I have not posted for a while as an issue that I posted on recently has been exercising my mind.
After my recent conversion to noneism, I think that I am ready to convert right back to Russellian-Quinean orthodoxy.
A few posts back I wrote on Lewis’ critique of Routley’s noneism and defended the latter. This post was successfully submitted to the Philosophy Carnival before last and a short comment exchange subsequently ensued.
My interlocutor suggested that my fear of non-existence could be explained as a fear of ceasing to be quantified over in the actual world, instead being quantified over only in some Lewisian possible world. As the actual world was defined by Lewis indexically (the actual world is this world) I could not equate my fear of non-existence with a fear of being in some other world. I imagined myself saying, I am in a different world to all my friends and stuff, but at least I still exist.
Later it occurred to me that the same could be said about the idea that what I feared was to lack some property of existence. I could imagine myself saying, I don’t have the property of existence but at least I am still somewhere, I’m still around.
The true fear of existence – the pre-theoretical concept of existence – is the fear of not being anywhere… of not being quantified over.
So, if existence is a property then it is the most general property, and everything possesses it. Yet, those things that are not quantified over (by a genuinely unrestricted quantifier) do not possess the property of existence because they do not possess any properties.
So much for noneism. …And so much for my Anti-dialetheism paper, which was predicated upon existence being a substantive property. My loathing of contradiction is thus merely founded on the incredulous stare and on the transcendental argument that there is no principled basis for barring any contradiction once any contradictions are allowed. This is not to say that contradictions entail explosion (which can be sidestepped by paraconsistent logics) but that all reason is pointless if one can hold to one’s position by asserting a contradiction and then isolating that contradiction from excessive entailment by some means.
(For the record, I think that Liar Statements are false)
Finally, I now think that reference to non-existent entities must be explained by the mediation of abstract entities that stand in for one or more concrete entities, i.e. mediated reference.
Wow, I certainly never expected such a result. I think you might be moving too quickly, though. Look, your fear of not being anywhere might just *be* a fear of non-existence as you say. Let me try to buttress this Quinean perspective a bit. When we meta-theorize about our theory and wonder what things’ existences we are committed to (ontological commitment) we are going to locate the answer at the level of the logical form of our language. Quantifiers, says Quine, are where the action is. But maybe there *is* an important difference between the following natural language expressions:
1) the moon is made of green cheese.
2) Santa Clause lives at the North Pole.
They look on their surface to be the same in all ontologically significant respects, since they appear to both quantify. However, this might be an illusion. If one had a good theory of correct assertibility for sentences which mention fictional or other non-existenct entities, like (2), this theory might not require that there is any quantification going on. And then your worry is renewed, for a fear of not being around anywhere — of not being ‘referrable to’ in any way? — would be a fear of non-existence. I worry that came out somewhat convoluted.
Finally, of personal interest, I have to ask about this tantalizing comment: “all reason is pointless if one can hold to one’s position by asserting a contradiction and then isolating that contradiction from excessive entailment by some means.” Well, as you agree, the pointlessness cannot be attributed to the trivializing effect of the contradiction (its isolated). So why does this make all reason pointless?
I must admit that I did not quite follow your main point. It might just be a bit over my head. Perhaps you could reformulate it?
As for my throw-away line on dialetheism, I am thinking about something like this:
Let’s say you are an atheist and you want to argue that the Trinity is contradictory, because Christianity is the predominant form of theism in your culture. You may say something like, ‘something cannot be both three and one…’ A Christian retorts, ‘Yes, but its just an actual contradiction and that’s permissible if I use a paraconsistent logic to avoid explosion.’ The atheist should rightly feel ripped off.
I feel the same way about dialetheists who argue that the quantum theory account of light as waves and particles, or simply the temporal A-series, are obvious examples of actual contradictions. These seem like areas in which more work needs to be done, and not simply examples of our presumed logical laws failing.
At its worst, allowing contradictions vindicates the sloppiest relativism: “your truth and my truth are both equally true.”
I know that Graham Priest, as one dialetheist, argues that this need not be so. That we can have contradictions and rigor. I am very doubtful about this. I challenge the dialetheist to give the principled basis for allowing some contradictions and not others.
Perhaps the principled basis would be based on empirical verification. Yet, as Quine makes much of, our interpretation of empirical evidence is dependent on a system of background beliefs which depend on principles such as the law of non-contradiction for their capacity to constitute a determinate and stable world-view. Quine, himself, seems undecided as to whether classical logic is revisable as we sale the ship of scientific enquiry.
In short, my objection to contradiction is a refusal to open the flood gates.
Yeah my original point was very unclear. Let me try it again. Maybe the Quinean who equates existence with quantification will also have a theory of non-existents according to which we are not properly quantifying over anything when we say things like “Pegasus can fly”. I don’t know what this theory would look like, but the obvious place to look is at theories of fictional discourse. These can get away with the truth of “Sherlock Holmes lives at 221b Baker St.” supervening on something written by an author. In that case, there is really nothing in our ontology which ‘Sherlock’ or ‘Pegasus’ or the like quantifies over at all. So this renews your original fear: if the truth of discourse about non-existence does not involve quantifying over its apparent subjects, then they are (as you put it) not ‘around’ anywhere.
Re: dialetheism, I think it must be something of a hasty overstatement to say that we cannot have contradictions and rigor. That’s crazy, right? Paraconsistent logic is every bit as rigorous a deductive method as that of classical logic. The dialetheist can be every bit as careful a philosopher as the non-dialetheist.
And I really don’t understand the suggestion that the dialetheist needs a ‘criterion’ for distinguishing when contradictions are allowable and when they are not. How about when they are true? Working out dialetheic theory is going to be something of a piecemeal process, but the same is true of any philosophical paradigm. So the only thing we can, and will offer is this: accept contradictions when it makes your theory better overall. In the case of the semantic paradoxes, there is overwhelming pressure to accept the contradictory conclusion of the Liar argument because it makes our semantic theory better in so *many* ways. In other cases, there might be better options than to accept the contradiction. Isn’t it enough to assess case by case?
Fair enough regarding not quantifying over winged horses and the like. I wonder if abstract entities suddenly have renewed appeal to explain such ‘pseudo-quantification over’, e.g. Plantinga’s maximal states of affairs. Maybe you don’t like such abstracta.
As for dialetheism, I could press the point but I can see us heading for a stalemate in terms of convincing each other to change positions. I find the idea of actual contradictions simply unacceptable.
Perhaps I will post my thoughts on the Liar and why I think Liar statements are false, but on a future date.