Roderick Chisholm’s ‘Philosophers and Ordinary Language’ (1951)

Roderick Chisholm seems to suggest that in terms of the word ‘certain’ everything is only a matter of (prior) stipulation, not about which language is correct (whether that of the philosopher or ordinary language).

Take the case of the epistemologist who uses the word ‘certain’ to refer to “a type of cognition which it would be logically impossible for any man to have (177)”.

We may immediately ask what the point of such a cognition would be if it were “logically impossible for any man to have” (177). Indeed in what sense would it be cognition at all if no man has ever experienced one?

In any case, this usage would be ‘incorrect’ according to ordinary language (or only according to Malcolm and/or G.E. Moore?). Despite that, even if the epistemologist’s use of ‘certain’ is incorrect, it is still the case that “we have not refuted him” (177). What we've done is to show him that he's misusing ordinary language; not that what he says is (necessarily) false. However, if the ordinary language defender is prepared to admit that what the epistemologist says about certainty isn't actually (necessarily) false, why would he also insist on calling his use of the word ‘certain’ incorrect? Doesn’t this create an unacceptable disjunction on the ordinary-language speaker’s part? Can we make this separation? –

1. The epistemologist misuses the word ‘certain’ according to ordinary language.
   
2. What the epistemologist says about certainty, not the word ‘certainty’, may well be true.

It's the case that

“now we understand [the epistemologist], we are no longer shocked by his statement that 'certain', in his sense, does not apply to beliefs about furniture”. (177)

Is that simply because we understand his stipulative definition (if it's only that) of ‘certain’? Or is it that we may also concede that his account of certainty may well be true? After all, Chisholm claims that “we are no longer shocked by his statement”. That seems to suggest that it's okay to be shocked by his incorrect use of the word ‘certain’; though not to be shocked by his (possibly) false account of certainty itself. (Isn’t this like the complaint to the BBC which instead of criticising a comedian for his racist jokes; criticised the comedian’s split infinitives which he used while making his racist jokes?)

Chisholm himself recognises this dis-juncture between truth and correctness when he writes that

“we now see, what we had not seen before, since, presumably, our beliefs about the furniture do not have what he calls 'certainty'” (177).

Now we have two possibilities.

1. That our beliefs about the furniture aren't certain. Or,
   
2. That our beliefs about the furniture aren't certain; though only according to the epistemologist’s stipulative definition. (According to our own definition, they're still certain.)
   

Despite my setting up a choice between 1) and 2) above, Norman Malcolm thinks that both 1) and 2) are false. There's no according to about it! If the epistemologist’s statement is paradoxical, which it is according to Malcolm and perhaps also according to Chisholm (though that wouldn't make it automatically false to him), then it “cannot… not be false” (177). That is, it must be false. It's false because it's not an example of ordinary language. And, according to Malcolm, it's paradoxical for a very specific or particular reason. It's paradoxical because “it asserts the impropriety of an ordinary form of speech” (177). That doesn't necessarily mean that the philosophical statement explicitly “asserts the impropriety of an ordinary form of speech” by being meta-linguistic (as it were). It may implicitly assert such an impropriety simply by what it says or by going against the rules and forms of ordinary language. In fact Malcolm himself suggests that the implicit assertion is more likely in the philosopher’s case. The fact that his statements are really “disguised linguistic statements” may be “concealed from himself as well as from others” (177).

Despite the psychoanalytic undertones of what Malcolm says about these ‘paradoxical’ statements, philosophers have always been keen to uncover what we really mean by discovering, for example, the logical form or suchlike of an utterance. Malcolm just turns this venerable tradition on its head by instead of telling us what the plebeians really mean, he tells us what the (paradoxical) philosopher really means. (What does Malcolm really mean when he says that the paradoxical philosopher really means X? And what did I really mean by what I've just said about what Malcolm really means?)

Chisholm then gives us a synoptic account of Malcolm’s position on what paradoxical philosophers really mean:

1. First we show that the philosophical statement isn't really an “empirical statement”. That it doesn't concern the ‘empirical facts’.
   
2. From this it will follow, according to the theory, that the philosopher is really trying to tell us something about language.
   
3. Then, with the philosopher’s disguise thus removed, an easy refutation is at hand (178).
   

From that chain of reasoning we can conclude that the paradox-merchant is really a philosopher of language. But that isn't quite right. He is, in fact, only a linguistic philosopher who “is really trying to tell us something about language” (178). This is a strange conclusion because the linguistic philosophers of old would have been the last type of philosopher to say anything that was even remotely paradoxical – or at least they would have never intentionally have said anything paradoxical. Of course we all know that the paradox merchants that Malcolm had in mind (like Russell, McTaggart and even A.J. Ayer) were far from being (mere) linguistic philosophers, even if some of them did take language and its role in philosophy seriously.

*) An interesting example of Malcolm’s disjunction of truth from (linguistic) correctness is supplied by Chisholm.

Chisholm says that even though Columbus knew that the earth is round, if he “wanted to teach his children the meaning of the word 'round' he would never cite the earth as an example” but would refer instead to “peaches and olives”. According to Chisholm, Malcolm holds that

“this would not show that Columbus was using language incorrectly, since in this case ordinary people were making a mistake and Columbus was not”. (176)

1. "The earth is flat." = a correct ordinary-language statement from the time of Columbus.
   
2. ‘The earth is flat.’ = a ‘mistaken’ ordinary-language statement from the time of Columbus.
   
3. ‘The earth is round.’ = an incorrect ordinary-language statement from the time of Columbus.
   
4. ‘The earth is round.’ = a true non-ordinary-language statement from the time of Columbus.
   
5. ‘The earth is round.’ = (?) a true statement which uses ordinary language incorrectly from the time of Columbus.
   

According to Malcolm, even the true statement expressed in 4) would be ‘incorrect usage’; whereas 1) would (only) be an example of ‘mistaken usage’ (i.e. because it states a falsehood); though not one of ‘incorrect usage’.

20th-Century Causation (in Broad Outline)

Why is causation seen as so important in (analytic) philosophy? Well, think about all the causal concepts there are: ‘produce’, ‘yield’, ‘generate’, ‘result’ and so on. These causal concepts alone could produce a vast amount of philosophical analysis. For example, when you produce baked beans is it the same as when one produces a conclusion to an argument? When an equation yields a solution, does it do so in the same way in which a mechanism yields a product? Is the result of an inference the same as the result of a football match? What do all these causal processes (if they are all causal) share?

As Jaegwon Kim puts it:

“If we cleansed our language of all expressions that involve causal concepts, we would be left with an extremely impoverished skeleton of a language manifestly inadequate for our needs.” (411)

Surely one can go further than this and say that there couldn’t be a language at all without any causal concepts. And if that's the case, we couldn’t speak or even think at all – at least not in the way in which we speak and think today. This isn't a surprising conclusion if you accepts the very basic fact that causation is something that occurs at almost every moment of our lives – indeed, it's something we do and are involved in at every moment of our lives.

At this very moment, I'm causing these words to appear on the computer screen. There are causal processes going on in my mind or brain. I can hear the radio, and that is a causal process which involves sound-waves impinging on my ears and entering my mind which will itself bring about mental causal processes. There are even causal processes going on deep within the computer mouse which I'm using while typing these words.

Because of all the above, we can say that “causation is intimately tied to explanation: to explain why or how an event occurred is often, if not always, to identify its cause, an event or condition that brought it about” (411). However, when we explain a causal process, we may not always use the word ‘cause’ in our explanation. We may not even use causal words like ‘generate’, ‘produce’ and so on.

For example, when I say that “John killed Mary” I don't use the words “John caused the death of Mary” or even a causal word like “John brought about the death of Mary”.

We can even argue that nearly all explanation is causal in nature.

There are exceptions.

If I ask you to explain why 2 plus 2 equal 4, that explanation will not be causal in nature. Similarly, if I ask you to explain why you believe that 2 plus 2 equals 4, your explanation will not be causal in nature. If you were to explain to me your belief in God, perhaps that couldn't be a causal explanation – at least not a completely causal explanation.

Causation is of such fundamental importance in science because “knowledge of causal relations seems essential to our ability to make predictions about the future and control the course of natural events” (411). If there were no strict and universal causal relations between events and which were fundamental to the constitution of objects and conditions, then we could never predict that if I were to do X, Y would occur after doing X.

We predict all the time. We must predict all the time. And without causation, there could be no predication at all.

We also require the existence of casual processes which are universal in order to control events and the course of our lives generally. If causal regularity were not a reality, then when I switched on the light I could never expect the light to go on as it had done the day before. What happened yesterday may not also happen today without causal regularity. Is it any wonder that David Hume called causation “the cement of the universe”?

Causal Event-Types

What is a singular causal relation?

It is a causal relation between two individual events?

Thus can we see that causation on this account occurs between events, not between objects, conditions, facts or anything else? In terms of a causal relation between two individual events, such a relation “must be covered by a lawful regularity between kinds of events under which cause and effect fall” (411). At first we stressed events; now we're stressing the kind of event/s involved in a causal relation. An example of a kind of event would be a car crash or the kicking of a football or a natural event like the wind blowing the leaves on a tree.

J.L. Mackie on Causation

According J.L. Mackie, a “cause is a condition that, though insufficient in itself for its effect, is a necessary part of a condition that is unnecessary” (411). That means that such a cause, on its own, will not bring about the effect. However, without the condition, the effect would not happen. Thus it is necessary; though not sufficient in and of itself.

Thus if I put a lighted match to gas, it should cause that gas to light – though only if there is oxygen in the air. The gas would not light without the lighted match. So when the gas is actually lighted by that match, the match light was necessary. It was not sufficient because oxygen in the air is also necessary. (We can also say, here, that it is also necessary, in a negative sense, that there is no wind in the air.)

However, Mackie’s last explanation is harder to immediately grasp. He argues that such a condition “is a necessary part of a condition that is unnecessary” (411). This means that although the cause, the lighted match, is necessary, though not sufficient in this case, the overall condition itself is unnecessary because the lighted gas could be caused by another set of necessary and sufficient conditions.

For example, it could be caused, in theory, by a spark off a machine of some kind. Again, if that were the case, that spark off a machine would also be necessary, though not sufficient in that this condition too would require other conditions such as the presence of oxygen and the lack of wind.

All this in itself shows us how complex causation can be; especially if we think in terms of a single cause causing a single effect.

Donald Davidson on Extensional Causal Events

Donald Davidson believes that causation “is an extensional binary relation between concrete events” (411). It's extensional because it's about concrete events in the world. More than that, it's extensional because it doesn't matter how that causal process is ‘described’.

This seems to mean that description is intensional in nature. Or at least that the description will involve intensional idioms of some form.

What does it mean to say that description is intensional or that causation is an extensional binary relation between concrete events regardless of how these events are described?

Perhaps if I describe my lighting the match to light the gas in this way: “I decided to light the match.” Here, I suppose, the predicate ‘decided’ is intensional in nature in that it is a propositional attitude which can't be extensional in nature. Perhaps all descriptions also involve a viewpoint that is by nature intensional in nature. The very fact that I say ‘I want to light the case’ involves the intensional term ‘want’. Is it also the fact that these examples are explanations and explanations are intensional or, at least non-extensional?

Jaegwon Kim says that “causation differs from explanation, which is sensitive to how events are represented” (411). Explanations explain causation; though explanations are evidently not themselves examples of causation. This is clear.

The non-extensional aspect of the causal explanation is that it is ‘represented’ and here ‘represented’ must be an intensional term. The extensional reality of causation must be what that causation is regardless of minds or descriptions or representations. More correctly, the only things that will be referred to in a fully extensional account of a causal process are the concrete conditions, processes, events and objects which take part in that causal process.

We can say, then, that a causal explanation will contain a Fregean ‘sense’ – it will not be fully extensional.

How do we talk about causation without representations, descriptions and senses?

Wesley Salmon on Causation

Wesley C. Salmon argues that the “traditional view to which the causal relation holds between individual events covered by a law is fundamentally mistaken” (411). This appears to be an argument against Donald Davidson’s (amongst others) position. It also appears to be against the general scientific view and perhaps also the position of the layperson.

What is Salmon’s position?

He argues that “processes, rather than events, must be taken as fundamental in understanding causation” (411). One’s immediate reaction to this is to say that either processes are events or that ‘process’ is a synonym of ‘event’. What is the different between an event and a process?

Kim writes that the

“basic problem of causation, or 'Hume’s challenge', is to provide a principled distinction between genuine causal processes and pseudo-processes, processes that, although they exhibit regular, even lawlike, connections between their elements (like the successive shadows cast be a car), are not real causal processes” (411).

Firstly, not all connections between events or processes are examples of causal ‘processes’. Even if these events “exhibit regular, even lawlike connections between their elements”.

For example, every time I open the window an owl may coo. This may be a coincidence. But even if it is not a coincidence that my opening the window makes the owl coo, this still may not be a real causal process in that at one time, in the future, or even the next time, the owl does not necessarily coo when I open the window. It may learn to ignore my opening of the window. Thus this would show that the connection between my window-opening and the owl cooing is not a ‘real’ causal process. There could, in theory, by a real causal connection between the two; though that would need to be established by investigation.

Michael Tooley’s Singularist Account of Causation

Let us now take Michael Tooley’s ‘singularist account’.

Tooley

“rejects the assumption underlying most attempts at an analysis of causation: namely, that causal facts supervene on noncausal facts – that is to say, once all noncausal facts (including laws of nature) of a world are fixed, that fixes all the causal facts as well” (411).

This seems to imply that ‘causal facts’ are explanatory facts in that they are a superadded facts about noncausal facts. That is, the noncausal facts are not, in themselves, causal in nature. The causal facts ‘supervene’ on the noncausal facts.

It's interesting to note that the laws of nature are also seen as noncausal in nature (on the ‘traditional’ reading which Tooley rejects). It would also seem to imply that causal facts are not (really) part of the world; but only part of explanation (therefore intensional?).

Tooley also argues “against the view that causal relations between individual events must always be subsumed, or covered, by general regularities” (412). That means that certain causal relations are ‘singular’ in nature in that they aren't cases of regularity or that they needn't instantiate or fall under a law. This appears to be similar to Hume’s position in that he too denied that we could make lawlike statements about the ‘universality’ of any causal connection. This would mean, then, that certain causal connections don't take part in any causal law or even instantiate or exhibit a causal regularity. This position, then, not only seems to go against the traditional scientific and philosophical view on all causal processes: it even goes against the layperson’s view.

In conclusion, then, Tooley offers us his ‘singularist’ account that “allows a pair of events to be related as cause and effect without being covered by any law” (412). This seems counter-intuitive. However, perhaps it only seems counter-intuitive to me because I have been brought up with the view that all genuinely causal processes instantiate or exhibit causal laws of some kind.

Now we must see how Tooley defends his position.

Allan Gibbard & Conceptual Essentialism

“Metaphysics aspires to understand reality as it is in itself, independently of the conceptual apparatus observers bring to bear on it.” (Yablo, 1987)

Allan Gibbard on Essence

The scheme that follows parallels, to some extent, the one offered by Allan Gibbard in his paper, ‘Contingent Identity’.

Conceptual essentialism is accepted by Gibbard. For example, he believes that

“variables in modal contexts shift their range of values: they range over senses…not over concrete things [like the lectern or Tony Blair].” (Gibbard, 1975)

He calls the “senses” above “individual concepts”. He also says that “proper names [e.g., ‘Tony Blair’] in modal contexts can be construed as denoting individual concepts” (1975).

Thus it's the concept of the lectern (or even the concept of Tony Blair) that has the modal quality of having set of properties E essentially, not the lectern or Blair itself or himself. It follows that concepts determine essence; or conceptual essence. However, according to Quine’s view of essentialism, necessity (or essence) applies “to the fulfilment of conditions by objects…apart from special ways of specifying them” (‘Reference and modality’, pg 151). That “special way”, presumably, would be a non-conceptual way. Gibbard himself clarifies traditional essentialism thus:

“Essentialism for a class of entities U…is the claim that for any entity e in U and any condition Ø which e fulfils, the question of whether e necessarily fulfils Ø has a definite answer apart from the way e is specified.” [1975]

But Gibbard’s “designations” (or my concepts) determine the essences of concrete things. As Gibbard puts it:

“…it makes no sense to talk of a concrete thing as fulfilling a condition Ø in every possible world – as fulfilling Ø necessarily…apart from its designation. Essentialism, then, is false for concrete things because apart from a special designation, it is meaningless to talk of the same concrete thing in different possible worlds. It makes good sense, on the other hand, to speak of the same individual concept in different possible worlds.”

What if one denies essentialism for concepts (or other abstract entities) too, as Quine does? Here too I borrow from Gibbard and Rudolph Carnap. (Gibbard himself borrows from Carnap.) Carnap did accept analyticity in his scheme. Though his analyticity, like mine, is a question of “individual concepts”.

Conceptual essences allow the possibility of analyticity for certain statements about concrete objects. Carnap was an essentialist when it came to his “individual concepts”. These concepts, again, have essences or criteria of identity forged in terms of concepts. And because we have conceptual essences, we can “explain necessity by analyticity”. That is, in

            a = b

a and b “are concepts of the same individual” (Gibbard, 1975), not variables for concrete objects.

Thus Perhaps we should write:

[Ca] = [Cb]

Thus if a and b are concepts of the same individual, we can create, from this, an analytic statement. That is, in the often-used example

All bachelors are unmarried men.

the words “bachelors” and “unmarried men” both refer to (or denote) different concepts of the same set of individuals (i.e., they have the same extension). There is no essence to the objects we call “bachelors” qua concrete objects; though there is essence qua the concept [bachelors].

According to Carnap, modal contexts were really disguised quotational contexts. (1947/1988) That is

i) Necessarily bachelors are unmarried men.

ii) “Bachelors are unmarried men” is analytic.

i) is an example of de re necessity. That is, it is a statement about concrete objects: bachelors and unmarried men. ii), on the other hand, is an example of de dicto necessity. That is, it's a statement about the concepts [bachelors] and [unmarried men] and the conceptual implication articulated by the quoted sentence. (Perhaps we should say that the notion of implication here is of course the semantical one, not provability.)

It terms of essence, it's not essential that the concrete objects unmarried men are bachelors (i.e., there may be no essentiality in the world). In terms of stipulational essence, it is essential that the concept [unmarried men] implies the concept [bachelors].

Alternatively, we can used second-order modal logic to get the above points across:

a) (c) (Mc  Rc)

b) (x) (Mx  ٱRx)

Are we saying that a) offers us the essence of, say, mathematicians care of certain statements or concepts (i.e., “quotational analyticity”)? Or, in b), that being rational is an essential property of the concrete objects mathematicians as they are “unspecified”? That is, being a mathematician isn't essential to the variable “x”; though if the value of that variable is the class of mathematicians, then part of an x’s essence will be rationality, according to b) above.

Again, the concepts are stipulated, unlike traditional meanings (which are meant to be determinate in minds or in a platonic realm). And, as Quine said, “meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object and wedded to the word”(Quine, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’).

This means that I am partly at odds with Quine in giving essences to concepts (even if not meanings). Though I agree with him in that essences don't belong to concrete objects as they are “unspecified”. The difference is, of course, that abstract meanings are, again, seen as determinate and fixed; whereas my concepts are stipulated: they aren't fixed or determinate (until stipulated) and often belong to particular conceptual schemes. According to semantic traditionalists, there is a correct and fixed answer to the question: What is the correct meaning of the word “bachelors”? Though there is no correct concept for a concrete objects outside all schemes and theories and before all acts of stipulation.

To use Saul Kripke’s words (as he used them about possible worlds): “[concepts] are given in the act of stipulation.” (Kripke, 1971)

Kant on Evidence-transcendence & Reason

According to Immanuel Kant, God is experience- or evidence-transcendent. And, in this sense, he agrees with David Hume. According to Kant, Hume thinks that “we apply only ontological predicates (eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence)” to God. But what Hume required were “properties which can yield a concept in concreto”. They must be “superadded”. That is, predicates such as eternity, omnipresence and omnipotence are not intrinsic properties, they are, if you like, abilities of God. What Hume wanted was a criterion of identity for God, not simply descriptions of His abilities and powers.

It’s as if someone were to describe a rose by saying that "it delights people and is an emblem of love", instead of saying that roses are red and give off a sweet pungency. These are relational predicates. Hume was asking: What is God? I don’t want to know His powers or what do he does?

Of course Kant would say that his intrinsic properties are beyond us because such properties can only be given in experience. This prompts the question: Aren’t the properties of omnipotence, omnipresence also given only in experience? But part of God’s essence, as it were, is the fact that He is beyond experience. And not only that, part of God’s essence for Kant, is that He is beyond experience. If we wanted more than this from God, we would, Kant says, be guilty of “anthropomorphism”; and this is what many theists were guilty of.

So, in a sense, Kant sympathised we Hume’s deism and sided with him against theism and all other “anthropomorphisms”. Theism, or at least anthropomorphism, is for crude God-lovers who somehow project their own properties or attributes on to God (as Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud were later to elaborate on). However, despite what has been said, Humean deism is going to far, or so Kant thinks. Kant’s view of deism is unequivocal. He says, “nothing can come” of it. Not only that: it “is of no value” and “cannot serve as any foundation to religion or morals”. So whereas theism is too human (“all too human”?), deism is too anti-human. Kant therefore attempted, as ever, to find some kind of middle way between the two extremes.

Though, again, Kant is unhappy with anthropomorphism (and therefore theism?). We mustn't “transfer predicates from the world of sense to a being quite distinct from the world”. The end result of Kant’s vision of God is therefore quite unequivocal. We must “acknowledge that the Supreme Being is quite inscrutable and even unthinkable in any determinate way as to what it is in itself”. God is, therefore, another noumenol being.

Kant agreed with Hume who thinks that it is wise “not to carry the use of reason dogmatically beyond the field of all possible experience”. However, Kant had a problem with this dogmatic attitude towards reason itself. He thinks that Hume should not “consider the field of experience as one which bounds itself in the eyes of our reason”. Reason ,therefore, comes to Kant’s rescue again. That is, reason can take us beyond “all possible experience” and give us the means to understand, if not know, God Himself (in this instance). Indeed Kant calls Hume’s dogmatism towards reason “scepticism”. And Kant, yet again, attempts to find “the true mean between dogmatism…and scepticism”.

Kant reiterates why he thinks we can transcend experience. He says that experience “does not bound itself; it only proceeds in every case from the conditioned to some other equally conditioned thing”. However, experience’s “boundary must lie quite without it, and this is the field of the pure beings of the understanding”. And, of course, it is reason again that takes us to these “pure beings of the understanding”.

It is natural theology, via reason, that takes us beyond “the boundary of human reason”. It “looks beyond this boundary to the idea of a Supreme Being”.

And yet again Kant shows us that there is an illusive bridge between the offerings of experience and that which is beyond experience. He concedes “that reason by all it’s a priori principles never teaches us anything more than objects of possible experience”. However, this doesn't mean that “this limitation does not prevent reason from leading us to the objective boundary of experience, viz., to the reference to something which is not itself an object of experience but must be the highest ground of all experience”. However, Kant again concedes that reason “does not, however, teach us anything concerning the thing in itself”.

So what does reason do? It “only instructs us as regards its own complete and highest use in the field of possible experience”. Reason takes us beyond possible experience; though only into the field of conjecture, supposition and speculation. That is, it doesn't give us absolute knowledge of what lies beyond the boundaries of possible experience. It does, though, show us the boundaries themselves and what may lie beyond them.

Kant is clear that it is metaphysics itself that takes us beyond the bounds of possible experience. He says that pure reason is compelled “to quite the mere contemplation of nature, to transcend all possible experience” and to “endeavour to produce the thing…called metaphysics”. Metaphysics frees “our concepts from the fetters of experience and from the limits of the mere contemplation of nature” and allows us into the “field containing mere objects for the pure understanding which no sensibility can reach”. It is in passages like this that Kant shows us how far removed from the tenets of empiricism despite the fact that he, in a certain sense, fused empiricism and rationalism.

The empiricists believed that there was no knowledge beyond experience. Kant agreed. However, Kant believed that metaphysics took us beyond experience into the realm of “pure beings” that, nevertheless, could not be known. It was these flights of fancy that traditional empiricism was against. And indeed, later 20^th century empiricists and the logical empiricists thought that it was precisely because of these Kantian flights of fancy - even if they didn't claim to give us knowledge - which resulted in metaphysics itself becoming “meaningless” or “nonsense”.

Kant did indeed strike a balance between the rationalism that had no time at all for the experiences of the senses and the empiricists who equally had no time for anything that was putatively beyond sense experience. Kant himself criticised Plato for floating off into the ether because he had no solid moorings in the world of sense. However, he accused hard-core empiricists like Hume of being “sceptics”. Was it the case, therefore, that Kant was between a rock and a hard place; or, as David Lewis put it, “between the rock of fallibilism and the whirlpool of scepticism” (1996, pg 503). Does it indeed make sense to talk of what lies beyond sense experience? Equally, doesn’t empiricism in its hard form annihilate the very practice of metaphysics and, ultimately, all philosophy?

Searle on As-If Intentionality & Linguistic Meaning

According to John Searle, intentionality and consciousness are inextricably linked together. However, from the following it can be seen that some things can have intentionality without having consciousness. Or, more correctly, if intentionality comes along with consciousness, these things have "as-if intentionality" without consciousness; though they don’t have (pure) intentionality without consciousness. In other words, as-if intentionality is parasitical on real intentionality. And intentionality depends on consciousness. Thus as-if intentionality is parasitical on consciousness – it's parasitical on human beings or, more precisely, on persons.

Searle gives "linguistic meaning" as an example of intentionality, even if it is as-if intentionality. Linguistic meaning is a real form of intentionality; though it's not intrinsic intentionality.

Linguistic meaning is "a real form of intentionality"; though it's not "intrinsic" – it is extrinsic or as-if. It's dependent upon the intentionality of those who use linguistic meanings. That is, on us. Thus linguistic meaning is also dependent upon consciousness, which has intrinsic intentionality and is intrinsic in and of itself.

Searle gives other examples on as-if - or extrinsic - intentionality which display themselves in terms of the perceptual, epistemic and cognitive metaphors we apply to inanimate objects. For example,

"I say about my thermostat that it perceives changes in the temperature; I say of my carburettor that it knows when to enrich the mixture; and I say of my computer that its memory is bigger than the memory of the computer I had last year." (500)

The as-if-ness of thermostats, carburettors and computers is "derived" from the fact that these inanimate objects have been designed to perceive, know and memorise. Though this is only as-if perception, or as-if knowledge, or as-if memory. That is, it's dependent on human perception, on human knowledge, or on human memory. More precisely, they're designed to replicate or mimic - though not actually be - perceiving or knowing objects; or objects capable of memorising. Perception, knowledge and memory require real - or intrinsic - intentionality, not as-if intentionality. Thermostats, carburettors and computers have a degree of as-if intentionality, derived from (our) intrinsic intentionality. However, despite all these qualifications of as-if intentionality, as-if intentionality is still "real" intentionality; though derived (a game is derived from its parts, but is nonetheless real). This is especially true in the case of linguistic meaning.

As Searle puts it:

"There is nothing metaphorical or as-if about saying that certain sentences mean certain things or certain maps are correct representations of the state of California or the certain pictures are pictures of Winston Churchill. These forms of intentionality are real, but they are derived from the intentionality of human agents." (500)

There's nothing "metaphorical" about the fact that linguistic meanings actually "mean certain things" because meanings were never even supposed to have real - or intrinsic - intentionality or aboutness in the first place. (What about non-linguistic or abstract meanings?) No one ever thought that words or linguistic meanings had consciousness or intentionality. (However, some people do when it comes to computers. Some do even when it comes to thermostats!) So the word ‘cat’ means cat in a thoroughly intentional sense. Though the word’s (or meaning’s) intentionality is derived or as-if, not intrinsic. The meaning of ‘cat’ depends on the consciousness of the human beings who used the word ‘cat’ and think about cats. The same can be said about "maps of California" or "pictures of Winston Churchill" (500). In the case of pictures and maps, we can say the as-if intentionality is more obvious or direct because, perhaps, maps and pictures are depictive, unlike words and linguistic meanings. Though that doesn’t alter anything about the issue here.

Another way of looking at thermostats, carburettors, computers (and perhaps linguistic meanings, maps and pictures, though less so), is that we can take an "intentional stance" towards them (501). That is, we can treat them - or take them - as intentional though inanimate objects. Or we can take them as as-if intentional objects. It's not clear if it makes sense to take an intentional stance towards linguistic meanings, maps or pictures as it may do towards thermostats, carburettors or computers. We're more likely to see a computer or even a thermostat as an intentional object than we are to take linguistic meanings, maps or pictures that way. It would make little sense to take an intentional stance towards linguistic meanings, maps or pictures because, primarily, they aren't concrete things as such. They're about things (as with meanings) and of things (as with maps and pictures); though not themselves things - as computers, thermostats and carburettors are concrete things.

Private Facts?

 

I’m not sure that everyone does "assume that all the facts in the world are equally accessible to standard, objective, third-person tests (Searle, 497)". This is a peculiarly scientific account of fact or facts. That's not to say, however, that this account is not all-pervasive and even common; though it is still largely scientific in origin and nature. We do see some things that aren't susceptible to "objective, third-person tests" as factual.

For example, if you formulate a mental image of Tony Blair in your mind, surely that imaginative act and the mental image itself have a factual status. If not to me, then to you. Surely it is a fact if one formulates a mental image of Tony Blair no matter how private and first-person it is. Something happened. And the mental image of Tony Blair is something. If these things aren't factual, then what are they?

We can accept the stipulatory account of the word or concept [fact] and say that facts must be objective and susceptible to third-person tests. However, we can just as easily reject that stipulation and provide our own. Or we can adopt Wittgenstein’s Tractatus view of facts in which all facts must be worldly or part of the world. With this too we can either reject or accept it. So it depends on what we mean by ‘fact’ in the end.

For example, one definition is "the worldly correlate of a true proposition" or "that which makes a true proposition true". Can a mental image be a "worldly correlate"? Is a pain a part of the world? These things surely must be parts of the world – unless the mental is a ‘third realm’, as in Karl Popper. It's easier to accept that a mental image or pain can be that which makes a true proposition true.

However, even this version of fact is problematic for mental items. Then, if something is truly first person or private, how can it be factual? Surely what is factual needs some kind of communal or third-person agreement. Is that same kind of thing true of knowledge and even of truth?

Take non-mental private though first-person facts. Jim can say that he's a millionaire. He can say it is a fact; though he refuses to prove it in any way or show us what he has bought with his money. He may well be a millionaire. Why should anyone else think that he is? And if no one else has a reason for thinking him a millionaire, how can it really be a fact? However, perhaps he really is a millionaire and he's just playing with us, as it were. Would it even be factual in this case? He either has or doesn't have a million pounds. If he has a million pounds. Then it is a fact that he has a million pounds. It's a fact that only one person knows about and it's not even a mental ‘fact’. It does seem to be private, at least in a looser sense. Unless, again, it is a definitional point that facts must acquire, as it were, objective or third-person status. In that case, it is not (yet) a fact that Jim is a millionaire, which seems odd. It's odd even if he has not spent a penny of it and simply keeps it all under his bed. Whether or not he spends it, it is still a million pounds. And if it is still a million pounds, he is a millionaire. Thus it is a fact that Jim is a millionaire?

De Re & De Dicto Modality

[I wasn't able to use the symbol for the necessity operator in this piece.]

The x in ∃x occurs free in the scope of necessarily in ∃Fx therefore the statement is de re. On the other hand, no variable or constant is free in the scope of necessarily in the formula necessarily ∃x Fx, therefore it is a de dicto statement. [The logical symbolism in the above doesn't make sense. This needs to be revised.] So the de re statement reads:

There is at least one x, such as that x is necessarily F.

The de dicto statement reads:

Necessarily there is at least one x, such that that x is F.

The de re statement ascribes a necessary property to an object. Whereas the de dicto statement ascribes necessity to the formula itself. That is, necessarily at least one object is F. The de dicto statement is saying that there is necessarily at least one x such as that x is F. Whereas the de re statement says that there is at least one object (though not necessarily one object), such that the object is necessarily F. In the former case, the necessity operator works on the object, whereas in the latter case the operator works on a property of the object.

In terms of possible worlds, the de re statement says that all x’s have the property F at all possible worlds. And if a = x, then a has the property F at all possible worlds.

The de dicto statement, on the other hand, says that there is at least one x such that this x is F. However, x's aren’t necessarily F at all possible worlds. So x, or an x, on the de dicto reading, need not be F in all possible worlds.

Quine on De Re Modality

‘9 = the number of planets’ in Quine’s scheme because he was an extensionalist. That is, he didn’t believe in possible worlds. However, he didn't accept that that the number of planets necessarily is more than 7 because the number of planets does not necessarily equal 9. But if we don’t except that the definite description equals 9 because of possible world scenarios, then we have no “clear meaning” what the description ‘the number of planets’ refers to. It could be 10 in possible world w1 and 1000000 at another possible world. In fact if possible worlds are infinite in number, ‘the number of planets’ could equal any number. If this is the case, then the definite description ‘the number of planets’ quite evidently “lacks a clear meaning”. So the number of planets can either have no de re meaning or it has a different meaning at every possible world.

Quine must accept, and I think he did accept, Necessarily (9 > 7). Though, according to Marcus, the description ‘the number of planets’ can't be a proper name precisely because it designates different numbers at different possible worlds. However, the name ‘Tony Blair’ does indeed designate the same object at all possible worlds. Though what, precisely, does that mean? It doesn’t mean that Tony Blair is called ‘Tony Blair’ at all possible worlds. It does mean that our name ‘Tony Blair’ designates the object Tony Blair at all possible worlds, whether or not Tony Blair is actually called ‘Tony Blair’ at all these possible worlds.

Kripke’s necessary a posteriori means:

If a and b are identical, then necessarily a = b at all possible worlds.

No mention of actual names is mentioned here. The a and b designate objects, not names. So the person Tony Blair could be named ‘Frank Parsons’ at one possible world, just as Cicero was also named ‘Tully’ at our world. Therefore Tony Blair couldn't be two different entities at different worlds; though he could have two or more different names at other possible worlds.

De Re & De Dicto Modality

The first de dicto statement means that part of the concept [British monarch] includes or contains the concept [head of the British government]. Of course it could be the other way around. That is, the concept [head of the British government] contains or includes the concept [British monarch]. We could say that one is more of a definite description than the other. However, [British monarch] is still descriptive in that different individuals could fulfil that role at different possible worlds.

The de re reading applies an essential or necessary property to a res – to a person. It could be read this way: Ma necessarily ∃Ba. Here the necessity operator is applied to the person who is a British monarch. It says that if this is the case, then he or she must be head of the British government.

In the de dicto reading, the necessity operator is placed differently. Here we have: necessarily (Ma necessarily Ba) ¸  (Ba necessarily Ma) ˆ (Ma ≡ Ba). Here the necessity operator has as its scope the whole statement, including all the constituent concepts or predicates. It reads:

Necessarily, if a is M, then a is B and necessarily if a is B then a is M. Therefore a is M if and only if a is B.

It could be said that the biconditional in and of itself entails necessity.

Hilary Putnam’s ‘Why Reason Can’t Be Naturalised’

i) Quine's Sheer Epistemological Eliminationism

ii) Sensory Stimulations, Beliefs, and the Normative

iii) Truth, Reference and Causal Processes

iv) Alvin Goldman's Reliabilism

Quine's Sheer Epistemological Eliminationism

Hilary Putnam’s position on W.V.O. Quine’s epistemological naturalism was very strong. He called Quine's position "sheer epistemological eliminationism". Putnam stated that Quine was arguing that

"we should just abandon the notions of justification, good reason, warranted assertion, etc., and reconstrue the notion of 'evidence' (so that the 'evidence' becomes the sensory stimulations that cause us to have the scientific beliefs we have)".

That's because Putnam believed that “justification, good reason, warranted assertion”, etc. are normative notions and (as we're often told) “Quine wanted to abandon the normative”. Whether or not Quine really did want to abandon all these notions, the very possibility of abandoning them seems extreme (at least in epistemology or even science). What would we have left? Well, for Putnam’s Quine, we would have “evidence” – or evidence which is reconstrued to be "the sensory stimulations that cause us to have the scientific beliefs we have".

Sensory Stimulations, Beliefs and the Normative

We only have evidence in the form of beliefs, not in the form of sensory stimulations - at least according to Donald Davidson. And if we're dealing with the beliefs of other subjects, then we're also dealing with the normative – primarily with attributions and assumptions of rationality on behalf of these subjects.

So whereas Putnam was saying that Quine wanted to abandon the normative in his project of naturalised epistemology, Davidson and Jaegwon Kim claimed that Quine couldn't have done this even if he had wanted to. Of course if sensory stimulations were so free of the normative (or even if they do actually exist as Quine saw them), then talk of sensory stimulations providing “input” - and the assertions they cause being seen as “output” - would be a purely descriptive - not a normative - epistemology (which is what Putnam claimed Quine really wanted).

Truth, Reference and Causal Processes

Putnam went further than this. His basic argument was that if Quine abandoned the normative, then it followed that he must also have abandoned - or given up on - “truth”. Rather than saying (as many philosophers do) that notions of justification, rational acceptability, warranted assertibility, right assertibility, etc. are alternatives to truth, Putnam argued that they all assume or/and rely on the notion of truth from the very start.

For example, the justification (or warranted assertibility) of p is relative to the truth of p. That is my first take on Putnam’s position. However, Putnam himself explained the Quinian implicit rejection of truth in this way. He argued that

"the notions the naturalistic metaphysician uses to explain truth and reference, for example the notion of causality (explanation) and the notion of the appropriate type of causal chain depend on notions which presuppose the notion of reasonableness".

Causality and reference don’t – at first - seem like normative notions or indeed normative things. However, to put it simply, there is an indefinite number of causal processes out there in the world. More particularly, there are also an indefinite number of causal processes which could (or which may) account for our theories of truth and reference. And that’s where the normative angle comes in. The causal theorist of truth (or reference) has to decide (or choose) what the “appropriate type of causal chain” is. The world - or its causal processes - won't choose these things for him. Thus he requires the normative notion of reasonableness. That is, what type of causal process would it be reasonable to select in our accounts of truth and reference? What are the important and relevant causal processes to this act of reference or this account of truth?

Here too the predicates “important” and “relevant” are normative in nature. To put this in Davidson’s way: causation “is not itself explanatory”. Causation is neither evidence for - nor an explanation of - anything. In Davidson’s terms again, beliefs fulfil these roles. And as already stated, beliefs can't help but have a normative component.

Alvin Goldman's Reliabilism

These arguments against Quine’s naturalism can be applied to a more specific approach – or alternative – to the normative notion of justification.

Take Alvin Goldman’s reliabilism. As Putnam puts Goldman’s position:

"… instead of saying that a belief is justified if it is arrived at by a reliable method, none might say that the notion of justification should be replaced by the notion of a verdict’s being the product of a reliable method."

Here again we can say that normative factors will be involved in our assessments of what actually is an example of a reliable process (or a reliable method). Indeed the very choice of reliability as an epistemic virtue will itself have required normative choices and constraints. More specifically, the “replacement” of justification with reliability must involve (or must have involved) normative decisions and judgments as to the value of reliability - or reliable processes - in the epistemological project...

For example, why reliable methods (or processes) rather than the methods (or processes) of clairvoyance? Is it because clairvoyance isn't a reliable process (or method)? Wouldn’t that be a circular justification (whether virtuous or vicious)? Even after reliabilism has been chosen as a tool of epistemology, normative decisions and judgements will still be required and used by the reliabilist.

Jaegwon Kim’s ‘What is Naturalised Epistemology?’ (1988)

The primary criticism of Quine’s naturalisation of epistemology project is that he was attempting to abandon the normative component of epistemology entirely. Many epistemologists would say that this approach is a wrong move in itself. Jaegwon Kim argues that it's not even possible without giving up on epistemology itself.

Kim actually sees Quine’s ‘evidence’ - or anyone else’s for that matter - as justification or justificatory in nature. Something works as evidence because it effectively justifies a theory or whatnot. Not only that: there will be normative factors which determine want counts to us as evidence (as well as why things don't count as evidence). There may also be normative factors or judgments which have led us to find what we now take to be evidence. 

For example, not accepting anything a mad scientist takes to be evidence for X to actually be evidence for X.

Quine himself often talks about evidence in his naturalisation project, yet Kim argues that

"evidence itself is a normative concept, distinct from and irreducible to the naturalistic concepts employed in science, e.g., the concepts of stimulation, causation, law, etc". (289)

Ordinarily one wouldn't really think of such a scientific predicate as ‘evidence’ as being a ‘normative concept’. So what does Kim mean by this? Firstly, he used the word ‘evidence’ is this context:

"Traditional epistemology asks what makes certain states, certain experiences and beliefs, evidence for other beliefs." (289)

This isn't very helpful because Kim tells us how the concept [evidence] was used in traditional epistemology; though he doesn’t tell us what traditional epistemologists, or what he, means by 'evidence' and why it is indeed a normative notion. He seems to be talking not about the relation of beliefs, ‘certain experiences’ and their relations to the world; but the relation of beliefs and experiences and their relations to ‘other beliefs’. Thus it is, perhaps, an internalist account. It's also logical in that Kim is referring to the evidential or logical ‘links’ between beliefs and beliefs - not between beliefs and the world. That is, the world itself can't be taken as evidence. Beliefs themselves must be taken as evidence. And beliefs have a normative dimension.

This is also Donald Davidson’s position in that he argues that the world - or an aspect of the world - doesn't provide evidence for a belief: only another belief can do that job. This seems to be both a holist argument and an argument against Quine’s position on what he calls ‘sensory stimulations’ (amongst other things).

In any case, according to Kim, ‘empirical psychology’ doesn't offer us anything about these logical or evidential relations between beliefs and beliefs; but only between our ‘meagre input’ (i.e. Quine’s sensory stimulations) and our ‘torrential output’ (i.e. our assertions or beliefs). Another way of putting all this is to say that the naturalised-epistemology approach (or the empirical-psychology approach) is purely descriptive in nature in that it tells us what goes in (the head) and then correlates it with what comes out (of the mouth). Though if it only does that, then it tells us nothing about ‘what confers positive epistemic value’ (289). That is, why is this evidence for that belief and is it good evidence? Not: X goes in and Y comes out.

I mentioned Davidson a moment ago and his stress on beliefs rather than on sensory stimulations and suchlike. Kim himself offers a

"Davidsonian argument for the claim that Quine is not even entitled to speak of naturalised epistemology as investigating the ancestry of beliefs". (289)

Presumably this is because Quine would talk in terms of sensory stimulations being the ancestors (as it were) of beliefs. Though, as I've just said, Davidson argues that only other beliefs can be the ancestors of yet further beliefs. Not only that: if we see beliefs - rather than (mere) sensory stimulations - as being primary in the epistemological project, then

"the identification of beliefs is possible only on the assumption that one’s subjects are rational, where rationality here is normative and includes epistemic rationality". (289)

That is, one must employ Davidson’s ‘principle of charity’ when analysing the beliefs of one’s subjects. And if we do that, we must assume that our subjects are - at least to a degree - rational. Rationality (or being rational), according to Davidson, is a normative notion because we must choose what constitutes rationality in that there's no purely scientific answer as to what rationality is. And the very assumption of a subject’s rationality is itself a normative move because he may well be mad. If the subject were mad, he wouldn't be the subject of an epistemological enquiry and perhaps wouldn't even be a person in the first place.

So various normative factors are creeping into the epistemological project all along the line. Even talk of ‘sensory input’, ‘sensory stimulations’ and ‘causal mechanisms’ between assertions and what the assertions are about can't erase the normative from the picture, at least according to Davidson and Kim.

Kim goes further than all this.

It's a simple fact, to Kim, that all epistemic properties are normative properties. So if naturalised epistemology gets rid of the normative, it also gets rid of epistemology. Thus naturalised epistemology mustn't be, well, epistemology at all.

Perhaps this is no surprise because Quine himself says that epistemology is a ‘branch of psychology’, which is itself ‘a book in science’. However, if epistemic properties are normative properties, and normative properties are supervenient (as Kim states), then epistemic properties must supervene on "certain non-epistemic, ultimately non-normative, properties" (289). So Kim’s position is far from being, say, Cartesian or internalist in nature and one may also say that it's also - to some degree at least - naturalistic in that epistemic properties must supervene on what is naturalistically kosher. However, this is also a question of whether or not supervenience itself (or its acceptance) is naturalistically acceptable.