Against Revisionary Ontologies

Against Revisionary Ontologies

3.1 Arguments from Counterexamples

Universalism seems to conflict with our intuitive judgment that the front halves of trout and the back halves of turkeys do not compose anything. Put another way, universalism seems to be open to fairly obvious counterexamples. Here is an argument from counterexamples against universalism:

(CX1)If universalism is true, then there are trout-turkeys.
(CX2)There are no trout-turkeys.
(CX3)So universalism is false.

Similar arguments may be lodged against other revisionary theses. The various forms of eliminativism wrongly imply that there are no statues; the doctrine of plenitude wrongly implies that there are incars; the doctrine of arbitrary undetached parts wrongly implies that there are leg complements; and so forth.[55]
Compatibilist accounts of the apparent counterexamples take the targeted revisionary views to be entirely compatible with the intuitions or beliefs that are meant to motivate CX2. Such accounts often take the form of assimilating recalcitrant ordinary utterances to some familiar linguistic phenomenon that is known to be potentially misleading. For instance, when an ordinary speaker looks in the fridge and says ‘there’s no beer’, she obviously doesn’t mean to be saying that there is no beer anywhere in the universe. Rather, she is tacitly restricting her quantifier to things that are in the fridge. Universalists often suggest that something similar is going on when ordinary speakers say ‘there are no trout-turkeys’ (or ‘there’s nothing that has both fins and feathers’). Speakers are tacitly restricting their quantifiers to ordinary objects, and what they are saying is entirely compatible with there being extraordinary finned-and-feathered things like trout-turkeys. Universalists may then hold that the argument from counterexamples rests on an equivocation. If the quantifiers are meant to be restricted to ordinary objects, then CX2 is true, but CX1 is false: universalism does not entail that any ordinary things are trout-turkeys. If on the other hand the quantifiers are meant to be entirely unrestricted then CX2 is false; but in denying CX2, one is not running afoul of anything we are inclined to say or believe or intuit.[56]
This is just one of many compatibilist strategies that have been deployed in defense of revisionary views. Universalists have also invoked an ambiguity in ‘object’ to explain the appeal of ‘there is no object that has both fins and feathers’. Eliminativists have claimed that ordinary utterances of ‘there are statues’ are instances of “loose talk”, or that they are context-sensitive, or that quantifiers are being used in a special technical sense in the “ontology room”.[57]
One common complaint about compatibilist accounts is that these proposals about what we are saying and what we believe are linguistically or psychologically implausible. For instance, when ordinary speakers are speaking loosely or restricting their quantifiers, they will typically balk when their remarks are taken at face value. (“You’re saying uncooked rice literally lasts forever?” “There’s no beer anywhere in the world?”) But this sort of evidence seems just to be missing in the cases at hand. (“You literally think there are statues?” “There’s nothing at all with both fins and feathers?”)[58]
Revisionaries may instead wish to give incompatibilist accounts of the putative counterexamples, conceding that the revisionary views they defend are incompatible with ordinary belief (ordinary discourse, common sense, intuition, etc.), but maintaining that the mistakes can be explained or excused. For instance, revisionaries may contend that the mistaken beliefs are nevertheless justified, so long as one is not aware of the defeaters that undercut our usual justification (e.g., those mentioned in §2.6). Or they may contend that ordinary speakers are not especially committed to these beliefs, which may in turn suggest that they do not deserve to be treated as data for purposes of philosophical inquiry. Or they may call attention to some respect in which the ordinary utterances and beliefs are “nearly as good as true”.[59]

3.2 Arguments from Charity

One way of approaching the question of whether there are statues is by asking whether the correct interpretation of the English language is one according to which ordinary utterances of ‘there are statues’ come out true. The interpretation of populations of speakers is plausibly governed by a principle of charity that prohibits the gratuitous ascription of false beliefs and utterances to populations of speakers. Such a principle—which is independently motivated by reflection on how it is that utterances come to have the meanings that they do—can be put to work in arguments for the existence of ordinary objects and for the nonexistence of extraordinary objects. Here is one such argument from charity:

(CH1)The most charitable interpretation of English is one on which ordinary utterances of ‘there are statues’ comes out true.
(CH2)If so, then ordinary utterances of ‘there are statues’ are true.
(CH3)If ordinary utterances of ‘there are statues’ are true, then there are statues.
(CH4)So, there are statues.

To see the idea behind CH1, notice that both eliminativists and conservatives can agree that there are atoms arranged statuewise. The question is whether the English sentence ‘there are statues’ should be interpreted in such a way that the existence of such atoms suffices for it to come out true. Let us call interpretations of ‘there are statues’ on which the existence of atoms arranged statuewise suffices for its truth liberal, and interpretations on which that does not suffice for its truth demanding. The idea then is that, given the availability of both liberal and demanding interpretations, the former would clearly be more charitable. CH2 is motivated by the thought that there are no other content-determining factors that favor a demanding interpretation over a liberal interpretation, in which case charity wins out and ‘there are statues’ is true. CH3 looks to be a straightforward application of a plausible disquotation principle: if sentence S says that p, and S is true, then p.[60]
One might challenge CH1 on the grounds that charitable interpretation is a holistic matter, and, while the liberal interpretations are charitable in some respects, they are uncharitable in others. After all, the puzzles and arguments discussed in §2 seem to show that no interpretation can secure the truth of everything that we are inclined to say about ordinary objects. For instance, the liberal interpretations on which MC1 comes out true (‘Athena and Piece exist’) must, on pain of contradiction, make at least one of MC2 through MC4 come out false. But then some other intuitively true claim—perhaps, ‘Athena and Piece (if they exist) are identical’—will come out false. The demanding interpretations on which MC1 comes out false do better than the liberal interpretations on this score, since they can make all of MC2 through MC4 come out true. This gain in charity might then be held to counterbalance the loss in charity from rendering MC1 false.[61]
One might also challenge CH1 on the grounds that the principle of charity, properly understood, demands only that the utterances and beliefs of ordinary speakers be reasonable, not that they be true. Since it looks to ordinary speakers as if there are statues, and since they have no reason to believe that appearances are misleading (having never encountered the arguments for eliminativism), their utterances and beliefs would be reasonable even if false. The principle of charity, so understood, would not favor liberal interpretations over demanding interpretations.[62]
Another strategy involves resisting the argument at CH2, by maintaining that there are constraints beyond charity that favor the demanding interpretations. Charity, after all, is not the only factor involved in determining the meanings of our utterances. Certain puzzles about content determination have been thought to show that the content of an expression or utterance cannot be determined solely by which sentences we are inclined to regard as true; it is also partly a matter of the relative “naturalness” or “eligibility” of candidate contents. One who accepts this sort of account may maintain that the demanding interpretations, although less charitable, nevertheless assign more natural contents to English sentences than the liberal interpretations, for instance by assigning a more natural meaning to the quantifiers.[63]
Finally, CH3 may be resisted by compatibilists, according to whom what ordinary speakers are saying is compatible with the eliminativist’s claim that statues do not exist. Since ontological discussions (like this one) are not carried out in ordinary English or ordinary contexts, one cannot infer that there are statues from the fact that ordinary speakers can truly say ‘there are statues’, any more than I can infer that I am on the moon from the fact that an astronaut truly utters ‘I am on the moon’.[64]

3.3 Arguments from Entailment

Arguments from entailment purport to establish that eliminativism is self-defeating, insofar as certain things that eliminativists affirm entail the existence of the very ordinary objects that they wish to eliminate. Here is a representative argument from entailment:

(ET1)There are atoms arranged statuewise.
(ET2)If there are atoms arranged statuewise, then there are statues.
(ET3)So, there are statues.

Below, I consider two arguments for ET2: the argument from identity and the argument from application conditions.
The argument from identity proceeds from the assumption that ordinary objects are identical to the smaller objects of which they are composed. The statue, for instance, is identical to its atomic parts. Accordingly, by affirming that there are atoms arranged statuewise, eliminativists let into their ontology the very things that they had intended to exclude.[65]
However, the view that composites are identical to their parts is highly controversial. One common objection is that the identity relation simply isn’t the sort of relation that can hold between a single thing and many things. Another common objection is that ordinary objects have different persistence conditions from their parts. For instance, the atoms arranged statuewise, unlike the statue, will still exist if the statue disintegrates and the atoms disperse. It would then seem to follow by Leibniz’s Law that the atoms are not identical to the statue.[66]
The argument from application conditions arises out of some general considerations about how it is that kind terms refer to what they do. Suppose an archaeologist uncovers an unfamiliar artifact, gestures towards it, and introduces the name ‘woodpick’ for things of that kind. Yet there are numerous things before her: the woodpick, the woodpick’s handle, the facing surface of the woodpick, etc. Furthermore, the woodpick itself belongs to numerous kinds: woodpick, tool,artifact, etc. So how is it that ‘woodpick’ came to denote woodpicks rather than something else? (This is an instance of what is known as the qua problem.) It must be because the speaker associates certain application conditions and perhaps other descriptive information with the term ‘woodpick’, which single out woodpicks—rather than all tools or just the facing surfaces of woodpicks—as the denotation of the term. And the same is plausibly so for already-entrenched kind terms like ‘statue’: their reference is largely determined by the application conditions that speakers associate with them.[67]
Armed with this account of reference determination, one might then argue for ET2 as follows. The application conditions that competent speakers associate with ‘statue’—together with facts about the distribution of atoms—determine whether it applies to something. But these applications conditions are fairly undemanding: nothing further is required for their satisfaction than that there be atoms arranged statuewise. Accordingly, so long as there are atoms arranged statuewise, ‘statue’ does apply to something, from which it trivially follows that there are statues.[68]
This argument may be resisted on the grounds that the application conditions that ordinary speakers associate with ‘statue’ aren’t quite so undemanding. It’s not enough simply that there be atoms arranged statuewise. Rather, there must be an object that is composed of the atoms—and (eliminativists might go on to insist) there are no such objects. However, those who are moved by the qua problem might respond that ‘object’ itself must be associated with application conditions, which are likewise sufficiently undemanding as to be satisfied so long as there are atoms arranged statuewise.[69]

» The Interpretation of the Theory and its Primitive Ontologies

Against Revisionary Ontologies

Against Revisionary Ontologies

3.1 Arguments from Counterexamples

3.2 Arguments from Charity

3.3 Arguments from Entailment

Against Revisionary Ontologies :: تعاليق

Against Revisionary Ontologies

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