marginally physical objects

or, contemporary myths in physicalism

dare i suggest that there is a vagueness in what, exactly, is implied in the concept or ontological category of the "physical". our everyday definition of a physical object is something that you can bump your head against. yet it seems that even the most innocent of everyday, physical things are pseudophysical in that they are also at least in some bit abstract. also, some processes of these physical objects get lumped into the physicalist account. does this move the discussion from physical objects to.. well something else?

all in all, there are some specific cases i have in mind...where the vagueness of the category is painfully apparent. here are three scientific examples.

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1. fields - our best physics posits the existence of fields, not only as necessary objects in the universe (as, say, scientists might posit numbers and theories) but also as strictly physical objects. handydandy wikipedia says that a field is 'the presence of a physical quantity at every point in spacetime.' hm.. something should ring a bell already as the definition seemed a bit off. the field clearly isn't made up of whatever the most minute particle might be, just as i am or stars are. no, fields seem to be not physical objects themselves but the position, behavior, and propensity for specific physical objects as they pass along specific regions of spacetime. does this add up to a physical object? well no, it's not a physical object and it isn't even made up OF physical objects. so, if even in our most sacred science there are objects that are straddling the line ontologically, what can we expect in other fields?

2. mental states - no doubt our brains have a lot to do with our mental states. so much so, of course, that when our brain ceases to function correctly our mental states cease to function accordingly, ad empirically demonstrated in brain damage studies. but, as some people have asked before me i'm sure, are brain states the same as mental states? is there an identity relationship be tween these two characterizations of whatever it is that's going on inside my head? I think kripke's argument is very powerful... take a look at it and see for yourself.

N= necessarily
P = possibly

(a) N (heat = molecular motion).

this is a necessary a posteriori truth. is it possible to have heat without molecular motion? well no. no matter what, if it's heat, it's caused by molecular motion. sure, there might be sensations of heat without molecular motion. but if it's real heat, it's real molecular motion. now, can we say

(b) ? N (pain = c-fibers firing)

well let's put the identity to the test just like last time. is it possible to have the sensation of pain without it being pain? well it seems like the answer is pretty obvious, NO! if you feel pain you have pain! this calls into question whether c-fibres firing just IS pain. once again, this either means that definition of pain provided by the best anatomical science is incomplete (and it doesn't seem to be, at least here on earth), or that pain just is not the same as c-fibers firing, leaving us with

(c) ~N(pain = c-fibers firing)

rounding out the discussion on physical objects, and brain states, where does this leave us? well it leaves us in a more primitively intuitive position where we think that the brain and its states (physical objects) sure do have a lot to do with our minds (presumably other than physical objects) yet they aren't the same thing. so things like belief, pain, fear, etc are partially physical.

3. species - reading fodor's critique of natural selection has got me thinking a lot about philosophy of biology lately. one of things i've come to believe is that talk of species and groups of animals with similar properties and so forth isn't strictly speaking physical. of course, this comes of no surprise to anyone who's familiar with set theory or even mereology. anyway, the abstractions we can assign to the physical characteristics of individual animals across similar-enough genetic liniage definitely makes the concept of 'species' an ontologically dualist one.
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well then, what do these suggestions do, if anything? i think it does two things. first, it reinforces the insight mcginn had in saying that ontological categories are oftentimes ill-defined. in these three cases i have given examples with a focus on the vagueness of the 'physical' category, but in doing so i've also muddled up 'abstract' and 'mental'.

a further, more powerful consequence of establishing these marginally physical objects is the clear rejection of ontological physicalism. If there is someone who wholds that what there is is physical and that's all there is, yet what's physical can't be said to be always physical, then physicalism is false.

sartre's 'existentialism and humanism'

The main ideas of Sartre's philosophy as expressed in "Existentialism and Humanism" can be summed up in a few basic points:

1. "Existence precedes Essence" - which is an ontological claim, that one must exist already in order to investigate the essence of that existence

2. Subject-Relative Constructive Ethics - which is a meta-ethical position, in the sense that it is a claim about ethics as a whole. There is no static, objective ethics to speak of, yet individuals have the power of creating their own ethical standards through their personal investigations of their own essence. And

3. Humanistic Marxism - which is an ethical/political position. Each individual will eventually reach conclusions, through the construction of their own ethics, approaching a humanistic Marxism. That is to say, that their ethical stances will be human-centered and equalitarian.

Each of these positions is causally independent. One can defend any of these three basic points without holding either of the other two; but Sartre combines these three to form the basic tenants of his Existentialist Philosophy. Because they're independent of each other, they can each be critiqued independently. Further, they can be critiqued in relation to each other. What I shall be doing, however, within the limited scope of this paper, is to critique at least a bit each proposition independently. I will leave the problem of their consistency untouched (although I suspect they cohere as well as Sartre would have liked).

1. 1. "Existence precedes Essence" is a quotation of Sartre's that could be taken one of two ways. It is either trivial or false. If by "existence precedes essence" he means that it is necessary for a cognizant person to be alive in order for it to investigate their own essence, then that seems to me to be a trivial point. Of course someone has to have the property of existence in order for them to have any thoughts whatsoever. However, if by this ontological claim he means to say that in order for any human being to have an essence they must first exist, I don't see how this is true. We can figure out the essence of any human being just as we figured out the essence of gold, or the essence of electricity: through scientific investigation. Gold's essence is a substance having the atomic number 79, the essence of electricity is what Einstein figured out, and the essence of Humanity is having 46 chromosomes and the only living members of the Homo genus. So to me this claim is rather nonsensical.

2. 2. Having an ethical system of subject-relative constructive ethics has many potential advantages as well as many drawbacks. If all ethics is is a series of claims reached by each individual through their own constructions, then there is obviously a sense of empowerment that each individual attains. In this sense, Sartre is very similar to Nietzsche, who would have agreed with his vision of individuals creating their own ethics. However, to me this reeks of a self-help manual more than a rigorous examination of what the true meanings of "right" and "wrong" are. IF this is all that ethics boils down to, there are no real truth values to ethical statements, only truth values as assigned by each individual. What then, if anything, do we use as a basis for grounding our morality? Do we use consensus between independently attained ethical propositions held by individuals? But then we slide back into a kind of utilitarianism that I believe Sartre wouldn't agree with either. My point here is that, as of right now, I can't make a decision as to whether I like Sartre's meta-ethics or not, but I feel that this kind of idea might as well be Dr. Phil's.

3. 3.I won't touch the third point.

So where does this leave Sartre? I don't think he's in very good shape if any of my criticisms hold.

did 'naming and necessity' really defeat descriptivism?

When Kripke is starting the third lecture of Naming and Necessity, he takes a second to look back at the accomplishments of the previous lectures. By Kripke’s own account (N&N p. 106), he has thus far shown how descriptivism falls short, how names are reference-fixers, not synonymous to descriptions, and how identity is a property that should be considered de re instead of de dicto., all worthy topics where Kripke undeniably made some progress. However, the prospect of this paper is to show that, even though Kripke challenged the way philosophers were thinking about these issues at the time, the revolutionary interpretation of his work is a bit unfounded, as some of the important projects of the paper don’t manage to connect.

One of the most important accomplishments of the book is the questioning of the descriptivist theory of proper names. Under the influence of Russell and Strawson, descriptivists conceived of proper names as synonymous either to a definite description or a cluster of descriptions that may have either conjunctly or disjunctly added up to the name at hand. This analysis of names conflated statements of a priori and necessary truths. If, in fact, ‘W. Bush’ meant ‘The only former governor of Texas who became president as of 2002,’ then this apparently contingent fact about the person W. Bush becomes a necessary one. However, intuition makes us strongly want to disagree with these consequences, as we feel that, but of course, W. Bush could have lost to Gore in the 2000 election.

That being said, Kripke made us think twice about whether names could really be descriptions because then any cognitive or even linguistic association we have with a give name is not only contingent, but also incomplete. Most people would not be able to give a uniquely satisfying criterion to any proper name, even those of our most intimate acquaintances. At the very least it is not a necessary precondition for proper use of a given name. If I wish to refer to Bach, and all I know of him is that he is a German composer, I can still l properly use his name even though I probably wouldn’t be able to name a single particular work he has created. Nevertheless, I am still talking about him and there is no reason to believe I am in any way misguided in what a descriptivist would have to admit being a meaningless utterance.

However, what comes into question is Kripke’s methodology. Kripke lays out a formal, comprehensive, and rigorous theory regarding proper names under the guise of a proper Descriptivist agenda. To this set of 6 theses and 1 non-circularity satisfaction condition (p. 71), he goes on to prove how each thesis is either misguided or doesn’t satisfy the non-circularity condition. This is fair enough, given his presentation of the theses. However, even though he shows that descriptivism is not the right kind of theory or proper names, he goes on to attempt to prove that a descriptivist picture won’t do either. I’m not so sure he actually makes this point.

Descriptivism, as a picture of names--as opposed to a full on theory, would fail if one could prove that descriptions of any kind are not always necessary for the use of proper names in a language. Further, Kripke would have to show how descriptions are irrelevant to proper names. If there is a way to introduce a name without any descriptive element, the anti-descriptivist wins. Kripke shows us how a name could be used without there being descriptions immediately attached: through the causal or historical chain attached to the name and object. However, how is it thatnames come to be to begin with?

Kripke gives us with two possible alternatives, the first being completely descriptive. One can introduce a name into a language by fixing a reference from a rigid designator. If, for example, I want to talk about the northernmost point in the continental United States, I could designate the name “Tom” to that spot.[1] With this kind of name origination, the description is ever present and thus we should consider the other option.

The second (and last) way Kripke discusses introducing proper names in to a language is through the initial baptism. What does this ceremony entail? Well there is something in front of you, and there is some suggestive gesture that the person who originates the naming will, from that point forward, call that thing by some name. Now, suppose it is a puppy. The owner of the puppy presumably looks at it and says, or even thinks, “I shall name it ‘Max’.” But what is the it? Is it possible, as a Quinian might say, that one is actually naming the un-detached puppy head? Or is it possible that you’re actually talking about the stage of puppy-life when they are that young? Or perhaps even giving a part of the puppy-collective? Well, presumably, no. What one is naming is the puppy itself. So whether explicit or not, one is thinking “I shall name that puppy ‘Max.”

In introducing the name along with the ‘sortal’, one is at least providing some kind of descriptive element when introducing the name, even in the event of baptism. Otherwise it would be left arguably ambiguous what exactly one was naming in the act of the initial baptism. If in fact it is true that all of these cases of baptism involve a sortal, and if sortals are descriptive, then both options explored by Kripke would include descriptions and descriptivism, in some modified way, is still a force to be dealt with. Further, descriptivism would not have been completely defeated.

But are these two methods of introducing proper names exhaustive? A possible counter-example to this line of argumentation, and it would come from the likes of people who might assert that there are times when one privately baptizes things around them. Say one is found in a novel environment, alone, perhaps a foreign wilderness, where one is unfamiliar with the fauna around oneself. Then perhaps it would make sense that this person would look at something and name it in their own mind without externally expressing anything at all. Surely, here there is no descriptive element? Well I think I would argue against that. Perhaps one doesn’t vocalize any sortal description, perhaps one doesn’t even speak to oneself using any sortal terms. Nevertheless, one looks at the certain thing and decides about that thing, whether it is the head of that thing (a head is a thing, after all) or that fauna in its entirety, or whatever one decides of that thing to call it by a certain name. Otherwise the intention of naming something fails to stick on to anything, throwing names into the dark.

Now that we have shown that there is a good argument that even baptisms include descriptions, and that the two options presented are tentatively exhaustive. Also, the previously mentioned method of introducing names via definite descriptions includes descriptions too, thus making both name-introducing mechanisms Kripke proposes dependent on descriptions. Why shouldn’t this theory of proper names be just a peculiar type of descriptivism, perhaps a des-Kripke-vism? Well the answer to this is once again return to the text carefully analyze Kripke’s arguments. The main point of contention seems to be that even if we allow for descriptive elements present at the inception of a name, carrying descriptions through to every possible use of the name, that is, making original descriptions necessarily known at every instance of its use, would lead to unacceptable conclusions including but not limited to: a conflation of the a priori and the necessary, determinism, and circularity.

So how has Kripke fared so far? Well he has definitely pointed out some difficulties in the descriptivist theory of proper names as presented his own manner. As a complete theory, Kripke has irrefutably proven that it fails, especially given the non-circularity conditions. However, in the beginning of his third lecture Kripke is arguing that the descriptivist camp not only failed to provide a theory, but that it also failed to give an adequate picture. Well I guess here it a matter of definition what one means to say that the descriptivist picture has failed. If by descriptivist picture one just means to say that hey, descriptions do play a major part in any theory of names, then Kripke here is just flat out wrong, since even his anti-descriptivist manifesto cannot dispense with descriptions altogether.

On the other hand, if one considers showing that descriptivism was the wrong type of picture we were looking for when it came to proper names was just denying the descriptivism as presented by Russell and potentially his close followers, then I guess Kripke did a very good job. And considering the fact that a whole lot of people still had Russell's “On Denoting” in a special drawer reserved for canonical, unquestionable texts, this achievement alone is very impressive.

The causal theory of names presented by Kripke isn’t held to the same rigorous standards descriptivists are held to. After presenting a theory of descriptivism and refuting it, Kripke doesn’t really show that the picture of descriptivism, as a rough sketch, might be at least in part right. When he provides his alternative, he first doesn’t even provide the audience with a rigorous theory. This is acceptable: he doesn’t intend to provide a rigorous theory. However, the picture he gives us of the causal theory of names is quasi-descriptivist, or at least retains some of the descriptive elements he was setting out to refute. Sure, Kripke’s theory differs from Russell's and in significant ways. Reference and use of a particular name can be continued without uniquely identifying knowledge, and names are passed by mostly if not entirely through the historical connections of use of words in presence of others. The initial users of the name, whether through introduction by rigid designation or through baptism, did have some descriptive association that was necessary for the introduction of the name. When the names are passed down, this necessary descriptive connection could potentially be lost (and, often, it actually is lost). That these names gain new descriptive associations is also a part of the causal-historical chain. However, the original descriptions don’t have to be thereby the time you move to the nth person down the line.

It becomes difficult to me to decide whether or not Kripke’s theory of proper names completely takes descriptivism off the map or not. Ultimately it’s not for me to decide, as a lowly undergraduate student. The social element of passing down names and the potential loss of meaning or descriptive associations with the name was a significant step forward. Conversely, because even when providing a supposed antithesis of the Descriptivist program Kripke ends up relying on descriptions himself, I can’t really say descriptivism was fully eliminates the still-powerful intuition that names have to have been linked to some identifying description

Works Cited

Saul Kripke (1980). Naming and Necessity. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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[1] There may be some ambiguity of scope here. I could be talking about the actual northernmost spot and naming it “Tom”, or I could be talking about the northern-most spot, whatever that may be, and naming that spot “Tom”. To clarify, I’m discussing the de dicto implications.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

the so-called death of descriptivism

for a very long time--actually from about russell's "on denoting" paper published in the 1900's (decade, not century) till circa 1980--descriptivism ruled the theory of proper names. names did not actually denote anothing according to this view, but were shorthand versions of descriptions. names were descriptions, which in turn gave meaning to the term. so a proper name gave a unique description to the individual in question and that's what the individual was. the main motivation for this position was a fregean reaction against the millian view of proper names where a name just meant that thing you're talking about.

then of course the young prodigy savior of modal semantics saul kripke came along and revolutionized the entire field of philosophy of language. as mcginn noted in his review of the book in philosophical review, either you hated naming and necessity, you loved it, or you were genuinely confused. this new causal-historical view of names was completely different from the descriptivism that preceded it and there was a huge party for those who feared metaphysical committment and nominalists were happy and ockam had a party in his grave and all that good stuff and blah blah blah blah blah.

but was this celebration justified? was descriptivism really defeated like kripke thought?

as that young, star-crossed poet juliet once said, "what's in a name? a rose by any other name would smell as sweet!" this insight would play right into the conniving hands of kripke, who would make it seem that it shows how names are arbitrarily chosen to baptize a particular entity, whether an individual or a natural kind or whatever. but then i guess the nature of the question shifts as one attempts to pinpoint how names are actually acquired.

according to kripke, in the second lecture of the book, delivered in princeton i believe it was the 22nd of january, 1970, proper names for particular entities or kinds are introduced into a language one of either two ways. the first way is by fixing the reference by means of description. in other words i might say, "i need a name for the hairiest cuban-american raised in miami currently studying in scotland. i shall name him 'G'." see what i did there was that i came up with a definite description. instead of using that definite description every single time i want to refer to this particular individual, i pretty much just came up with a shortcut of sorts.

the other way one can introduce a name into a language is by using ostensive gestures, pretty much. so in other words you might go ahead and visit your local animal shelter and pick out a puppy from there. you take it home and you point at it and you say "i shall name this dog, 'D'." you could just say "D" as you point at it but then, of course as quine might point out, you might be naming the dog, sure, but you also might be naming the puppy slice or the undetatched puppy part or whatever the fuck that crazy quine might say. so even if you don't downright say "the dog's name is 'D'," in your mind you make the connection between the name and the type of thing you're actually naming. however, including this 'type' categorization or as kripke calls it the 'sortal' word as well, you ARE including a descriptive element to the ostensive definition as well.

going back to the famous shakespeare quotation once again, sure that rose could have any other name and smell sweet. but whenever somebody decided to call it a "rose" they said hey, look at that fucking flower over there, i'm gonna name it "rose." so, at the very least in the introduction of the term, the name of the plant was coupled with a recognition of what they were talking about and thus a description.

so basically what i'm trying to say here is that, even in kripke's view, descriptions are INDISPENSABLE, and are thus built in to EVERY noun term--whether it be proper or categorical-- and kripke pretty much fails in debunking good ol' earl of russell.

identity and descriptive names

oooh crap well i was shaving today and i realized:

i've argued before for a descriptivist theory of proper names mostly based on my particular views on personal identity. My intuition has been that you wouldn't be the same person if you decided to play basketball instead of fencing, or if you decided to become a math major instead of a philosophy one.

but, as my dissentors have pointed out, this identity of personhood isn't the same sense identity is being used when describing the person, because one is an "identity" construed in a psychological sense of what defines a person and the other is a mathematical statement based on an equivalence relationship (you are you)... or is it??

check it out: if you decide to go eat dinner with your friends instead of working out, you are inhaling the atoms around the restaurant instead of those at the gym, you're eating the particular food you ate instead of burning some calories, you're stimulating your mind with the lively conversation with your friends instead of stimulating your muscle cells to grow or your lung capacity to increase. in other words, the course of actions you take does directly effect a difference in chemical composition of your body itself, which in turn in a very literal sense make you a different person, if looked at from an atomical perspective. and if you believe that difference in sub-particles affect difference in structure, then whabam! different person.

unless i'm jumping the gun here, this would mean that the descriptions associated with your name or mine are directly connected to some difference in chemical composition associated with those descriptions, effectively being a pretty good place-marker for your identity.

i still have to work out the kinks but i think this probably has some link to a deterministic argument :)