogue requires compromise. If you are willing to put in the same amount of effort that you expect of me, then the dialogue will have legs. If you aren't, either because you aren't interested in Aristotelianism or because we are too far apart or for some other reason, then we should cut our losses.
Quoting Banno
Are you committed to the modal view that Fine is addressing?
Quoting Banno
I'm not sure what proper names would have to do with definitions. Proper names pick out individuals, whereas (Aristotelian) definitions pick out essences, which belong to species. So naturally a definition of homo sapiens will not help you pick out Socrates from among the species homo sapiens. For an Aristotelian this is uncontroversial.
Yet we could also use 'definition' in a less strict manner, in which we are talking about descriptions more generally. In that case I think the description will be implicit in the name relation. The name will be attached to a perceptible reality,* and that perceptible reality will be susceptible to a description, particularly when one is trying to communicate the name to another. So in that sense I think the description is implicitly or explicitly needed to "pick out" individuals. If I cannot distinguish one candidate from another then I will not be capable of applying the name in the unique way that it is intended.
Quoting Banno
I am going to say that I do not know of a way of talking about a thing that does not implicitly advert to its "essence" (haecceitas - essence in a sort of individual sense). Whenever we talk about an individual we advert to its haecceity and the description thereof. But strictly speaking haecceity is not an Aristotelian notion, and is quite foreign to the Aristotelian tradition.
* Or in the case of a historical figure like Thales, it will merely be attached to a mental concept.
Not beyond a slight historical curiosity, no. As discussed, I think more recent approaches more... interesting.
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, no. I don't see what it does. Why do we need it, if at all?
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, I take them as a good place to begin. And so far we don't seem to have a common ground, a stoa in which we might have a decent chat. The logic of individuals informs the logic of predicates, so proper names are at least not irrelevant.
Quoting Leontiskos
Sounds like descriptivism to my ear. Surely not? Hence my reference to Thales, a simple case I think pretty convincing. Names do not refer in virtue of some description.
So perhaps you might share what "description will be implicit in the name relation" when we talk of Thales? IS that a way to proceed?
I don't think the modal view is correct, either. My point is that if you have no stake in either position of the OP, then Fine's argument won't be very interesting. I want to lure you out of that crevice. :razz:
Quoting Banno
Sure, so from my last post:
"Yet we could also use 'definition' in a less strict manner, in which we are talking about descriptions more generally. In that case I think the description will be implicit in the name relation. The name will be attached to a perceptible reality,* and that perceptible reality will be susceptible to a description, particularly when one is trying to communicate the name to another. So in that sense I think the description is implicitly or explicitly needed to "pick out" individuals. If I cannot distinguish one candidate from another then I will not be capable of applying the name in the unique way that it is intended."
So perhaps my first question is: If names do not require descriptions, then why are descriptions needed to communicate names? How are we to know which candidate a name picks out if not for descriptions?
I don't see that they are.
A novice who asks "Who is Thales?" does not have at hand a description of Thales, and yet they are asking about Thales.
If Thales did none of the things which are attributed to him, that would be a fact about Thales.
Reference can be successful without being associated with a definite description.
But the one who inquires about Thales already has some notion of Thales, and this should count as a description.
Contrary to your claim, the novice already has a description of Thales and he wishes it to be filled out. His description involves things like, 'Thales was a man', 'Thales lived a long time ago', etc.
So any description will do? even one that is wrong?
Supose the student thought Thales was a Spanish fisherwoman.
These are two different questions: Do names presuppose descriptions? Do names presuppose correct descriptions? My understanding is that we have been talking about the first question.
Not sure how that would help.
Again, it is not apparent to me that we need any sort of description to be attached to a name in order for it to function.
Help what? You said, "A novice who asks 'Who is Thales?' does not have at hand a description of Thales..." I explained why that is wrong. Doesn't that help? :grin:
Quoting Banno
Yes, and you gave an example to demonstrate your claim, and it turned out that your example failed to demonstrate the claim. So now what?
At the very least a name identifies an object, and makes the identification of that object communicable to others. But in order to know which object is being identified, we must have a description of the object. A name is not a description in itself, but it depends upon and presupposes a description, and this is why the act of naming and the act of communicating a name require description.
...I see you edited your post:
Quoting Banno
Then his description is partially right and partially wrong, and can be refined and corrected. But note that the novice still has a description. If someone has no description at all then they cannot use the name, for they will have no knowledge that there exists any object to be named.
This...?
Quoting Leontiskos
Sure, he has a description. That description fails to pick Thales from all the other men who lived a long time ago. So I don't see how it helps choose between them, in such a way that the student is talking about Thales... which I had taken to be the point of having a description handy.
Quoting Leontiskos
I think I've shown that this is not the case. Further, you seem now to be saying that we can know which object is being identified from any description, and not just a definite description, which I find quite enigmatic. As if "The fish nearest to Corinth" were adequate to give the essence of Thales.
No, I'm not following your argument here at all.
Names can just refer, sans description.
Sounds like Kripke. As long as the laws of causality and identity remain in play across all possible worlds, then the name that was dubbed for an individual will be "rigidly designated" for that individual across all possible worlds.
Of course, why the laws of causality or identity would have to obtain across all possible worlds would then have to be justified as well for that to be the source of how the individual is necessarily tied to that name (or if it is changed or mistaken, the name as it historically developed for that person).
One view is that a definite description sets out the essence of the individual involved. The individual just is that which satisfies the definite description. But if we do not need definite descriptions in order for proper names to work, then we do not need such essences, either.
Yes, , Kripke expresses arguments along these lines, but his emphasis, for obvious reasons, is on modality. Proper names are rigid designators that pick out an individual in any possible world in which it occurs, and regardless of it's attributes. The therefore do not rely on definite descriptions.
I decided to go back to Donnellan because it seemed to me that his, earlier, approach might cover both modal cases and Fine's use of definitions.
Yes, which I thought it appropriate to bring up ideas of Kripke's modal approach, as that is exactly what his theory is arguing against. He didn't like Russell's idea of a definite description as the basis for how names work. The main reason was the notion of contingency (opposite of necessity). That is to say, there could be some possible worlds where that definite description simply doesn't hold true. However, what would work across all possible worlds is that there was an event where that name picked out that person across all possible worlds.
My main point though against that, was not an aside or anything, but a legitimate questioning of this move. That is to say, if the definite description doesn't hold because it can't make it past "the test" of all possible worlds, why should the laws of causality (presumably the foundation for the original dubbing event of the named person), hold true either?
Quoting Banno
So I find a lot of these debates about reference come about because of oddly sticking to this idea of language pointing out individual entities. It is seen in Russell's On Denoting (there exists a unique x such that x is...). It seems to be in early Wittgenstein. I don't get why this emphasis on having to pick out a unique set of properties in an individual and it not just being a class (like it seems Donnellan allows for in attributive notions of reference). Can it just be that this is just debates on wrong initial premises causing confusion? Is there good reason Russell made this move to care for picking out individuals in the world? Is there reason to keep correcting this if that assumption is not even a good basis for names to begin with?
There might be something there, a modal argument against a causal theory of reference. But that the causal theory might be wrong does not weigh in on the argument at hand, that the descriptive theory is indeed wrong. Maybe there is a third option...
Russell was puzzling over how sentences such as "The King of France is bald" are to be understood. "The King of France" doesn't refer to anything; so how are we to make sense of the sentence? Is it false, or is it nonsense? Russell made sense of them with some rather clever logic.
It's very obvious that we do not need definite descriptions for proper names to work. We can just point to a thing and name it, with absolutely no description whatsoever.
The problem appears when we consider the fact that anything named in this way necessarily has a temporal continuity of existence (in traditional terms it is a "temporal object"), and so it has the property of a temporal duration.
This is a problem for "definite descriptions" because empirical evidence indicates that all temporal things are necessarily changing as time passes. So any proposed "definite description" would require an inclusion of the temporal changes to the object, in order to make the object identifiable at any time. Simply stating the description for a specific point in time would not suffice, because then the object would only be identifiable at that point in time, which would never coincide with "now" which always seems to consist of a duration of time.
The problem becomes even more difficult when we consider the nature of temporal existence, and the fact that the future consists of possibilities. Because the future consists of possibilities, any supposed "true" temporal extension of the object, into the future cannot be known. As Aristotle argued there is no truth or falsity concerning future events which are possible (future possibilities violate the law of excluded middle). Therefore this part of the object's description is necessarily "indefinite". This renders "definite descriptions" as an impossibility. So not only is it the case that definite descriptions are not necessary, they are necessarily impossible, and very definitely not the way that proper names work.
Quoting Banno
You ought to listen to what @Leontiskos says. Aristotelean logic was the principal, if not the only, form of logic studied in European schools for hundreds of years. It forms the foundation for all modern formal logic, other than modern mathematics which under the influence of Hegel took a different approach to Aristotle's law of identity. Aristotelian logic even provided the grounds for modern modal logic, with his insistence on an exception to the law of excluded middle for future events, and the role of the potential of "matter" in the unfolding of time. The Hegelian approach is to allow that "matter" violates the law of noncontradiction (dialectical materialism), something which Aristotle was strongly opposed to. Violation of the law of noncontradiction leaves the law of identity as completely useless, which is what Hegel argued about this law, that it is in fact completely useless.
But that is what I am questioning. I don't think this was puzzling to begin with. There exists a non-existent class (present King of France) for which no referent or predicate can even exist. This proposition is neither true nor false because of the non-existence of the class not the referent. Just recognize that there are classes of things that do not exist as a state of affairs. You'd have to be an extreme logical atomist to believe that classes don't exist, only individuals.
A brief way of saying this: A class of people can't exist, therefore an individual and their predicates in that class does not (and cannot) exist. Use universal and existential quantifiers if you want.
Quoting Banno
I would want to say that a name is intended as a unique designator, but that in fact it fulfills this reality no more than a description does. There are humorous stories of identical twins, such as the famous Bryan brothers, whose spouses will spontaneously start identifying and kissing the wrong sibling. The intention of a name pertains to metaphysics, but your point about description pertains to epistemology. Yet the day-to-day use of naming runs into the exact same epistemological problems as the day-to-day use of descriptions.
Quoting Banno
Your argument is valid, but the problem is that names don't work, at least not in the way that you purport. Names work about as well as quasi-definite descriptions work. Even the wife of a twin can fail to make his name work.
Quoting Banno
As I noted, the two questions are distinct. Of course we can talk about either one.
The point is that in order to arrive at a definite description one must begin with an indefinite description, particularly the novice who wishes to learn. The same sort of thing holds with names. In order to understand the unique referent, one must begin with a description (or a description vis-a-vis a perceptual cue, which includes pointing).
The broader point is that names presuppose description, and the description that they presuppose is supposed to approximate a definite description (because this is where the uniqueness of the referent arises). Again, this does not mean that a name is a description.
Regarding your paper by Donnellan, it leaves me perplexed (I read only the section on Thales). I find his focus on the physical existence of the referent somewhat strange. Supposing Thales never existed, it would not follow that 'Thales' has no referent. The referent in that case would be the person-concept fit to function in the philosophical accounts in question, much like the referent of "Sherlock Holmes" is the fictional person-concept created by Arthur Conan Doyle, and which is fit to function in the fictional accounts in question. Perhaps I am deviating from some modern technical sense of 'name', but deviation from overly technical senses is itself a mark of Aristotelianism. The intentional designations of real-Thales and concept-Thales are, of course, somewhat different, but I don't see this as insuperable. It is not insuperable because the two intentions overlap in the novice's class on ancient philosophy, and the raison d'être of the name is more directly tied to the latter intention.
Thanks for your interesting posts. If we want to look at Kripke I would probably need to refresh myself on his work, but the irony here is that Kripke may well be committed to the strange theory that is commonly (but mistakenly) identified in Aristotelian essentialism, namely the idea that an essence (or in this case, identity) is discernable apart from accidents and appearances.
More generally, this whole line seems related to modern philosophy's obsession with what I would want to call infallibility. "But how do we know that we are correct?" "But how do we know that a description is truly definite, or that a name truly designates uniquely?" The simple answer is that we don't. At least not with the certainty and precision that modern philosophy seeks.
@Banno
Agreed, which is why people who care about this stuff naturally gravitate to later Wittgenstein. Because then it's just about language games and use within context of a community and forms of life.
I think the project was failed to begin with. I think it's an anthropological question regarding language. Logic is a system devised within language, and not how it is naturally used. Thus, when using it to define language, it is a category error, and it's not even worth doing because it never was meant to fit in the first place. Logic is another type of language, not the basis of language.
Hear ye, hear ye! :fire: I agree so much! Granted, I can appreciate the 'linguistic' character of much of this forum, especially as it represents recent philosophy in the Anglophone world, but you hit the nail on the head.
:up: :grin:
I'd like to propose that both logicism and language-based approaches to resolving epistemic and ontological issues may not be the most productive avenues for exploration. It seems that early analytic philosophers, including Russell, Frege, and Meinong, encountered difficulties because they attempted to confine themselves to what could be expressed through symbolic logic, inadvertently missing the broader philosophical context. They began making assumptions that would have been better suited for discussion within established philosophical frameworks, such as Kantianism or centuries-old traditions. Instead, they constrained themselves within the limits of symbolic logic, which led to Russell, for instance, having to make metaphysical commitments, like his Platonic realism regarding universals and categories. These commitments might have been more aptly addressed in a more meta-philosophical context. In essence, the project of logicism became a self-imposed straitjacket.
It is intriguing how Russell, despite his comprehensive knowledge of the historical approach to philosophy (as evidenced by his work on the history of Western philosophy), opted for this somewhat restrictive approach driven by an unwavering enthusiasm for symbolic logic.
Whitehead, on the other hand, appears to have broken free from this constraint, offering highly speculative metaphysical ideas that transcended the limitations of logicism and linguistic constraints. Logicism, with its fixation on symbolic logic and language, seems to have reached a dead end.
The preference for later Wittgenstein can be interpreted as an acknowledgment that the logicism/logic realism project had effectively concluded. However, the mid to late Wittgenstein, as seen in works like "On Certainty" and "Philosophical Investigations," may introduce its own constraints, resembling the style of Nietzschean aphorisms. This writing style often reads like prophetic proclamations, as if, after arduous analysis on the part of the reader, understanding the information equates to agreeing with it.
If Wittgenstein indeed illuminated an exit from the logicism/logic realism quest for truth, it might be worthwhile to explore alternative approaches beyond Wittgenstein's. When studying language, one could heed Wittgenstein's suggestion to delve into the anthropological route. Consider thinkers like Terrence Deacon or anthropologists like Michael Tomasello, who may offer more comprehensive insights. The questions surrounding denotation often pertain to the holistic development of the body, brain, and mind over evolutionary timescales ("Great Outdoors"), rather than remaining confined within the self-referential systems of language and logic.
Yes, more good points. I am sure that we would disagree on any number of things, but on this you are preaching to the choir. I like the references to prophets and also to aphoristic writing styles.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Right. I don't have the expertise to locate the precise problems here, but when logic and language are conceived in a manner that cuts them off from external reality, and are studied in themselves, there is certainly no possibility of addressing epistemic or ontological problems.
I have recently been considering a related problem. Beginning even slightly before the Reformation we see an individualistic streak in intellectual life. There is a desire to break with the past and to carve out one's own niche. This is compounded when insuperable paradoxes moved thinkers to jettison the whole husk that contained the paradoxes and never look back. After that point the return to the older paradigms (realism, Kantianism, etc.) is a non-starter, even when the alternatives are obviously foundering.
A "philosophical schools" approach to philosophy is much different than the modern individualistic approach, and it is one that I prefer. In this case the individual is in some ways subsumed in the school, and philosophical output is intended to be a link in a long chain. Instead of prophets and augurs you have transparent claims and arguments which do not claim any special authority. There are no figureheads or personality cults. The philosophy is at the service of the school, and links past and future in a respectful way. The focus is on steady development and synthesis rather than originality. I think we have strayed a long ways from this sort of approach.
You're in a better position than me. Years ago I read a substantial amount of Aristotle in English, but that's about it.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
Is it possible to act without knowing?
That seems to be the only condition you'd accept human activity as non-essential, given that any amount of knowledge results in having at least a partial definition or some approximation of an essence.
Basically, no. Some degree of knowledge is always present. If no knowledge is present then you are not acting in a philosophically relevant way. For example, your knee might move when the doctor hits it, or you might sleepwalk, but these are not volitional actions.
And if you use a hammer then you have some knowledge about what it is, however incomplete. You will know, for example, that it is a physical object which possesses weight. If you use a word then you will have some (nominal) definition of it, however incomplete.
The modern conception where knowledge and action are two entirely different things does not hold for Aristotle (or Aquinas). There is a distinction between speculative knowledge and practical knowledge, but action still involves intellect and reasoning. Hence practical knowledge.
What, now?
Sure, the class of present kings of France is empty, but it can't both exist and not exist. Indeed, attributing existence to a class is itself problematic - what could it mean, except that the class is either empty or not? Quoting schopenhauer1
We understand what "present King of France" means... so there might have been a present King of France. That there isn't one does not mean that one could not even exist.
So what you are saying here seems misguided.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This could have been written as a summary of the difference between the Tractatus and the Investigations.
Logic is a useful tool for showing up confusions, as above.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your argument seems to be, <Names pick out things in a definite way; Description does not pick out things in a definite way; Therefore names depend on something more than description>.
The idea is apparently that description is insufficient to account for naming because names are capable of picking out a unique referent whereas descriptions are not. My response is that your first premise is simply mistaken. There is parity between names and quasi-definite descriptions in precisely the way that my account requires. The usage of a name fails precisely when the application of the quasi-definition description, which is attached to the name, fails. I could echo back to you, "Sometimes descriptions do not work. But sometimes they do," so what's the difference between descriptions and names vis-a-vis unique reference?
Well, no. Of course descriptions can pick out unique individuals, and names can be ambiguous. At issue is whether a given name is shorthand for some description, such that the description sets out the referent of the name. Presumably the description somehow is seen to set out the essence, but that's me guessing. I remain unsure of what sort of thing you think an essence is.
The Donnellan arguments show that a name may work even when the associated description fails.
And that it follows that the name's referring is not dependent on the description.
Me too. My first thought was essential oils. If it doesn't have the all important aroma, it ain't lavender. Then I thought of this:
[quote=Matthew 5:13]You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.[/quote]
And that takes me straight to 'a difference that makes a difference'. And the difference that the man, Thales, if he ever existed at all, might have made to the community he lived in, is largely unknown to us now, and almost certainly very different to the difference the tradition and stories we currently have of him, makes to us now.
But worse that that, this sort of 'sine qua non' turns out to be more about the namer than the named. There might well be varieties of lavender with no scent, but they are of no interest to parfumiers, except as weeds to be rooted out of their crop.
Presumably, under certain rules of succession, there is somewhere, a 'rightful heir' to the throne of France. but nobody cares, because nobody cares, and therefore there is no king of France. So the essence of kingliness is our caring about it???
Eh, I dont get why Russell structured his logic such that a non existent referent makes the statement false and not vacuously true. But maybe this is a problem with predicate logic and existential quantifiers as they are defined. Bilbo Baggins has hairy feet is vacuously true, and not false perhaps. Its the same as the present King of France.
Perhaps you can make a distinction of possibly true and never true. In modal logic terms, Bilbo is necessarily false and the King of France is contingently false. The reference for the King of France is possibly true. The reference of Bilbo is never possibly true. This is akin to Kripke, but deals with existence rather than identity or causality.
Existence doesnt answer questions if essence though. But it might point the way in terms of origination. Hobbits still have an essence. They are human-like folk, different from big folk and all their noise after all.
Quoting Banno
:up:
Quoting Banno
But creates its own problems. Logic is derived to solve problems but is just a tool then to clarify and not a description of truth per se. As Aristotle, Boole, Peano, Frege, Russell, and Lewis and Kripke and Tarski show just by their differences, you can break up and build up the world in any symbolic way you want!
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descriptions/#MotForRusTheDes
To a large extent it was to sort out ambiguities of scope. If anything, the situation is more complex than Russell supposed, but we've benefited from his drawing attention to it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, one ought be willing to accept the consequences of the structure you propose. So accepting a contradiction leads to explosion, which is not very helpful.
I want to circle back to this. I think you are right that anthropology is crucial. If Aristotle is correct about the nature of reality and knowledge, then anthropology will have a certain primacy.
@Moliere began a discussion of essences with the example of hammers. This is a strange move from the perspective of an Aristotelian, because hammers have no real essence. A hammer is a derivative being, a human artifact. Hammers should always be studied in relation to humans, because their existence is dependent upon humans.
In a very real sense the same thing holds of language. Trying to study language apart from man (anthropos) is a bit like trying to study hammers apart from man. For Aristotle the reason is obvious: language is an act of man, and originally an act expressed vocally. The actor is more primary than the action (even though it is true that language conditions man in various ways). Language therefore cannot be cordoned off and studied apart from a study of man and anthropology. Such an attempt leads to distortion and confusion. The same holds for logic.
(Of course philosophical anthropology and general anthropology are slightly different, but in many ways they are similar.)
I read the part of the paper relating to Thales and I find that the arguments do nothing of the sort. If you wish to try to argue for such a conclusion you will have to present actual arguments or actual quotes from Donnellan, rather than simply gesturing towards a 25-page paper. So far the only thing you have provided in that vein is the claim that the novice uses 'Thales' without any description. I pointed out why that claim seems to be false, and I don't see that you have responded to this.
I can flesh out my position a bit more by way of an informal argument. This is the same argument that was implicitly present in my first post.
* The fuller account of 'description' was given in my first post. Specifically what is needed is a set of perceptual or conceptual qualities which are used to identify the name's referent. If you actually believe that (4) is false, you will have say why the argument fails, and what alternative there is for identifying the referents of names.
I have been perusing Elizabeth Anscombes writings due to the fact that she forms a helpful bridge between Aristotelian-Thomism and contemporary philosophy, particularly in the Anglophone world. In one of her unpublished typescripts she expresses some of the exact same things I have been getting at. The essay comes from, "From Plato to Wittgenstein: Essays by G.E.M. Anscombe."
In a rebuff to Locke, Mill, and Russell, she says:
She goes on to note the way that Locke sidesteps the issue of how the referent of a name is identified, just as you are doing:
She then goes on to talk about the notion of an "identifying predicate," which accompanies a name.
She also disagrees with Russell's idea that names require existent referents in the same way that I disagreed with Donnellan's assumption that names require existent referents (and seems to be saying something very similar). I used the distinction of 'real' and 'conceptual'. Anscombe uses 'real' and 'formal'. Her second thesis is:
In defending this, she says:
Anscombe talks about the character "who was King in Britain such that the stories of the Arthurian cycle derive from or are embroideries on stories about him." I spoke about "the person-concept [...] which is fit to function in the fictional accounts in question."
Edit: A quote substantiating this dropped off the post. Here it is again.
Quoting pp. 352-3
I'm sorry that you haver been unable to identify the argument. It is quite well-known and you should have little difficulty in finding it in secondary or tertiary sources.
I am not aware of anything in which Anscombe directly addresses Donnellan and Kripke. IF you come across something, I'd be most interested.
Indeed. Well, this to me speaks to a confused ontology. It is a cleaving to an empiricism that doesn't seem to be warranted. If everything that is true has to exist, it is weirdly valuing "existence" as something that can input some sort of truth to it. But we all know Bilbo is a Hobbit, and it's true!
And this brings the bigger problems perhaps with analytics (early ones at least). By not participating in full-fledged construction of metaphysical theory (like a Kant or a Schopenhauer let's say), and only trying to restrict the level of inquiry to statements, which perhaps are filled in by de jour commitments when necessary, or by assuming a commitment (empiricism) with no other basis for it, the project becomes hollow.
It's as if you developed a computer program that does various things (but it couldn't handle certain calculations) and told me this program describes metaphysics. That's not how that works. And having a "cleaned" up version of the computer program (C vs. C++ by analogy let's say), it doesn't mean "thus metaphysics explained" either.
Analytic thinking is not monolithic. The detail here is considerable, and the gloss you give above is far from accurate.
Fair enough, replace the category "analytics" with "Russell" in particular. (Though early Witty follows him down the rabbit hole).
The converse of the issue you describe is presumably that folk such as Kant and Schopenhauer are perhaps too quick to develop a "full-fledged construction of metaphysical theory" without due attention consistency.
:up:
Quoting Banno
Well, you bring up here as to "what" we really agree on as to what is problematic. I didn't say that either. Rather, both can be true. Kant and Schopenhauer left questions to be answered, but they did not lack the condition of having a constructed metaphysical theory that provided a reason for analytic judgements in various statements about the world (for Kant his Critique and Schop his Fourfold Root of PSR, and to a broader scope the WWR).
Thus if I was to ever go back and ask as to the reasons behind their claims, I can clearly see where they were coming from. I cannot do that so much with Russell and Witty. They start from midground and don't give the background.
But to the topic of this thread, what sort of place do you see here for essence?
I think all three assumptions problematic. For the sake of simplicity, I've been focusing on the third, using Donnellan's argument. I thought that clear.
We could address the others, but I'm not intent on writing a thesis here.
Great question but it just opens up the door for writing a thesis on metaphysics and epistemology. And as you just said here:
Quoting Banno
Essence brings up ideas of realism versus idealism, empiricism versus social constructivism, necessity and contingency, and all the rest. It basically forces more than an easy answer that requires putting a lot of puzzle pieces together.
That being said, I'd have to think on it.
The essence of a thing is the rigidity with with which we designate it.
the essence of :
Frodo is the ring bearer.
King Arthur is the legendary hero of an imaginary magical realm on the pattern of Britain.
Thales is that he fell down a well and thought everything was water, and was one of the founders of Greek philosophy.
Lavender is the fragrance.
unenlightened is his willingness to make up shit on the fly.
I imagine some tedious archeologist finding the remains of a real king called Arthur, and his wife Guinevere, and some record of his reign that did not include quests or saving damsels in distress or the Holy Grail, or the round table. "Oh, that King Arthur, no one is interested in him." I would say, as if allowing that names are not always unique, while maintaining the rigidity of my designation.
But this is a confusion of a name with an individual, and it hinges on that mistaken assumption that the referent of a name must be an existing individual. Specifically, "the previous sentence is about" <concept-Thales>, or in Anscombe's Medieval language, a formally assigned name. Following her usage, I will talk about formal names and real names.
Again, there are two things attached to the name 'Thales' in the class that the novice takes on ancient philosophy. One is the formal name, which is fit to function in the dialectical philosophical narrative. The other is the real name, which specifically depends on a person who actually existed in the past. I really do think these referents overlap (although there is a primacy of the formal name in the context of the philosophy class because the non-existence of Thales will not impede the purpose of the philosophy class). But if you like we can be pedantic and keep the two designations separate. In that case the non-existence of Thales would undermine the real name but not the formal name. The identification of the formal name depends on a conceptual scheme vis-a-vis the received view about the dialectical history of philosophy. The identification of the real name depends on historical investigation. In both cases the referent is identifiable.* In the latter case the legitimacy of the name will depend on the historical investigations (ergo, it is ostensive).
Quoting Banno
It seems that I identified it just fine and addressed it earlier in the thread. To reiterate, he is wrong when he claims that the non-existence of Thales entails that 'Thales' has no referent; and he is wrong that a name must have an existent referent. Apparently Anscombe came to just the same conclusions in response to a very similar view.
Donnellan is apparently being tripped up by the fact that mistakes are possible, or that there is such a thing as an ostensive name (or that a name can be applied to a historical hypothesis). This apparently relates to @schopenhauer1's point about the errors which occur when logic attempts to dominate language. I will leave this to the side for now.
* Note that it is very different to say that "We don't know whether Thales existed," versus, "We don't know what the real name 'Thales' means or references." It ostensibly refers to a real historical person, and sufficient historical data will allow us to verify or falsify his historicity.
Yes, I also like Anscombe. I did run across an article relating to Kripke, albeit relating to his sceptical argument. It is in the same volume, and is named, "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language."
(There was another article or typescript she wrote on Kripke, but I would have to look to find it again.)
This is not bad as far as it goes. The key here is that there is a big difference between saying, "But how do you know that that definition captures this essence," and saying, "But it has no essence at all." There seems to be a lot of conflation between these two questions, where skeptics drawn to the first fall into the second. Whether the preserving quality of salt belongs to its essence is a coherent question; whether salt has an essence at all is not a coherent question. Or so I say. For once we admit that salt and sugar are different, they must be different in virtue of some real quality. They must be different in virtue of what they are; their what-ness; their quiddity; their essence.
Quoting unenlightened
The other important thing here is intention, and this is a place where modern philosophy is characteristically poor. Names with the same token obviously do not all have the same designation, else every name "John" would point to the same man. The referent of a name is therefore tied to the intention of the speaker, and I believe we must interpret names according to intention (including "formal" nameshence the unraveling of Donnellan's conundrum). It is first in the intention where the name is attached to the description (or as Anscombe calls it, the "identifying predicate").
Really? If Thales did not fall down the well, that is a truth about Thales, not about his name.
You'd have to fill this out somewhat.
And it's not that Thales doesn't exist - but that he exists, and yet none of the things we understood to be true of him are actually true. Suppose it is true that nothing we thought we know about Thales were actually true of him. That would be a fact about Thales. And this despite the unavailability of a description that is true of him.
The difficulty is that your argument simultaneously requires that the name identify and not-identify Thales:
Quoting Banno
So let's look at these three properties of the (formal) name 'Thales':
Why do you think the sentence is about Thales on the basis that (1) is true and (2) and (3) are false? How do those truth assignments ensure that the sentence is about Thales? Your privileging of the existence-predicate (1) seems arbitrary. I see no reason to believe that such a speaker would be talking about a man named 'Thales' who lived in ancient times but did not believe that all is water and did not fall into a well. In fact I think we can be confident that is not who (or what) he is talking about.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
If there is no way of identifying Thales, then of course the name cannot be used. The speaker who uses the name necessarily has a description in mind. This is the same false assumption that you gave earlier:
Quoting Banno
But the novice does have a description of 'Thales'. If they had no description they would not be able to ask the question. Specifically, if they did not believe that 'Thales' described an ancient philosopher, they would not be able to ask the question. "Thales was an ancient philosopher" is a description, as is (1).
Suppose, ex hypothesi, that the novice has no description of 'Thales'. If this were so, then what in the world do you propose they would be asking about when they ask about 'Thales'? In that case they could not be asking about a man, because if they were asking about a man then 'Thales' would have a description. They could not be asking about a previously existing thing, because if they were asking about a previously existing thing then they would have a description. They could not be asking about a name from their textbook, because if they were asking about a name from their textbook then they would have a description, etc.
So again, you are contradicting yourself in simultaneously holding that the novice has no description of 'Thales' and nevertheless uses the name in a meaningful sense.
You claim that a novice asks about Thales while having no description of Thales. I pointed out why you are wrong and I gave a number of different arguments to that effect. In response you provide nothing at all.
Now suppose that it wasn't Thales, but his friend Fred who fell into the well. So "The fellow who fell into the well" actually refers to "Fred".
It follows that all this time, while you thought you were talking about Thales, you were actually talking about Fred.
The alternative, which is now a commonplace, is that names do not refer in virtue of some associated description.
Edit: I hope it clear that in this case Thales certainly exists, but we do not have to hand a description that sets him apart, he has no "essence", so it seems, and yet we can still talk about him.
Well, it comes from Kripke because he is the bloke who developed a working semantics for modality.
Modality is the part of logic that deals with "what if..." and the like. Kripke's solution is Possible World Semantics. Part of that semantics is that proper names refer to the very same individual in each possible world in which it exists. A consequence of this is that one might specify a possible world in which the characteristics that supposedly set out the essence of that individual do not apply. Nevertheless, what they do not apply to is that same individual.
The argument from error being used here is a plain English account of that sort of argument.
Possible World Semantics gives a way of dealing with modalities that enables us to clarify quite a bit of what was obscure in earlier types of modal logic, especially that which did not progress far beyond De re and De dicto.
Not unlike the clarity that Frege and Russell brought to the ambiguity of "is" by separating out quantification, identity and predication - ?(x), x=x and f(x). There are folk not so far from this thread who have not been able to follow this, with dire consequences.
Part of the problem there is what counts as an individual? Russell was caught up with the referent. What happens if it was found the referent was fictitious? Kripke would move to say that its the causal dubbing (and its development that is traced back I guess) that is real in all possible worlds I would think and not the individual itself. But this provides for an oddly causal based realism, where only causality picks out essence (of individuals) and not individuals themselves. Something then seems off there. Its upgrading causality to a high status.
The reason I am not begging the question is because I am giving arguments. Arguments such as the following require a response:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Banno
If the definition of Thales is stipulated to be "the man who fell into the well," then Fred is Thales. We have then given Fred a second name. If the definition of Thales is stipulated to be "the man who fell into a well and who is referred to as 'Thales'," then on your account Thales does not exist, because no one matches that definition. Hence my point about predicates (1), (2), and (3). You don't seem to have a clear account of which parts of the description are thought to be necessary and which are not.
Quoting Banno
But it seems very obvious that when we use a name we are talking about something, and that if we don't know what we are talking about then we can't use the name in any meaningful sense. You don't seem to be taking this fact of experience into account. It can't simply be ignored.
The deeper problem is that your specifications are mistaken. When someone talks about Thales they are not defining him as "the man who fell into the well" (i.e. they are not assigning that as the one necessary property of Thales (along with existence)). If they were doing this then Thales would just be Fred. When someone talks about Thales they have a large number of predicates in mind, some of which are necessary and some of which are not. If historical existence is a necessary predicate then it is a real name; if not it is a formal name. To simplify and avoid the debate of the OP, we can simply say that the nominal definition aligns with the necessary predicates.
But first things first, you must specify which are necessary and which are not, instead of making wily assumptions on that score. Mistakes about necessary predicates will be decisive in undermining the speaker's intention; while mistakes about non-necessary predicates will not be. The kind of mistake will depend on the kind of predicate, as assigned in the speaker's intention. (E.g. Whether a name is formal or real will depend on what the speaker intends with respect to the existence-predicate.)
Quoting Banno
If Kripke thinks that an individual can be identified without a description then he is hopelessly confused. On my reading he does not think this, but it is apparently an implication you wish to draw out.
Quoting Nd.Edu Lecture Notes on Kripke
From the skim it seems that Kripke wants to say that proper names and definite descriptions do not have the same meaning (and this is something I have acknowledged multiple times). He tries to provide a causal alternative to "description," and his alternative seems problematic and unimpressive.
He also seems to think that the name and the description come apart in a very significant sense, and on this I disagree. If the reference of a name is fixed by its associated description, then the claim that the name and its description can come far apart involves the claim that the name and its reference can come far apart, which I think is mistaken.
The most recent thing I have read on Kripke (by philosophers who I actually take to be authoritative) spells out his misunderstanding of intention, and I can't help but wonder if the same flawed view of intention is on display in this realm (link). He apparently wants to talk about names in an objective way, apart from the subjective intentions of the speakers who are using the names. If so, this is a mistake similar to the one I <pointed out earlier>.
It may also be worth noting that I am not using "description" in any specialized sense, and that Banno introduced this term, not me. I would want to say that, primarily, names are associated with objects of perception, and that the rigidity of names pertains (primarily) to the uniqueness of such perceptions. This is why I think my example about identical twins is much more interesting than Donnellan's example about Thales. Names which are not associated with perception-"descriptions" are derivative in relation to this more primary use of names.
The discussion has moved to other considerations, but I have some thoughts here.
Aristotle is conceptually rich, so this is very much a guess in the dark:
Perhaps individual human activity, like hammering, is strange in Aristotle because he offers an ontology that has a kind of cause that accounts for the change of individuals over time such that they're still the same object while undergoing change because of the kind of object they are --- teleology. The hammer doesn't fit very well because it's not a biological entity or a natural kind -- its teleology is directed by an individual, and so its purpose is relative to the ends of not even a species but of an individual of the species. All tools are such that they are always relative to some other being's usage, and so they don't have a teleology at all -- they don't have an activity that their kind strives towards which makes them what they are.
It seems your account must have named objects without real essences alongside what has essences -- and maybe what you say here has something to do with why Heidegger used the example of hammering in putting the question of the meaning of being back on the table for philosophical investigation.
If hammers don't have essences, then what does? And on what basis are we to exclude tools from having being (or, perhaps they have being, but no essence?)?
Yes, great points. I think what you say is fairly accurate.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, for the Aristotelian they would have being but no essence.
I'm a bit pressed for time today, but for Aristotle the fundamental issue is that a kangaroo has an essence whereas a hammer does not, and this is because only the first is a cohesive thing (substance) with its own proper mode of being and acting (and this also includes teleological considerations). A hammer is an aggregate of substances thrown together for a human purpose.
A simpler example would be a horse-and-rider. A horse-and-rider is not a substance, and it has no essence. Instead it is a composite of two substances (a horse and a human rider). We can talk about the essence of a horse-and-rider in an analogical way, as if it were just a single thing, but technically this is not quite right.
I am not opposed to talking about the "essence" of a hammer or the "essence" of a named individual, just so long as we do not forget that for Aristotle there are no such essences. More broadly, it makes sense for the Aristotelian to say that the human has being in a more primary sense than the hammer does; or that the name attached to a perceptual 'description' is more primary than the name attached to the conceptual 'description' (and that the latter should take its cue from the former). Such a distinction may seem quite odd to the modern mind, but it may also be at the root of some of these issues.
I think that it's worth asking, in that case, what is the criterion of quiddity, what-it-is-ness, such that we can have names with and names without an essence? What's the criteria by which you judge an individual to have an essence? I take it your beliefs are Aristotelian-inspired, but since you're also saying "for Aristotle" it seems you may also be thinking about your account as different.
From what I read of you it comes down to whether something is a substance or is composed of substances. I'm not sure exactly how to parse that -- I put teleology as a criteria because I understand activity to be central to the essence of beings in Aristotle, and teleology is the kind of cause which is self-caused towards something -- so an olive is a seed with a teleology of becoming-tree, where its material cause is its is its plant-like embryonic structure, efficient cause would be water, soil, and nutrients, and formal cause would be the owner who planted the olives (or, in the wild, the form within the mind of God who thinks the seed-to-tree into being)
I'm going back to the four causes because it seems to me that hammers have a definition, and so I would have said that a hammer has an essence on that basis from my understanding of Aristotle's notion of essence. But you're saying that it doesn't, so I'm starting to rely upon my understanding of Aristotle's physics as a basis for differentiating what truly has a substance from that which is merely composed of substances. It seems to me that the lack of a teleological cause might be a basis for making this claim -- basically anything which is a natural kind would participate in all four causes. (the strange thing here being that the basic materials participate in teleology by having a proper place to be in the stack... which clearly goes against how we understand matter to operate today)
In PI§66 Wittgenstein, in considering the nature of games, asks us not to theorise but instead to look at how the word "game" is actually being used. We're in a not dissimilar place here, thinking "there must be something that serves to pick out the individual in question..."
But an individual can be "pick out" even in cases where the description is wrong - consider another example from Donnellan, someone at a party asking "Who is the man with the martini?" and receiving the correct reply, despite the drink not being a martini. The description may be wrong and yet still serve to elicit the correct response.
SEP lists three possible ways of fixing a referent, in addition to descriptions, and points out that they are not mutually exclusive. Some combination might well give the best account.
What is clear is that rejecting the idea that all references are fixed by descriptions does not tie one to the view that no references are fixed by description, nor to causal theories of reference.
In fending off the arguments, is obliged to take extreme measures. Hence "If the definition of Thales is stipulated to be "the man who fell into the well," then Fred is Thales". His approach cannot envision, let alone articulate, the possibility that Thales did not fall into the well, because for him "Thales" is exactly "He who fell into the well". I hope others will accept that "Thales might not have fallen into the well" is a clear enough English sentence that might even have been true.
Aristotle was a fine philosopher, "conceptually rich" as says, and well worth reading, especially on topics such as ethics. But his logic has been superseded. Leontiskos has attached himself to the descriptivist view, and thus to the supposed utility of Aristotelian logic he holds dear. He has taken the next, predictable step, when Kripke shows your argument to problematic, attack the character and authority of Kripke ().
Notice that the Kit Fine article (this is a thread about an article by Kit Fine...) does not reject Kripke's account; Fine is too good a logician to engage in anything so perilous. Instead he accepts the modal approach but tries to defend essences by accounting for them using definitions instead of necessity.
Anyway, given that the discussion has moved away from the Fine article I might leave this topic where it is.
He is not offering a criticism of modal logic, but accepting it's results while claiming that Aristotle is talking about something else.... definitions.
I have not understood how essences as definitions differs in salient ways from essences in terms of necessary properties. Isn't a definition a set of necessary and sufficient properties?
I figure there must be something in FIne's account I am missing, and hence this thread is in part an effort to elicit the missing piece.
Moore's account of essence is modal. A property P is partially constitutive of A's essence if the following implication holds: Necessarily (If x = A, then P( x ) ). That is, if x = A then P( x ) in all possible worlds.
Fine construes this as saying too much. As whatever constitutes the essence of A must characterise what it means to be it, not what being identical to it implies. An illustration of that distinction, what this means "A implies B, A, therefore B" and what "not A or B, A, therefore B" mean differ despite being semantically equivalent in propositional logic. You know that because the use of a modus ponens (the first) is distinct from the use of a disjunctive syllogism (the second) - NB, I am not talking about the use as theorems in propositional logic, I am talking about their use in a holistic sense that includes what the propositional logic encodes about our broader practices of reasoning. Like they have separate presentations, wikipedia pages etc.
This distinction manifests in the fact that the use of the modus ponens does not entail the use of the disjunctive syllogism, even though the two are interderivable in propositional logic. What gives there? It's an observation of a difference in practical language use, practical understanding, of the terms which is not reflected in the modal account.
That failure seems to come from the material implication holding over multiple worlds failing to capture the informal aspects of the connection of identity and necessitation insofar as it characterises their use. In other words, what it means for a being to be an A is different from what being an A must materially imply. And that derives from a context insensitivity in the logic whereas the essence of a thing demarcates a context it arises in and ought be understood as part of. That understanding the essence of a thing requires attending to the context an understanding of its nature imbues.
A dictionary definition is thus a bit closer to an essence than the modal account, since it tries to "minimally" specify the use of a term without all the subordinate variations that use engenders. Like listing all tautologies which it may materially imply.
Thus, rather than a metaphysical extravagance, a more definitional concept of essence is attuned to the practicalities of language use in a manner a modal logical characterisation must be blind to.
Ultimately that blindness comes from severing the connection between the target of the definition and how it seamlessly dwells in the world - beyond the words, its essence. What it means to count as a bachelor is different from what it means for a bachelor to count as an unmarried man.
So reflecting this back, Fine shows that there are necessary truths (the singleton) that are not true of the essence of Socrates, and so that the set of necessary truths is not identical to, or constitutive of, the essences. A dictionary definition might set out the characteristics that serve to differentiate an individual from other individuals - the "what makes it what it is", and these would be some subgroup of the necessary characteristics?
So the essence is some, but not all, of the necessary characteristics of the individual in question? And it can be given as a definition?
You can definitely think about it in terms of teleology. That may be the easiest way to do it. I was just trying to point out that Aristotle doesn't think about it solely in those terms, although it does play a significant part.
So if we think about it in terms of teleology (final cause), then we can see that a hammer or a horse-and-rider does not have a final cause. It is not ordered to anything in particular. It will not "go in some direction" left to itself. It seems to me that this is a perfectly good starting point for thinking about substances. An olive and an olive tree, on the other hand, do have final causes. The most obvious final cause of an olive is its orderedness towards an olive tree.
Quoting Moliere
It is true that if something has an essence then it has a definition. Trouble is, we are using "definition" in a loose sense (and therefore we are also using "essence" in a loose sense). Such loose usage is fine as far as it goes, but it does make things confusing if you are trying to grasp Aristotle. For Aristotle if we wish to speak strictly then the hammer has neither an essence nor a definition.
If we want to speak more strictly then we could talk about an understanding of a hammer. One who uses a hammer has an understanding of it and a conception of it, even if they are unable to set out that understanding in a formal description.
Quoting Moliere
You would have to say more on this.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, I am trying to stick closer to Aristotle in this conversation than I am wont to do in my general philosophical inquiry. I don't think I actually disagree with him on these topics, however. A large part of it is that we are deviating from Aristotelian usage, and I am trying to accommodate the different usage.
Thanks, great post. Related:
Quoting Introduction to Posterior Analytics, by Jonathan Barnes, p. xiii
But you missed the point, which is that your construals are the ones requiring extreme measures. We don't generally stipulate definitions in the way you are presupposing, and so my antecedent is abnormal precisely because it reflects your approach ("If the definition is stipulated to be...").
Specifically, I was replying to your claim:
Quoting Banno
This is completely wrong on my view, but if we accept it then Thales is Fred.* When I say, "The only thing I know about Thales is that he fell into a well," I am not committing myself to your synonym, nor am I committing myself to the view that "The fellow who fell into a well" is what we mean by "Thales". I think these claims of yours are altogether strange and wrongheaded. You seem to be significantly misunderstanding the meaning and intention behind the phrase of a novice, such as, "Isn't Thales the one who fell into a well?"
Quoting Banno
First, when you talk about descriptivism you are talking about Russell. You (and Kripke) are arguing against a phantom that I do not hold to.
Second, my point about Kripke is that I accept his authority no more than you accept Aristotle's. So when you cite him and simply expect to receive assent, you should check yourself. I have no respect for Kripke (and Frank's recent thread attests to the reason why). Neither do I have any special disrespect for him, and as I pointed out, the view you are here attributing to him doesn't even seem to be his. But the deeper point is that if you think Kripke is right then you have to argue for him. You don't get to merely cite him. I am doing the same with Aristotle.
* [hide="Reveal"]I said the exact same thing in my original post, and I am starting to wonder whether you are even reading my posts carefully:
Quoting Leontiskos[/hide]
Quoting Banno
One way to cash this out is to say that risibility or the ability to learn grammar supervene on rationality, and it is rationality that belongs to the essence because it is explanatorily fundamental. Thus a human being is not defined as "A risible animal" or "An animal capable of learning grammar," but rather, "A rational animal." This contains and explains the others.
Aquinas claims that, in a similar way, delight supervenes on happiness, for happiness is essentially the possession of a fitting good and not the possession of delight, and yet delight always follows upon and attends happiness such that they appear indistinguishable.
I should point out yet again that it is one thing to disagree with some real definition and another to disagree with essentialism itself. The latter is much more contentious and difficult, and would seem to involve the claim that no properties are explanatorily prior or posterior.
I think that's about right. If you think about an essence of a thing as set of properties, a candidate set must be identical to that "essence set" to count as that thing's essence. I think what Fine is illustrating is that sets of the form: {Properties P such that Necessarily(x = A entails P( x ))} are too large. Since they contain tautologies and the singleton, etc.
I think he's gesturing toward a bit more than that though. That discussion on the "source" of a "necessity" also suggests he has a qualitatively different account of necessity as a modality for expressing essence to the possible worlds one discussed in the article, and which you're using as a lens on his view.
So it seems that he believes there's some subset of the necessary (possible worlds sense) truths which are necessary (essential) to an entity's being. The "source" of these essential necessities seems to be the being's nature, as opposed to qualities like the singleton Socrates set, which derive from the whole possible world Socrates is in and the underlying logic which links statements within that world.
Attending to the "source" might limit those extraneous derive-ables and baseline assumptions, so that in specifying the necessary (essential) properties of Socrates, we'd then express Socrates' essence. In a similar manner that the authors of a dictionary exclude the set containing a bachelor from their definition of "bachelor" by expressing the essential characteristics of bachelorhood - what it means to count as a bachelor.
So I think he's firing shots at the combination of Moore's account and the modal modelling device of quantifying over possible worlds together in being used to flesh out essence. Seemingly Fine did come up with an alternative semantics for necessity, more relevant to his construal of essence, at a later date.
My prejudices come from the discussion of simples in PI, from around §46 on. What we take as a simple depends on the task at hand - on what we are doing. I read PI as a rejection of the Augustinian essentialism expressed in §1, and might roughly be expressed as a rejection of real essences.
It is not obvious that such a view is at odds with Kit FIne's essentialism.
So I am happy to talk of staying on it's own colour to be an 'essential' property of Bishops in Chess games. But doing so is not to suppose something profound about Bishops; it's just to set out what we do with Bishops.
I think your cynical self is asserting fundamental presuppositions which the article is challenging, rather than engaging with them on their own terms.
Quoting Banno
Construing understanding as epistemological is also something you're construing, there's not really much in the article about knowledge, it's about interpretation and meaning. Which I appreciate you have particular views on.
Quoting Banno
I think you can productively read it in the following manner - things have natures which constrain and partially determine how they behave. When you describe such a thing or process, that means setting out that nature in an act of understanding it The understanding of the thing or process determines which properties we express as necessary to it, that which it could not be understood as it is without. It seems there's a possibility for an error in relevance there, like the singleton containing Socrates, which (according to Fine) should not be construed as part of Socrates' essence.
Perhaps contrary to most of the discussion so far, I also think this discussion is almost orthogonal to how reference works. The intersection might be somewhere in the region of Evans' critique of a causal theory of reference that sees no place for predication or contextual cues in referring behaviours.
[hide=*] (I'm saying referring behaviours rather than reference for a reason we can get into later if it's needed, but I don't think it's required for now. Could be a bad idea for me to do this)![/hide]
Quoting Banno
It isn't obvious, I think it depends on whether you construe the properties of a thing as entirely determined by the language games they're used in, or whether the properties of a thing constrain language games they're used in. It also isn't obvious to me that there's anything Augustinian in what Fine's said, or theological.
It might be productive to think of a speech act like "I do". The essence of the speech act "I do" at a wedding might be construed like:
1) A symbolic commitment to an existing partnership, that it will be ongoing.
2) Taking on a definite legal commitments with that partner.
3) A declaration of profound and sustained romantic desire.
4) A commemoration of profound and sustained romantic desire.
5)...
Does it make sense for there to be a "real essence" of the speech act above and beyond the use of language? I don't think so, but I do think on such a basis that the kind of things that Fine might throw into understanding a concept won't just be extensional in the sense he's criticised. He wants essential properties to have a different extension, and to somehow be sourced from a thing in a (largely unspecified) manner.
The vocabulary of "flows from" he uses at one point I think has its roots in theology though, so it may be impossible - in the last analysis - to separate discussions of essence from some metaphysics.
Interesting. Thanks for the links. :up:
Quoting fdrake
I like how you said this, and especially the emphasis on the act of understanding. It seems like a recognition of the subjective aspect of the act of understanding is what is being overlooked in some of the opposing viewpoints.
I think I can see what you mean there. Though I read it the other way - how Fine is using the vocabulary of essence makes meaning "thingly" or "concrete" - puts the locus of sinigication/expression closer to the described object or act. Like the essence of Socrates is constrained by who Socrates was. Whereas how @Banno, I think, thinks of meaning precludes putting the "locus of expression" anywhere near a described object or act, since objects do not express, acts of expression do. And the acts of expression for Banno don't 'contain', 'reference', 'represent' or 'engender' some underlying hidden 'meaning' of the entity, since the meaning of a speech act is only ever its use in a discursive context, not an object or process which may be considered (relatively) independently of a (range of) discursive contexts.
Maybe. I don't see much by way of an argument in favour of essences, a reason that we need take them into account. I agree, of course, that our language games are constrained by the way things are, although that way of expressing it lacks a certain symmetry that I take as central it's not just that we are constrained by the world, but also that we also constrain how things are by our speech acts. Here, I'm not thinking of Sapir-Whorf, so much as of money and boarders and social status, the paraphernalia of our social lives. So I usually prefer to talk of our language being embedded in the world, something akin to a form of life or confirmation holism.
I'll also here make note of FIne's own argument against names having a sense, the novelty of which is what drew me to reading more of his work. I started a thread on the Bruces, but it garnered little attention.
The SEP article on reference gives four approaches, but I think there are good arguments against all. Descriptions we have talked about here. The causal theory remains incomplete; rules in language are more post-hoc rather than proscriptive, leaving intent as a strong contender mostly by default. Reference seems to function despite, rather than because, of each. And we should keep in mind that often referring expressions fail to refer. So I find myself again in rough agreement with Davidson, that reference has a function only within broader theories of truth (or meaning), and there can be no coherent theory of reference per se.
And i continue to think this leaves essence orphaned.
Yeah I don't think the article makes a particularly involved positive case for essence. It's very much a prologue. I think he wants to blow open a hole and pour a different flavour of essence in. More blowing here, less pouring.
You got any links to more systematic treatments of his account? I'll look into your Bruces thread. Fine's arguments against names having a sense, included. If he believes that my Evans comments were way off mark, I think!
That's fair. I suppose I was thinking more of reference than Fine's article. For example, apparently for Russell or Donnellan if the referent of a name does not exist then the speaker is denoting nothing. Similarly, according to your article from Gareth Evans, Kripke's target and Kripke's response both possess a strong focus on objective uniqueness. For the theory which he targets, the speaker must have a unique description if they are to denote; and for his own "theory" a causal explanation is meant to safeguard the uniqueness of the referent.
So we see these objective impositions: that a referent must exist in order for a name to denote; that a speaker must have access to a unique description if their name is to denote; and that a causal explanation is the proper way to identify a unique referent.
For the Aristotelian I should think that there is a much stronger emphasis on intention and a kind of subjective encounter with the object. For an Aristotelian like Anscombe, there is no reason why the referent of a name needs to exist in order for denotation to occur. For Strawson the idea that the speaker must have ready access to a unique and accurate description is a non-starter. I'm not even sure the Aristotelian account of cognition is going to allow for the level of objectification that someone like Kripke seems to desire. This tangential disagreement about reference may relate to significantly different accounts of knowing.
Was it intended to? Remember that the discussion of essences and definitions was transplanted from a different thread at your request, and was never motivated by Fine's article (link). Fine's article is critiquing the received modal account of essences. He is saying, "A is a better [account of essences] than B." :wink:
Quoting Banno
I also want to leave the topic, but it never "moved away from Fine's article." It was never about Fine's article in the first place.
Well, he did that, in that I had more or less taken Essence as a dead end, but what we have here gives it a bit of freshness. It harks back to some of the stuff I did on Individuation in my Honours year.
I would have said that our discussion of essences commenced here: ; before moving over to the other thread, where it sat uncomfortably under the heading of "belief". I don't think one can read Fine as rejecting modal accounts of essence, so much as refining them. Otherwise one would be rejecting the conception of essence as necessary and sufficient... do you want to go there, too?
This must have been a typo given the referent of the link.
For my part the discussion of essences and definitions never had anything to do with Fine's article. I only mentioned Fine's distinction a few times in the belief thread, before we started talking about essences and definitions. It seemed clear all along that you were not committed to the modal view that Fine is addressing ().
Quoting Banno
But modal logic does not have a copyright on the word "necessary." To speak about a modal account of essence is not to speak about any account of essence which utilizes the concept of necessity. Here is an example of fdrake making the proper distinction:
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, fixed. The link should be to your first post on this thread. Point being that the topic here is essence, and the other thread is about belief. Moot.
Quoting Leontiskos
Hmm. Any account of necessity that as incompatible with modal theory would need a pretty substantial defence. Fine's is certainly in line with modal theory, but at one stage you seem'd to reject Kripke, which would be very brave in this context.
So where now?
Now I'll leave you to it. :victory:
Me either, which is what I was trying to get at by asking for a criterion of quiddity.
As I'm reading Fine a definition is necessary, because Fine accepts the argument that if something is not necessary then it is not essential, but necessity is not sufficient.
Or, if we're going by way of Aristotelian essence, then I'm not sure "sufficiency" is the conceptual mark we should be using at all (hence my divergence into Aristotelian causes for determining whether something named has an essence at all)
But I believe you, @Leontiskos, have started to give an answer here:
Quoting Leontiskos
A definition is a true description of an essence, which is a property which is explanatorily prior to other properties, including the necessary ones (like the Singleton Socrates). "Prior" is unspecificed at this point, but that's the beginning of something: definitions are meant to explain something, and the explanation is one of a priority of properties.
@Leontiskos do you accept the argument that if some predicate is not necessary of a name that then that same predicate is not an essence of the name? (only asking because then we could add to this list to say that essences are necessary, though there are necessary predicates which are not essential)
Yes, this is correct. Your care is appreciated.
Freewheeling a bit, I would say that for Aristotle the purpose of a definition is twofold: to denote an essence, and to distinguish things from each other. These are related, but the latter has more to do with scientific taxonomy than the former. If two real definitions are identical (and correct in describing the essence) then the "two" things that they define are just the same thing. If two things are different then they will have different essences (and different definitions). I would want to say that the idea of sufficiency has to do with this second, taxonomical motive (i.e. the nominal definition should distinguish sufficiently).
Fine's article is very subtle, and the very fact that you can "run" essentialism on modal logic means that his argument is tangential to essentialism. He's not wrong, but I don't think it will be fruitful for someone trying to understand essentialism for the first time to get lost in that abstruse debate.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, but more concretely, things like risibility, the capacity to learn grammar, and delight.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, you are right about this.
The question about explanatory priority is a good one. "Explanation" (or "cause") usually translates aitia, for example:
Barnes gives a rather long explanation of why he translates "explanation" rather than "cause". To simplify, I would say the term spans both ontology and also linguistics/theory, such that the twofold purpose above is attainable.
I was looking around for freely accessible material on this topic. I did find something which is free, even if its accessibility is questionable. The article is technically arguing for realism against nominalism, but it also spends a good deal of time on definitions:
Quoting Daniel Wagner, The Logical Terms of Sense Realism, p. 53
Wagner defines differentia earlier. They are essential attributes which differentiate from other things in the same genus:
Quoting Daniel Wagner, The Logical Terms of Sense Realism, p. 27
I am still intrigued by this comment of yours, which is quite informative. It seems to be one of those cases where Humean nominalism and British empiricism flow together like oil and water. The attempt to limit oneself to the "discursive context" collapses on itself whenever an act of expression expresses an object. For example, a proper name is a 'rigid designator' which means that the object it identifies is ostensibly unique, and accounting for the manner in which one identifies such an object inevitably draws one outside the "discursive context." The meaning of a proper name is incomplete without some account of the way that proper names are used to reference real objects.
Just an idea out of leftfield, Graham Harman had the notion of "withdrawal" and a "hidden" aspect of objects. Objects "withdraw" from other objects and retain their hidden essence that can never be perceived or have interactions with other objects. The parts that have interactions (direct or indirect) he calls "vicarious causation". Vicarious causation is basically the ability to influence other objects, via their surface qualities.
From ChatGPT:
I guess that goes back to the sense/reference discussion you were having with @Banno earlier. Specifically whether/how reference leverages concepts or practices that are (often) exclusively associated with sense.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't read Fine to be talking about reference in the article, relationships between the sense/reference distinction and essence/definition relation look "downstream" from the issues in the article.
Quoting Leontiskos
I agree with that, even though it's outside the scope of the thread. I believe that any speech act which refers does so on the basis of a history of use outside its immediate context, and how the referent is individuated+interpreted is informed by that history and the referent's nature. So I believe that the association of names (like "Socrates") with referents (Socrates) is done through an interpretation+individuation of the referent, and that the discursive contexts which refer to that referent must keep associating a "sufficiently like" (weasel words) interpretation+individuation of the referent to fix+continue that particular sense/referent/reference relation.
Though there's a rub. Like if you and your friend are having a disagreement about whether the blegbleg really is a shmooblydoo or a bigglewiggle, another friend observing the disagreement can successfully refer to the blegbleg by aping their reference, even without their own understanding of the blegbleg's sense, conditions of individuation, or its real nature.
How does that rub relate to the thread? Who knows, it just seems to.
When we use "essence" do we mean the defining feature of the referent, or the defining feature of meaning of the word referring to the referent? I think there is a difference. One is metaphysical, the other is logic/linguistic. That is to say, for example, in Harman, the "essence" of an object is always "withdrawn" or "hidden" such that it cannot be interacted with. Therefore, it cannot be defined, but its influence is felt through its causative interactions with other objects, so we know there is an echo of "something" within the object that "Makes it that object". But you see, this kind of inquiry becomes about the object in question "itself" (the referent), and not about how we necessarily refer to this object. One requires a metaphysical inquiry, the other an epistemological one based on linguistic use.
Good posts. I think that by "essence" is meant the defining feature of the referent. I think those who prefer Wittgenstein would take the latter approach that you outline.
I myself am not convinced that linguistic use can be so heavily separated from metaphysics. After all, much of our language is referring to things in themselves. I recently listened to Gregory Sadler's video on Wittgenstein. One of the things that came across was the idea that Wittgenstein was a sort of towing truck for English-speaking philosophy, helpful for getting it out of the ditch but not a very reliable vehicle in himself. That seems like a reasonable assessment.
- The description of Harman is interesting, and I think there is a lot of overlap with Aristotle. I will have to look into him.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't think Aristotle or Aquinas would speak in such a strong way, but the idea is definitely present in their work. Understanding and defining essences is tricky business, always in need of revision and open to further precision or correction.
A basic question here is: What provides the surest starting point? Harman's objects? Aristotle's substances? Wittgenstein's linguistics?
I think object/substance is the prima facie answer, but if someone like Wittgenstein sees Hume blocking that path they will seek a different route. Of course there is no reason we can't have both. Thinkers like C. S. Peirce or John Deely are two examples of men who had both, in spades.
Yes, it does go back to that. Perhaps I should have resisted Bannos desire to move that topic into this thread, for it is a rather different topic than the one Fine is concerned with. On the other hand, your post was comparing Fines Aristotelian essentialism to Bannos linguistic approach, which is also different than the topic of this thread. I suppose that is what I was responding to.
Quoting fdrake
That seems reasonable, but of course the devils in the details.
Quoting fdrake
I would have thought ...and the referents nature was meant to circumvent such a rub. But that rub does bother me when it comes to the Wittgensteinian meaning-as-usage idea. On a related note, meaning-as-usage seems to dovetail with the burgeoning ChatGPT movement, fueling the erroneous notion that because AI is able to mimic usage therefore it is using language in the same way that humans do.
Quoting fdrake
Be at peace. It is said that moderators are not held to a higher standard. :wink:
But if we really wanted we could draw it back to the thread by opining that when the modalist assesses the nature of language, his necessary properties miss the mark of a true definition and thus erroneously admit the ChatGPT AI into the group of language users. In a way, usage is a necessary property of meaning, and always attends and reflects meaning, and yet to define meaning in terms of usage is a misunderstanding of the essence of meaning (along with the sources and plasticity of languages). The blegbleg example shows why the meaning-as-usage account misses the mark.
Great posts, by the way. Is there a thread where I can ask about your philosophical background?
This video might help as a good jumping off point for a Harman's view of objects. Perhaps we can have a discussion on it? As I do think it more than indirectly deals with essences, by way of defining objects and their ontology.
What I think is interesting here is that Harman treats all objects the same, or what he calls "flat-ontology". That is to say, supposedly "physical objects" and "abstract objects" big and small can be treated as their own entity. The Dutch East India Company and a quark are not in any hierarchy, and humans have no privilege as to "for-the-observer".
I also think that his idea of "undermining" and "overmining" an object is useful here. Undermining would be reducing to separate constituents. Overmining would be how it is related to every other thing, more-or-less. There is some midground where you get the object.
If you start a discussion I will watch the video and contribute a bit, but my time is running short at the moment so I can't commit to too much.
I have been pondering Michael Sugrue's claim that Anglo-American philosophy starts from the external world and can never manage to bridge the gap to the mind, whereas continental philosophy starts from the subject/mind and can never manage to bridge the gap to the external world. He makes it, for instance, in this video on Husserl at 44:59. It seems like this discussion is somewhat related.
Aye. I was too ambiguous to pin down my own position, and don't even know it - going down to brass tacks.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yeah that makes sense. I think we'd proceed better by going into tangential discussions at this point. But I'd not be interested in pursuing them without a detour, onto the original path, through more of Fine's work.
Quoting Leontiskos
Perhaps does. It seems like I can refer to my friend's blegbleg successfully even though I have no interpretation of its nature, and I could not tell a blegbleg from a non-blegbleg, based on a property or otherwise. I suppose whether that should go into a theory of reference is itself up for debate. Maybe because reference can work without the speech act "invoking" the referent's nature, a theory of reference might not need to talk about a referent's nature at all. But a theory of reference "fixing" might need to talk about that. I'm not convinced they can be pulled apart in that manner, and that might be a question of what you expect a theory of reference to explain in the first place... So many forking paths.
Quoting Leontiskos
I can just tell you. The only philosophy background I have is in scientific inference - so logic and statistical theory + methodology work. The research I've done has been fundamental in that intersection. Not fundamental in terms of importance, of course, but in terms of abstraction. So learning "conceptual analysis" has been useful.
Also studied philosophy a bit as a student. Yours?
Indeed, a lot of philosophy can revolve around this issue. I've listened to some of his lectures and generally like his survey of the philosophers, though I thought he was a bit too dismissive of Schopenhauer due to his pessimism. But fairly enough, I think he does that to all the philosophers giving his critiques as he goes. It's easy to try to psychologize Schopenhauer and his philosophy, but if one reflects internally, one sees the logic of much of Schop's project in WWR.
But anyways, to the broader point, much of philosophy revolves around how it is that the world exists without an observer, or sometimes formulated as a human observer. It would appear that idealists like Kant have priority of the representation before anything else can be posited of the world. Realists are willing to speculate about the world, not caring how representation formulates the empirical evidence, per se. That is to say, most forms of "realism" seem to essentially follow the lines of the scientific method for picturing the reality. However, this quickly becomes problematic when we factor in the fact that there is already an observer in the equation. It becomes quickly a "naive realism". For most layfolk, this is not a problem. They go back to watching their sports, going to their jobs, eating their food, etc. However, for philosophy-minded people, this should give great concern. So, the next move is to figure out some way that it "exists" in some way. Of course, the great debate in the middle of this is the Hard Question of Consciousness. However, excluding that major issue (which really is at the center of it, once all is said and done), you have small contingents like the so-called Speculative Realists (like Harman), who try to speculate about a reality beyond human conceptions of it. It is speculative because it obviously can never prove that reality, but it is believed one has the ability to speculate from the perspective of the human. They are not allowing this to hamper their ability to speculate.
It is a de-emphasis of both phenomenological approaches (like Husserl let's say), who only focus on what can be "known" via human cognition, AND linguistic approaches (like Wittgenstein), whereby one can only focus on what can be "said" via human language. Is this misdirected? Well those two schools of thought might say it is because they say that you can never get beyond the human. Thus metaphysics proper is almost impossible for them it would seem.
This is an incorrect formulation of the ontology-epistemology question, which I've seen quite often. With the "How is it that the world exists" you really mean to ask "how is it that we know that there's anything that exists. Very different questions.
Your question, as you posted it here, is about the "why" does the world exist. Epistemology deals with our knowledge of existence. Which one are you asking?
I'm not sure how you are getting a "why" from the quote. I think we are saying the same thing? I can't really see where your critique is coming from, and if it's just a misinterpretation. As I stated the problem:
Quoting schopenhauer1
So is there a problem with the word "how" or "without an observer" or "that the world exists without". In other words, where is the "incorrect formulation" stemming from, and why do you think it implies a "why"?
You are combining both the questions about whether the world exists (or whether there is existence) and how do we know that the world exists.
"How is it that the world exists without an observer". Asking this question entails that existence depends on our knowledge (the observer).
Tell me, are you asking "how do we know the world exists?"
Sounds Fine to me. Is there a particular part or aspect of Fine's article that you are interested in discussing?
Quoting fdrake
I am inclined to doubt this, although it depends on what we mean by 'refer'. On my view not knowing something prevents you from referring to it. Suppose I get into a conversation with my mechanic and starting using the word "catalytic converter," despite having no idea what it means (I am feigning competence). In this case we are both using the token 'catalytic converter', but in entirely different ways. Now if language is for communication then this is a failure of language. Even if I manage to fool the mechanic for a few minutes, no substantive communication is taking place.
I recognize that Anglo-American philosophy is keen to promote the idea of objective meaning, apart from the mere intention of the speaker. That's fine, but I would say that we can only prescind so far from intention and private knowledge. In my conversation with the mechanic intention and private knowledge come to the fore, and it seems that the term 'catalytic converter' when found on my tongue cannot be referring to a real catalytic converter, because I have no idea what a real catalytic converter is.
At best the ignorant person's working definition of 'blegbleg' or 'catalytic converter' seems to be, "That thing that my interlocutor knows about." It is the same in the earlier example about the novice who inquires about Thales.
Quoting fdrake
Okay, interesting. But you've obviously delved into philosophy given that you are able to discourse on a number of different philosophical topics with relative ease. For example, your interpretation of Fine seems quite apt, and your analysis of the debate between Banno and creativesoul was very cogent. Are there other philosophers or traditions that you have picked up along the way?
Quoting fdrake
I took an undergraduate degree in computer science, and then later took an undergraduate degree in philosophy along with some graduate work in theology. But the only field I have formally worked in is computer science. The philosophy was in large part a kind of analytic Thomism (Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle often in the sphere of analytic philosophy). But this was years ago and much of it feels rusty.
I am not saying that the world doesn't exist without an observer (necessarily), but the explanation of what that is (ontologically).
I agree. Sugrue is good although overly critical at times, but his criticism is usually evenly distributed.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes - much of modern philosophy. :smile:
Quoting schopenhauer1
I found this to be good and interesting. I welcome this sort of approach in our day, these realist attempts to overcome the divide that Sugrue talks about. In fact I find myself on the same page as this reviewer, both in his commendations and his criticisms.
There was <a thread> that ended up getting into Lloyd Gerson's work a bit, particularly his paper, "Platonism vs Naturalism." Anti-physicalism reminds me of Gerson's anti-materialism, and anti-smallism reminds me of Gerson's anti-mechanism. The opposition to "anti-fictionalism" and "literalism" don't have parallels in Gerson's article, but I also sympathize with these tenets.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Right, these were interesting ideas as well, and I think "overmining" relates to Fine's article to some extent. A lot of this resonates with Aristotle.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I wonder if it comes from the idea of speculative knowledge (as contrasted with practical knowledge). His argument against scientism is basically the idea that science is only concerned with practical knowledge, and the obvious alternative here is speculative knowledge. In that sense "speculative realism" could be something like "realism as an attempt to understand reality, with no ulterior motive."
Along these lines, I agree with the author in his wariness of Harman's attempt to see nothing unique in human thought:
Quoting schopenhauer1
For a classical realist like Aristotle or Aquinas, "realism" means realism with respect to universals (this is Gerson's anti-nominalism and anti-skepticism). The crucial idea here is that the human mind is capable of knowing reality as it is, and this is precisely where modern philosophy in all its forms departs. This inevitably leads to positing certain things about the human intellect, such as that it is immaterial due to its ability to comprehend material realities. (Interestingly, the one point in the video where Aristotle is brought up is with respect to knowledge of singulars, and on my view this is crucially related to this thread. It's a rather complicated topic, though. (link to Aquinas' view).)
Now the Speculative Realist seems to be committed to the view that the human mind can know reality as it is, and therefore I don't see how they can remain neutral on the question of the nature of the human mind (and the uniqueness of the human mind as an object).
---
More generally, a problem I see with so many modern philosophies is that they are largely reactionary, reacting to other philosophers' views on very limited and discrete issues. "A related problem is that such individuals basically started with a critique, and then interpolated their more systematic views on that basis of that critique" (). I hope Harman is careful about this, because there is a danger of reacting to current problems in philosophy rather than setting out an ontology that can stand on its own.
The other broad problem in modern philosophy seems to be a simplistic subordinationism. The approach is often mathematical, where one seeks a perfectly stable starting point and then attempts to derive all of the rest from that point. Once the starting point fails the philosophy is thrown into abeyance, and remains in abeyance. Aristotle really doesn't do philosophy this way, and it is a deep merit of his work. I wouldn't call his approach coherentism, but there are all sorts of different footholds, accessible from different directions and different realms of inquiry, and the system is not reliant on a single point or first principle. Neither is there an overemphasis on epistemology.
Anyway, sorry for the choppy and meandering response. The posts deserved more time than I had. Thanks for sharing the video. :up:
Indeed, in a sense the idea that something tangential to the object itself (causal connection or the set of itself or something like that), seems to miss the mark perhaps with these modalists? There is a level at which the object is and overmining and undermining can be tricky not to miss it altogether.
Quoting Leontiskos
Good point. If I remember, his ideas are influenced by Heidegger's idea, but a completely object-oriented inverse of it. Heidegger I think stays within the correlationism of the "human being". It's also clearly has some Aristotlean/Medievalist influences (vicarious causation for example).
Quoting OOO Wiki
Quoting Leontiskos
Yep true. You can almost see the break in approach at Aristotle vs. Plato as the seeds for later analytic vs. continental traditions.
Meaning what?
What is existence without an observer? Whats the relation of observer with the world. These kind of things.
"Stuff" is what exists without an observer. Actually, reality would be reduced to two-dimensional world without an observer. Do you agree?
I'm not going to make a commitment on any of those, but as you see, the question is open-ended and perplexing.
Nope. Further work though - truthmaker semantics. I don't know owt about it and would need to do homework.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't know how to define reference. Or what the conditions for successful reference would be. Let's say you said "There's a problem with the catalytic converter", and you didn't know what the catalytic converter was, the mechanic could go and look for the car's catalytic converter. While you didn't have the car's catalytic converter in mind while saying "catalytic converter", it would not have stopped the mechanic from interpreting the word and finding what it, in fact, designated.
In that regard "catalytic converter" would allow someone to manipulate what was designated, even if you didn't know anything about what was designated.
An example I was thinking of is "Can you send me a link to that website you mentioned last night?" when a friend had told you about one website last night, but you can't remember what it was or what it was about. "that website you mentioned last night" refers to that website the friend mentioned last night, and they could pluck its URL out of their internet history.
I suppose what I'm saying there is that a sufficient condition for a speech act to contain a successful reference is that the referent of the referring token can be acted upon. And if that suffices for a successful reference, it would thus suffice for a reference (simpliciter).
And where I'm going with that is that because that sufficient condition can be satisfied without an understanding of the catalytic converter, or the website's, essence, a speech act can contain a reference without requiring its doer understand the referent at all, never mind its essence.
Though that doesn't tell you whether the reference relation between the words "my car's catalytic converter" and the car's catalytic converter could be sustained or set up, even in principle, without there being an understanding of a (not just my) catalytic converter's essence. Even if not by the speaker.
When I hear "meaning is its use", I sometimes see this as a normative statement, and not a descriptive one. If everyone were zombies, and/or if no one had an internal understanding of a word that roughly corresponds to the concept, but its use (outward behavior way they expressed and acted when they spoke or heard the word) was always correct, would you really say that people understand the "meaning" of a word?
I tend to understand what Fine is arguing for better than what he is arguing against, and that's where my homework would lie. Ideally if I am going to discuss Fine I would need to interact with someone who is committed to what he is arguing against.
Quoting fdrake
Whereas I claimed that language is for communication, you seem to be claiming that language (or at least reference) is tied to action ("the referring token can be acted upon"). That's a fairly significant difference.
Quoting fdrake
So in this case I want to say that miscommunication is taking place, not communication. The action is based on that miscommunication, and will therefore be futile (or accidentally lucky). This is because the purpose of the customer's assertion is not being realized, given that they do not know what a catalytic converter is and therefore have no basis for their assertion. It seems to be a kind of lie. The lack of communication would seem to undermine the action. (Unless you are thinking of a case where they have a rational basis for their claim and are not merely feigning competence. For example, perhaps they have it on someone's authority that the catalytic converter is malfunctioning and they are simply conveying this opinion to the mechanic.)
More concisely, in order for someone to respond to a piece of information with action (such as 'checking the catalytic converter'), there must first be reliable information. Yet if your source is not actually communicating, then they cannot be providing reliable information; and if they do not understand what they are saying then they cannot communicate. But I'll leave it there for now. Perhaps you had the rational-basis case in mind, rather than the feigned competence case.
Quoting fdrake
I see this as a quite different case than the case of feigned competence, because real communication is occurring. In this case the speaker has real knowledge of the referent, even though that knowledge is incomplete. "That website you mentioned last night" is an adequate description with an adequate referent. The partial knowledge is necessary in order that the friend can supply the remainder of the knowledge, by sending the URL. This gets into Aristotle's theory of knowledge, where new knowledge is always something like a furtherance of knowledge, and that in order to learn some additional thing we must already know some previous thing (i.e. knowledge cannot be grounded in mere tautologies).
I don't know what the essence of reference is, so to speak, I broached it the way I did to try to find a speech act containing a successful reference which "piggybacked" on another's successful reference. Can you give me one instead?
Quoting Leontiskos
Aye I agree with you that it's obfuscatory. Where I'm coming from is that I'd have difficulty being able to imagine it as an obfuscation if we didn't recognise that "my car's catalytic converter" indeed did refer to my car's catalytic converter, and that I was bullshitting in ignorance of this fact. If we assumed that "my car's catalytic converter", in this instance, did not refer to my car's catalytic converter, on what basis would we be able to say that the mechanic - when grabbing the converter to check - displays an understanding of the car's catalytic converter which we lack?
I'm trying to say that how reference works is in some sense orthogonal to communication. Because communicative speech acts, and non-communicative speech acts, both can contain successful references.
Quoting Leontiskos
What is it about the partial knowledge that
"catalytic converters in cars can break"
"my car has a catalytic converter"
Which goes into
"I think it's the catalytic converter"
which distinguishes it from the website example?
I would say that in the website example knowledge is present, and this knowledge also involves knowledge of the referent. If I have a partial description of a website and I want to learn the exact URL, then I can provide my friend with the partial description in order to learn the exact URL. Metaphorically, my partial description is a sufficient key to unlock the door to my desire. In this case my knowledge of the referent is sufficient in order to use the term well and achieve my goal.
In the car example knowledge is not present, and this lack of knowledge also involves a lack of knowledge of the referent. One does not possess knowledge that "There's a problem with the catalytic converter" once they know both that "catalytic converters can break" and "my car has a catalytic converter." The partial description possessed is not sufficient to use the term well and achieve the goal, and this is because there is no knowledge. Or rather, the knowledge present is not sufficient; the description of the referent is not sufficient for the problem at hand. The partial description is not a sufficient key to unlock the door to the desire. One will be wasting the mechanic's time.
(So the difference lies in sufficient knowledge for successful use.)
Now this isn't a complete answer, because it does not spell out the way in which knowledge relates to reference. The rough idea is that some cases require more knowledge of the referent than other cases, and the one who knows the referent perfectly is licensed to use the term in any case whatsoever. The one who has no knowledge of the referent at all will likely not even possess the term.
Quoting fdrake
That's fair. I now understand what you were doing. So is it sort of like the case I set aside above? Where they "have it on someone's authority that the catalytic converter is malfunctioning," even though they do not know what a catalytic converter is?
(I will leave this case aside for the sake of length.)
Quoting fdrake
I think the obfuscation will come home to roost when the mechanic checks it, finds that it's fine, and then asks why we think the problem lies in the catalytic converter. Embarrassed, we might then admit, "Actually I don't even know what a catalytic converter is, or what it does." At that point the mechanic will realize that what I meant by "catalytic converter" is a great deal different than the thing he checked.
And there seems to be a nested obfuscation here. The first obfuscation/ignorance lies in "the problem," which we are ignorant of but pretend to know. Yet in order to feign competence we are required to obfuscate more concretely, by proposing a concrete solution to the problem that we do not understand.
Quoting fdrake
But what is an example of a non-communicative act that contains successful references? Perhaps we are disagreeing about what constitutes a "successful reference" of the catalytic converter. Would we at least agree that the mechanic would not count it as a successful reference? And that the mechanic is the one who most knows the referent?
I suppose you can successfully refer to the blegbleg in certain ways despite not knowing the referent. But is it a full absence of knowledge, or simply a dearth of knowledge? For instance, I can successfully ask what a blegbleg is with limited knowledge, but I cannot discourse on blegblegs with limited knowledge. That requires a better understanding of the referent, much like my point about Thales ("Suppose, ex hypothesi..." ). The idea is that there is a correlation between one's knowledge of a referent and one's ability to communicate regarding it.
I tend to conceive of words as signs, and signs are triadic. For example, when we talk about apples we have the sign, a-p-p-l-e, the signified, namely a particular kind of edible fruit, and the interpreter who assigns the signified to the sign. If two or more interpreters make the same sign-signified assignments, then they can communicate with one another. There is obviously more to be said, but this is the very basic structure.
Once this is in place I think it becomes clear why a speaker needs to know what their words mean (if they are to communicate effectively). The mechanic example also becomes clear, for a sign can be carried from one interpreter to another interpreter by means of a non-interpreter. This is precisely how encoded or encrypted messages work. One could also get their hands on a sign without understanding its public meaning, and then use that sign to influence the actions of others (but in a somewhat haphazard and unpredictable way). For example, suppose there was a foreigner in Germany during the World War II era, who did not speak German. They may have ascertained that the words, Heil Hitler, allowed one to move more freely in the country, yet without having any understanding of what the words meant in public usage (and what they meant to those he was interacting with).
It appears that you manufactured the discussion in the previous post since you're addressing Tim Wood, and it doesn't look like he contributed to this thread.
What's going on?
@tim wood?
This badly misrepresents not only my view, but those of Russell, Quine and Donnellan. has a history of this sort of thing.
Perhaps Leon's post is in the wrong thread?
Oops. This was a PM. I wrote it out so that I could preview it, and I accidentally posted it here instead of in the PM. I've deleted it, but I will leave the part about Banno if he wants to dispute it.
This, after I had explained only yesterday how we can give such sentences a truth value using free logic. And of course, the example is a common one in model logic, in which "Thales believes everything is made of water" can be true on some possible world.
This goes to deepen my conviction that Leon has only a minimal grasp of the logic in use here. For him logic stoped in the middle ages. Which is not to say that his points are not of interest, it's just that it is difficult to make sense of them in terms of more recent developments.
Nor is there a monolithic Quoting Leontiskos
Russell and Quine were superseded by Kripke and Donnellan, and the discussion is ongoing.
A mod is welcome to delete the whole mixup.
(My edit <here> is somewhat explanatory of what was going on.)