Back in Europe

I'm leaving Brooklyn for some days, in order to participate in the Metaphysics Workshop in Ovronnaz (Switzerland) and the 2007 Joint Session in Bristol (UK). Looking forward to seeing lots of friends there!

Rigidity for Predicates and the Trivialization Problem

I've just learned that this paper has been accepted for publication in Philosophers' Imprint. Thanks to everyone with whom I dicussed it in the last years!

Vagueness in St Andrews

I'm back in St Andrews, for some vagueness-related events: John MacFarlane's visit, the 2007 Arché Academic Audit, and the Vagueness Conference.

Oh, I was missing Arché tempo!

The Atheist's Nightmare: The Banana

Thanks to Aidan's the boundaries of language, I've just been enlightened. Just irrefutable.

Worlds and Times Enough or Locations?

(X-posted from the Arché Weblog.)

Some time ago we discussed Andy Egan’s ‘Second-Order Predication and the Metaphysics of Properties’ (AJP 82 (2004), 48–67), at the St Andrews Metaphysics Reading Group in a couple of sessions.

In the paper, it is argued that properties should be identified with functions from worlds to extensions, as a way of solving the following problem: If properties are sets of (possible) instances, things that exist in more than one world can’t have any of their properties contingently. Properties like being green exists in more than one world, but have some properties contingently: being somebody’s favourite property.

Then, although more tentatively, it is argued that properties should be identified with functions from worlds and times to extensions, as a way of solving the following problem: If properties are functions from worlds to extensions, then things without temporal parts can’t have any of their properties at some but not other times. Properties like being bent don’t have temporal parts, but have some properties at some but not other times: being coinstantiated with being hungry.

I think I am generally sympathetic, but I was concerned that the same kind of reasoning would also motivate that properties should be identified with functions from worlds and times and places (or locations, for short) to extensions. After all, (i) “Second-order predication” of properties such as having many instances around seem to pose similar problems to the world-time proposal, by being possibly true at some places but not others; (ii) there seem to be parallel cases of spatially self-locating attitudes; and (iii) the response to Lewis' concern seems similarly effective as to defend the world-time-place proposal from the charge that these are relations rather than properties.

Any views?

Issues concerning Women in Philosophy in the UK

Jennifer Saul has just announced that the Society for Women in Philosophy UK now has a mailing list. Anyone who is interested in issues concerning women in philosophy in the UK is welcome to join. To do so, go to < http://lists.shef.ac.uk/sympa/info/swip-uk>. If you're not a member of the University of Sheffield, you'll need to get a login and password first, which takes mere seconds. You can do this at the left-hand side of the page.

Are Factive Verbs a Myth?

I’ve just came back from 2007 Rutgers Epistemology Conference. The one that interested me most was Allan Hazlett’s ‘The Myth of Factive Verbs,’ winner of the 2007 Young Epistemologist Prize and forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. I’m afraid I disagree, however.

Allan argues against the orthodox view among philosophers that certain two-place predicates—‘knows’, ‘learns’, ‘remembers’, and ‘realizes’, for example—are factive in the sense that an utterance of ‘S knows p’ is true only if p, that an utterance of ‘S learned p’ is true only if p, and so on. He presents two consideration aimed to constitute a prima facie case against orthodoxy, and then discusses and rejects certain arguments in favor of orthodoxy.

I found the two considerations less than fully compelling. The first depends on the contention that “if the orthodox view is true, then we should expect the claim that all known propositions are true to be obvious to anyone who knows the meaning of ‘knows’” (p. 2). But on the face of it, this seems to unduly equate something like ‘analyticity’ with the obvious: the fact that ‘remembers’ or ‘sees’ might not be obviously factive for some competent users is clearly compatible with their being indeed factive all the same. As to the second, and as pointed out by several people in the discussion at Rutgers, it seems to depend on a too narrow conception of the phenomenon of loose talk.

It would be argued, however, that if the typical arguments for orthodoxy fail, this is remarkable regardless of the issue as to whether there is or not an antecedent prima facie case against it. The main one discussed by Allan is quite straightforward:

The appearance of contradiction. Someone who says ‘I know p, but not-p’ contradicts herself. Therefore, knowledge is factive. Mutatis mutandis for learning, remembering, realizing. (p. 6)

To which he replies:

‘I know p, but not-p’ is not contradictory, but an utterance of it is Moore paradoxical—to know that p is to believe that p, and ‘I believe p, but not-p’ is paradigmatically Moore paradoxical. (p. 6)

One typical way of arguing that ‘I believe p, but not-p’ is not contradictory, however, concerns the fact that is aproblematically OK when turned into the third person: ‘She believes p, but she’s completely wrong: not-p.’ In the case of ‘know,’ by contrast, it sounds exactly as bad as the original first-person version: ‘She knows p, but she’s completely wrong: not-p.’

Allan anticipates this objection, and says:

In §4 I outline what I think are some correct proposals concerning the pragmatics of the use of ‘knows’—and there I maintain that an utterance of ‘S knows p’ typically implies that p is true. I think this goes some way towards explaining why ‘S knows p, but not-p’ often sounds improper. (p.6)

Section §4, however, offers a "Gricean" account of the “implication” which exploits that knowing requires believing and a sufficient quantity of epistemic justification for one’s belief. But even in cases where S clearly satisfies both it would still sound contradictory to assert ‘S knows p, but not-p.’

Schaffer on Furnishing Functions

(X-posted from The bLOGOS.)

In a part of ‘Ontological Anti-Realism’ which I didn’t comment on (§§8-11), David Chalmers considers an objection against anti-realism based on the idea that the absolute unrestricted quantifier has an objective, determinate semantic value. I don’t want to assess his response to the objection here (see related discussion here, and references there).

In order to analyse existence assertions, however, he tentatively introduces the notion of a furnished world—an ordered pair of a world and a domain—and a furnishing function—a mapping from worlds to domains—(see the end of §8).

In his comments to the paper, Jonathan Schaffer objects:

The argument for heavyweight realism about fundamental structure: Furnishing functions are maps from a world to a domain. But a function is a map from one structure (‘the input’) to another (‘the output’). One cannot have a well-defined function without there being some articulated structure to the input. In particular we must be able to specify the arguments of the function. Any function is either complete or partial. It is either injective or not. It is either surjective or not. None of these classifications would make sense unless the input (‘the world’) already comes with some fundamental articulated structure inbuilt, to feed into the function. … I conclude that the framework that Chalmers actually supplies is at least half-realist, in the sense that it presupposes heavyweight realism about fundamental structure. (pp. 2-3)

I am probably missing something here. For I understood that a furnishing function was a map from the class of worlds to the class of domains, whose arguments were precisely just worlds. Thus I don’t see why there being such mappings requires in any sense any “articulated structure” in the items to which the function is applied. Can anyone help?

'Philosophy' at the Uncyclopedia

Here. Awesome ;-{)}!

(Thanks to Teresa for the link.)

How to Respond to Borderline Cases

It seems that Hannah and her wife Sarah may disagree as to whether Homer Simpson is funny, without neither of them being at fault. This is an uncontroversial (enough) case of apparent faultless disagreement. Whether such an appearance of faultless disagreement is to be endorsed—or even whether it could be endorsed—is, of course, a matter of controversy. But that such appearances exist is, I take it, a datum for non-relativists and relativist alike.

Some philosophers seem to think that vagueness should be included: borderline cases provide further cases of apparent faultless disagreement. But this, however, does not seem to be so. Take Jason and his husband Justin, and consider a borderline green towel. Typically, I submit, they would not respond to it by taking a view as to whether the towel is green or not. They would simply lack the judgements that they would naturally express in an ordinary context by asserting ‘The towel is green’ or ‘The towel is nor green’ with its literal meaning: rather, if questioned about it, they would easily converge in something like that ‘it sort of is and sort of isn’t,’ ‘it's greenish,’ etc.—and they would be rational in so doing. But then they would lack the building blocks for the appearance of faultless disagreement clearly present in the other case considered above: the (contrasting) judgements. Hannah and Sarah do typically form polar opinions with respect to issues such as whether Homer Simpson is funny; Jason and Justin typically do not form such verdicts with respect to issues such as whether the towel is green.

So this is in essence why I think that vagueness does not provide further cases of apparent faultless disagreement: with respect to borderline cases, people typically do not respond by taking a view—unlike what is the case in genuine cases of apparent faultless disagreement. I have written a paper trying to provide further considerations in favor of this claim. Comments and objections very welcome!

Disjunctions, Conjunctions, and their Truthmakers, again

I have just learned that my discussion of Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra’s ‘Truthmaking, Entailment, and the Conjunction Thesis’ has been accepted in Mind (on condition that I make a minor change).

The piece originated itself at the blogosphere, and benefited from discussions at The bLOGOS and (in Spanish) at the GAF Blog. Many thanks to Benjamin, Glenda, Ezequiel, Gonzalo, Jiri, and Joan!

Any further suggestions and objections are, as usual, very welcome.

Against Truth-Value Gaps?

I’ve been reading Michael Glanzberg’s ‘Against Truth-Value Gaps’ (link to penultimate version, page references to the published version). I found a lot of interesting stuff there, with much of which I agree—inter alia, that the point of assertion is to convey information, and that thus one should assert something in a context only if that would be (true and thus) true or false, in that that context.

As to the main point, however, I’m not sure I got it. I had my worry at the very first pages, and it was not mitigated in the subsequent fortysomething, so I guess there is probably something very basic I am missing. Any help appreciated.

The main claim of the paper is that

that there are no substantial truth-value gaps. There are some phenomena that appear like gaps, but they are importantly different. There are faux gaps, as I shall call them, but no substantial gaps. In particular, attention to the role of context dependence, and the ways in which utterances of meaningful sentences can fail to express propositions in some contexts, provides a rich theoretical basis for explaining away apparently substantial truth-value gaps as merely faux gaps. (p. 152)

A substantial gap occurs, or would have occurred, when something that is apt to be true or false—including utterances, interpreted sentences paired with context, and propositions—fails to be either. (p.151)

I am a bit uneasy with talk of propositions in this context: too many (subtly but crucially different) things might be meant, so that one has always to make explicit which one one is interested in—which might be held to make the usefulness of the notion at best debatable.

But never mind that, here is the worry: any “faux” gap seems to be a substantial gap, in the envisaged sense. Take a “faux” gap case, where an utterance of a meaningful sentence “fails to express a proposition” in a given context. Thus the utterance or, better, the (interpreted) sentence at the context fails to be true or false. As, admittedly, these are things apt to be true or false—unlike shoes and ships and sealing wax—, this would be (also) a substantial gap.

Rigidity for Predicates and Overgeneralization

What is it for a predicate to be rigid? The following seems to be a plausible straightforward proposal. Inasmuch as rigidity for singular terms concerns sameness of signification across possible worlds, so does rigidity for predicates: a predicate is rigid iff it signifies the same property across the different possible worlds (and is flexible otherwise). This I call the simple proposal about rigidity for predicates. It is arguably suggested by Kripke himself in N&N, and seems to be tacitly assumed in discussions in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, or metaethics.

However, it has received a number of criticisms in the recent literature. Among them: that it is unduly committed to the view that predicates signify entities like properties (the signification problem), and that it would trivialize the notion, by covering any predicate whatsoever (the trivialization problem).

I have written a paper defending the simple proposal from another objection. Although the objection is not usually formulated sharply, nor clearly distinguished from the trivialization concern, the idea behind it seems to be that the proposal would overgeneralize, by covering predicates for artifactual, social, or evaluative properties, such as ‘is a knife,’ ‘is a bachelor,’ or ‘is funny.’ And this despite the fact about the (relative) “unnaturalness” of the properties signified. Hence I label it the over-generalization problem. Recent proponents of this objection include Schwartz 2002 and Haukioja 2006.

My paper has been conditionally accepted in Synthèse, and I plan to write the final version in the next days. All comments, suggestions, and objections more than welcome ;-{)}!!

From Boise to SF

The metametaphysics conference in Boise has ended. Although I was not particularly active myself, I’ve really enjoyed it, both in format and content. I really wish people adopted the “pre-read papers” format more often, at least concerning small-medium sized conferences on specific topics. Having the papers in advance, and having much more time devoted to comments and discussion seem to go necessarily for the good of it!

I hope I’ll post more about it, both here and at The bLOGOS. But right now I’ve confirmed that one of the things that a fuller version of my paper should include is a comment—indeed, a complaint—about people in the field often equating analytic with trivial or philosophically nonsubstantive ;-{)}!

More importantly, I was re-reading in the plane Josh Parsons’ very interesting paper against analytic universalism. In my view, this represents a much more serious challenge for the view than those I have already discussed. I really look forward to think more about it as soon as I am back.

Now my first APA!

Analytic Universalism

(X-posted at The bLOGOS.)

I've put toghether in the form of a very brief note the considerations against the considerations against the view I propose to call Analytic Universalism, from discussions here, here, and here. Hopefully I could get some feedback from the participants at the INPC 2007 conference on metametaphysics.

Comments very welcome!!!

What Are Precisifications? I

I’ve been reading the first section of Achille Varzi’s ‘Supervaluationism and Its Logics,’ forthcoming in Mind.

According to him, there are at least two main options as to how exactly the notion of a precisification is to be cashed out:

“(1) One option is to construe a precisification of our vague language, L, as a precise language in its own right. (This is how David Lewis and Michael Dummett put it, at least in some of their works.) From this point of view, to say that L admits of several precisifications is to say that L is really many languages, a cluster of several (homophonic) precise languages whose semantics are only partially in agreement: our practices have simply failed to uniquely identify the one language that we are speaking. Correspondingly, to say that a statement of L is supertrue (for instance) is to say that it is true no matter how we suppose L tobe identified, i.e., no matter which (homophonic) variant of our statement we consider.

(2) A different, more popular option is to construe a precisification of a vague language L as a precise interpretation of L. (This is how most authors see it, from Kit Fine to the later David Lewis to Vann McGee, Brian McLaughlin, and Rosanna Keefe) Here the idea is that the grammar of our language is in principle compatible with countless interpretations, countless models each of which is logically adequate in that each assigns an extension to every predicate constant, a denotation to every individual constant, etc. Our linguistic practices and conventions are meant to select one such interpretation as the intended one, but they may fall short of doing the job properly. Correspondingly, to say that a statement of L is super-true (for instance) is to say that it is true no matter how we suppose the job to be done properly.”

As he himself anticipates, one might worry this to be a distinction without a difference. I do not find completely compelling the considerations he offers in response—and hope to post on it somewhen.

Here I just want to reckon that option (1) seems to me to be heterogeneous. In particular, one could adhere to a conception of precisifications as precise expressions (and languages) without necessarily reserving the expression ‘languages’ for precise ones—and thus in particular without being committed to the view of ordinary “languages” as clusters of (precise) languages.

Google and Vanity

I've just learn here that Ross is first hit when you google "essentiality of origin." I am pleased to announce that, after some tries ;-{)}, I've discovered that I am first hit for "vagueness as semantic indecision." (Ok, admittedly not the most straightforward label for the view, but still...)

If you're proud or amused of being among the first hits for some particular locution, please feel free to share it. And no, nobody's gonna believe you've never googled your name!

Chalmers, Meta-Metaphysics, Existence, and “Analyticity”

Finally I am going to participate in the INPC 2007 conference on metametaphysics. The list of people there is huge, and I am very excited about it—I hope to finish my paper in time for that!

I have been reading Dave Chalmers’ ‘Ontological Anti-Realism.’ There is a lot of interesting stuff, and I hope we discuss it at length soon in the Meta-Metaphysics e-Reading Group at The bLOGOS.

One thing that surprised me, however, and which connects with the discussion I had here and here, is the following paragraph:

“The absolute quantifier expresses a primitive concept, if it expresses any concept at all. Because of this, it is extremely implausible that ampliative conditionals involving the absolute quantifier, such as ‘If x and y exist, the sum of x and y exists’, or ‘If there are particles arranged heapwise, there is a heap’ could be analytic. It is unlikely that they are true in virtue of the concept of absolute quantification, because that concept is primitive and unanalyzable. It is unlikely that they are true in virtue of the concepts ‘heap’ and ‘sum’ alone, in part because they have logical consequences that do not involve these expressions. And it is unlikely that they are true in virtue of the concepts of absolute quantification and those expressed by ‘heat’ or ‘sum’ together: this combination might at best yield nonampliative analytic conditionals, such as ‘If there is an object made of particles arranged heapwise, it is a heap’, but not ampliative analytic conditionals.” (§7, p. 24)

For him, the conditionals are ampliative

“roughly in that the consequent makes an existential claim that is not built into the antecedent. (That is, the consequent is not a logical consequent of the antecedent, where we take an expansive view of logical consequence such that for example, ‘If x is a father, there exists someone who is an offspring of x’ is a logical truth.)” (§6, p. 18)

With this understanding of ‘ampliative’ it is indeed plausible that ampliative conditionals are not analytic, for being analytic would make them logical truths, in the relevant sense, and thus nonampliative.

The question, of course, is then which reason could be provided for the claim that the relevant mereological statements are not analytic; i.e. are “ampliative” in this sense? And the question is pressing, given that

‘Whenever there are two things, there is something which is a sum of them.’

does seem to be relevantly like related mereological statements such as

‘Whenever something is a proper part of another, there is something that is part of the latter but not of the former.’

‘Whenever two things overlap, there is something that is part of both.’

which, most would agree, are indeed “analytic” (and thus "nonampliative") in the relevant sense.

Spring Term in NY

After a longish hiatus, the new term is starting here. I am participating in Achille Varzi’s seminar on vagueness, Hartry Field & Jim Pryor’s Mind, Language, Etc 2007 seminar and Stephen Schiffer’s seminar on meaning and the apriori. I would expect some of the posts to be on issues raised in these.

A Meta-Metaphysical Taxonomy: The Sematic View vs (True) Dismissivism

The MetaMetaphysical e-Reading Group at The bLOGOS is getting busier and busier! (See there posts starting with ‘MM Bennett’ and ‘MM Sider.’)

Thinking about these issues, here is an abstract of a paper I plan to write after the break.

In the last couple of years, there has been a renewed interest in issues in meta-metaphysics on the nature of certain apparent disputes in metaphysics. The underlying worry seems to be that some of them are merely apparent disputes in metaphysics. In this paper I defend that there are two quite radically different ways in which this can be held to hold—although they are often not sharply distinguished in the debate.

On the one hand, one might hold that the disputes are indeed genuine, but of a semantic rather than metaphysical character. This I label the semantic view. I offer a criterion for identifying them, compare it with some alternatives by Bennett, Chalmers, Hirsch and Sider, and illustrate it with the dispute between defenders of the so-called “supervaluationist” vs almost-identity solution to the problem of the many.

On the other hand, one might hold that the apparent disputes are merely apparent, given that the views allegedly under dispute turn out to be, in a certain sense, equivalent to each other. Following Bennett’s terminology (although not her way of explicating the position), I propose to label this (true) dismissivism given that, by contrast with genuine semantic disputes, there is indeed something to be dismissed, if the apparent disputes turn out not to be genuine. Again I offer a criterion for identifying them, compare it with some alternatives by Bennett, McCall&Lowe, Miller, Sidele and Sider, and illustrate it, although more tentatively, with the 3D/4D dispute about persistence.

These two positions are in contrast with regarding the disputes as genuine and metaphysical in character (which I illustrate with the dispute between universalists and restrictivists with respect to composition). But I hope it will transpire the significance of the way they differ from each other vis-à-vis the kind of attitude that seems vindicated with respect to them.