Claudio Costa: PHILOSOPHICAL TEXTS - TEXTOS DE FILOSOFIA

                       THIS "BLOG" WAS IDEALIZED TO MAKE MY WORK IN PHILOSOPHY MORE ACCESSIBLE. IT CONTAINS MORE THAN 100 WRITINGS, THOUGH USUALLY IN DRAFT FORMS, IN ENGLISH AND/OR PORTUGUESE. THE PAPERS WITH INTEREST FOR THE RESEARCHER WERE MARKED WITH #.

ESSE "BLOG" FOI IDEALIZADO COMO UMA MANEIRA DE TORNAR MEU "FABULOSO" TRABALHO FILOSÓFICO FACILMENTE ACESSÍVEL A PESSOAS LEGITIMAMENTE INTERESSADAS EM FILOSOFIA. ELE CONTÉM MAIS DE 100 ESCRITOS, EM GERAL ESBOÇOS, MUITOS DELES EM PORTUGUÊS. ALGUNS SÃO DIDÁTICOS, OUTROS NÃO. OS TRABALHOS DE INTERESSE PARA PESQUISADORES FORAM MARCADOS COM #

FROM MY CURRICULUM

I was born in Vila Seropedica, near to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1954. After an intellectually boring medicine undergraduate study, I gained my MS in philosophy at the IFCS (Rio de Janeiro) and a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Konstanz (Germany). Since 1992, I have worked as a researcher and professor at the UFRN (Natal), secluded in the beautiful Northeastern of Brazil, though always in contact with the international philosophical discussion through many grants taken at the universities of Konstanz, Munich, Berkeley, Oxford, Göteborg, and Ecóle Normale Supérieure (INS). Even if dealing with contemporary analytic philosophy, I am at odds with the lack of comprehensiveness of the present mainstream philosophy. I have social dyslexia (a light degree of autism), which explains not only my lack of sociability but also my obsessive interests and intellectual independence. The books I am not ashamed to have written are "The Philosophical Inquiry" (Lanham: UPA, 2002), which develops a thesis on the nature of philosophy, Lines of Thought: Rethinking Philosophical Assumptions" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), and "Philosophical Semantics: Reintegrating Theoretical Philosophy" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018). The book from 2014 is a selection of essays (some of them, in my view, really relevant), while the long book from 2018 can be read as a comprehensive analysis of a cluster of concepts regarding philosophical methodology, the concept of meaning, verificationism, and truth, as investigated by philosophers from Frege to Wittgenstein. The last published book, "How do Proper Names Really Work?" (De Gruyter 2023), aims to overthrow the old stalemate between the new and the old orthodoxy in the philosophy of language. This book should be a game-changer in the field insofar as not being silenced by the community of ideas.

SOME BOOKS (ALGUNS LIVROS):

 

TROPES AND UNIVERSALS (DRAFT)

 DRAFT

 

UNIVERSALIZING TROPES: A SIMPLE WAY

 

 

Summary:

Donald Williams suggested that under the assumption of a trope ontology, universals can be understood as sums or sets of tropes. My goal in this article is to show that there is an easier and much more convincing way to deal with the issue. It consists of returning to the root of the problem, namely, the predicative problem of how to say the same of many. I intend to show that this is the real problem and that trope theory does not demand the resource of universals to solve this problem. All we need is to develop a universalizing ability, namely, the ability to identify precise similarities between tropes used as models and experientially given tropes.

Key Words: trope theory, universals, ontology, Donald Williams.

 

My goal with this article is to present a solution to the problem of universals using trope theory. I claim this solution is easier and more effective than Donald Williams's troublesome solution, fostering the trope theory considerably. In the first section, I begin by exposing the basics of trope ontology as motivated by Williams. In section two, I present his solution to the problem of universals by means of tropes and its difficulties. In section three, I present the original Socratic-Platonic problem that leads to the problem of universals. In section four, I present my own solution to the original problem by means of tropes, which by-passes the problem of universals as a pseudo-problem. In section five, I show how my solution applies to more complex tropes, and in section six, I briefly conclude.

 

1. Which kind of things are tropes?

The theory of tropes resulted from an idea as brilliant as simple by the American metaphysician Donald Williams, developed in the classic article "The Alphabet of Being" (1953 I-II). His fundamental metaphysical thesis was that:

 

Any possible world, and hence, of course, this one, is completely constituted by its tropes, and their connections of location and similarity and any others that may be (1953 I: 8)

 

In other words, tropes are, for Williams, the universe-building pebbles. But what are tropes? He defined them as abstract particulars because we can abstract them from concrete particulars. For example, he used the red of a lollipop, its shape, its sweetness, its smoothness, its hardness, its weight... Although this definition is technically correct, opposing tropes as abstract particulars to concrete particulars such as the lollipop, a more useful way to say the same is to define tropes as any spatiotemporally localizable properties. This contrasts with the use of the concept of property in the philosophical tradition, in which it is generally understood as an abstract entity in the sense of not being spatiotemporally localizable.

   Williams’ understanding of the extent of the concept of trope is made more evident by the following list that I take from his article:

 

Color, shape, surface, odor, red, size, triangularity... pain, love, sadness, pleasure, emotion, belief, serenity, perception, discrimination, intention, disposition, power, mental processes, sequences of thoughts... a smile, a sneeze... An election, a musical performance, a love affair, a moral decision, an act of contrition, a piece of impudence... the beauty of Mary, Mary being beautiful, the figure of a woman, her complexion, her digestion...

 

This list shows us that tropes can be simple properties (that red, a twinge of pain, the whistle of a train) or compound (a mental process, a sneeze, a love affair). They can be external (a sneeze, a smile, the figure of a woman), internal (sadness, serenity, pleasures, dispositions, thoughts), or even mixed (an act of contrition, a piece of impudence). They can also be homogeneous (a violin solo) or heterogeneous (a piece of impudence, Mary’s digestion).

   Sticking to the definition of tropes as spatiotemporally localizable properties, it is pretty clear that also very vague dependent entities, such as the forces of nature, can be considered tropes since they are localizable properties, albeit in a more or less dispersed way. Thus, electromagnetic forces, strong and weak forces, and a gravitational field are all tropes since all these are spatio-temporally localizable properties that can be abstracted respectively from atoms in motion, from the interaction between quarks and gluons in the atomic nucleus, from the interaction between subatomic particles in atoms, and finally (in the case of gravity) from the bending of space-time in the vicinity of massive bodies.[1]

   For Williams, tropes only contrast with concrete particulars such as, to use his examples, Mary, a church, and a nation. He analyzed concrete particulars as sets of concurrent or compresent tropes in the sense that their members are co-localized and co-temporal. They can be internally organized, like a specific chair or a particular human being, or quite disorganized, as in the case of a rock or an asteroid. Although concrete particulars are usually medium-sized dry objects, they can be as small as protons and atoms and as large as stars and galaxies. (Although Williams does not consider it, it is worth adding here that the criterion for identifying concrete particulars differs from the criterion for identifying tropes in that normally only tropes can be predicatively designated, in addition to their typical existence in dependence of concrete particulars – these are Aristotelian insights that, despite their allusive relativity, are worth to be preserved.)

 

2. Williams’ solution to the problem of universals

In addition to trying to solve the question of concrete particulars by resorting to tropes, Williams wanted to do the same with the question of universals. Here's how he introduced it:

 

Speaking again approximately, the set or sum of tropes precisely similar to a trope, say, that red, can of course be, or at least formally correspond to, the abstract universal or 'essence' which can be said to exemplify a definite sample of red. (1953 I: 9)

 

This somewhat far-fetched definition is usually presented more clearly: a universal (essence) is a set or sum of tropes that are precisely similar (i.e., qualitatively identical). The universal of the color red, for example, is nothing more than the set or sum of tropes precisely similar to a given trope of red. (Cf. Campbell 1997: 484). When I say that red is a color, what I mean is that the set of all the tropes of red (the universal-essence of red) is contained in the set of the tropes of color (the universal-essence of color).

   There are problems with Williams' solution. The most discussed has been that of the regress to infinity of tropes of precise similarity (see Campbell 1990: 34-37). If the world is made up of its tropes, then it seems that precise similarity is also a trope. In this case, the precise similarities between the tropes will need to be precisely similar, requiring a new class of precise similarities. However, the tropes of this new class of precise similarities will need to be precisely similar, requiring a third class of precise similarities, and so on, so that the result seems to be na infinity regress.

   There are several ways to address this objection. Campbell, for example, suggested that identity is an internal relationship between tropes that can only count as a pseudo-addition with no real ontological basis (1990:37). Personally, I prefer not to harbor any prejudice against the thiness of any trope. I like to think that precise similarity because it is a relation dependent on the existence of these tropes, is itself a trope insofar as it is findable between them and through them and not something that is found on the other side of the universe or anywhere (that nothing exists anywhere is an axiom of the theory of tropes). And the same, I would say, of a precise identity between two precise identities. If the latter two are somehow locatable, then the precise similarity trope between these precise similarities is also somehow locatable. The regress, therefore, exists, but it is not vicious because nothing forces us to go forward (Cf. Maurin 2007). It is like the regress we find when we say, "If P is true, then it is true that it is true that P is true." We can go on interspersing 'it is true that', but nothing prevents us from stopping at 'P is true', since continuing the regression adds nothing to what we want to say. Similarly, we can stop by saying that a class of precisely similar tropes has a class of tropes of precise similarity between its tropes, but that this does not oblige us to appeal to a subsequent class of precise similarities between these precise similarities.

 Nevertheless, my difficulties with Williams's solution are of a different order. Not only do we not know whether the set of precisely similar tropes is itself a trope, but sets have sizes, and can increase or decrease in size, while universals do not appear to have size, especially if they are essences, as he intended. The biggest problem, however, which in my judgment is decisive, is that sets of tropes that are precisely similar to each other are usually too large to fit in our heads. In other words, in the vast majority of cases, the set of tropes is cognitively inaccessible to us. Consider, for example, the set of precisely similar tropes of red: we can say that it exists, but not that anyone has ever met it. And if it is an essence, then that essence is unknowable. Someone once suggested to me that they are open sets. But open sets only seem to exist in the mind and not in nature. Also, how many members does this open set have? Can it be a unitary set?

 

3. The problem of how we can say the same of many

The problem of universals arises from another problem, which is how we can say the same of many, which could be called here the problem of predication. It is a question of knowing how it is possible for us to apply the same general term to a multiplicity of things, sometimes very different. How is it possible, for example, that anyone can say that Socrates was just, that Nicholas Winton's noble action was just, that the Finnish political system is fairer? The question is linguistic, but it is also epistemological, since it concerns the realization of synthesis in judgments, the cognitive identification of unity in multiplicity.

   The first philosophers to come across this question were Socrates and Plato. Socrates wondered about the definition of concepts expressed by general terms of philosophical interest. Plato famously replied to him with his doctrine of ideas. As he wrote:

 

We are in the habit, I take it, of positing a single ideia (idéa) or form in the case of the various multiplicities to which we give the same name (Republic 596a 6-8).

 

The idea or form is unique and abstract in the sense that it is not spatiotemporal, immutable (eternal), and capable of definition; it belongs to an intelligible world that transcends the visible world by being ontologically independent of it. Plato's suggestion was that by reference to the single idea or form we are able to identify the various things in the visible world that contain imperfect copies of that idea or form (by mimesis), or that in some way share their being with that idea (by methéxis).

   What is important to note is that through his answer to the question of how to say the same of many, Plato moved from an epistemological-linguistic problem to an ontological-metaphysical solution. It was as a result of this movement that the problem of universals arose. Since the idea or form is the universal (to catholou), the problem of universals arises here, which was defined by Aristotle as that of knowing "that which by its nature is predicated of a number of things" (1984: 17a 38), that is, the problem of the ontological nature of something objective that by itself makes us capable of saying the same about many. For realist philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, under the more usual interpretation of the latter (see Metaphysics 1034a 5-8) universals are abstract, immaterial entities, even if, in Aristotle's case, they are generally dependent on the existence of the things that constitute the visible world.

   But it was not only the realist philosophers who moved from the epistemological-linguistic problem to an ontological-metaphysical solution. There are also nominalist philosophers who have followed this same path. This is the case of class nominalists, for whom the general term has as its reference the extension of the things (concrete particulars) to which it applies (Armstrong 1978 ch. 4; 1989, ch. 1). A class nominalist might say that the class of all red objects must be responsible for the applicability of a general term like 'red'. And a sophisticated class nominalist like D. K. Lewis (1986: 50 ff.) would answer the problem of different general terms with the same denotation and different connotation by appealing to their application to the class of objects that encompasses all possible worlds, since in that case these classes would no longer need to coincide.

   It seems to me quite likely that in proposing his solution to the problem of universals as being classes of tropes precisely similar to each other, Williams was being inspired by class nominalism, an idea that had already been floated well before the publication of his paper. He only replaced things, concrete particulars, with tropes as members of the class considered to be the universal.

   I call the kind of solution of the problem of how we can say the same of many by recourse to universals such as those considered above the "traditional solution." My opinion is that it was nothing more than a great error that compromised more than two thousand years of metaphysical research without substantial results, namely: the error of offering an unnecessary ontological-metaphysical solution to a linguistic-epistemic problem. Although this mistake was first made by Plato, it gave rise to a tradition of investigating universals so ingrained that its epistemic origin was forgotten and it became very difficult to get it out of the heads of philosophers.

   Not all philosophers, it is true, have fallen into this trap. Through their particularism, Berkeley (1973 Intr.) and Hume (1978 I, I, VII) were honorable exceptions. For Berkeley's immaterialism, as is well known, the world (besides that of spirits) is totally constituted of particular ideas of mental natures, having nothing more to do with Platonic ideas or Aristotelian universals. The things of the so-called external world are nothing more than more intense and organized ideas that impose themselves on us (1973 I, sec. 30). An idea can be general, in the sense that it applies to many and diverse things. But for him they are never abstract, which means that they never have the function of Platonic or Aristotelian universals or anything else other than their purely mental and in this case also subjective nature. As he wrote:

 

It seems that a word becomes general by being made the sign, not of a general abstract idea, but of several particular ideas, any one of them indifferently suggested to the mind (1973: Intr. Sec. 11)

 

That is: a general term is associated with mental ideas, for example, the general term triangle is associated with images of several particular triangles, equiangles, rectangles, obtuse... On this basis we are able, whenever we have access to a given triangle in the external world, that is, to an external idea of a triangle, to compare it with an idea of the ideas that we have associated with the general term and apply this term to the given triangle in the so-called external world. To explain this operation – which is nothing more than that of identifying it in many – Berkeley does not need at any time to resort to universals. He only compares the idea from which he has the name with the idea given to the experience, and when he perceives the similarity between them, he gives the same name to the idea given to the experience. Hume hailed this proposal by Berkeley as a major discovery made in the republic of letters (1978: 17). I can anticipate that my strategy will be largely structurally analogous to Berkeley's, for what I will do is essentially replace "idea" with "tropes." However, I will be free from the main criticism of Berkeley's solution to the problem of predication, which is that it is an imagistic solution and that many concepts do not require the formation of images or secondarily require them. Since tropes need not be essentially imagistic, even if they must be somehow derived from sensory experiences, we will not be open to this accusation.

   In what follows, I want to propose my solution to the problem of how we can say the same of many, inspired by the Berkeley gambit. Although it is based on the theory of tropes, this solution does not need to answer the epistemological problem through an ontological solution. It is an alternative solution that dispenses with the appeal to universals in the sense considered. In other words, my proposal will be purely epistemic: universals are an unnecessary ballast that has only served to confuse philosophers in the last two millennia. It's time to get rid of them! It is time to say goodbye to Platonic-Aristotelian entities common to many individuals, classes of objects or their extension into possible worlds, or even to sets of tropes that have taken on a life of their own by the chance fact that they have been used in an inevitably mistaken explanation of how we are able to say the same of many.

 

4. Universalizing Rule Following Skills

I propose that we learn to say the same about many by gaining a skill. It is the ability to (i) associate certain tropes with the corresponding general terms and (ii) use those same tropes (or any others that are precisely similar to them) as models, to compare with any trope that we are given to consider, to be able to tell whether or not it has a precise similarity with the model.

   Once this skill is acquired, we become able to say the same of many without resorting to universals or classes of tropes as universals. Out of reverence for the immense efforts that philosophers have made to solve the problem of universals, I will call it the universalizing ability.

  I want to start with a very simple example. Suppose Mary has taken a painting course and learned to identify the color 'Terra de Siena'. To this end, she had eye contact with many examples of this color, having learned to associate these examples with the name of the color and becoming able to remember precisely this model or trope of color. Later she takes a trip to Italy. There she identifies a number of buildings painted with the same color as Terra de Siena. All he needs to do to identify the color of these buildings correctly is to have the memory of a certain trope and to be able to identify new tropes precisely similar to it. She developed the ability to recognize the Land of Siena trope. She learned to say the same of many. And obviously (to her own luck) she does not need to resort to any immense set of Land of Siena tropes that are precisely similar to each other to be able to use this general term predicatively. Maria's universalizing ability with respect to the Terra de Siena trope can be specified as that, having associated with models of tropes of the same color that she holds in her memory, she has become able to identify any Terra de Siena trope that is given to her experience as being precisely similar to those model tropes. We also say that Mary learned to use the word 'Land of Siena', that she showed that she knew its meaning as a rule of use, in other words, that she mastered the concept or conceptual rule.

   Two points are worth mentioning. The first is that memory is something secondary to the universalizing ability. Not that memory is a problem. It has nothing mysterious about it. It is like a copy of something, a copy that we learn to trust because it works well enough to be considered trustworthy, since we are able to confer that trustworthiness by interpersonal comparison between what has been identified and what has been reidentified. But it is important to highlight that it is an intermediary that is not part of the procedure as such. The second point is that this ability is always, at least in principle, capable of generating an extensional class of tropes—but a class that has no relevance whatsoever in solving the problem of predication.

   To highlight these points, imagine that a group of people with a certain mnemic deficiency are in an exhibition and that they are given a task: to identify the paintings in which the color Terra de Siena appears. There are 12 numbered frames. Each of them receives a table where the name 'Land of Siena' is found next to a circle painted in the same color and twelve squares corresponding to each of the 12 paintings. All they need is to mark the spaces corresponding to the frames in which they find the color Terra de Siena. By taking the tables with their painted circles close to each frame they will be able to mark the spaces corresponding to the frames in which a color precisely similar to the model is found. By doing this, people are carrying out a universalizing practice without resorting to memorized models. Finally, let's say that the only frames with these color tropes are 2, 3, 8, and 12, and that this shows up as a result in the correctly populated tables. With this they found, within a very narrow scope, a set of Terra de Siena tropes that are precisely similar to each other: the extensional set {2, 3, 8, 12}. However, this set has no explanatory force with respect to the ability to say the same of many, here mechanically practiced even without appeal to memory.

   One characteristic of what the people in the example do is that they are following a rule that tells them to compare the color model trope of the table with the color tropes found in the frames in search of a precise similarity. The model trope that they see and that we are able to actualize in our memory is what serves as a criterion for the application of the rule. The rule is applied when people mark the square corresponding to the trope that is on the board on which the Terra de Siena trope is found. Since we say that this person now has the concept of the Land of Siena, there is nothing more natural than to consider this universalizing ability a conceptual rule or concept.

   Returning to our problem, we can now define the universalizing ability as follows:

 

Universalizing ability with respect to a general term (Df.-U) = ability to, having associated the term with a model trope any Tm, be able to use it as a criterial rule capable of allowing the identification of any given trope as being or not being precisely similar to Tm.

 

The universalizing ability is a conceptual rule that corresponds to what we ordinarily call a concept. And this rule, like everything else, is a findable trope in every application of yours and nothing that is metaphysically abstract.

 

5. Universalization of complex tropes

 So far we have explained our universalizing ability relative to a trope that can be classified as perceptually simple, which is the color Earth of Siena. But what about more complex cases, such as the other tropes cited by Williams, tropes such as those of triangularities, of sneezing, of smiles, of sadness, of a thought, of an act of contrition?

   I believe that at least for those who have considered the constructive procedures of a philosopher like John Locke (1979: book II), demonstrating that we can start with simpler ideas and combine or separate them (by abstraction) in order to form more and more complex and diverse ideas, this would not be seen as a real problem. The difference is that here we do not start with ideas, as in Locke, but with something more general (which includes what he called qualities), that is, with simpler tropes, and then proceed to combine them in order to form more complex and diverse tropes, to such an extent that they may appear to recur to universals independent of empirical foundation. We use the memory of these tropes as a criterion for identifying precisely similar tropes that are in some way given to us by experience. And in doing so we are again applying the same universalizing skill exemplified above, which is the ability to follow conceptual rules or, more simply, to apply concepts.

   I want to analyze some of these tropes in an attempt to demonstrate that they are spatio-temporally localizable particulars and that they have nothing abstract in the realistic (Platonic-Aristotelian) sense. To do so it will be necessary to define or decompose them analytically in order to demonstrate that although they are not as directly and immediately identifiable as the earth trope of burnt Siena, their origin results from simpler trope combinations found in sensible experience than is spatio-temporally given. The goal is to make it plausible that the universalizing ability acquired in the cases of more complex tropes considered by Williams does not differ appreciably from the newly defined universalizing ability.

   Let's start with the easiest case of a complex external trope of sneezing. It can be taken for granted that it is on the basis of interpersonal corrections of positive and negative examples that we usually learn tacitly the concepts expressed by the most common general terms of ordinary language (Tugendhat 1976, lesson 11). Thus, in general, we learn what sneezing is by observing adults give this name to the act of other people or ourselves of sneezing, being praised when we get it right and corrected when we make a mistake when applying the word. In this way, we acquire the universalizing ability that allows us to identify sneezes as precisely similar to models already experienced. This is also about learning the concept (the rule of conceptual application) based on our memories of sneeze tropes. As this rule is tacitly learned, we do not generally know how to verbalize it. But dictionaries help us, defining sneezing as "an involuntary movement of the airways to expel any foreign substance from the body." This definition makes explicit what the irrelevant sneeze trope is.

   Let us now look at the relatively simple trope of triangularity, also recalled by Williams. Here learning is also done through interpersonal examples in a tacit way. We are presented with equiangular triangles, acute, obtuse, rectangles, until we learn, not an abstract triangle common to all of them (as Berkeley would have done), but to vary the internal angles of a model triangle so that we are able to form the corresponding images of triangles given in the experiment. Only later do we learn definitions such as that of "a three-sided polygon", which decomposes the internal tropes of the triangle into that of a polygon, which is also decomposable.

   Now consider the internal trope of sadness: all we need to universalize is to be able to identify instances of sadness as being precisely similar to tropes of sadness that we have already learned to identify in other people and in ourselves and that we use as a model, that is, as criteria for the conceptual rule of identifying sadness. Dictionaries characterize this trope as a feeling of despondency, melancholy, unhappiness, and hopelessness.

   Let us now look at the mixed and rather complex trope of the act of contrition. I have been informed that it is a Christian prayer that asks for repentance for sins and mercy from God. All we need to know to know how to universalize is to have some example of an act of contrition in memory or, in my case, to be explicitly informed about this trope so that I can imagine it in such a way as to be able to identify cases precisely similar to it.

   I want to consider now two examples of countable name tropes that were not considered by Williams. They differ from the previous ones in that they concern the "essence" of concrete particulars. A first example is that of an artifact name: the trope of chair (from "to be a chair" or "chair"). This is a complex external trope. I think I can give a reasonable definition of a subject (which applies to both Portuguese and English):

 

Chair trope (Df.): non-vehicular seat trope with backrest, made for one person to sit at a time.

 

In fact: if it had no backrest, it would not be a chair, but a simple bench. It cannot be found in vehicles such as cars, planes, trains, because in that case they will be called seats. They need to be made for one person to sit on, otherwise they would be sofas. Even if a chair were teleported to a planet where people were extremely thin and several of them could sit in the same chair, it would not turn into a sofa, as it is an artifact made for one person to sit on at a time. And a chair that has not been made as an artifact, say, a chair carved into the rock, is a chair only metaphorically, no less than a toy chair. And armchairs are specimens of chairs. All this we learn through perceptual experiences. Note that we are not able to have the direct perception of a chair trope. It is not written on a chair that it is made for one person to sit at a time, or that it should be a bench with a backrest. Nor that it may have been the work of a carpenter.

   That is why it took a good number of experiences of positive and negative examples so that we could gradually tacitly learn the complex trope, linguistically expressed in the definition of chair. Therefore, keeping in mind the external, complex and articulated trope that we associate with the word chair, we are able to identify precisely similar tropes of "chair", such as those that exist when we encounter table chairs, wheelchairs, beach chairs, electric chairs, thrones... Of course, this trope need not be reduced to something of which we can have a mental image. Neither tropes nor the procedure of universalization force us to a purely imagetic conception of reality.

   Someone may now ask a challenging question: how to distinguish the trope of chair – which I will call the trope of "chair" – from the concrete particular that is a certain chair? After all, the chair trope is a set of spatio-temporally locatable tropes present, and where a chair is found, one will also find a complex trope of its chair. The answer lies in the fact that a chair, as a concrete particular, is constituted by many other tropes, in addition to those that constitute its chair. These are accidental tropes that do not define it, but that help us identify the concrete particular. For example, the chair I'm sitting on now has a soft upholstery, it's made of plastic and wood, it's a faded yellow color, it's old, it was bought in a second-hand furniture store... These are not elements of the trope of the chair in which I sit, but of this concrete particular, in addition to being what it is, it instantiates this trope. Hence, the concrete particular is a set of present tropes that extrapolates the trope that specifies it. This answer can also be applied to other countable names of "essences" like the one in the next example.

   Let us consider, finally, a much-talked about trope of the countable concept of natural species: that of the human being, traditionally defined by the Greeks as that of a rational animal, but characterized today in dictionaries as a bipedal primate endowed with reason, culture, and advanced language. Of course, this characterization of the complex trope cannot be directly read in the immediate sensible perception we have of other human beings, as with a color trope. But it is also learned tacitly through positive and negative examples, even if we are not able to linguistically articulate the dictionary definition. I myself have seen many of these bipedal primates during my existence and have been led to recognize myself in the mirror as one of them. I know that they are capable of a certain degree of reason, culture, and advanced language. It was through this public learning arising from extraordinarily complex articulations of simple perceptual tropes that I gradually learned what human beings are and that I became able to use the complex trope associated with the general term 'human being' as a rule in recognizing precisely similar trope articulations in the cases of the most diverse beings recognizable as humans. I do not need or am able to form images of this trope, since it is not imagetic. But he induces me to form associated images, like that of an Oriental man. Influenced by Locke's analyses, we would say that it results from an extraordinarily complex articulation of tropes whose ultimate elements are perceptually experiential and imagetic in a broad sense of the word.

 

6. Conclusion

The proposed solution seems philosophically plausible if we restrict ourselves to the examples of tropes presented and discussed in this article. It is entirely in line with Williams’ metaphysical project of using the concept of the trope as an epistemic basis for the construction of reality. It excludes the paralyzing difficulty that I pointed out in his solution of the problem of universals and makes the ontology of tropes more palatable.

   Indeed, most of the questions are still open. There are properties whose universalizing ability does not seem to be prima facie covered by examples such as those discussed here. Williams did not question whether spatial relationships can count as tropes. He also left open the case of mathematical properties such as classes and numbers or the property of existence... which seem abstract in the sense of not being perceptually localizable...

   I believe that much of this could, in principle, be explained in terms of spatiotemporally localizable properties, that is, tropes. Consider, for example, that the only way to justify the application of mathematics to the empirical world seems to be that mathematical entities can be considered somehow to belong to that same spatio-temporal empirical world. As a bet on a radical empiricist naturalism, the ontology of tropes would be, in principle, available. However, any more ambitious approach to these issues is beyond the scope of a brief article.

 

References:

Aristotle (1984): De Interpretatione. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Book I, Ed. Jonathan Barnes, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Armstrong, D. M. (1989): Universals. Boulder: Westview Press.

Armstrong, D. M. (1978): Universals and Scientific Realism. vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Berkeley, George (1973): The Principles of Human Knowledge. In Philosophical Works Including the Works on Vision ed. by M. R, Ayers, London: Everyman.

Campbell, Keith (1990): Abstract Particulars. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Campbell, Keith (1981): Midwest Studies in Philosophy 6 (1): 477-488.

Costa, Claudio (2023): How do Proper Names Really Work? Berlin: De Gruyter.

Hume, David (1978): A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kung, Guido (1967): Ontology and the Logistic Analysis of Language Dordrecht: Reidel.

Lewis, D. K. (1986): On the Plurality of the Words. Oxford: Blackwell.

Locke, John (1979): An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

Maurin, Anna-Sofia (2007): Infinite Regress: Virtue or Vice? In Hommage a Vlodek (Lund University).

Plato (1961): The Republic. In The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Tugendhat, Ernst (1976). Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die sprachanalytische Philosophie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag.

Williams, D. C. (1953a) “On the Elements of Being I.” Review of Metaphysics, 7(1) 3-18,

Williams, D. C. (1953b) “On the Elements of Being II.” Review of Metaphysics 7(1) 171-92.

 

 

---

[1] Keith Campbell (1990: 151-155) has called them quasi-tropes, but conceding the definitions given it does not seem that these forces need be less than tropes.

SUGGESTING POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES (5 de 5)

  This is only a developed draft of a chapter of the book "How do Proper Namers Really Work?" (De Gruyter 2023). It was written before review.

 

V

 

 SUGGESTING POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES

 

 

The issues to be addressed in this last chapter concern possible consequences of our old style internalist-neodescriptivist account of the semantic function of proper names for other terms of our language. The proper name is a singular term. In the logic of our language, we can clearly distinguish between singular and general terms. Singular terms are those by which we identify only one object, distinguishing it from a plurality of others, while general terms are those that can be applied to more than one designatum, allowing us “to say one over many” (Plato). Singular terms are of three kinds: indexicals, definite descriptions, and proper names.

   Theories of proper names always have consequences for the ways we understand the mechanisms of reference of other terms. Hence, it is to be expected that the adoption of a meta-descriptivist theory of proper names will have consequences for our analysis of them. In what follows, I will not have space to develop any orderly or detailed explanation of these consequences, but I think I am allowed to launch some suggestions for later consideration. After all, philosophy is by definition “work in progress”.

 

1

We begin by taking into consideration the case of definite descriptions. By definite descriptions, I do not understand referential, but rather attributive ones. Referential definite descriptions are those that are used indexically, to call attention to a person or thing, irrespective of their content (e.g., ‘the man over there drinking a martini…’ pointing to a man holding a glass of water), while attributive definite descriptions are those used to assert something about whatever or whoever fits the proper meaning of that description (like ‘the man in the iron mask…’, referring to a prisoner forced to wear an iron mask). (See Donnellan 1966: sec. III)

   There are also the two conflicting influential analyses of attributive definite descriptions, which vary particularly with the way they treat statements in which attributive descriptions have empty subjects. The first was suggested by P.F. Strawson (1950). For him a statement like

 

(a)   The present king of France is wise,

 

is faulty in meaning, lacking a truth-value, since to be true or false it must presuppose the truth of the existential statement (b) “There is a present king of France”, which is false (1952: 185). The alternative way of analysis was given much earlier by Russell’s theory of descriptions (1905; 1916: Ch. XVI). He would analyze a sentence like (a) as the conjunction of three sentences: (i) there is at least one king of France, (ii) there is at most one king of France, and (iii) he is wise. Using as the operator of existence, F for the predicate ‘…king of France’, and ‘W’ for the predicate ‘…is wise,’ Russell would symbolize (a) as ∃x [Fx & (y) (Fy → y = x) & Wx]. Since ∃x (Fx) is false, the whole set of conjunctions is made false and, consequently, (a) any similar sentences must be false.

   Russell’s view was strongly defended by Stephen Neale (1990), though the issue remains controversial. Although we are unable to see sentence (a) as false, other sentences of the kind, such as: (b) “The present king of France is an old man suffering from dementia”, (c) “The present king of France decided to forbid tourists to visit the Versailles Palace”, and (d) “The present king of France is sitting in that chair” seem to be false, while (e) “The present king of France is not wise, because there is no present king of France” seems to be true.

   The most usual answer in defense of Russellian analysis is pragmatic (Sainsbury 1979: 120-121; Blackburn 1984: 309-310; see also Russell 1957). According to it, we are used to saying that a statement is false when the subject applies but not the predicate. Thus, the statement “The Earth is flat” is immediately seen as false. But in empty statements like “The king of France is wise”, the predicate cannot apply, simply because the subject term does not apply, which causes confusion. But, from a logical point of view, it seems more reasonable to conclude that in the same way that a sentence is false when the predicate cannot be applied to the object referred to by the subject, it will also be false when it cannot be applied, because the subject term cannot be applied. After all, what counts is whether or not the predicate applies – whether or not it is satisfied – and not the reason involved. Perhaps this could explain why statements (b) to (e) are intuitively seen as having truth-values: their predicates have more “semantic weight” than the predicate ‘…is wise’ in the statement (a). They lead us to focus our attention on the non-applicability of the predicates presented in the statements.

   Another influential objection made by Strawson against Russellian analysis concerns the problem of unicity (1950: 332). A statement like “The round table is covered with books” receives the Russellian paraphrase (a) “There is precisely one (at least one and no more than one) table, and it is covered with books”. Since there are many round tables covered with books in the world, Russell’s analysis seems to be wrong. The best strategy to solve this problem consists in contextually limiting the domain of quantifiers (Cf. Ostertag 1998). Thus, in statement (a) the domain of the quantifier can be restricted to the objects found in the sitting room of apartment 408 of the Villagio di Milano… Calling a domain D, the predication included in the definite description F (ex: ‘…a round table’), and the additional predication G (ex: ‘…is covered with books), we can analyze the description (a) as having the form:

 

There is precisely one x belonging to the domain D, so that x is F, and for any y belonging to D, if y is F, then y = x, and x is G.”

 

I have found no very convincing objection to this kind of answer.

   Although I sympathize with Russellian analysis, I am not sure of it, and here is not the place to attempt any sustained defense of his view. My only aim here is to show that the meta-descriptive view can be presented in a Russellian form, as was already shown in my third chapter. Indeed, a natural way of extending this idea to attributive definite descriptions would be to say that they must be analyzed as expressing IR-descriptions (derived from MDR_F) able to refer to their object of reference – a description that, as much as it expresses the core meaning of a proper name, should here express the proper meaning of the attributive definite description. Assuming this, Russellian analysis can be understood as a way of decomposing essential aspects of an IR-description and affirming its effective application. This can be shown, insofar as we reinterpret the conditions (i), (ii), and (iii) as saying that the ascription rule of the predicate ‘…king of France’, when effectively applied to precisely one object of reference, is transformed into an IR-description. Calling A = ‘…satisfies the property of being a present king of France’ (the characterizing description), B = ‘…satisfies the ??? properties’ (the localizing description), S = ‘the satisfaction of Ax ˅ Bx is sufficient’ (condition of sufficiency), P = ‘(Ax ˅ Bx) satisfies x better than anything’ (condition of predominance), and W = ‘…is wise’, the empty statement “The present king of France is wise” can be symbolized as:

 

∃x [(Ax ˅ Bx) & (Sx & Px) & (y) ((Ay ˅ By) & (Sy & Py) → y = x) & Wx]

 

This means that the same kind of Russellian analysis we gave to “Aristotle had to leave Athens” can be applied to “The present king of France is wise”.

   What about a definite description clearly associated with a proper name? For instance, (a) “The author of the Nicomachean Ethics had to leave Athens”. It seems plausible to think that we are speaking about precisely one x, who was the author of the Nicomachean Ethics, who was Aristotle, and who had to leave Athens. This is contextually implicit. However, I think that Kripke equivocally treats (a) as containing an autonomous description by supposing that in all counterfactual situations (in all possible worlds) we should abstract the information that Aristotle was the person who almost certainly wrote that book. In this case, the description (a) should rather be presented as having the form of the following identification rule: ‘There is one only person x who sufficiently and predominantly satisfies the characterizing description of being the author of the Nicomachean Ethics and/other works and also satisfies some unknown localizing description, and this x had to leave Athens’. This would be a one-foot autonomous identification rule, which must be analyzed in the same way that we have the autonomous definite description ‘the 52^nd Regiment of Fot’, that is, in the same way as we have analyzed proper names. However, it is equivocal to treat (a) as if it were an autonomous description, since it is literally meant as something loosely associated with the proper name ‘Aristotle’ and its identification rule (see III, sec. 11, 12).

 

2

Now, I would like to consider some consequences for indexicals, which can be defined as those singular terms that allow us to identify different particulars through the different utterances in which they appear. Examples of indexicals are demonstrative pronouns like ‘that’ and ‘those,’ possessive pronouns like ‘mine,’ ‘yours,’ personal pronouns like ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they,’ adverbs like ‘now’ and ‘tomorrow’… They are epistemologically relevant, because it seems that through them the language, so to speak, touches the world.

   Indexicals have admittedly two kinds of meanings: the lexical function (also called ‘character’ and ‘role’) and the semantic content. The lexical function is something that does not change with the change of utterances. Because of this, we can easily define them, at least in their standard uses – understanding by standard uses those that are the most common and originary. Here are some examples:

 

1. The demonstrative ‘that’ has the lexical function of indicating a material object physically near to the speaker (often accompanied by a gesture of ostension).

2. The personal pronoun ‘I’ has the lexical function of indicating who is uttering something in the moment of utterance.

3. The adverb ‘here’ has the lexical function of indicating the place of utterance.

4. The adverb ‘now’ has the lexical function of indicating the time of utterance.

5. The adverb ‘tomorrow’ has the lexical function of indicating the day after the utterance.

 

Indexicals also have secondary, non-standard uses. Consider, for instance, the greeting message recorded on a telephone answering machine. When you call someone on the phone, the recorded message says something like: “Thank you for calling, I am not here now, please leave your message after the signal”. In this case, the indexicals ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’, have displaced functions: the personal pronoun ‘I’ refers to the person who recorded the message days or weeks before, not to someone speaking at the moment the caller reaches the desired telephone number; the ‘here’ and the ‘now’ refer respectively to the present place and time, not the place and time the message was recorded. Because of such unpredictable cases, I find it advisable to distinguish standard usage from secondary ones. Without this, no workable definition of lexical function would be possible.

   The question concerning the nature of semantic content is more difficult. According to some externalist theorists, the semantic content of an indexical is what Frege would call its reference (Bedeutung), while the lexical function would be what Frege would call its sense (Sinn) (Kaplan 1989: 520).

   Here things seem to go wrong. After all, for Frege the semantic content of the indexical seems to be its sense, since the sense is the way the object is presented to us[1], which if it is changed produces changes in the proposition (i.e., the Fregean thought) independently of a real change in the reference. So, for instance, to the sense belongs the presentation of an aspect of the referent, like the Moon presented as the Last Quarter Moon, instead of the full Moon, and to the sense belongs as well the presentation of the context of the referent, like the Morning Star instead of the Evening Star. Contrastingly, the lexical function is only a linguistic marker common to all indexicals of a certain kind in their standard uses, being consequently unable to gain the particularizing function of a Fregean sense. We can compare the lexical function of an indexical rather with the standard function of a definite description of being a nominal complex connoting a reference, or with the standard function of a proper name of referring to only one object and distinguishing it from a multiplicity of other objects.

   The change in view suggested here leads us to reconsider Frege’s short analysis of indexicals. According to him, an indexical utterance has as its sense a proposition (a thought (Gedanke), in Frege’s nomenclature), which will be atemporally true or false, since part of its expression is what we could call its evaluative context (its truth-makers). Consider Frege’s example:

 

(1)   This tree is covered with green leaves.

 

According to Frege, in this case, “the time of the utterance is part of the expression of the thought” (Frege 1918, 66). That is, for him contextual elements like the time in the evaluative context of the indexical utterance (and, we could also add, the place), along with things like the gesture of pointing, are non-linguistic parts of the complete sentence expressing the indexical thought. A consequence of this is that the thought or proposition expressed by (1) cannot be true in May and false in January, since in January the time will be a different one, and so also the proposition or thought. This is a deeply interesting idea, since it freezes the concept of a proposition as the proper truth-bearer, making indexical propositions on a par with those propositions expressed by eternal sentences – those that are fixedly true or false.

   It is important to notice that unlike Frege, we do not need to see the proposition or thought as an abstract (platonic) state of affairs. Once we accept Donald Williams’ radical trope ontology, a proposition must be seen as something like a set or class of tropical mental contents which are precisely like one another, or, as I prefer to put it, as any chosen mental tropical thought-content or any other tropical thought-content precisely like the first one (Ch. III, sec. 2). Moreover, if we accept a nuanced and contextually variable semantic verificationism, and not the straw man that positivist philosophers and their heirs developed as a machine gun to fight metaphysics, and later rejected, but as its real discoverer, Wittgenstein, originally suggested with his examples, then the proposition could be identified with the verifying rule of a declarative sentence, (see Ch. I, sec, 4). The identities would then be the following: proposition (thought-content) = cognitive sense of the declarative sentence = verifiability rule.

   Having this in mind, we can figure out how we could replace the utterance (1) with an eternal sentence, a sentence containing the Fregean thought expressed by (1), with a truth-value independent of the context of its utterance. My suggestion is the following:

 

(2)   The speaker S at the moment T points to the place L and says that this is a tree covered with green leaves (or: …and says: “This tree is covered with green leaves”), because place L in fact contains a tree covered with green leaves.

 

I claim that sentence (2) is an eternal sentence, since it has frozen the contextual dependence of the indexicals that appear in it. It contains more than (1), obviously. But it also contains (1) as a that-sentence that belongs to the eternal sentence (2) and does not depend on the indexically given circumstances anymore. Indeed, in accordance with Frege’s analysis of subordinate clauses, ‘that this is a tree covered with green leaves’ refers to its own sense or thought (proposition). This means that, although (1) contains the indexicals ‘this’, and the verb ‘to be’ in the present of the indicative, these terms appear in (2) either within a subordinate clause referring to their own senses, or (enclosed by comas) as what we today would call as a semantic-metalinguistic sentence, in which these indexicals would also refer internally to their senses in the proposition to which they belong. (See Frege 1892: 37 f.) Moreover, the truth-pretension of (2) also demands the truth of (1): this pretension is satisfied insofar as (1) should be made true by the final clause of (2), according to which, place L must in fact contain a tree covered with green leaves.

   The same paraphrase suggested above can be applied against John Perry’s very influential objections to Frege’s view of indexical sentences (1977; 1979). Although I do not have space to object to Perry’s multiple counterexamples, I can rebut the best known one (1979: 3).[2] He recalls that once while shopping in a supermarket, he noticed a sugar trail on the floor. His thought was (3) “Someone is making a mess”. Then he decided to follow the trail, looking for the responsible person. After steering his shopping cart through a maze of supermarket aisles, he came back to the place he started from, only to notice that the sugar was leaking from his own shopping cart. His thought then changed from (3) to (4):

 

(4) I am making a mess.

 

After thinking (4), he immediately changed his behavior. The thought or utterance of (4), Perry argues, cannot be substituted by any utterance that eschews the indexical ‘I’, building something like an eternal sentence. If he replaces ‘I’ with ‘Perry’, this cannot be done in all contexts, since Perry could, for instance, be suffering from dementia, having forgotten his name… The indexical utterance cannot be replaced by a sentence that preserves its truth-value in any context. Hence, he concludes, the indexical cannot be replaced by any contextually independent eternal sentence. The indexical is essential.

   However, sentence (4) is fully replaceable by an eternal sentence, since it can be treated in the same way we treated Frege’s example (1). This means that sentence (4) can be paraphrased through the following eternal sentence:

 

5. At 10 a.m. on March 26, 1968, in the confectionery supplies section of the Fleuty supermarket, in the city of Berkeley, Perry notices a sugar trail stretching outward from his shopping cart and thinks that he is making a mess (or: … and thinks: “I am making a mess”) and in fact, he is making a mess by leaving a sugar trail from his cart.

 

Sentence (5) contains (4). Although containing the pronouns ‘he’ or ‘I’, (5) is an eternal sentence, since according to Frege’s semantics the pronoun ‘he’ referring to its own sense and, alternatively, the ‘I’ can be seen as mentioned in a semantic metalanguage, the direct relations with their original indexical contexts being suppressed. Other counterexamples given by Perry can be paraphrased in a similar way. Even the truth-claim of (4) is preserved in (5), since a match between the indexical proposition and the fact is linguistically confirmed.

   There are some objections that could be made against the suggested paraphrase. The first one is that the content of (5), although containing the content of (4), gives back much more than what is contained in (4): it is almost certain that Perry didn’t know that he was in the confectionary supplies section of the Fleuty supermarket at 10 a.m. on March 26, 1968... However, what is so bad with this? One can even answer that this kind of paraphrase is part of our common dialogical speech, for instance, when someone tells the story of Perry’s amusing behavior in the confectionery supplies section of the Fleuty supermarket. Even Perry, if sufficiently informed, would tend to agree that the additional information is complementary to (4) and that the truth of (5) implies the truth of (4). A further objection would be that (5) does not give back Perry’s personal phenomenal experience when he thinks or utters sentence (4). The answer to this is that personal phenomenal experience is usually private and does not belong to the public language, the only thing that really matters here, due to its communicative function.[3]

 

3

A further point concerns Tugendhat’s (and Dummett’s) thesis that singular terms must have identification rules. If so, then, considering that indexicals are singular terms, they should also have identification rules. Moreover, if they have identification rules, we can ask if they have localizing and characterizing conditions similar to what we have found with proper names and autonomous definite descriptions. I think that the answer must be in the affirmative.

   The reasons are all too obvious. Suppose that I enter a French bakery, see a loaf of salt bread stuffed with goat cheese and tomatoes under the glass, point to it, and ask: “Could you please give me that?” The seller takes it, packs it, and sells me the loaf of bread I  pointed to. Of course, as I pointed to the bread, I created an identification rule for that object. The seller, on his side, recognizes the same object and identifies it by its place and characteristics in a way similar to the way I identified it. He used essentially the same identification rule. Localizing and characterizing conditions belong to that identification rule. They could be expressed by a definite description: “The loaf of salt bread stuffed with goat cheese and tomatoes that was found at place L and time T”. They belong conjunctively, since without this rule it would not be easy to distinguish such a referent.

   This simple example shows something about the indexical ‘that’, namely, it must indicate the time and location of the referent, together with a characterizing t-property or sets of compresent t-properties (individuals). It could also be the case that I decide to bring the loaf of bread home and put it in the refrigerator, so that the story of buying the loaf of bread also belongs to my identification rule. Anyway, the demonstrative ‘that’ replaces an identification rule that can be expressed by a definite description. This shows us something about the genesis of definite descriptions: they arise when we decide to fix indexicals linguistically to communicate the same reference without the need to show the object of reference to the hearer, as I expressed to the seller, or each time I intended to refer to it indexically. Indexicals allow us to identify a referent within some interpersonal context. But only definite descriptions allow us to refer to the object even when this object is not given in the ego-centered space. It gives the singular term what we could call constancy, though this constancy is inflexible. Only proper names can give us constancy with flexibility.

 

4

We can now go a step further to the case of general terms, which can be defined as those that are applicable to an indeterminate number of objects, allowing us to say, “the same of many”. This is the case of natural species terms like ‘gold’, ‘planet’, ‘tiger’, the case of mass terms (non-count ones) like ‘water’ and ‘air’, and the case of artifact terms like ‘chair’ and ‘house’. There is no systematic classification of general terms. However, I think it is possible to suggest a classification symmetrical to that of singular terms. This means that instead of indexicals, descriptions and proper names, we would have three classes of general terms, which we could call: (a) indexicators, (b) descriptivators, and (c) nominators. Before giving a rationale for these distinctions, I will explain them separately.

   Indexicators are the simplest general terms; they must be introduced by means of indexicals in a way that does not allow further analysis in our natural language.[4] This is the case of terms like red, hot, hard, round, and square. These terms can be further analyzed when they are used in additional domains of language, but not with the meanings they have in the natural language in which they were originally introduced. Consider, for instance, the word ‘red’. This term can be analyzed in the language of physics, as designating electromagnetic wavelengths that range between 630 and 740 nm. But the language of physics is an elaboration upon natural language that goes far beyond it. The same can be said about a term like ‘round’, which can be defined in the more refined language of geometry as what is limited by a circular perimeter. However, these languages are inevitably appended to the original language about colors and forms. In their original natural language meanings, these words have gained their sense by means of a kind of acquaintance, a term introduced by Bertrand Russell. As he insightfully observed, a blind man cannot learn the meaning of the word ‘red’, at least not in the original sense; hence, learning this word requires some form of acquaintance. Accepting this, I am of course not agreeing with Russell’s metaphysics of logical atomism, according to which the meaning of ‘red’ is a sense-datum (1994: 194-5, 201-2).[5] What I wish to defend is that the original meaning of ‘red’ must be given by an ascription rule relating physically given tropes of red, like the red of a carpet, with the word ‘red’. This ascription rule must be learned through positive and negative examples, in interpersonal acts of pointing, allowing the possibility of reapplication, and by this means also of error and interpersonal correction. This is how we first learn the ascription rule for a word like ‘red’ in the form of a tacit public convention. According to this reading, the ascription rule of a general term of the form of an indexicator must be its cognitive meaning, its semantic content.

   Indexicators can also be understood in their application to individuals, as in the sentence “This couch is red”, when the speaker points to tropes of redness belonging to the couch. In this case, the ascription rule should associate some remembered representation of red with what the person is observing in her ego-centered space. But it can also be understood as a non-realist kind of universal. When I say, “Red is a color”, what I intend to say, according to Donald Williams, is that the universal consisting in the class of all precisely similar tropes of red belongs to the class of all precisely similar tropes of color.[6]

   We consider now the descriptivators. They are general terms analogous with definite descriptions, though with classificatory instead of identifying functions. Consequently, they must be descriptive general terms provided with semantic complexity, able to be analyzed, and whose learning does not need to be directly dependent on any acquaintance with their reference. They easily take the form of indefinite descriptions. For instance: ‘a dowry hunter.’ This expression can be predicated to more than one object, for instance, to both David Sebastian and Zsa Zsa Gabor as persons who marry for money. Descriptivators are linguistically more stable than indexicators, since they do not depend directly on acquaintance: we do not need an indexical situation to learn what a dowry hunter is.

   There are, finally, nominators, also called general names. Like proper names, their symbolic expression is not descriptive, and they do not need to be learned in indexical situations like indexicators, even if this might be the case. They should be analyzed in a way that retains similarities with the way we have analyzed proper names; their meanings do not come from their syntactic articulation. They can be natural species terms like ‘tiger’, mass terms like ‘water’, artifact terms like ‘chair’, social terms like ‘professor’, cultural terms like ‘art’… Although these terms often seen semantically simple, they are in fact abbreviations of indefinite descriptions or even clusters of indefinite descriptions expressing a complex ascription rule. Take, for instance, the nominator ‘cathedral’; its meaning can be given by the indefinite description ‘a church that contains the cathedra of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference or episcopate’. Here we have a descriptivator term; and it is easy to guess (though difficult to prove) that if we analyze further and further the elements of this indefinite description, we would end up speaking of indexicators.

   We can justify the distinction among three kinds of general terms as analogous to the distinction among three kinds of singular terms appealing to a genetic progression. From a descriptivist viewpoint, it seems very plausible to think that the use of indexicals necessarily precedes the generation of descriptions, which in some way necessarily precedes the generation of proper names. Through the indexicals, we are presented with  objects for the first time. But the content of indexicals must be attached to the spatiotemporal situation in which they are used, which means they are not permanent (e.g., “Who is that tourist in the group?”). They only gain the property of permanence insofar as they are made context-independent by explicitly taking the form of definite descriptions (e.g., “Who is the tourist with an Australian hat in the group?”). Finally, they gain flexibility because of their independence from this or that definite description only when they take the form of a proper name (e.g., “John is [the tourist with the Australian hat] in the group”). My proposal is that a similar genetic progression can be found justifying the emergence of general terms. The semantic contents of indexicators are contextually and interpersonally given, differing from indexicals by their applicability to many things without a change in content.[7] They lack permanence and flexibility since they are limited by ego-centered contexts of use. The semantic content of descriptivators gains permanence; they can be applied to tropes independently of the context of use in which they are learned. Finally, the semantic content of nominators not only has permanence, but also flexibility, since, as we will see, in many cases it can be replaced by a variety of indefinite descriptions.

   Furthermore, we can speculate as to whether both singular and general terms do not have a common, undifferentiated origin, later restricting the first to individuals only, while allowing the second to have general application to tropical properties. Consider, for instance, the alarm calls of birds. They mean the same as “here” (an indexical) and “danger” (a general term), though without distinctions between subject and predicate. I think that these undifferentiated terms were also what Ernst Tugendhat had in mind with his concept of quasi-predicates (Quasiprädikate). As he wrote:

 

Probably one can say that the expressions of characterization of babies in the first stages of their language learning have this form of application. The baby learns to say “uau-uau” by seeing a dog, “mama” by seeing its mother when the perception-pattern of the mother appears… (1976: 208)[8]

 

These undifferentiated terms work like singular terms, because they distinguish something from all others, but they also work like general terms, because they can be applied to a multiplicity of referents.

 

5

 

It is particularly interesting to consider the case of nominators, since, somewhat like proper names, they are as a rule only apparently simple. Consider, for instance, the artifact term ‘chair’. This term can be analyzed as an abbreviation, as shown by the following definition:

 

‘Chair’ (Df.): a non-vehicular seat with a backrest designed for use by only one person at a time.

 

A chair must be non-vehicular, since similar objects in cars, trains, and airplanes, are called seats and not chairs. Moreover, to be a chair, a seat needs to have a backrest, because without one it is a seat. It must also have a designer since something that only by chance has the form of a chair (like a chair accidentally carved by nature out of a large rock) cannot be called a chair. And it must be made to be used by only one person at a time, since if it were not so, a couch would be a chair. The above given indefinite description expresses the criterial rule for the application of the word word ‘chair’, which constitutes the semantic content of this general term. The word ‘chair’ is only an abbreviation of this definiens. It is a practical abbreviation without much flexibility. Beyond this, there are symptoms that help us to identify chairs, like the fact that most chairs have four legs, many have armrests, some are cushioned, etc. This is the simplest case of a nominator, where the word is the abbreviation of a complex indefinite description.[9]

  Cases of natural species are more complicated. Some natural species concepts have nothing to do with microstructural essences, at least in the ways they have been used until now. This is the case of the biological concept of species (the genetic structure is not taken as a definitory element of a species). A better example is the concept of religion – a candidate for what Wittgenstein called family resemblance. Tha philosopher P. W. Alston (1964: Ch. 6) proposed the following descriptive model of criterial conditions for calling something a religion:

 

1.     Belief in supernatural beings (gods)

2.     Religious feelings (reverence, adoration, sense of mystery, and guilt)

3.     A moral code sanctioned by God or the gods

4.     Sermons and other forms of communication with God or the gods.

5.     A distinction between the sacred and profane; ritual acts related to sacred objects.

6.     A wide organization of personal and social life based on such characteristics.

7.     A cosmovision: an explanation of the world and man’s place in it.

 

Alston observes that Catholicism, Judaism, and Islamism, paradigmatically satisfy all these conditions.[10] Protestantism, however, attenuates rituals concerning sacred objects, while the Quakers reject them, concentrating on the mystical experience. Hinayana Buddhism, he notes, dispenses with supernatural beings, emphasizing a moral and spiritual discipline that aims to eliminate desires.

  We can go further, asking what should be said about Comte’s religion of humanity, which deifies human society, adopting devotional figures like Shakespeare and Clotilde de Vaux? What about immanent views of the divine, like Spinoza’s and Einstein’s religious attitude towards the universe? What about social organizations like the Rosicrucians, radical political groups, or the mathematical mysticism of the Pythagorean philosophers? My proposal is that to get more clarity about all these cases, we should add a higher-order condition, measuring the indefinite descriptions presented in Alston’s model. Here is what we could call the ascription rule for the concept word ‘religion’:

 

RA-‘religion’:

We use the word ‘religion’ to refer to a t-complex property x belonging to the genus of socio-cultural practices

Iff

(i)    x satisfies at least one or two of the 7 first-order indefinite description-rules.

(ii)  x satisfies them to a sufficient degree.

(iii) x satisfies them more than any competing socio-cultural practice.

 

 If we accept this ascription rule, we will include Comte’s religion of humanity under the concept of religion, since it satisfies 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 in varying degrees. We would have doubts concerning Spinoza’s and Einstein’s religions, since they satisfy only condition 2 entirely, but just barely satisfy conditions 5, 6, and 7. Rosicrucians, radical political groups, and Pythagorean mysticism would sufficiently satisfy some basic descriptions, but they would not satisfy condition (iii) of the ascription rule, since it applies less to other socio-cultural practices that are respectively ‘secret organizations’, ‘radical political groups’, and ‘philosophy’.

   Finally, it is interesting to note that this kind of ascription rule is often explicitly used in science. Examples are the criterial conditions for the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome in neurology (Gillberg 2002: Chap. 2), and the revised forms of Jones’ criterion for the diagnosis of rheumatic fever in internal medicine (Jones 1944).

 

6

A more complex and maybe the most discussed general term in recent analytic philosophy is that of water. From a descriptivist point of view, the conceptual content or semantic-cognitive meaning of the concept word ‘water’ has evolved historically. Since the stone age, humans have had this concept. It always was the transparent, colorless, and tasteless liquid found in rivers, lakes, and oceans, which fell to earth as rain, quenched thirst, irrigated flowers and crops, and was used to wash things and put out fires. Around 1750, still before the birth of modern chemistry, one could also add to these properties those of being a liquid able to cause rust, conduct electricity and necessary to maintain life. These were easily describable dispositional properties.

   A descriptivist would say that at least some central properties of this group, like (in a pure state) being transparent, colorless, and tasteless… and the dispositional properties of quenching thirst and extinguishing fires would be essential constituents of the meaning of the word ‘water’. But from 1780 to 1830 there was a scientific revolution. In 1781 Lavoisier ignited a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, causing a chemical reaction that joined the two elements to form water molecules, and in 1786 he reversed the process to break water molecules into the two component elements. In 1801, Nicholson and Carlisle obtained the same results through electrolysis. In 1811 Avogadro concluded that the composition of water was HO_1/2. And in 1821 Berzelius corrected that result, showing that the chemical structure of water was H₂O, which we now accept.[11]

  Philosophers like Putnam would argue that these discoveries put an end to descriptivism: the essence of water is H₂O, and this must be its real meaning. However, this argument would only impress the naïve descriptivist. A more sophisticated descriptivist would see it as the result of prejudice, retorting that a description does not need to be restricted to what one sees with the naked eye; the word ‘description’ has a much broader use, allowing its application to things invisible, like microstructures  visible only with the aid of a microscope... As Avrum Stroll noted (1998: 71), all good modern dictionaries include, along with superficial properties like being a transparent liquid… the chemical structure of H₂O, as well as other chemical properties like the percentages of hydrogen and oxygen by weight.

  My suggestion is that a sophisticated descriptivist should not reject chemical properties in the case of water, but rather incorporate them into descriptions expressing the meaning of the word. From this perspective, in its present sense the word ‘water’ should have a superficial and a deep nucleus of meaning. The superficial nucleus of meaning is the popular meaning, already known in 1750, including superficial dispositional properties. The deep nucleus of meaning would be the scientific meaning, which could be summarized by the formula H₂O, but well-considered should include what privileged users, namely, chemists, know about this compound (e.g. 2H₂ + O₂ = 2H₂O), together with the inferential relations between the superficial and the deep nuclei of meaning (e.g. the high surface tension caused by cohesive interaction between molecules).[12] Now, how could the ascription rule for the concept of water be formulated? My tentative suggestion is that in its widest sense the concept of water could be formulated in the following ascription rule:

 

     AR-‘water’:

The general term ‘water’ refers to t-properties belonging to the genus of an inorganic compound in any sample x (any sample identifiable through singular terms)

iff

(i)              x satisfies the characterizing rules constitutive of its popular nucleus of meaning and/or satisfies the characterizing rules constitutive of the scientific nucleus of meaning

(ii)            in a measure on the whole sufficient,

(iii)          more than any other inorganic compound.

 

This ascription rule for the concept word ‘water’ in the widest sense is to some extent like the MIR_F for proper names. However, it differs from the last one by the fact that condition (iii) does not restrict the application of the rule to a particular sample x. Moreover, the inclusive disjunction creates room for compounds that lack either the popular or the scientific nucleus of meaning, following in this way our intuitions. Indeed, it seems that if we could have a cup of a watery liquid with all the superficial properties of water, but different microphysical properties, for instance, with molecules constructed according to some complex formula that could be abbreviated as XYZ instead of H₂O, we could still call it water. On the other hand, it seems that if we had a liquid with no superficial property of water, but with the deep property of being constituted by H₂O, we could also call it water.

   It seems appropriate here to add a pragmatic consideration. By speaking of water, we can have in mind the satisfaction of superficial and/or deep properties, according to what could be called the context of interest involved. Imagine a scientific context of students who know some chemistry and are doing an experiment with electrolysis in the laboratory. In this context, what counts is the scientific nucleus of meaning of the compound, not the popular meaning since they are interested in using electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. The word ‘water’ is used here essentially in the sense of ‘oxide of hydrogen’, which is a chemical name of water, and this is what they contextually emphasize as the word’s meaning. Suppose on the other hand, that the context is one of simple fishermen on a remote island, who intend to dig a well to obtain water for drinking and washing. In this case, the context of interest will elevate the value of the superficial properties of water, since it is of no interest what chemical structure the aqueous liquid has, insofar as it fully satisfies their expectations (we can even imagine that they have no idea of the chemical constitution of water). What they mean with water is simply the aqueous liquid essential for life. What we mean with the word ‘water’ can remain general, satisfying AR-water, but can also vary from ‘oxide of hydrogen’ to ‘aqueous liquid’ according to the context.

   The above considerations enable us to deal with a dilemma that early descriptivists like A.J. Ayer (1983: 270) and causal-referentialists like Kripke (1980: 128-9) and Putnam (1975: 215-271) left unsolved. Let us suppose the two following imaginary situations (Costa 2014: 87):

 

(i)              A sample is found that has all the superficial characteristics of water: it is transparent, odorless, tasteless, quenches thirst, sustains life, puts out fire, etc. However, it has been discovered that this liquid is not H₂O, but XYZ.

(ii)            A sample is found that has no superficial characteristic of water. It is black like pitch, does not quench thirst, does not put out fire… but (very surprisingly!) has the chemical composition of H₂O.

 

The question is: which substance is really water: (i) or (ii)? Old style descriptivists like Ayer would say that (i) must be water and not (ii), since what defines water for them is only the superficial properties, not its chemical composition. Causal-referentialists like Kripke and Putnam would say that (ii) must still be water, but not (i), since only (ii) has the essential property of water, which is that of being a compound with the microstructure of H₂O. This is a dilemma, because both alternatives seem to have some appeal.

   The assumption of AR-‘water’, along with our pragmatic considerations, brings a solution to the dilemma. Both (i) and (ii) are, in the wide sense of the word, samples of water. We can call the first water-XYZ and the second water-H₂O. Moreover, in a scientific context of interest one can insist that the XYZ liquid is not water, understanding by water the same thing as oxide of hydrogen or H₂O, while in a popular context of interest one can insist that XYZ is water, insofar as it still has all its superficial properties, including those satisfying our needs.

   Another application of the proposed descriptivist analysis of the meaning of water concerns the epistemological status of the statement “Water is H₂O”. According to philosophers such as Kripke and Putnam, this is a necessary a posteriori statement, since it is based on experience, but it is also necessary, since for them the rigid designator ‘water’ picks out the same natural kind as the rigid designator ‘H₂O’ in all possible worlds… Avrum Stroll has noted something interesting about that statement (1998: 73): the ‘is’ in “Water is H₂O” is not the ‘is’ of identity, as Kripke suggested, but the ‘is’ of constitution. “Water is H₂O” does not mean “Water = H₂O”, but “Water is made of H₂O”. This is true, though it still seems possible to save the identity by changing the identity sentence into “Water is the same as quantities of H₂O molecules” or something of the kind. Moreover, even if the ‘is’ were one of constitution, “Water is H₂O” would for Kripke be a necessary a posteriori statement (see Burgess 2013: 65).

   A difficulty often found in Kripke’s necessary a posteriori is that what is necessarily true is what is true in all possible worlds, and it seems that what is true in all possible worlds must be known a priori (Stalnaker 1976). It seems that even if we arrived a posteriori at some truth, it would be accepted as being a priori as soon as we saw that it is true in all possible worlds.

   It is interesting to consider the statement “Water is H₂O” in the light of our suggested analysis of the meaning of H₂O, since it allows an explanation that circumvents the problem posed above. Accordingly, there must be three possible meanings of “Water is H₂O” (and also “Water is made of H₂O”):

 

(i)              If by ‘water’ we mean AR-‘water’, the statement must be contingent a posteriori, since the inclusive disjunction belonging to AR-‘water’ allows the empirical possibility that water is not the same as (or made of) H₂O, but even so, remains water. It is seen as remaining water, insofar as it still satisfies the superficial properties of being an aqueous liquid. In this general sense, the liquid would remain water even if it had the composition of XYZ.

(ii)            However, in a scientific context of interest in which ‘water’ means oxide of hydrogen, the statement “Water is H₂O” would be a necessary a priori statement, since it is seen as the same as “Hydrogen oxide = H₂O”.

(iii)          On the other hand, within a popular context of interest, ‘water’ will mean ‘aqueous liquid’ independently of  its chemical composition, which means that the statement “Water is H₂O” will, again, be contingent a posteriori.

 

After this analysis, the pressure for the acceptance of the necessary a posteriori disappears, at least regarding the statement “Water is H₂O”. Unaware of the given distinctions, defenders of the necessary a priori are in this case only unduly joining the necessity of sense (ii) with the a posteriori character of senses (i) and (iii).

 

7

The above discussed internalist understanding of the meaning of ‘water’ is obviously opposed to Putnam’s well-known externalist view, according to which “meanings just ain’t in the head” (1975: 227; 1988: 28). Here we must dwell on his famous Twin-Earth fantasy. He imagines that in some part of the cosmos there is a Twin-Earth, in all its details identical to ours, with one exception: the transparent, tasteless, odorless liquid that quenches thirst, puts out fires, falls to earth in the form of rain, fills rivers and oceans… has a complex chemical structure that can be abbreviated as XYZ, which has nothing to do with H₂O. Suppose a person called Oscar on the Earth in 1750 sees rain and says: “That is water”. At the same time, on the Twin-Earth the Twin-Oscar does the same. He looks at the rain and says: “That is water”. Since in 1750 the chemical structure of water was not yet known, all that Oscar and Twin-Oscar can have in their heads when they say, “That is water” is that they are looking at the same transparent, tasteless, odorless liquid called ‘water’. However, as chemists some time later discovered, what Oscar meant by pointing at the rain was the liquid with the microstructure H₂O, while Twin-Oscar meant a liquid with the microstructure XYZ. Since for Putnam the essence of water lies in its microstructure, XYZ cannot really be water (he calls XYZ ‘twin-water’). Consequently, Oscar and Twin-Oscar mean – refer to – different things with the word ‘water’, although they have the same contents in their heads (the same idea of a transparent, tasteless, odorless liquid…) Putnam’s conclusion is that if they have the same thing in mind, but what they mean are different things with different extensional meanings, then the meaning of ‘water’ cannot be in their heads! It must be something external to their head, the quantities of liquid with the same structure that they are pointing at. The conclusion is that the meaning of ‘water’ must be external to our minds, which can be generalized to other terms. It did not take much time until someone came to the conclusion that even our minds must be outside our head, since the locus of meaning is the mind (McDowell 1992).

   There is an ongoing controversy about the correctness of Putnam’s externalism (see Pessin & Goldberg 1996). I would like to add here a short but, in my view, fatal counterargument. It begins with a consideration of the ambiguity of the word ‘mean’ as used by Putnam. The word ‘mean’ has a twofold meaning: it means (i) ‘meaning’ (e.g., “What do you mean with the word ‘ulotrichous’?”), but it also means (ii) ‘what one is pointing at’ (e.g., “I mean that chair and not this table”). It is easy to confuse the second with the first use of the word, concluding that the Oscars really mean (in the sense (i) of ‘meaning’) different things, when in fact they only mean in the sense (ii) that they are pointing at different kinds of things, since the meaning they are giving to the word ‘water’ in 1750 is really the same, namely, the transparent, tasteless, odorless… aqueous liquid. (Even regarding the cause of their cognition, if questioned, they would identify it as the aqueous liquid they see falling from the sky and not a subjacent microstructure…). However, what this consideration, applied to the thought-experiment, shows is that when Putnam says that in 1750 Oscar and Twin-Oscar meant two different things with the word ‘water’, he:

 

induces us to tacitly use Oscar and Twin-Oscar as indexical instruments for what we ourselves presently mean (in the sense of ‘meaning’) with the word ‘water’ in each case. However, it is obvious that we, with our present knowledge of the chemistry of water, mean by ‘water’ something with the composition of H₂O when we consider what Oscar is pointing at, and, having in mind what Putnam has told us, we mean by ‘water’ XYZ (whatever it is), when we consider what Twin-Oscar is pointing at. Since our mental states are obviously different when we think H₂O and XYZ, Putnam’s thought experiment fails.

 

 What was and remains different are the references and the extensions of these two compounds, which always were, are and will be external. Putnam’s argument is nothing but a sophisticated kind of linguistic sorcery asking for careful linguistic Wittgensteinian therapy.[13]

   Putnam has also developed externalist arguments to defend that the meaning can be in society. In the first argument, he supposes that aluminum and molybdenum can only be distinguished by metallurgists and that the Twin-Earth is full of molybdenum, a rare metal on Earth. Moreover, he supposes that the inhabitants of Twin-Earth call molybdenum aluminum, and aluminum molybdenum. In this case, the word ‘aluminum’ said by Oscar will have an extension that is different from ‘aluminum’ said by Twin-Oscar. But since they are not metallurgists, they have the same psychological states. Hence, once again “the psychological state (the meaning) of the speaker does not determine the extension of the word” (1975: 226).

   In his second example, Putnam considers the difference between an elm and a beech tree (1975: 226-227). Most of us do not know how to distinguish elms from beech trees in a forest. Even so, we can use these words, knowing that they have different extensions, that elms are not beeches, and vice-versa. Hence, what we intend to say with these words, the meanings that we attribute to them, are different, even if the difference is not in our heads. Putnam notes that all we know is that an elm is a tree that is different from a beech tree, and vice-versa, but since this difference is totally symmetrical, the representations cannot be distinguished from one another (1991: 29[14]). We need the linguistic social corpus to distinguish them for us.

   His conclusion from these examples is that “Only the sociolinguistic state of the collective linguistic corpus” to which the speaker belongs will be able to fix its extension (1975: 228). Meaning is not only external but also social: “reference is socially fixed and not determined by conditions or objects in individual brains/minds” (1991: 25).

  Concerning these last views, we have already said enough when we made an internalist reconstruction of the linguistic division of work applied to proper names in chapter III (sec. 9) of this book. So, I will only answer Putnam’s last two examples against internalism.

   Concerning the first example, all we need to do is to generalize what we said about unqualified versus self-sufficient references, and the two success criteria of unqualified reference (SCBs), from singular to general terms. A fisherman who says that a whale is the biggest ocean fish gives a wrong definition of a whale, since it is a mammal. However, what he means already satisfies conditions of convergence and linguistic competence, enough not only for the insertion of the word in discourse by an enhanced mechanism of reference borrowing, but also even for his identification of whales based on their appearance. However, if a child thinks that ‘whale’ is the name of a mountain in the Appalachians, when in fact there is no such mountain, the child will fail to satisfy the condition of convergence, being unable to refer in the sense of inserting the word in discourse in a tolerable way. In the same way, we are already pretty sure that aluminum and molybdenum are metals and that they are different metals. Even if we cannot represent the differences (they are symmetrical), it is already a piece of information to know that A ≠ M: I already know that A and M must have differences in their properties, though I might know nothing about these properties. This is already, regarding the contexts, sufficient for the insertion of these words referentially in discourse, assuming an enhanced mechanism of reference borrowing. The meanings here will only be differentiated by privileged users, namely, by chemists and metallurgists.

   Concerning the second example, the answer is similar. We need to add that there is more in what we believe when we distinguish ‘elm’ from ‘beech’ (or ‘aluminum’ from ‘molibdenum’). If someone asks us about the difference between these two trees, we will answer that we suppose that these terms refer to different kinds of trees, though we concede that we are not sure. But what leads us to this hypothesis? I think a good reason would be that these words are in fact not new to us, we have in our lives heard of each separately, in different circumstances, which leads us to think of this hypothesis. Hence, we have minimally two pieces of information: (i) elms and beeches are kinds of trees; (ii) we suspect that they are different kinds of trees. Information (i) already allows us to insert these words convergently into discourse: we know that an elm cannot be made of molybdenum, for instance. Information (ii) makes us think that they are different kinds of trees. And this is all we need as a starting point. Yet, we can still be misled! It is very possible that elms and beeches are different names for the same kind of tree, in the same way as ‘calendula’ and ‘marigold’ are in fact the same kind of plant, although possibly they do not appear to be. Putnam mistakenly takes a plausible internal bet for an externalist form of social knowledge.

   Finally, I think that the acceptance of a trope ontology gives us a way to escape the conflict that supposedly bothered Putnam and many others: They didn’t accept Fregean platonic entities like concepts (Begriffe) or thoughts (Gedanken); and they also did not accept that conceptual meanings could be rendered in the form of changeable psychological states. Consequently, to go through these entities to the outside world seemed to be a plausible alternative. However, if a conceptual meaning as a universal is a class of precisely similar psychological tropes, we have a psychological escape hatch without the corresponding psychological burden.   

 

8

Another attempt to show that thoughts are outside our heads comes from Tyler Burge. Following John Searle, I have changed the example a bit to make it clearer. Imagine that Bill, living in community A, searches for a doctor, complaining that he has arthritis in his thigh. The doctor explains to him that arthritis cannot occur in the thigh, since it is an inflammation of the joints. Forgetting this conversation, Bill travels to a distant region of the country, where there is a community B that uses the word ‘arthritis’ for pain in the thigh. This time the doctor confirms his condition. According to Burge, such a story shows that the content of thought cannot be in the mind, since Bill has uttered the same sentence and thought about the same thing in the two different contexts with opposite truth-values. If we remember that the truth-value bearer is usually considered to be the content of a thought, the change in the truth-value shows that the contents of the thoughts should be different and, therefore, should not be in Bill’s mind.

   The internalist answer is that what Bill has in mind by thinking he has arthritis in his hips is more than that. As Searle wrote: “the presupposition of commonality of linguistic usage is a general background assumption, something that is prior to explicit beliefs and thoughts” (2004: 185). In other words, Bill is also in his mind assuming that his use of the word ‘arthritis’ is the same as the use of this word by the community of speakers surrounding him. This explains why in the first utterance his statement is true and in the second false. Together with this assumption, the first of Bill’s utterances can be unpacked as follows:

 

(1)   I believe that I have arthritis in the thigh, assuming that the word ‘arthritis’ is used by the surrounding linguistic community A as something causing pain in the thigh.

 

While the same utterance by Bill in the distant region of the country can be unpacked as having the form:

 

(2)   I believe that I have arthritis in my thigh, assuming that the word ‘arthritis’ is used by the surrounding linguistic community B as something causing pain in the thigh.

 

Now, the assumption is false in utterance (1), and true in utterance (2), which does not matter, since the full statements (1) and (2) are already different, the first referring to community A and the second referring to community B. They have different truth-values simply because their full contents of thought are different. And there is nothing external in this.

   An externalist could react by arguing that the semantic content of the indexical is already external, so that A and B remit to ‘the actual surrounding linguistic community’, which belongs to an essentially external, broad content. But the internalist could counter by answering that this move is in no way granted. He is fry to internalize the concept of broad content, suggesting that the internal indexical assumption is what we use to name the broad content, while the also internal thought-content that Bill has arthritis in his thigh is what we use to name the narrow content.

 

9

Descriptivism implies internalism. So, I will finish these sketches by rebutting two imaginative examples of David Kaplan in defense of externalism.

Removing some rhetorical ornaments of the first example, imagine that a person, say, Jim, points to someone on the street who seems to be Charles. Since Jim knows that Charles has moved to Princeton, he says:

 

1*. He moved to Princeton.

 

What Jim does not know is that the person on the street is his friend Paul, disguised as Charles. Since Paul didn’t move to Princeton, the proposition is false. However, thinks Kaplan (1989: IX), if the proposition were mere cognitive content, it should be true, since the belief Jim has is that Charles has moved to Princeton. Hence, the semantic content involved must be in the world outside, in what he calls a structured proposition, and not in the belief-content.

   The answer is that what authorizes Jim to state that he (the person Jim is pointing to there) has moved to Princeton is a previous visual (false) identification of Charles. Hence, the statement (1*) is the result of intuitive reasoning, which could be stated as follows:

 

1. That person there is Charles.

2. Charles moved to Princeton.

3. Hence: He (that person there) moved to Princeton.

 

This makes it clear that the statement (1*) does not involve in its semantic content the view that Charles went to Princeton. Statement (1*) = (3), which is only the result of reasoning from two other of Jim’s beliefs where (1) is false and (2) is true, which makes (3) false. This shows that Jim’s belief that Charles has moved to Princeton has nothing to do with the falsity of (3), which is perceived by some other person.

   The second argument concerns two identical twins: Castor and Pollux (1989: 531-2). They are observed to have the same cognitive-psychological states. At a certain moment, both say:

 

My brother was born before me.

 

Since Pollux was born first, Castor says something true, while Pollux says something false. According to Kaplan, since the cognitive states are the same, the difference in the belief-contents must be in the world outside, that is, in what he called a structured proposition.

   This argument only works if we take Putnam’s externalist arguments seriously. If not, the idea that Castor and Pollux have identical mental states but mean different things turns out to be gratuitous. After all, through the expression ‘my brother’, Castor must have in mind Pollux and Pollux Castor, and with the word ‘me’, each has in mind himself. Only the linguistic-grammatical meaning of the two sentences is the same, and this meaning is not sufficient to constitute a proposition or a content of thought.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABOUT THE APPENDIXES

 

The two following appendixes are complementary to the text of this book in the following ways. The first one shows that the view according to which abstract entities like numbers can be adjusted to a trope ontology isn’t as absurd as it seems at first view, since there is a plausible way to build natural numbers from tropes. The second Appendix shows that the resource of sense data – even from a direct realist point of view – is inevitable. From the point of view of the philosophy of language this means that there is no reason to avoid semantic internalism when it is called for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

APPENDIX I: TROPICAL NUMBERS

 

 

There are many attempts to define natural numbers. All of them defective. Although the present attempt is only a sketch, I guess I know why all the others are defective: It is because this is the right one.

 

 

I

Trope theory aims to give an ontological account of the whole world based on empirical building blocks called tropes. I characterize a trope as a spatiotemporally localizable property, notwithstanding its vagueness. This characterization is easily applicable to properties like qualities and forms, external or internal, simple or complex, the last ones being homogeneous or heterogeneous. It is also easily applicable to relational properties, insofar as they are spatiotemporally localizable. Material objects are bundles of compresent tropes. Even very diffuse things like the electromagnetic field of the Earth or the Thirty Years War should be understood in tropical terms since they can be seen as made up of very diffusely located spatiotemporal properties.

  A vulnerable point of trope theory is that it seems unable to explain the so-called abstract entities like those of mathematics. Against this limitation, my aim in this paper is to sketch a strategy to explain natural numbers as tropes. This can be of obvious interest since natural numbers are touchstones of mathematics.

 

 

II

 

A preliminary point concerns the usual strategy to construct universals as sets or sums of strictly similar tropes (Williams 1953 I: 9; Campbell 1981). The universal of redness, for instance, is the set of all tropes of red that are strictly similar one another. However, this answer has well-known shortcomings. First, some consider sets to be abstract entities, universals in a Platonic or some Aristotelian sub-Platonic sense. Second, there is a well-known problem concerning our treatment of strict similarities: Either they are instances of the universal of strict similarity, contaminating trope-theory with realism on universals, or they are also tropes. If they are tropes, however, then two strict similarities between tropes must be strictly similar one another, what commits us to conceding a second-order strict similarity. But then we would soon need a third-order strict similarity of second-order ones, falling into an infinite regress. A further problem is that sets can change the number of their elements, which means that sets of strictly similar tropes could easily change their size, while universals cannot change their size since they do not have sizes. An appeal to open sets would not be helpful since although they exist in our minds and as written symbols, it is doubtful if they exist at the ontological level.

  My way to deal with the problem is free from these burdens. It is simpler and inspired in the particularism of English empiricism. Instead of appealing to sets, I suggest that to build tropical universals we proceed like a geometer building a proof by means of an example drawn on a blackboard: the example serves as a model for all cases (Berkeley 1710, Intro., sec. 12). Doing so, all that we need in order to construct a universal is just one trope that we arbitrarily choose to use as a model. Then we define the universal as either this model or any other trope that is strictly similar to this model. That is, calling T the trope T used as a model, we can define the universal as follows:

 

Universal for a trope T (Df.): T* or any other trope strictly similar to T*.

 

Giving a simple example, suppose I am acquainted with a patch of vermillion of cinnabar, a very specific color. Now, suppose I intend to use this trope as the model-trope Tv*. This allows me to build the universal of this color as the trope Tv* or any other trope strictly similar to Tv*. Certainly, Tv* in practice does not need to remain the same. You can choose any other strictly similar patch as a model. That is, the models can be randomly chosen. In this way, we are free from the urge to build higher-order strict similarities, since we may consider any chosen trope T in terms of its first-order strict similarity or lack of strict similarity with Tv*. Moreover, there is no question about size in this operational view of universals, since we dropped the appeal to sets.

 

 

III

 

Coming to our attempt to build numbers as tropes, empiricist accounts can give us a first clue. Locke, for example, saw the number as a primary quality (1690, Book II, Ch. Viii). Indeed, the bed in my room has the property of being one, independently of the sensory system of the perceiver. For applied small natural numbers, this seems to work: I can perceive two, three, or even six coins at a glance; and some savants can perceive more than a hundred coins at a glance, although they are also unable to perceive large numbers without counting. Penelope Maddy noted that the ten fingers of her hands are located on her hands (1884: 87). Moreover, applied numbers can even move together with their bearers. For instance, the 26 stones that make up Stonehenge were originally transported to Wiltshire from Wales.

   Although these applied numbers seem to satisfy our definition of tropes, since they are spatiotemporally localizable, they are surely not at the same level of the counted bed, coins, fingers and stones. Since Frege, we have known that applied numbers are dependent on the conceptual ways we have to divide up the world. Thus, I count my 10 fingers but only my 2 hands, we count 26 stones but only a single Stonehenge in Wiltshire. Even if we agree to consider these applied numbers as tropical entities, we must consider them as dependent on the kind of thing counted, namely, as higher-order properties of concepts associated with the higher-order property of existence (Frege 1884: sec. 55)… Now, understanding the concept (differently from Frege) as a conceptual rule, not as rule actualized in someone’s mind, but as a dispositionally localizable trope, we can read existence as the (higher order) property of this dispositional rule of its effective or warranted application. Moreover, this effectively possible application of a rule must be also a higher-order localizable dispositional trope-property indirectly belonging to what is said to exist, since it will be the higher-order tropical property of such a dispositional conceptual rule of being applied in some domain, which the real application of this conceptual rule proves. (Because of this, a thing can exist even if its conceptual rule does not actualize, insofar as if this rule were actual it would be effectively applicable to it, which makes the existence of things independent of the actual existence of cognitive subjects or rules.)

  Now, when we count different applications of a conceptual rule, what we get are applied numbers added to existence. Consider, as Frege would do, the case of the empty concept of ‘moons of Venus’. Symbolizing the conceptual rule for ‘moon of Venus’ as V, we can symbolize the idea that Venus has 0 moons as ~∃x (Vx). The concept ‘moons of Earth’ applies to only one object. Symbolizing the conceptual rule expressed by ‘…moons of Earth’ as E, we can render the idea that the earth has one moon as ∃x [Ex & (y) (Ey → y = x)]. Symbolizing the conceptual expression ‘…moons of Mars’ as M, we can symbolize the idea that Mars has two moons as ∃x [(Mx) (My) & ~(x = y) & (z) (Mz → (z = x) v (z = y))]… For higher numbers and more complicated statements a similar method can be easily conceived. Important is that these existences and applied numbers can be seen as spatiotemporally localizable higher-order possible properties or tropes belonging to possible first-order tropical possible conceptual rules. The number 2 associated with the concept ‘moons of Mars’ applies to Phobos and Deimos, for instance, means that this applied number is located presently and in the surroundings of Mars and not in a distant Galaxy in a remote future or in a Platonic heaven. Our only moon exists circling the earth and this existence is not in Andromeda. Finally, there are the 0 moons of Venus, in the sense that the conceptual rule of ‘moon of Venus’ isn’t effectively applicable to its surroundings as expected.

  After identifying the applied natural number with the dispositional tropical property of the enumeration as an idealized counting of the effective application (existence) of dispositional tropical conceptual rules, what we need to do is to separate (or abstract) the numerical trope from the dispositional tropical conceptual rules in question and the dispositional application of them as attributions of existence. I suggest we can represent in a separated form these numerical tropes as spatiotemporally located dispositional sets-tropes of applications that in this way represent applied numbers separated from their associated conceptual rules. So, we can represent the numerical property of not being locally applied of the conceptual rule of ‘Venus’ moons’ using a set containing as its only member the lack of the applicability of an attribution of existence or {~a} (= 0). We can represent the numerical property of being locally applied only once, using the set that contains only one application of some conceptual rule or: {a} (= 1). We can represent the property of being applied twice using the set that contains a double trope of application or {a, |a|} (= 2). We can represent the property of being applied three times as the set {a, |a|, ||a||} (= 3), and so on. Since {a, |a|, ||a||} (=3) contains {a, |a|} (=2) that contains {a} (=1), each new representation shows the right kind of complexity, containing its antecedents. Moreover, it is essential to see that although we are here distinguishing applied numbers by means of sets, these are not pure sets! (We are not trying to build natural numbers from nothing, as do mathematician like von Neumann or Zermelo have attempted, beginning with the null set.) We are dealing with spatiotemporally located sets of higher-order trope-properties of ideally countable applications of conceptual-rules (I say ideally countable because great natural numbers are not countable to human beings). The two-members set-trope of Mars’ moons is spatiotemporally located around Mars, the one-member set-trope of earth moons is spatiotemporally located around the earth, and the null-member set of Venus’ moons is a set of non-applicability, since there isn’t any moon spatiotemporally located in the surroundings of Venus, as expected – no numerical tropes are to be found in the location.

 

IV

At this point, a mathematician could object that we have explained only applied, not abstract numbers. Mathematicians are not interested in counting the number of fingers on their hands. When they perform the addition 7 + 5 = 12, they are considering numbers in abstraction from conceptual divisions of the world. What really matters, they say, are the numbers of abstract arithmetic, the universals, the numbers-in-themselves, independently of their satisfaction by ideally countable material objects. Reducing numbers to numerical sets of located applications, we explain an applied number but not what is common to all equinumerous applied numbers. The natural number 3, formulated as {a, |a|, ||a||} is a triad, but not what is common to all triads, namely, the universal three, the three-in-itself.

   The proper way to represent what is common to all triads seems to be the appeal to things like a Russellian set of all sets of the same kind. However, this seems to lead us to his conclusion that the universe has an infinite number of objects (1919, Ch. XIII), which is too demanding, considering how infinite an actual infinite must be. Moreover, without assuming tropes, these sets seem to be abstract objects. In any chosen way, we seem to overpopulate our world with an infinite number of abstract objects.

  However, in the same way as we have constructed universal quality-tropes without appealing to sets, we can also construct universal numerical tropes without appealing to sets. As we have seen, an applied natural number can be understood as a trope, since it is spatiotemporally localizable as a second-order numerical property of a dispositional conceptual rule resulting from its (ideally countable) applications. Consequently, in order to account for the universal as the number-in-itself, we can also appeal to our disjunctive device.

   In this case, for instance, it is conceivable that the number 2 in itself would be a disjunction between a set instantiated by a chosen located higher-order set-trope of enumerable dispositional applications used as a model (e.g., the number 2 in the statement ‘I have 2 hands’) or any other strictly similar (equinumerous) located set-trope. Now, in order to get the number 2 as the ‘abstract universal’, the so-called ‘2-in-itself’, all we need to do is to apply the same procedure we have applied to get universals from our usual quality-tropes to a numerical set-trope of located applications {a, {a}} understood as a selected model. For instance:

 

Number 2 (Df.) = a selected model understood as a higher-order set-trope of located countable applications {a, |a|}*, or… any further higher-order set-trope of located countable dispositional applications strictly similar (equinumerous) to {a, |a|}*.

 

 In this sense, the natural number as a universal (or ‘abstract object’) can be defined as:

A higher-order located (ideally) countable set-trope taken as a model or of any higher-order located (ideally) countable set-trope strictly similar (equinumerous) to the model.

 

Note that such a universal or abstract object remains empirical since it is a higher-order disjunctive numerical set-trope of located dispositional applications that can be found as something dispersed across our whole spatiotemporal world.

   Assuming a definition like that, we neither stumble over controversial pure or infinite sets nor seem to remain limited to particular instances or directly committed to any empirical constituent of material objects. The foreseeable conclusion is that even the abstract world of mathematics is built of thin higher-order tropes. Such tropes, like some others, would be situated at the peak of a building whose originating genetic-epistemic foundations are our more feasible perceptually given quality-tropes, although retaining the distinctive property of being spatiotemporally located, even if in an extremely diffuse way. A final advantage of the proposed view is that it is consonant with the applicability of mathematics to the empirical world. Mathematical entities are applicable because, like all in our world, they are made up of tropes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

APPENDIX II

NON-NAÏVE DIRECT REALISM

 

 

My intention here is to show that we can reconcile direct realism with the idea that we in inevitably perceive the external world through a “veil of sensations” (of sense data). It is difficult to say something really new about the classical philosophical problem of perception. Aware of this, my goal here is to highlight some points in defense of a “non-naïve” direct realism.

 

1.     Janus Face thesis of perceptual experience

My understanding of direct realism is grounded on two theses. I can state the first now: everything experienced in normal perception has a kind of Janus face. That is, we can conceive the phenomenally given in sensory-perceptual experience of the outside world in two different ways (Costa 2018, 419 f.):

 

(A) As the psychological experience of cognitively dependent internally given sensory contents (more often called sense data).

(B) As the proper perceptual experience of cognitively-independent, externally given perceptual contents (understood as physically singularized entities).

 

Psychological experience (A) gives us what we may call sensory impressions or contents (also called sense data, sensations, sensa, qualia, ideas, phenomena…). Today it is beyond doubt that sensory contents are always present in perceptual experience. Although in the past many philosophers denied the existence of sensory contents (understood as sense data) as those sensory contents given in (A) as necessarily accompanying proper perceptual experience (B), I defend the view that today the issue has been definitively settled by neuroscience, at least regarding visual experience. The computational reconstruction of moving mental images taken with BOLD fMRI by reading brain activity first made at the University of Berkeley was able to show moving visual images formed in the brain when a person sees objects or watches a film (Gallant et al. 2016). After experiments like these, who would dare to doubt the existence of sense data accompanying perception?

   However, thesis (B) also seems beyond doubt: it is the idea that in addition to sensory experience, when we perceive something, this something is given to us as an external entity. Indeed, it is also a commonsense truth to say that we usually perceive the external world as it really is, constructed of mind-independent entities like material objects and their singularized properties.

    The clearest evidence favoring this double view is tactile experience (Cf. Searle 2015: 24). Suppose I touch a hot stove with my hand. I can say I have a sensation of heat: this sensory-impression is the psychological internal sensory-content of experience (A). Alternatively, and correctly, I can also say that I have perceived that the stove in itself is hot; this is the correct perceptual experience of the externally given physical entity (B). The essential to be noticed in this example is that in the normal case we are unable, as John Searle would note, to phenomenally distinguish experience (A) from experience (B). The content seems to be the same, though differently understood. Thus, in a similar way I can say:

 

(A) [I feel that] I am holding a tennis ball in my hand.

(B)  I am holding a tennis ball in my hand.

 

Now, of auditory experience, I can say:

 

(A) [I have the auditory impression that] I hear thunder.

(B)  I hear thunder.

 

And of the most common visual experience, I can also say:

 

(A) [I have the visual impression that] I am seeing a fishing boat entering the mouth of Pirangi River.

(B) I am seeing a fishing boat entering the mouth of Pirangi River. 

 

As you can see, the phenomenal descriptions outside the brackets are the same, but in the (A) cases, I speak of sensory contents occurring in my head (sense data), while in the (B) cases, I speak of independent factual contents pre-existing in the external world. The real thing (B) is cognitively dependent on sense impressions (A), since without (A) I couldn’t know (B). On the other hand, sense impressions (A) are causally dependent on (B), which causes (A). These conclusions lead us to our second thesis.

 

2.     Thesis of the cognitive primacy of sensory content

Along with the thesis of the Janus face of content in the case of real perception, I will defend the epistemic thesis of a cognitive primacy of sensory content. The conditions in which sensory content or sense data can be interpretatively resituated as perceptual content are the conditions in which sensory content is a medium through which perceptual content can be given by us. This thesis of cognitive primacy of sensory content can be complemented with a thesis of the causal primacy of perceptual content in the case of real perception, which is its ontological counterpart.

   I can illustrate how harmless the above duplicity is by comparing it with the kind of doubling that occurs in our interpretation of objects we see in a mirror. What we see in a mirror can be interpreted as: (A’) a simple image of things, for instance, the image of a vase of flowers on a table. But it can also be seen as: (B’) the vase in itself that I am seeing in a mirror. For instance, I can point to an object I see in a mirror, and you can ask me if I am pointing to the reflected image of the vase of flowers or to the real vase of flowers behind me. That they belong to different domains is made clear by functional differences: the image isn’t considered real, because it has a changeable size, we cannot touch, smell or break it. The real vase of flowers, on the other hand, has an unchangeable size, and can be touched, smelled, directly seen from all sides, manipulated, broken, etc.

   However, by looking at the mirror, we would not be able to see the vase on the table without the help of the image; and the elements and relations between both will coincide, at least partially. As in the case above, (B’) is cognitively dependent on (A’), because without the image (A’) you couldn’t see (B’). Alternatively, (A’) is causally dependent on (B’). This is why when you pay attention to an object in a mirror you see it as perceptually dependent on its image, but when you pay attention to the image, you see it as causally dependent on the real object. You can easily say that you see the reality through the image. But you will never say that you cannot see the vase only because what you really see is only its image. Moreover, you can also say that you are seeing the real vase directly by means of its image, at least if you compare it with the same vase seen in a photo or a picture. You can see either the real vase or its image – but not both together. And the mirror-image also shows that our experience is perspectival. What we see are typically facets, aspects.

   The analogy shows how we pass from the mind-dependent to a mind-independent interpretation of phenomena. We can observe an external factual content by means of its phenomenal experience as involving a purely sensory content, which is internal. The phenomenon of post-images illustrates the point clearly: after looking at the sun very briefly one can close one’s eyes, and the image of the sun does not disappear immediately. As we will see, the dichotomy considered above is also important because it is a condition for the defeasibility of observational evidence: it allows us to explain why evidence can deceive us.

   Beyond the analogy, we can consider the case of the contextual differences between sensory experience and perceptual experience. When we compare sensory content with perceptual content, we can see that here there are also clear conditions to distinguish the first from the second. Together these conditions, which were already listed by philosophers like Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Frege, and G. E. Moore, form what we could call the reality criterion (Cf. Costa 2018; 435-6). Based on them I can conceptualize the reality criterion as the conjunction of the following four conditions for the diagnosis of external reality. The first two are conditions of externality and can be spelled as:

 

1.     The content must be given independent of our will,

2.     The content must be capable of being object of interpersonal agreement under suitable circumstances.

 

The second two conditions constitutive of our criterion of reality are the following conditions of reality:

 

3.     The content must be given to us in its most intense degree and detail, and often in co-sensorial modus.

4.     The content must obey the laws of nature, it must display expected regularities of different forms, must be also contextually coherent.

 

Once the phenomenal content given to experience satisfies these four conditions conjunctively, we are usually[15] allowed to interpret the content as being “the real thing”: an externally given perceptual content, that is, an object, a singularized property (trope), an event, a state of affairs, a process... It is fundamental that the satisfaction is conjunctive, since when satisfied separately, these criteria can be only symptoms[16] unable to warrant external reality (there are intense hallucinations, there are ways of controlling external reality using only the activation of the motor cortex, interpersonal hallucinations are possible under the influence of drugs, a very tedious dream can display usual regularities…). When a person has a dream, the person has sensory content without perceptual content. In a dream usually only condition (1) (of externality, it seems external) is satisfied. In the case of alcoholic hallucinosis not only condition (1) but also condition (3) (the images seem to be quite real) is satisfied, though not (2) and (4). We can say that in usual circumstances the satisfaction of the criterion of reality simply defines what is externally real. On the other hand, before the computational reconstruction of brain images, the thesis that sensory content exists, acting like a medium to be projected on the real world in real perception could be more easily contested.

   As in the case of mirror images, the perceptually real content inferred from the conjunctive satisfaction of conditions (1) to (4) is cognitively (epistemically) dependent on pre-existing sensory content, which does not conjunctively satisfy conditions (1) to (4), but does satisfy criterial conditions for sense data, like that of being susceptible to the computational imagistic reconstruction of brain activity. And also in the same way as in the case of mirror images, sensory content can be shown to be causally (ontologically) dependent on pre-existing external perceptually real content (which does conjunctively satisfy conditions (1) to (4). 

 

3.     Response to the argument of Illusion

There are, however, two traditional arguments designed to show that the kind of direct realism suggested above must be wrong, and it is advisable to answer them here. They are the famous argument of illusion and the argument of science.

   I begin with the famous argument of illusion. It usually concerns cases of perceptual illusions in which what we think we perceive is not what we should perceive, particularly in the extreme case of hallucinations in which we only imagine we perceive something. The main goal of the argument of illusion is the replacement of direct realism by indirect realism, according to which we perceive the objectively real world indirectly through the “veil of sensations” constituted by sensory perceptions or sense data.

   There is an extensive philosophical literature aiming to show that the argument of illusion is fallacious, and we do directly perceive things around us as they really are. In my understanding of direct realism, I do not wish to deny that there are sensory impressions or sense data. I do not even wish to deny that we perceive the world through a “veil of sensations” or sensory perceptions or sense data, since by accepting (A) I have accepted these conclusions. What I reject is the claim that these things make our perception indirect, which is the basic claim of indirect realism. For we never say we perceive our sensations; what we might say is that we perceive the world directly through, or by means of, or by a contextualized interpretation of what we receive as our sensations or sensory impressions. This suggests that the fact that we can show we perceive the external world through a “veil of sensations” doesn’t make our perception of the external world indirect, and it is a category mistake to defend this view. Put simply: the central problem with the argument of illusion is that it is based on a misunderstanding of the semantics of our concept of being direct.  Consider the following two sentence pairs:

 

1. The trip is direct (the bus travels directly from Constance to Munich with a lunch stop of thirty minutes).

2. The trip is indirect (first you take a bus from Constance to Lindau, then a train to Munich).

 

1. The bullet struck the victim directly (after piercing window glass).

2. The bullet struck the victim indirectly (after ricocheting off a wall).

 

These examples show that what makes some relations direct is not necessarily the fact that we cannot find intermediaries between the relata – they very often exist and there can be more than just one. Directness/indirectness is an essentially conventional distinction that depends on the relevance of the intermediaries for what we aim to consider.

   In the case of perception, conventions allow us to say that we perceive things around us directly, even if by means of causal processes involving a number of intermediaries. And there is nothing wrong in accepting the view that we perceive things directly by means of sense data or through a “veil of sensations,” just as much as there is nothing wrong in saying that the victim was struck directly by a bullet, though it first had to go through window glass.

   Having in mind what I just said, I will consider only a few well-known examples of the argument of illusion, showing where they fail to prove that perceptual experience is indirect:

 

EXAMPLE 1: If with closed left eye I press the side of my right eye with my right finger, I have the impression that things in front of me move in the opposite direction. Consequently, what I see directly are only images of things, that is, sensory impressions, and not things as they are in themselves.

ANSWER: Even if I show by pressing my eye that I see things moving through my visual field, this does not mean that I am not seeing the things directly. In fact, I can even say, ‘I see external things directly and precisely as they are, although they seem as if they were moving.’

 

EXAMPLE 2: If I hold my index finger fifty centimeters from my face and look at the other end of the room, I see two images of index fingers when focusing on the far wall. If I then focus my eyes on the finger, the two images merge into a single image. Since they are not phenomenally different in the two cases, I conclude that what I really see are sensory impressions of my index finger, even if I can locate my finger through these sense data.

ANSWER: As Searle has noted, I can instead say, ‘I do not see two fingers… I am directly seeing my index finger as if it were doubled.’ 

 

EXAMPLE 3: I look at a coin that I am holding at an angle. I know it is round, but it appears elliptical. Indeed, only occasionally do I see a coin with a round form, which is called its real form. So, what I primarily see are my sensory impressions.

ANSWER: About the form of the coin, it appears elliptical, but I can say that I directly see a round coin that only looks elliptical because it is being held at an angle. – As A. J. Ayer noted, what we consider to be real is often a question of convention (Cf. Ayer 1973, Ch. 4). We have the convention that the real form of a coin or a table is the form we see when we look at them from above. In the same way, we have a convention that the real form of a mountain is the form we see when looking at it from the ground below it at a distance, but not an aerial view from above (e.g., Matterhorn, Sugarloaf). The real color of a tropical mountain is normally green, even if it may seem blue when viewed from a great distance, etc. 

 

EXAMPLE 4: Suppose I have a perfect hallucination of a white horse. What I see is not a real white horse, but only a hallucinatory image. Since this image made of sense data isn’t different from what I see when I see a real white horse, the primary object of perception must be my sensory impressions or sense-data.  

ANSWER: Finally, in the case of a hallucination, it is simply wrong to say that I see the content of my hallucination. I only believe I see it, when in fact there is nothing there to be seen! Verbs like ‘seeing,’ ‘perceiving,’ ‘being aware of’ are primarily related to the factual, objective content, and not to a merely sensory content. Even if it is through sensory content that we have perceptions of things, this does not make our realism indirect. In a similar way, when we say that a bus made a stop of thirty minutes for lunch, this does not mean that the bus trip was indirect.

Summarizing: we perceive things directly, even under misleading conditions like those of delusions, which justifies the direct realist view of whatever is given in perception. Nor does this means that there cannot be an irrelevant veil of sensory impressions or sense data in-between, being interpretatively relocated as constituents of objective reality. This justifies my psychological interpretation (A) of a given content as based merely on sensory data, without forcing me to reject interpretation (B).

 

4.     Response to the argument of science

Finally, a word about the argument of science. According to this argument, perceptual experience depends on the stimulation of distal neuronal cells that in the end leads to the stimulation of cortical regions in the brain. In the visual case, as far as I know, it seems that what we call sensory impressions or sense data has much to do with the activation of the striate cortex, because the stimulation of this region without the activation of photoreceptors in the retina is apt to produce hallucinatory phenomena (Teeple, Caplan, Stern 2009: 26-32). The conclusion of this argument is that our experience is in fact the experience of something occurring in our brain, which is nothing but the experience of sensory impressions or sense data. Consequently, our direct experience can only be one of these sensory impressions occurring in our brain. From this it should follow that we cannot have a direct experience of the world around us; it also follows that we cannot have any warrant that our contents of experience reflect the way the external world really is. We cannot even be sure of its real existence. Worse yet, we may be led to the incredible conclusion that since our brain also belong to the external world, we cannot even be sure that our brain exists... All we can be sure of is that there are all these changing flocks of sensory impressions!

   The answer to the argument of science is that there is nothing semantically wrong in saying that we directly experience things given in the external world, even if this experience requires underlying neuronal work as intermediary means. In the case of visual perception, the relevant point is that the sentence ‘I directly see the object’ belongs to our ordinary language, while expressions like ‘by stimulating of distal neuronal cells…’ or ‘through activating the striate cortex…’ indicate underlying intermediating neurobiological processes responsible for this direct experience, expressible in a neuroscientific language with a very different semantic import. The argument of science is based on a confusion between ordinary and scientific languages.

 

5.     Phenomenalist objection

There is still a phenomenalist objection. The objection can be expressed as follows: The internal contents, the sense data, are of a mental, psychological nature. If through the satisfaction of a criterion of external reality, they are interpreted or projected as external, turning into external contents – for instance, this computer with its singularized properties like weight, hardness, colors, luminosity, forms…  – then these contents must remain mental or psychological. This means that the external world is phenomenally constituted by internal, mental constituents, which are externalized sense data! This means idealism, if not also solipsism.

   Against this radical view there is a Kantian middle way solution: what we usually call the external world is constituted by mental phenomena, though there is something beyond them that is the world as a thing-in-itself (Ding an sich), an x that is beyond cognition. This thing-in-itself is noumenal, that is, it must be beyond the phenomenal domain, which also means beyond the reach of our knowledge. In this way, grounding what we know by means of what we do not know, Kant arrives at his transcendental idealism. This would be the most reasonable way to solve the problem.

   The answer one can give is that, although this seems to be the most reasonable solution, it creates another equally serious difficulty. How to justify the existence of this thing-in-itself? Is it not an odd, empty hypothesis that cannot be proven and is consequently senseless? One answer to the problem is that the thing-in-itself should not be thought of as a real thing. It must be thought of as something dim, like the reverse side of a sheet of paper, when the first side is the phenomenal side. But then, how can we know that our phenomenal world is like a sheet of paper wich has another side so that we not even know what kind of thing the other side is? The metaphor thus does not seems helpful.

   From my side I do not believe we need to fall into the traps of transcendental idealism in order to solve the problem. When the content of sensation, the sense data, the qualia, satisfies the criterion of reality, that is, the conditions of externality and reality, it can be interpreted-projected-relocated as something qualitatively identical in the external world. This content, when considered as satisfying the criterion of reality, is simply defined as an external spatiotemporal singularized property (trope) or a bunch of external compresent singularized properties, namely, as a material object, or as any combination of these two things building external empirical facts (states of affairs, events, processes…).[17]

   My proposal is that with this kind of direct realism we not only have the cake but also permission to eat it. But isn’t this just a hat trick? My answer is that if it is “magic”, it is the sort we find in everyday life. If the sensory impressions satisfy the criteria of external reality, this allows us to reinterpret them as aspects of things belonging to the external world, that is, as external physical contents.

   Finally, we could suggest that there is an ontologically deeper glue joining these contents, which is that both are made up of singularized properties (tropes): the external content must be in some way made up of external singularized properties that are physical ones, while the internal content must be made up of internal singularized properties, which from our perspective are mental or psychological ones, though constituted by physical tropes. Because both contents are structures made up of properties singularized in space and time, they share enough to make justified our cognitive access to the external world. The fact that we do not yet know how it is does not impaire the fact that it must be so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES

 

 

Ahlberg, J., M. Cholbi (eds) 2017. Procreation, Parenthood, and Educational Rights: Ethical and Philosophical Issues. London: Routledge.

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Backer, G.P. 1974. Criteria: A New Foundation for Semantics. Ratio 16, 156-189.

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- 1981. What’s in a name? Australasian Journal of Philosophy, v. 59, n. 4, 371-386, 1981.

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the concept of rigid designator is deflated, since any singular term is a rigid designator…

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[1] This translation fares better than the literal expression ‘the referent’s way of being given’ (die Art des Gegebenseins des Bezeichneten) (Frege 1892: 26) since it preserves the intentional aspect of the concept of Sinn. Max Textor suggested ‘a mode of purported representation’ to warrant the sense of empty names (2011: 134).

[2] For a detailed discussion, see Costa 2014, Ch. IV.

[3] For a detailed discussion, see Costa 2014, Ch. IV.

[4] The argument that follows is influenced by Wittgenstein’s considerations about the interpersonal character of language, along with the idea that there are different “regions” of language (“languages”), different “practices” or “language-games” in which the same expression is used, with different but kindred meanings, easily leading the philosopher to confusion. (See Wittgenstein 1984b, part I, 1984a; see also Costa 2018: 115-153)

[5] Indexicators are subrogates of what Russell called logical proper names. However, differently from Russell, I do not see their meanings as their references, but as rules linking the references with the terms, which means they can also be learned and used incorrectly, and for this reason statements using them can be false.

[6] Or, following what I suggest in chapter II (to avoid problems with the term ‘class’), what I intend to say is that any arbitrarily chosen trope of red or any other trope of red precisely like it is also any arbitrarily chosen trope of color or any other trope of color precisely like it (qualitatively identical to it).

 

[7] In conformity with our acceptance of trope theory, we can imagine a model or models that are interpersonally introduced in order to fix the semantic rule for some indexicator. This would eschew the problematic appeal to abstract entities. Possible worlds could contain or not contain exemplars of the model, having in the first case the t-property.

[8] I think that the line of thought that led to his conclusions was, however, a different one. For him, the characteristic of such words is that the situations of their application and of their explanation are the same (1976: 208-209).

[9] Cognitive psychologists, beginning with Eleanor Rosh, noted the importance of the degrees of similarity of an exemplar with prototypical cases when the intention is to make a conceptual categorization (Rosh 1973; 1999). We can more easily identify what concept we should apply to an object, insofar as we find it has more features in common with the stereotypical case (for instance: we can identify a falcon as a bird much more easily than a penguin, since penguins have fewer features similar to common stereotypes of birds, and we can identify a chair in the dining room as a chair more easily than an electric chair). All that is well-justified regarding performance and the process of learning. But it would be confusing to attempt to maintain the prototype theory without preserving the possibility of definitional tacit conventions, since without the criteria offered by them, we can get lost in finding the right similarity features and stereotypical cases. Any concept is in one  other aspect like any other (a needle can be seen as in some way like the Eiffel Tower), and in the end, only definitional tacit conventions can adequately rescue their vague limits. Otherwise, how to justify the intuitive adequacy of the above definition of a chair, which includes rocking chairs, beach chairs, thrones, electric chairs? It seems that a prototype does not do much more than exemplify a case in which most if not all definitory criteria and auxiliary symptoms are satisfied.

[10] They are what Rosh would call prototypical cases.

[11] The history is more complicated; for a short account see Philip Ball (2001: Chap. 5).

[12] I think that this scratches the link between descriptivists and inferentialist views of meaning (for the latter, see Brandon 2000).

[13] This is why much of present metaphysical philosophy tends to ostracize the critical therapeutic philosophy of the later Wittgenstein. He was, however, well-aware that both are dialectically interdependent. As he wrote: “The problems arising through the misinterpretation of our language have a character of deepness. They are deep disquietudes; they are so deeply rooted in us as the forms of our language, and their significance is so great as the importance of our language”. (1984b sec. 111).

[14] See also Hilary Putnam’s introduction to A. Pessin and S. Goldberg (eds.), The Twin Earth Chronicles, 1996.

[15] Occasionally, there are special cases, like those of skeptical scenarios, which demand a somewhat different concept of external reality, but they will not be considered here (Cf. Costa 2014, Ch. 6).

[16] For the distinction between criteria and symptoms, see Wittgenstein (1965), pp. 24-25.

[17] Here also I am assuming Donald Williams theory of tropes as the chosen fundamental ontology. (Williams 2018)