154th Philosophers' Carnival is up!

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Towards A Kinder, Gentler Verificationism

Towards A Kinder, Gentler Verificationism 

A Sketch of a Research Project

Jason Zarri

It often happens, for various reasons, that philosophers defend radical views which, first, are too radical to be plausible, and second, are such that a less radical and more plausible view would satisfy the underlying motivations. Here is a historical example. The logical positivists famously sought to eliminate traditional metaphysics by arguing that the statements metaphysicians make are meaningless because of being unverifiable. Much of the ensuing discussion concerned whether verifiability is really necessary for meaningfulness. But clearly, even if the logical positivists were wrong about this, they could still have a strong case for the elimination of metaphysics. For already if they could establish that the statements made by metaphysicians are unverifiable, they could argue for the pointlessness of the enterprise. If we cannot obtain good evidence for or against the statements of metaphysics, surely metaphysics is a pointless enterprise.

—Matti Eklund, “Rejectionism About Truth”, p. 1, https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/me72/reject_truth.pdf

            I think it may be advisable to follow a wise point that lies buried in Logical Positivism: Though it may very well be that unverifiable statements are meaningful, and so true or false, this does nothing to prove they are legitimate objects of inquiry. For the statements the positivists sought to ban are, after all, unverifiable, and where there is no possible method of verifying a statement, there is seemingly no means of resolving disputes concerning it. Save in those cases where our psychology compels our universal assent, such as, perhaps, our belief in the existence of other minds, there is, short of force, coercion or sheer coincidence, no way to reach a consensus with respect to unverifiable statements, and given this it appears unwise to argue over them. For if we do not aim to achieve consensus, to what purpose do we argue? However, it must be admitted that verifiability comes in degrees, and there are perhaps no statements which are conclusively verifiable. Still, one can say that the harder it is to verify or refute a given statement, the less reasonable it is to argue over it. And of course to say that we shouldn’t bother arguing over something is not to say that we cannot have our own, private opinion on the matter.

None of this is to say that the positivists were correct in determining which statements are verifiable and which are not, only that we should not try to assess the truth value of statements which are genuinely unverifiable. I differ from the positivists in my estimation of the scope of the unverifiable. I think there may be a great many metaphysical, religious, and ethical claims which are verifiable. Furthermore, the methods of verification employed need not be empirical; they need only be capable of deciding the issue under examination, of resolving it one way or another. In light of this, I will henceforth talk of decidability instead of verifiability.        

In spite of the above qualifications, one might think that any verificationist-inspired project is doomed to failure for much the same reasons the Logical Positivists’ was. As hard as they tried to hammer out a workable verification criterion, everything they came up with proved to be either too strict or too liberal to suit their purposes. If one makes the criterion too strict, it will turn out, for example, that the notion of a natural law is meaningless, since one cannot verify that it holds in an infinite number of instances. Statements about the remote past, the far future, and theoretical entities would also go by the board. But if one liberalizes the criterion so that we count as meaningful statements about things that experience only renders probable, then one will have to admit things into one’s ontology that would make a positivist shudder, such as the “élan vitale” of the vitalists or the Absolute of the Absolute Idealists, if their existence would have any implications, however slight, for our experience. The verification criterion would then seem to impose no real constraints on the meaningfulness of statements. The simple fact is that no verification criterion could do what the positivists wanted it to do. One objection to my proposal, then, is this: Is not my “decidability criterion” dangerously close to a liberalized verification criterion? What, exactly, does the “decidability criterion” rule out?

My reply is that we should not try to deduce a priori that certain classes of statements are undecidable; for there is, I think, no single form or subject matter that unites all undecidable statements and makes them undecidable. In my opinion, the positivists’ failure to recognize this point is a major reason why their repeated attempts to formulate a workable verification criterion failed. And even if there were a single form or subject matter which all undecidable statements had in common, it seems unlikely that a priori reflection could discover it. (One reason to think this is that the sustained a priori reflection of the positivists failed to discover it.) Instead, we should look to the past to see what kinds of statement have proved easy to decide and which have not. My criterion, then, would counsel us to reject statements which are of the same kind as those which history has shown to systematically resist attempts at resolution. In future work, my task will thus be to show that this criterion imposes non-trivial constraints on philosophical practice.

            I intend to develop my own kinder, gentler verificationism by using the views of Rudolf Carnap as a foil. Though I sympathize with several facets of his position, and with the motivation behind them still more, I think there are a few important points about which he was mistaken. First, his conception of what philosophical practice should be is excessively formal; it focuses too much on language, and it seems to allow no room for the vagueness or open texture of words and concepts; and it also seems to rule out Wittgensteinian “family resemblances”.

            Second, his distinction between “internal” and “external” questions is too sharply drawn. If we consider “frameworks” that are actually in use, in both the sciences and in the humanities, I think we will find that it is not always so clear what counts as part of a framework and what doesn’t. Also, I doubt very much that pragmatic considerations are the only things relevant to the selection of a framework. Furthermore, there may be an objective truth—one transcends any particular framework—even if we can’t know what it is.

            Finally, Carnap’s views were bound up with the philosophy of language of his day, before the advent of externalism and causal theories of reference, and stand in need of substantial modification.

            As for my own account, I will try to accommodate the lessons we learned about language and categorization from Wittgenstein and the theories in cognitive science that his work helped to inspire, such as prototype and exemplar theories of concepts. Also, on my view, we might be able to attain knowledge of objective truth without having to “step outside” of our various frameworks—though we might also be able to know the objective truth by doing so, if doing so is possible—by comparing our frameworks themselves against each other and seeing what, if anything, they have in common. If all the viable, mutually comparable frameworks concerning a given subject matter agree about something, I think that is good evidence that it is probably true, provided that the different frameworks come close to exhausting the possibilities. (This is, in essence, a generalization of my approach for getting eithical guidance from ethical theories.) And I see no reason why our frameworks need to be (solely) linguistic. I will also try to give an account which is consistent with causal and externalist views on reference and mental content. And on my view, what counts as evidence for what is in part determined by what “context of inquiry” one belongs to, among other things, and so my view of evidence is in some sense externalist.

            In spite of the differences I have just spelled out, Carnap and I  have something important  in common: we both put great stress on engaging in disputes only if there is some way of resolving them.

The Utilitarian Stance Section 1: The Pursuit of “Pleasure”

The Utilitarian Stance

Jason Zarri

~ Section 1 ~

The Pursuit of “Pleasure”:

What Utilitarianism Could Not Be

There are many things that people strive to obtain: Wealth, power, jobs, friends, material goods, loving relationships... . Is “pleasure” one of them? Well, if by 'pleasure' one simply means pleasant experiences, I think the answer is “yes, of course.” But it has sometimes been thought that there is a thing called 'pleasure' which is a distinguishable but inseparable element in all pleasant experiences, and furthermore, that this element is the sole thing that is desired for its own sake, and that obtaining it is the one true motive that drives all our actions. I will call this belief 'psychological hedonism,' and in the present section my goal is to argue that it is misguided.

It is undeniable that there are pleasurable experiences, but I see no reason to think that the term 'pleasure' denotes a distinguishable element within them. For my part, when I examine what I consider to be a pleasurable experience—the sweet taste and crisp-yet-gooey texture of a caramel apple; the cool, wet feeling of an ocean wave breaking over me on a warm summer day; looking up and seeing the subtle, mesmerizing glow of the Milky Way against a dark, moonless sky—I can observe nothing but the experience itself, and though all of them 'pleasurable', I can find no one thing that is common to them all. When I bite into a caramel apple, I do not experience sweetness and crispness and gooey-ness and pleasure; I experience only the first three, and they are enough to satisfy me. I desire the sweetness, crispness, and gooey-ness themselves, not as a means to something that accompanies them. I may have a feeling of contentment upon this desire's satisfaction, but this does not make that feeling the object of that desire. In any case the feeling is an emotion with a phenomenology of its own, and while its qualities are not as easily describable in words as are those of my experience of the apple, they can still be identified in consciousness. It seems to me that what makes the feeling one of contentment is that I like the qualities themselves, not something else which is conjoined both with them and with the taste and texture of the apple.

If one feels inclined to disagree with me about this sort of case, consider the emotional experience of loving someone or feeling loved by them, of feeling proud of one's accomplishments or one's children's, or of feeling hopeful about the future after one's favored candidate has just won the presidential election. These are all powerful emotions with quite different phenomenologies. One likes all of these experiences and desires to have them, but beyond this liking or this desiring, is there really some one thing which is common to them all in virtue of which one likes or desires them? Others may, after reflecting on their experience, discover some such thing which they choose to call 'pleasure', but I am certain there is no such principle in me. But if experience should turn out to prove that others are like me in this respect, we may say that matters are quite the reverse of what a psychological hedonist imagines: We do not desire something because we find it pleasurable; we rather call something 'pleasurable' because we do in fact desire it.

“All well and good,” one might say, “but what is the significance of this?” Well, for one thing, it shows that human actions are not motivationally unified in the way that psychological hedonists think they are. There is no one, simple, overarching explanation for why people do what they do. One variety of psychological hedonism, which I will call 'psychological egoism', holds that people always desire their own pleasure. If you donate to charity, a psychological egoist would say that either you did it to gain the pleasure resulting from the esteem and good favor of others, or because you get pleasure from the act of giving itself. If you protest that you didn't give in order to obtain any feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, but simply to help others, they will reply that it is the pleasure you get from the thought of helping others that makes you act as you do. The betterment of others' lives can at the most be desired as a means to your own pleasure, it can never be desired for its own sake.

If I'm right, this kind of simplistic explanation of your behavior is wrong: There is no such thing as “pleasure” pure and simple, so it can never be an object of your desire. The claim that one always desires to help others as a means of producing pleasant experiences in oneself is an empirical one, and one that is almost certainly false. It may be true that some always desire to help others as a means of producing pleasant experiences in themselves, but it is by no means necessary that all should do so, for it is perfectly possible to desire to improve the lives of others for its own sake. One can take pleasure in their welfare as such; not, or not just, in the experiences that their welfare or the thought of it produces in oneself.

For another thing, the truth of my thesis would show that the distinction between “hedonic” or “pleasure” utilitarianism and “desire” or “preference” utilitarianism is not a very sharp one. If we construe hedonic utilitarianism as the idea that we should produce the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number; 'pleasure' being understood in the way that the psychological hedonist understands it, then it is misguided, for it tells us to produce the greatest amount of something that does not exist. This is what utilitarianism could not be.

If however, we construe it, as the idea that we should produce the greatest amount of pleasant experiences for the greatest number, it might be true; but if so, it would not, I think, be the whole truth. For if one can take pleasure in things besides experiences, and utilitarianism is about maximizing pleasure, shouldn't those things be promoted as well? This is basically what is called “desire” or “preference” utilitarianism, but if the obtainment of what we desire or prefer is just what pleasure is, there are no grounds for distinguishing between it and hedonic utilitarianism, provided that we understand the latter to include the production of the greatest amount of non-experiential as well as experiential pleasures. It is this kind of utilitarianism that I wish to explore in what follows.

Philosophy Limerick of the Day: David Lewis

David K. Lewis opined
Possibilia should never be quined:
Accept possible worlds, and a paradise unfolds
None greater than which you can find.

And just so you know, I think that'll be it on the limericks for a while. ;-)

Philosophy Limerick of the Day: Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand had an ideology
To found philosophy on a tautology:
All A are A, at the end of the day
And therefore, you must do things her way!

Philosophy Limerick of the Day: Quine

Willard V. Quine had a plan
To put analyticity under the ban
He scotched the Two Dogmas, and fought ever onwards
To show modality was a sham

Philosophy Limerick of the Day: Wittgenstein

There was once a philosopher, Witt
Who acted just like a git
He picked up a poker, and when thought a joker
Stormed out of the room in a fit

Tenseless* Presentism

(* For the purposes of this post I consider only the past and future tenses as genuine tenses. Think of the "present tense" as the null tense, if you like.)

I believe there's a way for presentists to have their Relativistic cake and eat it too. That is, I think there's a way to believe in the Special and General theories of Relativity (henceforth, I'll refer to both as 'Relativity') while remaining a devout presentist. In order to do so, however, one does have to believe that these theories have been wrongly interpreted.

The idea is this: There is but one moment of time; this moment, the present moment. There were none before it, there will be none after it. At this single moment, there is a four dimensional space of variable curvature, at whose points exist everything that we perceive and interact with; everything, in a word, that we ordinarily take to exist in space-time. The only error of the ordinary conception lies in the belief that the fourth dimension is time. Time, on tenseless presentism, essentially involves the idea that 'earlier than' and 'later than' are irreducibly tensed notions; granted, entities may be ordered in the fourth dimension by relations of increasing entropy and whatnot, but that is not what 'earlier than' and 'later than' come to. It is the way that our experiences are laid out four-dimensionally that gives rise to our belief that the fourth dimension is time, and to experience it as time, even though it really isn't. Nevertheless, these experiences give rise to intuitions about time, tense, and how the former involves the latter, and thus it is only tense that could underwrite the existence of real 'earlier than' and 'later than' relations, though on this view no such relations actually obtain.

In contrast to presentist views that treat Relativity as empirically adequate but false--either by regarding it as not describing a real structure, or by privileging some reference frame as the real present--tenseless presentism does neither of these things. Relativity does describe a real structure, and none of the reference frames within it are privileged, it's just that we have wrongly interpreted the fourth dimension of this instantaneous space temporally. Even though it is treated different mathematically from the other dimensions, on this view that doesn't make it a dimension of time, whatever else it may make it.

This version of presentism might not seem appealing, for it lacks the (alleged) virtue of more common versions of presentism, namely that they accommodate our (alleged) intuition that time really does pass, and that this passage is as we experience it to be. Still, tenseless presentism does respect our (alleged) intuition that tense is essential to genuine 'earlier than' and 'later than'  relations, and to all appearances it has the definite virtue of not conflicting with accepted physical theory. So if you find presentism compelling and value the maximal consistency of one's metaphysical views with science more highly than the (alleged) common sense intuition that our experience of time is veridical, I think tenseless presentism is the way to go.

My new YouTube Video, Viva la Castlevania

Check out my new YouTube video, a tribute to Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 1 and 2, and Viva la Vida by Coldplay:

Hope you like it. ^_^

Singer's "Famine, Affluence and Morality": Exposition and Appraisal: Now on YouTube

I've posted an audio version of an article of mine critiquing Peter Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc1j7IMltR0

Timothy Sprigge and the Importance of Subjectivity

Scott Ryan has a new article at Scholardarity, Timothy Sprigge and the Importance of Subjectivity. The article covers panpsychism, eternalism, Absolute Idealism, and ethics. Here is an introductory excerpt:

In this essay I shall offer a brief appreciative overview of the philosophical system of British philosopher Timothy L.S. Sprigge (14 January 1932—11 July 2007). In so doing I shall be emphasizing the importance in that system of subjectivity—of the existence of centers (he writes “centres,” but here I follow the US spelling convention) of consciousness, sentience, and experience, characterized essentially by the fact that there is ‘something that it is like’ to be them.

Sprigge had adopted this way of talking about subjectivity—as involving what it is “like” to be something—before it was made famous by Thomas Nagel in his 1974 paper “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” Subjectivity was a theme of Sprigge’s philosophical work from the very beginning, well before he had fully worked out his mature views. Indeed, “The Importance of Subjectivity” was the title of his inaugural lecture upon his appointment to the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in 1982, and was chosen (by his friend, colleague, former student, and literary executor Leemon McHenry, at the suggestion of Pierfrancesco Basile) as the title of a posthumously published collection of his papers.

My aim is to provide, for interested readers, a short and accessible (though of course very far from complete) account of the main lines of Sprigge’s system in a way that will provide a quick and ready grasp both of the overall unity of that system and of the fundamental and far-reaching importance of subjectivity within it.

Daemonodicy: The Problem of Good

Daemonodicy

~ The Problem of Good ~

Jason Zarri

“Leibniz’s solution of the problem of evil, like most of his other popular doctrines, is logically possible, but not very convincing. A Manichaean might retort that this is the worst of all possible worlds, in which the good things that exist serve only to heighten the evils. The world, he might say, was created by a wicked demiurge, who allowed free will, which is good, in order to make sure of sin, which is bad, and of which the evil outweighs the good of free will. The demiurge, he might continue, created some virtuous men, in order that they might be punished by the wicked; for the punishment of the virtuous is so great an evil that it makes the world worse than if no good men existed. I am not advocating this opinion, which I consider fantastic; I am only saying that it is no more fantastic than Leibniz’s theory.”

--Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, Simon & Schuster (1972), p. 590

Zigur: Greetings, brother Zead.

Zead: Greetings, brother Zigur. May our lord Malus curse you and smite you on the Day of Pain!

Zigur: (Muttering:) Yes, I certainly hope so...

Zead: You hope so?!

Zigur: That is precisely the reason I came to see you, brother Zead. I am starting to doubt my faith, and have come to you for assurance and for counsel.

Zead: I am glad that you have come to me, Zigur. I will do whatever I can to strengthen you, and keep you in the Dark One's fold. Speak then, and tell me of the cause of these doubts.

Zigur: Well, we are told that the lord Malus is most evil, are we not?

Zead: Indeed, brother Zigur; lord Malus is supremely evil, the first cause of all misery and despair. Not only is he the most evil being in existence, he is that than which no fouler can so much as be conceived.

Zigur: Yes, that has been my instruction from the earliest age, and reflecting upon it has been the chief source of my doubt. If the lord Malus is as wicked as you say—omnimalevolent, as our Daemonologists put it—why do we see so much good in the world? In every nation there are some who thirst after righteousness, and they are not smitten. There are some who help the disadvantaged and fight for the freedom of the oppressed, and our lord does not strike them down. I know of some who go so far as to treat their enemies as well as their friends, and yet they prosper. And not only is all this the case, but the virtuous even outnumber the vicious! Why would the lord Malus allow this mockery of his unholy name? For we are taught that he is not only omnimalevolent, but omniscient and omnipotent. Does he not know of goodness? Then he is ignorant. Is he willing to suppress goodness, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able to suppress goodness, but not willing? Then he is beneficent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes goodness? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him a Daemon?

Zead: These are natural questions, brother Zigur, but they have natural answers. Have you not been taught them as well, as a part of your instruction? Do you not know that the lord Malus, though he is wickedness itself, allows there to be some good men and women, so that they may suffer? Some of them receive their due punishment in this life, but in the next they will all receive the greater condemnation. Though all suffering is bad, the suffering of the virtuous is a far worse thing than the suffering of the vicious, because the vicious deserve to suffer and the virtuous do not. This is why the lord Malus, our most beloved Daemon, allows his human creatures free will. Virtue is not truly virtue unless it is freely chosen, and the same is true of vice. This is why he suffers anything good to exist; that out of it, he may bring a greater evil. This too is why we worship him: We also will suffer to satisfy his malice, but not as much as those who are good, for when the vicious receive less punishment than they deserve it is an offense against justice. Let this console you, brother Zigur.

Zigur: All that is well said, brother Zead; so indeed I have been taught, and O how I wish it to be true! But I am afraid that my doubt is greater than you may fear, and extends not only to the wickedness of Malus, but to his existence as well.

Zead: Your doubt is exceedingly great, Zigur! Yet I have in my power the means to dispel it. Surely you can conceive the lord Malus to exist, or you would not have come to me to help strengthen your faith?

Zigur: Yes, I can conceive it.

Zead: And surely you agree that we understand Malus, The Dark One, to be that than which no fouler can be conceived?

Zigur: Certainly, brother Zead.

Zead: Excellent, brother Zigur! It is now within my power to prove to you that our lord Malus exists.

Zigur: How is that?

Zead: I shall tell you, brother Zigur. Suppose that what you fear is true, and that Malus does not exist. Then, since we have acknowledged him to be that than which no fouler can be conceived, does it not surely follow that that than which no fouler can be conceived also does not exist?

Zigur: Most surely, brother Zead.

Zead: Now consider this: Doesn't that than which no fouler can be conceived, though we suppose it not to exist in reality, exist in our understanding, since we can conceive the lord Malus to exist, and he is that than which no fouler can be conceived?

Zigur: Indeed.

Zead: But then, brother Zigur, it follows that one can conceive of that which is fouler than that than which no fouler can be conceived, a contradiction!

Zigur: How so, Zead?

Zead: Like this, Zigur: We suppose that Malus, that than which no fouler can be conceived, does not exist. But we've agreed that that than which no fouler can be conceived can be conceived to exist in reality, which is fouler. But then that than which no fouler can be conceived  can be conceived to be fouler than it is—since it would be fouler if it existed in reality—which is absurd. Therefore our lord Malus, the great Daemon and source of all evil, who on the first day created darkness and saw that it was bad, most assuredly exists in reality, and not in the understanding alone!

Zigur: Your argument is wickedly excellent, brother Zead; too excellent, I fear, to be sound. Could one not argue for all manner of other evil things, in much the same way? Consider the foulest possible island, adorned with volcanoes, deserts, and thickets of thorns, and replete with the greatest possible number of inhabitants in the worst possible agony. Surely this island exists in our understanding. Now, if we suppose it not to exist, we can still conceive it to exist in reality, which is fouler. But the island than which no fouler can be conceived surely cannot be conceived to be fouler than it is, whence it follows that it exists in reality as well. Nice as it would be to know that it exists, I have heard no reports of such an island from any corner of the known world, and even if it were discovered, it seems to me that we shouldn't believe in it just on the strength of the argument I have just presented.

Zead: Surely we should not, Zigur. But there is a flaw in your reasoning: We cannot conceive of an island than which no fouler can be conceived, any more than we can conceive of a number than which no larger can be conceived. We can always conceive of a bleaker, more desolate and larger island, with a larger number of miserable inhabitants in greater agony, and for a longer amount of time. If our imagined island grows too large for the Earth's oceans, we can imagine it to exist on another, larger planet. You have already admitted that the existence of an omnipotent Daemon is possible, and so we may suppose that there are possible circumstances where he does exist, and as there is no limit to the foulness of an island which he could create, there is no limit to the foulness of an island which could exist, even if it could not come to exist by natural means. So there cannot be a foulest conceivable island, while you have already admitted that there can be a foulest conceivable being.

Zigur: An excellent reply, brother Zead! I must admit that my objection is vanquished, but my doubts live on. I have another worry: Couldn't one give a similar argument for a most perfect possible being, that than which no greater can be conceived? For it is surely greater if it exists in reality than if it exists in the understanding alone, and can it thus not be proved to exist by an argument exactly analogous to your own?

Zead: Ingenious, Zigur! But nevertheless, mistaken. I will tell you a secret: Those of us in the inner circle know a great truth; namely, that goodness, and hence “greatness” of the sort you have mentioned, is nothing positive, nothing existent in its own right, but is a mere privation, a lack of an evil which rot to be present in a thing.

Zigur: Which rot to be present, brother Zead?

Zead: Yes, Zigur; the perverted, those who seek justice and love the good, think that good is positive and that evil is negative; but their minds have been clouded, and the truth is just the opposite. They would say that what is evil or bad ought not to be present in a thing; which, though true, is not the proper mode of expression, for it can make one think that evil is merely negative, an opinion most abhorrent to us. Thus, we in the inner circle say that that which is evil or bad rot to be present in a thing, and that that which is good rot not to be present in it.

Zigur: I see. But isn't happiness good, brother Zead? And happiness is something positive, which exists in its own right.

Zead: Happiness is certainly good, but it is not an instance of goodness itself. That is, while happiness is something positive, its goodness is negative, being the lack of a misery which the happy creature rot to be suffering instead.

Zigur: Interesting. But how does that answer my objection?

Zead: In this way, Zigur: If a good is nothing but the lack of an evil which rot to be present, and a “perfect being” is one which is supremely good, it is one which must needs also be supremely non-existent. To be, is to be evil; to be good is not to be, in a certain respect. Whence it follows that to be perfectly good is not to be in any respect. So this being cannot be conceived of except as being unreal, while just the opposite is true of our lord. Does this satisfy you, brother Zigur?

Zigur: Indeed I am satisfied brother Zead; you have convinced me at last that there is a Daemon, and that I must have been a fool for my heart to say otherwise! 

"Song of the Lonely Tolkien Fan, Or: There and Back-Before-it-Ended Again (Extended version)":

Now that The Hobbit has come out on video, I feel it's appropriate to re-post my lyrical review: 

"Song of the Lonely Tolkien Fan, Or: There and Back-Before-it-Ended Again (Extended version)":

It drove them, greedy ambition bold/
To seek out treasure, as dragons did of old/
They slave away, both night and day/
To pile up stores of, ill-gotten gold/

Fans began feeling, that something wasn't right/
Their groans resounding, in the night/

The film was bloated, the story's soul was lost/
The movie tickets, had not been worth the cost/

The news would spread, it was a dread/
Those who like halflings, should read the book instead!/

Ways Modality Could Be

Cross-posted at Scholardarity: Click Here

In this post I want to introduce the idea of a higher-order modal logic—not a modal logic for higher-order predicate logic, but rather a logic of higher-order modalities. “What is a higher-order modality?”, you might be wondering. Well, if a first-order modality is a way that some entity could have been—whether it is a mereological atom, or a mereological complex, or the universe as a whole—a higher-order modality is a way that a first-order modality could have been. First-order modality is modeled in term of a space of possible worlds—a set of worlds structured by an accessibility relation, i.e., a relation of relative possibility—each world representing a way that the entire universe could have been. A second-order modality would be modeled in terms of a space of spaces of (first-order) possible worlds, each space representing a way that the entire space of (first-order) possible worlds could have been. And just as there is a unique actual world which represents the way things really are, there is a unique actual space which represents the way that first-order modality actually is.

Why, though, should we adopt a framework like this? To motivate it, consider the fact that people have mutually conflicting intuitions about what the space of all (first-order) possible worlds is like. Does God exist in all, none, or only some worlds? Or consider the famous dispute between Platonists and nominalists concerning predication. Platonists think that at least some predications can be true only if objects exemplify properties, and nominalists deny this. They think that there are no properties, but that predications can still be true. For the one party, some predications essentially involve properties, and for the other none do. Platonism, if true, is necessarily true, and if false, is necessarily false. The same goes for nominalism. Either some predications essentially involve properties or none do. On the face of it, this is problematic for the view that conceivability implies possibility: Platonism and nominalism have both been believed, and by many very able philosophers at that. What is believed is conceivable in some sense, otherwise such “beliefs” would have no content. So both positions are conceivable, but only one is possible. Either way, conceivability doesn't imply possibility.

But maybe that's not quite true. Perhaps, though only one of these positions is actually true, and hence first-order possible, both views are second-order possible. So maybe conceivability does imply possibility—at some order or other. Related considerations might apply to semantic content and possibility: If we can coherently mean something, it can be the case—at some order or other.

And what is the accessibility relation itself like? Presumably it is reflexive, but is it also symmetric, or transitive? And whichever of these properties it may or may not have, could that itself have been different? Could at least some rival modal logics represent ways that first-order modality could have been?

To be clear, the claim is not just that some things which are possible or necessary might not have been so, but rather that the nature or structure of actual modality could have been different. Even if the accessibility relation is actually both symmetric and transitive, maybe it could have (second-order)  been otherwise: There is a (second-order) possible space of worlds in which it is different, where it fails to be symmetric, or transitive. We must, therefore, introduce the notion of a higher-order accessibility relation, one that in this case relates spaces of first-order worlds. The question then arises as to whether that relation is symmetric, or transitive. We can then consider third-order modalities, spaces of spaces of spaces of possible worlds, where the second-order accessibility relation differs from how it actually is. I can see no reason why there should be a limit to this hierarchy of higher-order modalities, any more than I can see a reason why there should be a limit to the hierarchy of higher-order properties.

The accessibility relation is not the only thing that might be thought to vary between spaces of worlds: Perhaps the contents of the spaces can vary as well. While I presume that the contents of the worlds themselves remain constant—it makes doubtful sense to suppose that in one space an object o exists in w_1 and in another space o doesn't exist in w_1—we may suppose that the spaces differ as to which worlds they contain. Thus we might have a higher-order analogue of a variable-domain modal logic.

I do not expect this kind of framework to settle the issue of how modality at any order actually is—no more than I expect ordinary first-order modal logic to settle (aside from first-order necessary truths) what is actually the case. What goes for the actual world goes for the actual space of worlds, and for all higher-order spaces of spaces. What I do hope for is that it will, if it proves to be coherent, help to clarify the terms of the debate about the way modality is—to help us to state the issues, and to see their interrelations, as clearly as we can.

I think that's enough for this time. I'll leave the further development of such a framework for another occasion--or occasions—provided that you, my readers, think it merits further development.