Ontological Landscapes: Recent Thought on Conceptual Interfaces Between Science and Philosophy 9783110319811, 9783110319316

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Vesselin Petrov (Ed.) Ontological Landscapes Recent Thought on Conceptual Interfaces Between Science and Philosophy

Vesselin Petrov (Ed.)

Ontological Landscapes Recent Thought on Conceptual Interfaces Between Science and Philosophy

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Contributors Acknowledgements Preface Vesselin Petrov I. Analysis—synthesis Roberto Poli

1

19

II. How can we verify metaphysical hypotheses? On necessary connection between metaphysics, ontology and science Bogdan Ogrodnik 43 III. Logical analysis and its ontological consequences: Rise, fall and resurgence of intensional objects in contemporary philosophy Bruno Leclercq 53 IV. Causality: ontological principle or explanatory scheme? Anguel S. Stefanov

97

V. The metaphysics of secondary qualities: Defending responseintentionalism Nenad Miščević 115 VI. Process Ontology in the context of applied philosophy Vesselin Petrov

137

VII. Sparse and dense categories: what they tell us about natural kinds Lilia Gurova 157

VIII. Ontology of ability: a defense of counterfactual analysis of ability Marina Bakalova 169 IX. Naturalizing mathematics and naturalizing ethics Fabrice Pataut

183

X. On the intricate interplay of logic and ontology Rosen Lutskanov

211

XI. The politics of radical experience M. Weber

229

XII. Towards a reistic social–historical philosophy Nikolay Milkov

245

XIII. Revisiting Sartre’s ontology of embodiment in Being and Nothingness Dermot Moran 263 XIV. On the effects of a fictitious encounter between Alfred North Whitehead and Gilbert Simondon Emeline Deroo 295 Analytic Table of Contents

311

CONTRIBUTORS Marina Bakalova is Assistant Professor in the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Sofia, Bulgaria). Her fields of expertise are analytic philosophy and epistemology. She had a three year fellowship (2002 – 2005) at the Central European University, Budapest and a short fellowship in virtue epistemology at Fordham University (USA) under the supervision of Prof. John Greco (2006). She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Balkan Journal of Philosophy (Sofia, Bulgaria). Emeline Deroo is a PhD student at the Philosophy Department of the University of Liège (Belgium). Her field of research is process metaphysics and her doctoral dissertation deals with A. N. Whitehead and G. Simondon's relational and processual ontology. Lilia Gurova is Associate Professor at the Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology of the New Bulgarian University (Sofia, Bulgaria). Her research interests are in history and philosophy of science, cognitive science, epistemology and philosophy of mind. She has published two books in Bulgarian and about 90 papers in English and Bulgarian. Dr. Gurova is a member of the Philosophy of Science Association, the Cognitive Science Society and the European Philosophy of Science Association. She is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the Balkan Journal of Philosophy and serves as a national contact point for the subprogram “Science in Society” of the 7th Framework Program of the EC. Bruno Leclercq is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department of the University of Liège, Belgium. His fields of interest include early phenomenology and analytic philosophy. As a member of the (Belgian) National Centre for Research in Logic (CNRL-NCNL), he has launched and now leads an interuniversitary research project on “Logic and ontology”. Rosen Lutskanov is Assistant Professor in the Institute for the Stu-

dy of Societies and Knowledge at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He has had several short-term specializations in Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia and the Slovak Republic and participated in conferences in Belgium, Romania and the Czech Republic. His first book The Incompleteness Theorem: Contexts of Interpretation (in Bulgarian) is published by East-West Publishers, Sofia, 2009. Currently he is vice-president of the Bulgarian Centre for Process Studies and member of the Editorial Board of the Balkan Journal of Philosophy (Sofia, Bulgaria). Field of competence: mathematical and philosophical logic, history and philosophy of logic and mathematics, ontology and epistemology of formal sciences. Nikolay Milkov is Associate Professor (Privatdozent) at the University of Paderborn, Germany. His publications include the books Kaleidoscopic Mind: an Essay in Post-Wittgensteinian Philosophy (1992), Varieties of Understanding: English Philosophy After 1898, 2 vols. (1997) and A Hundred Years of English Philosophy (2003). Milkov has authored papers in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Essays in Philosophy, Axiomathes, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Grazer Philosophische Studien. Nenad Miščević is Professor of Philosophy at the Philosophy Department of the University of Maribor, Slovenia and Recurrent Visiting Professor in the Philosophy Department of the Central European University, Budapest. His field of interest is analytic philosophy. Presently he is a member of the Steering Committee of the European Society for Analytic Philosophy. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of International Studies in the Philosophy of Science (Oxford), Studies in East European Thought (Kluwer, Boston), Acta Analytica (Dettelsbach, Germany), Analiza (Ljubljana, Slovenia), the Balkan Journal of Philosophy (Sofia, Bulgaria) and Chair of the Editorial Board of the Croatian Journal of Philosophy (Croatia). Dr. Mišĉevic has published 8 books in English, Croatian and Slovenian and a number of articles in these languages. Dermot Moran is Professor of Philosophy at University College

Dublin and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. His books include: The Philosophy of John Scotus Eriugena (1989), Introduction to Phenomenology (2000), Edmund Husserl. Founder of Phenomenology (2005), and (Eds.) The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy (2008). He is Founding Editor of The International Journal of Philosophical Studies, and co-editor of the Contributions to Phenomenology book series (Springer). He a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology (CARP) and a member of the Steering Committee of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP). Bogdan Ogrodnik, Institute of Philosophy, University of Silesia, Poland. He is President of the Whitehead Metaphysical Society and a member of the board of the International Process Network. Editor of 4 volumes of Studia Whiteheadiana. Member of the International Advisory Board of Process Studies. The author of four books: Ontology of Concrete Time; Introduction to Roman Ingarden’s Ontology; Treatise on the Pure Activity; Between Quantum Mechanics and A.N. Whitehead’s Metaphysics. First Hypotheses of Philosophy of Nature and over 30 papers. Fabrice Pataut, Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques, (CNRS - Université Paris 1 - École Normale Supérieure). His fields of interest are the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of logic and ethics. He has published on these topics in Archives de Philosophie, Canadian Philosophical Review, Conceptus, Dialectica, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Philosophia Mathematica, Philosophical Investigations, Philosophiques, Topoï, in proceedings of international conferences and in anthologies, both in English and French. For further information: http://www-ihpst.univ-paris1.fr/42,fabrice_pataut.html . Vesselin Petrov is Associate Professor in the Department of “Ontological and Epistemological Investigations” of the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Sofia, Bulgaria). His fields of research are: ontology, applied ontology, epistemology, philosophy of science and process philosophy. He is author

of two books in Bulgarian: First Steps Towards the Mystery of the Continuum, 1999; Process Philosophy: Its History and Actuality, 2010, and of some 90 papers in Bulgarian, English and Russian. Dr. Petrov is editor of more than 10 books in Bulgarian and English. He is President of the Bulgarian Ontological Society and President of the Bulgarian Center for Process Studies. He is also the Editor-in-chief of the Balkan Journal of Philosophy. Roberto Poli (PhD Utrecht) is editor-in-chief of Axiomathes (Springer), a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the study of ontology and cognitive systems, member of the editorial advisory board of Cognitive Semiotics and on the editorial board of Meinong Studies, editor of Categories (Ontos Verlag), member of the editorial board of Process Thought (Ontos Verlag), and the Academic Board of Directors of the Metanexus Institute, Philadelphia (http://www.metanexus.net/Institute). His research interests include (1) ontology, in both its traditional philosophical understanding and the new, computer-oriented, understanding, (2) the theory of values and the concept of person and (3) anticipatory systems, i.e. systems able to take decisions according to their possible future developments. Poli has published four books, edited or co-edited more than 20 books or journals’ special issues and published more than 150 scientific papers. Details at robertopoli.co.cc. Poli teaches Applied Ethics, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, and Futures Studies at the Faculty of Sociology of the University of Trento. Anguel Stefanov is professor in the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Prof. Stefanov is a visiting professor at the philosophy departments of Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski and Veliko Tarnovo University St. St. Cyril and Methodius. His fields of interest are philosophy of science and theory of knowledge. He has published 10 books, and more than 120 papers in Bulgarian, English, and Russian. Michel Weber is the Director of the Centre for Philosophical Practice Chromatiques whiteheadiennes (Brussels, Belgium). He is the au-

thor of four monographs (e.g., Whitehead's Pancreativism: The Basics, 2006) and the (co-)editor of more than twenty books (e.g., with Will Desmond, Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, 2008). He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Acta Neuropsychologica (Poland), the Balkan Journal of Philosophy (Bulgaria) and Studia Whiteheadiana (Poland).

Acknowledgements First of all I would like to thank the participants and organizers of the Sofia International Conference on Ontology SICO’09 “The Stakes of Contemporary Ontological Thinking” held in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2009 for a fruitful discussion of many of the topics included in the present volume. The conference was made possible due to the financial support of the National Science Fund of Bulgaria and the National Endowment Fund “13th Centuries of Bulgaria”, Sofia, Bulgaria. Special thanks are due to Johanna Seibt and Roberto Poli for their suggestions for improving the texts of the volume. I am also indebted to Michel Weber for his help in the process of improving the book. Last, but not least, the book would not be possible without the efforts of John Cronin who made all necessary corrections in language and formatting for all the texts in the book.

Vesselin Petrov Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

Preface Vesselin Petrov After many years of neglect and being treated, at best, as a secondary (ancillary) field that serves epistemology, ontology is now enjoying a renaissance and a new independence. Ontology has successfully developed in many directions in the last decades. This renaissance has fostered various approaches and directions in its further development. In other words, there is an urgent need to consider the present situation and investigate the most important issues in contemporary ontological thinking. The task has potentially many dimensions, one of which is outlining recent thought on the conceptual interfaces existing between science and philosophy. The fulfillment of that task will depict contemporary ontological landscapes. The book is expressly intended to carry out that task. Our contemporary world is characterized by the very rapid developments in science. For better and for worse, Science has entered into every aspect of our lives. Therefore, philosophy and, in particular ontology, has also been influenced by contemporary science; it is this interaction of science and ontology that needs exploring. On the one hand, different branches of science have influenced ontology to the extent that it has changed its claims, its approaches and even its essence. On the other hand, ontological (and, more generally, philosophical) ideas have entered into the field of newly developed sciences such as computer science, artificial intelligence, etc. Sciences in such branches see ontology as a general methodological framework for their own field of work. In the last few decades, we have begun to speak of applied ontology, ontology as technology, etc. We need to explore these processes and outline at least some of the most important questions and problems in the interplay between science and philosophy. Contemporary ontological thinking offers many different streams of thought. For example, we need to explore how process ontology interacts, particularly, with analytic metaphysics and phenomenological ontology. Can we expect that the interplay between these ontological approaches will give rise to new fruitful ideas in ontology and that they, in

2 turn, will be useful for the further development of each of these approaches? Is it possible to argue that some of these different ontological approaches are more rewarding than others, or is it the case that each of them has its own value and that they should all be developed in parallel, in their mutual interaction? Among the many alternative ontological schemes currently discussed, process ontology is receiving great interest. There are new applications and further developments in Whitehead’s process metaphysics, but the number of new non-Whiteheadian approaches to process ontology has also increased. The purpose of this anthology is to open up a view onto the plurality of different ontological schemes and to present ontology in terms of its tasks rather than in terms of ideological commitments to this or that category scheme, based on substances. The papers collected in this volume all address the question of how, in view of current results in all areas of empirical research, we should ontologically model the basic notions used in empirical research. More concretely, the papers discuss the interfaces between ontology and empirical research that are created by the notions of a whole, a thought, a number, a quality, an ability, a kind, notions of causation, dynamicity, and social objects. The application of relevant logical tools for the reconsideration of ontological paradigms, as well as the investigation of the consequences of some new topics, e.g. in cognitive sciences on the development of ontology are also part of the conceptual interfaces of science and philosophy. All these investigations into the content of core notions of empirical research from an ontological point of view are supplemented by methodological discussions of the goals of ontology in relation to empirical research, phenomenology, and metaphysics or “speculative philosophy”. Usually the English term ‘science’ only refers to the natural sciences; the humanities are not sciences at all, though it is possible to talk about social sciences, health sciences, etc. In German, in French and in some other languages this problem does not persist. We note that some of the authors in the present collection have followed this non-English tradition. The first chapter of the book is Roberto Poli’s “Analysis – synthesis”. It expresses the anxiety that modern science has mainly relied on an analytic strategy creating insurmountable barriers with a loss of information. The author suggests further development of the synthetic meth-

3 od and combining both analytic and synthetic strategies for the creation of a new integral vision of the world. According to him, the present situation is to a great extent due to the lack of a correct ontology containing a theory of wholes and their parts and a theory of levels of reality. His task is to suggest some main cornerstones around which such a new ontology might be built. Roberto Poli begins the fulfillment of this task with a new interpretation of the analytic and synthetic strategies. He argues against both pure holism and pure reductionism and launches a new investigation of the whole and its parts, differentiating three main kinds of wholes – simple, partial and integral wholes. He then moves on to the next element of his ontological framework, provided according to him by the theory of levels of reality with its three basic strata of reality: material, psychological and social. The author discusses how these strata are connected and suggests using not only the well-known whole-part relations, but also whole-whole relations. He investigates these wholewhole ties, paying special attention to the ties between the greater wholes (the so-called ‘capsulate wholes’) and their sub-wholes, and emphasizes that it is a mistake to conceive all wholes as hierarchical. Poli concludes that the so-outlined main points in his paper will “contribute to the development of a more articulate ontology, able to grasp deeperlying aspects of reality”. The second chapter “How can we verify metaphysical hypotheses? On necessary connections between metaphysics, ontology and science” by Bogdan Ogrodnik is devoted to the formulation of a method of verification of metaphysical hypotheses. The author considers the types of connections between metaphysics, ontology, physics and mathematics as different areas of knowledge and points to the problem of verification of metaphysical hypotheses as one of the serious problems arising from the outlined frame of reference. He investigates this problem using the example of Whitehead’s metaphysics, paying special attention to two problems arising in this regard: is Whitehead’s methodological standpoint coherent; are the metaphysical hypotheses verifiable and how we can verify them? In connection with the first of them, Ogrodnik explains that speculative philosophy examines two aspects of the Universe: empirical and rational and that Whitehead builds a metaphysical system in which something that is empirical and something that is rational or mental are

4 two poles of one unit of experience. As to the second problem, Ogrodnik argues that Whitehead’s method of metaphysics as described in his magnum opus Process and Reality is very similar to the method elaborated by Karl Popper. However, Popper elaborated an evolutionary epistemology and Whitehead has gone further: the metaphysical theory of organism is compatible with Whitehead’s hypothetism. Ogrodnik considers physics and mathematics as a paradigm of the connection between a priori and a posteriori types of knowledge. He treats metaphysics as a posteriori knowledge and ontology as a priori knowledge concerning ideas, ideal meaning or other types of similar objects. His conclusion is that the “paradigmatic relation between physics and mathematics determines a similar relation between metaphysics and ontology” and that “ontology can be treated as a tool for metaphysics in analogy to the relation between mathematics and physics”. Bruno Leclercq has devoted the third chapter “Logical analysis and its ontological consequences: Rise, fall and resurgence of intentional objects in contemporary philosophy” to considering the ontological paradigms worked out by Gottlob Frege and Franz Brentano and the role of the development of modal logic for the reconsideration of these paradigms, as well as the appearance of some hybrid entities, such as individual concepts and intentional objects. The author first investigates Brentano’s theory of judgement in pointing out that every judgement – affirmative or negative – is a judgement of existence or inexistence. Brentano’s logical theory has significant ontological consequences: it asserts not only the immanent presence of an object in every presentation, but also that every positive judgement is an existential assertion of its object. The author next sheds light on ontological consequences in the Brentanian School. Brentano professed reism, i.e. a kind of empiricism and nominalism, whereas some representatives of own his school went against his ontological convictions. Philosophers like Twardowski, Meinong and, finally, Husserl aimed at extending actual objects: contradictory objects, ideal entities like numbers, or whole states of affairs. One result is Husserl’s theory of intentionality, grounding the theory of objects on a phenomenological investigation. Contrary to Brentano, Frege maintained Platonist views; however subsequent logical analysis in Frege’s school led to more nominalistic positions. According to Frege’s

5 theory, judgement is not primarily the assertion of the existence of an object, but the assertion of the truth of a proposition. Frege’s analysis of the existential judgment largely determined the course of ontological reflection in his school, i.e. in analytic philosophy. The distinctive feature of Frege’s ontological work, separating him from Brentanian theories of objects is his logical distinction between theoretical existential questions and the non-conceptual question of the structure of the world. Russell radicalized Frege’s analysis, claiming that some singular judgements involve existential and not referential presuppositions. Carnap’s reductionist thesis asserts that all pseudo-objects of the various sciences have to be constructed on the grounds of the immediate knowledge obtained by empirical acquaintance with the basic “objects” of the world. Quine is also an heir to Frege in formulating his criterion of ontological commitment. In a word, Frege’s idea has given rise to a school that has developed the nominalist position. The author of the present chapter analyses the development of both the Brentanian and Fregean schools in the twentieth century and has reached the conclusion that their opposition, grounded on their diverging logical analyses, has blurred in the twentieth century with the development of modal logic, especially quantified modal logic. The so-called “essentialism” of quantified modal logic consists in the thesis that necessity is de re and not only de dicto. The opposite view is the position of the “rigid designators”. It consists in maintaining that there are no essences and that all necessity lies in analytic relations between concepts. The chapter concludes that Brentano’s logical and ontological position does not prevail over Frege’s. In accordance with the analytic tradition, the conceptual nature of intentional objects is maintained. The fourth chapter “Causality: ontological principle, or explanatory scheme?” by Anguel Stefanov seeks to answer three questions: first, do different forms or types of causality exist, second, if so is there a common feature that unites them as manifestations of one general principle, and third, are there uncaused phenomena. The author argues for a positive answer to the first question recalling the well-known efficient, teleological and statistical, etc. types of causality. He points out that one of them (the theory of efficient cause) is traditionally called the central theory of causality (CTC) due to its long metaphysical tradition. Many

6 difficulties in the CTC are considered: Hume’s criticism of the necessity of the effect occurring after its cause; the existence of uncaused phenomena (i.e. phenomena that have no natural cause) – for example phenomena that occur because of acts of human free will; and so-called backward causation (i.e. a non-standard causal relation in which the effect emerges earlier than its cause) – for example, a backward time travel in moving with a speed greater than that of light in a vacuum. Next, the author considers some possible responses to the above difficulties, pointing out, however, that they do not provide an equal defense of the classical theory. He comes to the conclusion that CTC is not a general ontological theory of causality, although it has limiting ontological grounds. Namely, interaction is the limiting ontological ground of CTC; one of its sides is usually taken as a cause and the other side as its effect. Accordingly, the meaning of the concepts of cause and effect is elucidated. Nenad Miscevic discusses the problem of secondary qualities in the fifth chapter “The metaphysics of secondary qualities: Defending response-intentionalism”. He criticizes both extreme views: the reductionist, primary quality view that secondary qualities are identical to physical micro-properties, and the opposite extreme, projectivist-eliminativist view that visual experience cannot be adequately described without reference to the intrinsic sensational qualities of a visual field. The author defends a dispositionalist response-dependentist attitude that offers a middle road. He presents his own version of this approach, which he calls “response intentionalism”, RI. His RI replaces the traditional characterization of what is caused “as being a sensation with an intentionalist characterization, more faithful to the actual phenomenology of the experience of secondary qualities as belonging to objects, rather than to one’s mental state”. Colour is used in the text as the main example of a secondary quality. The author traces four steps that lead to his response intentionalism. His line of reasoning is alleged to offer a better solution to the problem of locating secondary qualities. However, he confesses that there is still “a long way to go between pointing to a seeming solution to the actual proof that the solution is the right one”. Vesselin Petrov investigates the newly developed topic of applied philosophy and in particular the significance of process ontology in ap-

7 plied philosophy. The aim of the sixth chapter “Process ontology in the context of applied philosophy” is to consider the role of process ontology as applied ontology and to defend the view that process ontology is mature enough for applications in different philosophical and scientific areas, as well as to suggest new ideas for the methodological role of process ontology as philosophy. The author differs from some widely circulated notions about the proper understanding of the terms “applied philosophy” and “applied process thought”. After considering some recent examples of an application of process ontology in computer and information science, new generalizations are made on their basis. Until a few years ago, the formal representation of an ontology has assumed the more or less static form O = 〈C, A, R〉. However, this kind of representation is only suitable for the limited sphere of static knowledge, but not for the dynamic knowledge of tasks and processes that manipulate static knowledge. Better detailization of the knowledge types generates new types of ontologies, such as functional ontologies, task and method ontologies, activities ontologies, and of course, process ontologies. In the last few years, some new approaches for the realization of dynamics in ontologies have been developed, e.g. the inclusion of isolated dynamic elements in ontologies, the extension of the concept of the dynamicity of ontologies to new cases, etc. Finally, the author considers process ontology as philosophy and its methodological role. In the given examples and generalizations, top-level ontologies have been considered in the sense of ontology as technology. However, the author makes the suggestion that there should exist an ontology as philosophy above top-level ontologies in the sense of technology, and that this philosophical ontology should be a kind of process ontology. On the one hand, it realizes the top-down approach in the sense that it is the process of ontological categories, relations between them and the rules that are most suitable for ruling quasidynamic and dynamic domain ontologies. On the other hand, generalizations of quasidynamic and dynamic domain ontologies to toplevel ontologies as technologies are a good basis for making some process philosophical generalizations. In this way a down-top approach is realized. In a word, the interrelation of process ontology as philosophy and ontology as technology combines both top-down and down-top approaches. That is why the author concludes to a fruitful methodological

8 role for process ontology as philosophy based on the combination of both approaches. The seventh chapter is “Sparse and dense categories: what they tell us about natural kinds”, by Lilia Gurova. It is devoted to the natural kinds debate between realism and conventionalism and between the essentialist and the non-essentialist versions within realism. New elements of evidence are provided for non-essentialist realism about natural kinds on the basis of the author’s implications, drawn from real experiments made recently by the cognitive psychologists Kloos and Sloutsky along the lines of the newly developed experimental philosophy. These authors have introduced the so-called statistical density of a category and have divided the categories into the two groups, dense categories (categories with higher density) and sparse categories (categories with low density). Gurova first concludes that the distinction between natural and nominal kinds is objective and points to this fact as an evidence for realism about natural kinds, and second, that “insofar as the statistical density is a relational property … being a natural kind should be conceived as a relational property, too”. She also points to some difficulties within the distinction between sparse and dense categories related to the distinction between natural kinds and artifacts and to the lack of a clear-cut boundary between dense and sparse categories. Nevertheless, her suggestion is that the results of the experimental studies of categorization can bring about significant shifts in the natural kinds debate. The eighth chapter “Ontology of ability: a defense of counterfactual analysis of ability” by Marina Bakalova treats problems raised in contemporary discussions in analytic philosophy. The author first outlines the classical analysis of dispositions by means of conditionals and the objections against this treatment. She reminds us that dispositional properties can be divided into those of physical objects and those of living organisms. The main problem in the chapter is that of ability. Abilities are treated as a general term for dispositions of living organisms. The problem of “the conditional fallacy” is explained as the problem that allegedly undermines the conditional analysis of dispositions and of abilities in particular. The author discusses the debate between two contemporary philosophers – Timothy Williamson and Ernest Sosa – and tries to come to her own decision. Williamson has introduced the argument in

9 favour of the claim that abilities have a primitive nature known as “the primeness argument” together with the idea of showing that abilities are not decomposable into internal and external components and are not analyzable. Bakalova aims to argue that there is room for a metaphysical analysis of abilities. The widespread opinion among analytic philosophers is that there are two options: to defend counterfactual analysis or opt for its unanalyzability. Bakalova argues that there is also a third possibility: searching for an analysis of ability that is compatible with the primeness argument. For this purpose, she uses Sosa’s notion of apt performance: we can treat ability as functionally determined by apt performance. Bakalova concludes that the view according to which ability conditionally hinges upon apt performances of a given kind is immune to the conditional fallacy and that we do not need to abandon the counterfactual analysis of abilities faced with the conditional fallacy argument. The ninth chapter “Naturalizing mathematics and naturalizing ethics” by Fabrice Pataut argues for rejecting naturalism as a philosophical program from the viewpoint of analytic philosophy. The author investigates two cases of naturalizing – the case of mathematics and the case of ethics – pointing to ontological (metaphysical), epistemological and semantical similarities between these cases. The main question that has to be answered is whether we should choose to naturalize; does this yield a plausible account of mathematical and ethical truth? Beginning with the ontological aspects of the question, the author considers two kinds of doctrine: according to the one, everything that exists is natural, i.e. there is only one kind of reality – natural reality. According to the other kind of doctrine, everything that exists may in principle fall at some level under the scope of some appropriate natural science, such as chemistry, physics, biology, etc., and if no natural science is able to subsume objects belonging to some ontological category then such objects do not exist; mental events are a typical example. In fact, this case leads to reductionism because we look for examples of a reduction of the semantical to the psychological, or of the psychological to the physical. As to the epistemological aspect, the author points to the Quinean doctrine of naturalizing epistemology. We have to distinguish between two projects: one is to account for the content of knowledge or of justified belief in

10 naturalistic terms; the other is to account for the processes by which we get such knowledge or belief. The author points to the great difficulties of both projects in the cases of mathematics and ethics, explaining the situation with the help of charts. He explains naturalism’s challenge to provide an explanation of how we can acquire knowledge of abstract objects. Another notion at stake is the semantic notion of truth. Justification is a two-level affair: a function of the reliability of the algorithm and of its cognitive penetration. With respect to the perceptual model, there is an asymmetry between the case of mathematics and the case of ethics that is represented in this chapter - again with the help of charts. Next the author focuses on the relation of conservativeness (as a replacement for truth) and causal inertia. His main idea is that what allows us to explain also causes phenomena; hence we should follow the methodological principle that underlying every good extrinsic explanation is an intrinsic explanation. There is a parallel here with the case of ethics. As the author says: “we countenance the existence of non-instantiated moral properties in order to conclude that, since we have moral convictions we hold to be true, we are quite systematically mistaken in our moral presumptions”. There is a brief consideration here of a particular kind of ethical naturalism – evolutionary ethics – and of its relation to the notions of truth, justification, and objectivity. We cannot conclude that our ethical norms are objectively true; that objective morality is superfluous and that such superfluity is a good thing. In this way, we end up with a contradiction: we have a reduction of the claim that ethical statements are true whether or not we have a means of discovering that they are. The author concludes that there might be a better way of conceiving the nature of difficulties in mathematics and ethics: adopting an internalist perspective, according to which the knowing mind relates only to what it establishes. He argues in favour of a new kind of internalist position, such as has recently appeared in the philosophical literature, according to which the internalist hypothesis fails to imply a better accessibility to mathematical objects. The author thinks it might be helpful to consider ethical puzzles in the same way. The theme “On the intricate interplay of logic and ontology” is developed by Rosen Lutskanov in the tenth chapter. If ontology and logic are inseparable, their development must follow two principal possibili-

11 ties: maintain ontology, but modify logic or maintain logic, but modify ontology. The first possibility was widely developed in the twentieth century in many non-classical logics. The task of the author here is to outline the second possibility: alterations in ontology. In that sense, his approach belongs to the field of development of dynamic ontology. The author uses formal tools for the realization of his task. The chapter can be divided into three parts. In the first one, the basics of a formal framework is elaborated for a preliminary account of the interplay of logic and ontology by the use of modal logic. In the second part, an inferential articulation of the concepts of “object” and “property” is considered. The author argues that “two atomic propositions of subject-predicate form are essentially concomitant if and only if they express essential properties of their common subject”. He suggests that this is the proper way of inferentially characterizing the use of individual constants naming concrete objects. This reconstruction is very close to Quine’s idea that all objects (concrete or abstract) are postulated entities. On the other hand, to some extent, the author follows Wittgenstein’s doctrine concerning the “multiplicity” of language and claims that the essential property of predicates is the fact that they are satisfiable by more than one individual constant, while the essential property of individual constants is the fact that more than one predicate applies to them. Having at hand means expressing identity between individual constants signifying objects. The author also points out the possibility of introducing predicate letters corresponding to properties and relations. The concluding third part of the chapter introduces two complementary varieties of shifts in ontology. The author concludes that we can discriminate between two basic strategies: “the way of ontological parsimony” and “the way of ontological abundance”. According to him, this facts show that the methodological decision to keep logic static implies the imperative of making ontology dynamic, i.e. revising the extension of the set of existent entities. The title of the eleventh chapter “The politics of radical experience” by Michel Weber is inspired by Ronald Laing’s Politics of Experience (1967) for reasons that will be explained below. The author of this chapter makes a successful attempt to develop a Whiteheadian point of view on the topics of the chapter. He considers the possibility of metaphysics (or ontology) using historical and systematic analysis. At pre-

12 sent, there are serious attempts being made to make a return to the kind of ontology inspired by XIX century mathematics and pragmatism in the broad sense, and it is Whitehead who is the main figure in this revival. In this regard the author considers first the question of whether Whitehead ever fostered a kind of formal ontology. He argues that the development of Whitehead’s philosophy can be characterized as a creative advance from formal to existential ontology. Next, he considers the extent to which Whitehead’s existential ontology is a pragmatic one. Weber argues that Whitehead’s pragmatism has remained up to now unacknowledged first of all because Whitehead was quite elusive with regard to his own pragmatism, second, Whitehead was concerned with a cosmology that is rather remote form pragmatic modes of thought, and third, because most Whiteheadians have been interested in the theological development of his philosophy. Given this background situation, Michel Weber argues that to adopt the politics of experience is to acknowledge the correlation between metaphysics and politics and accept all experiences. On the other hand, as he suggests, “pragmatism urges us to practice philosophy in order to obtain some efficacy in the real world”. Finally, “anti-psychiatry” was also a metaphysical movement because, from a Whiteheadian point of view, psychiatry rests on a tragic fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Comparing Laing with Whitehead, Michel Weber argues that Whitehead’s ontology can articulate the main principles that Laing discovered in his medical practice. In this regard, Weber mentions four levels of argument and four types of democracy: categoreal (necessitating both categoreal interdependence and independence), ontological (the “stuff” of the world secures both independence and interdependence), clinical (the same pattern is discovered in a clinical environment), and political (human life is both individual and communal). The author concludes that several claims could be inferred from the text: first, that speculative philosophy has to start from experience, not from principles; second, that generalizations extracted from experience make sense only insofar as they allow some deepening of experience; third, that we should distinguish the objective and the subjective dimensions of experience, but not contrast them. In a word, in this way we obtain a complex cognitive tool that makes the creative advance of “speaking”. Whitehead obviously thought that he had gone further than the bare pragmatic re-

13 quirements evoked earlier. The twelfth chapter “Towards a reistic social-historical philosophy” by Nikolay Milkov advances a theory of social reality that concurs with the formal ontology developed in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. The author claims that this formal ontology is reistic in a broad sense: social objects are primary and social relations are super-structured over them. The chapter consists of two main parts: the first one sets out the theoretical foundations of the suggested approach; the second one considers some of its applications to sociology and history. The author argues in the first part that his social theory follows a reistic interpretation of certain of Wittgenstein’s statements. The basic claim is that the world consists of objects which set up connections, and the latest ones build up states of affairs. Milkov accepts as primary social objects reistic entities that are atomistic, and divides them into five groups of increasing abstractedness: (a) material objects that are produced by human agents; (b) social agents and social groups; (c) different performances (e.g. theatre performances); (d) social actions and their parts; (e) theories, novels and other artifacts. According to him, social objects set up social constructions (social individuals): they are similar to what is usually defined as units of cultural heredity. The author points out that social objects are social in the sense that they are products of collective intentionality. He criticizes John Searle’s view that the building blocks of the social world are institutions because, according to him, institutions are products of collective intentionality that emerge on the basis of a certain level of development of social objects. Typical examples of social objects are stock market products. Characteristic of stock market ontology is a constant exchange of objects. The author introduces the term “surface of social life” as a topological concept in this ontology. It consists of ever new and changing social objects. The second part of the chapter embodies an attempt to apply the newly introduced reistic social ontology to the practice of historical study. The author illustrates three realms of application of his approach: genealogical studies, explanations in history, and investigations of the “metaphysics” of social life. Whereas some social objects are repeatedly renewed, others are old. Milkov sees social constructions or individuals as a series of ever-changing social objects that build up different sets. Besides their genealogical order, social objects have

14 other levels of dependencies which can be seen as having assemblystructures. The changes of social objects take place according to the “assembly-structures” ontological model, because social structures have a clear hierarchy and are strictly ordered one over the other, and every change rearranges social objects in new constructions, transforming objects’ roles in new constructions. The next step of enriching the author’s social ontology is the assumption that people connect social objects with specific “metaphysics”. On the basis of social objects, different practices and actions are developed. The author argues that practices in use at a particular time and place determine people’s way of life. He suggests three ways of overcoming the progressivist fallacy: (a) to use some new developments in history, e.g. the so-called experimental archaeology, which means reconstructing former ways of life in a more authentic way; (b) trying to identify more or less constant forms of human life; (c) following the author’s exploration method in seeking authentic social individuals. The author concludes that the presented ontology is rather programmatic: nothing is said about social relations and social events; it is a task for further investigations. His reistic social theory does not follow reism in its original form, as developed by Kotarbinski. He merely uses the general idea of reism in order to better articulate his idiosyncratic social theory in hoping it might help us in better understanding the multiplicity of social life. In the thirteenth chapter “Sartre’s ontology of embodiment in Being and Nothingness”, Dermot Moran wants to revisit Sartre’s conception of embodiment, arguing that Sartre is more than Merleau-Ponty a phenomenologist par excellence of the flesh and intersubjective intercorporeity. However, Sartre’s phenomenology of the body is different from Merleau-Ponty’s in important aspects. Moran emphasizes that embodiment has recently become a central topic in the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences and that the manner in which humans are embodied knowers has important consequences for ontology as well. The author revisits Sartre’s account of the body in the chapter ‘The Body’ in Being and Nothingness (1943) and argues it is an original phenomenological ontology of the body. What is surprising in Sartre’s account is that it was he who first introduced the notion of ‘flesh’, usually associated with Merleau-Ponty and develops flesh as where intercorpereity (in-

15 teraction between human bodies) is possible. For Sartre, our sense of ourselves is neither pure object nor pure consciousness. The unusual in Sartre’s approach is his offering an ontological approach. Sartre thinks that the failure to distinguish between different ‘orders of reality’ or ‘orders of being’ is the cause of our philosophical problems. He has suggested a tripartite structure for his ontological approach: the body as being-for-itself; the body-for-others; and the so-called ‘third ontological dimension of the body’. Sartre makes a distinction between the ‘in-itself’ and the ‘for-itself’ and in fact has made an important step forward in identifying the body with the for-itself. As a phenomenologist, Sartre begins with the body as lived in the first-person perspective. His account of the second ontological category has two aspects: first, there is the constitution of the ‘objective’ body as that which is the normal model of the body in sciences; and second, there is the body which mediates the instrumentality of things in the world and is an instrument of instruments. The third dimension explores how ‘I exist for myself as a body known by the Other’. This is the body in its intersubjective, intercorporeal, socialized dimension. According to this dimension, I experience my own body as reflected in its experience by others. Sartre rejects the traditional attempt to unite mind and body and claims that the starting point for any phenomenological description has to be the recognition that our naïve experience is of the world or of the situation. According to Dermot Moran, this ‘in-the-worldness’ is the central lesson Sartre believes phenomenology has provided to correct traditional empiricist and idealist approaches. Sartre’s ‘third ontological’ level concerns the body as personally experienced in relation to others. His specific contribution is the description of the way the body spreads itself over things it is in contact with. Sartre describes the body as omnipresent. Moreover, Sartre claims that the phenomenon of double sensation is not essential to my embodiment; it is something contingent. The author points out that MerleauPonty’s metaphysical use of the double sensation is the opposite of Sartre’s; Merleau-Ponty claims that both vision and touch have this doubleness. Dermot Moran concludes that Sartre’s account of the body is subtle, complex, and many layered and that his phenomenological account overcomes ‘Cartesian’ dualism in stressing our embodied-being-in-theworld. Merleau-Ponty and Sartre disagree about the role of our self-

16 perceivings and Sartre maintains that our perceivings objectify what we perceive. The last fourteenth chapter, “On the effects of a fictitious encounter between Alfred North Whitehead and Gilbert Simondon”, by Emeline Deroo is devoted to the field of process philosophy. Its aim is to define new stakes in contemporary process ontology. The author finds significant proximity between Whitehead and the French philosopher of the later twentieth century, Simondon. She first discusses Simondon’s philosophy of individuation and explains his intention to get rid of the idea of the “principle of individuation” in its two forms: the substantialist version and the hylemorphic version. In fact, Simondon outlines a processual framework in which becoming is not opposed to being, and becoming is “a dimension of being”. Simondon has found relevant notions for the explanation of his ideas in scientific terminology, especially in physics, while Whitehead is more inspired by the biological paradigm. Simondon has studied individuation using the means of the paradigm of crystallization. They both – Whitehead and Simondon - have built their process philosophies on a set of axiomatic rules; this axiomatization is presented in the chapter in contrast to the immanent position of Bergson. The author focuses her attention on three fundamental principles that outline some parallels between Whitehead’s and Simondon’s thinking: first, Whitehead’s principle of process and Simondon’s claims about the identity between being and becoming; second, the principle of relativity, where we can find similarities with Simondon’s notions about relativity, relation and potentiality; and the ontological principle that shows some contrast between Whitehead and Simondon. On the other hand, the author also finds parallels between Whitehead’s actual entity and Simondon’s individual. Of course, there are also differences, e.g. while societies are in Whitehead’s ontological framework necessarily explained by singularities, for Simondon, on the contrary, societies are elements of explanation and singularities are described by their functional role. The chapter concludes that a new prospect of thinking is now opened that paves the way for the development of a new systematic processual and relational ontology. * * * The book does not claim to be the final word on the conceptual in-

17 terfaces between science and philosophy. This sphere of human thought is vast and being rapidly developed. Hence, it is impossible to cover all the new achievements in a single book. But it does give a representative description of investigations that are presently going on in this important area of human knowledge. The authors of the book hope that this work will stimulate further developments in the interface between science and philosophy.

I. Analysis—synthesis Roberto Poli Abstract: The multi-layered complexity of the connections linking together analysis and synthesis is unfolded against the theories of wholes and their parts and levels of reality. The paper claims that entities connected by a relation of existential dependence and not related by a partwhole connection are linked by a whole-whole relation. In exploiting some of Herman Dooyeweerd’s ideas, one type of whole-whole connection is discussed. Key words: Ontology, analysis, synthesis, whole, level, windowing, enkapsis, encapsulation, identity 1. Introduction. The Need for a New Vision1 To date, modern science has relied on an essentially analytic strategy. Different sciences have been developed in order to efficaciously segment the whole of reality into classes of more or less uniformly connected phenomena. The guiding idea has been that phenomena occurring within each class are more causally homogeneous than phenomena pertaining to other classes, so that the task of explaining their behaviour should be more easily accomplished. This divide et impera (divide and rule) strategy has proved immensely successful, at least for some regions of reality. Other regions have proved more refractory, for a number of serious reasons. The first is that different regions may require different types of causation, some of which are still unknown, or only partially known. A second reason is that for some regions of reality the analytic strategy of breaking items down into pieces does not work properly. A third and somewhat connected reason is the lack of a synthetic methodology. The complexity of reality requires the analytic strategy of segmentation into categorically homogeneous regions. This first move is not que1 A simplified version of this paper has been published by Global Spiral, 10(5), 2009 (http://www.metanexus.net/Magazine/).

20 stioned. However, some regions contain only items that can be further analytically segmented into pieces. These items are entirely governed by their parts (from below, so to speak). Other regions contain items with different patterns: they depend not only on their parts, but also on the whole that results from them, and eventually also on higher-order wholes of which they are parts (e.g., organisms, communities). Mainstream science, however, has defended and still defends the idea that sooner or later all types of reality will be analytically understood. The outstanding successes achieved by analytic methods, however, come at a price: namely the fragmentation of all types of entities into their lower-order parts, especially material parts. Not only are living entities seen as nothing other than biochemical reactions, but also mental phenomena are supposedly completely understood in terms of brain dynamics. Moreover, persons are seen as agents, and furthermore as individual (i.e., isolated), purely egoistic agents, as if they were atoms within a container. More profoundly, the analytic process of fragmentation creates apparently insurmountable barriers (1) between physical and biological sciences, (2) among the natural, cognitive and social sciences, and (3) among science, philosophy and religion. The world itself becomes fragmented and loses its integrity. The fact is that analysis may inadvertently destroy the relational linkages that are crucial in the study of ‘living’ systems. Synthesis, on the other hand, is a natural procedure with which to study emergence: the (unanticipated) relational connections that appear when a multitude of component systems interact. To give but a single example, it is enlightening to observe our wealthy societies: apparently, the systematic adoption of purely analytic methods results in our wealthy societies become wealthier, while people and societies themselves seem to become more and more internally fragile. The main problem is that at least some items cannot be fragmented without losing relevant information. Organisms, persons, communities are some of the striking cases. When they are fragmented and reduced to their ‘matter’ they lose their most essential property: life, for organisms and spirit, for persons and communities. Analytic methods deprive persons and communities of their spirit.

21 Admittedly, our understanding of non-fragmentable items is still deficient. Otherwise stated, there is no denying that a properly developed method of synthesis needs to be developed. Many scholars doubt that it will ever be developed or acquire scientific respectability. Indeed, reductionism as a general position can be seen as the answer provided by those who believe that an inclusive synthetic picture will never be achieved. Science, as it has been developed during the past few centuries, has no internal capacity to distinguish responsible from irresponsible projects. Scientists may be deeply responsible persons, or fathers/mothers, or citizens, but there is no way internal to science to draw the boundary between responsible and non responsible research projects and applications. This state of affairs can be seen as a consequence, possibly one of the most important, of the overwhelming prevalence of analytic strategies. These factors notwithstanding, awareness is starting to spread that something has gone wrong within mainstream science (and, let us add, philosophy as well). As successful as analytic methods may be, at some point they fail properly to grasp the phenomena under consideration. At some point something different is required, something gentler and more respectful of the integrity of the phenomena themselves. The availability of both strategies (analytic and synthetic) will enable the development of a more articulated, integral, respectful and responsible vision of the world. The synthetic vision required is anything but antiscientific. We defend science in all its aspects. At the same time, however, we struggle for a more integral science, a science able to integrate its many branches, a science able to dialogue, to teach and to learn from both philosophy and theology. This vision is headed toward a New Humanism, a spiritual achievement that may be able to bridge many of the cleavages that segment our culture into isolated and isolating islands. As a side remark, it may be worth noting that the trend toward more and more complex forms of analytic specializations seems to have substantially contributed to the general feeling that universities are failing badly in their roles. The misplaced faith in analytic, reductionist methods follows almost

22 unavoidably from the lack of a correct ontology, and in particular from the lack of both a theory of wholes and their parts and a theory of levels of reality. More often than not, scholars defending otherwise widely different theories of spirituality have advocated some form or other of the theory of levels (also known as the theory of aspects of reality). Thinkers who have taken this approach include Husserl, Stein, Ingarden, Hartmann, Conrad-Martius and Dooyeweerd. All of them have realized that without a properly developed theory of levels of reality, the deep, ontological differences between organisms, minds and spirits become easily blurred. Following a somewhat different path, some scientists have also advocated the shift towards synthetic methods (Bohm and Rosen, among others). Carl W. Hall, former deputy assistant director, directorate for engineering, of the National Science Foundation (USA), began a paper entitled “The Age of Synthesis” with the following words: “As we enter the 21st century we are in the beginning stages of a new age of synthesis, philosophically and technologically. … This new age of synthesis is being built on and utilizes the emphasis on analysis featured in the 20th century”. And then continued: “Synthesis provides a framework for guiding analysis, research, development, management, and education” [Hall, 1996, p. 12]. James F. Danielli, director of the Center for Theoretical Biology in Buffalo (1965-1974) and also the founder and long-time editor of the Journal of Theoretical Biology (1962-1984) regularly used the expression “age of synthesis”. Danielli was describing the three ages in the science of modern biology as the age of observation → age of analysis → age of synthesis. But the description is just as appropriate for science in general.

2. Analysis and Synthesis Analysis and synthesis have been used in many different ways. By way of exemplification, the Greeks understood analysis as a working back or reduction to principles, and Euclid masterfully applied it to geometry. Synthesis then became the opposite strategy, which started from

23 principles and derived consequences from them. This initial understanding of analysis and synthesis was also the starting point of a different interpretation, according to which analysis is tied to induction and synthesis to deduction. Closer to the present day, the fathers of analytic philosophy, Frege and Russell, understood analysis as a transformative or interpretive dimension. In order to apply the tools of logical analysis, sentences should be transformed into their appropriate canonical form ([Dubray, n.d.], [Beaney, 2007]). On the other hand, science uses analysis and synthesis in further different ways. As far as analysis is concerned, the term is used in fields as different as spectrographic analysis, cost-benefit analysis and environmental analysis, and many more besides. Synthesis, too, is used in widely different fields, such as chemical synthesis, frequency modulation synthesis and Fourier synthesis, and many others. Unfortunately, none of these more or less well documented understandings of analysis and synthesis fit well with the problems we are about to discuss. For this reason, we shall propose a different interpretation of analysis and synthesis implicitly sketched in the Introduction above. One merit of the interpretation we are about to present is that it is an interpretation grounded in the experience most of us have, even if it is only rarely spelled out explicitly in all its necessary details. According to the interpretation we are proposing, analysis and synthesis are the two general strategies to which we may resort to answer the basic question “what is this?” It is unquestionably true that there are many different ways to answer this basic question. When I look at my cat Sigliende and ask myself “what is Sigliende?” I may answer in a biologically oriented fashion and say for instance: Sigliende is a cat, a feline, a mammal, an animal, a living being. Or I may instead answer by stressing the connection between Sigliende and myself and say: Sigliende is a pet, or even better, Sigliende is my pet. These answers – and many more – are unquestionably correct. Here, however, I would like to dig deeper and try to understand what it is that makes Sigliende the entity that it is. The “biologically oriented” kind of answer provides one way of understanding the nature of Sigliende. A twin and possibly deeper way to answer the same question is to adopt a structural framework, a part-whole framework able to clarify which kinds of internal dependen-

24 cies are at work with Sigliende. In brief, this is precisely what most natural scientists do: they look for structures. The question “what is this?” is the basis of any and every effort to understand reality, be it the little, apparently irrelevant, item we are curiously watching, or the marvel of a starry night or the sense of uncomfortable piety we feel at the suffering of a living being. Whatever it is, whatever its value, we love and want to know. As far as I can see, there are only four possible general strategies able to provide some answers to the “what is this?” question. Let us give a name to “this” and call it “A”. To answer the question about the nature of A we may adopt one of the following four strategies: • A is what results from its parts (by way of a first approximation: look downwards) • A is what results from its neighbors (look sideways) • A is what results from the wholes to which it pertains (look upwards) • A is simply what it is, A is A and nothing else (look nowhere) It is apparent that there is a major difference between the first three answers, on the one hand, and the fourth answer, on the other. The first three answers seem able to provide some information about the A we are inquiring about, while the fourth answer refers to a formal constraint (the identity of A), something apparently unable to provide any articulated kind of information. It is worth noting that the formal reading provided by the fourth answer above may be a necessary constraint required if our mathematical and logical frameworks are to start working, and in this sense it has indeed a remarkable role to play. Furthermore, it may have a role to play as a general metaphysical principle by calling attention to the fact that every individual entity is that particular individual, it has its own individual nature, and for this reason it is different from any other individual entity. This metaphysical side of the identity problem is usually called the haecceity of A, after a term introduced by the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus. Both readings of identity, the formal and the metaphysical ones, show that the fourth claim above is substantially more important than appears at first sight. However, the main problem with the claim is that it is uninformati-

25 ve. It may play the role of a basic (formal or otherwise) constraint, and in this sense it is something that any research framework should respect, but in itself it does not provide further information. Even if Section 4 below will show that there is still more to the matter, for the time being it is plain that in order to articulate an informative answer to the question “what is A?” we cannot but limit our consideration to one or more of the first three answers. The second answer (look sideways) also seems somewhat secondary. In order for some B that is not part of A to influence A there must be a context C such that both A and B are part of C. Looking sideways is a well-known piece of wisdom: more often than not, the behaviour of a teenager is easier to understand by looking at her peers or at her parents, as the situation may suggest. In either case, the answer is provided by the whole that is the group of peers or the whole that is the family. Answer two is thus but a special case of answer three. We are left with two main cases: • A is what results from its parts (look downwards) • A is what results from the wholes to which it pertains (look upwards) Two more steps are needed to properly understand the workings of analysis and synthesis. The next step is to consider that, more often than not, in order to complete the answer to the initial question about the nature of A, we must add a second question, namely “what does A do?” This second question amounts to the imposition of constraints. In order for item A to be able to do whatever it does, the parts of A and their interactions must be arranged in such a way that A can do whatever it does. Complementarily, in order for the item A to be able to do whatever it does, the wholes to which A pertains must be arranged in such a way that A can do whatever it does. These two instances of making possible (a concept I have learned from [Perzanowski, 1994]) play different roles: from below making possible refers to the presence of enabling conditions, from above it refers to the lack of inhibiting conditions. The final and main step is to set the window of inquiry. The main option here is whether one single windowing is able to provide the information we seek, or whether more (at least two) windowings are needed.

26 The three steps just sketched show that it is far too simple to conceive analysis as only the strategy of looking downwards, and synthesis as only the strategy of looking upwards. Analysis is instead the strategy of looking downwards together with the assumption that one single windowing of inquiry is sufficient. In order words, analysis claims that all the information concerning item A are present in the framework composed of the parts of A plus their mutual relations. By contrast synthesis starts from the claim that more than one windowing of inquiry is needed. Let us assume that two windowings are required, one for the whole A and one for its parts. The claim that two windowings are needed makes sense only if some of the information related to A is not present in its parts and subsequent relations. In turn, this amounts to saying that what A does imposes constraints on its parts and their relations. The parts are constrained precisely by the fact that they are parts of that whole. The problem is that the parts of A do not “see” the constraints imposed by A. In other words, A’s parts must respect constraints they do not see. Analysis has no way of answering the question of the constraints imposed from above. The distinction between single and multiple windowings brings to light the connection between analysis and reductionism. If A can be entirely understood by looking at the single windowing composed by its parts plus their interactions, the same procedure can be repeated for the parts themselves. We take them as wholes and entirely decompose them into their own parts and interrelations. In the end we arrive at the rockbottom layer of reality, at what is really real, as they say. The fact that in the meantime we lose all the rest of reality, ourselves included, does not seem too worrying a conclusion for many scholars. I can perhaps grudgingly accept, at least for the time being, this unwelcome strategy, provided that no other options are available. But there is synthesis, and it turns out that synthesis is both more informative and more general than analysis. By admitting a number of windowings and their internal dependences, the framework provided by synthesis can raise, and eventually also try to answer, many more questions than any analytic framework could ever dream of.

27 3. Wholes and Their Parts Whichever aspect of reality interests us, it can be seen as, alternatively, a whole or a part. Consider material reality: atoms form molecules, which form cells, which form organisms. We can go further downwards to subatomic particles or upwards to groups of organisms and ecosystems. Leaving the two boundary cases aside, all the rest is a part when seen from above and a whole when seen from below. This is important, because it shows that as soon as one fixes the A one is interested in, this A can be seen as either the whole that results from its parts or as a part that plays a role within its whole(s). This strategy can be repeated for every and any kind of thing. Both strategies are always available. This is indeed a rather fortunate situation. The possibility itself of science may indeed depend on the alternating play of wholes and parts. A subtle problem, however, emerges. Both strategies, as said, are always available, at least in principle. The problem, however, is that the overall outcomes resulting from their systematic exploitation are remarkably different. One strategy pulls everything towards its lower constituents. As we have seen, analysis is the strategy adopted by all the many versions of reductionism. On the other hand, the twin strategy of looking upwards pulls everything towards some overall whole encompassing all the aspects and nuances of reality. Untempered holism, however, can be as utterly wrong as untempered reductionism. Both strategies, then, have their dangers. The discussion thus far, however, explains why universal analysis down to the last parts and universal synthesis up to the most encompassing whole are both unsupported extensions of the reasoning proposed here. Both analysis and synthesis, in fact, depend on the previous move of windowing item A, the unit under scrutiny. Analysis and synthesis are always related to some A. It is with respect to A that we have to see which of the two strategies is eventually more informative. In principle, all options are available: analysis may prove more informative than synthesis, or synthesis may prove more informative than analysis, or they may be equally informative. It may also be that analysis proves more informative for some aspects of the scrutiny, and synthesis for other as-

28 pects. Keeping item A firmly within the focus of scrutiny is therefore mandatory to avoid the pitfalls of either untempered reductionism or untempered holism. 4. The Three Main Kinds of Whole As noted at the beginning of the paper, analysis tends to forget information. Analysis is blind to the information that is only valid at the level of the whole. Unfortunately, there are cases where the most important information characterizing the whole – what makes the whole what it is – is precisely the information that analysis is unable to take into account. In order to spell out in some detail what I have just written, I need to distinguish among three main types of wholes, namely simple, partial and integral wholes. Simple wholes are wholes that can be decomposed into parts without losing information. Partial wholes are wholes that are not simple and that require other wholes to exist and to do what they are supposed to do. Integral wholes are wholes that are not simple and are maximal, in the sense that they do not require other wholes of the same type to exist. For them, doing usually implies further conditions, for reasons that will soon become apparent. The descriptive understanding of the various wholes can be sharpened by the following definitions, adopted after [Ingarden, 1964]. • Other-dependent: X is existentially other-dependent when the existence of X requires the existence of some other entity Y. • Self-dependent: X is existentially self-dependent when X is not other-dependent. • Autonomous: X is existentially autonomous when X is other-dependent and has its foundation in itself. • Heteronomous = X is existentially heteronomous when X is otherdependent and has its foundation in something else. I shall soon say something on the foundation issue. Before that, the three types of wholes that have been distinguished can then be specified as follows:

29 • Simple wholes can be decomposed into parts without losing information. • Partial wholes are not simple and are existentially heteronomous wholes. • Integral wholes are not simple and are existentially autonomous wholes. To better understand the difference between partial and integral wholes, consider the difference between, say, an ear and an organism. Both are wholes. Ears are authentic wholes, they can be studied by themselves in order to understand what they are and do. One can divide an ear into its parts and see how they are made and what they do. The same applies to an organism. Both are authentic wholes, both can be studied in themselves, both can be subjected to (partial) analysis and synthesis. On the other hand, it seems correct to claim that organisms are more completely wholes than ears. Organisms have their own dependencies on other entities (air for aerobic ones, food, mates, etc), because organisms are parts of higherorder wholes, such as the ecological niche in which they live. All this is patently true, and it amounts to saying that organisms are far from being absolute wholes. On the other hand, it also seems correct to claim that organisms are more important stop-points than ears, the latter being less integral than the former. Even if the idea of an integral whole is slippery and difficult to make crystal-clear, it nevertheless appears to be both correct and quite natural. Reality has joints, and any proper understanding of reality should learn to distinguish its joints. The fact that we are often wrong says more about the limitations of our cognitive capacities than about reality itself. 4.1. Simple wholes Simple wholes are the unquestioned realm of analysis. All questions concerning simple wholes can be answered by decomposing them into their parts and subsequent relations. Decomposition fully answers all the questions that can be raised. Aggregates may be cases in point.

30 4.2. Partial wholes Partial wholes are remarkably more interesting than simple wholes. Consider the above example of the ear, which incidentally was the example used in Riemann’s unfinished paper “The Mechanism of the Ear” (1866) (see [Ritchey, 1996] for details). The starting point is the question: what is the ear supposed to do? It seems apparent that ears are such that they make the organism able to perceive sounds. This answer has two sides. First, ears play some role within organisms. Like everything else, they need wholes to be parts of. On the other hand, organisms build ears, not the other way round. This provides some evidence for the claim that ears are partial and not integral wholes. Second, by having a role to play, ears cannot but constrain their own parts in such a way that they end up forming a structure that is putatively able to play the role it has to play. Parts should further constrain their subparts so that they can play their own roles. And so on and so forth. Two further observations are worth adding. The constraining procedure may always fail. For any windowing, the constraints imposed by the relevant whole may not be able to steer the appropriate developments [Poli, An Introduction to the Ontology of Anticipation, 2009]. This may imply, for instance, that the “ear” organ fails to play its role, and this in its turn may further imply that the organism must either forget the perception of sounds or explore other avenues (e.g., different kinds of perception, or different kinds of ears). Secondly, the phenomenon of biological convergence, according to which the most diverse biological species are able to discover the same solutions, shows that, at this point, almost unknown higher-order constraints are at work (see the astonishing evidence accumulated by [Conway Morris, Life's Solution. Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, 2003] and [Conway Morris, The Deep Structure of Biology, 2008]. See also [Poli, Evolution and Anticipation, 2010]). When searching for a solution to its problems, life apparently does not traverse the entire combinatorial space of possibilities, but continues to discover the same solutions.

31 4.3. Integral Wholes The case represented by integral wholes is substantially more intriguing than the previous two cases of simple and partial wholes. In fact, integral wholes are wholes in a twofold way, so to speak. Not only are they closer to what we have called above the joints of reality, but they have further structural dimensions, lacking in the previous cases. As a starter, the priority of organisms with respect to their organs does not seem to pose too severe a problem. The issue is remarkably more intricate, however, where physical systems are concerned, because it seems that there is no obvious way to segment physical items into integral as opposed to non-integral wholes or systems. Well, not really. Consider the famous three-body problem. The three-body problem was – and still is – one of the first theoretical failures of classical mechanics. In brief, we can systematically calculate everything we need to calculate with respect to the dynamics and mutual interactions of two bodies. However, as soon as we pass from two to three interacting bodies, a systematic strategy is no longer available. Even if physicists and engineers are able to calculate the numerical solution of each individual instance of a three-body problem, no general analytic solution is available. The reason is that the dynamics of a three-body system gives origin to an authentic indecomposable whole, which implies that “one cannot solve a three-body problem reductionistically, by solving two-body and one-body problems” [Rosen, 2000, p. 109]. Any decomposition of a three-body problem into a one-body and a two-body problem omits something (in this case the integrality of their dynamics). This simple example from baby-physics teaches us two lessons. First, the integrality of an integral whole may be of a dynamic nature. Second, the analysis-synthesis complementarity is even subtler than expected. In fact, we may be able to calculate any single individual instance of a given problem without this implying that we have a general method able to systematically address the problem. Sometimes we also know that no general method will ever be available. Some integral wholes exhibit the further intriguing structural feature of producing their own parts. The capacity of a whole to produce the components of which it is composed is usually called autopoiesis, after

32 [Maturana & Varela, 1980]. An autopoietic whole does not start from a set of pre-given elements, nor does it assemble them. Autopoietic wholes are self-referential systems, meaning that the whole’s relational self-production governs the whole’s capacity to have contacts with its environment. Put otherwise, the whole’s connection with its environment becomes a reflexive relation mediated by the self-referential loops that constitute the whole itself. This single property changes the nature and workings of the whole, dramatically strengthening the synthetic priority of the whole with respect to its parts. Self-referentiality paves the way to the third structural layer of this family of integral wholes, namely the fact that these wholes may present a dynamic of their identity [Poli, The Complexity of Anticipation, 2009]. The definitions listed in section 4 above left the problem of ‘foundation’ unaddressed. The classical understanding of foundation as reference to lower-level components obviously does not fit with the framework we are articulating. Self-referential or autocatalytic loops may provide an alternative worth pursuing. For more articulated details the reader may consider [Louie, 2009], [Ulanowicz, 2009] and [Poli, The Complexity of Anticipation, 2009]. In Section 2 above we set aside the case of identity as unable to provide information. We did not consider the case of those wholes that exist in the form of changing entities. Besides the customary identity of a formal type, these wholes also have some kind of dynamic identity. Organisms are cases in point; we are as well. Dynamic identity introduces an entirely new class of integral wholes, namely wholes whose dynamics may fulfill or fail to fulfill their potentialities. It is entirely appropriate for these wholes to consider the problem of their flourishing, i.e. of their capacity and possibility to unfold; one might say, to realize themselves. These wholes have interests, things matter to them [Smith, 1998]. Thus far, we have exploited the framework of parts and wholes as our sole framework of inquiry. However powerful and enlightening it may well be, it may obscure some necessary distinctions. To glimpse what the framework of wholes is not able to detect, one may ask oneself whether atoms or molecules or cells can really be taken as parts of, say, society. It obviously cannot be so. Therefore, something has been missed. To see what has been missed, let us move to the next framework,

33 the one provided by the theory of levels of reality. 5. Levels of Reality The unity and the variety of the world is the outcome of the complex interweaving of dependence and inter-dependent connections and various forms of autonomy among the many items of which the world is composed. The distinction is widespread among three basic realms or regions (or strata, as we will call them) of reality. Even if the boundaries between them are differently placed, the distinction between the three realms of material, psychological and social phenomena is essentially accepted by most thinkers and scientists. A major source of discussion is whether inanimate and animate beings should be placed in two different realms (this meaning that there are in fact four and not three realms) or within the same realm. The latter option defends the thesis that a phase transition or something similar connects inanimate and animate items (on the theory of levels of reality see [Poli, The Basic Problem of the Theory of Levels of Reality, 2001], [Poli, First Steps in Experimental Phenomenology, 2006], [Poli, Levels of Reality and the Psychological Stratum, 2006], [Poli, Three Obstructions: Forms of Causation, Chronotopoids, and Levels of Reality, 2007]. Levels are distinguished by their categories. Material entities are different from, say, psychological entities because their unfolding requires different categorical frameworks. Leaving aside universal categories (those that apply everywhere), two main categorical situations can be distinguished: (a) Types (Items) A and B are categorically different because the description (codification or modeling) of one of them requires categories that are not needed by the description (codification or modeling) of the other. (b) Types (Items) A and B are categorically different because their description (codification or modeling) requires two entirely differrent groups of categories. I term the two relations as respectively relations of over-forming

34 and building-above. Strata or realms of reality are connected by building-above relations. That is to say, the main reason for distinguishing the different strata of reality as clearly as possible is that any one of them is characterized by the birth of a new categorical series. The group of categories that are needed to analyze the phenomena of the psychological stratum is essentially different from the group of categories needed to analyze the social one, which in its turn requires a group of categories different from the one needed to analyze the material stratum of reality. Over-forming (the type (a) form of categorical dependence) is weaker than building-above and it is used to analyze aspects of the internal organization of strata. Each of the three strata of reality has its specific structure. The case of the material stratum is the best known and the least problematic. Suffice it to consider the series atom-molecule-cell-organism (which can be extended at each of its two extremes to include sub-atomic particles and ecological communities, and also internally, as needed). In this case we have a clear example of a series that proceeds by levels of granularity. Compared to the material realm, the psychological and social ones are characterized by an interruption in the material categorical series and by the onset of new ones (relative to the psychological and social items). More complex types of over-forming are instantiated by them. A terminological note may be helpful. I use the term ‘level’ to refer in general to the levels of reality, restricting the term ‘layer’ to over-forming relationships, and the term ‘stratum’ to building-above relationships. I shall eventually use the expressions ‘sub-layer’ and ‘sub-stratum’ when analysis requires them. The question now arises as to how the material, psychological and social strata are connected together. The most obvious answer is that they have a linear structure. On this view, the social realm is founded on the psychological stratum, which in its turn is founded on the material. Likewise, the material stratum is the bearer of the psychological stratum, which in its turn is the bearer of the social one. This point of view is part of the received wisdom. However, a different option is possible. Consider the possibility that material phenomena may act as bearers of both psychological and social phenomena. In their turn, psychological and social phenomena reciprocally determine each other. Psychological and so-

35 cial systems are formed through co-evolution, meaning that the one is the environmental prerequisite for the other [Luhmann, 1995]. This minimal introduction to the theory of levels is sufficient for our purposes. In fact, what we really need is the relation we have called building-above. What this shows is that the creativity of reality is such that it is able to produce entities that are both existentially dependent on lowerorder entities and categorically orthogonal – i.e. entirely different – from them. To reformulate what I have just said with less intimidating wording: minds and societies are entities deeply different from material ones. However, we do not know of minds that flow away without their organic hosts, nor have we ever, or ever will, encounter ungrounded societies, i.e. societies without individual agents. How can it be that there are entities that are both dependent and orthogonal? We have already called attention to the most relevant cue to begin answering such a demanding question. The cue was the remark that it makes no sense to claim that atoms, molecules, or cells are parts of societies, or minds for that matter. The fact that there is no proper part-whole connection between them seems to ruin our entire perspective. This is not so, however. As a matter of fact, the impasse is more apparent than real, as shown by our stress on the connection of existential dependence between lowerorder and higher-order entities. If these kinds of entities are connected by a relation of existential dependence and are not related by a part-whole connection, the only remaining option is that they are linked by a whole-whole relation. This latter kind of relation is much less-known than the much better-known part-whole relations. Very few scholars have been able to see the presence of whole-whole ties in the fabric of reality. The main reason for this widespread ‘blindness’ is that most thinkers do not have anything like a robust theory of levels of reality. The only scholar who has chosen to delve into whole-whole relations is the Dutch philosopher and theologian Herman Dooyeweerd, doing so mainly in his magnificent and impossible four-volume New Critique of Theoretical Thought ( [Dooyeweerd, 1953], for a lucid introduction to Dooyeweerd see [Clouser, 2005], for an application to biology [Zylstra, 1992]).

36

6. Whole-Whole Ties Dooyeweerd distinguished different types of enkapsis – his name for whole-whole ties – namely • Foundational enkapsis, such as the sculpture, and the block of marble from which it is made. • Subject-object enkapsis, such as a hermit crab and its shell. • Symbiotic enkapsis, such as clover and its nitrogen-fixing bacteria. • Correlative enkapsis, such as an environment and its denizens. • Territorial enkapsis, such as a city and its university [Basden, 2008, p. 89]. In this paper, I shall restrict my remarks to the first type of enkapsis, the so-called foundational enkapsis. To grasp the framework addressed by foundational enkapsis more clearly, let us consider a few relevant cases, such as those exemplified by the following ties: • The marble—statue tie • The canvas—painting tie • The paper—water-colour tie • The paper—novel tie • The CD—song tie To simplify our inquiry we have chosen cases pertaining to the same sub-family of foundational enkapsis, namely the family of works of art. It is apparent that all the above five cases show that there is a connection between something that behaves as a bearer and something else that is borne by it. Furthermore, the features that describe the nature of the objects playing the role of bearer and the objects that are borne by them are broadly if not entirely different. The physical properties of marble, canvas, paper and a CD, in fact, are remarkably different from the aesthetic properties of the statue, painting, water-colour novel and song. Let us call these properties the ‘nature’ or the ‘qualifying function’ of the respective objects. On deeper analysis, however, an interesting subtlety surfaces. The

37 five exemplifications above can be divided into two different groups distinguished by whether the bearer has some interaction with the object that it bears. CDs and the paper used to print a novel, in fact, have no kind of interaction with the higher-order objects they bear, as proved by the fact that the latter objects can be just as effectively borne by other bearers, such as mp3 or pdf files. Electronic versions of novels and songs are as authentic as paper-printed or CD-printed versions. On the other hand, however, the tie between a water-colour and the paper on which it is painted is more intimate, because the colour penetrates into the paper’s fibers. It is well known, in fact, that water-colours should be painted on special kinds of paper which let the colour penetrate into their fibers because this adds further layers of expressivity to the painting. Similarly, not all types of marble are equally suitable for a given statue, and the properties of the marble add something to the aesthetic properties of the statue. As far as the interplay between an aesthetic object and its bearer is concerned, the canvas-painting case is somewhat intermediate between the two groups thus far discussed, in the sense that it is far less evident whether the bearer influences the object it bears. Another characteristic, however, places this latter case closer to the second group. The two groups distinguished can be seen from a different perspective, namely whether they are truly reproducible. The exemplifications belonging to the first group (songs and novels) can be reproduced as wanted, and all of them remain true exemplifications of the same object. This further explains why the bearer is utterly irrelevant to the borne object: some bearer is needed in order to instantiate the object, but what kind of bearer is used is utterly immaterial. On the other, hand, the other group is composed of objects that cannot be truly reproduced, in the sense that properly speaking any reproduction is a fake. It may be a clone, but it is nevertheless a fake: it is a different object from the original. The non-reproducibility of this family of objects patently depends on the more intimate connection between the borne component and its bearer. As before, the canvas-painting case is somewhat intermediate between the two main cases, in the sense that a painting can be transferred to a different canvas (e.g. when the original is so damaged that the entire painting risks destruction). We can leave further complications aside, however, since we

38 have already accumulated enough data to understand foundational enkapsis. The analysis has thus far shown that there are at least some objects with a stratified structure organized in such a way that their strata are linked by a double connection: first, the higher stratum existentially depends on its lower stratum (it must be instantiated into some “matter”) and, second, the properties of the two strata are widely different if not utterly orthogonal. The further distinction between reproducible and non reproducible instances shows that other components may have to be taken into account. The colours used by an artist are themselves material entities – and this explains why they can interact with the material surfaces on which they are placed. The features of the marble are explicitly exploited by the artist when she gives shape to her work; they are information that enters the fabric of the work of art. The five cases we have seen are far from exemplifying authentic part-whole relations, because the two strata of the bearer and the borne have different natures. An authentic part-whole relation can only work between objects with the same nature (or qualifying function as Dooyeweerd would say [Clouser, 2005, p. 286]). The existential dependence of the higher stratum on the lower is thus far from being a sufficient condition for a part-whole relation. We need air to keep ourselves alive, we existentially depend on it, but air is not one of our parts. I shall follow [Clouser, 2005] in describing the greater wholes which include sub-wholes as “encapsulating” them, and thus call the greater whole “capsulate wholes”. Capsulation stands for the awkward enkapsis. Capsulate wholes are everywhere. Molecules capsulate atoms, and cells capsulate molecules, and so on and so forth. Works of art capsulate their bearers. For all these cases, the nature (or qualifying function) of the capsulate whole overrides the nature of its capsulated sub-wholes [Clouser, 2005, p. 289].

39 7. Wholes again It is worth noting that the interest surrounding the analysis of parts and wholes, so popular in the past 20 years or so is almost completely focused on the relation “part-of”. The non-relational category of whole, on the other hand, has been far less frequently addressed, apparently for a number of good reasons. Not only are wholes more refractory to categorical scrutiny, but the viewpoint of wholes has historically been connected to visions that today do not have much currency, such as the theory of the so-called ethical state developed by Hegel and other idealist thinkers. It is also well-known that some of the most obviously outdated proposals advanced by Aristotle, notably his theories on the state and the family, and the consequent subordinate role of women and slaves, directly depended on his view of the state and the family as wholes. The most straightforward reading of these issues can be aptly summarized thus: the family and the state are wholes, the husband/father/ king is the formal representative of the family (“is” the family) or the state (“is” the state), and every other member of the family/state must be subordinated to him/it. However, this reading is critically dependent on a specific assumption; namely that a natural whole always has (must have) a canonical representative. The issue is a rather subtle one and involves a number of problems we cannot discuss here (see [Poli, The Complexity of Anticipation, 2009] for some of the connected complications). Leaving many details aside, the main question is nevertheless apparent. Why should a whole have one unique individual representative? Only specific – i.e. non-generic – wholes do. In particular, only (totally, i.e. perfectly) hierarchical wholes have maxima. This shows that the theory of wholes cannot be restricted to those wholes that have canonical representatives. One of the distinctive characteristics of modern society – as opposed to traditional forms of society – is precisely the transformation from an essentially hierarchical structure (well represented by the king) to a functional organization in which politics, law, economics, art, religion, science, and many more dimensions each has its own irreplaceable role to play. There is no natural way to confine functional structures within one single total hierarchy. The same applies to the family: both spouses

40 are equally representatives of the whole that is their family. Hierarchical wholes are then but a tiny subsection of wholes, and it is simply wrong to conceive wholes as hierarchical. Some are, many more are not. 8. Conclusion This paper has begun to unfold the multi-layered complexity of the connections linking together analysis and synthesis. Even if much work has still to be done, the overall geography of the problems starts to exhibit a few landmarks which should be exploited further. Three appear worth mentioning in the paper’s final summary, namely: • The ontological relevance of windowing; • The typology of wholes, including their relationships and in particular the whole-whole family of connections; and • Levels of reality or what can be termed an ontological theory of types. These three headings, if addressed, may eventually contribute to the development of a more articulate ontology, capable of grasping deeperlying aspects of reality.

References Basden, A. (2008). Philosophical Frameworks for Understanding Information Systems. Hershey, New York: IGI Publishing. Beaney, M. (2007). Analysis. Retrieved November 2008, from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analysis/ Clouser, R. (2005). The Myth of Religious Neutrality. An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories, 2nd Revised edition. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Conway Morris, S. (2003). Life's Solution. Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

41 Conway Morris, S. (2008). The Deep Structure of Biology. West Conshohocken (Pennsylvania): Templeton Foundation Press. Dooyeweerd, H. (1953). A New Critique of Theoretical Thought . Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company. Dubray, C. (n.d.). Analysis. Retrieved November 2008, from New Advent (The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907): http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01450a.htm Hall, C. W. (1996). The Age of Synthesis. Resource , 12-14. Ingarden, R. (1964). Time and modes of being. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas Publisher. Louie, A. (2009). More Than Life Itself. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag. Luhmann, N. (1995). Social Systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition. Boston: Reidel. Perzanowski, J. (1994). Reasons and Causes. In J. Faye, U. Scheffler, & M. Urchs, Logic and Causal Reasoning (pp. 169-189). Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Poli, R. (2010). Evolution and Anticipation. submitted. Poli, R. (2009). An Introduction to the Ontology of Anticipation. Futures, forthcoming. Poli, R. (2009). The Complexity of Anticipation. Balkan Journal of Philosophy, 1 (1), 19-29. Poli, R. (2007). Three Obstructions: Forms of Causation, Chronotopoids, and Levels of Reality. Axiomathes , 1-18. Poli, R. (2006). First Steps in Experimental Phenomenology. In A. Loula, R. Gudwin, & J. Queiroz, Artificial Cognition Systems (pp. 358-386). Hersey PA: Idea Group Publishing.

42 Poli, R. (2006). Levels of Reality and the Psychological Stratum. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 163-180. Poli, R. (2001). The Basic Problem of the Theory of Levels of Reality. Axiomathes, 12 (3-4), 261-283. Ritchey, T. (1996). Analysis and Synthesis. Retrieved November 2008, from Swedish Morphological Society: http://www.swemorph.com Rosen, R. (2000). Essays on Life Itself. New York: Columbia University Press. Smith, B. C. (1998). God, Approximately. Retrieved November 2008 , from http://www.ageofsignificance.org/people/bcsmith/papers/index.html Ulanowicz, R. E. (2009). A Third Window. Natural Life beyond Newton and Darwin . West Conshohocken: Templeton Foundation Press. Zylstra, U. (1992). Living things as hierarchically organized structures. Synthese , 111-133.

II. How can we verify metaphysical hypotheses? On necessary connections between metaphysics, ontology and science Bogdan Ogrodnik

Abstract: In this paper a method of verification of metaphysical hypotheses is formulated. The method consists in relating such hypotheses to analogical sentences which come from three areas of knowledge: ontology, mathematics and physics (in the simplest cases). The analogy occurs between the following pairs: metaphysics and ontology and physics and mathematics respectively. It is based on two hypotheses about the unity of an actual world and the unity of the realm of eternal objects. It is a weak (compared to science) but determined way of examining metaphysical hypotheses. Key words: process metaphysics, hypotheticality, method of verification, metaphysics and science, Whitehead 1. Terminology explanations The term “hypothesis” is one of the most frequently found words in modern philosophy of science and methodology, but there are very few applications of it to philosophy, especially metaphysics. We know that hypotheticality is a distinctive methodological feature of Whitehead’s metaphysics, but a problem of verifying such hypotheses immediately arises. By “ontology” I mean any a priori science concerning ideas, ideal meaning or other type of objects similar to mathematical ones. A priori is understood here in a phenomenological way, and examples of such areas sources would be: Ingarden’s ontology1, Husserl’s eidetics2, and 1 Roman Ingarden: Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt. Bd. I, II/I, II/2. Tübingen:

44 Whitehead’s theory of eternal objects3. Ontological objects are given as eternal, and determined connections between objects are given as necessary ones. As for the meaning of science, I take into account its two types, namely: a priori and a posteriori. The former is represented by mathematics and the latter is represented by physics. The above proposals are provisional and their goal is to present the main problem of the paper- whose problem is partially independent of them. 2. At a first glance, the problem described in the title is of a methodological nature, but if we accept the principle that there is adequacy between the nature of an object and a method to be used in researching it then the problem concerns a connection between different types of objects belonging to different types of research areas. For instance, the well-known problem of the connection between mathematical objects and physical ones is called the problem of the mathematicality of the physical world. But there are other important types of connections between different types of objects. For instance, we can examine the connection between ideas or ideal meanings in the above sense of the words and real beings belonging to the real world. We are allowed to call it the problem of the ontologicality of the real world. In general, there are six types of connections between four chosen areas of knowledge. Let us look at picture no. 1: These four areas of knowledge and the six connections between them provide a frame of reference for many serious problems. One of them is the verification of metaphysical hypotheses. In numerous instances in Process and Reality, Whitehead explicitly determines a methodological status for metaphysics and makes many remarks on how to deal with metaphysics.4 The following four problems Max Niemeyer, 1964; Ibidem, Time and Modes of Being. (Translated from parts of Der Streit) by Helen R. Michejda. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1964. 2 See for example: Edmund Husserl: Cartesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1988 3 Alfred North Whitehead: Science and the Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925. 4 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, New York: Macmillan 1929, Part I, Chapter I. Speculative Philosophy, p. 3-17. (P&R)

45 Physics

Metaphysics

Mathematics

Ontology

Figure 1 arise here: 1) Is Whitehead’s methodological standpoint coherent? 2) Is the standpoint in agreement with Whitehead’s metaphysics which, as we know, is in fact a theory of elementary experience? This means that human cognitive experience has to be an exemplification of general metaphysical hypotheses. Let us put it more precisely; we should expect that the hypotheticality of metaphysics finds explanation on the basis of the same metaphysics. 3) Is it possible to determine the adequacy of Whitehead’s method in relation to the matter he researches by means of that method? 4) And the last issue: are the metaphysical hypotheses verifyable or not; if they are, then how can we verify them? Out of the above issues, only the first and the forth will be discussed here. The problem of the conformity of Whitehead's methodology with theses of his system is so broad that it could be the subject of a separate monograph. We need merely realize that from the first phase of the concrescence of an actual entity a subtle and complex coupling between different sorts of feelings occurs: between physical feeling and conceptual

46 feeling, perceptive feeling and imaginative feeling, indicative feeling and propositional feeling, etc. They are all metaphysical analogs of both empirical and rational aspects of the cognition proper to humans. It is clear that examining the second issue of the four given above involves almost the entire Whiteheadian system and there are no shortcuts. We shall return to this problem later in making a few remarks. It would only be possible deal with the third problem after the presentation of extensive material, once Whitehead’s developed method has been applied. It would then be possible to assess the accuracy as well as the effectiveness of the applied method. But it would fall outside the scope of this paper. Metaphysics is speculative philosophy. Whitehead used the term "speculation”, although he was aware of its pejorative meaning in connection with either scholasticism or German idealism. "Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme."5 Speculative philosophy is a process aimed at forming a determined system of ideas; and although it has stages, it has no end. Speculative philosophy examines two aspects of the Universe: empirical and rational. This distinction has a long tradition, like unto philosophy itself. However Whitehead stressed that acceptance of such a distinction is something other than acceptance of the conclusion that these two aspects are separated. In order to draw such a conclusion one would have to assume a concept of experience expressed by a set of premises. Whitehead's entire research effort was aimed at building such a metaphysical system, in which something that is empirical and something that is rational (or more widely mental) are two aspects (or poles) of a unit of experience. This system intersects both Cartesian dualism and Kantian transcendentalism, themselves insufficient for meeting contemporary needs for adequate metaphysics. According to Whitehead, noticing difference is primarily related to 5 P&R, p. 3.

47 noticing similarity. What isn't different is similar. Inductive method has no application, either in science or in philosophy. Development of knowledge needs some kind of “leap” of imagination or imaginative generalization. We then reach the realm of pure possibilities which Whitehead calls eternal objects. We need to go beyond what is given in concrete experience. The result has to meet inner requirements, namely, logical consistency and coherence as well as external ones: applicability and adequacy. The method of imaginative generalization is a basic method for all science and is especially a basic method for metaphysics. Only released thought can apprehend differences which cannot be otherwise observed due to the universality of metaphysical factors. These factors are constantly present in every bit of reality examined by metaphysicians. Thus, a situation without the factors is impossible. The problem that arises immediately is: how can the metaphysical factors or categories be found? Whitehead’s standpoint as to the sources of metaphysical categoryes is pluralism. He points to imaginative generalization as a method of speculation. “In the first place, this construction must have its origin in the generalization of particular factors discerned in particular topics of human interest; for example, in physics, or in physiology, or in psychology, or in aesthetics, or in ethical beliefs, or in sociology, or in languages conceived as storehouses of human experience. In this way the prime requisite, that in any case there shall be some important application, is secured. The success of the imaginative experiment is always to be tested by the applicability of its results beyond the restricted locus from which it originated.”6 Imaginative generalization leads to advancing a metaphysical hypothesis but generalization does not consist in changing a quantifier range from finite to infinite. The meanings of the notions which may be the source of metaphysical categories must be modified. That modification should make the categories - or more precisely a set of hypotheses - coherent and logically consistent (i.e. without contradiction). So such a set has to be a system whose parts assume one another. There are two serious mistakes in generalization: the fallacy of misplaced concreteness and the fallacy of logicism. The 6 P&R, p. 5.

48 first one is connected with metaphysical realism. Realism consists in such determination of being as preserves its fullness and actuality. A good example of a real or rather categoreal notion or hypothesis is actual entity as a dynamic but momentary atom of the world process. A negative example is creativity. Despite its universality and its basic position in the hierarchy of metaphysical factors, creativity cannot be full being but rather something which manifests itself in each being. The second fallacy is connected with overestimating logic in determining the clarity and univocality of all terms of a system. A complete deductive system is a goal, not a starting point of philosophical research. According to Whitehead, deduction is a helpful method only when we want to verify a metaphysical hypothesis. A categoreal scheme is a kind of matrix which allows us to imply statements about individual situations. The matrix consists of existential categories, categoreal explanations and categoreal obligations. Because of its hypotheticality nobody knows what the validity range of a system is. If we apply rigid logical criteria to any metaphysical system treated as a set of statements joined by means of conjunction, then such a metaphysical system is always false. Metaphysics gradually discloses and elaborates categories and formulated hypotheses. “Weakness of insight – said Whitehead - and deficiencies of language stand in the way inexorably. Words and phrases must be stretched towards a generality foreign to their ordinary usage; and however such elements of language be stabilized as technicalities, they remain metaphors mutely appealing for an imaginative leap.”7 This does not mean that external criteria such as applicability and adequacy are useless. Just the opposite. “The success of the imaginative experiment is always to be tested by the applicability of its results beyond the restricted locus from which it originated. ... It will enlighten observation in those remote fields, so that general principles can be discerned as in the process of illustrateon, which in the absence of the imaginative generalization are obscured by their persistent exemplification.”8 Metaphysics is empirical 7 P&R, p. 4. 8 P&R, p. 5.

49 theory if it is applicable and adequate. But the latter condition is a very strong obligation. Whitehead postulates that metaphysical categories should be applicable to the whole of Reality. It is clear that there is no metaphysics which satisfies this demand. This is the main reason for Whitehead’s well-known standpoint as to the value of past philosophical systems. None of them has been falsified but most of them were abandoned. His tolerant attitude gives us a chance to adopt old categories and hypotheses to new contexts. They need a special kind of examining, which differs from simple historical research. We do not exclude situations where we can adopt certain categories opposed to those wellknown in the history of philosophy. The measure of progress in metaphysics is an increase in its adequacy. The method of metaphysics described in the first chapter of Process and Reality is very similar to the method elaborated by Karl Rajmund Popper in his The Logic of Scientific Discovery.9 Such elements as the crucial role of positing hypotheses, deduction as a method of their verification, the essential meaning of falsification for development of knowledge, a strong critique of the positivistic version of inductionism, treating empirical data as being theoretically engaged, etc. are all important elements of Popper and Whitehead’s methodology. They stressed that both science and philosophy have a common method of research which is critical rationalism. Popper’s opinion that metaphysics belongs in the context of scientific discovery is close to Whitehead’s claim that metaphysics is a universal critique of scientific foundations. Popper elaborated so-called evolutionary epistemology.10 For instance, according to Popper, an organism is full of embodied theories. Whitehead went much further. Metaphysical counterparts of senses and cognition i.e. prehensions and feelings are synthesized in a microprocess of a concrescence of a metaphysical organism. The metaphysical theory of organisms is compatible with Whitehead’s hypothetism. Each organism ‘puts forward a set of hypotheses’ about its nature, society and the Universe it 9 Karl Rajmund Popper: The Logic of Scientific Discovery. (translation of Logik der Forschung). Hutchinson, London, 1959. 10 Ibidem, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972.

50 lives in. Let us try to look at the problem of revivifying metaphysical hypotheses, which can be partially resolved by means of the method of proportional analogy. For over 300 years, a connection between physics and mathematics has been a paradigm for the close connection between a priori and a posteriori types of knowledge. Knowledge of mathematical objects and relations between them, applied to describing a structure of the physical aspect of the world, reached a high level of effectiveness and subtlety. Thus, it becomes a reliable point of reference for building a connection between metaphysics and ontology. Metaphysics is understood here as a posteriori knowledge concerning being and its categoreal structure. By ontology I mean any a priori knowledge concerning ideas, ideal meaning or other types of similar objects. The range of subject of physics and mathematics is limited in relation to the range of subject of metaphysics and ontology, respectively. In other words, metaphysics examines being as such, but physics examines a particular type of being from one point of view only. Ontology examines a given ideal object as such, but mathematics examines particular types of objects from one point of view only. Metaphysics, for instance, examines an electron as a being, but physics examines the same electron only from the aspect determined by its quantitative properties and mathematical structure. Ontology, for example, examines a number as an object which is given as such, while mathematics examines a number only from the aspect determined by its quantitative properties and structure. We can arrange the four areas of knowledge into four proportional parts, as illustrated in figure no. 1. The paradigmatic relation between physics and mathematics determines a similar relation between metaphysics and ontology. We conclude here that ontology can be treated as a tool for metaphysics in analogy to the relation between mathematics and physics. The second conclusion is that the above analogy can work between various objects belonging to the four areas mentioned above. As an example of such proportion, we shall take into account the following theoretical objects: a metaphysical category of actual entity as a smallest unit of dynamic reality, a physical concept of quantum as a smallest unit of a particular type of dynamics, a mathematical notion of an infinitesimally small quantity and an idea of an event as a smallest momentary real ob-

51 ject. We can illustrate the proportion as follows: Metaphysical category of an actual entity -----------------------------------------------------Ontological idea of an event

~

Physical concept of a quantum --------------------Mathematical notion of an infinitesimal

These four theoretical objects are interconnected and at the same time each of them has a strong position inside its own theoretical context. However, in relation to three other areas of knowledge, metaphysics has the weakest position. Thus, if we find such kinds of metaphysics as possess theoretical objects that can be compared by means of proportional analogy with objects belonging to other areas of knowledge, then the existence of such a connection can be treated as a kind of verification of metaphysical hypotheses. This type of verification is weak and indirect but the hypotheticality of metaphysics leads to a particular procedure at our disposal. However, the procedure based on proportional analogy should be used with the utmost caution. References: Husserl E. (1988). Cartesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Ingarden R. (1964). Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt. Bd. I, II/I, II/2. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Ingarden R. (1964). Time and Modes of Being, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas. Ogrodnik B. (2000). Between Whitehead’s Metaphysics and Quantum Theory. First Hypotheses of Philosophy of Nature. Krakow. (In Polish). Popper K.R. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson.

52 Popper K.R. (1972). Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Whitehead A.N. (1925). Science and the Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whitehead A.N. (1929). Process and Reality, New York: Macmillan.

III. Logical analysis and its ontological consequences: Rise, fall and resurgence of intensional objects in contemporary philosophy Bruno Leclercq Abstract: The aim of this paper1 will be to show how significant the logical theories of judgement which were worked out at the end of the nineteenth century have been for ontological thought during the twentieth century. Against the classical - Aristotelian and Scholastic analysis of predicative judgement, Franz Brentano, on the one hand, and Gottlob Frege, on the other hand, levelled two different criticisms, which then generated two radically divergent ontological paradigms. On one side, despite Brentano’s own nominalistic stands, there was a tremendous extension of the general category of “object” as well as of the notion of “being” with, as a consequence, the exceptionally luxuriant ontologies of Brentano’s heirs. On the other side, notwithstanding Frege’s own Platonistic affinities, there was a drastic deflation of the realm of objects to the benefit of the realm of concepts taken as classifying functions, and therefore a strong nominalistic trend among Frege’s heirs. The development of quantified modal logics at the middle of the twentieth century however forced contemporary ontology to reconsider this simple alternative in order to make room for some hybrid entities such as individual concepts or other kinds of “intensional objects”. Key words: Franz Brentano – Alexius Meinong – Gottlob Frege – Bertrand Russell – intentionality – intensionality – existence – modal logic 1. Brentano’s theory of judgement 1 A first draft of the first part of this paper has been published in French in Philosophie, 2008 (vol. 97), pp. 26-41. In that part, some important amendments have however been made concerning Brentano’s school. For these, I am indebted to Roberto Poli who made useful comments after my talk at the Conference in question.

54

It is well known that Franz Brentano’s theory of the intentional reference of mental acts has led many if not all of his disciples to make an extensive use of the notion of “object”. In his Psychology from an empirical standpoint, Brentano had indeed distinguished physical phenomena from psychic or mental phenomena, the second ones being characterized by their “aboutness”, i.e. by their directedness towards some intentional object or content ; when I think, I think of or about something; when I believe, I believe that something; when I’m afraid, I’m afraid of something, ... Now, as complex, abstract, fictitious and even impossible entities can be the objects of such intentional acts, the very notion of “intentional object” covers an extremely broad domain of entities, even the broadest conceivable since, as Kasimierz Twardowski will claim against Bernard Bolzano, everything which is conceived is an object. Amongst others, Meinong’s theory of objects or Husserl’s phenomenology can then be seen as attempts to classify this huge and disparate universe by a careful investigation of the intentional or phenomenological status of each kind of object. That with all these theories come some radical ontological theses however results from another determinant and sometimes underestimated side of Brentano’s immanent realism, namely from his logical analysis of judgement. After having stated the specificity of mental phenomena, Brentano’s Psychology had indeed specified three kinds of mental phenomena, namely bare presentations, judgements and “phenomena of love and hate”2. Presentations were the most fundamental acts since the acts of judgement and acts of love and hate consisted in taking theoretical or “practical” - affective or volitive - stands towards bare presentations; I assert or deny this or that presented content, I love or hate this or that presented content, I want or reject this or that presented content3.

2 Brentano F., Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Leipzig, Meiner, 1924, vol. II, pp. 28-37. English translation Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, London, Routledge, 1995, pp. 194-200. 3 Ibid., vol. II, p. 38, Engl. transl. p. 201.

55 Within the framework of psychological discussions on the distinction between judgements and bare presentations, Brentano touched on some proper logical questions. He strongly contested the logical privilege of predicative judgement in the Aristotelian and Scholastic tradition as well as the “very common”4 psychological thesis that a judgement consists in the linking – or, inversely, in the seperating – of presentations. Against these theses, Brentano first claims that some links between presentations do not yet constitute judgements but only other bare presentations, as when I think about a red tree without judging that a tree is, in fact, red5. Secondly and conversely Brentano shows that judgements do not always link several presentations. This is the case of some perceptive judgements – “I see a tree”, “I hear thunder” – where I acknowledge the empirical reality of a presentation but do not link it with another one. This is also the case of existential judgements – “Trees exist” -, which, as Brentano shows, cannot be analyzed as predications – “Trees are existing”. When I say “Some men are learned”, I say the same thing as “There are learned men” and, as the assertion of the (conjunctive) whole implies the assertion of each of its parts, it means that there are men, that there are learned things and that there are things which are both men and learned; but should I say “Some men are existing”, I could not translate it by “There are existing men”, meaning that there are men and that there are existing things and that there are things which are both men and existing6. In his criticism of the ontological proof of God’s existence, Immanuel Kant had touched upon the specificity of existential judgement and its irreducibility to predicative judgement when stressing the fact that existence is not a real predicate; but, Brentano says, because he still put ex4 Ibid., vol. II, p. 44, Engl. transl. p. 205. 5 Ibid., vol. II, p. 45 Engl. transl. p. 205. 6 The absurdity of such an analysis is even more patent in the case of negative existential judgements. “No swan is blue” is equivalent to “There is no blue swan” or, again, as the negation of a part implies the negation of the (conjunctive) whole, “There are swans but they are not blue”; but “No swan exists” cannot be translated by “There is no existing swan”, i.e. “There are swans, but they do not exist” [Ibid., vol. II, pp. 49-50, Engl. transl. pp. 208-209].

56 istential judgements amongst synthetic judgements, Kant threw his readers back into confusion. More recently, however, such logicians as Johann Friedrich Herbart or Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg have more clearly distinguished existential judgement from categorial judgement7. Yet Brentano does not content himself with this distinction; he rather claims that every judgement, being an affirmative or negative stands towards a presentation, is a judgement of existence or inexistence. In the judgement “The tree is red”, the “is” is not so much used for predication – the bare presentation of a red tree shows that a mere juxtaposition of terms is enough for the linking of presentations -, as for the assertion of an existence. Instead of a general reinterpretation of existential judgements in terms of predicative judgements, Brentano therefore suggests reinterpreting predicative judgements in terms of existential judgements, as the following analysis of the four fundamental forms of predication shows8 : Some men are sick → There are sick men No stone is living → There is no living stone Some men are not learned → There are non-learned men All men are mortal → There is no immortal man What should be noticed here is that, according to Brentanian analysis, the particular affirmative judgement is the most fundamental form of predication, while the other three forms can be considered as its derivative forms. In a footnote, Brentano writes that “truly affirmative proposi7 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 53-54, Engl. transl. p. 211. In 1883, Brentano will consider the impersonal propositions in Slavonic languages brought to the fore by Fran Miklošič as a major confirmation of his reform of logic. On this, see Albertazzi, Liliana, Immanent Realism, Springer, Dordrecht, 2006, pp. 179-187. 8 Brentano F., Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 56-57, Engl. transl. pp. 213-214. Although, as we shall see, this analysis is quite different from Frege’s, it is indeed close to other set theory readings of predicate logic, since it corresponds, for example, to John Venn’s graphic presentation of these fundamental forms of predication. As Peter Simons has shown (“Brentano’s reform of logic”, in Topoi, vol. 6, 1987, pp. 25-38, especially section 7), it can also be formalized by a quasi-Boolean algebra.

57 tions are the so-called particular affirmative and particular negative propositions”9. contraries

There is no immortal human being (¬MH) subalterns

There are mortal human beings (MH) +

There is no mortal human being (MH) contradictories

subcontraries

subalterns

There are immortal human beings (¬MH) +

This logical theory, which favours the existential judgement, will be slightly modified by Brentano in some lectures given at the end of the 1870’s and during the 1880’s. The aim of this modification is to give more importance to the specificity of predicative judgement and to acknowledge the remaining logical difference between the judgements “There are men” and “Some men are learned”. The latter is not the bare assertion of an existence – “There are learned men” -, but a twofold judgement, which, on the one hand, asserts the existence of the predicateon’s subject S+ and, on the other hand, acknowledges that some property suits this subject (SP)+. This judgement is therefore existential and predicative, the assertion of the subject – men – and the assertion of a whole (the subject with its determination) – men being learned. In accordance with the 1874 analyses, the O-judgement is thus reinterpreted as the assertion of a subject’s existence S+ and the assertion of a whole (S not 9 Brentano F., Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, op. cit., vol. II, p. 58 footnote, Engl. transl. p. 215 footnote. See also vol. II, p. 57, footnote, Engl. transl. p. 214 footnote.

58 P)+ ; the E-judgement is interpreted as the negation of a whole (SP)-, which does not necessarily imply the negation of the existence of S ; the A-judgement is interpreted as the negation of a whole (S not P)-, which does not necessarily imply the negation of the subject’s existence either10. On this new reading of the “square of opposition”, Brentano suggests grounding a wholly new syllogistic, work which will be partially undertaken by one of his followers, Franz Hillebrand11. In his lectures on logic, Brentano also generalizes his existential reading of categorial judgement to other traditional kinds of judgements, such as disjunctive judgements, hypothetical judgements, and so on. To a large extent, the global aim of these investigations is similar to the one which will soon guide Gottlob Frege’s ideographical research: the question is to bring to light the deep logical structures which lie beyond linguistic appearances12. In this respect, the misleading simplicity of the linguistic form of predication is without doubt one of Brentano’s main targets, just as it will be for Frege13. However, despite their common claim to reforming the traditional theory of judgement, Brentano’s logical move differs radically from Frege’s and this will have important ontological consequen10 Brentano F., Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil, Bern, Francke Verlag, 1956, § 30, pp. 120-121. See also the supplementary remark IX added in 1911 to the second edition of Psychologie..., vol. II pp. 164-169, Engl. transl. pp. 295-298. 11 The main impact of Brentano’s logical considerations on contemporary logic should, however, be sought in the Polish school, especially in Leśniewski’s ontology, which preserves more of the Aristotelian logic of terms than Frege’s functional analysis does. On this, see SIMONS P., “A Brentanian basis for Leśniewskian logic”, in Logique et Analyse, vol. 27, 1984, pp. 279-307. 12 As early as 1874, Brentano wrote that it is important not to confuse “linguistic differences with differences in thought” (Brentano F., Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, op. cit., vol. II p. 63 footnote, Engl. transl. p. 220). And, later on, in Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil (op. cit., § 14, p. 31), he will stress that “Many errors come into psychology as well as into logics (or even into metaphysics) from the fact that thought has been judged in function of its linguistic expression”. 13 “It will turn out that in the categorical form we are not dealing with a simple judgement, but with a complex judgement, and therefore not with a mere assertion or negation but with a complex of assertions and negations” (Brentano F., Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil, op. cit., § 30, p. 114).

59 ces. Indeed, because of his logico-psychological analysis of judgement, Brentano not only asserts the immanent presence of an object in every presentation; he also claims that every positive judgement about such a presentation is an existential assertion of its object14. And this opens the way – which will be taken by most Brentanians – for extraordinarily luxuriant ontologies. Indeed, all that can be the subject of a judgement should be considered as an object which somehow “exists” or “is”. And this includes abstract contents of presentation – as in “Nation is sovereign”; “Miserliness is a sin” or “67 is a prime number” -, fictitious contents of presentation – as in “Pegasus is a flying horse”, “the unicorn is a horse with a horn on its forehead” -, impossible contents of presentation – as in “a round square is a geometrical figure with four equal sides and four equal angles and whose peripherical points are at the same distance from a given central point” – or, further, categorically structured contents such as contents of judgements as a whole – in “Some trees are red”, I do not only assert that there are trees, but also that there are “red trees”; in “A book lies on the table”, I do not only assert that there is a book, but also that there is a “book on the table”. Of course, saying that all these objects somehow are or exist does not mean that they all are or exist in the same way. This is why an important part of the work of Brentano’s heirs will indeed consist in investigating the very notions of being and existence in order to give an account of the existential assertions which, according to Brentano’s logical analysis, are involved in all judgements. Like their teacher, they will, in 14 As Brentano will later stress, the mere fact of being the intentional reference of a presentation does not yet provide any ontological status: “The person thinking may have something as the object of his thought even though that thing does not exist”. [...] I allowed myself the term “immanent object” in order to say, not that the object exists, but that it is an object whether or not there is anything that corresponds to it” (Brentano F., Wahrheit und Evidenz, Leipzig, Felix Meiner, 1930, pp. 87-88. English translation The true and the evident, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966, pp. 77-78). In-existence or intentional objectivity is thus not in itself a kind of existence (and therefore intentional reference not a proper relation). Only with the act of judgement arises the question of existence.

60 a way, try to make sense of Aristotle’s claim that being-true is a kind of being15. And, as we shall see, Brentano himself will have to undertake further investigations on that question and amend his previous theories so as to avoid some of the conclusions which his disciples were inclined to draw from them. 2. Ontological consequences in the Brentanian School A first and important move in this ontological reflection lies in Kasimierz Twardowski’s essay On the theory of content and object of presentations, which tries to clarify Brentano’s theory of intentional reference and sheds light on Bernard Bolzano’s problem of “objectless presentations”. While Brentano was in the habit of speaking almost indiscriminately of the “content” (Inhalt) and of the “object” (Objekt) of a presentation and assigning to them “intentional inexistence” as well as “immanent objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit)”, his student Aloïs Höfler had explicitly identified the immanent content of a presentation with its intentional object (as opposed to the external object)16. Twardowski, however, wants to stick to two other – interrelated - Brentanian theses. The first one is Brentano’s theory of meaning, according to which any linguistic phrase expresses some mental act, means some content and 15 On Aristotle’s major influence on Brentano’s work, see the whole introduction of Liliana Albertazzi’s book, Immanent Realism (op. cit.). It is noteworthy that, when rejecting his disciples’ assertion of the existence of states of affairs, Brentano will again come back to Aristotle’s theory of being-true as a kind of being and argue that this being is not proper existence : “Aristotle is quite correct in saying that the “That is so” by which we indicate our agreement with a judgement means nothing but that the judgement is true, and that truth has no being outside of the person judging; in other words, it exists only in that loose and improper sense, but not strictly and in reality. It would lead to the most disastrous complications, if we let ourselves go astray regarding this Aristotelian doctrine and took those fictions to be things which have being in the proper sense of the word” (Supplementary essay IX to Psychologie..., vol. II p. 160, Engl. transl. pp. 292-293). 16 Höfler, A., Philosophische Propädeutik. Erste Teil : Logik, Vienna, Tempsky, 1890, p.7. Later on, in a letter to Anton Marty, Brentano will condemn this reading by denying that the intentional reference of mental acts amounts to the existence of “objects of thought” (BRENTANO F., Wahrheit und Evidenz, op. cit., pp. 87-89, Engl. transl. pp. 77-79).

61 names some object. In every presentation, Twardowski says, we should thus distinguish between the mental act, its mental content and its object, the same object being sometimes aimed at in different ways, i.e. through different contents or meanings17. Now, as Brentano claims that all names, even “Jupiter”, name an object even though it does not exist, Twardowski concludes that all presentations must have an object whether it exists or not18, which contradicts Bolzano’s famous claim that empty presentations such as “round square”, “green virtue” or even “nothing” have a content but no object19. This position is related to the second Brentanian thesis, namely the distinction between presentation and judgement. As Twardowski explains, the immanent presence of an object in each presentation – and of a referent “behind” each name – is prior to the judicative question of its existence or non-existence20. Every presentation is the presentation of an object – there is no objectless presentation – even though judgement may show that this object does not or cannot even exist21. For example, the presentation of a round square is the presentation of an object which 17 Twardowski, K., Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Eine Psychologische Untersuchung, Vienna, Hölder, 1894, München, Philosophia Verlag, 1982, § 3, pp. 10-12. English translation On the content and object of presentation, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1977, pp. 8-10. 18 Ibid., § 5, p. 24, Engl. transl. p. 22: “Every presentation presents an object, whether it exists or not, just as every name designates an object, regardless of whether the latter exists or not”. On the notions of object and content in Brentano, Höfler, Twardowski and Meinong, see Marek, J.C., “Meinong on psychological content”, in L. Albertazzi, D. Jacquette et R. Poli eds., The School of Alexius Meinong, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2001, pp. 261-286. 19 Bolzano, B., Wissenschaftslehre (1837), Leipzig, Meiner, 1929, § 67, vol. I, pp. 304-305. Partial English translation Theory of Science, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1972, pp. 88-89. 20 Twardowski, K., Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, op. cit., § 2, pp. 8-9, Engl. transl. pp. 6-7. 21 Ibid., § 5, pp. 23-24, 27-29, Engl. transl. pp. 21-22, 24-26. Like the mental act, the mental content of presentation always exists (ibid., § 5, p. 24, § 11, p. 64, Engl. transl. p. 22, p. 61). But the true subject of judgements is the object rather than the content of presentation: what is consisting in gold is the object and not the content “golden mountain” (ibid., § 5, p. 24, § 6, pp. 30-31, Engl. transl. p. 21, p. 28).

62 is impossible, i.e. which cannot, for a priori reasons, be the object of a positive existential judgement22. There is therefore an object, but not an object which properly exists, i.e. over and above presentation; the “existence” of this object is, as Twardowski says, only “objective”, “intentional” or else “phenomenal”23. And this is also the case of general objects such as the general ‘picture which hangs in this room’ or the general ‘triangle’24. Alexius Meinong will in some way extend Twardowski’s reflection by systematically distinguishing the status of object and the question of its existence. Like Brentano, Höfler or Twardowski, and unlike Bolzano (who relates contents with ideal entities), Meinong conceives the content of an act of presentation as a real part of this mental act. Conversely, the object of this act is not a real part of the act and therefore, Meinong concludes, its ontological status should be investigated. This will be the task of the theory of objects25. In Über Gegenstandstheorie, starting from the theory of intentional reference26, Meinong shows that, despite a traditional “prejudice in favour of the actual”, objects enjoy different forms of being: the existence (Existenz) of real (wirklich) objects is another kind of being than the subsistence (Bestand) of ideal objects such as mathematical entities or such as states of affairs (the Objektive which he had studied in 1902 in Über Annahmen)27. Furthermore, some objects, especially impossible objects like “round squares” neither exist nor subsist, while they nonetheless have properties and are therefore the subjects of true judgements – they have a “Sosein”. Now, since they take 22 Ibid., § 5, p. 26, Engl. transl. p. 23. 23 Ibid., § 5, pp. 24-25, § 7, p. 35, Engl. transl. pp. 22-23, p. 33. 24 Ibid., § 15, pp. 102-106, Engl. transl. pp. 97-101. 25 That objects of presentation and of knowledge are not real parts of mental acts and therefore do not fall under the scope of psychology constitutes Meinong’s main claim against “psychologism” (Meinong, A., Über Gegenstandstheorie, Leipzig, Barth, 1904, §§ 8-9, Engl. transl. in Roderick M. Chisholm ed., Realism and the Background of Phenomenology, Glencoe, Free Press, 1960, pp. 94-99). 26 Ibid., § 1, Engl. transl. p. 77. 27 Ibid., § 2, Engl. transl. pp. 79-81.

63 part in the being of “Objectives” – Aristotle’s being-as-true –, they too seem to enjoy some kind of being28. Meinong’s struggle with Brentano’s heritage concerning the logical analysis of judgement is patent here. Previously, Meinong used to call “Quasisein” or “Pseudoexistenz” this kind of being which is specific of beingless – i.e. neither existent nor subsistent – objects. In 1904, however, Meinong found a better way of complying with Brentano’s logical analysis. From now on, inexisting and impossible objects will only be assigned the bare status of objects of presentation, “indifferent to being (auβerseiend)”. Only when they become the objects of judgements does the proper question of their being, i.e. of their existence, subsistence or beinglessness arise29. Unlike previous Quasisein, Auβersein is thus not a third kind of being, next to actual existence and subsistence. It is the status of being a pure object outside or before the very question of being. In that way, it is, as commentators rightly maintain30, more a semantical than an ontological status. While metaphysics concerned itself only with actual objects, ontology extended this concern to all subsistent objects (including actual ones). But theory of objects also worries about contradictory objects, as it is concerned by all objects, regardless of their being. It is, as Dale Jacquette says, an “extraontology”. Yet Auβersein theory still retains some traces of Quasisein theory; and Brentano’s logical analysis is still at work here. Indeed, Meinong does not contend with Ernst Mally’s claim of “the independence of sobeing from being”31. He also considers meanings as objects and even 28 Ibid., § 4, Engl. transl. pp. 84-85. 29 “If the opposition of being and non-being is primarily a matter of the Objective and not of the object, then it is, after all, clearly understandable that neither being nor non-being can belong essentially to the object in itself. [...] The object is by nature indifferent to being (auβerseiend), although at least one of its two Objectives of being, the object’s being or non-being subsists” (Ibid., § 4, Engl. transl. p. 86). 30 See in particular Findlay, J.N., Meinong’s Theory of Objects and Values, 2nd ed., Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1963, pp. 57-58 ; Jacquette, D., Meinongian logic. The Semantics of Existence and Nonexistence, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1996. 31 Meinong, A., Über Gegenstandstheorie, op. cit., § 3, Engl. transl., p. 82. This

64 grants them some specific status in what still appears as an ontological hierarchy: Auβersein is owned by all objects, subsistence by all non contradictory objects, and existence only by actual beings. This provides these objects with some quasi-ontological value, as indeed appears in the use of the existential quantifier in Meinong’s paradoxical assertion that “There are objects of which it can be said that they do not exist”32. Now, this Brentanian heritage will not only be the main target of Frege’s school33 ; it will also be the main reason for Brentano’s clarification of his own theories so as to sanitize them from this kind of consequences34. As for Edmund Husserl, he also gives a maximal extension to the notion of object, which tends to cover all that can be the subject of a judgement; beside real objects, there are thus essences, ideal entities such as numbers, syntactic objectivities such as conjunction or predication, or yet whole states of affairs. His original contribution will be developing Brentano’s theory of intentional reference into a proper theory of intenthesis will later on lead to the assertion that, unlike redness, existence is an “extranuclear property”. On this theory, as well as on its relation to Kant’s assertion that existence is not a real predicate or Frege’s assertion that existence is a second-level predicate, see Jacquette, D., “Nuclear and Extranuclear Properties”, in The School of Alexius Meinong, op. cit., pp. 397-426. 32 Meinong, A., Über Gegenstandstheorie, op. cit., § 3, Engl. transl., p. 83. 33 From Russell’s “On Denoting” to Quine’s “On What There Is”, going through Ryle’s review of J.N. Findlays’s Meinong’s Theory of Objects or his comments in “Intentionality Theory and the Nature of Thinking”, Meinong has indeed personified for Frege’s school the ontological overindulgence of Brentano’s school. That, however, the early Russell shared Meinong’s views and even defended a more naïve version of these views which will yet radicalize his later fight against them, has been clearly highlighted by commentators. See for example The School of Alexius Meinong, op. cit., pp. 20-25, 380-383. 34 “I do not wish to bring this discussion of mental reference to a close without having given a word of consideration to the view that there is a distinction between “being” and “existing”. According to this view both are to be taken in a very particular sense. Namely, a person might be led to say that if someone is mentally referring to an object, the object really always has being just as much as he does, even if it does not always exist as he does. [...] I confess that I am unable to make any sense of this distinction between being and existence” (Brentano, F., Psychologie..., op. cit., vol. II, pp. 136-137, Engl. transl., pp. 287-288.

65 tionality, which makes him able to ground the “theory of object” on a phenomenological investigation, i.e. on an analysis which asks the question of the ontological status of each object via the question of the way it is constituted by and given to consciousness. For Husserl, the extension of objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit) indeed entails a correlative extension of the notion of givenness, since there is a specific intuition of each kind of object that grounds the truth of our judgements on these objects. And, because of this maximal extension of the notions of “intuition” and “being”, the early Husserl has indeed been regarded as a “Platonizing realist” even though he carefully distinguishes several kinds of objectivity35. Now, before contrasting these positions with the ones which will prevail in Frege’s school, it should be stressed that all the latter developments go against Brentano’s own ontological convictions, as Brentano habitually professed reism, i.e. a strong kind of empiricism and nominalism according to which only concrete individual beings that are given 35 “It has ever and anon been a special cause of offence that as “Platonizing realists” we set up Ideas or Essences as objects, and ascribe to them as to other objects true Being, and also correlatively the capacity to be grasped through intuition, just as in the case of empirical realities (...) If object and empirical object, reality (Reales) and empirical reality mean one and the same thing, then no doubt the conception of Ideas as objects and as realities is perverse “Platonic hypostatization”. But if, as has been done in the Logical Studies, the two are sharply separated, if Object is defined as anything whatsoever, e.g., a subject of a true (categorical, affirmative) statement, what offence then can remain, unless it be such as springs from obscure prejudices ? (...) In this sense, indeed, the tone-quality c, which is a numerically unique member in the tone-scale, or the digit 2 in the series of numbers, or the figure of a circle in the ideal world of geometrical constructions, or any proposition in the “world” of propositions – in brief, the ideal in all its diversity is an “object”” (Husserl, E., Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, vol. III des Husserliana (Hua), Dordrecht, Kluwer, § 22, pp. 48-49). As is well known, such a “Platonizing realism” is, in Husserl’s work, counterbalanced by some idealistic positions – since intuition always fullfils meaning intentions, so that objects cannot be given without also being intended and constituted by consciousness – as well as some empiricist positions – since all intuitions are eventually grounded on sensory intuition. On that, see my « Que le mode de donation dépend du monde de constitution : l’intuition des idéalités », in Marc Maesschalk et Robert Brisart eds., Idéalisme et phénoménologie, Hildesheim, Olms, 2007, pp. 187-200.

66 through sense experience can properly be said to exist. He was thus horrified to see his disciples making the most of his psychological and logical theories so as to assert the existence of abstracta, imaginary beings, states of affairs or other entia rationis such as the “not being green of a tree”36. To all these theories acknowledging the existence of “irrealia”, Brentano will object that every presentation and every judgement is about something, “thing” being understood here as an empirical reality. This position will be explicitly and strongly defended – mainly against his own heirs – in many writings and letters after 1905. Asserting his reist position will even lead Brentano to modify his former psychological and logical theories so that every existential judgement is the assertion of existence of some reality. Brentano indeed introduces the distinction between two modes of presentation: some objects – all of them real – are presented “modo recto” while other objects – some of them being unreal – can only be presented “modo obliquo”, i.e. as being related to the first ones. For example, in the presentation of a flowerlover, the person and his mental acts of love are presented in recto while the loved flowers are presented in obliquo37. If the question of the existence of God is asked, what is presented in recto is someone’s mental act of asserting or denying the existence of God – a mental act which is real – while God – which is not real – is only presented in obliquo38. Similarly, when we judge that a tree is not green, someone’s mental act of asserting that the tree is green is presented in recto (and then denied) but the “state of affairs” of the tree being green is only presented in obliquo. This theory not only allows Brentano to avoid the existence of states 36 See the debates between Brentano, Marty and Kraus in Brentano, F., Warheit und Evidenz, Leipzig, Barth, 1902. See also Brentano’s dictations inserted as additional essays in further editions of Psychologie... (pp. 199-277, Engl. transl., pp. 311368) or in Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen, ed. By F. Mayer-Hillebrand, Hamburg Meiner, 1977. See also Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil, op. cit., § 17, pp. 38-46. 37 Brentano, F., Psychologie..., Supplementary remark IV, vol. II p. 147, Engl. transl. p. 282. 38 Brentano, F., Psychologie..., Additional essay “On Objects of Thought”, p. 217, Engl. transl. p. 324.

67 of affairs (Sachverhalte), which almost all of his students were led to admit39; it also allows him to improve his account of fictitious objects. In his Logic and in a postal exchange with Brentano at the beginning of the 1870’s, John Stuart Mill had indeed raised the difficult question of judgements on inexisting objects; though it is affirmative, Mill said, the statement “A centaur is a poetic fiction” cannot be interpreted as an existential assertion. In his answer to Mill, an answer which was later inserted as a footnote in Psychology from an empirical standpoint, Brentano still maintained his stand by discarding Mill’s example. Just like the judgement “A man is dead”, Brentano said in the 1870’s, the judgement “A centaur is a fiction” only seems to be predicative; in fact, the attribution of the property to the subject modifies the very nature of this subject. In that case, the assertion of the whole is therefore not the assertion of each of its parts; the assertion of the existence of a dead man is not the assertion of the existence of a man and the assertion of a dead thing. Similarly, the assertion “A centaur is a poetic fiction” is indivisible; it is an existential assertion, but the assertion of the existence of the whole “centaur imaginatively created by poets”40. Brentano’s later theory on the modes of presentation then develops this reading in accordance with reism. From now on, the existential judgement “A centaur is a poetic fiction” will be understood as the existential assertion of existence of some poets’ acts of imagining, which are presented modo recto, while the centaur is only presented modo obliquo41. 3. Frege’s theory of judgement Because of their fight against psychologism, Gottlob Frege and the early Bertrand Russell will conversely maintain some Platonist stands. 39 On Brentanians’ positions towards states of affairs, as well as on Lotze’s influence on their positions, see in particular Smith, B., “Logic and the Sachverhalt” in Liliana Albertazzi, Dale Jacquette and Robert Poli eds., The School of Franz Brentano, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1996, pp. 323-341. 40 Brentano, F., Psychologie..., vol. II, p. 60 footnote, Engl. transl. pp. 219-220. 41 Brentano, F., Psychologie..., Supplementary remark IX, pp. 158-160, Engl. transl. pp. 291-292. See also Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil, op. cit., § 17, pp. 3840.

68 But the logical analysis which they bring into play will lead their school to more and more nominalistic positions. Unlike Brentano (but like some of his heirs), Frege believed that a judgement can not bear upon any content of presentation but only upon thoughts (Gedanke), i.e. upon objective categorically structured contents which can be true or false. Judgement is therefore not primarily the assertion of the existence of an object, but the assertion of the truth of a proposition. Now, even though many of these propositions are expressed in a predicative form in natural language, Frege, like Brentano, wants to dismiss the confusion which this linguistic predicative form throws logical analysis into42. Like Brentano, Frege thinks that the logical form of many propositions is more complex than the mere predication it seems to be. This is particularly the case of universal or particular predications which Aristotle and the Scholastics had considered as mere predications. In fact, in the logical sense of the term, predication is always the subsumption of a singular object under a concept, as in the statement “Socrates is mortal”. Now, despite a similar linguistic appearance, the universal statement “Human being is mortal” or “All human beings are mortal” does not possess the same logical structure: it involves two concepts which subsume common objects, since all objects which fall under the concept “human being” also fall under the concept “mortal”. Of every object x, the universal statement “Human being is mortal” says that, if x is a human being, then x is mortal. Here we can see the logical complexity of this universal proposition, which corresponds to an infinite conjunction of conditionals between genuine singular logical predications: if Socrates is a man, then he is mortal; and if Jupiter is a man, then he is mortal; and if 2 is a man, then it is mortal; and so on. This is what Russell will call “formal implication”43 and symbolize as: ∀x (Hx ⇒ Mx). On this ground and in accordance with the square of opposition, the particular negative (the O-proposition: “Some human beings are not mo42 Frege, G., Begriffsschrift, Halle, Louis Nebert, 1879, § 3, Engl. transl. Conceptual Notation, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972, pp. 112-113. 43 Russell, B., Principles of Mathematics, London, Allen and Unwin, 1964, chap. III, pp. 33-41.

69 rtal”) will be considered as the negation of a formal implication: ¬∀x (Hx ⇒ Mx). The E-proposition (“No human being is mortal”) can be transformed - through obversion - into an A-proposition according to which “All human beings are immortal (or not-mortal)”, a proposition which says of every object x that if x is a human being, then x is not mortal : ∀x (Hx ⇒ ¬Mx). Finally, the I-proposition is the negation of the latter: “Some human beings are mortal” is equivalent to: not for every x, if x is a human being, then x is not mortal: ¬∀x (Hx ⇒ ¬Mx)44. What is human is mortal ∀x (Hx ⇒ Mx) subalterns

It is false that what is Human is immortal ¬∀x (Hx ⇒ ¬Mx)

contraries

contradictories

subcontraries

What is human is immortal ∀x (Hx ⇒ ¬Mx) subalterns

It is false that what is human is mortal ¬∀x (Hx ⇒ Mx)

Let us notice that, for Frege, particular judgement should be analyzed as a derivative of universal judgement, while the reverse was true for Brentano. Now, this is important since the relation to existential judgement occurs at the level of particular judgement. Like Brentano, Frege indeed identifies the particular judgement “Some human beings are mortal” with the existential judgement “There are mortal human beings”. But, for Frege, this means that this existential judgement should be analyzed as “Not for every x, if x is a human being, then x is not mortal”; it is the negation of a formal implication. And the more simple case of existential judgement with a single concept such as “There are human be44 Frege, G., Begriffsschrift, op. cit., § 12, Engl. transl. pp. 133-135. It should be noticed that, for Frege, negation is not the act of judgement which is opposed to assertion but it is a part of the asserted content.

70 ings” will be analyzed in the same way. It is the negation of a universal negative judgement, i.e. as the negation of an infinite conjunction of negations of logical predications: “Not for all x, x is not a human being”. Now, this logical analysis of quantification, which is already at work in Frege’s Begriffsschrift in 1879, is the first ground of Frege’s later reflections on the notions of existence and number in the Grundlagen der Arithmetik45 (1884) and, in the same way, on the idea of the range of values (Werthverlauf) of a function, an idea which will be developed in some famous papers in the early 1890’s and will be formally used in the first volume of the Grundgesetze der Arithmetik in 1893. Just like number, Frege says, existence is a second-level property46, i.e. a property which is never directly related to objects, but always to concepts, about which this property claims that they are satisfied by at least some objects, i.e. that some objects make true the propositions in which the concept in question is attributed to them. For example, planets of the solar system exist since some objects satisfy the concept “planet of the solar system”, i.e. some objects make true the proposition “x is a planet of the solar system” when replacing x in this propositional function. In Frege’s terms, the concept “planet of the solar system” must, like an unsolved equation, be saturated with an argument in order to constitute with it an actual proposition which can be true or false. Though, from an intensional point of view, a concept is characterized by several defining features (Merkmale) – in order to be a planet, you must be a celestial body and be in the orbit of a star -, from an extensional point of 45 Frege, G., Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Eine logisch-mathematische Untersuchung über den Begriff der Zahl, Hildesheim, Olms, 1961, Engl. transl. The Foundations of Arithmetic. A Logico-mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number, Oxford, Blackwell, 1953. See in particular §§ 46 and 53. 46 The concept of existence is a second-level function, which takes concepts as its arguments and truth values as its values : the concept “x is a man” is related to “true” by the second-level function “has a non empty extension”, while the concept “x is a round square” is related to “false” by the same function (Frege, G., “Über Begriff und Gegenstand”, Engl. transl. “On Concept and Object”, in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, Oxford, Blackwell, 1960, pp. 4255).

71 view, a concept is characterized by its range of values, i.e. by the set of its (ordered) pairs “argument-value” – Mars-true, Saturn-true, Socratesfalse, and so on for “planet of the solar system”. Frege, as we see, analyzes the existential judgement in relation to logical predication ; not that the statement “There are planets of the solar system” should be translated into the mere predication “Planets of the solar system are existing” as in the naïve analysis which Brentano had criticized, but that asking the question of the existence of planets of the solar system is asking whether there are, among the objects of the universe, arguments which make true the predicative propositional function “x is a planet of the solar system”. And this analysis, which fixes the notion of existence in the existential quantifier47, is the determining factor of the whole ontological reflection in Frege’s school, i.e. in analytic philosophy. 4. Ontological consequences in the Fregean School For Frege, an existential question is indeed only significant where its puts forwards a concept of which it is asked whether it is satisfied by some objects or not48. For example, asking whether there are centaurs or whether there are atoms of helium without neutrons is not asking whether the objects “centaur” and an “atom of helium without neutrons” exist, but whether, amongst the objects of the universe, some satisfy the defining features of the concepts “centaur” or “atom of helium without neutrons”, i.e. make true the propositional functions “x is a centaur” or “x is an atom of helium without neutrons”. Proper existential questions are therefore always theoretical questions, i.e. questions about the truth 47 As Quine will put it: “There are no ultimate philosophical problems concerning existence except insofar as existence is expressed by the quantifier ‘(∃x)’” (Quine, W.V.O., Methods of Logic, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959, § 37, p. 224). 48 Frege, G., “Dialog mit Pünjer über Existenz”, Engl. transl. “Dialogue with Pünjer on Existence” in Posthumous writings, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1979, pp. 5367. See also “Rezension von : E. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik I”, Engl. transl. “Review of E. Husserl, Philosophy of Arithmetic I”, in Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1984, pp. 195-209.

72 of some propositions involving concepts taken as classifying functions. Now, obviously, such theoretical existential questions presuppose the question of the existence of the basic objects of the universe, i.e. of the entities about which it is asked whether they satisfy this or that concept. Asking whether, amongst the objects of the universe, some make true the propositional function “x is a planet of the solar system” is indeed asking whether there are objects which make this propositional function true. And this requires knowing what kinds of objects there are in the universe. In order to ask theoretical existential questions, we first need to list what Russell will call the “furniture of the world”, i.e. to draw up the stocklist of all basic objects of the universe which will serve as arguments for the propositional functions. By analyzing the notion of existence as a second-level property – i.e. a property of concepts rather than of objects -, Frege somehow seems to presuppose that the non theoretical question of existence has already been answered and that the inventory of the furniture of the world has already been made. Now, as Frege himself does not make this inventory in detail, we can only foresee its outlines from the logical theses he maintains, as well as from the examples he uses. For Frege49, an object is every individual entity which satisfies the relation of identity with itself – the propositional function x = x – and, according to Frege, this is not only true of empirical realities50 but also of numbers, truth values or even ranges of values, which, by the way, will lead to the vicious circles highlighted by Russell. Though Frege’s reflection on the basic furniture of the world is quite cursory, his logical distinction between theoretical existential questions and the non-conceptual question of the furniture of the world precisely constitutes the distinctive feature of his ontological work, separating it from classical metaphysics as well as from Brentanian theories of objects. According to Frege, asking whether centaurs or nations belong to 49 Frege, G., “Dialog mit Pünjer über Existenz”, art. cit., Engl. transl. p. 62. 50 Frege, G., “Funktion und Begriff”, Engl. transl. “Function and Concept”, in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, op. cit., p. 23.

73 the set of existing objects is forgetting that “centaur” and “nation” are concepts, i.e. mere classifying functions, and that, therefore, they do not exist as such but can only be satisfied by some objects in the proper sense. In the same way, asking whether God exists is only meaningful if “god” is a concept whose defining features are specified so that it is possible to run around the “universe” looking for one or several objects which satisfy this concept. If “God” were a proper name, the question of his existence would be meaningless, since the very fact that we use a proper name already assumes that this question has been positively answered. This problem of “existential presuppositions” indeed gives us further opportunity to exhibit Frege’s main innovation. The logical analysis of judgements into concepts and objects – i.e. functions and arguments – rather than into “terms” entails a sharp distinction between referential and existential presuppositions. For Frege, the question of the existential presuppositions of a statement can only properly be asked where the linguistic subject of the sentence is a concept. For example, a particular judgement such as “Some men are bold” entails an existential presupposition since, for it not to be true that all men are not bold, it must be true that there are bold men, i.e. that some objects satisfy both concepts. But this is not the case of singular judgements, whose subject is a proper name which directly refers to an object and about which no theoretical existential question – i.e. question about the objects which satisfy it – can be asked. The use of a proper name, Frege says, involves a referential presupposition51. If a proper name is a genuine proper name52, it desig51 Frege, G., “Sinn und Bedeutung”, Engl. transl. “On Sense and Meaning” in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, Oxford, Blackwell, 1960, pp. 68-69. Hintikka’s free – “pressupositionless” – logic precisely aims at replacing these referential presuppositions by explicit existential assertions. As this requires that existence be afresh predicated of basic objects (and not only of concepts), free logic can be used as a tool for Brentanian-oriented logical and ontological analyses. Furthermore, by questioning the relations between existence and identity, free logic opens the way to original investigations in the question of crossworld identity, which, as we shall see, is the very crux of the problem of “intensionnal objects”. 52 Later on, Frege will see in the language’s “tendency to form proper names to

74 nates an object, i.e. one of the items on the stocklist of the furniture of the world; and it is therefore meaningless to ask whether this object exists or not. Of course, it is possible to spot some proper names devoid of any referent – i.e. proper names like “Gottlob Russell” which claim to name something but do not name anything –, but these are fake proper names rather than proper names referring to “inexisting objects”. Conversely, conceptual terms do not entail any referential presupposition; their meaning lies in classifying functions which could still be conceived were there no object in the universe. Now, the difference matters because, as we said earlier, not every use of conceptual terms implies existential presuppositions, i.e. entails that these conceptual terms be satisfied by one or several objects. Universal judgements, for example, have the logical form of generalized conditionals (formal implications) and are trivially true when no object satisfies the concept which constitutes the linguistic subject of this universal predication: if there is no centaur, it is trivially true that all centaurs are bearded. To show that some singular judgements involve existential rather than referential presuppositions will be Bertrand Russell’s most brilliant insight. By radicalizing Frege’s analysis, Russell will then end up meeting the very question of the furniture of the world. Making the most of Frege’s opposition between concept and object, Russell in fact comes to reject Frege’s idea according to which a proper name not only refers to an object but also has a meaning, so that two proper names can refer to the same object through two different meanings (2+2 and 4, Phosphorus and Vesperus, John Paul II and Karol Wojtyla). In order to have a meaning, Russell objects, a proper name would have to identify its referent through some conceptual description; it would thus be a fake proper name. From that moment on, Russell will thus champion the cause of tracking down fake proper names and of exposing pseudo objects, i.e. theoretical entities which are not listed among the furniture of the world, but only characterized by conceptual definitiwhich no objects correspond”, especially through the use of the definite article, a root of the paradoxes of set theory (Frege, G., “Sources of Knoweldge and the Mathematical Natural Sciences”, in Posthumous writings, op. cit., pp. 269-270).

75 ons. Indeed expressions such as “the present President of the USA” or “the natural satellite of the Earth” are not proper names, but conceptual expressions which identify single objects because these satisfy – and are the only ones to satisfy – the corresponding concepts53. By exhibiting the conceptual nature of their linguistic subject, Frege had cleared universal and particular statements of any referential presupposition. Russell’s theory of definite descriptions does the same for some singular statements, namely those, such as “the present President of the USA is bold”, whose linguistic subject is a fake proper name. Russell’s theory of definite descriptions aims at highlighting the existential presupposition that is involved in such statements. This presupposition, as well as the presupposition of unicity – there is one and only one present President of the USA –, must be explicitly joined by a conjunction to the logical predication – the present President of the USA is bold – within the formalization, so that the falseness of the presuppositions is sufficient to make the whole proposition false54 ; if there is no present King of France, it is not true that “The present King of France is bold”. In this case, however, it should not be said that the object about which the proposition is does not exist but rather that no object of the universes satisfies the concept which constitutes the linguistic subject of the proposition (present King of France), i.e. that the extension of this concept is empty. A significant part of Russell’s later epistemology will then consist in accounting for this logical distinction between genuine and pseudo objects with the distinction between two ways of knowing: knowledge by acquaintance55 – especially sense experience – and theoretical knowle53 Russell, B., “On Denoting”, in Mind, 1905, vol. 14, n. 56, pp. 479-493. 54 As it distinguishes the existential assertion involved in the linguistic subject and the assertion of the logical predication that constitutes the whole sentence, this analysis could be read as Russell’s version of Brentano’s theory of “twofold judgements”. 55 See in particular Russell, B., Problems of Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, chapter V. For Frege (“Dialogue mit Punjer über Existenz”), it is superfluous to say of an object that it can be experienced.

76 dge, i.e. knowledge by conceptual description. Basic objects which constitute the furniture of the world - and the arguments of (first level) theoretical functions – are the entities that can be directly experienced, while pseudo-objects are entities that are theoretically – i.e. conceptually – identified56. And this will be the ground for Rudolf Carnap’s work in The Logical Structure of the World57. For Carnap, all pseudo-objects of the various sciences are to be built progressively – i.e. step by step, level after level – on the ground of the immediate knowledge gained by the empirical acquaintance with the basic “objects” of the world. Atoms, cells, organisms, but also mental states or cultural objects are thus all pseudo-objects, which are defined within the system as complex many-valued functions that are satisfied or not by the objects of sense experience58. Of course, at each level, the concepts – which are defined on the ground of the concepts of the previous level by pure logical means – become more and more complex, and so does the question of their “existence”, i.e. of their satisfaction by basic objects. But, and this is the “reductionist the56 Even though Brentano’s reism, like Russell or Carnap’s empiricism, distinguishes between real objects given through sense experience and pseudo-objects such as an “empty space”, Brentano’s use of the notion of existence shows that he still considers as de re objects (designated by genuine proper names) some of the objects which Russell and Carnap would consider as de dicto and conceptually defined: “‘There is’ has its strict sense or proper meaning when used in connection with genuine logical names, as in ‘There is a God’ or ‘There is a man’. In its other uses, ‘there is’ must not be taken in its strict sense. ‘There is an empty space’ may be equated with ‘There are no physical bodies located in such and such a way’. [...] It would be a complete mistake to interpret ‘there is’ when used with mere grammatical names in the way in which we interpret it in ‘There is a God’ and ‘There is a man’. For there is nothing other than things, and ‘empty space’ or ‘objects of thought’ do not name things” (Brentano, F., Warheit und Evidenz, op. cit., pp. 7879, Engl. transl. p. 68). 57 Carnap, R., Der logische Aufbau der Welt, Leipzig, Meiner, 1928, Engl. transl. The Logical Structure of the World, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967. 58 In fact, Carnap uses Frege’s method of logical abstraction to build “objects” corresponding to each complex concept. These “objects”, however, belong, according to Russell’s logical type theory, to a higher logical type than the objects which satisfy the concept from which they are issued. And, for Carnap, this jump of logical type is the very evidence of their pseudo-objectivity.

77 sis”, it always remains possible, at least in principle, to decide whether some basic objects – objects of empirical acquaintance – do satisfy these complex concepts or not. According to Carnap, the only unsolvable questions of existence are the ones which cannot be translated into the rigorous language of this system of logical reconstruction of the world. But, for that reason, these unsolvable questions are generally meaningless, as they are either logically badly formed – for example they commit some logical type mistakes – or empirically unverifiable – they use concepts whose defining features cannot be logically reduced to simpler concepts of the scientific structure and finally to the properties and relations of elementary experiences. As for Willard Van Orman Quine, he will also inherit from Frege in formulating his famous criterion of the ontological commitments of theoretical speeches. As all existential questions in a theory are conceptual, they can only be answered by going through the list of arguments which could satisfy the related concepts. The true objects of a science, the ones which bear its extra-theoretical ontological burden, are thus the objects which are listed among the arguments to which the conceptual functions of the theory apply, and therefore the values which can be taken by the bound variables of the theoretical statements of that science59. In this respect, as Russell had shown, even proper names are not trustful indicators of the extra-theoretical ontological commitment of a speech; some proper names are indeed disguised conceptual descriptions rather than genuine individual constants. Quine even suggests hardening Russell’s tracking down of fake proper names by systematically “conceptualizing” proper names – Socrates, for example, is nothing but the “x which socratizes”60 – so as to sharply distinguish, in any singular term, what is a matter of “ideology” – classifying functions – and what is a matter of “ontology” – ontological burden. This sharp distinction between conceptual meaning and objectual 59 Quine, W.V.O., “On What There Is”, in From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, second edition, 1980, p. 12. 60 Quine, W.V.O., Word and Object, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 1960, § 37.

78 reference is yet another way of asserting that, being a pure x, a basic object has no intrinsic content but only extrinsically satisfies – and is sometimes the only one to satisfy – theoretical functions. Before coming to what will force analytic philosophers to question this distinction between meaning and reference, let us briefly stress what has been shown up to this point. Because of his functional logical analysis, Frege, who was himself a Platonist, has given rise to a school which developed the nominalist position to the highest degree and disqualified as “pseudo objects” all de dicto objects, i.e. all objects that are conceptually identified and appear as linguistic subjects of propositions without being genuine proper names. Conversely, because of his existential logical analysis, Brentano, who was himself a reist, has given rise to a school of thought which extended the notion of “object” so much that it came to involve de dicto objects and entia rationis, which do not properly exist and whose ontological status is thus in question. This might seem paradoxical. But, indeed, the fact that Brentano’s heirs have developped a luxuriant ontology opposed to Brentano’s own ontological convictions and that Frege’s heirs have used Occam’s razor where Frege himself claimed the objective existence of the world of idealities precisely shows that it is thanks to their respective logical analysis rather than to their metaphysical stands that Brentano and Frege gave rise to schools. 5. Intensional objects strike back This sharp opposition between two antinomic ontological conceptions grounded on two diverging logical analyses has however become more blurred by the mid twentieth century when, within the Fregean tradition, functional logical analysis was completed with the tools of modal logic. As early as in the 1910’s, Clarence Irving Lewis had already developed a formal system of propositional modal logic in order to give an account of an implication link which would be stronger than the one that is rendered by Frege and Russell’s material or even formal implication61. During the following thirty years, several other systems were then 61 Lewis, C.I., A Survey of Symbolic Logic, Berkeley, University of California

79 developed and studied by a few pioneers, who aimed at formalizing reasonings involving modal alethic notions (necessity and possibility), deontic notions (obligation and permission), temporal indications or, further, meanings embedded in the context of intentional – especially epistemic – attitudes. When, however, these developments were extended to quantified predicate logic in the 1940’s, major logical and ontological stakes immediately came to light. That some elementary inference rules - such as Leibniz’ principle of intersubstitutability salva veritate - were ruined in “modal” contexts, including contexts of intentional attitudes, had already been known for long and had even been stressed by Frege himself when elaborating his functional analysis62. For example, even though Cicero and Tullius is one and the same person, I can know that Cicero denounced Catilina without knowing that Tullius denounced Catilina, so that it matters whether I put “Cicero” or “Tullius” to replace “x” for the truth value of the sentence “Bruno Leclercq knows that x denounced Catilina”. And again, even though the morning star and the evening star are one and the same celestial body, namely Venus, it is true that “It is necessary that the morning star be the morning star”, but it is not true that “It is necessary that the morning star be the evening star”. In modal contexts, a proposition can thus change its truth value in case of a substitution of two expressions designating the same object or having the same set of objects for extension. These contexts are sensitive to the way this or that expression aims at this object or this set of objects, i.e. these contexts are sensitive to the meaning and not only to the reference of the occurring expressions. They are thus said to be “intensional” and not only “extensional”. Vindicating the specific rationality ruling these intensional contexts was precisely the main aim of modal logic, especially quantified modal logic. But, as Quine showed in 1943, a tough problem concerns the identity criterion and the very nature of the objects that constitute the arguments of the functions, which, in modal contexts, get into the scope of Press, 1918. 62 Frege, G., “Sinn und Bedeutung”, art. cit., Engl. transl. pp. 58-59, 65-67, 76-78.

80 quantifiers63. Indeed, the very notions of necessity and possibility (as well as of possible states of affairs which are considered in the contexts of intentional attitudes) require that, in “other worlds”, some objects could have satisfied or could satisfy different concepts than the ones they actually satisfy. But then arises the question of what kind of object might constitute such “crossworld” entities, i.e. could be reidentified as one and the same through the different worlds even though they possess different properties from one world to the other. To use Saul Kripke’s famous example64, we want to say that it was not necessary that Richard Nixon win the American presidential election in 1968, i.e. that he could have not won that election. But this means that we need to be able to say of one and the same entity (Richard Nixon) that it actually has a property (having won the 1968 election) but that it might not have it or that it doesn’t have it in at least one possible world. Similarly, we want to say that, though the evening star happens to be the same object as the morning star in our world, they could have been different objects (in other worlds). Now, in this frame of analytic philosophy, the question that quantified modal logic asks is whether crossworld 63 Quine indeed shows that quantification is not normal in modal contexts if we take basic objects as arguments. From “Bruno Leclercq does not know that Tullius denounced Catilina”, cannot be concluded, by existential generalization, that “There is someone of whom Bruno Leclercq does not know that he denounced Catilina”: (∃x) (Bruno Leclercq does not know that x denounced Catilina). Indeed, if the argument that satisfies this propositional function is Tullius, it is Cicero as well, but Cicero does not satisfy this propositional function, since Philip does know that Cicero denounced Catilina. Similarly, from « Necessarily, if there is life on the morning star, there is life on the morning star », it cannot be concluded by existential generalisation that « There is an x such that, necessarily, if there is life on the morning star, then there is life on x », because if the argument that satisfies this propositional function is the morning star, it is the evening star as well, but the latter does not satisfy this propositional function (W.V.O. Quine, “Reference and Modality”, in From a Logical Point of View, op. cit., pp. 145-149). 64 Kripke, S., Naming and Necessity, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 40-53. Actually, this example, used in 1970, echoes previous discussions on the (future) winner of the 1968 American presidential election when he was not yet designated (See, for example, Hintikka, J., Models for Modalities, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1969, pp. 117-121). At that time, the distinction de re/de dicto was of course even more obvious than after the election.

81 entities are “basic” objects – which are designated by proper names – or whether they are pseudo-objects – which are characterized by definite descriptions. In other words, are they “de re” or “de dicto”? A first and simple answer could be to say that they are basic objects and that proper names which refer to them in our world can also refer to them in other worlds where they have different properties. Proper names would thus be “rigid designators”. Unlike definite descriptions such as “the evening star” or “the teacher of Alexander the Great”, which are respectively satisfied by Venus and Aristotle in our world, but could be satisfied by other individual entities in other worlds, the proper names “Venus” and “Aristotle”, this first theory claims, each designate one and the same individual in every world (where it exists). Since it requires crossworld individuals, quantified modal logic seems thus to strengthen the distinction between definite descriptions and genuine proper names, which Russell had drawn against Frege but which Quine had somehow jeopardized by suggesting replacing all proper names by definite descriptions65. Indeed, true identity statements relating two proper names – such as “Monte Cervino is (identical with) Matterhorn” – appear to be necessarily true, since the two proper names which designate the same object in our world are rigid designators and designate the same object in all possible worlds. Conversely, identity statements involving definite descriptions which are not rigid designators – “the evening star is the morning star” or “Aristotle is the teacher of Alexander the Great” – allow unnecessary identity statements, since, according to Russell’s analysis, definite descriptions identify an object which actually satisfies some concepts but could satisfy some other concepts in other worlds. Now, since these 65 For many pioneers in modal logic such as Arthur Smullyan (“Modality and Description”, in Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 13, 1948, pp. 31-37), Frederic Fitch (in “The Problem of the Morning Star and the Evening Star”, in Philosophy of Science, vol. 16, 1949, pp. 137-141) or Ruth Barcan Marcus (“Modalities and Intensional Language”, in Synthese, vol. 13/4, 1961, pp. 308-311), the Russellian distinction between proper names and definite descriptions seemed indeed sufficient to give an account of extensional opacity.

82 identity statements involving definite descriptions are in fact disguised predicative statements, it can be said that all genuine identity statements relate two proper names and are thus necessary. And this conception indeed underlies the very first works in quantified modal logic, especially Ruth Barcan Marcus’ system, which does not explicitly use the notion of “rigid designator”, but states, as one of its axioms, the necessity of identity statements : (x)(y) [(x=y) ⇒ (x=y)]. This first conception, however, immediately encounters some of Quine’s criticisms. Indeed, the question arises of how proper names can be rigid designators, i.e. of how they can refer to one and the same object through several worlds even though this object changes – possesses different properties – from one world to the other. “Individuals, Jaakko Hintikka admits, do not carry their names on their foreheads; they do not identify themselves”66. Crossworld identification requires that objects possess some fixed “characteristics” (Merkmale) beside their contingent properties. Richard Nixon could have not won the 1968 election and still be the same individual entity; but could he have not been the son of Francis Nixon and Anna Milhous and still be the same individual entity? Or could he have not had the genotype he actually has and still be the same individual entity? In order for the proper name “Richard Nixon” to be a rigid designator, should it not be linked with some characterization of the entity which it designates, so that this entity, while changing some of its properties from one world to the other, can still be identified as Richard Nixon as long as it keeps some essential features or characteristics? This would lead to a form of “essentialism”, which would acknowledge that each individual entity has a specific essence or at least some characteristics which it keeps in all possible worlds and which allow us to identify it in every world. Such a conception, whose seeds Quine has already seen in Ruth Barcan Marcus’ first work67, has indeed 66 Hintikka, J., The Intensions of Intentionality and Other New Models for Modalities, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1975, p. 28. 67 Quine, W.V.O., “Reference and Modality”, op. cit., pp. 155-156. It should how-

83 been explicitly assumed by some tenants of quantified modal logic. As Saul Kripke states it : “The tags [i.e. rigid designators] are the “essential” denoting phrases for individuals, but empirical descriptions are not, and thus we look to statements containing ‘tags’, not descriptions, to ascertain the essential properties of individuals. Thus the distinction between ‘names’ and ‘descriptions’ amounts to essentialism”68. Now, not only is Quine’s nominalism repelled, but the whole foundation of analytic philosophy questioned, by such an essentialism. While all Frege’s heirs had done their best to sharply separate the basic objects, that are directly known by acquaintance, from the classifying functions, which are satisfied by some of these objects, it still seems that some properties are constitutive of basic objects. In opposition to Frege’s idea according to which only concepts – and pseudo-objects – can be defined by characteristic marks (Merkmale)69, it is here asserted that genuine objects are intrinsically characterized by some attributes, i.e. that they

ever be noticed that Barcan Marcus herself avoids the whole problem by adopting a substitutional interpretation of quantifiers (Barcan Marcus, R., “Modalities and Intensional Languages”, art. cit., pp. 314-316. See also her “Interpreting Quantification”, in Inquiry, vol. 5, 1962, pp. 252-259). 68 Kripke, S., “Discussion after Ruth Barcan Marcus’s Lecture February 8, 1962”, in Max Wartofsky ed., Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1963, p. 115. See also Kripke’s developments in Naming and Necessity, op. cit., third lecture, pp. 112 and sq.. Similarly, while defending quantified modal logic against his teacher, Quine’s doctoral student Dagfinn Føllesdal admits that “Aristotelian essentialism is unavoidable in quantified modal logic” (Føllesdal, D., Referential Opacity and Modal Logic, London, Routledge, 2004, p. 92). Føllesdal however claims that essentialism is not so much linked to the notion of “rigid designators” as to the interaction of modal contexts and quantifiers. As for Jaakko Hintikka, he denies that cross-world identification always requires characterizing the entity by its essential properties: “We cross-identify, not in terms of any priviledged attributes of our individuals, but by means of the continuity of these individuals in space and time” (Hintikka, J., The Intensions of Intentionality..., op. cit., p. 131). Hintikka however concedes that such a method only works for cross-identification of spatiotemporal entities in contexts of some propositional attitudes. As far as logical modalities are concerned, essentialism seems unavoidable (ibid., p. 132). 69 See in particular the preliminary draft of “Über Begriff und Gegenstand”, Engl. transl. in Posthumous Writings, op. cit., p. 111.

84 possess these attributes “regardless of the way they are referred to”70. In order to say that Richard Nixon satisfies but could have not satisfied the property of being “the winner of the 1968 American presidential election”, we first need to know that Richard Nixon necessarily is a man and he necessarily has the particular genotype he has. This means that basic entities are “thicker” than what was expected; like the intentional objects studied in Brentano’s school71, basic objects already have characteristics before being submitted to the theoretical classifying functions which they satisfy in some but not all possible worlds. All this questions the very notions of “basic objects” and “proper names”; and, in that respect, it is indeed very significant that Kripke analyses proper names like Moïse, Aristotle, Richard Nixon or Kurt Gödel quite the same way as conceptual terms for “natural species” like gold, water or tiger. If basic objects have a specific “nature” or at least some “characteristics”, could not rigid designators be considered as hiding descriptions which state these characteristics? This would account for necessity. Indeed, as the case of the expression “the only even prime number” already shows, some definite descriptions are satisfied by the same entity in all possible worlds, so that they behave like rigid designators when involved in identity statements. While “the evening star” and “the morning star” are identical in our world but not in all possible worlds, “the only even prime number” and “the positive square root of 4” are necessarily identical. The reason is of course that these definite descriptions involve concepts which are logically interrelated so that the identity statement is indeed analytical. Similarly, if “Richard Nixon” stands for “the person who has such and such a genotype” (i.e. we would not identify as Richard Nixon an entity which, in another world, would happen not to have this genotype even if he looked like our Richard Nixon and had won the American presidential election in 1968), he is not necessari70 Føllesdal, D., Referential Opacity and Modal Logic, op. cit., p. 92 71 Unlike Frege, Twardowski, for example, conceives characteristics not as the defining features of concepts but as constitutive parts of objects (Twardowski, K., Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, op. cit., § 8, p. 44, § 13, pp. 82-92, Engl. transl. pp. 41, 78-87).

85 ly the winner of the election but he necessarily has that genotype. But, Quine argues, would Richard Nixon have been identified as the winner of the 1968 election, the contrary would have been true. And, for Quine, this means that essentialism – the thesis that objects possess some attributes “regardless of the way they are referred to” – amounts to unfairly favouring one way of identifying the entity over the others72. Of course, this is not what the tenants of rigid designators claim. Even those who admit that crossworld reidentification of an object probably implies knowing its characteristics strongly reject the conclusion that rigid designators are hidden definite descriptions. On the contrary, they want to separate the objects designated by genuine proper names from those which are conceptually specified73, as well as distinguishing the necessary properties of the former from the analytical relations between the latter. The so-called “essentialism” of quantified modal logic precisely consists in the thesis that necessity is de re and not only de dicto, i.e. “resides in things and not only in the way in which we talk about things”74. That these “things” cannot be pure “de re objects”, or at least that they cannot be as simple as Russell’s basic objects, is however a point which Quine definitely made. Far from being the solution, the notion of “rigid designator” merely emphasizes the need for “some theory of individuation which accounts for identification of objects from one possible world to another”75. Though the development of such a theory “is not the business of a poor modal logician”76, it is, Hintikka says, a prerequisite of any quantified modal logic, as the very meaning of quan72 Quine, W.V.O., “Reply to Professor Marcus”, in Synthese, vol. 13/4, 1961, p. 330. See also “Reference and Modality”, art. cit., p. 155. This actually echoes a remark that Frege had already formulated in a footnote of “Sinn und Bedeutung” (art. cit., p. 58). 73 They want a “two sorted semantics” (Føllesdal, D., Referential Opacity and Modal Logic, op. cit., pp. XVII-XVIII). 74 Føllesdal, D., “Essentialism and Reference”, in L.E. Hahn and P.A. Schilpp eds., The Philosophy of Quine, Library of Living Philosophers, La Salle, Open Court, 1986, p. 104. 75 Føllesdal, D., Referential Opacity and Modal Logic, op. cit., p. 36. 76 Hintikka, J., Models for Modalities, op. cit., pp. 170.

86 tifiers in such logic depends on it77. At the exact opposite of the “rigid designators” view, a second answer to the question of whether crossworld entities are de re or de dicto appeared during the very first years of scientific investigation on quantified modal logic. This alternative conception consists in maintaining that basic objects are free of any conceptual definition and only contingently satisfy concepts, that there are thus no essences and that all necessity lies in analytical relations between concepts. From that point of view, it will be claimed that only pseudo objects, i.e. objects which are characterized by conceptual descriptions, can constitute crossworld entities and be said to necessarily possess this or that property. For example, the son of Francis Nixon and Anna Milhous is not necessarily the winner of the 1968 American presidential election – both concepts are independent of each other –, but he is necessarily, i.e. by definition, a human being. This second conception, which is held by Carnap in Meaning and Necessity, has the advantage of doing without essences, but the other side of the coin is the disadvantage of using semantical entities – “intensional objects” – as values for the variables which are bound by the quantifiers of the theories78. 77 “Since variables bound to quantifiers range over individuals, a method of individuation is an indispensable prerequisite of all quantification into modal contexts. A quantifier that binds (from the outside) a variable occuring in a modal context does not make any sense without such a method of individuation, and its meaning is relative to this method” (ibid., pp. 169). As a philosopher more than as a logician, Hintikka himself has provided some attempts at building theories of individuation. In particular, he has distinguished between perceptual and physical methods of individuation and shown that these methods lead to two different meanings of the existential quantifier (ibid., 171-177. See also Models for Modalities, op. cit., pp. 47-48). This, Hintikka argues, even gives some special sense to Quine’s thesis of the “indeterminacy of ontology” (Models for Modalities, op. cit., p. 38). 78 In his review of Quine’s “Notes on Existence and Necessity” (in The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. VIII, 1943, pp. 45-47), Alonzo Church had already suggested restricting the range of quantifiers in modal contexts to “intensional objects”. Later on, however, Church will change his proposal and adopt a kind of Fregean semantics, for which expressions designate their reference in extensional contexts and their meaning in intensional contexts (Church, A. “A Formulation of the Logic of Sense and Denotation”, in Structure, Method and Meaning. Essays in Honor of

87

Carnap indeed intends to solve the problem of intensional contexts by systematically distinguishing intension and extension for all linguistic expressions. Two conceptual terms which are satisfied by the same objects have the same extension and are thus equivalent (or F-equivalent), but they are L-equivalent only if they have the same intension – the same defining features – and can be intersubstituted in all contexts salva veritate. Similarly, two statements which have the same truth value have the same extension and are thus equivalent (or F-equivalent), but they are L-equivalent only if they have the same intension – the same propositional content – and can be intersubstituted in all contexts salva veritate. And again similarly, two singular terms – including proper names – which refer to the same individual entity have the same extension and are thus equivalent (or F-equivalent), but they are L-equivalent only if they have the same intension – the same conceptual content which Carnap calls “individual concept” – and can be intersubstituted in all contexts salva veritate79. From this point of view, extensional contents matter where the principle of intersubstitutability salva veritate holds not only between Lequivalent expressions, but also between (F-) equivalent expressions80. Outside these specific contexts, however, L-equivalence is the rule and properties (with their defining features) rather than classes, propositions rather than truth values and individual concepts rather than individual entities are at stake as it is for them that the relation of self-identity holds. While in Barcan’s system, necessity of identity – (x)(y) [(x=y) ⇒

(x=y)] – held between basic objects designated by proper names but not between pseudo-objects characterized by definite descriptions, this law holds, for Carnap, between the intensions of singular terms but not between their extensions. As Quine regrets but Carnap admits, semantical entities thus constitute the arguments of general – i.e. extensional and H.M. Sheffer, New York, Liberal Art Press, 1951, pp. 3-24). 79 Carnap, R., Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1947, § 3, pp. 13-16. 80 Ibid., § 11, pp. 46-51.

88 intensional – speech, though Carnap stresses that this does not for all that exclude extensions, which cannot be separated from intensions81. Let us make the consequences of this analysis immediately clear for singular expressions. In order to be able to speak of one and the same individual entity throughout the possible worlds – and, for example, to question the necessary or contingent nature of some of its properties –, our speech must take as its argument an individual concept, which will have an individual entity as its extension in each world. An individual concept is thus a function which picks out in each world or “state-description”82 the individual entity which satisfies this individual concept in that world83. This analysis, as we can see, fits well with singular expressions that are disguised definite descriptions, such as “Zorro”. But it forces us to consider proper names like “Walter Scott” as designating individual concepts which can get different extensions from one world to the other. That this is not satisfactory is of course a point for the tenants of rigid designators. Like a definite description, Jaakko Hintikka will say, a rigid designator is a function that picks out an entity in each world, but it is specific in that it picks out the same entity in each world84. Even though Carnap strongly stresses the fact that the link between linguistic expressions and their – two-sided – meaning should not be considered as a name-relation85, it is still obvious that here “intensional objects” “strike back”. Since the individual concepts “Walter Scott”, 81 Ibid., § 40, pp. 177-182, § 44, pp. 193-202. 82 A good analysis of what Carnap’s “state descriptions” lack to be proper “possible worlds” is provided in Hintikka, J., “Carnap’s Heritage in Logical Semantics”, chapter 5 of The Intensions of Intentionality..., op. cit., pp. 76-101. 83 Carnap, R., Meaning and Necessity, op. cit., § 40, pp. 180-181. 84 Hintikka, J., Models for Modalities, op. cit., pp. 101-106. See also The Intensions of Intentionality, op. cit., pp. 30, 89-90. Hintikka interestingly notes that, in epistemic contexts, the specificity of individuating functions can be challenged by the fact that the agent does not always know whom a rigid designator refers to. In such cases, Hintikka says, rigid designators “can be bent” (The Intensions of Intentionality, op. cit., p. 123). 85 Carnap, R., Meaning and Necessity, op. cit., chap. III, §§ 24-32, pp. 96-144.

89 “the author of Waverley”, “Zorro” or “Pegasus” are values of the bound variables of the theory, they enjoy some identity as well as some existence. What Meaning and necessity proves is that intensional contexts make Frege’s heirs´ strong nominalism unbearable and that they are forced to restore something like the intentional objects which had been theorized in Brentano’s school. As Quine states it, quantified modal logic “leads us to hold that there is no such ball of matter as the so-called planet Venus, but rather three distinct entities: Venus, Evening-Star and Morning-Star”86. Of course, this should not surprise us too much. Intentional objects had been thematised in Brentano’s school in order to give an account of the contents of intentional attitudes which quantified modal logic also tries to capture. And, as Jaakko Hintikka has shown87, the question of the relation of an object with his “Art des Gegebenseins” – a question which puzzled Brentano’s heirs as well as the early Frege – is strongly related to the question of the relation of an object with its counterparts in possible worlds. Interestingly, Hintikka’s work also shows that crossworld identification is much more plausible in intentional contexts than in the case of logical necessity and possibility since variations between possible worlds are much more restricted in such contexts – e.g. to the worlds that are compatible with an agent’s belief88. This even leads Hintikka to assert that quantification probably only makes sense in these modal contexts89, so that the areas of concern of quantified modal logic 86 Quine, W.V.O., “The Problem of Interpreting Modal Logic”, in Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 12, 1947, p. 47. In From a Logical Point of View (op. cit., p. 151), this thesis will be stated as “The planet Venus as a material object is ruled out by the possession of heteronymous names ‘Venus’, ‘Evening Star’, ‘Morning Star’. Corresponding to these three names, we must, if modal contexts are not to be referentially opaque, recognize three objects rather than one – perhaps the Venus-concept, the Evening-Star-concept, and the Morning-Star-concept”. 87 Hintikka, J., Models for Modalities, op. cit., pp. 92-93 ; The Intensions of Intentionality, op. cit., pp. 16-17, 81, 115, 195, 201-202, 207-208, 217-219, 235-236. 88 Hintikka, J., Models for Modalities, op. cit., p. 145 ; The Intensions of Intentionality, op. cit., pp. 87-88, 118. 89 Hintikka, J., The Intensions of Intentionality, op. cit., pp. X, 36-37.

90 and of the theory of intentionality eventually coincide. And, at this point, it would be interesting to show – which we will not do here – that the limitations of the extensionalist paradigm which emerged in quantified modal logic had already been pointed out from the very beginning by some Brentanian readers of Frege’s work. To take just one example, Edmund Husserl had addressed very early criticisms of Frege’s views on identity statements in the Grundlagen, criticisms which bear upon the same problems that will be, ten years later, at the center of Frege and Russell’s reflections on Leibniz’ principle of intersubstitutability and Frege’s principle of logical abstraction90, but also, fifty years later, at the center of the reflections on identity in modal logic. Now, all this does not mean that Brentano’s logical and ontological analysis eventually prevails over Frege’s logical and ontological analysis. Section 16 of Carnap’s Meaning and Necessity indeed shows that there is still quite a difference as to whether the arguments of quantified modal logic are considered in terms of “intentional objects” or in terms of “individual concepts”. While Meinong has to assert that Alexander’s horse is an actual object, that Alexander’s unicorn is a non-actual but possible object and that Alexander’s round square is an impossible object, Carnap can restrict himself to acknowledging the crossworld “existence” of the corresponding individual concepts and to asserting that the individual concept “Alexander’s horse” is not F-empty, that the individual concept “Alexander’s unicorn” is F-empty (i.e. factually empty, empty in the actual state-description, empty in “our world”) and that the individu90 On this see Claire Ortiz Hill’s work, especially Hill, C.O., Word and Object in Husserl, Frege and Russell, Ohio University Press, 1991 ; Hill, C.O., Rethinking Identity and Metaphysics, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997 ; chapters 1, 5 and 6 of Hill, C.O. and Rosado Haddock, G.E., Husserl or Frege ? Meaning, Objectivity and Mathematics, Chicago, Open Court, 2000. In chapters 2, 4 and 11 of this last book, see also Guillermo Rosado Haddock’s analyses on Frege and Husserl’s theories of sense and reference, as well as his interpretation of Frege’s law V of the Grundgesetze through Brentanians’ notion of “content”. For a reading of Husserl’s theory of meaning, which makes it an alternative to - rather than a pale imitation of - Frege’s, see also Jitendra Nath Mohanty’s work, starting with Mohanty, J.N., Edmund Husserl’s Theory of Meaning, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1964, §§ 6-11.

91 al concept “Alexander’s round square” is L-empty91. Crossworld “existence” comes to concepts rather than to objects. And if, unlike in Carnap’s system, quantified modal logic is developed around the notion of “rigid designator”, it is even possible to avoid admitting the existence of intensional entities altogether. Admittedly, Quine has shown that quantified modal logic working with rigid designators is not only committed to admitting the existence of basic objects in each world92, but also to admitting the existence of “individuating functions”, i.e. functions picking out a member – recognized as being the same one – from the domain of each possible world93. But, Hintikka argues, these “entities” are not part of our actual world (nor of any single world), and therefore are not part of our ontology: “The members of F [the class of individuating functions] are not members of any possible world; they are not part of anybody’s count of ‘what there is’. They may ‘subsist’ or perhaps ‘exist’, and they are certainly ‘objective’, but they do not have any ontological role to play”94. Does this lead us back to Meinong’s claim of the extraontological nature of intentional objects as pure objects of presentation? Not really; some significant difference still remains. In accordance with the analytic tradition, what is once again claimed here is the conceptual nature of these objects. Since, Hintikka says, their definition requires some conceptual and epistemological assumptions on possible worlds, they are part of our “ideology”95, and can perhaps only be called objects “by courte91 Carnap, R., Meaning and Necessity, op. cit., § 16, pp. 66-67. 92 « We cannot start from individuals. We can only arrive at them as outcomes of transworld comparisons » (Hintikka, J., The Intensions of Intentionality, op. cit., p. 33. See also pp. 122-124, 209-210). 93 Hintikka, J., Models for Modalities, op. cit., pp. 137-138; The Intensions of Intentionality, op. cit., pp. 31-32, 91. 94 Hintikka, J., Models for Modalities, op. cit., pp. 94-95. See also p. 105. 95 « Even such prima facie transparently simple notions as that of an individual turn out to depend on conceptual assumptions dealing with different possible states of affairs » (Hintikka, J., Models for Modalities, op. cit., p. 109).

92 sy”96. References Albertazzi, Liliana (2006). Immanent Realism. Dordrecht: Springer. Bolzano, B. (1929). Wissenschaftslehre (1837). Leipzig: Meiner, 1929, Vol. I. Partial English translation (1972). Theory of Science. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Brentano, F. (1924). Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Leipzig: Meiner, Vol. II. English translation (1995). Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. London: Routledge. Brentano, F. (1930). Wahrheit und Evidenz, Leipzig: Felix Meiner. English translation (1966) The True and the Evident. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Brentano, F. (1956). Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil. Bern: Francke Verlag. Brentano, F. (1977). Warheit und Evidenz. Leipzig, Barth, 1902. In: Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen, Eds. by F. Mayer-Hillebrand. (1977). Hamburg: Meiner. Carnap, R. (1928). Der logische Aufbau der Welt. Leipzig: Meiner. Engl. transl. (1967). The Logical Structure of the World. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Carnap, R. (1947). Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Church, A. (1951). “A Formulation of the Logic of Sense and Denotation”. In: Structure, method and meaning. Essays in honour of H.M. Sheffer. New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1951, pp. 3-24. Findlay, J.N. (1963). Meinong’s Theory of Objects and Values, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 96 Hintikka, J., The Intensions of Intentionality, op. cit., p. 54.

93 Fitch, Frederic (1949). “The Problem of the Morning Star and the Evening Star”. In: Philosophy of Science, vol. 16, 1949, pp. 137-141. Føllesdal, D. (1986). “Essentialism and Reference”. In: Hahn, L.E. and Schilpp, P.A. (Eds.) (1986). The Philosophy of Quine. Library of Living philosophers. La Salle: Open Court. Føllesdal, D. (2004). Referential opacity and modal logic. London: Routledge. Frege, G. (1960). “Sinn und Bedeutung”. Engl. transl. “On sense and meaning”. In: Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. (1960). Oxford: Blackwell. Frege, G. (1960). “Über Begriff und Gegenstand”. Engl. transl. (1960). “On concept and object”. In: Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 42-55. Frege, G. (1961). Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Eine logisch-mathematische Untersuchung über den Begriff der Zahl. Hildesheim: Olms. Engl. transl. (1953). The Foundations of Arithmetic. A logic-mathematical enquiry into the concept of number. Oxford: Blackwell. Frege, G. (1972). Begriffsschrift. Halle: Louis Nebert, 1879. Engl. transl. (1972). Conceptual Notation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Frege, G. (1979). “Sources of Knowledge and the Mathematical Natural Sciences”. In: Posthumous writings. (1979). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Frege, G. (1979). “Dialog mit Pünjer über Existenz”. Engl. transl. “Dialogue with Pünjer on Existence”. In: Posthumous writings. (1979). Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 53-67. Hill, C.O. (1991). Word and Object in Husserl, Frege and Russell. Ohio University Press. Hill, C.O. (1997). Rethinking identity and metaphysics. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hill, C.O. and Haddock, Rosado G.E. (2000). Husserl or Frege? Meaning, objectivity and mathematics. Chicago: Open Court.

94 Hintikka, J. (1969). Models for Modalities. Dordrecht: Reidel. Hintikka, J. (1975). The intensions of intentionality and other new models for modalities. Dordrecht: Reidel. Höfler, A. (1890). Philosophische Propädeutik. Erste Teil: Logik. Vienna: Tempsky. Husserl, E., Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, vol. III des Husserliana (Hua). Dordrecht: Kluwer. Jacquette, D. (1996). Meinongian Logic. The semantics of existence and non-existence. Berlin: De Gruyter. Jacquette, D. (2001). “Nuclear and extranuclear properties”. In: L. Albertazzi, D. Jacquette and R. Poli (Eds.) (2001). The School of Alexius Meinong. Aldershot: Ashgate. Kripke, S. (1963). “Discussion after Ruth Barcan Marcus’s lecture February 8, 1962”. In: Max Wartofsky (Ed.) (1963). Boston studies in the philosophy of science. Dordrecht: Reidel. Kripke, S. (1980). Naming and Necessity. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. Leclercq, B. (2007). « Que le mode de donation dépend du monde de constitution : l’intuition des idéalités ». In: Marc Maesschalk et Robert Brisart (Eds.) (2007). Idéalisme et phénoménologie. Hildesheim, Olms, pp. 187-200. Lewis, C.I. (1918). A Survey of Symbolic Logic. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marcus, Ruth Barcan. (1961). “Modalities and Intensional Language”. In: Synthese, vol. 13/4, 1961, pp. 308-311. Marcus, Barcan R. (1962). “Interpreting Quantification”. In: Inquiry, vol. 5, 1962, pp. 252-259. Marek, J.C. (2001). “Meinong on Psychological Content”. In: L. Albertazzi, D. Jacquette and R. Poli (Eds.) (2001). The school of Alexius

95 Meinong. Aldershot: Ashgate. Meinong, A. (1904). Über Gegenstandstheorie. Leipzig: Barth, 1904. Engl. transl. In: Roderick M. Chisholm (Ed.) (1960). Realism and the Background of Phenomenology. Glencoe: Free Press. Mohanty, J.N. (1964). Edmund Husserl’s Theory of Meaning. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Quine, W.V.O. (1943). “Notes on Existence and Necessity”. In: The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. VIII, 1943, pp. 45-47. Quine, W.V.O. (1947). “The Problem of Interpreting Modal Logic”. In: Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 12, 1947. Quine, W.V.O. (1959). Methods of Logic. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Quine, W.V.O. (1960). Word and Object. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press. Quine, W.V.O. (1961). “Reply to Professor Marcus”. In: Synthese, vol. 13/4, 1961. Quine, W.V.O. (1980). “On what there is”. In: From a logical point of view. (1980), second edition, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. “Rezension von : E. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik I”. Engl. transl. “Review of E. Husserl, Philosophy of Arithmetic I”. In: Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy. (1984). Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 195-209. Russell, B. (1905). “On Denoting”. In: Mind, 1905, vol. 14, n. 56, pp. 479-493. Russell, B. (1964). Principles of Mathematics. London: Allen and Unwin. Simons, P. (1984), “A Brentanian Basis for Leśniewskian Logic”. In: Logique et Analyse, vol. 27, 1984, pp. 279-307.

96 Simons, Peter (1987). “Brentano’s Reform of Logic”. In: Topoi, vol. 6, 1987, pp. 25-38. Smith, B. (1996). “Logic and the Sachverhalt”. In: Liliana Albertazzi, Dale Jacquette and Robert Poli (Eds.) (1996). The School of Franz Brentano. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 323-341. Smullyan, Arthur. (1948), “Modality and Description”. In: Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 13, 1948, pp. 31-37. Twardowski, K. (1894). Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Eine Psychologische Untersuchung. Vienna: Hölder, 1894; München: Philosophia Verlag, 1982. English translation (1977). On the content and object of presentation. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

IV. Causality: ontological principle or explanatory scheme? Anguel S. Stefanov Abstract: In St. Augustine’s way of speaking, I can declare that I know what causality is when I’m not asked to describe it, but don’t know when I’m asked. Herein I shall try to put some order into the existing controversy, by focusing on the answers to some crucial questions like “Do different forms or types of causality exist?” and “If so, is there a common feature that unites them as manifestations of one general principle?” A positive answer to the former question, and a negative answer to the latter, means that causality ought not to be construed as some universal ontological principle. Despite this, limiting ontological grounds of causality are outlined, and its importance in explanatory schemes is supported. Key words: central theory of causality (CTC), ontological principle, types of causality, meanings of cause and effect. 1. Introduction The disjunctive form of the title question was of choice. Not because I oppose the fact that an ontological principle may certainly possess explanatory functions, but to emphasize the possibility of causality not being regarded as some universal ontological principle, while at the same time retaining its guidance as an anthropomorphic landmark in the formation of explanatory contexts. If we leave aside various skeptical approaches, as well as the predilections of authors belonging to post-modern deconstructivism, in the European metaphysical tradition causality has been dressed in ontological garments. Explanatory schemes have been pinned onto them as decorations, since they were only meaningful as accompanying their ontological fabric. No causal relation, no causal explanation. But nowadays the ontological garments are being cut out in so many different ways that the only common element that seems to remain is the decoration.

98 Thus, following St. Augustine’s way of speaking, I can declare that I know what causality is when not asked to describe it, but don’t know when asked. Yet I’ll try to put some order into the existing controversy in attempting to answer the following two questions: (1) Are there uncaused (spontaneously emerging) phenomena? (2) Do different forms or types of causality exist and, if so, is there a common feature that unites them as manifestations of one general principle? For the purpose of furthering my analysis, I chose to pose these two questions as if they denoted two different problems. But they cannot obtain independent answers. (1) has no meaningful answer that is reachable in separation from the answer to question (2). If we don’t have a well defined concept of causality at our disposal, a concept covering all forms of causal relations, we will not be able to answer question (1). So, firstly, I’ll try to provide an answer to question (2). Secondly, the notion of uncaused phenomena will be elucidated on the background of what I dub “the central theory of causality”. And thirdly, I’ll argue that despite the lack of some generally accepted ontological conception of causality, valid causal relations construct the skeleton of plausible explanatory schemes. 2. Different types of causality The problem with question (2) is that it has a positive answer to its first component question, and, as it seems, a negative answer to its second component question. Indeed, one can readily speak of different types of causality, for at least two reasons. The first reason is that nowadays one can subscribe to different theories of causality (efficient, teleological, statistical, counterfactual, etc.), although one of them might be called the central theory of causality (CTC), since it bears a long metaphysical and scientific tradition. The second reason is that this central theory, working with the standard notion of efficient cause, is taken by many authors to be violated by examples coming from contemporary science. This, in turn, leads to different versions of CTC (e.g. relativistic causality), if the conceptual core of the theory is to be retained. Or, going further, we might cite the lapidary definition of D. Ross and D. Spurrett:

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Where there are multiple (for example mental and neural) causal claims about what happens in some part of the world, it seems to many philosophers that some of them must be false, unless we accept reduction or overdetermination. This is known in recent analytic metaphysics as ‘the causal exclusion argument’ (CEA).1 1 It is worth mentioning that arguable reasoning can be used pro and contra CEA. Different relations, pretending to connect shared observable events, one may claim, are erroneously taken to be causal relations, i.e. to have one and the same ontological backing. Thus CEA ought to be hailed as dispelling some century old delusions. Different relations, holding even in different ontological domains, an opposite contention might suggest, show that we can seriously defend a general concept of causation, insofar as these relations are similar in that they always lead to the emergence of new properties, or events, in one and the same way. Thus CEA is an exaggeration. Which of these arguments will be developed depends on the background metaphysical position of the (pr) opponents to CEA. 3. Difficulties confronting CTC CTC is the well-known theory of the efficient cause. According to it, something causes something else, if the latter always appears by necessity after the appearance of the former. Thus one can speak of the principle of causality, having in mind its standard formulation to the effect that every phenomenon in the world has its (efficient) cause – an ontological principle that has been embraced since ancient times, and surely at least since Leucippus and Democritus. In its standard construal, the causal relation presupposes two formal conditions holding among causes and effects. First, each effect follows its cause in time, and second, causation is an irreflexive, and an asymmetrical relation. This means that an event 1 Ross, Don and David Spurrett, “Notions of Cause: Russell’s Thesis Revisited”, Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 58 (2007), pp.50-51.

100 cannot be the cause of itself, and that an effect should not be looked upon as the cause of its cause.2 Described in this way, CTC has been acepted as a legitimate theory of causality, remaining in harmony with philosophical determinism, with classical science, and with common sense as well. But if so, could it not be accepted as the legitimate theory of causality, and all other “types of causality” be declared as stringently non-causal, though resembling causal relations, or arguments? We could, of course, make such a conceptual move, if there were not specific difficulties confronting CTC. They are of different kinds and threaten CTC in differrent ways. 3.1. Hume’s Criticism David Hume’s criticism of the principle of causality is well-known, so I will only make some brief remarks here. The central attack concerns the requirement of necessity by which the effect occurs after its cause has appeared. As John Hospers puts it “Those who attribute necessary connections to nature, or say that effects necessarily follow their causes, are going beyond anything anyone can observe. We never observe that one event must follow another but only that it does in fact follow another. We can attribute necessity to the relations among propositions (“If all A’s are B’s, then all B’s must be A’s”) but not to the sequences of events in nature.”3 If this claim were true, then the principle of causality would certainly be deprived of its ontological pretensions. This is why, in Hume’s interpretation, instead of causality one ought to speak of constant conjunctions among events, erroneously taken to be connected through a “causal” link (being realized by necessity). D. Hume’s position, so it seems, has affected thinkers like L. Wittgenstein, who support the belief that 2 A detailed analysis of these two features of the causal relation can be found in Weingartner, Paul. (2007). “Causality Relations in Laws of Nature”, in: Perspectives of Philosophy in the 21st Century. Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the International Academy of Philosophy. Athens, 2007, pp.43-45. 3 Hospers, John. (1997). An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. Routledge, London, p.142. His italics.

101 causes and effects are not related by a necessity operating in nature, since the only kind of necessity we can reasonably accept to hold to is logical necessity.4 3.2. Uncaused Phenomena If we admit that there is at least one phenomenon which has appeared, or may appear, without a natural cause, then the principle of causality would be violated. And, insofar as it is the ideological backbone of CTC, this central theory must either be rejected, or its general sphere of validity must be restricted in a proper way. What I’m interested in here is the answer to question (1) within the context of CTC. But before pointing to an answer, let me specify the very notion of phenomenon. I take this notion to possess a very broad extension. By phenomenon I mean every observable change, the appearance of some new natural object, or of some new property of it, some new relation among objects, i.e. any “happening”, whatever that word may indicate, with the only proviso being that the happening, or as I’ve chosen to call it – the phenomenon, is spatially and temporally separable from other phenomena, and is susceptible of a clear description. Each phenomenon is something that happens in the world, and does not coincide with the world as a whole, i.e. with the whole universe. The universe is not a phenomenon in the accepted sense; and given that, CTC hardly has the pretension of applying to what may be speculatively called the “cause” of the universe. So the answer to question (1) should encompass phenomena having no natural cause. There is at least one, albeit extremely vast group of such phenomena – the phenomena that occur because of acts of human free will. If we ever relate free will to something, it is to the mind, not to the body. Freedom as such is not a natural phenomenon, despite its readily bringing about various changes in the material surroundings of a freely acting subject. In other words, what I have in mind here is the classical (though having no widely accepted solution) problem about the com4 More about D. Hume’s influence on L. Wittgenstein can be found in Ayer, A.J. (1990). Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. Unwin Paperback, London Sydney Wellington, p.114.

102 patibility between ontological determinism and freedom. 3.3. Irreducibility of final to efficient causation I have no room here to dwell on the different interpretations of an end, to which a series of states or actions are directed, and which is usually called a final cause. It can be construed as a mere ending of a metamorphosis, or as a structural evolution of some well developed organ in a biological organism. This complies with Aristotle’s ontological conception that “a thing’s end is the actualization of its proper nature”. But it can also be understood as the end that possesses a peculiar meaning, and is pursued to be attained just for its existential meaningfulness.5 Both of these interpretations of a final cause, however, are irreducible to the concept of efficient cause, typical of CTC; while in Aristotle’s philosophy final and efficient causations “worked” in full harmony. After all, final causes are even more significant determinants guiding human life, and thus causing acts of meaningful behaviour, than efficient causes, being described mostly in their capacity as sheer technical means. 3.4. Backward Causation By “backward causation” some authors mean a non-standard causal relation, in which the effect emerges earlier than its cause, i.e. a situation in which the cause and the effect have changed their places in time. It is obvious then, that if backward causation could be observed, CTC would be seriously undermined. But how can such kinds of causation be conceivable? There are at least two thought experiments claiming the realization of backward causation, the first of which is a version of backward time travel. Backward time travel (as usually conceived) involves backward causation: for example, the time traveler’s arrival in the past is the causal consequence of an event in the future – the pressing of the button that

5 The considered distinction is well elucidated in Smith, Steven G. (1985). “The Causation of Finality”, American Philosophical Quarterly, 22 (1985), N 4, pp.311314.

103 activates the machine.6 The second thought experiment is concerned with objects moving with a speed greater than that of light in a vacuum.7 Using the language of the special theory of relativity, we can say that the world line of such an object is “spatial-like”, i.e. it is situated outside of the inner space-time of the light cone. For instance, imagine that we stand beside a gun that is shooting a bullet flying faster than light. Then in our reference system the act of shooting (the cause) precedes the explosion of the cartridge (the effect), as required by CTC. In the reference system of another observer, however, being in motion with respect to us, the explosion would appear before the act of shooting. In other words, this observer would be a witness to a backward causation. 3.5. Infringement of CTC in the Quantum Domain It is a well-known fact that many physicists and philosophers have accepted an infringement on the classical principle of causality in the quantum domain. The main reason for this is the fundamentally statistical behaviour of quantum systems, governed by their wave functions. The wave function is the only theoretical way of presenting the possible states of the atomic objects, and possesses a purely probabilistic interpretation. 4. Possible Responses 4.1. To Hume’s Criticism There are two possible ways of responding to D. Hume’s criticism. The first one is to reveal weak points in his argumentation. A peculiar weakness in this argumentation is presented by the claim that replacing “causation” by “constant conjunction among events” does not make any difference among cases, reluctantly taken to present one and the same 6 Dainton, Barry. (2001). Time and Space. Acumen Publishing Ltd., p.120. 7 Often the objection is heard that such speeds are banned by the theory of relativity. But that claim is not exact. The special theory of relativity only bans the possibility of a material object, moving with a speed lower than that of light and being accelerated, reaching the speed of light, because its mass would grow to infinity.

104 kind of relation. A good example in this sense, suggested by G.J. Whitrow,8 involves two clocks in a room, wound up in such a way that one of them always strikes whole hours before the other. But in this case, despite the strict conjunction between the strokes of the two clocks, one would hardly say that there is a causal nexus between them; while the effect of a billiard ball being set in motion when hit by another ball is readily avowed to be caused by this hit. The second possibility for a response involves a direct objection against expelling necessities from nature. It is usually accepted that a natural necessity is represented by some well formulated scientific law. To this effect, causal relations are taken to be expressed by natural laws. Again, a skeptical hindrance facing this contention might be based on the non-observable status of a necessity per se. Are there necessities in nature? It’s not very clear what the question is supposed to mean. Does it mean “Are there events in nature that must occur as they do?” And why do people say not only that stones do fall, but that they must fall?9 Objections to this skeptical stance may run as follows. Firstly, contemporary scientific knowledge is making use of many pure theoretical constructs, referring to unobservable entities like classical and quantum fields, space-time curvatures, quarks, etc, that are yet accepted to exert real influences in the physical world. These influences may be interpretted as necessary causal links if they pertain to established laws.10 Secondly, the answer to the question “Why do stones not only fall, if not supported, but must fall?” is that their motion is dictated by a natural law (the law of the mutual attraction between any two free material bodies) that is generally valid, i.e. it knows of no exceptions. For at least 8 About the fact that constant conjunction among events is neither enough, nor a sufficient condition, for the explication of causation, see Whitrow, G.J. (1961). The Natural Philosophy of Time. Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., London and Edinburgh, ch.VI.2.

9 Hospers, J. Op. cit., p.141. 10 For an analysis of how causal relations are expressed by laws of nature, see Weingartner, P. Op. cit.

105 one dynamical law strictly determines what will happen (a stone will fall), when specific conditions are present (a stone is left above the Earth’s surface without any support). A necessity could be modalized, of course, by attracting the resources of a logic of possible worlds. “Ordinary” necessity might hold for some worlds, and not for others, while “strong” necessity holds for all of them. But the reasoning deployed here is valid for any isolated world containing necessity, for instance, for the world we live in. 4.2. On Uncaused Phenomena From an ontological point of view, spontaneous (uncaused) phenomena violate the principle of causality, requiring that every phenomenon in the world have a (natural) cause. This principle (and hence CTC) can be saved, however, by looking at Kant’s transcendental interpretation of freedom. Formally, it is a generalization of the principle of causality, insofar as freedom is being captured by it. Determinism is no longer confronted with freedom, since the former encompasses the latter within the series of causes and effects. Non-formally, Kant’s solution, based on the affiliation of freedom with causality as “causality from freedom”, is in full agreement with his transcendental metaphysics. This is achieved after a critical re-evaluation of the classical ontological approach, offering putative, but doubtful solutions to our problem. Thus, one classical exit is the commitment to ontological dualism, admitting interactions between thinking and extended (material) entities (res cogitans and res extensa), which can barely be explained and which are relinquished by Kant at the very outset as a dogmatic metaphysical solution, relying on the uncritical involvement of substances. Kant goes down another route, paved by the transcendental resources of his philosophy. He looks at freedom from two compatible points of view: according to the acts of intelligence, construed as a transcendental subject, and according to their results, appearing as natural phenomena. In its empirical character, therefore, that subject, as a phenomenon, would submit, according to all determining laws, to a causal nexus, and in that respect it would be nothing but a part of the world of sense, the effects of which, like every other phenomenon, would unfailingly arise

106 from nature… “In its intelligible character, however (although we might only have a general concept of it), the same subject would have to be considered free from all influence of sensibility, and from all determination through phenomena: and as in it, so far as it is a noumenon, nothing happens, and no change which requires dynamical determination of time, and thereofre no connection with phenomena as causes, can exist, that active being would so far be quite independent and free in its acts from all natural necessity, which can only exist in the world of sense.”11 4.3. On the Irreducibility of Final to Efficient Causation Admitting the irreducibility of final to efficient causation certainly inflicts a conceptual blow to CTC in its quality as the theory of causation. Indeed, this fact cannot be an incentive for the rejection of CTC as a theory; the fact only requires a restriction over CTC’s region of validity. Of course one might ask why my interest is only directed at final causation, and not to the irreducibility of statistical or counterfactual causation to CTC. The answer is the following. As far as counterfactual causation is concerned, its reducibility to CTC seems to be unproblematic. It is true that it is valid for cases involving the explanation of events which are unique in their emergence, and have no repeated appearance, brought about after the regular appearance of one and the same cause. The counterfactual character of this type of causation is expressed by the fact that if event A is accepted to be the cause of event B, then non-B (B not occurring) is the case only if non-A (if A does not occur). But the causal mechanism, i.e. the mode in which A causes B, is covered by the conceptual structure of CTC. A good example to this effect is one taken from G.J. Whitrow, concerning the legend about the death of Aeschylus.12 The poor playwright was killed (event B), because a flying eagle dropped a tortoise which fell right on his head (event A). The unique event B would surely not have occurred, if the cause A hadn’t occurred, 11 Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason, A: 540-541; B: 568-569. Taken from the F. Max Müller translation, Anchor Books, Garden City, New York, 1966, pp. 370-371. 12 Whitrow, G.J. Op. cit. ch.VI.2.

107 but B was brought about by A in accordance with the necessity of natural laws of gravitation and mechanical motion. As concerns statistical causation, it is not of the same ontological order as that of efficient causation. While it does not presuppose a well determined singular phenomenon as an active real agent to produce another phenomenon as its effect, CTC is based on that presupposition. In other words, while statistical causation has been predominantly accepted as an explanatory scheme, CTC still suggests an ontological principle of causation. For its part, final causation shares the same ontological status with efficient causation, insofar as final causes arrange events within a well ordered sequence – as is the case with chains of efficient causes and effects – so that the final cause be attained. Hence, if one accepts final causation seriously (and not as a mere anthropomorphical way of explaining specific phenomena), then she has to avow the restricted validity of CTC. 4.4. On Backward Causation At first glance, backward causation does not pose a difficulty for CTC because both of the cases described in (3.4) are only imaginative, and not really observed - for now. Nevertheless, the possibility of such cases is not excluded in principal.13 In order for that the conceptual core of CTC be preserved, some authors speak of relativistic causality. This means that the causal connection among events is always realized only in the inner space-time area of the light cone, with a speed less than that of light in a vacuum. This limiting condition keeps all the features of CTC intact. 4.5. On Infringement on CTC in the Quantum Domain There are two possible, though unsatisfactory, responses to the claim that classical causality is being violated in the quantum domain. The first one points to the deterministic way in which the state vector 13 Not every idea about backward time travel is confronted with paradoxes, and superluminal speeds are known to physicists, e.g. the instantaneous connection between two separated elementary particles, observed in the experiments confirming the so-called APR-paradox.

108 (the wave function) of every free (non-interacting) quantum object evolves through time. The deterministic evolution of the state vector is secured by the fact that as a complex function it is a solution to Schrödinger’s equation, central for the mathematical apparatus of quantum mechanics. As already mentioned in (3.5), however, the wave function bears a purely probabilistic interpretation. It possesses no physical meaning, and does not refer directly to any property of quantum systems, subject to experimental observation. Acts of measurement are always accompanied by the so-called reduction of the state vector – an entirely indeterministic process. The second response is a suggestion peculiar to philosophers and scientists not wanting to abandon the conceptual comfort of CTC. The suggestion is simple: instead of saying that the classical principle of causality is violated, we may declare that a specific form of the causal relation holds in the quantum domain, usually named “probabilistic causality”. In other words, the suggestion resembles the already considered attempt at establishing relativistic causality as a specified version of CTC. But while the latter is a more or less successful attempt, the concept of probabilistic causality has never been adequately explained. The idea that this concept overlaps that of statistical causality is mistaken. Because classical and quantum probabilities are not of one and the same kind. Statistical causality can, for instance, account for the fact that among people suffering from lung cancer, smokers are a predominant group. For every concrete case, at least in principle, specialists could tell you why the suffering started, if they had the whole picture of the patient’s health status (e.g. the effectiveness of the cell reparation mechanism), together with all other relevant life conditions (exposure to radiation and smoke particles, kind of work, habits, and the like). Such an individuation, however, is impossible for the quantum domain. For example, in the case of nuclear radiation, nobody can tell exactly which of the atomic nuclei is going to decay at a given moment. Thus the expression “probabilistic causality” can have at best a metaphorical, but not a properly conceptual usage, in referring to the quantum domain.

109 4.6. Recapitulation The considered responses (4.1 – 4.5) to the difficulties confronting CTC (3.1 – 3.5) do not provide an equal defense of this classical theory. Response (4.1) serves its purpose well. The same could be said for (4.2), although, if we depart from Kant’s transcendental reasoning, we step into the field of classical determinism in its broadest construal, attracting the human will and desires to the side of natural causes and effects. Thus CTC is being formally rescued. No response is provided in (4.3), if we accept the active influence of final causes. (4.4) suggests an elaborated version of CTC in the form of relativistic causality, expelling backward causation as a strong counter-example, while (4.5) points to the lack of a consistent response to the quantum domain’s ontological challenge. Hence, the conclusion may be drawn that CTC is not a general ontological theory of causality. Yet we can still ask about its ontological grounds. 5. The ontological grounds of CTC In spite of the just reached conclusion, as was mentioned in the beginning of section 2, CTC has a long metaphysical and scientific tradition. Furthermore, there are even philosophers, who, especially after the skillful exhortation of H. Reichenbach, support the so-called causal theory of time14. Its grand, but unsound, pretension is explaining the direction of time through the ordered occurrences of consecutive causes and effects. After all, CTC seems to be a good explanation of the historically and culturally formed habitual graspings of causal relations (especially within the realm of modern European rationality). With all this in mind, on the one hand, and the conclusion that CTC is not a general ontological conception of causality, on the other hand, the question arises as to limiting its ontological grounds. This task requires keeping a close watch on the chief premises of CTC. We would reluctantly expel necessity from the causal relation, since the principle of causality would lose its principal character, and would be transformed into a Humean repeated conjunction among events. The 14 See Reichenbach, Hans. (1958). Philosophy of Space and Time. New York, ch.II, #21.

110 irreflexibility requirement is plausible enough to be relinquished, too. Indeed, it is hardly conceivable that there be a phenomenon in the world whose emergence is due to its self-causation.15 The claim that the causal relation is asymmetrical is a formal one, so we may ask what the ontological reason for its sustenance is. And here comes an easy answer. The relation is asymmetrical since it is widely accepted that the cause always occurs before its effect, its action brings forth the respective effect. Precisely this ontological presupposition, being at the heart of CTC proponents’ positions, may be critically reconsidered. And it has in fact been criticized - although rarely. As a classical theory of causality, CTC combines the claim that the cause is a sufficient condition for its effect’s appearance with Hume’s claim that causes precede their effects. R.G. Collingwood has noticed, however, that these claims have varied validity. As A.J. Ayer puts it: “Where Kant went astray, in Collingwood’s view, was in trying to combine the concept of a cause as a uniquely sufficient condition with Hume’s proposition that causes precede their effects. For it is only where a cause is used in the second of Collingwood’s senses that Hume’s proposition holds true. When I cause something, in the sense of producing it, I do no more than contribute what is at most a necessary element in a set of sufficient conditions, so that there is room for a time-interval between my action and the effect. But if the cause is a uniquely sufficient condition there is no room for any time-interval. It has to be simultaneous with its effect.”16 What this quotation implies is that the concept of cause, as commonly used, contains two meanings for its being a sufficient condition for the appearance of its effect. If the cause is the active agent among other conditions in “the production” of the effect, then it precedes its effect. But if it is “a uniquely sufficient condition”, then it occurs simultaneous15 Spinoza’s idea of causa sui is not a counterexample, since cause and effect, according to our stipulation (see 3.2), are taken to be separate phenomena, and not initial substances. 16 Ayer, A.J. Op. cit., p.206.

111 ly with its effect. Indeed, putting the complex idea of production aside, we may ask how a real and an active relation between two things is possible, if one of them is already existing as a cause (as “a uniquely sufficient condition”), but the other is not yet existing as an effect? If we stick to the common answer, that a process, originating from an object (a cause) brings forth some change in another object (which we call an effect), then we must accept that a causal connection exists between a process that is available, and a change that is yet not available.17 If we are not inclined to accept that queer inference, then we must repeat that “there is no room for any time-interval” between the cause and its effect, that the cause and the effect are simultaneous. Hence an action, stemming from the cause and directed to the effect, should not be pointed to as the ontological backing of causation. It is interaction that might pretend to be the limiting ontological grounds of CTC. And insofar as the interaction always possesses two sides as an aftermath, one of them is usually taken to be a cause, and the other – to be an effect. Imagine a child who energetically kicks a ball, and the ball breaks a first floor window of a nearby house. What is the cause of the window’s glass being broken? The flying ball is the answer. But what is the cause for the change in the ball’s flight? It’s going through the brittle stuff of the window glass is the answer. The example readily prompts an understanding of how meaning is conveyed to the concepts of cause and effect. According to our interest, we always interpret one aspect of the interaction as a cause, with the other aspect being taken to be the effect. Thus, in our example, the houseowner will say that the ball, kicked by the child, is the cause of his broken window, and will probably address the child’s father for compensation. While at the same time his guest, a speculative physicist, would contend that the cause of the abrupt change in the ball’s trajectory is its meeting the window glass. The conception developed here can also account for the fact that one 17 Cf. Muntyan B. (1959). “The Question of Causality and Some Problems of Physics”, in: Proceedings of the Institute of Philosophy (in Bulgarian). Vol.IV, Publ. House of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, 1959, pp.8-9.

112 of the CTC’s chief components is the readily accepted claim that causes precede their effects. The explanation for the wide support of this claim consists in the following. The acts of giving meaning to the concepts of cause and effect are dependent on the context of communication we are involved in. Going further, we see clearly why the conviction that causes and effects are separated in time is so strong. The reason for this is the subjective splitting of the results of an interaction into different aspects, which allows the isolation of different events, remaining more or less far from the moment of the interaction, to be determined as cause and effect. For instance, I can say that the levelling of a gun by a skillful hunter, or even his intention to come back home with a catch, caused the death of a wild rabbit, knowing at the same time that the direct cause was the interaction between the bullet and the rabbit’s body. Thus causes and effects, as construed by an amended CTC, are subjective, since they are determinable in the context of communication, but possess an objective genesis, due to the limiting ontological grounds of efficient causation. Causation is a complex topic; it may well come in different forms, and there are many competing accounts of it. The only thing that is clear and relatively uncontroversial is that finding an objective and non-temporal difference between cause and effect is a far harder task than one might have imagined, and thus a good many philosophers have concluded that there is no such difference. In which case, the causal asymmetry is not something that exists in reality, but something our modes of thought project onto reality, in somewhat the same way as (many would argue) we project colour onto the physical things we perceive, things that in themselves do not possess colour-as-we-perceive-it.18 6. Conclusion CTC, the standard theory of efficient causality, is often presented as a general ontological theory – something that is not that readily attributed to other popular conceptions of causality. It has been shown in the course of analysis that this view is wrong. One can say that the lack of a 18 Dainton, Barry. Op. cit., p.53.

113 general principle of causality is a pity for ontology. In spite of this, however, it has been also shown that CTC possesses limiting ontological grounds. The meaning of concepts like cause and effect has been elucidated in the construction of plausible explanatory schemes. References Ayer, A.J. (1990). Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. London Sydney Wellington: Unwin Paperback. Dainton, Barry. (2001). Time and Space. Acumen Publishing Ltd. Hospers, John. (1997). An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. London: Routledge. Kant, Immanuel. (1966). Critique of Pure Reason. F. Max Müller translation. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books. Muntyan B. (1959). “The Question of Causality and Some Problems of Physics”, in: Proceedings of the Institute of Philosophy (in Bulgarian). Vol. IV. Sofia: Publ. House of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Reichenbach, Hans. (1958). Philosophy of Space and Time. New York. Ross, Don and David Spurrett. (2007). “Notions of Cause: Russell’s Thesis Revisited”, Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 58. Smith, Steven G. (1985). “The Causation of Finality”, American Philosophical Quarterly, 22, N 4. Weingartner, Paul. (2007). “Causality Relations in Laws of Nature”. In: Perspectives of Philosophy in the 21st Century. Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the International Academy of Philosophy. Athens. Whitrow, G.J. (1961). The Natural Philosophy of Time. Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., London and Edinburgh.

V. The metaphysics of secondary qualities: defending responseintentionalism Nenad Miščević Abstract: The topic is the ontology of secondary qualities, properties that seem mind independent and categorical but, according to the line defended in this paper, are not; they are rather response-dispositional (or response-dependent). The final view to be proposed and defended is the view, dubbed “response-intentionalism”: for a surface to be of a colour C is to have a disposition to cause a response in normal observers, namely, an intentional phenomenal C-experience. Response-intentionalism follows on considerations of charity, i.e. minimizing and rationalizing the error of the cognizer, and inferring the best explanation: being red in a scientific sense is being such as to cause the response of (intentionally) visaging phenomenal red in normal observers under, normal circumstances. Key words: colour, secondary qualities, intentionalism, responsedispositionalism 1. Introduction Since the early modern age, secondary qualities—colours, smells, tastes--present both a challenge to metaphysics and an interesting promise. The challenge came originally from the contrast between the phenomenology of these qualities, which ascribes them to items in the world, and the scientific picture of the world as consisting of “atoms and void” exemplifying nothing remotely like secondary qualities. The promise resides in the possibility of generalization: if we had a satisfactory account of secondary qualities we could perhaps extend it to cover other problematic and philosophically even more interesting properties, like moral

116 and aesthetic ones. I am quite enthusiastic about this promise, but I will not discuss it here for reasons of space; I shall concentrate on secondary qualities, and colour in particular. . Imagine a person; call her Jane, looking at a ripe tomato. She sees a red surface. What is the redness she sees? The contemporary philosophical scene features a lot of answers, and a lot of approaches to secondary qualities, ranging from “primary quality” ones, which assimilate them to primary qualities (either nonreductionist, e.g. Campbell’s, or reductionist ones (see below for sources), ranging from neo-Lockean dispositionalist, response-dependentist ones [Johnston (1992)], [Peacocke (1983, 1984)], to projectivist approaches [Boghossian (2008)]1, [Maund (1995)]. My sympathies are with the dispositionalist, response-dependentist attitude, captured by Locke in his famous claim that “sensible qualities” are dispositions or powers to produce “ideas” in us: The power that is in any body, by reason of its insensible primary qualities, to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our senses, and thereby produce in us the different ideas of several colours, sounds, smells, tastes, &c. These are usually called sensible qualities. [Essay, Bk.II, Ch.VIII,22] Returning to the Jane examples: the redness she sees “in the tomato” is for Locke its disposition to make Jane have an “idea of red”, in present-day jargon, a red-type experience. Similarly, another person, call her, Lucy, sees an eggplant, and gets an “idea of purple” in response to its surface. The purple “in the eggplant” is its power to produce this response. In this paper I present my own version of the dispositionalist/ response-dependentist approach, to be called “response intentionalism”, RI, for short. I shall claim that the tomato’s being, say, red in the scientific sense is being such as to cause in normal observers under normal circumstances the response as of seeing phenomenal-red, experienced intentionally as a simple property of the surface of the tomato. RI thus replaces the traditional characterization of what is caused, of the “idea” from 1 The references in the paper are to [Boghossian, P. A., and Velleman, J. D. (2008)]. Colour as a secondary quality. Originally published in Mind 98, 81-103. 1989, and reprinted in [Boghossian (2008)].

117 the above quote, as being a sensation with an intentionalist characterization, more faithful to the actual phenomenology of the experience of secondary qualities as belonging to objects, rather than to one’s mental state. I shall begin by contrasting it to some extant alternatives. In section II, I shall present a sketch of Jackson’s view, and briefly present my criticism (with apologies for briefness, for space is lacking). In section III, we come to the positive proposal, namely RI. I shall follow the tradition in using colour as the main example of a secondary quality.

2. Against the primary quality view The two extremes in the metaphysics of secondary qualities are the primary quality views and the projectivist-eliminativist ones. Traditionally, the most popular primary quality view has been the just mentioned, non-reductionist view that secondary qualities are sui-generis properties, not identical to any underlying physical property. The view seems problematic nowadays both in physicalist and dualist frameworks, and we shall set it aside here. The presently most popular primary quality view is a reductionist one that sees secondary qualities as identical to physical micro-properties; basically, according to them, the surface colour is identical to reflectance properties of surfaces. 2 One of the most authoritative proponents of this version of the primary quality view of colour is Frank Jackson. In his “From Metaphysics to Ethics” he summarizes his main argument in the following way: I have to say that when we explain by citing a disposition, we are doing two things together: we are saying that the basis of the disposition, be it known or not, did the causing, and that what got caused has a special connection with the manifestation of the disposition of light to pass through something plays a special role in the causal path to what happens. (…) If follows, therefore; from the prime intuition that the colours are presented in colour experience, and so are causes or potential cau2 See [Jackson (1998)], [Hilbert (1987)], [Byrne (2003)], and [Matthen (2005)].

118 ses of things' looking one or another colour, that the colours are not dispositions to look coloured. They are instead the categorical bases of dispositions to look coloured. Moreover, the categorical bases of the dispositions are, we know, one or another complex of physical properties of the objects, perhaps in conjunction with their surroundings. [1998: 92] He reconstructs his argument thusly, using yellow as his example of colour: Pr.1. 'Yellowness is the property of objects putatively presented to subjects when those objects look yellow. (Prime intuition) Pr. 2. The property of objects putatively presented to subjects when the objects look yellow is at least a normal cause of their looking yellow. (Conceptual truth about presentation). Pr. 3. The only cause (normal or otherwise) of objects' looking 'yellow are complexes of physical qualities. (Empirical truth) Conclusion: Yellowness is a complex of the physical qualities of objects. [1998:93] Dispositions are not causes, in particular not causes of their manifestations. 3 Jackson notes: “when we explain by citing a disposition, we 3 Here is his further explanation: The dispositional theory of colour is mistaken because dispositions are not causes, and, in particular, are not causes of their manifestations. Their categorical bases do all the causing, whereby the categorical basis of a disposition in some object, I mean the property of the object responsible for its having the disposition; that is, the property that is responsible for the object's being disposed to behave in the way definitive of the disposition in question. Consider, to illustrate the point, a fragile glass that shatters on being dropped because it is fragile, and not (say) because of some peculiarity in the way it is dropped. Suppose that it is a certain kind of bonding B between the glass molecules which is responsible for the glass being such that if dropped, it breaks. Then the dispositional property of being fragile is the secondorder property of having some first-order property or other, bonding B as we are supposing, that is responsible for the glass being such as to break when dropped. And the first-order property, bonding B, is the categorical basis of the fragility. But then it is bonding B, together with the dropping, that causes the breaking; there is nothing left for the second-order property (second-order in the sense of being the property of having a property), the disposition itself to do. All the causal work is done by bonding in concert with the dropping. To admit the fragility also as a cause

119 are doing two things together: we are saying that the basis of the disposition, be it known or not, did the causing, and that what got caused has a special connection with the manifestation of the disposition [Ibid.]. Since colours are causes they must be “the categorical bases of dispositions to look coloured”. However, Jackson is aware that there is something irreducibly relational about these matters: the primary quality account should regard attributions of colour as relativized to a kind of creature and a circumstance of viewing. The primary quality account is the result of combining a causal theory of colour-the view that the colours are the properties that stand in the right causal connections to our colour experienceswith empirical information about what causes colour experiences. And a causal theory of colour takes as fundamental: colour for a kind of creature in a circumstance. [1998:95] The defenders of the opposite extreme, Boghossian and Velleman, have raised a host of objections to primary quality view(s). They are asking: what does an object look like when it looks red? [2008: 323]. The defender of the primary quality view might appeal to similarity classes: it looks like ripe tomatoes and British phone booths. The readers in the area will guess the objection to the answer: many of them might not know what British phone booths look like, but they still know, say, that blood is red. People may have the concept red without even having concepts of tomato or phone booth (Ibid.). The other answer is indexical (our authors call it Humean): “red looks like this”. It doesn’t help much. Finally, the defender of the primary quality view might use the locution “looks red” as primitive, but this leads him into circularity [2008:327]. A theory of colour must give us an epistemology of colour experience, and it must respect its phenomenology. The epistemological demand is conof the breaking would be to admit a curious, ontologically extravagant kind of overdetermination. Or consider what happens when a signal is amplified by an amplifier. Surely what causes the signal to increase is not the amplifier's being an amplifier, but rather whatever features the amplifier's designers put into it that make it an amplifier. [1998: 92]

120 nected to our knowledge of necessary relations between colours (hues); and the primary quality view has troubles accounting for it (although Matthen offers an interesting beginning of an answer). More importantly, the reflection on colour experience has the property of sufficiency: you need only reflect on your experience of red and orange to come to know that they are two distinctive colours. Explaining our knowledge of colour will force the primary quality theorist into admitting that in reflecting on colours we project sensations onto objects, though (s)he will claim that in colour experience we don’t; and this is clearly an unstable position. From my own vantage point, I would raise another objection to Jackson. Consider the main argument for the primary quality view. It relies on complete confidence in a very strong reading of the naïve theory, namely what Jackson calls “primary intuition” on colour. We can work with the rough schema: redness is the property of objects which typically cause them. To look red in the right way, where the phrase 'the right way' is simply code for whatever is needed to bring causation up to presentation, for whatever is needed to make the right selection from the very many normal causes of a thing's looking red. In particular; the rough schema gives us enough to show that the dispositional theory of colour is mistaken, or so I will now argue. [1989: 91] Of course, to return to Jackson’s earlier example, yellowness is the property of objects putatively presented to subjects when those objects look yellow. But it does not follow that the property putatively presented is presented truthfully as the normal cause in the strong, technical sense of “cause”, which excludes dispositions and the like (and which makes relevant Premise 3: The only cause (normal or otherwise) of objects' looking 'yellow are complexes of physical qualities.). Of course, on the naïve view, the object’s yellowness “makes me see” that it is yellow. But, this naïve assumption, which is, I agree, part and parcel of the phenomenology of colour experience, is twice removed from the context Jackson is forcing it into. Firstly, folk intuitions are silent on detailed issues of causation.

121 They often treat appeals to dispositions as bona fide answers to whyquestions; for instance: why should I eat broccoli if I want to feel better? Because it is healthy. (And why avoid certain chemicals? Because they are poisonous.) So there is nothing in the folk “primary intuition” that would mandate the strong, technical reading of Premise 2. Secondly, even if folk intuitions were thus technical, they might turn out to be a bit off the mark. In fact, most early modern theories of secondary qualities, with a possible exception of Descartes’s, were presented as resulting from empirical discoveries, not as armchair speculations from analysis of folk intuitions. Moreover, very disjunctive properties are not causes, any more than dispositions are. In contrast, as a good example, kinetic energy is, or participates in a cause, because it is a well-behaved item, with central examples, and not individuated essentially and relationally to our experience. In short, Jackson’s main argument does not prove much. Even worse, Jackson seems to go against his own theory of program explanation: disposition is a quite good program-explanandum, and this role is sufficient for it to satisfy the wide and relaxed folk notion of causing. Let us very briefly consider the opposite extreme now, the projectivist view claiming that visual experience cannot be adequately described without reference to intrinsic sensational qualities of a visual field; and second, that intrinsic colour properties of the visual field are the properties that tomatoes and phone booths are seen as having. (I am following the summary offered by Boghossian and Velleman in their work “Colour as a Secondary Quality” [2008]). The view does ascribe massive error to the naïve observer. Its proponents counter that charity is not needed in this particular area: first, it is holistic, and, second, the error, in this case, is nicely explicable. But the “particular area” of secondary qualities is huge, and analogous problems are encountered elsewhere, for instance in ethics and aesthetics, so that the lack of charity spreads over central parts of the “manifest image” of the world. No wonder one would like to take a middle road. 3. Response intentionalism Dispositionalism or response-dependentism offers just such a mid-

122 dle road. Let me start with two more famous quotes from Locke: Secondary qualities of bodies. Secondly, such qualities which in truth are nothing in the objects themselves but power to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities, i.e. by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts, as colours, sounds, tastes, &c. These I call secondary qualities. [Essay, II, VIII, 10] What I have said concerning colours and smells may be understood also of tastes and sounds, and other like sensible qualities; which, whatever reality we by mistake attribute to them, are in truth nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us; and depend on those primary qualities, viz. bulk, figure, texture, and motion of parts as I have said. [Essay, II, VIII, 14] Why is this middle way? The classical Lockean dispositionalist is to a large extent friendly to the naïve perceiver, and tries to salvage as much objectivity of colour as scientifically possible. She does ascribe some error to the naïve perceiver (and some understandable and venial error for all that), but is far from a full-blown projectivism which denies the existence of colour-in-the-objects. On the cognitive side, the present day follower of Locke could claim, as I did in my [1998], that people are presented mostly with properties that seem mind independent and categorical. They start with concepts that are meant to stand for such categorical properties. However, many thus presented properties are not independent and categorical, but response-dispositional. Discovering this fact, in the case of colour, requires a lot of cognitive effort “against the current”. And, at the end of the day, people settle for sophisticated conception(s) of such properties that represent them as response-dispositional. Critics of the traditional dispositionalism (or response-dependentism) have been quick to point out the problems with its interpretation of the subjective side of the colour-constituting relation. The Lockean “idea” is too vague for contemporary philosophical tastes, and has been

123 interpreted in ways that dramatically contradict each other, and range from sensation through image (Ayers) to external property (Yolton). Contemporary versions of the traditional view are much more precise, but equally risky. Take Peacock’s intrinsic property “red’ on the subjective side of the relation: the redness-constituting disposition is to appear in the portion of a visual field having the intrinsic sensational property of being red’ [1983]. To stay with our chosen critics, Boghossian and Velleman [2008, ch. 13] immediately note that visual experience does not distinguish between the subjective field and qualities of objects. And they challenge Peacock’s model by taking it literally: visual field, according to it would represent objects, and sensational qualities, but independently of each other. Say, tomato on the objective side, and ‘red’ sensation of the subjective. But this would be like pain, they suggest. When I cut myself with a knife, the sharp edge of the knife is there, in the world of knives and forks, and the pain is in my tactile field. The two are disjoint. This is not how visual experience represents the colour of objects. Here is a related problem for the sort of sensationalism formulated by A. Byrne [in his 2000]. Assume: X looks P to O, but O does not believe that X is P. Thus O has P’-sensations and by 1, no corresponding belief. By the classical sensationalist theory, X does not look P to O. Therefore classical sensationalism is false. Byrne helpfully introduces the name of “natural sign theory” for theories that combine the following claims: “Imagine that someone is looking at an eggplant, and sees that it is purple. If we apply the basic outline of the natural sign theory to the perception of the eggplant’s colour, what is going on? Firstly, a property of the eggplant causes a certain sensible effect in the perceiver: a purple´ sensation. Secondly, she becomes aware that this sensation is purple´. Thirdly, she forms the belief that the eggplant has the power to cause purple´ sensations (i.e. she believes that the eggplant is purple.) End of story.” Next comes the criticism: Of course the eggplant will look purple, or visually appear purple, to the perceiver. The natural sign theorist can say that this simply amounts to the

124 fact that she believes that the eggplant is purple and has a purple´ sensation. But now imagine that our perceiver does not in fact believe that the eggplant is purple—she suspects, say, that the lighting conditions are abnormal. The eggplant will still look purple to her. And this cannot be accomodated by the natural sign theory.” [p.28] So, our appearance theorist faces a dilemma. Either a) K-effects are represented as dispositions to cause K*-effects causing K**-effects, etc. b) K-effects are not represented as dispositions. If a) then we have regress. If b), then K-effects cannot be represented dispositionally. But, then, P can also be represented non-dispositionally (X can be represented simply as having P), and dispositionalism is not proved. Here is Byrne’s formulation: “One obvious problem is that eggplants don’t appear that way.” But that is not all. “There is a more fundamental difficulty. Effects of kind K might require unpacking as effects that are themselves causes of yet further effects K*, but clearly this process has got to stop somewhere, so let us assume for simplicity’s sake that it never gets started. Perception, then, although it represents the eggplant as having some property that causes such-and-such effects, does not represent the effects in this way. But the appearance of purple is not the appearance of a property that causes particular effects, as Byrne himself notes, as a first objection. So, why should the response-intentionalist build this appeal to effects into the (de dicto) content of appearance? Here is Byrne’s answer: But once this is conceded, there is no obvious reason for treating eggplants any differently from effects: the eggplant can appear purple without it appearing to have some property that causes effects of kind K. So the natural sign theory leaves out the appearances. Adding the appearances in, however, leaves the natural sign theory without visible support.” [Ibid.] Of course, naïve beliefs about colour treat colour the same way they

125 treat eggplants. There is no obvious reason to treat them differently. But there are reasons, rather non-obvious to the “naked eye”, culled from colour science. What I propose is that we take the sameness of treatment seriously. What folk describes as “colour” is seen as the property of the surface, on a par with shape. And, what folk describes as “colour” seems to be a simple, self-manifesting property. Such a property is “intentional”, not there in the object, say eggplant, but “seen” to be there. So, we should take this characterization in our specification of the subjective side of the definition of colour. Call the intentional colour-related properties, “seen” on the surfaces “colours*”, e.g. red*, purple* etc. Being red is then having a disposition to produce a certain response in the observer, i.e. to appear red*. Since the appearing is on the intentional side, I am calling the proposal response intentionalism (RI). Let us retrace the steps that lead to it, and discuss them briefly. In order to have an expression neutral between “seeing” (“perceiving”) and mere “seeming” with which to characterize the intentional experience of colour*, let me borrow a term from R. Millikan [2000], and call the intentional act “visaging”. Let me then introduce the first premise of my defense of RI. 3.1. Full phenomenal red is being visaged (intentionally experienced) as being on the surface of the tomato. (A datum) The datum is both obvious and robust. It crucially distinguishes the experience of colour from the experience of pain-causing devices. Locke’s mana ( a laxative inducing stomach pain), a device that produces pain in the thumb, say a thumbscrew, or an imaginary pain-producing surface, like those in Wittgenstein’s thought experiment are, or would be, experienced in a quite different way. Victim’s perceptual apparatus does not ascribe to those a phenomenal property corresponding to their pain-producing power. The power is experienced as an affordance, a negative one for non-masochists. In experiencing the redness of the surface, Jane does not experience additional “subjective qualities” of the surface. The redness is transparently on the surface [see Crane, 2001, section 43]. If Jane’s red experience changes, so does its intentional content: as Crane puts it, “the pheno-

126 menal character of experience is determined by intentionality of experience” [2001:144]. The most prominent objection to premise 1, suggesting that ultimately, phenomenal red is not intentionally experienced comes from the Inverted Earth thought experiment, famously proposed by N. Block. I prefer to opt for moderate externalism. To take a leaf from F. Macpherson (forthcoming), one line open to the externalist is to claim that the reference of colour contents stays fixed on the Inverted Earth; the traveler’s red-visaging states go on referring to red to the end of his days. Again, intentionalism should be distinguished from a move, denounced by Block, the so-called fallacy of intentionalizing qualia, i.e. the supposition that experiential contents that can be expressed in public language such as looking red are qualitative contents. [Block (1990):55]. Byrne discusses a theory that might resemble RI. We start with natural sign theory, which defines colour in terms of some effects of kind K, Keffects for short. according to the natural sign theory, all that can be gleaned from perception (as far as colour is concerned) is that the eggplant has some property that causes effects of kind K. Therefore appears purple must be construed as appears to have some property that causes effects of kind K. [Ibid] Add representational content: X appears P to O. (The RI theorist might propose the same). But, he says: this is not enough. By natural sign theory, all O has to go by is property causing effects. 3.2. Full phenomenal red* is not on the surface of the tomato. Science tells us that no simple physical property of the surface of the tomato comes even close to playing the role of such a property. Reflectance properties yielding the visaging of red are motley. Note that the full phenomenal red is not presented as a disjunctive property, nor as a disposition. There is a panoply of well-known science-derived and science-backed reasons in favour of 2. The main ones concern perceptual variation and metamerism. Of course, the defenders of non-dispositionalist options have proposed various counter-maneuvers and –arguments, and they should be properly addressed. Let me here briefly address one

127 of them. It has been objected by Stroud that accepting the scientific, “unmasking” premises, like our 2, leads the theoretician to believe that there are no colours; but that the theoretician must be able to “identify perceptions as perceptions of this or that colour without himself ascribing any colour to any physical object”, and this “cannot be done” [2002: 245; the argument is deployed at length in 2000, Ch. 7]. However, this objection underestimates the possibilities of bootstrapping: in his own case, the unmasking theoretician starts with the full panoply of common sense beliefs, and then proceeds by weakening them, as his theorizing progresses, going from “this is red” to “this looks red to me”, where the content of “red” accordingly changes.4 3.3. Full phenomenal red is not a property of a subjective state (From Transparency). Even the most enthusiastic defenders of qualia would agree that full phenomenal red is not presented to the subject herself as a quality of experience, but rather as a property of object. Intentionalism only enforces this point. Unfortunately, both claims, 2 and 3, attribute a certain error to Jane. But, no one is perfect. And our everyday experiences and folk conceptualizations offer no guarantee of being error-free. Jane’s error might be like the folk error of taking “up” and “down” as absolute properties of space. It is not dramatic, but it is an error nevertheless. Charity in interpretation dictates that we don’t see folk as referring to nothing whatsoever when referring to directions conceptualized in the absolutist, folk way. Rather, they are best interpreted as managing to refer to the property that is the closest cousin to the intended one. The point is not just in minimizing the error, but also in rationalizing it, making it intelligible. 4 Jackson has proposed the view that colour is a role property with similarity relations (colour circle) determining the role, and various reflectances are realizer properties. But the structure of the colour circle is explained by our cognitive organization. The similarity structure is due to us, so the “role property” is not mind-independent in the requisite sense. And the realizer properties realize the role property by causing experiences with the requisite similarity structure. Once this is accepted, the role account turns into a version of dispositionalism.

128 Charity and inference to the best explanation go hand in hand. The traditional dispositionalist or response-dependentist thesis honors both. It captures the fact that the closest actual referent for colour concepts and expressions is the disposition of surfaces to cause the target intentional states. And it does this stressing in the right order of determination: what makes a surface red is its state-causing power, and not the other way around. Many think that any dispositionalist theory that, like our RI, takes an intentionalist view of the content of colour experience is simply an error theory. Stroud is very explicit about this, dedicating almost an entire chapter (the seventh one of [2000]) to the issue. Even the early Johnston, who is arch response-dependentist, suggests this might be the case (Postscript to his 1992 paper, see the reprint in [Hilbert and Byrne (1997)]). However, RI is not an error theory in a literary sense. It alleges partial and venial error, and this is exactly what we do encounter in the case of colour experience. The response-intentionalist uses considerations of charity and infers the best explanation in order to find the middle way between the eliminativism suggested by 2. and 3. and the commonsense conviction of reality of colour. He also takes into account important epistemological considerations about human capacities to recognize similarities and contrasts of colours. 3.4. Being Red in the scientific sense is being such as to cause the intentional response of visaging phenomenal red* in normal observers (as they actually are) under normal circumstances (as they actually are). (Response-intentionalism, RI for short) Of course, all this needs much more arguing (a slim book might do), but here I can only try to expand on this conclusion by discussing the most frequent criticisms encountered in the recent literature. An obvious line of criticism of RI as formulated is that rigidification (i.e. relativisation to actual observers and circumstances) runs counter to the secondary quality status of colour. Let me put its point in terms of conditionals about red. Consider the counterfactual: if our cognitive makeup were different, ripe tomatoes would not be red. This counterfactual, if true, would ground the response-dependent character of red in the order of determination: it is our makeup that ma-

129 kes ripe tomatoes red. Rigidification blocks the use of such counterfactuals, so it threatens to block the appeal to order of determination, and collapses the primary-secondary quality distinction. Paraphrasing Stroud, to relativize the definition of colour to how observers and circumstances are right now in the world, would be to identify red as a nondispositional property of objects. In his eyes this way of taking it would even be compatible with the claim that what causes our perception of red is the property of being red; it could be because objects are red that, as things happen in the world right now, they are disposed to produce what we all recognize as perceptions of red. That is presumably what is true in the case of shape. [2000:125 ff]. 5 The answer is that it is not the problematic counterfactual, but the whole scheme of explanation that accounts for the right order of determination. We explain the property of being red in terms of, inter alia, contributions of the human cognitive makeup, in the way that makes its dependence on that makeup obvious. It is the explanation, and not the counterfactual dependence that grounds the subject-to-object order of determination. Another standard criticism, often put forward both from eliminativist and from primary-quality view philosophers concerns problems with defining (what counts as) “normal”, and with the appeal to subjective “look” in determining what is of what colour [Hardin, 1993]. The criticism is usually phrased so as to suggest that the problem is somehow unique to the dispositionalist (response-dependentist). This is misleading and unfair.6 To see this, consider the disjunctivist, Jacksonian variety of realism. It relativizes redness to particular observers and circumstances. But what makes these observers competent red-detectors? The question has prompted early contemporary colour-realists, like Smart, to attempt eschewing appeal to subjective experience completely [1997]. But, whatever criteria a Jacksonian uses to pick out a person, our Jane, as a competent red-detector, we, the response-dependentists, can refuse to pick 5 Jackson and Smith, in their recent paper [2000], use this consideration to reconcile (minimal) response-dependence with primary quality status. 6 On the issue of variation in the experience of colour, compare the debate between G. Harman, S. Shoemaker and E. Sosa in [Villanueva (1996)].

130 her out as a colour-normal person. Realists do not mention observers and normality in their definition of colour; this does not mean that they do not have to face the same problem as response-dependentists and, for that matter, as everybody else. Or consider another option, the dynamical view put forward by J. Broackes and mentioned above: to be dark blue is not crudely to have a disposition to present a single appearance…; it is to present a variety of appearances in a variety of kinds of lightning, according to a constant pattern. [1997: 215] But how do you characterize light phenomenally? By its effect on observers, i.e. by typical experiences they have in relevant circumstances. Broackes himself has been working for years on less than normal observers, mostly dichromats, and his work has interesting and challenging consequences on both issues: first, who counts as normal and by what standards, and second, what kind of experience counts as being an instance of experiencing red. In short, every theory of colour has to address the issue of how to identify looking red, and most have to cope with addressing the normality problem. Both problems are vexing, but they say nothing at all against response-dependentism in particular (nor against its response-intentionalist variety), being completely general and practically almost everybody’s problems. A more recent criticism, raised by Stroud, alleges that response-dependentism (and, by implication, RI) is bound to separate colour concepts from colour perception [2000:119, 138]. Along these lines, response-dependentists (including, the defenders of RI) claim that (a) our thought of objects as coloured is dispositional in content (e.g. “The surface of this tomato is such-as-to-have-the tendency-to-cause-red-experiences”, but (b) perception of objects as coloured is categorical. (e.g. “I see that the surface of this tomato is red”). Therefore, the proposition believed (in our example the one expressed within the second brackets) is not the proposition seen (the one within the first brackets). As Stroud puts it, what we think or believe to be true in cases of what seem to be propositional seeing is not really the very same as what we see to be

131 true. The same thing is not both seen and believed. If this is true, things really look bleak for the response-intentionalist. The option of claiming that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as propositional seeing, at all, is a non-starter, as Stroud rightly observes. And the view that the contents of seeing and believing are dramatically different wreaks havoc with our ordinary treatment of perception. Stroud notes that the object of perception and thought are the same in the case of shape; so how come they are not in the case of colour. Isn’t colour visible? On the other hand, if the response-intentionalist tried to avoid the asymmetry by equating the two contents, he would immediately run into trouble with regress (as often noted, and with particular clarity and detail by Boghossian and Welleman... If redness is a disposition to cause experiences of looking red, then Jane’s seeing red would be unpacked as Jane’s seeing a disposition to cause experience of looking like having a disposition to cause experience of looking like …So, the choice is between utter implausibility and a catastrophic regress. I don’t believe RI is committed to seeing-believing asymmetry. The reason is simple. We should distinguish the naïve colour concept from the sophisticated colour concept. The naïve concept is, of course, categorical (this is what is wrong with it). So the content of naïve belief is the same as the content of naïve perception. And there is no regress. The difference only comes into play with the sophisticated concept used to elucidate both the referent (and not the conceptual content) of the naïve belief and the referent (not the phenomenal content) of naïve perception. The alleged asymmetry is not between seeing and believing, but between naïve seing-cum-believing and the sophisticated explaining of both. And this asymmetry is not problematic, but normal and welcome, being an instance of many asymmetries between the manifest and the scientific image. Why else would we need science and inquiry, if all that is manifest were identical with its deep structure? But what should the sophisticated believer believe once confronted with a ripe tomato in broad daylight? Both that she is “seeing” (in the sense of having visual experience of) phenomenal red, and that the property underlying the property intentionally experienced is the disposition to produce experience of precisely that present kind. Consider now the desiderata spelled out by our projectivist. A theo-

132 ry of colour must give us an epistemology of colour experience, and it must respect its phenomenology. The second requirement is clearly satisfied: an important argument for RI is that colour is phenomenally experienced as belonging to objects (even problematic ones, like afterimages), not to sensations. The first includes accounting for our knowledge of necessary relations between colours. Here the projectivist is half-right: what we know are necessary relations between colours* as visaged; however, some conspicuous relations between dispositions follow relations between their normal effects. Take red and green: the visaged colours* of red* and green* are experienced as incompatible, so the dispositions to produce them, i.e. red-in-the object and green-in-the object can hardly be co-instantiated. But why? We now know that the impossibility is primarily due to our cognitive organization: it is our processing channel that by its construction assigns to the respective reflectance profiles, responsible for red* and green*, the two sharply contrasted outputs. The two are contrasted-for-us. Compare a chemical substance that is healing in small doses, but poisonous in larger ones. The trio reflectance profile-colour (i.e. disposition)-colour * is paralleled by the trio chemical composition-disposition-effect. In the second case, a slight difference in the disposition basis turn into dramatic contrast in dispositions, thanks to the specific vulnerability of our organism, and the contrast is clearly readable from the respective final effects. Consider now the property of sufficiency: to adapt the example above, you need only reflect on your experience of red and green to come to know that they are two contrasting colours. The projectivist is half right: we project red* and green* onto the visible surfaces. However, by doing so, we correctly classify the red (-in-the objects) contrasting it with green (-in-the-objects). This does not give us knowledge in the strictest sense, since the classification involves both a tinge of error (we erroneously see the surface as being objectively red*, not as merely having the right disposition), and an element of luck (effects do successfully classify the dispositions to produce them, although in the case of colour, we are not aware that this is the basis of our modest cognitive success). Still, it is better than (the projectivist’s) nothing.

133 4. Conclusion Let me reiterate the main arguments of this paper: 1. Full phenomenal red, call it red* is being visaged (intentionally experienced) as being on the surface of the tomato. (A transparency datum clarified by Crane) 2. Full phenomenal red is not on the surface of the tomato. (From science) 3. Full phenomenal red is not a property of a subjective state (From Transparency). Therefore (by principles of charity and by inference to the best explanation) 4. Being Red in a scientific sense is being such as to cause the response of visaging phenomenal red in normal observers under normal circumstances. (Response-intentionalism). Let me just mention further prospects for generalizing this approach to secondary qualities in general. Generalized to secondary qualities in general, the view yields response-intentionalism about secondary qualities. Generalized to secondary qualities in general, the view yields response-intentionalism about secondary qualities. I share Shoemaker’s intuition (also mentioned by [Crane, p. 147]) that our concepts of other such qualities, flavour in particular, are more ‘subjective’ than our naïve colour-concepts. In his view, “our dominant interest in classifying things by flavour is our interest in having certain taste experience and avoiding others, and not our interest in what such experience tells us about other matters” [1994, cited from Hilbert and Byrne, 1997:238-9]. I would add smell to the list. Here then is the generalized argument: I)

II) III) IV)

A quality Q* is being visaged (intentionally experienced) as being a bona fide property of some item I in the world, a material object of a physical event. (Transparency ) Q* is not a bona fide property of item I. (From science) Q* is not a property of a subjective state (From Transparency). Therefore (by principles of charity and by inference to the

134 best explanation) V) There is a corresponding property Q in the objects, and it is such as to cause the response of visaging Q* in normal observers under normal circumstances. (Response-intentionalism) VI) Q* tracks objective Q (i.e. PQ causing disposition). VII) Q* manifests the objective dispositional property Q. This line of reasoning seems to solve the “location problem” for secondary qualities better than the alternatives proposed. But there is a long way to go between pointing to a seeming solution to actual proof that the solution is the right one. That task I must to leave to some further occasion. References Block, N. (1990). Inverted Earth. In Philosophical Perspectives 4, Eds. J. Tomberlin. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview. Boghossian, P. (2008). Content and Justification, Oxford University Press. Broackes, J. (1997). “The Autonomy of Colour”. In: Byrne, A., and D. Hilbert (Eds.). (1997). Readings on Colour, Volume 1: The Philosophy of Colour. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Byrne, A., and D. Hilbert (Eds.). (1997). Readings on Colour, Volume 1: The Philosophy of Colour. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Byrne, A. (2000). “Colors and Dispositions”, web, Draft 7/10/00. Crane, T. (2001). Elements of Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hilbert, D. (1987). Color and Color Perception. Stanford, CA: CSLI. Jackson, F. (1998). From Metaphysics to Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnston, M. (1992). How to speak of the colours. Philosophical Studies 68, 221-63. (Reference to the reprinting in Byrne and Hilbert 1997.)

135 Macpherson, F. (forthcoming). “Colour inversion problems for representationalism”. Matthen, M. (2005). Seeing, Doing and Knowing, A Philosophical Theory of Sense Perception. OUP Maund, Barry (1995). Colours, Their nature and representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Millikan, R.G. (2000). On clear and confused ideas. CUP. Miscevic, N. (1998). “Apriority and response-dependence”. In Menzies, P. (Eds.) (1998), Secondary Qualities Generalized, The Monist, v. 81. Peacocke, Ch. (1983). Sense and Content. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Peacocke, C. (1984). "Colour Concepts and Colour Experience", Synthese, v. 58, no. 3. Shoemaker, S. (2003). “Content, Character and Colour”, Philosophical Issues, v. 13, Philosophy of Mind, 253- 278. Sosa, E. (1996). ”Is Colour Psychological or Biological? Or Both?”, Philosophical issues, 7. Perception, 67 -74. Stroud, B. (2000). The Quest for Reality. OUP. Stroud, B. (2002). “Reply to Boghossian and Byrne”, Phil. Studies, 78, 239-247. Villanueva, E. (1996). Perception, Philosophical Issues, 7. Ridgeview, CA.

VI. Process ontology in the context of applied philosophy Vesselin Petrov Abstract: This paper considers process ontology in the context of applied philosophy. The aim of this paper is to outline its present state and argue that process ontology as applied ontology holds promise, both in the philosophical and the technological sense of the term ontology. The results consist, firstly, in some new generalizations regarding the use of process ontology as technology, and secondly, in arguing for the methodological role of process ontology as philosophy on the basis of a combination of both top-down and down-top approaches. The paper will be useful first of all for philosophers who are interested in its applications and its methodological function, but it may also be useful for computer scientists, engineers and other specialists who are interested in ontology as technology. Key words: applied philosophy, applied ontology, process ontology, applied process ontology, ontology as technology, methodology.

The topic of the paper involves the present state and future perspectives for process ontology in the context of applied philosophy. In the following exposition, I shall begin with several well-established presuppositions as introductory notes: Firstly, I claim that a developed, applied, scientific knowledge can and even should be as theoretical as pure scientific knowledge. Secondly, I will furnish a rather broad interpretation of applied philosophy. Thirdly, I discuss the (more or less widespread) notion of applied ontology in the context of applied philosophy. The aim of the paper is to consider the role of process ontology as applied ontology and defend the view that process ontology is mature enough for applications in other philosophical and scientific areas. This will be accomplished in several steps: I shall begin with a short depiction of the present state of applied process ontology. Next I shall consider some recent cha-

138 racteristic examples of process ontology as technology on the basis of which the generalizations existing in the specialized literature will be considered and new ones will be made. Finally, new ideas will be suggested for the methodological role of process ontology as a philosophy constituting a development of a combination of both the top-down and down-top approaches. The conclusion deals with the opportunities and perspectives of applied process thought in principle. 1. Introductory notes Discussions about pure and applied knowledge began long ago. They concern the question of whether it is possible to divide knowledge into pure and applied and, should the answer be positive, whether the applied knowledge has the same status as the pure. The brightest lights of mankind long ago realised the fact that we “cannot see why it is nobler to strive to understand than to busy ourselves with the right ordering of our actions. Both have their bad sides; there are evil ends directing actions, and there are ignoble curiosities in the understanding.”1 Analogous discussions went on in the field of science. Those discussions began long ago and, firstly, in the most developed sciences. They occurred first in mathematics: theories of applied mathematics developed gradually and at present applied mathematics is as theoretical as pure mathematics. The same is valid in many other spheres of scientific knowledge. Analogous processes have also occurred in the sphere of the humanities, including philosophy. The view has begun to be recognised in the last few decades that there exists not only traditionally accepted “pure” philosophy, but also applied philosophy. What is to be understood by “applied” philosophy? Academic philosophy is usually considered to be the study of reality in the perspective of its ultimate causes and principles with the aid of human reason.2 Traditionally, philosophy is divided into speculative or de1 Whitehead, Alfred North. (1967). The Aims of Education. New York: The Free Press (First edition 1929 by The Macmillan Company), pp. 103-104. 2 Dolhenty, Jonathan. What Do We Mean By “Applied Philosophy”? – in: http://www.radicalacademy.com/philapplied1.htm (last accessed at 15 December 2009).

139 scriptive philosophy and normative or prescriptive philosophy. We assign, for example, metaphysics and epistemology to the former, and ethics and axiology to the latter. In the last two or three decades many philosophers have added a third, general kind of philosophy called “applied” philosophy to this differentiation.3 The term “applied” means “to put into practice” or “to be used practically”.4 Hence it is possible to formulate as a general definition of applied philosophy that “it is the application of those principles and concepts derived from and based on philosophy to a study of our practical affairs and activities”.5 Recently applied philosophy has gained widespread currency; it continues to develop successfully and now is even in a process of institutionalization. Applied philosophy continues strengthening its position as very important in society’s pursuit of philosophy. In a way, all knowledge is applied philosophy because there is no one sphere of knowledge which does not pose philosophical problems. So, in this sense every type of philosophy can be applied and the application of one philosophical theory to another philosophical theory is also a kind of applied philosophy. This is a rather broad interpretation of applied philosophy and even concerns such fundamental philosophical disciplines as ontology. Nowadays the notion of applied ontology has begun a broad strengthening of its position in ontology. This concept (applied ontology) has gained a widespread use even in non-philosophical circles (computer specialists, engineers, mathematicians, logicians and so on). The ideas of applied ontology “are still being developed”.6 Many ontologists use the following working definition of applied ontology: “Recent years have seen the development of new applications of the ancient science of philosophy, and the new sub-branch of applied philosophy. A new level of interaction between philosophy and non-philosophical disciplines is being realized. … Applied ontology is a branch of applied philosophy us3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Munn, Katherine. (2008). Introduction: What is Ontology for? In: Munn, Katherine, Smith, Barry. (2008). Applied Ontology. An Introduction. Frankfurt/Paris, etc.: Ontos Verlag, p. 18.

140 ing philosophical ideas and methods from ontology in order to contribute to a more adequate presentation of the results of scientific research. The need for such a discipline has much to do with the increasing importance of computer and information science technology to research in the natural sciences…”7 This last is valid not only for the natural sciences. The literature devoted to a better mutual understanding between philosophers and specialists in other disciplines has increased recently8 defending successfully the thesis that “ontology in knowledge engineering (let’s say: ontology as technology) and ontology in philosophy (let’s say: ontology as categorical analysis) have numerous problems in common and … they seek to answer similar questions.”9 Given these introductory notes, we are ready to ask the question: can process ontology find its proper place in the sphere of applied ontology? The question can be formulated in the following way: is process ontology successfully applicable and where can we find its applications? 2. Process ontology as applied ontology 2.1. The present state of applied process ontology To answer the question of whether process ontology can find its proper place in the sphere of applied ontology, we first need to investigate and attempt to answer to the general question “What is applied process thought?” There are successful attempts at answering this question and we rely on investigations in the existing literature. Let me briefly recall what has been accomplished so far. The well-known publishing house Ontos Verlag has begun publishing volumes in a series devoted to applied process thought. Two books have appeared in the last few years

7 Smith, Barry and Klages, Bert. (2008). Philosophy and Biomedical Information Systems. In: Munn, Katherine, Smith, Barry. (2008). Applied Ontology. An Introduction. Frankfurt/Paris, etc.: Ontos Verlag, p. 21. Italics mine. 8 Special attentention has to be paid to the two volumes: Poli, R., Seibt, J. (Eds.). (2010). Theory and Applications of Ontology. Vol. 1. Philosophical Perspectives. Springer; Poli, Roberto; Healy, Michael; Kameas, Achilles (Eds.). (2010). Theory and Applications of Ontology. Vol. 2. Computer Applications. Springer. 9 Poli, R. Preface. In: Poli, R., Seibt, J. (Eds.). (2010). Theory and Applications of Ontology. Vol. 1. Philosophical Perspectives. Springer, p. V.

141 and others may soon appear.10 This fact speaks for itself about the increasing popularity of process ontology, on the one hand, and about the greater significance of the question of the applicability of process ontology, on the other hand. The question “What is applied process thought?” is used as a title of the introductory essay of the collection Applied Process Thought I. Initial Explorations in Theory and Research. Ontos Verlag, 2008, edited by Mark R. Dibben and Thomas A. F. Kelly. The answer given there is that “Applied Process Thought is a term we have coined to represent work that moves beyond not only detailed technical renderings of (primarily but not exclusively Alfred North Whitehead’s) process philosophy, but also broad-sweeping process-oriented commentary, towards the wholehearted attempt to examine scientific and social scientific phenomena through the process philosophical detail.”11 The authors continue in saying that “By process we mean … not merely transformation process, trans-form-ation, the change from one stable entity to another, but something altogether more fundamental. [We need to examine] this more fundamental process”.12 They emphasize four basic principles of process thought: “First, sensory perception is a secondary mode of perception, a synthesis of more primitive forms of perception and, as such, derivative from more fundamental, non-sensory ‘prehension’. […] Second, all true individuals—as distinct from aggregational societies—have at least some iota of experience and spontaneity (self-determination). Third, and as such, all actual entities have internal as well as external relations. From this, fourth, all enduring individuals are serially ordered societies of momentary ‘occasions of experience’”13. According to the authors cited, these main principles ground the examination of different aspects of ap10 Dibben, Mark & Kelly, Thomas (Eds.). (2008). Applied Process Thought I. Frankfurt/Paris, etc.: Ontos Verlag; Dibben, Mark and Newton, Rebecca (Eds.). (2009). Applied Process Thought II. Frankfurt/Paris, etc.: Ontos Verlag. 11 Dibben, Mark R. and Kelly, Thomas. (2008). Introduction: What is Applied Process Thought? In: Dibben, Mark & Kelly, Thomas (Eds.). (2008). Applied Process Thought I. Frankfurt/Paris, etc.: Ontos Verlag, p. 27. 12 Ibid, p. 32. 13 Ibid, pp. 31-32.

142 plied process thought. The question of applied process thought is also connected to the question “Does process philosophy have a mission?” which in turn is connected to the question “what is philosophy’s overall mission?” We can advance the supposition that “The mission of philosophy today is to point out the errors in our cultural mind and work for a humanistic cultural reform.”14 In line with this presupposition, we agree with Herman Greene’s answer that the mission of process philosophy is “to bring under critical review and to correct errors in the cultural mind of our civilization, the prevailing assumptions and beliefs about our knowledge-yielding powers, the various sectors of the culture, and the basic structure of the world”15. Elsewhere, the editors of the second volume in the Ontos Verlag series devoted to applied process thought declare that “[t]hese volumes are to demonstrate how process thought, and particularly the thoroughgoing use of process metaphysics, can be used to unpack and explore contemporary scientific and social scientific phenomena, as well as philosophical matters of importance.”16 The chapters in both volumes published up to now are presented under the same three headings. “Firstly, applications of process thinking to topics in philosophy itself. Secondly, applications of process thinking to some topics in the sciences … . Thirdly, applications of process thinking to some topics in the social sciences”.17 We see that the approach employed and the scope of research in these representative publications devoted to applied process thought is much broader than the widespread concept of applied ontology as an application of ideas and methods from ontology for contribution to a more adequate presentation of the results of scientific research, and is not at 14 Adams, E. Maynard. (2000). “The Mission of Philosophy Today”, Metaphilosophy 31, 349. 15 Greene, Herman. (2008). Does Process Philosophy Have a Mission? In: Dibben, Mark & Kelly, Thomas (Eds.). (2008). Applied Process Thought I. Initial Explorations in Theory and Research. Ontos Verlag, p. 5. 16 Dibben, Mark & Newton, Rebecca. (2009). Introduction: Following a Trial Ablaze. In: Dibben, Mark and Newton, Rebecca (Eds.). (2009). Applied Process Thought II. Frankfurt/Paris, etc.: Ontos Verlag, p. 41. 17 Ibid, p. 44.

143 all reduced to an application of ontological ideas to computer and information science technology as might be extrapolated from the definition of applied ontology alone.18 I think such an approach is much more in accordance with the view that all knowledge is in a sense applied philosophy, that every type of philosophy can be applied, and that an application of one philosophical theory to another philosophical theory is also a kind of application. It is also in accordance with the view that a developed, applied scientific knowledge is just as theoretical as pure scientific knowledge. I feel that entering into such a level of development of applied scientific knowledge is evidence of its maturity. So we can conclude from the above considerations that applied process philosophy is being developed successfully. However, it is still more developed as an application to scientific than to social knowledge. In the next pages I would like to consider in more detail its promising aspects precisely in the former field. 2.2. Some examples of process ontology as technology One of the traditional ways of considering applied ontology is to understand ontology as technology and investigate the relationships of ontology as philosophy and ontology as technology.19 A question immediately arises: what about process ontology as technology? The prospectives are positive. In the spirit of the definition of applied ontology provided above, I shall mention some recent examples of an application of process ontology in computer and information science. One of the earliest attempts for application of process ontology is in the field of robotics.20 The attempt consists, first, in sketching of a pro18 See the definition cited in the previous section of the present exposition. 19 See for example Poli, R., Obrst, Leo (2010). The Interplay Between Ontology as Categorial Analysis and Ontology as Technology. In: Poli, Roberto; Healy, Michael; Kameas, Achilles (Eds.). (2010). Theory and Applications of Ontology. Vol. 2. Computer Applications. Springer, pp. 1-26; Poli, R. (2008). Sofia Lectures on Ontology. In: Hadjiski, M., Petrov, V. (Eds.). (2008). Ontologies – Philosophical and Technological Problems. Sofia, Prof. Marin Drinov Publishing House, pp. 48-66. 20 Manzotti, R. (2003). A Process-Based Architecture for an Artificial Conscious Bein. In: Seibt, J. (Ed.). Process Theories: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Dynamic Categories. Kluwer, pp. 285-312.

144 cess-ontological scheme that introduces a new term ‘onphene’ as a description of the basic unit of reality. “Onphene’ is the contraction of ontos (existence), phenomenon (representation), and episteme (being in relation with)”21; it is similar but not equivalent to the types of processes proposed by Whitehead.22 Second, an account of motivation is offered on the basis of this ontological scheme and on the basis of its definition a general architecture for an artificial conscious being is built.23 Finally, it is considered “an experiment in which a robot implementing the described motivation-based architecture evidently develops a new motivation on the basis of its own experience.”24 It is claimed that the account sketched “can be tested in the laboratory.”25 Many examples of an application of process ontology concern the elaboration and use of process ontology (here ontology is considered as technology) for business process knowledge. Process ontology is to be distinguished from domain ontology; new terms are coined: process domain, process engineering, etc. Application domain ontology and process ontology are described by a “common system of metaconcepts” which means that a higher-level ontology is required, which is called upper-level ontology; next upper process ontology is defined.26 The first steps in that direction were taken over a decade ago as attempts to outline “the requirements necessary to represent manufacturing process”[es] and “provide the foundation for a single, high-level ontology that describes the process domain” as well as the creation of a process ontolo21 Ibid, p. 293. 22 See Whitehead’s interpretation of ‘prehension’. Whitehead, A. N. (1978). Process and Reality. An Essey in Cosmology. Corrected edition (Ed. by Griffin, D. R. and Sherburne, D.). New York: The Free Press (First edition 1929 by The Macmillan Company). 23 Manzotti, R. (2003). Op. cit., pp. 298-306. 24 Ibid, p. 306. 25 Ibid, p. 308. 26 See Čiukšys, Donatas and Čaplinskas, Albertas (2007). Ontology-based approach to reuse of business process knowledge. – available at: http://www.leidykla. eu/fileadmin/Informacijos_mokslai/42-43/168-174.pdf (last accessed on 07.01. 2010).

145 gy.27 “These requirements can also serve as a foundation for the creation of a new, standardized process ontology on which all future process ontologies would be built.”28 Another more recent example concerns ontology-based organizations in managing knowledge applied within business processes. Here a top level ontology “specifies the explicit and implicit organizational declarative knowledge concerning the concepts characterizing an application domain”.29 Other kinds of ontologies specified in this regard are ontologies representing core organizational knowledge entities. They contain the “formal representation of human resources and their organization in groups, processes and their activities, knowledge objects constituting elements produced or used in business processes”.30 In line with these efforts is the very recent usage of process ontology in the context of the integrated European project BRITE (Business Register Interoperability Throughout Europe), which includes its usage for several application areas, such as process management, data-modelling, domain description, as well as monitoring and event control.31 In this project “ontologies are seen as a key technology to solve

27 Gruninger, Michael, Schlenoff, Craing, Knutilla, Amy, Ray, Steven. (1997). Using Process Requirements as the Basis for the Creation and Evaluation of Process Ontologies for Enterprise Modeling. In: ACM SIGGROUP Bulletin, Vol. 18, Issue 2, pp. 52-55. – available at: http://www.mel.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/ontology.htm (accessed at 07.01.2010). 28 Ibid. 29 Gualtieri, Andread, Ruffolo, Massimo. (2005). An Ontology-Based Framework for Representing Organizational Knowledge. – Proceedings of I-KNOW’05. Graz, Austria, June 29 – July 1, 2005. – available at: http://i-know.tugraz.at/wpcontent/uploads/2008/11/9_an-ontology-based-framework-for-representing.pdf (last accessed at 07.01.2010). 30 Ibid. 31 Mondorf, Ansgar, Herbon, Timo. (2008). Ontology-based process mediation in the European project BRITE. In: Bichler, Marin; Hess, Thomas; Krcmar, Helmut; Lechner, Ulrike; Matthes, Florian; Picot, Arnold; Speitkamp, Benjamin; Wolf, Petra. (2008). Multikonferenz Wortschaftsinformatik, Berlin. (Proceedings of MKWI 2008 – Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik – Munich, 26-28 February 2008), p. 341. – available online in: http://ibis.in.tum.de/muwi08/06_eGovernment/ 03_Mondorf.pdf (accesed at 11.06.2009)

146 interoperability problems”32. The conception developed in the publication uses the following figure33, representing Guarino’s top-down approach34. Top-level ontology Domain ontology

Process ontology Application ontology

Fig. 1. The top-down approach. Here it is explained that “top-level ontologies are independent of particular problems or domains and describe very general, unified concepts” and that “[p]rocess ontologies and domain ontologies detail the vocabulary introduced in the top-level ontology by describing the specific terminology of a generic process or a generic domain”35. What is important for us – philosophers – here are not the technical details, but the fact that “the top-level process ontology ha[s] to be specialized and instantiated by creating subclasses, subproperties and concrete values for it”36 and that “a top-level process ontology has to be designed which describes in a generic way how a process may be implemented as a process ontology”37. The project introduces process ontology (as 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid, p. 343. 34 Guarino, N. (1998). Formal Ontology and Information Systems. IOS Press Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp. 3-15. 35 Mondorf, Ansgar, Herbon, Timo. (2008). Ontology-based process mediation in the European project BRITE. In: Bichler, Marin; Hess, Thomas; Krcmar, Helmut; Lechner, Ulrike; Matthes, Florian; Picot, Arnold; Speitkamp, Benjamin; Wolf, Petra. (2008). Multikonferenz Wortschaftsinformatik, Berlin. (Proceedings of MKWI 2008 – Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik – Munich, 26-28 February 2008), p. 341. – available online in: http://ibis.in.tum.de/muwi08/06_eGovernment/ 03_Mondorf.pdf (accesed at 11.06.2009), p. 343. 36 Ibid, p. 349. 37 Ibid, p. 347.

147 technology) that describes “the process of a data transformation” and “a transition in the world from one state to another”.38 The authors differrentiate atomic processes, simple processes and composite processes39. The development of top level process ontology is based on a metaprocess description.40 Another very recent example is the so-called SUPER (Semantics Utilized for Process management within and between Enterprises) ontology, developed in a project with that same name which is oriented towards business process model representation.41 This SUPER ontology is in fact a set of ontologies “intended to support the representation of business processes as well as supporting reasoning on the basis of such representations. All ontologies in this core stack …. [a]re intended to fall under an upper-level layer which is to be embodied in a single ontology, namely UPO.”42 Figure 2 represents what is meant. All the kinds of ontologies depicted in the figure are described in that project. What is important for us however is that the purpose of the Upper level process ontology (UPO) is “to represent high-level concepts for Business Process Modeling. Here the top-level ontology in SUPER is used as the unifying ontology for other ontologies”.43 The last example for application of process ontology that I would like to mention is “an ontological interpretation of some statements about (ontological) emergence.”44 It is suggested that “claims about emergence are best interpreted within process-ontological framework”45 that is nonWhiteheadian process ontology developed as theory of general process (GPT). The idea that emergence requires process ontology has been ra38 Ibid, p. 345. 39 Ibid, pp. 345-346. 40 Ibid, p. 347. 41 Project IST 026850 SUPER. Deliverable 1.5 (March 2009). – available at: http://www.ip-super.org/res/Deliverables/M18/D5.1.pdf (accessed at 07.01.2010). 42 Ibid, p. 3. 43 Ibid, p. 5. 44 Seibt, J. (2009). Forms of Emergent Interaction in General Process Theory. In: Synthese, Vol. 166, Number 3, p. 482. 45 Ibid.

148 ised long time ago by Herbert Mead and Samuel Alexander; what is new Upper Level Process Ontology Time Ontology Behavioral Reasoning Ontology Organizational Ontologies

Core Business Process Analysis Ontology

Business Process Modeling Ontology Semantic EPC Ontology

YATOSP (NGOSS Ontologies)

Events Ontology

Semantic BPEL Ontology

Semantic BPMN Ontology

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colour

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Imports

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Fig. 2. SUPER Ontology here is the use of a formal process-ontological framework for the development if this idea: it is a mereology with non-transitive part-relation for

149 the general process theory.46 This approach is implemented by the French computer scientist E. Soulier in his laboratory. 2.3. Generalizations Thousands of examples might be given of ontologies as technology. I have only mentioned a few of them that are characteristic of the recently developed tendency to build process ontologies as technology. Some generalizations can be made on the basis of these and many other, similar examples. Since the early 1990’s, ontologies have begun to be classified in different ways, the most important of which involve the use of several criteria: (i) level of detail, e.g. meta-level ontology, reference ontologies, domain ontologies; (ii) level of dependence, e.g. top-level ontologies, task ontologies, application ontologies, or alternatively knowledge representation ontologies, general ontology, top-level ontology, meta-ontology, domain ontology, task ontology, etc.47 The kinds of ontologies are usually described in the following way: - An upper ontology defines base concepts supporting ontology development. - A domain ontology defines the terminology and concepts relevant to a particular topic or area of interest. - An interface ontology defines the structure, content, messaging, and other restrictions relevant for a particular interface. - A service ontology defines a core set of constructs for describing the vocabularies and capabilities of services. - A role ontology defines terminology and concepts relevant for a particular end-user. - A process ontology defines the inputs, outputs, constraints, relations, terms, and sequencing information relevant to business processes. 46 See Seibt, J. (2009). Op. Cit., pp. 479-512. This paper is a continuation of ideas developed earlier in Seibt, J. (2004). Free process theory: Towards a typology of occurrences. In: Axiomathes, Vol. 14, pp. 23-55. 47 Ding, Ying. (2001). Ontology: the enabler for the Semantic Web. In: Journal of Information Science, 2001. – available at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/ download?doi=10.1.1.6.5548&rep1&type=pdf (accessed at 07.01.2010).

150 Until a few years ago, the formal description of an ontology was usually represented in the form O = 〈C, A, R〉 where C represents the concepts, terminology, and nomenclature; A represents the attributes or properties explicitly defining concepts; and R represents the relations among concepts, but these relations are given statically. However, this kind of static representation is suitable for the limited sphere of static knowledge. It is not suitable for the dynamic knowledge of tasks and processes that manipulate this static knowledge. The appearance of process ontologies (as technologies, to use the terminology of Roberto Poli) shows the beginning of differentiation in their formal representation between processses, events, and states. On the other hand, better detailization of the knowledge types generates new types of ontologies, like functional ontologies, task and method ontologies, activities ontologies, direction ontologies and, of course, process ontologies. The dynamic aspects of these ontologies are manifest - at least at a conceptual level. Ontologies enter further and further into different spheres of human activity. According to some recent investigations, there are more than 1,500 ontologies in the library of Onto Select alone.48 In the last few years, some new approaches for the realization of dynamics in ontologies have also won recognition, e.g. the inclusion of isolated dynamic elements into ontologies (operands, conduits, dynamic modules, etc.); the extension of the concept of the dynamicity of ontologies to new cases (adaptation of ontologies, evolving ontologies with changing structures, etc.). The development situation of the theory of dynamic ontologies may be represented in Figure 3. We can generalize that some of the most important directions of application of these dynamic ontologies are: - Modeling of the functioning of complex systems and processes. - Interoperability in complex systems. - The task of problem solving. - The task of personalization. - Etc.

48 Buitelaar P., and Eigner T. (2007). Evaluating Ontology Search. In: Proc. of the Int. Semantic Web Conf. Busau, South Korea, 2007.

151 DOMAIN ONTOLOGIES Static

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Fig. 3. Domain ontologies We can consider this figure to be a better detailization and correction of the top-down approach depicted above in Fig. 1, because we see that process ontologies can be part (examples) of domain ontologies and not separated from them, as in Fig. 1. The depicted top-down approach, notwithstanding its faults, is interesting for us, given its idea that some toplevel ontologies should be above (ruling over) domain ontologies. In the original idea, it is depicted as ontology as technology, but it gives us an opportunity to make a suggestion concerning process ontology as technology. 2.4. Process ontology as philosophy and its methodological role In the above examples and generalizations, the top-level ontologies and process ontologies have been understood in the sense of ontology as technology. Here the question arises: what about ontology as philosophy? We could make a suggestion that above the top-level ontologies there should be an ontology considered as philosophical ontology. And, moreover, this philosophical ontology should be a kind of process ontology in the philosophical sense of the word. The idea can be represented in Figure 4. This figure, on the one hand, depicts the top-down approach in the sense that it is the process of ontological (in a philosophical sense) categories, relations between them and rules (and not some static ones) that are most suitable for ruling quasi-dynamic and dynamic domain ontolo-

152 gies. It is significant that recently – in the last several years – process ontological ideas have even penetrated such kinds of more or less technical investigations. This is serious evidence in favour of the fruitfulness of process ontological ideas. Process ontology as philosophy has a methodological role in the development of the various ontologies as technologies.

PROCESS ONTOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHY

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Adaptive

APPLICATION ONTOLOGY Fig. 4. The relationship of process ontology as philosophy to ontology as technology. On the other hand, generalizations of quasi-dynamic and dynamic domain ontologies to top-level ontologies as technologies are a good basis, namely for making some process philosophical (process ontological) generalizations. It is a realization of a down-top approach. The great development of different quasi-dynamic and dynamic on-

153 tologies as technologies has given a strong impetus to the development of process philosophical ideas. In this way, the interrelation of process ontology as philosophy and ontology as technology combines both top-down and down-top approaches. The situation is depicted in the figure with a double arrow. This conclusion is not valid for every kind of static ontology as philosophy.49 3. Conclusion We have come to realize the great possibilities for applying process thought in diverse directions. However what has so far been achieved in this area is not enough. Special attention should be devoted to further applications of process thought to all fields of natural and social sciences, as well as to philosophy itself. To conclude, I think we can all agree with the words of the process philosopher Michel Weber that “[f]or a full-fledged Whiteheadian process thinker, the future status and applicability of process modes of thought is unknown in principle. … We live in an open universe that only partially allows us to foresee events, all the more so if they belong to the highest level of complexity known to us.”50 But in any case “process thinkers can be optimistic because their mode of thought has not yet developed all its potentialities or become generally recognized, even though science is nowadays totally processual.”51 I would add that we can rely not only on our optimistic inclination, but also on a broad understanding of applied scientific knowledge and applied ontology (in49 The present exposition further develops ideas suggested in the previous publication Petrov, V. (2008). Process ontology as an expression of the idea of dynamism in philosophy. In: Hadjiski, M., Petrov, V. (Eds.). (2008). Ontologies – Philosophical and Technological Problems. Sofia, Prof. Marin Drinov Academic Publishing House, p. 75. 50 Weber, Michel. (2009). The Urizen of Whiteheadian Process Thought. In: Dibben, Mark and Newton, Rebecca (Eds.). (2009). Applied Process Thought II. Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt/Paris, etc., p. 61. See also Weber, Michel. (2009). The Urizen of Whiteheadian Process Thought. In: Balkan Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2009, Sofia, Professor Marin Drinov Publishing House, pp. 37-42. 51 Weber, Michel. (2009). The Urizen of Whiteheadian Process Thought. In: Dibben, Mark and Newton, Rebecca (Eds.). (2009). Applied Process Thought II. Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt/Paris, etc., p. 62.

154 cluding applied process ontology) in particular, as defended in the present paper, which give us greater opportunities for successful investigations in these directions.

References Adams, E. Maynard. (2000). “The Mission of Philosophy Today”, Metaphilosophy 31. Buitelaar P., and Eigner T. (2007). Evaluating Ontology Search. In: Proc. of the Int. Semantic Web Conf. (2007). South Korea: Busau. Čiukšys, Donatas and Čaplinskas, Albertas (2007). Ontology-based approach to reuse of business process knowledge. – available at: http:// www.leidykla.eu/fileadmin/Informacijos_mokslai/42-43/168-174.pdf (last accessed on 07.01.2010). Dibben, Mark & Kelly, Thomas (Eds.). 2008. Applied Process Thought I. Frankfurt/Paris, etc.: Ontos Verlag. Dibben, Mark R. and Kelly, Thomas. (2008). Introduction: What is Applied Process Thought? In: Dibben, Mark & Kelly, Thomas (Eds.). (2008). Applied Process Thought I. Frankfurt/Paris, etc.: Ontos Verlag. Dibben, Mark and Newton, Rebecca (Eds.). (2009). Applied Process Thought II. Frankfurt/Paris, etc.: Ontos Verlag. Dibben, Mark and Newton, Rebecca. (2009). Introduction: Following a Trail Ablaze. In: Dibben, Mark and Newton, Rebecca (Eds.). (2009). Applied Process Thought II. Frankfurt/Paris, etc.: Ontos Verlag. Ding, Ying. (2001). Ontology: the enabler for the Semantic Web. In: Journal of Information Science, 2001. – available at: http://citeseerx.ist. psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.6.5548&rep1&type=pdf (accessed at 07.01.2010). Dolhenty, Jonathan. (2009). What Do We Mean By “Applied Philosophy”? In: http://www.radicalacademy.com/philapplied1.htm (last acces-

155 sed on 15 December 2009). Greene, Herman. (2008). Does Process Philosophy Have a Mission? In: Dibben, Mark & Kelly, Thomas (Eds.). (2008). Applied Process Thought I. Initial Explorations in Theory and Research. Ontos Verlag. Gruninger, Michael; Schlenoff, Craing; Knutilla, Amy; Ray, Steven. (1997). Using Process Requirements as the Basis for the Creation and Evaluation of Process Ontologies for Enterprise Modeling. In: ACM SIGGROUP Bulletin, (1997). Vol. 18, Issue 2, pp. 52-55. – available at: http://www.mel.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/ontology.htm (accessed at 07.01.2010). Gualtieri, Andread; Ruffolo, Massimo. (2005). An Ontology-Based Framework for Representing Organizational Knowledge. – Proceedings of I-KNOW’05. Craz, Austria, June 29 – July 1, 2005. – available at: http://i-know.tugraz.at/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/9_an-ontologybased-framework-for-representing.pdf (last accessed on 07.01.2010). Guarino, N. (1998). Formal Ontology and Information Systems. The Netherlands: IOS Press Amsterdam. Manzotti, R. (2003). A Process-Based Architecture for an Artificial Conscious Bein. In: Seibt, J. (Ed.). Process Theories: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Dynamic Categories. Kluwer, pp. 285-312. Mondorf, Ansgar; Herbon, Timo. (2008). Ontology-based process mediation in the European project BRITE. In: Bichler, Marin; Hess, Thomas; Krecmar, Helmut; Lechner, Ulrike; Matthes, Florian; Picot, Arnold; Speitkamp, Benjamin; Wolf, Petra. (2008). Multikonferenz Wortschaftsinformatik, Berlin. (Proceedings of MKWI 2008 – Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik – Munich, 26-28 February 2008), p. 341. – available online at: http://ibis.in.tum.de/muwi08/06_eGovernment/03_Mondorf. pdf (accesed at 11.06.2009). Munn, Katherine. (2008). Introduction: What is Ontology for? In: Munn, Katherine; Smith, Barry. (2008). Applied Ontology. An Introduction. Frankfurt/Paris, etc.: Ontos Verlag.

156 Petrov, V. (2008). Process ontology as an expression of the idea of dynamism in philosophy. In: Hadjiski, M., Petrov, V. (Eds.). (2008). Ontologies – Philosophical and Technological Problems. Sofia: Prof. Marin Drinov Academic Publishing House. Poli, R. (2008). Sofia Lectures on Ontology. In: Hadjiski, M., Petrov, V. (Eds.). (2008). Ontologies – Philosophical and Technological Problems. Sofia: Prof. Marin Drinov Publishing House. Poli, R., Seibt, J. (Eds.). (2010). Theory and Applications of Ontology. Vol. 1. Philosophical Perspectives. Springer. Poli, Roberto; Healy, Michael; Kameas, Achilles (Eds.). (2010). Theory and Applications of Ontology. Vol. 2. Computer Applications. Springer. Poli, R., Orbst, Leo (2010). The Interplay between Ontology as Categorial Analysis and Ontology as Technology. In: Poli, R., Healy, Michael; Kameas, Achilles (Eds.). (2010). Theory and Application of Ontology. Vol. 2. Computer Applications. Springer, pp. 1-26. Project IST 026850 SUPER. Deliverable 1.5 (March 2009). – available at: http://www.ip-super.org/res/Deliverables/M18/D5.1.pdf (accessed at 07.01.2010). Seibt, J. (2004). Free process theory: Towards a typology of occurrences. In: Axiomathes, Vol. 14, pp. 23-55. Seibt, J. (2009). Forms of Emergent Interaction in General Process Theory. In: Synthese, Vol. 166, Number 3, pp. 479-512. Smith, Barry and Klages, Bert. (2008). Philosophy and Biomedical Information Systems. In: Munn, Katherine; Smith, Barry. (2008). Applied Ontology. An Introduction. Frankfurt/Paris, etc.: Ontos Verlag. Whitehead, Alfred North. (1967). The Aims of Education. New York: The Free Press (First edition 1929 by The Macmillan Company). Whitehead, A. N. (1978). Process and Reality. An Essey in Cosmology. Corrected edition (Ed. by Griffin, D. R. and Sherburne, D.). New York: The Free Press (First edition 1929 by The Macmillan Company).

VII. Sparse and dense categories: what they tell us about natural kinds Lilia Gurova

Abstract: This paper traces the implications of an observation recently made by two cognitive psychologists for the natural kinds debate. Kloos and Sloutsky (2008) revealed that the distinction between what they called sparse and dense categories “maps onto the distinction between natural and nominal kinds”. It is argued that Kloos and Sloutsky’s finding speaks for the objective but at the same time relational character of the natural/nominal kinds distinction and thus provides evidence for a relationist, non-essentialist realism about natural kinds. The same finding, however, raises new problems which anyone who is involved in the debate should cope with: the lack of a clear-cut boundary between natural kinds and arbitrary groups, as well as the impossibility of distinguishing between natural kinds and some groups of artifacts. Key words: non-essentialist realism about natural kinds, sparse and dense categories, experimental philosophy. There are no signs that the philosophical controversies between realism and conventionalism about natural kinds and between the essentialist and the non-essentialist versions of realism will be settled soon1. Many see the situation as the result of the “markedly different intuitions” [Dupré, 2000] which philosophers of various clans have employed in 1 The following publications represent some of the central issues which have been discussed in the contemporary natural kinds debate: [Ellis, 2001], [Wolf, 2002], [Harré, 2005], [Heil, 2005], [Mumford, 2005], [Hacking, 2007], [Lowe, 2007], [Bird, 2008]. The Natural Kinds Bibliography, which has been created as a part of the AHRC Metaphysics of Science Project, contains more than 300 titles of papers and books, providing a more detailed picture of the debate over the last half a century. The bibliography as well as additional information about the Metaphysics of Science Project are available on-line at: http://www.bris.ac.uk/metaphysicsofscience/ .

158 their analyses. One possible way out of this seeming impasse is to try to minimize the role of intuition: instead of appealing to it in asking how people would react in the imagined and even impossible situations which most philosophical thought experiments refer to, we might do better if we turn instead to the results of some real experiments, revealing how real people deal with these supposed natural kinds in real situations. This paper’s primary aim is to contribute to demonstrating the success of the latter approach2 by pointing out some implications for the natural kinds debate that can be drawn from some recent findings in cognitive psychology. In the first place, we will show how these findings provide new evidence for non-essentialist realism about natural kinds. It will be shown next, however, that the same findings raise new problems which those involved in the natural kinds debate will have to cope with. 1. Some terminological preliminaries Sometimes philosophers and psychologists use different terms to refer to the same thing and sometimes they assign different meanings to the same term. That is why, in order to avoid misunderstanding when discussing psychological findings in a philosophical context, the following terminological remarks should be made in advance. According to the general consensus in philosophy, a group of entities (objects, properties, processes) forms a natural kind if its existence as a group does not depend on human decisions or actions [Bird & Tobin, 2008]. Thus electrons, chemical reactions, cats and dogs, and even colours3 have been taken to constitute natural kinds. Natural kinds as such have been contrasted both with arbitrary groups (also-called nominal kinds) like collections of jewelry, the content of a dustbin etc. on the one hand, and with artifacts like books, clocks, and furniture, on the other hand. 2 A few positive results of the application of this approach (sometimes called “experimental philosophy”) have been already announced – see [Appiah, 2008], [Knobe & Nichols, 2008]. 3 Although colours as such do not exist in nature but rather appear in perception, the way they appear to us as well as the way we distinguish different colours does not depend on our decisions or actions. In this sense colours do form natural kinds.

159 Instead of “kinds”, contemporary cognitive psychologists prefer to use the name “categories” for the groups of entities which share something in common. Respectively, the process of category-formation has been called by them categorization. But one should be careful about categorization in reading psychological texts because the same term categorization has also been used to denote the process of recognition of a particular exemplar (it might be an object-exemplar, a property-exemplar, or a process-exemplar) as a member of a given category. For example, when we recognize the animal X as a cat we in fact categorize it, psychologists say, as a cat, or in other words, we admit its belonging to the category of cats. Returning to philosophical terminology, conventionalists about natural kinds have been recognized as those who insist that there are no natural kinds, i.e. there are no groups in themselves in the world. Categorization is a human mental process, they say, and, therefore, we have no reason to claim that any category/kind exists as such independently of human intentional acts4. Conventionalists are in controversy with realists about natural kinds. According to the latter, it is difficult to wrestle with the intuition that cats for example, form a group, which is objectively (i.e. independently of any human decision) distinct from the group of dogs, or from the groups of stools or stones. For their part, the realists on natural kinds have divided into essentialists who defend the view that all instances of a particular natural kind possess a common essence and non-essentialist realists. The greater part of essentialists have assumed that the alleged kind essences are either sets of properties or structures, which all instances of a given natural kind have in common. Essentialism is probably the oldest philosophical view about natural kinds; its roots can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle5. 4 Conventionalism about natural kinds is sometimes called constructivism or constructionism [Bird & Tobin, 2008]. 5 However, essentialism has never been a unified doctrine, even in the times of Plato and Aristotle. Plato, for example, insisted (in the dialogue Parmenides) that the members of a given kind do not share the same properties; what keeps them together is their resemblance to the same idea of which they are imperfect manifestati-

160 Non-essentialist realism about natural kinds is a relatively new conception. Some non-essentialist realists construct their position on the criticism of the view that all members of a given natural kind share the same properties or the same structure. These non-essentialists insist that the members of most natural kinds exemplify similar rather than identical properties or similar rather than strictly identical structures [Boyd, 1991]. But this similarity-based realism is not the only realist alternative to essentialism. A good example of a non-essentialist and at the same time non-similarity-based view about natural kinds is the biological species concept, which was first introduced by Ernst Mayr in the mid 20th century. According to this concept, biological species, which most philosophers have taken as a paradigmatic example of natural kinds, are “groups of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups” [Mayr, 1989; 138]. It is easily seen that this definition does not refer either to an alleged common essence (conceived as a set of shared common features) or to the similarity of the individuals which belong to a group recognizable as a biological species. Mayr himself has stressed an important feature of this definition – that it forms a relational concept: whether a particular organism belongs or does not belong to a given species does not depend entirely on its specific features, it depends on the first place along the way the given organism relates to, or interacts with, other organisms. Now we have at our disposal the minimal vocabulary that will allow us to demonstrate how a distinction, which has been recently introduced by the cognitive psychologists Heidi Kloos and Vladimir Sloutsky can change the perspectives we might have on the basic controversies in the natural kinds debate.

ons. Aristotle, on the contrary, was convinced that the members of a given kind share identical forms. The controversy between Plato and Aristotle was an ancient predecessor of the medieval discussions on the problem of universals – see [Klima, 2000]. The contemporary natural kinds debate is, in a sense, a follow-up of the medieval debate unfolded in a larger philosophical context. One of the most recent versions of essentialism is the so-called “scientific essentialism” which has been defended by some philosophers of science, like Brian Ellis – see [Ellis, 2001].

161 2. Dense and sparse categories In their paper “What’s Behind Different Kinds of Kinds: Effects of Statistical Density on Learning and Representation of Categories” H. Kloos and V. Sloutsky [Kloos & Sloutsky, 2008] have presented the results of a series of experiments originally designed to contribute to resolving the controversy between the so-called similarity view on categorization and its rival rule-based view. According to the similarity view, we decide that a given unknown object (property, or phenomenon) X belongs to the category A if X is similar enough to all (or to the most typical) representatives of A. According to the rule-based view, the exemplar X belongs to the category A, if it obeys the rule (the principle, or the theory), which all representatives of A are supposed to obey. Significant experimental evidence has been produced for both the rule-based view and the similarity based view on categorization, which at first glance look incompatible. A possible interpretation of this situation is that categorization is probably not the result of a simple, homogeneous process but rather the phenomenal effect of different underlying mechanisms. From this perspective, it becomes possible to reconcile the two seemingly rival accounts of categorization – by assuming that they probably refer to different mechanisms of categorization. This interpretation, however, raises a new question: is there any regularity connecting a particular mechanism of categorization with the entities which are categorized by that mechanism? Or in other words, what determines which mechanism will be activated under certain conditions? Kloos and Sloutsky’s 2008 paper seems to suggest an answer to this question. The results of the experiments, which were presented in [Kloos & Sloutsky, 2008] reveal that the type of categorization which people employ in a given situation depends on the category structure and, in particular, on an objective statistical measure of this structure, which Kloos and Sloutsky have called statistical density. People tend to apply rules when they have to decide whether a particular exemplar belongs to a sparse category (i.e. to a category with low density) but they rely greatly on similarity estimations when the exemplar which is to be categorized is compared with the instances of a dense category (or a category with higher density). One can more or less

162 successfully guess whether a particular category is sparse or dense before doing the calculations prescribed by Kloos and Sloutsky in the following way: if the membership in a given category depends on few (one or two) shared properties, most probably this category is sparse. Kloos and Sloutsky have noticed that most scientific concepts which typically have one or two defining features refer to sparse categories: accelerated motion and even numbers are good examples of such concepts. On the contrary, if the category membership depends on the presence of many shared features we may successfully presume that this particular category is dense. It is intuitively clear why people rely on similarity when they have to decide whether a particular item belongs to a dense category: the members of a dense category share a lot of features and this makes them looking highly similar; thus it is easier for the subject to check whether the given item fits this overall similarity than to look for a rule that might determine the category membership. The members of a sparse category have few features in common and because of that their similarity is not as evident. That is why in this case subjects find it more reliable to look for a rule determining the category membership. In addition to this and to some other experimental findings, Kloos and Sloutsky have made the important observation that the distinction between dense and sparse categories “maps onto the distinction between natural and nominal kinds, with natural kinds (e.g., species of animals) being statistically denser than nominal kinds (e.g., scientific, mathematical, and legal concepts)” [Kloos & Sloutsky, 2008; 69]. Does this seeming side-issue for a psychological paper imply anything new and important about natural kinds? Before moving on to the discussion on how Kloos and Sloutsky’s observation can change our view on the realism vs. conventionalism and essentialism vs. anti-essentialism controversies, let us see what kind of measure statistical density is, and what exactly it means to say that a given category is dense, or sparse. Conceptually, statistical density is represented as “a ratio of variance relevant for category membership to the total variance across members and non-members of the category” [Kloos & Sloutsky, 2008; 53]. Kloos and Sloutsky have assumed that the classical notion of entropy is a good candidate for measuring both in-category and between-categories variance as it is intuitively clear, they say, that higher entropy holds for

163 higher variance and vice versa. Thus they have suggested calculating the variance among category members as well as the total variance among members and non-members of a given category by using Shannon’s classical formula of entropy [Shannon & Weaver, 1948]. Category density has been calculated as the inversed ratio between the entropy within the target category and the entropy between the target and the contrasting categories in the following way (see [Kloos & Sloutsky, 2008; 53]): D = 1 – Hwithin/Hbetween where D – statistical density Hwithin – the entropy within the target category Hbetween– the total entropy of target and contrasting categories H = f(M, wi, pj) where M – the total number of varying dimensions (such dimensions might be shape, colour, weight, etc.) wi – the attentional weight of a particular dimension pj – the probability for a particular dimension i to have the value j (for example, the probability for the dimension “colour” to have the value “red”) It is important for the analysis which will be undertaken in the next part of this paper to stress that the statistical density of a particular category is a completely objective measure of its structure. One might try to question this claim by pointing to the fact that the number of varying dimensions (M) as well as the attentional weight (wi) are arbitrary chosen rather than measured and, therefore, are not themselves objective. This is true. But let us remember that the statistical density is a ratio and that it is a well know mathematical fact that if the same arbitrarily chosen numbers appear in both parts of the ratio they do not change its value. Thus

164 even if the number of the observed varying dimensions and their attentional weights are chosen more or less arbitrarily, that arbitrariness will not influence the value of the ratio D. What matters in respect to this value are the distributions of the values of the chosen dimensions (pj) which are obtained as a result of entirely objective measurements. 3. Implications What can we construct based on the observation that the distinction between dense and sparse categories “maps onto the distinction between natural and nominal kinds”? In the first place, if the distinction between dense and sparse categories is purely objective, as the analysis of Kloos and Sloutsky’s findings reveals, then the fact that this distinction “maps onto the distinction between natural and nominal kinds” immediately suggests that the latter distinction is also objective. This can be considered as an additional evidence for realism about natural kinds6. Second, insofar as the statistical density is a relational property (as it is based on the ratio of in-category and between-categories variance), being a natural kind should be conceived as a relational property, too. This reminds us of the biological species concepts and Mayr’s insistence on the relational character of species. The relational character of the sparse/dense categories distinction thus might be viewed as confirming Mayr’s strategy of looking for what makes species natural rather than nominal kinds. In addition, the universality of the sparse/dense categories distinction allows us to speculate that Mayr’s relationist approach to biological species might be successfully applied to non-biological natural kinds, too. This is a novel prediction and its eventual confirmation in the near or in a more distant future will be a great success for the nonessentialist (relationist) version of realism about natural kinds. At the same time, however, we should admit that although providing new evidence for the claims of non-essentialist (relationist) realism about natural kinds, the sparse/dense categories distinction runs into so6 The confirmation of this prediction might be viewed as well as a contribution to the success story of the research program of experimental philosophy.

165 me serious difficulties. The first difficulty is related to the fact that the statistical density is a continuous measure and, therefore, there is no clear-cut boundary between dense and sparse categories. At the same time, the common intuition about natural kinds resists the idea that the boundary between them and the arbitrary groups is fuzzy. What does it mean for a group to be semi-natural or semi-conventional? At the moment it seems totally unclear what a good answer to this question might be, and whether there is such an answer at all. A second difficulty relates to the distinction between natural kinds and artifacts. The sparse/dense categories distinction helps us distinguish between natural kinds and arbitrary groups but it is not at all instructive in respect to the division between natural kinds and artifacts insofar as the latter might be dense categories, too. What does that mean? One can conclude from this fact the rather heretical hypothesis that perhaps the division between natural kinds and artifacts (unlike the division between natural kinds and arbitrary groups) is not itself natural. And, indeed, some of the participants in the natural kinds debate are not far from this sort of conclusion7. But, of course, arriving at such a conclusion is not indispensable. The inability to use statistical density as a tool for discrimination between natural kinds and artifacts does not necessarily suggest that there isn’t any “natural” difference between these two “kinds of kinds”. The lack of a discrimination tool does not imply that the differ7 Those who argue for the fuzzy boundaries between natural kinds and artifacts usually come up with examples like these: chemical compounds which exist in nature, such as ascorbic acid, are admittedly natural kinds; but then artificially synthesized ascorbic acid should be recognized as an instance of a natural kind, too, as it is chemically indistinguishable from the “natural” ascorbic acid; but then we have no reason to refute the naturalness of any man-made chemical compound even if it has not existed in nature before its artificial synthesis; but then how, on what basis, can we draw a clear-cut boundary between natural kinds and artifacts if the presence/lack of human intervention is not conceived as its defining feature? Quine tried to surmount these difficulties by the suggestion that any set of objects which share a natural property is a good candidate for a natural kind [Quine, 1969]. But then we lose the boundary between natural kinds and arbitrary groups, for if we follow Quine’s quite liberal definition, we should admit that the group of a ruby, a red pencil, a red tomato, and a red balloon is a natural kind insofar as all the objects which belong to this group share the natural property of “being red”.

166 ence which the missing tool is expected to identify does not exist. To summarize, the properties of the sparse/dense categories distinction speak convincingly in favour of non-essentialist realism about natural kinds. At the same time, the intuitively appealing ideas about the existence of clear-cut boundaries between natural kinds and arbitrary groups, and of a natural division between natural kinds and artifacts look problematic in light of what the sparse/dense categories distinction tells us about the world. Both cases, however, suggest that, taken seriously, the results of the experimental studies of categorization can bring about significant shifts in the natural kinds debate, no matter how controversial these results might look at first glance.

References Appiah, K. (2008). Experiments in Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bird, A. (2008). Lowe on a Posteriori Essentialism. Analysis, 68, 336344. Bird, A., Tobin, E. (2008). Natural Kinds. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved August 18, 2008 from http://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/natural-kinds/ Boyd, R. (1991). Realism, Anti-Foundationalism, and the Enthusiasm for Natural Kinds. Philosophical Studies, 61, 127-148. Daly, C. (1998). Natural Kinds. In: Craig, E. (Ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved July 30, 2006, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/N099SECT3 Dupré, J. (2000). Natural Kinds. In: Newton-Smith, W. H. (Ed.) A Companion to the Philosophy of Science. Oxford: Blackwell. Ellis, B. (2001). Scientific Essentialsm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hacking, J. (2007). Natural Kinds: Rosy Dawn, Scholastic Twilight. Ro-

167 yal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 82, 203-239. Harré, R. (2005). Chemical Kinds and Essences Revisited. Foundations of Chemistry, 7 (1), 7-30. Heil, J. (2005). Kinds and Essences. Ratio, 18 (4), 405-419. Klima, G. (2000). The Medieval Problem of Universals. In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved March 28, 2002 from http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/universals-medieval/ Kloos, H., Sloutsky, V. (2008). What’s Behind Different Kinds of Kinds: Effects of Statistical Density on Learning and Representation of Categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137 (1), 5272. Knobe, J., Nichols, S. (2008). Experimental Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. LaPorte, J. (2004). Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lowe, E. (2007). A Problem for a Posteriori Essentialism Concerning Natural Kinds. Analysis, 67, 286-292. Mayr, E. (1989). Species Concepts and Their Application. In: Ruse, M. (Ed.) Philosophy of Biology. New York: McMillan. Mumford, S. (2005). Kinds, Essences, Powers. Ratio, 18 (4), 420-436. Quine, W. V. (1969). Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press. Shannon, C., Weaver, W. (1948). The mathematical theory of communication. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Wolf, M. (2002). The Curious Role of Natural Kind Terms. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 83 (1), 81-101.

VIII. Ontology of ability: a defense of the counterfactual analysis of ability Marina Bakalova Abstract: The main question of this paper is what is ability? The paper has four parts. First, since abilities are often treated as a kind of disposition, I offer a brief outline of the classical analysis of dispositions by means of conditionals. Then, I discuss a major objection raised against it, “the conditional fallacy”. In the third and fourth parts, I bring into the discussion a debate between two contemporary philosophers, Timothy Williamson and Ernest Sosa. I consider an argument offered by Timothy Williamson, and particularly directed against Sosa’s conditional analysis of abilities. The argument is known as “The Primeness Argument”, and it is here presented as bearing a kinship to the conditional fallacy family. In the last part, I attempt to reconsider Sosa’s analysis of abilities by treating them as functionally dependent on the notion of apt performance. I try to show that this analysis is compatible with the primeness argument, and that it is resistant to the conditional fallacy in its classical form. I conclude that there is still room for a metaphysical analysis of abilities. Key words: ability, disposition, conditionals, analysis, causation The main question of this paper is what is ability? We know from classical metaphysics that entities divide into objects and properties, or particulars and universals. Since ability cannot be an object, or a particular, it must be a property. What sort of property though? We might distinguish between two categories of properties. The first category includes properties such as square and round (that are actually manifested in the object); the second category includes manifestable properties or dispositions, such as fragile, poisonous, good-hearted, and curious. Ability is most generally considered to be a kind of dispositional property. Dispositional properties can be divided in two kinds: those of physical objects in general (like fragile, poisonous, coloured, or being a roller), and those of living organisms. Dispositions of organisms are character traits,

170 including dispositions of ‘body character’ (DNA dispositions, physical capacities, etc); dispositions related to moral character; and those related to intellectual character. We are going to treat “ability” as a fairly general term for dispositions of living organisms, and the kernel of intelligent action. “Ability” in the English language can be used in relation to objects too, as in the phrase: “Beer is able to make you drunk.”, or the heart has the ability to pump blood. If you think that beer and the heart do have abilities, then I suppose that the proposed analysis can be extended to cover that too. However, the scope of this paper is limited to the abilities of agents who are subjects of sophistication - they cover the range from the ability to breathe to the ability to prove complicated mathematical theorems or to write good poems. How wide the scope of abilities is, is inessential to the purposes of this paper. This paper has four parts. First, I offer a brief outline of the classical analysis of dispositions by means of conditionals. Then I discuss a major objection raised against it, “the conditional fallacy”. In the third part, I discuss an argument of the same family, directed in particular against the conditional analysis of abilities. The argument is offered by Timothy Williamson, and is known as “The Primeness Argument”. In the last part, I try to reconsider an analysis of abilities, suggested by Ernest Sosa, by referring to the notion of apt performance. I claim that this sort of analysis is resistant to the conditional fallacy in its more classical form, and that it is compatible with the primeness argument. I conclude that there is still room for metaphysical analysis of abilities. 1.

Analysis of dispositional properties.

Let me start by briefly outlining a common way of analyzing abilities. We have already granted that abilities are kinds of dispositions. The main approach to explaining dispositions is by means of counterfactual conditionals. This thought goes back at least as far as to Gilbert Ryle: “To say that this lump of sugar is soluble is to say that it would dissolve, if submerged anywhere, at any time and in any parcel of water. To say that this sleeper knows French, is to say that if, for example, he is ever addressed in French, or shown any French newspaper, he responds pertinently in French, acts appropriately or translates correctly into his

171 own tongue.” [Ryle (1949), 123] Like other dispositions, ability is conceived as having internal and external grounds: an internal ground of the ability entails having a property to achieve success (practical or theoretical) in a certain range of circumstances. Having such a property is equivalent to having a disposition, or in some sense the ability itself. The internal component under question is conditionally determined by its relation to a certain range of circumstances. They constitute the external ground of the ability. Here is how dispositions and abilities are analyzed by means of simple conditionals: x is fragile iff if hit it breaks readily; x is poisonous iff if S drank it, S would die. Similarly, about abilities: S is able to ride a bicycle iff when he gets on a bike, S can ride it. In the above examples: hit, drink, and ride a bike, are parts of the external grounds; break, die, and ride are manifestations of the relevant internal properties, or the dispositions themselves. 2.

The Conditional Fallacy.

There is a famous methodological problem that allegedly undermines the conditional analysis of dispositions, and hence of abilities in particular. The problem is known as "The Conditional Fallacy" [Shope 1978, Martin 1994, Lewis 1997 and Bird 1998]. The conditional fallacy aims at revealing that having a disposition is compatible with rejecting the conditional that is meant to define it. Namely, we are likely to consider x fragile on occasions when if hit, it does not break.e.g. if x is well packed with a protective layer, and hit. We consider x poisonous even if when S drinks it, S doesn’t die, e.g. if S drinks x together with its antidote, as noticed by Bird1. Similarly, when it comes to abilities: we consider S as being able to ride a bicycle even if when getting on a bike, S would fail to ride it. e.g. if there is a stick in the bike’s spokes. Therefore, dispositions in general, and abilities in particular, cannot be defined 1 "Dispositions and Antidotes" Philosophical Quarterly 48 (1998) 227–34.

172 by means of conditionals or counterfactuals. The conditional fallacy was delineated by Robert Shope2, and was expressed in simpler form by Charles Martin3. Martin introduced the term “finkish dispositions” for dispositions that may occasionally disappear. The idea is that when a thing has a disposition it is sometimes possible that it lose it for a period of time, namely, in occurrences when the antecedent of the conditional describing it is satisfied, but the consequent is not. If a fragile object is struck and does not break (because it is protected), at that very moment it loses its disposition of being fragile. In his paper “Finkish Dispositions”4, David Lewis interprets the phenomenon as a mere fact that dispositions can come and go. He provides an analysis of dispositions that is compatible with their disappearing from time to time, at moments when occasional interventions of finks occur. More precisely, according to Lewis, dispositions can disappear a very short period of time after the antecedent has taken place, and before the result occurs. Lewis calls the antecedent of such a conditional “the causal basis of the disposition”, and he offers the following analysis of dispositions: “Something x is disposed at time t to give response r to stimulus s iff, for some intrinsic property B that x has at t, for some time t' after t, if x were to undergo stimulus s at time t and retain property B until t', s and x's having of B would jointly be an x-complete cause of x's giving response r.”5 Lewis says that what happens in cases described by the conditional fallacy examples is that x loses its property B in the time between the moment t and moment t', so that for that very short period of time the thing may lose its disposition, and instead manifest a different one – finkish and surprising- which has its full causal basis in the glass itself: 2 Shope, R. K., 1978, "The Conditional Fallacy in Contemporary Philosophy", Journal of Philosophy 75: 397–413 3 Martin, C. B., 1994, "Dispositions and Conditionals", The Philosophical Quarterly 44: 1–8. 4 Lewis, D., 1997, "Finkish Dispositions", The Philosophical Quarterly 47: 143– 158. 5 Ibid. p. 157

173 “We can agree that the glass does have a disposition to astonish such an observer - an extremely finkish disposition, with the entire intrinsic character of the glass as its causal basis. That is not the only disposition the glass has for responding to being struck; and not the most noteworthy disposition. Yet it is this disposition, and not any opposite disposition, that our present proposal deigns to notice.” 6 Lewis’s strategy against the conditional fallacy is to attack the claim that failures of the related conditional are compatible with the presence of the disposition: when a deviant causal chain occurs the agent loses its relevant disposition which she previously had. In this context, it is natural to ask: what if x does not lose the disposition at the moment when it is expected to take action? Is such a case conceivable? Alexander Bird argues against Lewis by claiming that it is: he brings into the discussion the idea of antidotes, and he argues that in the face of finks, dispositions can stay. If one drinks poison together with its antidote, he claims, the poison does not lose its disposition to kill S, at any point of time, although it does not kill S. Therefore, the stuff x can maintain its disposition of being poisonous during the time when the antecedent of the conditional is satisfied: S drinks the poison, it may even start to function, but the expected consequent does not take place: x does not kill S. The existence of antidotes, as Bird presents it, is supposed to undermine Lewis’s analysis, and to exemplify the full power of the conditional fallacy. Hence, the conditional fallacy seems to throw a serious doubt on the legitimacy of the traditional analysis of dispositions. Let us look, however, at two possible ways out of even the most radical Birdean form of the fallacy. One way to preserve the conditional analysis of dispositions in general is by adding ceteris paribus clauses. Adding a ceteris paribus clause means adding a clause of the sort: “in the absence of factors which interfere with examining the specific causal relationship”. Then, for example, being fragile would amount to something like: x is fragile iff it would break if hit in the absence of factors which interfere with breaking. Adding ceteris paribus clauses looks suspiciously ad hoc, and therefore not the best solution to problems of this kind. We should notice, however, that there is a much simpler move of the sort which is not 6 Ibid. p. 158

174 ad hoc. It entails adding something similar to a ceteris paribus clause, i.e. the clause: “in normal circumstances” (or “in the presence of certain prevalent extraneous factors”). It does not seem to me an ad hoc move to say: S is able to ride a bicycle iff in normal circumstances when getting on on a bike, S can ride it, since we initially take it that that ability is indexed to a certain range of circumstances. For instance, when we say that an archer has the ability to hit the target, we assume that she has it under certain lighting conditions. Similarly, we can say that x is fragile iff in normal circumstances, if hit it would break, or that x is poisonous iff in normal circumstances if S drinks it, S would die. Thus, we can take it that the antidote-type cases are cases where normal circumstances are absent, and hence these cases are irrelevant to the issue of whether an agent possesses certain dispositions that can be antidote targeted. Seen this way, the problem seems to vanish: inducing an antidote can block the manifestation of a disposition, but it does not block the possession of that very same disposition. This solution may either look too fishy to the proponents of the conditional fallacy, or it shows that the fallacy is not to be taken seriously. 3.

The Primeness Argument against the Analysis of Abilities.

We will herein focus on abilities and try to show how the above problematic relates to the concrete issue of abilities. Now, let us call the group of philosophers who think that abilities are primitive entities, i.e. indecomposable in one or another way “primitivists”. In the recent literature, there is a growing popularity of the line that abilities are indecomposable and therefore unanalyzable entities. (T. Williamson, A. Millar). The line is probably inspired by the conditional fallacy argument, because it is also targeted against the possibility of analysis.7 The main argument in favour of the claim that abilities have a primitive nature is known as “The Primeness Argument”, and has been introduced into the literature by Timothy Williamson. Despite its kinship to conditional fallacy arguments, the primeness argument has a reverse 7 Evidence for that is provided in Timothy Williamson “Sosa on Abilities, Concepts and Externalism” in J. Greco, ed. (2004), Philosophers and their Critics: Ernest Sosa, Oxford: Blackwell., p. 266

175 form: the conditional fallacy aims at revealing that one can have a disposition without the fulfillment of the particular conditional which is meant to define it, whereas the primeness argument aims at showing that the alleged necessary and sufficient conditions for the ability can be conjointly fulfilled in the absence of the ability. More precisely, the idea of the primeness argument is to show that abilities are not decomposable into internal and external components, and therefore, they are not analyzable. The primeness argument reveals that even if normal circumstances are present, ability cannot be decomposed into internal and external components in the way that the traditional metaphysical analysis suggests. Let me now present the argument. The primeness argument is a reducio ad absurdum of the claim that ability can be decomposed into internal and external components. Let us use as an example the ability to see. Suppose that the exercise of that ability, namely seeing, is a conjunction of narrow conditions D and environmental conditions E. Timothy Williamson8 invites us to consider three different cases: α, β, and γ. Suppose that there is water in front of a subject S. In α, S only sees water with her right eye, because there is a device which simulates water in front of her left eye, and she has a head injury preventing her from processing the input from that eye. The state β is the reverse of α: S sees water with her left eye only, because there is a water-simulating devise in front of her right eye, and she has a head injury preventing her from processing the input from that eye. Finally, the state γ is internally like α, and externally like β. It is a situation where the left eye in front of which there is real water does not process anything, but the eye in front of which there is a water-simulating device produces the corresponding “narrow” content of water. The moral of the story is that in γ S does not see, although the purported internal and external conditions for seeing are each satisfied separately and conjointly. Hence, seeing is not a conjunction of internal and external components. In other words, the ability to see is not decomposable into internal (narrow) and external (environmental) sub-conditions in such a way that the conjoined satisfaction of those sub-conditions entails the ability. Therefore, there is no clear set of 8 Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and its Limits, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 66-73.

176 internal and external conditions the satisfaction of which is sufficient for being able to see. The primeness argument can be seen as bearing a kinship to another well known argument. As we take it, abilities are dispositions for reliably achieving success in certain ranges of circumstances. We usually appreciate verbs like recognize, know, tell, see, etc. as factive verbs – verbs that actually indicate success. Hence, the presence of proper circumstances is crucial for the exercise of abilities. But the presence of normal circumstances is not enough for the exercise of ability. Neither is the presence of the relevant internal property. Take a case in which John’s secretary has a twin sister who is sitting behind the secretary’s desk in John’s office. Well John enters his office at that very moment, and he sees Mary’s twin sister sitting behind his secretary’s desk. The real secretary Mary is in his office, but she is well hidden behind the densely ordered book shelves, and invisible to John. John, who does not even suspect that Mary has a twin sister, after passing the secretary’s office, enters his cabinet with a firm assurance that his secretary is in the office. In this example, John does have the ability to recognize Mary, he tries to exercise it, and the proper circumstances are there, since Mary is indeed in the office, but John is not in a position to exercise his ability. The reader will recognize the well-known structure of the Gettier-style stories in this example.9 We could now raise the question of whether providing a metaphysical account of abilities really leaves us with the following two options: either of defending the counterfactual analysis, or of opting for its unanalyzability? If this is the dilemma, then since the unanalyzability option automatically deprives us of a natural tool for understanding the nature of ability, it seems a prima facie desideratum to try to ensure analysis. Or perhaps there is another route to be taken? It is important to notice that the primeness example above shows only that the protagonist is not in a position to exercise her ability of seeing water, but it does not show that the agent intrinsically lacks the relevant ability. In other words, the 9 Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Edmund L. Gettier, Analysis 23 (1963): 121- 123.

177 argument demonstrates that the exercise of ability is prime, but not that ability cannot be possessed in an intrinsic sense. The point is that, of course, the proponent of the argument might not be willing to accept the distinction between having the ability (intrinsically) and being able to exercise it, because it partly undermines the conclusion of the argument. Bringing this distinction into focus provides us an opportunity of opting for a third possibility, i.e. of searching for analysis of ability that is compatible with the primeness argument. A possible direction of thought along these lines is the following. The conditional analysis in its traditional form presents ability as a conjunction of internal and external components. The primeness argument undermines such a conjunctive approach by showing that the ability does not amount to a satisfaction of the internal and external conditions combined in a merely conjunctive way. Now, it is legitimate to ask: does the primeness argument generally undermine analysis of ability into internal and external, or does it rather undermine only the merely conjunctive way in which the internal and the external are put together in forming necessary and sufficient conditions for the exercise of that ability? I think we are justified in accepting only the latter conclusion. Thus we are not obliged to thoroughly reject the line according to which there are internal and external necessary conditions for ability, but only the claim that their merely conjunctive alliance is a sufficient condition for their exercise. Seen in this way, the scope of the primeness argument shrinks to the notion of success from ability, strictly speaking. Then, what the proponent of the analysis perhaps has to do is try to find a different condition (over and above the mere conjunction of external and internal conditions) that could account for cases of success from ability. 4. Defense of a Metaphysical Analysis of Ability: The Primeness of Apt Performance. Let us focus on the notion of success from ability. In a recent book, Ernest Sosa [E. Sosa 2007] suggests that in order to understand success from ability we should explore the notion of apt performance, a performance which is accurate, because adroit. (or successful because competent). The aptness condition brings an attempt to make sense of the col-

178 laboration between the agent’s disposition and the circumstances into the analysis of ability. More precisely, it puts stress on the agent’s contribution in achieving success – its causal role in reaching the goal. Thus, the crucial point of introducing the criterion is to differentiate between a performance which is successful and competent, and a performance which is successful because competent. Here is how Sosa points out a normative difference between the causal relation and the relation of mere coexistence: “For some reason, causation enters into the proper determination of values beyond the intrinsic in a way denied to mere precedence and coexistence. Causation helps induce other values, instrumental value prominent among them, in a way that mere temporal relations and bare coexistence are unable to do.” [VE 42]. Note that by rendering the agent’s contribution central to success from ability, Sosa only blocks undesired epistemic luck, but at the same time leaves room for collaboration of circumstances: success is usually inapt if proper circumstances are only apparently present. They have to be actually present, which is not always the case, and should not necessarily be within the agent’s grasp. I want to suggest that Sosa’s notion of apt performance opens a third possibility for understanding the nature of ability: we can treat ability as functionally determined by apt performances. Here is how we can put it schematically: S has an ability iff: i) S has a property x, such that ii) in normal conditions, S would succeed if she tries as a result of x (and not via mere luck). Note that such analysis need not involve the notion of reliability: S can have the ability if she is in principle advanced enough to use it aptly. The aim of the above conditional is, of course, to provide an analysis of ability which is not vulnerable to conditional fallacy-type arguments. As we saw, those arguments attack the analysis of dispositions at a point where at moment t, the event e occurs, but the event e1 does not occur, where e and e1 are events connected by the defining conditional. By introducing the aptness requirement, we change the criterion from a requirement of just a temporal co-existence of e and e1, to a requirement for e

179 to be the particular cause of e1. Thus, quite obviously, the explanation of ability that conditionally depends on the aptness criterion cannot be affected by the conditional fallacy-type arguments. In order to undermine the above analysis, proponents of the fallacy have to demonstrate an impossible proposition: that when e1 is caused by e, the causal relation does not occur. A further issue is whether the aptness analysis is immune to the primeness argument? I will argue briefly that the relation of aptness entails primeness since it is not a mere conjunction of external and internal. To illustrate that, consider three different cases: α, β, and γ. Suppose that there is target T in front of a subject S, and there are no external obstacles to hitting the target (no wind and the like). The shooter is aiming at it with two guns in her hands. One of the guns does not function. So, in case α: S’s brain is properly sending a signal to the right hand holding a working gun. S’s brain center, charged with sending a signal to the other hand is impaired. However, she has a muscle twitch in that hand which makes her pull the trigger. As it happens, the gun in her left hand does not work. As a result, S hits the target aptly. In case β: S’s brain is properly sending a signal to the left hand holding a working gun. S’s brain center, charged with sending a signal to the other hand is impaired. However, she has a muscle twitch in that hand which makes her pull the trigger. As it happens, the gun in her right hand does not work. As a result, S hits the target aptly. Now, case γ is internally like α, and externally like β. In γ: S’s brain is properly sending a signal to the right hand holding a non-working gun. S’s brain center, charged with sending a signal to the other hand is impaired. However, she happens to hold the working gun in that left hand. By accident, a muscle twitch makes her pull the gun’s trigger. As it happens, the gun in her left hand does not work. She hits the target, but her hitting the target is inapt. This generalizes to other abilities. The thorough primitivist can respond by accepting the aptness criterion of ability, and then claim that ability does not entail a set of internal and external conditions. Instead, it consists of nothing but occurrences of apt relations, when the internal and the external, so to speak, come together in such a way that the whole is, at the end of the day, indecomposable. There is one major problem with this response. There is a common

180 intuition that ability can be had without being exercised. If primitivists identify ability with apt performance, they have to explain what is being retained during the time the agent does not exercise the ability? In an attempt to answer, they may take it that the track record of apt performances determines whether one has the ability in the intrinsic sense or not. But this is not very plausible. It seems clear that one can acquire an ability without ever having exercised it. For instance, I can acquire the ability to recognize orchids just by looking at pictures, rather than real orchids: before my trip to the Amazon jungles, I study my orchid book thoroughly, and on my very first encounter with an actual orchid, I immediately recognize it. So, it seems that S can acquire an ability without having any track record of success. In this case, the primitivist may try to reject the claim that I have the ability to recognize 3D orchids prior to my having any positive track record of recognizing real orchids, and to confirm the claim that I have instead acquired the ability to recognize 2D orchids as standing for 3D ones, which is a different ability from the ability to recognize 3D orchids straightforwardly. In this case, the primitivist has to provide a further argument against the claim that I have acquired the ability to recognize 3D orchids in virtue of my having acquired a proper inferential basis which works in proper circumstances. A way for her to go is to agree that I have accumulated certain reliable modes for recognizing orchids by looking at pictures, but in the time I have not exercised them with a positive track record of success, I don’t really have the ability to recognize orchids. But even in this case the primitivist has to argue that having reliable modes of the kind is not an essentially internal basis of an apt performance. Without having her word for it, identifying ability with a set of apt performances looks like a non-starter for the primitivist. It looks rather obvious that exercise of ability entails having the ability, but not vice versa. So I contend that ability has a functional role to play in an apt performance, that it is conditionally defined, and that it can exist prior to an apt performance. Is not such a triad of statements circular? The point is that aptness, in its original sense, means accurate because adroit, and therefore the very notion of aptness already presupposes adroitness. By functionally embedding adroitness in the notion of aptness, we try to ex-

181 press the claim that ability has primarily, and essentially, an instrumental value. Moreover this explains the intuition that one can have ability without having exercised it. I have the ability to kill without ever having tried to kill anyone. In the face of these considerations, I do not think the above triad is viciously circular. A more interesting question concerns cases where I seem to exercise my ability, but I fail to exercise it. Then, the question is what kind of ability do I exercise? In such cases, I claim that the agent exercises a different ability, not the one that she thinks she exercises. This, however, is an issue to be argued for elsewhere. Finally, we can tentatively conclude that the view, according to which ability conditionally (counterfactually) hinges upon apt performances of a given kind, is immune to the conditional fallacy, and to its subspecies, the primeness argument. This view does not entail outright primitivism. We contend that ability can be conceived as holding a counterfactual dependence to apt performances, where a set of internal and external conditions must necessarily be present. The point is that although such a set is necessary for an apt relation to take place, quite obviously, there is no fixed set of such conditions which conjointly entails an apt relation. This leads us back to the traditional analysis of ability. There is no particular reason to reject the possibility of analysis of ability in terms of apt performance. If this is correct, we don’t need to abandon the counterfactual analysis of dispositions/abilities in the face of conditional fallacy arguments. References Bird, Alexander. (1998). "Dispositions and Antidotes". In: Philosophical Quarterly 48 (1998) 227–34. Gettier, Edmund L. (1963). Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? In: Analysis 23 (1963): 121-123. Lewis, D. (1997). "Finkish Dispositions". In: The Philosophical Quarterly 47: 143–158.

182 Martin, C. B. (1994). "Dispositions and Conditionals". In: The Philosophical Quarterly 44: 1–8. Shope, R. K. (1978). "The Conditional Fallacy in Contemporary Philosophy". In: Journal of Philosophy 75: 397–413 Williamson, T. (2000). Knowledge and its limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williamson, Timothy (2004). “Sosa on Abilities, Concepts and Externalism”. In: J. Greco (Eds.) (2004). Philosophers and their Critics: Ernest Sosa. Oxford: Blackwell.

IX. Naturalizing mathematics and naturalizing ethics Fabrice Pataut

Abstract: I offer several reasons for rejecting naturalism as a philosophical viewpoint or program envisaged for two paradigm cases: the case of mathematics and the case of ethics. Semantical, epistemological and metaphysical similarities between the two are investigated and assessed. I then offer a sketch of a different way of understanding the nature of mathematical difficulties and that of ethical puzzles. Key words: Philosophy of mathematics; ethics; evolutionary ethics; ontology; metaphysics; naturalism; natural facts; causal inertia; values; abstract objects; mathematical knowledge; truth; pleonastic theory of truth.

1. The point of this paper is to present and criticize a contemporary trend in ontological thinking consisting in an attempt at naturalizing two traditional areas of philosophical investigation: mathematics and ethics. The trend applies today to a wide array of areas of study and it is indeed growing in strength and scope, but I shall only be concerned here with these two disciplines. The problems and puzzles raised by the prospect of naturalization aren’t limited to ontological matters, to claims about what there is. There are also epistemological and methodological worries, but since the book is devoted to the stakes of contemporary ontological thinking, I shall focus, either directly or indirectly, on the metaphysical. The leading question then is: what must we countenance in terms of objects, or properties, or relations, or in terms of some ontological category or other, with respect to both mathematics and ethics -- should we choose to naturalize such disciplines? Moreover: does this yield a plausible account of mathematical and ethical truth, and of mathematical and ethical knowledge?

184 Whenever we take ontological or metaphysical disputes into consideration with the prospect of naturalization in mind, it is worth distinguishing between two kinds of doctrines1. According to one kind of doctrine, everything which exists is natural. Just as Thales claimed that everything is water, and just as Anaximenes and Diogenes claimed that everything is air [Aristotle 1941 Eds. : Bk. I, Ch. 3, 983b20—984a11], the advocate of naturalism claims that everything is nature or that everything is natural. If, rather than claiming that reality is one in this sense, i.e. with one single ἀρχή, primary cause or simple body generating everything there is — as Thales thought was the case with water or humidity and Anaximenes and Diogenes with air —, the naturalizer deems it advisable to carve out reality in some way or other, claiming that everything there is, whatever its category, belongs to nature or is part of nature. The leading metaphysical or ontological claim is still that there is only one kind of reality, viz. natural reality, but the naturalizer now insists that seemingly different items are, at bottom, made of the same stuff. No matter what ontological categories we should resort to in order to carry out the carving — events, properties, individuals, processes, relations, facts, etc — we shall end up claiming that every event is natural, every property is natural, and so on… In other words, in either case, there is nothing unnatural or non-natural, nothing outside or over and above nature, nothing of a different order or of a different kind. The view has been defended with respect to particular kinds of items, e.g. ethical facts, and the argument is then that since all facts are natural facts and since there are ethical facts, all ethical facts are natural. [See e.g. Sturgeon 1988: 239. I shall come back to this.] There is another kind of doctrine, which is just as general and pertains to epistemology, according to which everything which exists may, at least in principle, at some level fall under the scope of some appropriate natural science, either physics, or chemistry, or biology, or genetics, etc. The naturalizer is then claiming that there isn’t anything which mightn’t be reducible to the kind of facts which are studied, described and predicted by the natural sciences, either at the most general level (physics), or at a more specific level (say biology or genetics). In a so1 I shall use the adjectives “ontological” and “metaphysical” interchangeably.

185 mewhat stronger version, the naturalizer will move on to another modality and claim that everything there is must, at least in principle, be investigated by some natural science. This “must” is sometimes conceived as expressing a rational obligation or maxim, so that reality, or what there is, must be understood exclusively in this scientific way. This is at least a matter of a methodological ideal in the sense that we should always do our best to subsume whatever we shall have recognized as existing, as constituting reality, as part of the furniture of the world, under natural laws. In most discussions of the ins and outs of naturalism, the general metaphysical thesis and the general epistemological thesis are presented together so as to form an argument, with the first thesis in the role of premise and the second thesis in the role of conclusion: since everything that exists is natural, or is part of nature, everything, either effectively or in principle, comes under the jurisdiction of some natural science [see, e.g., van Kerkhove 2006 : 15]. In these very same discussions, one is rather keen on contraposing, so that if no natural science has so far been able to subsume objects belonging to some ontological category or other (event, property, etc), under its laws, then such objects don’t exist2. An immediate consequence of the contraposition is that our previous ontological claims are indeed unwarranted. We must at best regard them as mere façons de parler. They are nothing more than metaphysical illusions. Such objects aren’t part of our general ontology. Mental events provide a typical example: we may have naïvely thought there were mental events or processes, when all we may help ourselves to are electro-chemical processes in the brain, i.e. natural events to be studied by the natural sciences [see, e.g., Armstrong 1968 and Kim 1966]. According to a variant of functionalism, even if there were no strict psycho-physical laws (as opposed to ceteris paribus laws) which would legitimate the reduction of the psychological to the physical, either type-type or token-token, it must be in principle possible to “read off, from a person’s physical organization and state-tokens, a who2 In this instance, I am using the word “object” in an informal and most general sense, not in the more restricted sense of an ontological category distinct from that of properties, events, etc.

186 le mental life” [Loar 1982 : 24-25]. Another example is that of semantic facts, the fact that certain sentences of a public language are true, or mean what they mean. A physicalist will claim that such semantic facts or properties are to be countenanced only insofar as they are not irreducibly semantic. If sentences which ascribe semantic properties such as truth and meaning are true, then the truths they state must be explained, and indeed explained away in physicalist or neutral terms [see, e.g., Schiffer 1982]. The leading idea in this particular case is to look for a reduction of the semantical to the psychological and of the psychological to the physical, so that we end up with strictly physical properties, i.e. properties which may be understood and analyzed by the most fundamental natural science, viz physics. In all such cases, despite crucial differences, it is claimed that certain facts or states of affairs are natural, and this means or entails that they are reducible to facts or states of affairs coming under the jurisdiction of some natural science. We find ourselves in a situation where, contrary to what Strawson argues for in the case of perception — visual perception in particular — there is no such thing as a plurality of real properties, corresponding to the various ways in which we look at reality, or to the diverging conceptions we may form of it, and which would all be equally valid [Strawson (1979) 1988 : 110-112]. Let us for instance consider the case of colour from the eliminativist standpoint: the eliminativist may go as far as claiming that colour sensations as such do not exist. In this kind of strong construal, there is nothing distinct from neural codings, nothing but brain states. The denial of qualia then assumes an extreme form, for it outwardly rejects any residual subjective states which would be distinct from such codings, and this means or implies that our visual experiences do not even constitute an additional contingent subjective extra which wouldn’t fall under some natural law. There are no sensory qualities and no mental events at all [see Tye 1992]. In this respect, naturalism strongly converges on physicalism, perhaps even on some form or other of scientism, at least as far as the categorical denial of the kind of position Strawson is defending for visual perception is concerned. It might not be strictly speaking equivalent to it, but it certainly goes in that general direction.

187 2. Let us leave ontological considerations as such for a moment and have a look at epistemology. There is a doctrine, which is partly methodological and which advocates of naturalism have inherited from Quine: the doctrine of naturalized epistemology. Quine’s original claim is that epistemology, the theory of knowledge, must lose its old status of first philosophy. The business of epistemology is not to theorize on the foundations of science, or to reconstruct science in some way or other. It is legitimate insofar as it is a chapter of psychology, i.e. a chapter of natural science. It is indeed nothing if not a natural science, so that the traditional roles are reversed: “The old epistemology aspired to contain, in a sense, natural science; it would construct it somehow from sense data. Epistemology in its new setting, conversely, is contained in natural science, as a chapter of psychology.” Quine 1969 : 83 Maddy, in the philosophy of mathematics [Maddy 1990 ; Maddy 2007], and Sturgeon in ethics [Sturgeon 1988 : 248], have adopted that stance. A number of philosophers agree that the epistemology of the empirical sciences is itself an empirical science [see Boyd 1988 : 191-192]. Quine’s original target is the rational reconstruction of science from sense data à la Carnap [Carnap 1928], but Cartesian foundationalism could easily be another one since the Cartesian project is to take a philosophical truth, established by a purely philosophical argument, as the rational basis for the entire structure of knowledge. Husserl’s phenomenological viewpoint must also be rejected by the advocate of naturalized epistemology. Within the limits of the “natural theoretical attitude”, the horizon of all possible investigations is what we call “the world”. Nature is identical to spatio-temporal reality [Husserl (1913) 1982 : Book 1, §1 ; Book 2, §§1-3] : Sciences of the world, thus sciences in the natural attitude, the sciences of material nature, but also those of animate beings with their psychophysical nature, consequently also physiology, psychology, and so

188 forth, are all so-called natural sciences in the narrower and broader sense. [Husserl (1913) 1982: Book 1, §1, p. 6 ] There is therefore no place here for a science of pure essences (see op. cit. : Book 1 : §3) and Husserl concludes : [The scientific investigator of Nature] observes and experiments; that is, he ascertains factual existence according to experience; for him experiencing is a grounding act which can never be substituted by a mere imagining. And this is precisely why science of matters of fact and experiential science are equivalent concepts. […] After the foregoing it is clear that the sense of eidetic science [i.e. the science of pure essences as opposed to the science of contingent facts] necessarily precludes any incorporation of cognitional results yielded by empirical sciences. [Husserl op. cit.: §7, p. 16 ; §8, p. 17 ] As a general rule, any extra-scientific or trans-scientific point of view which would impose philosophical desiderata on the natural sciences will have to rejected. Such a point of view has been criticised by Putnam: [I]t is silly to agree that a reason for believing that p warrants accepting p in all scientific circumstances, and then to add ‘but even so it is not good enough’. Such a judgment could only be made if one accepted a trans-scientific method as superior to the scientific method; but this philosopher, at least, has no interest in doing that. [Putnam 1979: 356] This is exactly what the advocate of naturalism also refuses to do. If we look at the case of naturalism in mathematics as put forward by Maddy, naturalism consists in

189 […] the simple Quinean idea that we should not expect to view science from some extrascientific perspective, that we should instead judge science by the standards of science itself. [Maddy 1990: 620] For Maddy [Maddy 2007], philosophy of science is either a one-level or a two-level affair. Whenever we adopt a one-level perspective, we distinguish questions which come up from within scientific practice from those we ask as philosophers. Typically, questions of ontological commitment and justification of belief emerge once answers have been provided to questions born and raised within the precincts of scientific practice. Two kinds of questions typically surface: “What are the ontological commitments of a particular science?” and “are we justified in believing, or believing literally, what a given science, at first blush, claims is the case?” Carnap has famously criticized this way of proceeding, in particular with respect to the first kind of question, by means of a distinction between answers to internal questions and answers to external questions. We ask internal questions whenever we ask within a particular linguistic framework whether entities of a given kind exist. We ask external questions whenever we ask, outside any linguistic framework, whether a system of entities or objects, taken as a whole, exists, or is real [Carnap [1950 ; 1956] 1983 : 242]. If we ask the internal question whether or not numbers exist, the answer may only be positive [Carnap op. cit. : 245], but when we ask that same question independently of any framework, we ask a pseudo-question devoid of cognitive content. Carnap notoriously thought we could not make any progress with respect to such questions, for there is just no relevant evidence or data which might enable us to settle the matter [Carnap loc. cit., 254-255]. In the case of ethics, the advocate of naturalized epistemology will look at moral explanation, and in particular at the explanatory relevance of moral facts, in the following way : I am addressing questions about the justification of belief in the spirit of what Quine has called “episte-

190 mology naturalized”. I take this to mean that we have in general no a priori way of knowing which strategies for forming and refining our beliefs are likely to take us closer to the truth. The only way we have of proceeding is to assume the approximate truth of what seems to us the best overall theory we already have of what we are like and what the world is like, and to decide in the light of that what strategies of research and reasoning are likely to be reliable in producing a more nearly true overall theory. One result of applying these procedures, in turn, is likely to be the refinement or perhaps even the abandonment of parts of the tentative theory with which we began. [Sturgeon 1988: 248] Suppose we adopt a one-level position. Does this indicate with sufficient accuracy which method, or perhaps which range of relevant methods, we should adopt at this one level when looking for justifications for our beliefs? In the perspective of naturalized epistemology where, in Maddy’s phrase, philosophy is second, we are trying to justify our beliefs — in whatever domain — in naturalistic terms. Can we offer a rationale for this choice without already presupposing that every piece of knowledge, every justified belief, possesses as it were de facto, an empirical basis? Can there be a guarantee that all internal considerations will side with empiricism, that everything we should believe in the long run from our investigations is never to be found by means of considerations or arguments by which we look at the natural sciences from some extrascientific or trans-scientific point of view? Haven’t we aready given some epistemological value or primacy to the causal model of perceptual knowledge? In other words, to use Putnam’s terminology, is the (ideal) consideration of the totality of scientific “circumstances” enough to reject the possibility of an acceptance of p which would not fit into the empiricist or naturalized framework? 3. It is important at this point to distinguish between two projects.

191 One is to account for the content of knowledge or of justified belief in naturalistic terms, i.e. without ever postulating any non-natural or noncausal ingredient of content. Another one is to account for the processes by which we acquire such knowledge or belief so as to never appeal to non natural or non causal processes in the explanation or justification of the acquisition of content. The naturalizer wants to defend two distinct claims : that what we know or justifiably believe, i.e. the very content of knowledge, is natural, and that the cognitive capacities we use to grasp such content is also natural. These two projects are marred with notorious difficulties both in the case of mathematics and in the case of ethics. We may look at each situation with the help of charts, one for mathematical knowledge, and one for ethical knowledge. I shall first indicate the position which the naturalizer must avoid. I shall then try to determine under which conditions the other boxes of the charts might be filled out. CHART 1 MATHEMATICS

Natural Content

Non-Natural Content

Natural Acquisition Processes

NonNatural Acquisition Processes

FullBlooded Naturalist Position

FullBlooded AntiNaturalist Position

192 CHART 2 ETHICS

Natural Acquisition Processes

Natural Content

FullBlooded Naturalist Position

NonNatural Content

NonNatural Acquisition Processes

FullBlooded AntiNaturalist Position

I shall not talk about anti-naturalist or non-naturalist positions. Let me just mention a few famous ones pertaining to our two cases, so that we get an idea of how we might fill out the bottom right squares. With respect to mathematics, Plato argued in the Meno that the slave has in his soul true thoughts about things which he ignores but nevertheless comes to believe justifiably by reminiscence. Such, e.g., is the thought that one must begin with the diagonal of a square in order to duplicate its surface. The thought has always been there in the slave’s soul. It is brought back to life and full consciousness through the process of questioning, testing and examining [Meno : 85c-86a]. The soul has always known this, it has learned it in some non-human temporal dimension, therefore through processes which may not be properly called “natural” (although perhaps the processes through which the content comes back to consciousness might be natural). Poincaré, in an utterly different frame of mind, argued that mathematical induction (as opposed to empirical induction), or proof by recursion, was an irreducible and sui generis mode of reasoning [Po-

193 incaré (1894) 1903]. Interestingly enough, Poincaré appeals to mathematical induction in order to avoid the following dilemma: if mathematical propositions could be obtained by an application of the deductive rules of formal logic, mathematics would be a rigorous science but it would also reduce to a mere tautology. So its rigour must come from somewhere else, namely from some unique and specific mode of reasoning which yields contentful results, and this is provided by induction and recursive methods. One may also think of Brouwer’s creative subject, which isn’t a natural or psychological subject, but rather a highly idealized one. The mental proofs of Brouwerian intutionism have no natural content and are not acquired by natural processes. No science of nature could contain a psychology of the creative subject in the way Quine believes natural psychology contains epistemology. As for ethics, one may well think of Plato again, for whom the Good, or the Good in itself, as a non mental and non natural yet external entity, may not be grasped by anything akin to a natural process or to a causal contact. Kant, for whom a rational being gives himself or herself a necessary moral law, certainly may not admit that he or she could come to grasp either the law or its necessary character through any cognitive means or process which could be the object of an empirical study. In a quite different frame of mind, Richard Price, for whom the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, are attributes or real qualities of actions, conceives the understanding or grasp of these attributes as a form of perception, albeit a perception of the intellectual faculties. What we have here are clear examples of modes of cognition which resist naturalistic construals or reductions. 4. I hope it is clear by now that two key notions are at stake in this very broad presentation: the metaphysical notion of abstract object and the semantic notion of truth. To begin with, we have this notion of causally inert objects and properties, of things we cannot, not even indirectly, examine through perception — say sight —, not even through perception with the additional help of some technical apparatus. Abstraction is understood here in terms of causal inertia: anything we may not be causally connected to is deemed abstract. The challenge of naturalism is to provide an explanation of how we can acquire and develop a knowledge of se-

194 emingly or putatively abstract objects. Secondly, both in the case of mathematics and in that of ethics, our statements may, at least at first blush, be true. They are typical truth-bearers. They appear to possess what Wiggins has called the marks of truth, or the marks of assertability [Wiggins 1980]. Wiggins lists five. I shall need only the first three for present purposes : MARK 1. The assertibility (hence truth) of a sentence is the primary dimension of its assessment. MARK 2. A sentence is assertible (hence true) if and only if its content is such that, with respect to it, there should be a tendency, under favourable conditions of investigation, for disagreement to diminish and for opinion to converge in agreement. MARK 3. 3a : Any sentence which lacks the property of assertibility (hence of truth) lacks it independently of a speaker’s means of recognizing it. 3b. Any sentence which possesses the property of assertibility (hence of truth) possesses it independently of a speaker’s means of recognizing it. Let us now consider the following sentences as fairly typical examples: (1) There are prime numbers greater than 17. (2) Eating animals is wrong. Suppose the naturalizer wishes to explain how we can get to know that (1) without appealing to “exotic” capacities. He will have to appeal to some kind or other of natural cognitive abilities bearing natural relations to the content of mathematical knowledge. Ideally, the explanation will have to appeal to non-causally inert entities and properties at three different levels: (i) that of the cognitive resources of the agent, (ii) that of the relations between the cognitive acts grounded in such resources and the cognitive content, and (iii) that of the content as such. Traditionally, legitimate imputations of knowledge will be captured by the following schema : [K] X knows that p [is true] iff there exists some causal rela-

195 tion between X and the referents of the names, predicates and quantifiers occurring in p. A possibility which has been explored for the mathematical case consists in construing the justification for a mathematical belief so that it depends on the causal reliability of the processes through which it has been formed [Goldman 1986]. According to this conception, a mathematical theorem is indeed made true by abstract entities with which we cannot have any causal contact. The objects, concepts and properties of mathematics may nevertheless be represented by symbols with which we do have a causal contact by means of our ordinary perceptual and cognitive abilities. An agent may learn how to prove a theorem if and only if he or she possesses (i) perceptual abilities enabling him or her to identify numerical or algebraic formulæ and geometrical forms, (ii) storage capacities, in order to memorize the proof’s steps (there might be many), and (iii) the ability to perform deductive inferences, i.e. to draw conclusion from premisses. Goldman thus distinguishes primary epistemology from secondary epistemology: the first one studies the infra-individual psychological processes of belief formation, the second one studies proof procedures and algorithms. In such a naturalist perspective, a mathematical belief is justified only in the case the primary cognitive processes involved in the learning and mastery of proof procedures and algorithms are reliable and the procedures and algorithms are themselves reliable. The role assigned to the use of primary psychological processes is crucial: mathematical beliefs are fully justified just in case these processes are reliable. The primary cognitive processes are hard-wired in the human cognitive architecture: choosing the wrong algorithm and falling short of mastering algorithms are grounded in failures of the primary processes. Justification is thus a two-level affair: it is a function of the reliability of the algorithm (i.e. of the very fact that it yields the expected results) and of its cognitive penetration by whoever will be using it. A belief is justified if and only if these two conditions are fulfilled. Notice that the content itself isn’t natural: objects and properties are abstract (although the acquisition processes are not). In order to obtain a fully causal theory of the kind advocated by, e.g., Benacerraf [Benacerraf (1973) 1983], we must add a causal theory of reference for mathematical terms to the causal mo-

196 del of perceptual knowledge. The perceptual model has also been advocated in the case of moral knowledge, so that to know that (2), or the negation of (2) amounts to the perception of natural properties. Boyd, e.g., proposes the following: [I]f we adopt a naturalistic conception of moral knowledge we can diagnose in […] people a deficit in the capacity to make moral judgements somewhat akin to perceptual deficit. What I have in mind is the application of a causal theory of moral knowledge to the examination of a feature of moral reasoning which has been well understood in the empiricist tradition since Hume, that is, the role of sympathy in moral understanding. [Boyd 1988] This brings about an asymmetry between the case of mathematics and that of ethics, which we may represent by partly filling out our previous charts in the following new charts. 5. There are two kinds of strategies addressing the question of truth: the replacement strategy and the deflationist strategy. The first contends that we may do without truth and replace it with conservativeness [Field 1980]. The second purports to show that truth is redundant or pleonastic so that the appeal to true thoughts, true sentences and true assertions is innocuous [Schiffer1990]. The first one proposes the following formulation of the principle of conservativeness: Let A be any assertion expressed in a nominalistic language (i.e. a language containing no reference to and no quantification over abstract entities), let N be a set of assertions belonging to a nominalistic language and let M be some mathematical theory; then A may not be a consequence of N + S unless it is a consequence of N alone. N + S is thus a conservative extension of N. Field’s recourse to the notion of conservative extension as an alternative to truth has been much criticized, but I want to focus here on a feature which has received little attention, namely the relation between conservativeness and causal inertia. It seems to me that a good way to get the gist of the nominalist strategy is to look at the contrast Field draws

197 between the elimination of theoretical entities such as electrons and that of numbers: CHART 1 MATHEMATICS

Natural Content

Non-Natural Content

Natural Acquisition Processes

NonNatural Acquisition Processes

FullBlooded Naturalist Position Perception of symbols for abstract objects (formulæ, diagrams, geometrical forms ; storage capacities ; deductive abilities

FullBlooded AntiNaturalist Position

[Goldman 1986]

The attempt to eliminate theoretical entities of physics (e.g. electrons) from explanations of observable phenomena is not likely to be possible without bizarre devices like Craigian transcriptions; it is also not likely to be illuminating even if it is possible, because electrons

198 CHART 2 ETHICS

Natural Content

Natural Acquisition Processes

NonNatural Acquisition Processes

Perception of moral goodness construed as a perception of a cluster of various goods causally linked and unified by a process of homeostatis or mutual reinforcement which may be observed and empirically tested. [Boyd 1988]

NonNatural Content

FullBlooded AntiNaturalist Position

are causally relevant to the physical phenomena they are invoked to explain. But even on the platonistic assumption that there are numbers, no one thinks that those numbers are causally relevant to the physical phenomena: numbers are supposed to be entities existing somewhere outside space-time, causally iso-

199 lated from everything we can observe. If, as at first blush appears to be the case, we need to invoke some real numbers like 6.67 x 10-11 (the gravitational constant in m3/kg-1/s-2) in our explanation of why the moon follows the path that it does, it isn’t because we think that that real number plays a role as a cause of the moon’s moving that way; it plays a very different role in the explanation than electrons play in the explanation of the working of electric devices. The role it plays is as an entity extrinsic to the process to be explained, an entity related to the process to be explained only by a function (a rather arbitrarily chosen function at that). Surely then it would be illuminating if we could show that a purely intrinsic explanation of the process was possible, an explanation that did not invoke functions to extrinsic and causally irrelevant entities. [Field 1980: 43] The leading idea is that what allows us to explain, say, electrical phenomena also causes electrical phenomena, so that we should in general follow the methodological principle that, underlying every good extrinsic explanation there is an intrinsic explanation. One may attempt to draw a parallel with the case of ethics along the following lines. Let us suppose that we try to explain why eating animals is wrong (example (2) in section 4). Either what explains that some injustice is thereby committed also plays a causal role in the occurrence of that injustice, or it doesn’t. In the first case, we end up with an intrinisc explanation, in the second case with an extrinsic one. It seems that the naturalizer who picks out ethics as his field of study must be looking for explanations of an intrinsic kind so that, say, the injustice or wrongness done to animals is the causal result of natural facts, and so that the ethical disagreement over the question of knowing whether or not we may eat meat must be settled by getting a good understanding of these facts. In any event, it is hard to see how the advocate of naturalism could argue in favour of an explana-

200 tion of why some injustice is being committed when one eats meat which would invoke some divine command, or an obligation with respect to creatures possessing an immortal soul. (We expressed this in full generality in section 1 by saying that the naturalizer claims there is nothing over and above nature, nothing of a different order.3) Just as the nominalist argues that we may dispense with the abstract objects implied in extrinsic explanations, i.e. the arbitrary functions, rest frames and so on, one refers to in a mathematical language, the ethical naturalist must argue that we may dispense with divine commands, a priori justified laws and indeed anything one refers to or quantifies over in most ethical discourses. The second strategy countenances the notion of truth but claims to do so at no ontological or epistemological cost. Just as there is a pleonastic use of the word “true”, there is a pleonastic use of the words “fact”, “property” and “proposition” according to which the doctrine that there are moral facts [see Sturgeon 1988, mentioned in sections 1 and 3], or moral properties, or moral propositions, may be accepted by anyone who is ready to make moral judgements (so, except perhaps by the advocate of amorality or by the moral skeptic). It is acceptable because one may resort to these notions in order to express one’s moral beliefs without committing oneself to the existence of moral facts, moral properties and moral propositions. Suppose someone believes eating animals is wrong. Anyone expressing that belief by claiming that it is a fact that eating animals is wrong, or that the consumption of meat has the property of being wrong, simply reaffirms his or her belief in some pleonastic way [Schiffer 1990 : 602]. The argument purporting to show that ethical propositions containing occurrences of ethical terms are true in an innocuous or pleonastic way is the following. Typical fact-stating sentences like “Eating animals is a source of protein” and moral sentences like (2) have the same semantic status. Believing is a relation between subjects or agents and the re3 One may nevertheless want to look at Rawls’s attack on naturalism, in Rawls 2009. In that perspective, a naturalist is someone who underestimates the gap between nature and mind, or nature and soul. In Rawls’s view, Augustine and Aquinas end up being naturalists just because they take God to be part of nature. The comments by Robert Merrihew Adams on Rawls’s suggestion are particularly relevant here.

201 ferents of the subordinate propositions introduced by “that”, which specify the content of belief. According to the so-called pleonastic theory of propositions, the singular term “that eating animals is wrong” cannot fail to have a reference. Why isn’t it liable to reference failure? Because we cannot distinguish between “that” clauses such that some have a referent, say “that eating animals is a source of protein” whereas others don’t, typically “that eating animals is wrong”. Moreover, according to Schiffer, ethical predicates do not have instantiation conditions. The argument, at this point, relies on some kind of Armstrongian conception of properties according to which properties are mere shadows of predicates [Armstrong 1989 : 78], or perhaps on the conception that to be a property is just to have the grammar of a property [Boghossian cited by Schiffer in Schiffer op. cit. : 604]. To summarize where we have got so far: Any meaningful predicate F has its nominalization, i.e. “the property of being F”, which may not fail to have a reference. But although a predicate has a referent, the property thereby designated may not be instantiated, not because there are no genuine or intrinsic moral properties, but because of disagreements between users of the moral language. Therefore, since there are disagreements with respect to the conditions of correct use or application of the predicate “wrong” occurring in (2), there are no instantiation conditions for it and no truth-conditions for ethical claims like (2). In other words, we countenance the existence of non instantiated moral properties in order to conclude that, since we have moral convictions we hold to be true, we are quite systematically mistaken in our moral presumptions. Just as Mackie thought, we quite systematically fall into error4. 6. It is interesting at this point to look at a particular kind of ethical naturalism known as evolutionary ethics and to inquire into its relation to the notions of truth, justification, objectivity and the like. As Ruse rightly remarks [Ruse 1993 : 35-37], the label “evolutionary ethics” is applied to many different theories, some of which pertain to some form or other of 4 For Mackie, of course, ethical statements express beliefs which may have a truthvalue, either the true or the false, although none, as a matter of fact, are true [Mackie 1977 : ch. 1].

202 social Darwinism while others conceive evolution as an ascending process towards the specifically human [see Spencer (1857) 1868 and Wilson 1978]. The general idea is that since the organic world is prey to an internal struggle whose end result is natural selection, and since we are, as human beings, a product of the organic world, we should quite easily understand that (i) we struggle in order to survive and natural selection is merely the expression or the result of that struggle, and that (ii) the struggle is a perfecly legitimate state of affairs. The justification rests on the consideration that this constitutes a way — as a matter of fact the only way — to further the survival of the human species. To the objection inherited from Moore [Moore 1903] that one commits a fallacy when arguing from premises acknowledging facts (natural selection) to an evaluative conclusion (natural selection is a good thing) or to a normative one (we should promote natural selection), the advocate of evolutionary ethics argues in favour of both conclusions by appealing to the very fact that we are ourselves a product of natural selection, so that we are indeed in a case where the exception to Moore’s objection is itself legitimate [Ruse 1993 : 41]. Pushing on with this kind of reasoning, we might perhaps claim that such legitimacy is itself a product of natural selection. Ruse amends the traditional defense of evolutionary ethics by introducing the notion of random mutation. Natural selection is not, as it were, trying to reach a particular end it will get at only in the very long run; it aims at short term ends such as immediate survival and reproduction. Moreover, mutations involved in evolution aren’t a product of the particular needs of the individuals who are subject to evolutionary change. This is what “random” means. The sense of good and evil and the sense of moral obligations are end products of natural selection and of its action by way of random mutations [Ruse op. cit. : 44]. Let us look at the paradigmatic case of altruism. An organism exhibits an altruistic behaviour if and only if it behaves to the advantage of another organism without expecting benefits in return, or by exposing itself to disadvantages and even to danger. In this context, “altruistic” is ambiguous: it has a metaphorical meaning (because the organism exhibiting the behaviour lacks intentionality and doesn’t believe its actions are altruistic), and a technical one. “Altruistic” must therefore be followed by the adverb “biologically”, “biologically altruistic” being then synonymous with “incli-

203 ned to social cooperation”5. Biological altruism is hard-wired, i.e. biologically innate. It is not conscious, it is not the object of propositional attitudes such as beliefs, desires and intentions, and it isn’t the end product of social upbringing or group pressure. Since humans have limited resources with respect to reproduction (we reproduce less than social insects like ants), the extension of what is hard-wired is necessarily limited [Ruse op. cit. : 50]. Secondly, evolution has built us as imperfect calculating machines. Why? Because the time it takes to compute the best conclusion or the best outcome for our actions is much too long. So we are neither hard-wired ‘all the way’, nor ideally rational. We’re somewhere halfway between pure hard-wiring and rational, conscious omniscience. This leads the advocate of evolutionary ethics, as an advocate of one particular kind of naturalized ethics, to put forward an argument about truth, justification and objectivity, i.e. an argument concerning the notions at stake in the philosophical discussions we’ve been considering. We may reconstruct this argument as an argument from unwarranted objectification in the following way [Ruse 1993 : 62]: PREMISS 1. Morality works (i.e. people follow moral norms) if and only if people really believe it has an objective foundation. PREMISS 2. Morality works if and only if people objectivate it in Mackie’s sense (equivalent to P1). PREMISS 3. We believe our ethical norms are objectively true because our biological makeup forces us to believe it. CONCLUSION 1. We may not conclude our ethical norms are objectively true. CONCLUSION 2. Objective morality is superfluous. CONCLUSION 3. Such superfluity is a good thing. The argument would have us believe that, from the conjunctive fact 5 See Dawkins 1976 for a discussion of many relevant examples in relation to the reproduction of genes.

204 that we are part of the process of evolution and that we inevitably ask questions about its meaning or raison d’être (as creatures inclined to metaphysical speculations), it follows that we quite naturally think of ourselves as being at the very end of that process, that evolution and natural selection are directed towards us (although, if scientists are to be believed, in a random fashion). There is, as it were, a kind of necessary illusion of an objectivity which is favourable to us. Although we agree that normative ethics is the result of natural selection, we nevertheless still insist that it must benefit from an objective foundation. We find the idea that it is a natural fact resulting from natural random processes hard to accept. There are two possibilities. Either we read “objectively true” in PREMISS 3 and CONCLUSION 1 along the lines of the pleonastic theory, or we read it as meaning “true independently of the means we have at our disposal to acknowledge that it is” [see MARK 3b in section 4. and Wiggins 1980]. In the first case, the (meta-ethical) conclusion according to which moral objectivity is superfluous (CONCLUSION 2) is in some sense already contained in the premisses and we have no genuine argument. The denial of moral objectivity would be a mere effect of the pleonastic character of “true”, or of its use, even though we have taken care to qualify “true” with the adverb “objectively”. In the second case, we reach in fine a substantial conclusion (CONCLUSION 3) to the effect that although the notion of moral objectivity is superfluous, we are conditioned to believe that the objectivity of moral truths might very well be unaccessible to us, maybe because of the kind of perceptual deficit Boyd is concerned with [see section 4. and Boyd 1988]. But this places us in a delicate situation, epistemologically speaking. We end up with a contradiction, i.e. in a situation where we have a reductio of the claim that ethical statements might be true whether or not we have the means at our disposal to discover that they are, i.e. a reductio of realism in Dummett’s sense as applied to ethical discourse, and this because we also know that the objectivity is superfluous. 7. There might be a better way of conceiving the nature of difficulties in disciplines such as ethics and mathematics, a more convincing way of understanding why it is so difficult to find a general proof of Go-

205 ldbach’s conjecture or of making up one’s mind about the practice of eating meat in argumentative fashion. If we adopt an internalist perspective, according to which the knowing mind relates only to what it establishes, we may very well be baffled by the difficulty of mathematics. Since the mind only retrieves or stumbles upon its own creations, why should it have to struggle at all, let alone struggle with yet unsolved problems? In the externalist perspective, the mind discovers something which is entirely distinct from itself and when it does, it does so piecemeal. Struggle is then quite to be expected: we toil with problems because we discover an external reality little by little, as we would discover some yet uncharted continent. (We are back to the most metaphorical expression of Platonism.) But externalism has a price: mathematical knowledge is then a matter of access to suprasensible entities and one must accordingly explain how such knowledge is possible. (We must remember that in Goldmanian epistemology, we do not have a full-blooded naturalist position, but only a partially naturalist one since the contents which are grasped are indeed non-natural (see CHART 1 in section 4). Likewise in ethics: if we give ourselves moral truths or moral imperatives, why should there be so many disagreements, and if grasping them is an empirical matter, which empirical methods are suited to the task? In particular, how do ethical facts and properties, qua natural facts and properties, fit into a general picture where facts and properties traditionally recognized as such by the natural sciences also play a role? Some philosophers claim that although ethical properties are metaphysically natural, it doesn’t follow that we should try to express or rephrase our moral assertions in naturalistic terms [see Sturgeon 1988 : 240]. In any event, the problem is still to give a plausible account of how the facts and properties interact (albeit without resorting to reductive definitions of moral terms and assertions). Oumraou has recently looked at the case of mathematical knowledge and argued in favour of a new kind of internalist position according to which (i) the internalist hypothesis doesn’t imply a better or greater accessibility to mathematical objects and (ii) objective mathematical contents contain the cause of their difficulties, so that the explanation of why mathematics is so difficult is to be found in the very nature or content of mathematical propositions and not in the limitations of cognitive

206 abilities directed towards an external reality [Oumraou 2009]. It might be helpful to consider ethical puzzles and disagreements in the same way. In the case of ethics, some philosophers have denied that moral dilemmas may have a solution. From the emotivist point of view, the attempt at justifying emotional reactions requires an appeal to second-level emotional reactions which take the original emotions as their object, so that more and more emotions are called into play. For the advocate of the pleonastic theory, disagreements come from the fact that moral agents may mean the same thing when using an ethical term and still use diverging criteria for its correct application. Although “just” refers to a determined and fixed moral property, the term may not have instantiation conditions. Neither position yields a satisfying explanation of the nature of ethical difficulties. The advocate of the pleonastic conception, in particular, ultimately relies on a “thin” metaphysical conception of moral properties as mere shadows of moral predicates which implies that opponents in ethical debates are mistaken about the very content of the disputes. To begin with, it is much too demanding to require that anyone objecting to a moral judgement, or ranking criteria, do so by reference to the fixed extension of moral predicates. Moreover, if propositions of ethics may not be true, except in a pleonastic sense, it is hard to see how they could be justified with the help of the relevant epistemic notions which constrain truth in the anti-realist perspective. Obviously, there are numerous cases in which it is particularly difficult to come up with a good argument in ethics. The interesting cases are those in which incompatible beliefs (i) do not rely on fallacious arguments, (ii) are not held on the basis of one or more refutable beliefs, moral or otherwise, and (iii) where no extra argument could justify a choice. The internalist perspective requires us to look for contents and justifications which are not always or necessarily transparent, but which may neverthless yield an explanation of why there are difficulties in the first place. At first blush, it seems more promising to explain such difficulties through the analysis of content than to impute them to our cognitive limitations.

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X. On the intricate interplay of logic and ontology Rosen Lutskanov Abstract: The fundamental ontological category of objects is traditionally imparted with the air of staunch inalterability. As a rule its extension was deemed as remaining fixed through the course of our theoretical considerations. But in the last century many dramatic events in the realm of science have forced us to modify our received ontological commitments. Thus objects came to be construed as constituted ceaselessly, over the course of the inferential articulation of scientific practices. Now it seems quite apparent that ontology (what we think about) and logic (how we think about it) are virtually inseparable. Therefore we have two principal options: to maintain ontology but modify logic or to retain logic while altering ontology. In the second half of the twentieth century, the first of these alternatives was pushed to the extreme and consequently the realm of non-classical logics was densely populated. Here I shall pursue the second option, which up to the present moment seems much less popular. My objective shall be to outline a methodological stance which conceives alterations in ontology as engendered by features of the received norms of reasoning. That is why the present approach is plotted as pertaining to the theoretical field of dynamic ontology. Key words: theory of argumentation, philosophy of modality, material inference, ontological commitment, shifts in ontology. §0. The design of the present essay is to provide a precursory account of the interplay of logic and ontology by elaborating a formal framework for the systematic study of inferentially induced shifts in ontology. It is set out in the following manner: the opening part (§1-§6) elaborates the basics of the formal framework, founded on the notions of substantial argument and the modal universe of discourse associated with it; the next part (§7-§14) develops an inferential articulation of the crucial

212 concepts of “object” and “property”, based on the definition of “essentially concomitant propositions”; the concluding part (§15-§18) introduces two complementary varieties of shifts in ontology and explores their interaction. §1. Any substantial piece of reasoning is concerned with the way the world is, it points to some facet of reality. Therefore any “argument”, or relatively self-contained piece of reasoning, is charged with a stock of (possibly dormant) ontological commitments1. Apparently, if we try to establish the truth of a particular claim concerning the world, we have to avail ourselves of some other claims making manifest the metaphysical features of the universe. For example, when Sherlock Holmes tries to locate the perpetrator of manslaughter, he overtly employs some facts concerning the circumstances of the crime scene but at the same time silently admits into his reasoning various general presuppositions concerning the spatio-temporal and causal structure of the universe. The same applies to informal and formal argumentative settings alike. Hence, from now, on we shall admit that our analysis applies to formalized arguments couched in a regimented language and based on a clear-cut set of valid inference rules. According to the preceding remark, the deductive development of such formalized arguments is nothing more than an unfolding of their hypothesized contentions relating to the actual world. That is why the present discussion is based on the assumption that the fundamental ontological commitments associated with any formalized argument are captured by its premises – starting from the rudiments, the conclusion of the argument has to be deductively established. §2. Granted that this assumption is admissible, it may be supposed that any consistent set of premises determines a universe of discourse – a set of “possible worlds”, “situations” or “states of affairs” which are compatible with the truth of every member of the set of premises2. These 1 This has become a virtual commonplace due to Russell’s dictum according to which “Logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology, though with its more abstract and general features” (See Bertrand Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, second edition, London, Allen and Unwin, 1920, p. 169). 2 The notion of “universe of discourse” was introduced by Boole (See George Boole, Mathematical Analysis of Logic, Being an Essay towards a Calculus of Deductive Reasoning, Cambridge, Macmillan, Barclay and Macmillan, 1847, p. 15). What

213 sets specify the list of relevant alternatives that may bear on the extraction of the argument’s conclusion. If we reiterate the Sherlock Holmes example above, we could say that the available pieces of evidence (“the premises”) determine the list of suspects and the conclusion singles one of them out as “the murderer”. Henceforth, we are free to deal with possible worlds, and without any significant loss of generality, because to any set of situations or states of affairs, corresponds a uniquely determined set of possible worlds. It is evident that to any situation (or “incomplete possible world[s]”) belonging to the set of situations S, we may associate the set of possible worlds which are its completions; the union of all such sets for all members of S is the set of possible worlds W which shall be juxtaposed to S. After these preliminary remarks, we can lift the discussion to the appropriate technical level. Let us suppose that the set of propositions {p1, p2, … , pn} is the premise-set of some particular argument, say A. To any member of this set, say pk, we can assign a class of possible worlds: these are the possible worlds which “support” pk i.e. render it true. So, for any world w and proposition p, if p is true in w, then we shall write “w ╞ p” and say that w “supports” p. Furthermore, for any proposition p, we shall define its support set as sup(p) =DF {w  w ╞ p}. Analogously, we may introduce the notion of the support set of a premise set. Insofar as in the course of the argument we suppose that all of its members are satisfied at once, we have that given a premise set S = {p, q, r, …}, its support set would be sup(S) =DF (∀p ∈ S){w  w ╞ p}. Given an argument A with premise-set {p1, p2, … , pn} we shall say that the class of possible worlds W is a (modal) universe of discourse associated with A, provided that the support set of {p1, p2, … , pn} is contained in W. This means that the class of modal universes of discourse associated with given argument A is underdetermined by it; to any argument A corresponds an open hierarchy of modal universes at whose bottom lies the support set of the premises of the argument. The reason for the alleged ambiguity of the relation between an argument A and its modal universe of discourse W shall become evident when we come to discussing cases when the unfolding of the argument necessitates expansion of its initial universe of discourse. §3. After we have specified the basics of our modal framework, we can locally model the behaviour of the well-known logical constants: contemporary modal logic achieved was to multiply this single universe of discourse and implement it in the analysis of metaphysical claims concerning essence and necessity.

214 thus the proposition q shall be qualified as (local) negation of p (and denoted “¬Wp”) if and only if sup(q) = W – sup(p) i.e. when the support set of q is the relative complement of p with respect to W; r shall be qualified as the (local) disjunction of p and q (and denoted “p ∨W q”) if and only if sup(r) = sup(p) ∪ sup(q) i.e. when the support set of r is the union of the support sets of p and q; r shall be qualified as a (local) conjunction of p and q (and denoted “p ∧W q”) if and only if sup(r) = sup(p) ∩ sup(q) i.e. when the support set of r is the intersection of the support sets of p and q, etc.3 The apparently awkward decision to produce an infinite number of structurally identical definitions of logical constants, one for each universe of discourse, is a corollary of our initial assumption that the essentials of our reasoning processes are to be accounted for from the perspective of the due universe of discourse. The full power of such local connectives will become evident when we begin correlating different universes of discourse associated with a given argument. Let V and W be two such universes, with V ⊂ W (i.e. V is contained in W) and let us be given two propositions which are contradictory in V: paradigmatically these shall be of the form “p” and “¬Vp”. Insofar as V is strictly contained in W, it may be postulated that there shall be a world w ∈ W such that w ∉ sup(p) and at the same time w ∉ sup(¬Vp), therefore the law of excluded middle fails for p and ¬Vp in W. This makes manifest the fact that ¬Vp is not the proper negation of p in W. Of course this is not a problem at all because, according to our definition above, there shall be another connective “¬W” such that this and all other properties of classical negation hold for it in W. We shall soon be in a position to study the interplay of such local connectives and their impact on shifts in ontology. §4. Now, given an argument A and a universe of discourse W associated with it, there is an obvious relation between the support set of any cogent conclusion c of A and W: the support set of c should be contained in W. If there is a possible world w such that w ∈ sup(c) but w ∉ W then the course of reasoning has led us beyond the initial argumentative setting i.e. beyond the list of relevant alternatives listed in its premises. We 3 These definitions are replicas of Carnap’s definitions worked out in his “Logical Syntax of Language” (See Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, Paterson, NJ, Littlefield, Adams and Co, 1959, pp. 199-204).

215 shall exclude from our consideration such “defective” arguments as fail to link their premises and conclusion properly. Henceforth, for present purposes, we shall fix our attention on arguments with the property that their conclusion c is such that sup(c) ⊆ W (i.e. the support set of the conclusion is included in the initial universe of discourse associated with the argument’s premises) and shall call them “conservative” arguments. As we shall see presently, this methodological decision does not imply that the universes of discourse considered here shall be immune to shifts in ontology. On the contrary, I do not exclude the possibility that in order to reach the desired conclusion we sometimes need to revise and expand our original universe of discourse. The only desideratum in such cases is that this recourse to expanded ontology shall be sublated in the argument’s conclusion. As is well-known after the work of Hilbert and many others, sometimes we have to introduce “ideal” elements in order to reach substantial conclusions concerning the “real” objects under consideration4. §5. After this digression we shall discriminate between two varieties of conservative arguments: the arguments the support set of whose conclusion coincides with the universe of discourse (which may be expressed by the formula “sup(c) = W”) and the arguments the support set of whose conclusion is strictly included within the universe of discourse (which corresponds to the condition “sup(c) ⊂ W”). The first type of arguments shall be called “trifling” because under the received rules of inference their conclusion goes no further than the premises. A trivial example for such trifling argument is a piece of reasoning with premise-set {p, q} and conclusion p ∧ q. Obviously, the classical validity of the rule of conjunction-introduction sanctions the claim that sup({p, q}) = sup({p ∧ q}), thus we have learned nothing in the course of the argument. On the other hand, there are “substantial” arguments with the property that sup(c) ⊂ W. Almost all real-life examples of reasoning belong to this stripe of arguments because in many cases the premises do not provide 4 One of the first elaborate discussions concerning this point is contained in Hilbert’s paper “On the Infinite” (See its English translation in Jean van Heijenoort (ed.) From Frege to Gödel, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1967, pp. 367-392).

216 the information needed to support the conclusion. That is why, in the course of argumentation, we append additional premises in order to narrow down the set of possibilities left open by the initial premises (sometimes these auxiliary hypotheses are temporarily accepted as true, which means that they may be overthrown in the course of the argument). What Hintikka has called the “Sherlock Holmes” conception of logic essentially boils down to the same idea: that logical inference is informative because it is in a constant search for new premises which infuse empirical content into the hollow forms of valid reasoning5. In the actual argumentative settings of everyday reasoning, the conclusion is not something we hit upon by sheer chance; we actually look for ways to back a conclusion we have conceived beforehand. In order to find how this procedure works, we shall need some extra terminology. §6. Let us consider an argument A and a universe of discourse W associated with it. Now let us fix our attention on a particular world w belonging to W. The world w is completely characterized by the set of propositions which are true for it (its “truth” set). Clearly this is just the set of propositions p such that w belongs to their support set: Tr(w) =DF {p  w ∈ sup(p)}. Now the duality of possible worlds and propositions comes to the fore: propositions are collections of possible worlds (encompassed by their support set) and possible worlds are (maximal consistent) collections of propositions (constituting their truth set). In the same fashion, we can introduce the notion of the truth set of a set of possible worlds: if we let V be such a set, then Tr(V) =DF (∀w ∈ V){p  w ∈ sup(p)}. Having truth sets at our disposal, we can introduce a measure of the “information gain” of a given argument. Usually, when we initialize the inferential process and fix our universe of discourse, we have a designated world in our minds: this is the world we identify as the actual world, i.e. the support set of all true propositions. If we return to our Sherlock Holmes example, this means that when the detective commences his investigation, he has already designated one of the suspects as 5 For more information on the notion of “Sherlock Holmes’ conception of logic” consult Hintikka’s paper “Is logic the key to all good reasoning?” (See Jaakko Hintikka, Inquiry as inquiry: a Logic of scientific Discovery, Selected Papers, vol. V, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999, p. 1-24).

217 “the murderer” (as we shall see later this assumption is defeasible insofar as in many cases there is more than one murderer). Therefore the universe of discourse has a designated element wα, which is traditionally called “the actual world”. Its truth set Tr(wα) comprises the set of propositions we are disposed to entertain or accept as true. The whole enterprise of argumentation aims at the following: starting with the set of premises {p1, p2, … , pn} and the universe of discourse W associated with them to verify as many elements of Tr(wα) as possible, i.e. to ascertain a set of auxiliary hypotheses {pn+1, pn+2, … , pn+k} such that the support set of {p1, p2, … , pn} ∪ {pn+1, pn+2, … , pn+k} includes wα and is as small as possible. Hence given a family of functions {fi} with domain sup({p1, p2, … , pn}) and co-domain sup({p1, p2, … , pn} ∪ {pn+1, pn+2, … , pn+k}), the argument under consideration shall be called “substantial” (i.e. with positive information gain) if there is a member of {fi} which is injective, “defective” (i.e. with negative information gain) if there is a member of {fi} which is surjective, and “trifling” (i.e. with zero information gain) if there is a member of {fi} which is both injective and surjective (i.e. is an isomorphism). §7. Now we have everything at hand and may proceed with our principal task: the inferential articulation of the notion of “object”. Let us be given again an argument A with an associated universe of discourse W. Some of the propositions we manipulate in the course of the argument will have the curious property that they are always jointly present or jointly absent from the truth set of any possible world belonging to W. We shall call two propositions p and q with the property that, for some possible world w belonging to the universe of discourse W, either w ╞ p and w ╞ q or w │≠ p and w │≠ q (here the formula “w│≠ p” expresses the claim that the possible world w does not support the proposition p), “concomitant with respect to w”. Furthermore, two propositions are viewed as “essentially concomitant” if they are concomitant with respect to any possible world w belonging to the universe of discourse W. My contention is that what was called by Brandom and others “material inference” is what essential concomitance is responsible for in the present setting6. If the propositions p and q are essentially concomitant, then 6 The concept of “material inference” is part of the research program of inferentialism (See Robert Brandom, Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Dis-

218 you can infer p from q and vice versa in any world belonging to the universe of discourse. In such cases, the propriety of inferences is not safeguarded by logical form alone, but by the structure of the universe of discourse which by default is partitioned into sets of essentially concomitant propositions. §8. But what characteristic feature of propositions reflects the property of essential concomitance? When pairs of propositions at least one of which is molecular are concerned, the answer to this question is relatively easy. For example, the proposition p ∨ q is inferable from the proposition p (in compliance with the rule of disjunction-introduction) and this is the reason why the propositions p and p ∨ q are essentially concomitant: possible worlds are maximal consistent sets of propositions (they are closed with respect to the logical consequences of the propositions contained in them) therefore any possible world which supports p shall also support p ∨ q. But what happens if in our universe of discourse there is a pair of atomic (i.e. devoid of logical structure) propositions which are essentially concomitant? In order to answer this question, we need to consider the different possible relations that obtain between the conceptual contents expressed by two different atomic propositions. If we narrow down our discussion to propositions analyzable into subject- and predicate-terms (i.e. “predicative” propositions), there are four possibilities: (1) the two propositions have one and the same subject and one and the same predicate (i.e. they both are of the form “P(a)”, where “P” is their common predicate, and “a” – their shared subject); (2) the two propositions have one and the same subject but different predicates (i.e. the first is of the form “P(a)” while the second is of the form “Q(a)”); (3) the two propositions have different subjects but one and the same predicate (i.e. the first is of the form “P(a)” while the second is of the form “P(b)”); (4) the two propositions both have different subjects and different predicates (i.e. the first is of the form “P(a)” while the second is of the form “Q(b)”). §9. The first case is trivial because if two propositions share their subject and predicate terms, then we cannot properly regard them as different at all; they are just two instantiations of one and the same proposicursive Commitment, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1994, pp. 97105).

219 tion. The fourth case also seems clear because it is evident that it is impossible for two propositions of this kind to be essentially concomitant. If our universe of discourse is “sufficiently varied”, then for any two propositions which are not related in any way (just like “P(a)” and “Q(b)”), it is certain that there shall be a possible world belonging to it such that it supports the first but does not support the second. The third case also presents no serious complications because it is obvious that if two propositions convey information about two different objects then it is impossible for them to be essentially concomitant. For example, if the independent propositions “Jack is bald” and “Jim is bald” concerning the detached individuals “Jack” and “Jim” are both supported by our actual world, then there shall be no convincing reasons for us to expect that they would both be true or both false in all other possible worlds, belonging to some (sufficiently varied) modal universe of discourse associated with arguments relating to baldness. On the other hand, the case (2) is somewhat more complicated. What does it mean for two propositions of the form “P(a)” and “Q(a)” to be essentially concomitant? First, let us consider the case when “P(a)” and “Q(a)” are both true. This means that the intersection of the predicates “P” and “Q” is not empty and includes the object designated by the individual constant “a”. But extensions of predicates vary from world to world so, in general, the fact that the object designated by “a” belongs to the extension of “P” shall not imply the fact that “a” belongs to the extension of “Q”. Therefore I shall argue that the only reason for two predicates to “pursue” an object from world to world is the fact that they express essential attributes of that object. For example, any counterpart of Socrates inhabiting any conceivable possible world shall possess attributes like “wisdom” and “mortality”; this means that any possible world where the individual called “Socrates” is present shall support both the propositions “Socrates is wise” and “Socrates is mortal”. The same line of reasoning may be pursued when the two propositions are both false in a world w; this means that Socrates does not exist in the possible world in question and therefore the non-referring individual constant that names it inevitably fails to satisfy the characteristic properties expressed by the predicates “x is wise” and “x is mortal”. §10. From these considerations we can draw the conclusion that two

220 atomic propositions of subject-predicate form are essentially concomitant if and only if they express essential properties of their common subject. I suggest that this is the proper way to characterize inferentially the use of individual constants naming concrete objects: these are the parts of our vocabulary which are accountable for the essential concomitance of atomic propositions. Moreover, if we apply the same approach to relational propositions, this shall be enough for the characterization of abstract objects: the fact that the atomic proposition “the chair is on the left of the table” is essentially concomitant to the atomic proposition “the table is on the right of the chair” provides inferential articulation of the abstract object “direction” by making explicit the relation of its two complementary modifications: “left” and “right”. I shall not dwell on this topic further because the difference between concrete and abstract objects does not seem essential in the present context: concrete objects relate to essentially concomitant predicative propositions, and abstract objects – to essentially concomitant relational propositions. This reconstruction seems congenial with Quine’s idea that all objects (concrete or abstract) are postulated entities which round off and simplify our theoretical practices7. The present approach makes this fact manifest by letting objects be referred to by individual constants explicitating the inferential structures governing material inferences nested in a given universe of discourse. §11. Notwithstanding whether the difference between abstract and concrete objects is acknowledged or not, we now have a natural procedure for extraction of objects inhabiting or pertaining to a possible world: when two essentially concomitant propositions p and q are both supported by the world w (i.e. w ╞ p and w ╞ q), it is legitimate to introduce an individual constant denoting the object characterized by p and q (this means that not all individual constants manage to single out objects and that the grammatical form of the proposition is not a reliable indication of its logical form). As far as the relation of essential concomitance may be supposed to be an equivalence relation (i.e. reflexive, symmetric 7 The principal source of this doctrine is Quine’s landmark article “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (See Willard Van Orman Quine, From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1953, pp. 42-45).

221 and transitive) we may introduce the formula “C(p)” as a symbolic expression signifying the equivalence class of all propositions essentially concomitant with p. Then the claim that the object a exists in the possible world w as a counterpart of the equivalence class of propositions essentially concomitant to p may be introduced as: a(w, p) =DF (w ╞ p and q ∈ C(p)). Obviously this means that if q ∈ C(p) (respectively p ∈ C(q)) then a(w, p) = b(w, q). This equality shall be termed an “intra-world” identity claim because it expresses the identity of two individual constants corresponding to two essentially concomitant propositions with respect to a specified world w. It is to be distinguished from the “inter-world” identity claim of the form a(w, p) = b(v, q), which captures the fact that if w and v are two possible worlds which support respectively p and q and moreover there is a proposition r such that p ∈ C(r) and q ∈ C(r) then the objects existing in w and v as counterparts of the equivalence class of propositions essentially concomitant respectively to p and q are identical. §12. It may be asked why the presence of at least two essentially concomitant propositions is required in order to introduce an individual constant signifying an object inhabiting a possible world belonging to the universe of discourse under consideration. Maybe in some cases one proposition would prove to be sufficient? Indeed, if we subscribe to the ancient doctrine of haecceity then to each object shall be attached a canonical predicate signifying its essence. Here we may even allude to the famous example: the fact that Pegasus exists in a possible world w seems equivalent to the claim that the predicate “x pegasizes” is satisfied in w. Therefore, maybe the atomic proposition which we obtain by saturating this canonical predicate with the unique individual constant which satisfies it should provide sufficient motivation for the assertion that Pegasus exists? This line of reasoning seems correct but it misses the point. Following Wittgenstein’s doctrine concerning the “multiplicity” of language, I am prepared to contend that the essential property of predicates is the fact that (at least in principle) they are satisfiable by more than one individual constant while the essential property of individual constants is the fact that (at least in principle) more than one predicate applies to them8. Objects lie at the junctions of the extensions of different predi8 An excellent discussion concerning the motivation for this claim with the picture

222 cates, hence generally they must have more than one property: for example, if there were only one object satisfying the predicate “x is red” then it would be otiose to say “This is red”, the more concise statement “Red” would prove to be sufficient. Moreover, every ontologically relevant statement concerning particular objects stands in various relations of material incompatibility with other statements concerning that very object. Obviously, if the object signified by the individual constant “a” belongs to the category of coloured objects, then the fact that the world w supports the atomic proposition “A is red” implies that w also supports the proposition “A is not green”. This relation of material incompatibility (along with infinitely many other relations of this sort) is characteristic for the ontological category of “coloured objects”. Therefore every proposition expressing a property of the object “a” materially implies a host of other propositions concerning that very object, and this general principle applies indiscriminately to propositions expressing essential and non-essential properties alike. Therefore if we are interested in locutions concerning existing objects we have to track them down through equivalence classes of essentially concomitant propositions. §13. The fact that objecthood stems from essential concomitance shows that the existence and identity of objects cannot be extracted from inspection of a world in isolation; these are features of the ontological framework determined by the overall structure of the modal universe of discourse. That is why in the initial part of this paper it was suggested that the ontological commitments of a piece of reasoning are captured not by a single world but by its premises which fix the (minimal) extension of the underlying universe of discourse. Now, after we have acquired means of expressing identity between individual constants signifying objects, we are also in a position to introduce predicate letters corresponding to properties and relations. Extensionally construed, properties are nothing more than classes of objects, the fact that in the world w the object designated by “a” possesses the property P tells us that in w this object is a member of the class of objects belonging to the extension of P (that is why I shall introduce the index “w” in order to signify the local theory of meaning in the background has recently been provided by Anthony Kenny (See Anthony Kenny, Wittgenstein, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2006, pp. 8991).

223 extension of P in w, i.e. I will use formulas like “Pw”). This gives us a straightforward criterion for the intra-world identity of properties: two properties P and Q coincide in a world w if their extensions in w are one and the same: Pw = Qw. The adequate criterion for inter-world identity presents no difficulties either: if P is a property of objects in w and Q is a property of objects in v then P is identical with Q (Pw = Qv) if and only if for every object a(w, p) there is an object b(v, q) such that a(w, p) = b(v, q) and vice versa. §14. On this occasion we can even introduce a precise definition of the requirement that the universe of discourse associated with a given argument has to be “sufficiently varied”. In the present context, sufficient variability means that if two atomic propositions p and q are not related (i.e. p is of the form “P(a)” and q is of the form “Q(b)” and moreover there are no worlds w and v such that: (i) a(w, p) = b(v, q) where “p” and “q” are propositions supported by w and v respectively, and (ii) Pw = Qv) then in W exists a possible world w such that (w ╞ p and w │≠ q) or (w ╞ q and w │≠ p). This guarantees that two propositions unrelated with respect to their content shall not be rendered as referring to a particular subject as expressions of its essential properties. For example, if we assume that “wisdom” is an essential attribute of Socrates but “ugliness” is not, then the requirement that the universe of discourse is to be “sufficiently varied” means that there is a possible world belonging to it which supports “Socrates is wise” but fails to support “Socrates is ugly”. If the requirement of sufficient variability is dropped, then essential concomitance shall fail to pick out propositions expressing essential properties of objects and the inferential articulation of ontological commitments shall go astray. That is why essential variability is a truly decisive requirement in the present context. §15. After we have outlined the way objects emerge from inferential practices, we come to the most important topic the present approach addresses: the study of ontological shifts. If ontology supervenes on logic (as I have tried to show up to this point) then the motivation for revisions of the commitments concerning the furniture of the world has to ensue from problems haunting the deductive apparatus employed in the particular argument. That is why I suggest that there are cases when such shifts in ontology are necessitated by breakdowns of the inferential ma-

224 chinery triggered by the argumentative setting. But there is one principal flaw that every inferential apparatus is susceptible to: inconsistency (this is the case when both a proposition and its negation are inferable from the premises). As I mentioned before, we are generally interested in “substantial” arguments whose distinctive feature is that they comprise two kinds of inferential “moves”: derivation of new conclusions from the accepted premises and introduction of new premises. The new premises shall concern the objects that already inhabit the universe of discourse and their properties, because their existence is codified by the premises of the argument which implicitly characterize the universe of discourse. When we introduce new premises we usually take care that they do not overtly contradict the already accepted premises. But some contradictions are so deeply concealed that it is strictly impossible to locate them from the outset. That is why, from time to time in the course of the argument, contradictions pop up. If the inferential machinery elaborated in it is modeled upon the norms of classical logic then their presence is bound to be lethal: the set of derivable propositions “explodes” when contradictions are present, and the argument “jams”. What should we do in such a case? There is no universal recipe for getting rid of contradictions but we can discriminate between two basic strategies to which I shall refer as “the way of ontological parsimony” and “the way of ontological abundance”. Let me start with the second - which seems much more tractable. §16. First of all, we have to keep in mind that the paradigmatic case of contradiction concerns conflicting atomic propositions involving particular objects inhabiting our universe of discourse. The auxiliary premises introduced in the course of the argument are truth-functional compounds composed from ingredients of the form P1(a1), P2(a2), … , Pn(an), where “ak” is an individual constant designating an object and “Pk” is a predicate letter designating a property of this object. Then the presence of a contradiction may be interpreted in the following lines: Let us designate the set of worlds where the object a(w, p) exists as Ex(a(w, p)), i.e. Ex(a(w, p)) =DF {v  (∃Pv) v ╞ P(b(v, q)) and a(w, p) = b(v, q)}. Then the claim that a(w, p) possesses P in w shall be expressible symbolically as Pw(a(w, p)) and its (local) negation – as ¬Ex(a)Pw(a(w, p)) (the local negation is employyed here because if a does not exist we cannot sensibly assert or deny

225 anything about it9). Therefore, contradictions shall be of the form Pw(a(w, p)) ∧Ex(a) ¬Ex(a)P(a(w, p)). What I have called “the way of ontological abundance” is an ontological shift motivated by the presence of such contradictions, which comprises a single step: Consider the worlds w which support the paradoxical proposition above, then split the “repugnant” object a into two halves b and c such that b satisfies only Pw(x) and c satisfies only ¬Ex(a)P(x). This procedure is commonly applied in our everyday argumentative enterprises. If, for example, a veracious friend of mine has told me that he has met Jack in front of city hall at 8 p. m. and another reliable acquaintance of mine has reported that he has seen Jack in the hospital where he underwent a surgical intervention at approximately the same time, I have no choice left but to introduce two temporary constants “jc” (signifying the person in front of the city hall) and “jh” (signifying the person in the hospital) while leaving the possibility that jc = j or jh = j where “j” stands for my old cognate Jack. §17. But there are other cases when this strategy is not applicable. For example, the famous two-slit experiment convincingly demonstrates that there are certain physical phenomena (for example, refraction) whose account relies on alternative interpretations (i.e. the wave / particle dualism). But if we separate the wave-aspect of the phenomenon from its particle-aspect (as suggested by the way of ontological abundance) then we run into troubles because these two aspects are known to be inseparable, i.e. must be taken into account by any adequate description of the phenomena under consideration. What am I supposed to do then? The way of ontological parsimony suggests the answer: I have to transfer the repugnant object a (which is half-wave and half-particle) from the domain of “real” (existent) objects to the domain of “ideal” (non-existent) objects. How is this move to be effected? The process is twofold: first I set the object as non-existent (i.e. let Ex (a) = ∅ which means to reevaluate the truth value of the essentially concomitant propositions associated with a) and then I posit a collection of possible worlds Wa such that for any world w ∈ Wa we have w ∉ W; the function of the possible 9 The locus classicus containing a purported vindication of this doctrine is Plato’s dialogue “Gorgias” (See John M. Cooper (ed.) Plato. Complete Works, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, 1997, pp. 791-869).

226 worlds belonging to Wa shall be to support propositions concerning the new “ideal” object which is a counterpart of a. The introduction of Wa implies extension of the initial universe of discourse W: it gives us a novel universe of discourse (represented by the set theoretical union W ∪ Wa) associated with the initial argument A (the definition of a modal universe of discourse implies that if W is a universe of discourse associated with A, then W′ = W ∪ Wa is also a universe of discourse associated with A). In the present context it is obvious why we needed local copies of the logical connectives: the fact that in the initial universe of discourse the object a featured in inconsistent propositions of the form P(a) ∧W ¬WP(a) does not imply that a shall be inconsistent in the enriched universe W′ because it has its own copies of the logical constants which obey different conditions codified by the overall structure of W′. The local connectives “∧W” and “¬W” do not apply to the ideal object signified by “a” because their domain of interpretation is the less-encompassing universe of discourse W (which is only inhabited by real objects). Here we have only to add that the definition of the notion of a substantial argument implies that recourse to the newly introduced “ideal” elements is prohibited in the argument’s conclusion; they can only be employed in the intermediate steps of the argument. §18. Up to this point we have seen that the interplay of logic and ontology has a tripartite structure: (1) Given an argument A with premise set {p1, p2, … , pn} we can associate with it a modal universe of discourse codifying its overall ontological commitments; (2) Given the relation of essential concomitance (corresponding to universally invertible material inferences) of propositions supported by the possible worlds belonging to the universe of discourse, we can populate our ontology with individual constants standing for objects taken as real in accordance with the premises of the argument; (3) Given paradoxical contradictions emerging in the course of the argument, we can shift our initial ontology in compliance with the complementary strategies referred to as “the way of abundance” and “the way of parsimony”. Their concurrent application gives us a non-monotonic dynamics of the set of existent entities: some of them “split” in accordance with the way of abundance, others “disappear” in accordance with the way of parsimony. This shows that the me-

227 thodological decision to keep logic static (i.e. to keep the canons of inference employed in the argument fixed throughout its deductive development) implies the imperative of making ontology dynamic (i.e. of revising the extension of the set of existent entities). A strictly inverse soluteon is also possible but this is a completely different story10.

References Boole, George. (1847). Mathematical analysis of logic, being an essay towards a calculus of deductive reasoning. Cambridge: Macmillan, Barclay and Macmillan. Brandom, Robert. (1994). Making it explicit: reasoning, representing, and discursive commitment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 97-105. Carnap, Rudolf. (1959). The logical syntax of language. Paterson, NJ, Littlefield: Adams and Co. Cooper, John M. (Eds.) (1997). Plato. Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Hilbert, D. “On the infinite” (English translation in Heijenoort, Jean van (Eds.) (1967). From Frege to Gödel. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 367-392) Hintikka, Jaakko. (1999). Inquiry as inquiry: a logic of scientific discovery, selected papers, Vol. V. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, p. 1-24. Kenny, Anthony. (2006). Wittgenstein. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Quine, Willard Van Orman. (1953). From a logical point of view. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 10 A small part of this story is told in my paper “What is the definition of ‘logical constant’?” (See Michal Pelis (ed.) The Logica Yearbook 2008, London, College Publishers, 2009, pp. 111-122).

228 Russell, Bertrand. (1920). Introduction to mathematical philosophy, second edition. London: Allen and Unwin.

XI. The Politics of Radical Experience Michel Weber Abstract: This contribution attempts to define the conditions of possibility of metaphysics through an analysis that is historical, systematic and applicable to pedestrian issues. It is Whiteheadian insofar as it refuses to establish watertight compartments between disciplines, seeks to bring to the fore some principle (or “archè”) and does so with the firm intention of testing its applicability and fostering new patterns of experience. It provides exemplifications in the psycho-therapeutical and political realms. Key words: speculative philosophy, cosmology, metaphysics, ontology, psychiatry, politics, Alfred North Whitehead, William James, Ronald David Laing Ontology or metaphysics has a problematic status in the history of science, i.e., within Western culture.1 Once upon a time, it was a much respected core discipline, then it became the bare ancillary of Christian theology and ended up—largely because of this nefarious institutional compromising—repudiated by positive thought. We now experience a return to a form of ontology directly inspired by XIXth century mathematics and pragmatism (both understood broadly). One of the most important actors in this revival is Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), whose works precisely lie at the intersection of these two fields. By way of introduction to our discussion of Whitehead’s ontology and its political relevance, let us briefly envisage these two fields from the limited, but totally relevant, perspective of his intriguing philosophical development. First, what can we learn from the contrast between formal logic and formal ontology and, more precisely, has Whitehead ever fostered a for-

1 Since my discussion is not tied to Process and Reality’s lexicon, I do not sharply differentiate here between speculative philosophy, cosmology, metaphysics and ontology. The reader interested in these subtleties is kindly referred to my Whitehead’s Pancreativism. The Basics, Frankfurt / Paris, Ontos Verlag, 2006.

230 mal ontology of sorts?2 The contrast between formal logic and formal ontology is quite useful in specifying the broad context of Whitehead’s philosophical development, spreading forth from Cambridge to Harvard, from algebra to theology. The contrast itself is Husserlian (see his Logische Untersuchungen III, 1900–1901), but it can be traced back to Aristotle and Grassmann, the latter being of the highest Whiteheadian relevance. Aristotle’s Metaphysics distinguishes scientia universalis and ontologia generalis. The former embodies the search for the first principle(s), i.e., logic: the Book Gamma concentrates on a theory of principles, in particular on the law of contradiction as the fundamental principle and on the four causes as its instrumentalization. The latter seeks the theory of being qua being, i.e., metaphysics per se.3 Two complementary claims are made: on the one hand, Aristotle promotes an onto-logic, i.e., a discourse on being that is logical—the discourse as well as being—; on the other hand, that discourse is in unison with a logical system that matches (more than it fits) reality. In this, he simply unfolds the consequences of the Greek cultural vision: humans live in one single organic cosmos. Similarly, Grassmann’s lineale Ausdehnungslehre (1844) distinguishes two standpoints: the formal standpoint of logic and the real standpoint of the general theory of forms. Grassmannian scholars highlight two interesting influences that might help in renewing Whiteheadian scholarship on these issues: an indirect debt to the work of Schelling and a more explicit debt to Schleiermacher. I have argued in a paper (that, I am told, has actually aged well) that the development of Whitehead’s philosophy can be best depicted as a creative advance from formal to existential ontology: on the one hand, Whitehead’s works have always been concerned with concrete experience, whether scientific or personal, i.e., they have always had an ontological import; on the other hand, what he took for being concrete slowly, gently expanded from the bare prerequisite of algebraic systematization to the full concreteness of experience as it is lived by human beings 2 Roberto Poli and Peter M. Simons (eds.), Formal Ontology, Boston (Mass.) / Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996, Foreword. 3 See especially Metaphysics Theta and Lambda.

231 and other embodied and embedded organisms (sharing a common world through feelings, enjoyment, value…).4 In other words, Whitehead pushed the founding idea of a formal ontology to the hilt when he expanded his experiential standpoint, the reason why one can speak of an existential ontology: his theoretical writings moved from a focus on disembodied (i.e., only quantitative, scientific) experience to lived experience (all experiences and only experiences being taken at their face value), from sense-perception to sense-awareness and, later, to causal efficacy and physical prehension. Here lies the rationale for his adoption of a critical form of panpsychism that has been named panexperientialism or pansubjectivism.5 Second, to what extent is Whitehead’s existential ontology pragmatic? Two complementary claims have to be made to answer this question: although Whitehead was fully aware of the fact that pragmatism is the only consistent paradigm in a world constantly reframed by the creative advance of nature, his propensity for architectonics always slowed down the implementation of a full pragmaticism. Whitehead’s juggling act amply shows that system building and full-fledged process philosophy do have a future on the epistemological scene. On the one hand, one can no longer philosophize as one used to in the Greek cosmos, and even less so in the Christian universus: since the three main openings defining post-modernity, thinkers have had to deal with a chaosmos, i.e., with a hybrid world neither fully chaotic nor perfectly ordered.6 This conceptual revolution is perfectly embodied in pro4 See Michel Weber, “PNK’s Creative Advance from Formal to Existential Ontology”, in Guillaume Durand et Michel Weber (éditeurs), Les Principes de la connaissance naturelle d’Alfred North Whitehead — Alfred North Whitehead’s Principles of Natural Knowledge, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, 2007, pp. 259273. 5 J. B. Cobb, Jr. coined these terms in dialogue with D. R. Griffin and L. Charles Birch. Cf. their Mind in Nature: Essays on the Interface of Science and Philosophy, Washington, D. C., The University Press of America, 1977. 6 The three openings are spatial (Cues, Bruno), temporal (Spencer, Darwin) and consciential (Myers, Freud). See my “Vision of Existence and Knowledge of Being”, in Yvanka B. Raynova & Vesselin Petrov (eds.), Being and Knowledge in Postmetaphysical Context, Wien, Institut für Axiologische Forschungen, 2008, pp. 13-29.

232 cess thought at large and most obviously founds Whitehead’s speculations as well. As a matter of fact, pragmatism is at work in Whitehead’s own lexicon, as it was articulated in Process and Reality’s first Part and especially in its categoreal scheme. Besides his insistence on applicability, Whitehead deplores the weakness of intuition and the deficiencies of language and is also keen to identify the main fallacies involved in cognition (the dogmatic fallacy, the perfect dictionary and the fallacy of misplaced concreteness),7 to incriminate the syntax of Indo-European languages, and particularly to denounce its substantialistic interpretation of the subject/predicate pattern. Perhaps its most straightforward sign is to be found in the following quote: “(T)he true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.” (PR 5) Thought, whether scientific, philosophical or religious, always starts with the actual experience of the thinker him/herself. It does not start with self-evident absolute principles; it seeks principles by extracting them from the always limited and relative but variegated experience at stake. Furthermore, these principles are to be made at work, they are meant to be tested, to bring some cash-value, as James says. And the loop does not stop here because the new experience, enriched as it is by the adequate concepts, necessarily evokes in its turn a new abstractive flight, and so forth and so on. On the other hand, Whitehead had a scientific education and a philosophical temperament of his own and both bent his pragmatism in the direction of shameless system building. First, being a trained algebraist with a vast experience in applied mathematics, he was always keen to exploit the power of systematic thinking to generalize what can be lear7 In a nutshell: the dogmatic fallacy and the fallacy of the perfect dictionary are closely related: “it is widely held that a stable, well-known philosophic vocabulary has been elaborated, and that in philosophic discussion any straying beyond its limits introduces neologisms, unnecessary, and therefore to be regretted” (Adventures of Ideas [1933], Free Press, 1967, pp. 228-229). The fallacy of misplaced concreteness consists in the “accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete” (Science and the Modern World [1925], Free Press, 1967, p. 51).

233 ned from experience. Second, the experiences he tentatively generalized were often screened by science or produced by his feats of intuition and his sharp imagination. In other words, whereas a radical empiricist like James was actively exploring all levels of direct experience, notably through intoxications and other borderline psychological states, Whitehead obtained basically the same visions through powerful imaginative generalisations. The Wahlverwandtschaften that exist between the two authors is all the more impressive… Now, Whitehead’s pragmatism, as tame as it sometimes appears, has remained widely unacknowledged for various additional reasons, among which three are outstanding. First of all, Whitehead himself was quite elusive with regard to his own pragmatism. His only serious discussion on the matter took place in The Function of Reason (1929), where he discussed Ulysses’ pragmatism—not Peirce’s, James’s, Dewey’s or even Schiller’s pragmatisms (the latter two being his contemporaries). He argued that the pragmatic function of reason—to promote the art of life—has to be complemented with the speculative function of reason (exemplified by Plato’s works) and that such a synergy is best at work in technoscience, as exemplified in the works of James Watts (1736–1819). This dialectic version of the flight of the aeroplane is obviously the goal he aimed at when, in The Principle of Relativity—With application to Physical Science (1922), he proposed a theory of relativity providing the same applicability as Einstein’s but proceeding from a strict process standpoint. Second, in his magnum opus—Process and Reality, 1929—, Whitehead is concerned with the creation of the most likely story about the cosmos, i.e., with a cosmology, a work of imaginative generalization that seems prima facie rather remote from the conceptual asceticism required by pragmatic modes of thoughts. Third, most XXth century Whiteheadians have been interested in the theological relevance of his process blend of philosophy and this has meant of course, classically or neoclassically,8 acknowledging the existence of one single principle (in the Greek sense of archè). In sum: although Whitehead’s publications have always enforced 8 Hartshorne, Charles, The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics, La Salle, Illinois, The Open Court Publishing Company, 1962.

234 the pragmatic requirement of applicability and hence emphasized the falsifiability of the concepts they designed to fit an open universe, they have never addressed it in the way a trained philosopher would have. The title of this contribution is freely inspired by Ronald David Laing’s (1927–1989) Politics of Experience (1967). I take this liberty for three basic reasons. First, Laing’s title embodies the hermeneutical circle of philosophy and all the more so of ontology: no thought takes place in an experiential vacuum and certainly not in a socio-political vacuum; there is actually no escape from the stakes of power. Focusing further on the topic of this book: ontology has been developed in a political atmosphere shot through and through with theocratic purposes; it has been repudiated in a culture seeking to promote more pedestrian virtues and especially scientific ones; it is now fostered in the context of a renewed interest in realist and objectivist thinking. Second, metaphysics should enforce a politics of experience. Granted, metaphysics deals with radical experience—the root experience or what is thought to root experience—, but what does that mean? It is not a mere rhetorical difference that is at stake: the root experience is the experience that roots both existence and its representation; what is set down as the root is not necessarily an experience—as a matter of fact, it has quite often been remote from all actual, or even possible, experience whatsoever. Whitehead is seen to be quite straightforward here: there is no set of clear and distinct principles from which one might deduce all relevant categories; on the contrary, the very generalities that metaphysics seeks to express are embedded in a complex and fuzzy experience. Categories do not trickle down from eternal principles; they are extracted from the bare temporary habits of nature as we experience them. “The task of philosophy—insists Whitehead—is to recover the totality obscured by the selection.”9 And this totality is multifarious, even a bit confused, if one speaks from the perspective of human cognition: this is the meaning of his analysis of perception articulating causal efficacy (too rich to be rationally transparent) and presentational immediacy (neat 9 Process and Reality [1929], Corrected edition, 1978, p. 15

235 and tidy but too poor to be significant). In sum, to adopt the politics of experience is to acknowledge the correlation between all cognitive fields, including metaphysics and politics and, more precisely, to accept all experiences and only experiences. It is not enough to be an empiricist; one has to be a radical empiricist in order to do justice to our chaosmotic experience. (Empiricism has been historically tied to substantialism.) Third, pragmatism urges us to practice philosophy in order to obtain some efficacy in the real world. To live a bare conceptual life is of no use to anyone unless it has a real ascetic virtue: let us remember that askesis means above all exercises, such as those rooted in Socrates’ and Epicurus’ legacies and, more recently, in Pierre Hadot’s “spiritual exercises.” To put philosophy to the test requires a commitment to authenticity that is specific to philosophical life—and this commitment, in turn, demands a clear political engagement, all the more so when the days of civilization are numbered. This will be developed in concluding; it is worth underlining again here the correlation that exists between the concept of chaosmos and the pragmatic standpoint: in the same way that the threefold bursting of the cosmos leads to pragmatism, the early pragmatic philosophers were sceptics, i.e., critics of the cosmic worldview. When and where you find pragmatic principles at work there is necessarily a pragmatic vision of a pluriverse lured towards indeterminate states by some built-in “nisus” or “élan vital”: a tropism that is neither voluntary and conscious nor teleological. The limit-concept that allows some grasp on the chaosmos is the eschaton: it has been reframed outside the Christian’s eschatology per se by thinkers such as Ricœur and Ladrière, and ought to be activated through a discussion of the Kantian Grenze/ Schranke contrast. Four, the “anti-psychiatry”10 of Laing and his kin, like Szasz and Foucault,11 who independently argued that concepts of sanity and insa10 David G. Cooper (1931–1986), Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry, London, Paladin, 1967. Laing didn’t actually consider himself an “anti-psychiatrist”. 11 Thomas S. Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness. Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct, New York, Harper and Row, 1961. Cf. his The Theology of Medicine. The Political-Philosophical Foundations of Medical Ethics (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1977) and Michel Foucault’s Folie et déraison. Histoire

236 nity are social constructs, was not only a medical, ethical and political movement but also a metaphysical one. According to them, “madness” has historically become “mental illness” by means of an incoherent psycho-physical conceptual venture, an awkward combination devised to legitimise the use of force to limit deviance from societal conventions. There is a continuum between the persuasion of the Church, the physical coercion of the police force and the mental coercion of psychiatry. The only institution that seems to have had a worse impact on the health and sanity of citizens is the school system, which traditionally combines the three levels of normative power. It does not take long to realize that this understanding of mental health and social order is bound to substantialism and is especially crippled by its ingrained dualism. (A dualism so fundamental that it still defines the characteristics of materialism.) In Whiteheadian parlance, psychiatry relies on a tragic fallacy of misplaced concreteness: linguistic and behavioural problems that are intrinsically systemic are falsely internalized, i.e., substantialized, something that usually amounts to their materialization and the belief that electric shocks, specific pharmaceutical molecules or neurosurgery can promptly cure the “disease”. Actually, the arrogance of psychiatrists seems quite unbelievable until you experience it first hand during encounters that are supposed to occur between “sane” individuals—say when you have to discuss the tribulation of a third party or when you attend post-graduate seminars. It does not amount to the simple arrogance of experts; it is the normative arrogance of the warden of reason and social normativity. Laing, like Whitehead, totally discards the classical claims of foundationalism: he finds no use for the concept of substance or for the pathological lexicon (that has been assembled in the famous Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1952)12. He fosters instead de la folie à l’âge classique (Paris, Librairie Plon, 1961). 12 There are many puzzling facts about the DSM, one of them being the inflation of the pathologies listed: around 1880 orthodox psychiatry distinguished seven mental disorders (mania, melancholia, monomania, paresis, dementia, dipsomania, and epilepsy); by the time of the first edition of the DSM, there were 106; the DSM-IV (1994) lists 297 disorders… (Cf. Franz G. Alexander and Sheldon T. Selesnick, The History of Psychiatry: An Evaluation of Psychiatric Thought and Practice from

237 a process—a metanoiac—understanding of mental illness that pleads for an eventful ontology. In a conference delivered at the Sorbonne in 1967, Laing explained what he had garnered from the work done within the experimental and experiential community he created in 1965 in London.13 First, whatever it is that is clinically diagnosed as acute schizophrenia, it amounts to a (schizophreniform) breakthrough rather than a schizophrenic breakdown. Psychosis is a healing process, a resource human beings spontaneously call upon when all else seems impossible for the psyche’s healing itself of unbearable and inescapable conflict (recalling the discussions of the etiology of schizophrenia with the help of Bateson’s concept of double bind). Psychosis embodies the drama of individuation. Second, in order to let the healing happen, the set and the setting have to be adequate, basically meaning that it requires an initiatory community, not a “mental hospital”. Within such a community, psychiatrists drop their medical persona and engage with patients as one human being to another; patients are able to rely upon a community that supports their metamorphosis. When all is said and done, all human beings share their elusive quest for “themselves.” Third, since the exact modalities of this initiatic breakthrough vary from one person to another, the theoretical model piloting the process should be as loose as possible. According to Mary Barnes (1923–2001), who published the most dramatic account of such a healing process, it is a symbolic death that is at stake: schizophrenia is not a disease that one has, but a process one goes through by regressing and then being reborn.14 Prehistoric Times to the Present, London, Allen and Unwin, 1967.) Since homo sapiens is supposed to have been a stable organic form for more than 200 thousand years, this raises a few immediate questions: is psychiatric science getting more and more scientific?; is the human race on a bad mental slope (why)?; could these disorders be culturally weighted (ethnopsychiatry)?; what about the loop existing between the scientific recognition of a disease, the existence of a pharmaceutical molecule to «cure» it and the intervention of insurances? 13 R. D. Laing, “Metanoia: Some Experiences at Kingsley Hall”, in H.M. Ruitenbeek (Ed.) Going Crazy—R.D. Laing and Beyond, New York, Bantam Books, 1972, pp.11-21. 14 Mary Barnes and Joe Berke, Two Accounts of a Journey through Madness, New

238 To resume our Whiteheadian argument, let us turn to the publication of Laing’s manifesto, The Divided Self, in 1960. Laing was widely read in philosophy, especially in existentialism. The Divided Self basically adopts William James’ (1842–1910) standpoint in the Varieties: (i) there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand; (ii) that wrongness is the product of various forms of isolation (humans are isolated from themselves, from each other, from the world and from the Ultimate); (iii) what is needed is a new togetherness uniting persons in themselves, people among each other and with their environment, and people with the Ultimate—whatever that Ultimate (James speaks of “higher powers”) may be in itself and for their own culture.15 But he immediately underlined that this multifaceted togetherness should not obliterate individuality: engulfment is as dangerous as loneliness. Individuality and solidarity need to be in unison: “inner identity” has to be as much in the making as the “community” in which it ripens. Laing, bridging the legacies of the arch-radical empiricist James and of thinkers like Tillich and Sartre, also speaks of “ontological security”16 and the lack thereof. Tillich writes: “The anxiety of fate and death produces nonpathological strivings for security. Large sections of man’s civilization serve the purpose of giving him safety against the attacks of fate and death.” The individual qua individual seeks to be secure in a world that provides the conditions of possibility of his/her own existence. Two examples are striking: the nuclear family and its way of feeling at home in the world. Any form of internicine war constitutes a danger for the physical and mental well-being of a child. Likewise, all “external” stress—social, economical, cultural…—is likely to leave scars. York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc., 1971. 15 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature. Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901 – 1902, New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta, Longman, Green, and Co., 1902, cf. pp. 507 sq. 16 Ronald David Laing, The Divided Self. An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, London, Tavistock Publications Ltd, 1960. The title of the book is borrowed from James’ Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and the concept of ontological security is Paul Tillich’s (see his The Courage to Be, Yale University Press, 1952, pp. 74 sq.).

239 Traumatic experiences (accident, earthquake, rape, torture…) are more often referred to than victims of economic or cultural stress, but the similarity in patterns can be named with the help of Tillich. It is precisely here that Whitehead’s ontology can articulate the three principles that Laing discovered in his medical practice (individuation qua breakthrough; solidarity qua set/setting; paideia qua minimal piloting); these are as old as Plato’s definition of the conditions for the possibility of communal life. In the context of the present discussion, four levels of argument and four types of democracy are worth mentioning: categoreal, ontological, clinical and political. First, the concept of coherence establishes the basic constraints ruling over architectonics. In order to be systematic, speculative philosophy has to satisfy five criteria: logical consistency, coherence, applicability, adequacy and necessity. There is no need to summarize here the lengthy analysis I have proposed elsewhere.17 To boil down Whitehead’s seminal discussion: two criteria are ultimate, applicability and coherence. The criterion of coherence imposes a double constraint on the institution of a categoreal scheme. On the one hand, it questions the interdependence of the categories, it is a co-presuppositional requirement: each systematical concept has to presuppose the others, so that in abstraction from the scheme it would be meaningless. A category is operational only within a certain configuration. On the other hand, the criterion of coherence questions the independence, i.e., the non-reciprocal deductibility of the categories: categories should not be definable in terms of each other, they should foster contributiveness. In conclusion, the demand for coherence embodies an ideal of categoreal democracy necessitating both categoreal interdependence and independence. Second, this is also valid in ontology: Whitehead interprets the “stuff” of the world in a way that secures both the independence and the interdependence of its grades of actuality. Process and Reality argues for an event ontology that is distinctly more complex than most process works: there is a gradient of actuality that spreads from the full actuality of concrescing “actual entities” (so-called atomic) to the quasi-actuality, 17 Whitehead’s Pancreativism. The Basics, op. cit., pp. 87 sq. interpreting the first chapter of Process and Reality.

240 or virtuality, of prehensions and to the different guises of potentiality (continuous): perished or transitional ” actual entities” structured in the extensive continuum and the eternal objects. 18 Let us focus again on the main intuition at work. Whitehead carefully hinges microscopic and macroscopic processes. Actuality per se is to be found at the microscopic level, where the concrescence process occurs with the help of the process of transition; all macroscopic processes are thus potential. In a nutshell: the process of concrescence is the seat of existence and that process is intrinsically private and independent; yet concrescence occurs in an environment that is public and interdependent: its “actual world” provides—together with the initial subjective aim derived from the primordial nature of god—the conditions for the possibility of the emergence of a new actuality. If we concentrate on the actual entities, it is easy to show that they satisfy both the independence and the interdependence requirements. When they are in the making (i.e., concrescing) actual entities are basically bundles of private experience; when they are made (i.e., in transition), they are the public data available for further concrescences. Whitehead also expresses this correlation with the help of the principle of process and the principle of relativity. Third, we discover the same pattern in clinical environments. Indeed, the three points evoked earlier correspond to the three conditions of possibility of a genuine community: first of all, the individual is at the center of the community; the freedom of the individuation process is the sine qua non condition of a community; second, there is no community without a strong sense of solidarity; it does not suffice to aggregate individuals, they have to live together; third, the co-dependent becoming of the independent individual within a structure of interdependency is linked to the existence of a peculiar culture. Hospitals, mental or otherwise, that are operated with the paternalistic worldview pervading societies themselves not only prevent healing but aggravate the health problems they tackle. 18 A lengthier discussion can be found in my “Process and Individuality” in Maria Pachalska and Michel Weber (eds.), Neuropsychology and Philosophy of Mind in Process. Essays in Honor of Jason W. Brown, Frankfurt / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, 2008, pp. 401-415.

241 Four, this naturally leads us to politics19. We have to acknowledge what common sense has always claimed: human life is both individual and communal; there is no humanity where genuine individuality and community are denied. On the one hand, our experience is intrinsically private, we feel—and are—different from each other: we all have a unique standpoint and a personal destiny. On the other hand, it is public; we belong to a certain social group, itself embedded in a given historical society. But in neither case is this two-fold reality given once and for all: private individuality is recreated, day after day, in an unpredictable process of individuation; public solidarity both fosters that individuation and is nurtured by it. Both constraints meet because the cultural atmosphere allows it. Furthermore, it is possible to show that these three criteria reflect, in their own order, the three functors of the creative advance itself. Laing spoke of engulfment and loneliness; in common political parlance we might say conformity and atomicity. Engulfment means what happens when individuality is obliterated, atomicity when solidarity is absent. What we learn from his clinical expertise is that both dimensions are intertwined and that finding a middle way is tricky: individuals seek, need and also dread relatedness; solidarity binds, nurtures, protects but sometimes also smothers people. If love leads to absorption, loneliness is obtained; if love opens all horizons, it secures both solitude and social life.20 Interestingly enough, two different types of emptiness are involved here: in the case of engulfing love, the emptied individual feels himself a meaningless vacuum; in the case of individuating love, the individual is likely to experience the energizing nothingness that allows all spiritual growth.

19 See my “Vision of Existence and Knowledge of Being”, op. cit., and its sequel: Éduquer (à) l’anarchie. Essai sur les conséquences de la praxis philosophique, Louvain-la-Neuve, Éditions Chromatika, 2008 20 Arendt is always worth citing on these matters: “Thinking, existentially speaking, is a solitary but not a lonely business; solitude is that human situation in which I keep myself company.” (Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind [1978]. One-volume edition, San Diego, New York, London, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1978, p. 185.)

242 What general claims can be advanced from our short ecclectic overview? First, speculative philosophy (and that includes ontology), like any other scientific discipline, has to start from experience, not from principles, and all experiences are elligible (this corresponds to James’ radical empiricism). Second, the generalizations extracted from experience only make sense insofar as they allow some deepening of experience and a better grasp of experience (both being pragmatic virtues). To delve deep into experience should be the philosopher’s motto. Third, one should distinguish, without bringing into conflict, the objective and the subjective dimensions of experience. The so-called analytical and continental divide impoverishes our relationship with ourselves and with the world. The objectivity of experience is made of past, settled, events (i.e., transitional actual entities); the subjectivity of experience consists of events in the making (i.e., concrescing actual entities). Objectivity can be analyzed with the help of mereotopological tools, subjectivity with phenomenological tools. Process and Reality’s outstanding thesis is that there is a complementarity between modes of thought that have been historically understood as incompatible with each other. Whitehead undoes various conceptual knots in fostering this thesis, the main ones being the articulation of the morphological or coordinate analysis of Part IV and the genetic analysis of Part III. In sum, we obtain a complex cognitive tool that attempts to make the creative advance “speak”: creativity demands a phenomenological analysis that can be aligned with logical consistency and coherence requirements; efficacy is best understood with mereotopological categories; vision consists of the pragmatic articulation of both modes of analyses. Whitehead obviously thought that his concept “god” allowed our going further than the bare pragmatic requirements evoked earlier. It seems that the reader has to decide for him/herself whether this daring move improves or endangers the overall coherence of his categoreal scheme.

243 References Alexander, Franz G. and Selesnick, Sheldon T. (1967). The history of psychiatry: an evaluation of psychiatric thought and practice from prehistoric times to the present, London: Allen and Unwin. Barnes, Mary and Berke, Joe. (1971). Two Accounts of a Journey through Madness, New York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc. Cooper, David G. (1967). Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry, London: Paladin. Foucault, Michel. (1961). Folie et déraison. Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique. Paris: Librairie Plon. Griffin, D. R. and Birch, L. Charles. (1977). Mind in Nature: Essays on the Interface of Science and Philosophy, Washington, D. C.: The University Press of America. Hartshorne, Charles. (1962). The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics, La Salle, Illinois: The Open Court Publishing Company. James, William. (1902). The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature. Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901–1902, New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta, Longman: Green, and Co. Laing, Ronald David. (1960). The Divided Self. An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, London: Tavistock Publications Ltd. Laing, R. D. (1972). “Metanoia: Some Experiences at Kingsley Hall”, in Ruitenbeek, H.M. (Ed.) (1972). Going Crazy—R.D. Laing and Beyond, New York: Bantam Books, pp.11-21. Poli, Roberto and Simons, Peter M. (eds.) (1996). Formal Ontology, Boston (Mass.) / Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Szasz, Thomas S. (1961). The Myth of Mental Illness. Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct, New York: Harper and Row.

244 Szasz, Thomas S. (1977). The Theology of Medicine. The Political-Philosophical Foundations of Medical Ethics. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press. Tillich, Paul. (1952). The Courage to Be, Yale University Press. Weber, Michel. (2006). Whitehead’s Pancreativism. The Basics, Frankfurt / Paris: Ontos Verlag. Weber, Michel. (2007). “PNK’s Creative Advance from Formal to Existential Ontology”. In: Guillaume Durand et Michel Weber (éditeurs) (2007). Les Principes de la connaissance naturelle d’Alfred North Whitehead — Alfred North Whitehead’s Principles of Natural Knowledge, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster: Ontos Verlag, pp. 259-273. Weber, Michel. (2008). “Vision of Existence and Knowledge of Being”. In: Yvanka B. Raynova & Vesselin Petrov (Eds.) (2008). Being and Knowledge in Postmetaphysical Context, Wien, Institut für Axiologische Forschungen, pp. 13-29. Weber, Michel. (2008). “Process and Individuality”, in Pachalska, Maria and Weber, Michel (eds.) (2008). Neuropsychology and Philosophy of Mind in Process. Essays in Honour of Jason W. Brown, Frankfurt / Lancaster: Ontos Verlag, pp. 401-415. Weber, Michel. (2008). Éduquer (à) l’anarchie. Essai sur les conséquences de la praxis philosophique, Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions Chromatika. Whitehead, A. N. (1967). Adventures of Ideas [1933], New York: The Free Press. Whitehead, A. N. (1967). Science and the Modern World [1925], New York: The Free Press. Whitehead, A. N. (1978). Process and Reality [1929], Corrected edition. New York: The Free Press.

XII. Towards a reistic social–historical philosophy* Nikolay Milkov Abstract: The present essay advances a theory of social reality which concurs with the formal ontology developed in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Furthermore, we identify this formal ontology as reistic but in a rather wide sense: in the sense that social objects are primary whereas social relations are super-structured over them. This thesis has been developed in opposition to John Searle’s claim, made in his book Construction of Social Reality (1995), that the building blocks of social reality are institutions. We do not claim that this is the only valid theory of social reality. We simply hope that it has considerable explanatory power so that it can be used as a theory alternative to those already existing or to any new theory of society. The paper has two parts. Part One sets out the theoretical foundations of the approach followed in it, whereas Part Two advances details of its application to sociology and history. Key words: formal ontology, neo-utilitarianism, physicalism, reism, social constructivism, social objects I 1. Reistic formal ontology Our social theory follows a reistic interpretation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus that we have advanced elsewhere.1 It claims that the world consists of objects and nothing beyond that. They are bulky, voluminous things, with borders and faces which are in contact with the boundaries * A first variant of this paper was read (in German) at the 21st Congress of the German Philosophical Society at the University of Duisburg–Essen, September 18, 2008. Another version was delivered as a “Habilitation Lecture” at the University of Paderborn on July 9, 2009. Thanks are due to the audience in the two sessions and in particular to Prof. Rudolf Lüthe. 1 Cf. Nikolay Milkov, “Tractarian Scaffoldings”, Prima philosophia 14 (2001), pp. 399–414.

246 and the faces of other objects. Being voluminous, they fill up the world. The objects set up connections (Verbindungen) which build up states of affairs. In this state of affairs, objects “fit into one another like the links of a chain” (2.03). The important point is that “there isn’t anything third that connects the links. ... [T]he links themselves make connexion with one another.”2 The very docking of the objects one to another makes them stick together; this is what secures the cohesion between them. There is no “relation” connecting them. This is a main idea in the Tractatus. With the help of this conception, Wittgenstein hoped to defeat the last remnants of the old subject–predicate logic, which “contains more convention and physics than had been realized”.3 Many authors have insisted that Tractarian objects are unsaturated, their unsaturatedness being similar to Frege’s unsaturatedness of functions and arguments. There is an important difference between Frege and Wittgenstein on this point though. Frege’s conception is chemical. According to him, the function and its argument merge into one another. In contrast, Tractarian objects are connected to one another topologically, not chemically. In the connection, they remain independent of one another. Russell’s logical constructionalism, in its turn, uses the metaphor of a “logical skeleton” on which the data of experience are fleshed out. In contrast, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein does not speak of a skeleton. Instead, he makes use of the concept of logical scaffolding. It simply supports the formation of objects from outside, but does not connect them. As we are going to see in what follows, if the scaffolding is removed, it may well be the case that the objects remain stuck together.

2 L. Wittgenstein, Letters to C. K. Ogden, ed. by G. H. von Wright, Oxford: Blackwell, 1973, p. 23. Elsewhere Wittgenstein said: “The elements are not connected with one another by anything. They simply are connected, and that connection just is the state of affairs in question.” Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, conversations recorded by Friedrich Waismann, ed. by B. F. McGuinness, Oxford: Blackwell, 1979, p. 252. 3 L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Grammar, ed. by R. Rhees, trans. Anthony Kenny, Oxford: Blackwell, 1974, p. 204.

247 2. Social objects In order to make our conception clearer, we shall first specify exactly what social objects are. We accept as primary social objects reistic entities which are typically atomistic. Moreover, we divide them into five groups of increasing abstractness: (i)

Material objects that are produced by human agents. To them belong: (a) products of market economy; (b) technologies, working instruments, etc. (ii) Social agents with the roles they play in society, as well as social groups of different sizes and natures. (iii) Different performances like sporting matches, theatre performances, social presentations, etc. (iv) Social actions, but also parts of them4 like particular gestures (particular cases of habitus or modus operandi). (v) Theories, melodies, novels, and other artifacts.5 Furthermore, we assume that social objects set up what we shall call social constructions—or social individuals—like the game of soccer, German forestry, Oxford University, etc. This point is of special importance since—and we shall see this in the second part of the paper—in such disciplines as sociology, history, as well as in everyday life, we usually discuss, or ponder on, complex social objects that are better discussed as individuals. It goes without saying that there is no sharp boundary between social objects and social constructions. For practical reasons, we can consider social constructions social objects, and vice versa. By way of elucidating, we underline the fact that these kinds of objects are primary terms in our social theory as long as they are the minimal units that social agents approve or disprove of, like or dislike, imita4 On this point we oppose Rüdiger Bittner, according to whom actions are indivisible. Cf. R. Bittner, “One Action”, in: A. O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, pp. 97–110. 5 Among others, they were investigated by Roman Ingarden. Cf. Amie Thomasson, “Ingarden and the Ontology of Cultural Objects”, in: Arkatiusz Chrudzimski (ed.), The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2005, pp. 115–136.

248 te or not, take over, or pass over.6 In other words, they are the subjects of our practical judgments in the wide sense of the word: our practical judgments—in contrast to those of Kant—are not reducible to moral judgments but are at work in every new situation of human praxis. Apparently, our social objects are similar to what have recently been called “memes” which are usually defined as units of cultural heredity.7 Typically, we can be fascinated by them, we admire them; we strive to copy them, to imitate them, to join them, or we simply consider them (actions, for example) just and fair. And vice versa: we disprove of them, we ostracize them, etc. Understood in this neo-utilitarian (and neo-Darwinian) way, our objects are social in the sense that they are products of collective intentionality. They are opposed to “brute objects” like stones and other minerals8—of course, when the latter are not subjects of practical interest. 3. An objects-oriented approach in social philosophy With reference to our kind of naïve formal ontology, developed in § 1 and to our conception of social objects advanced in § 2, we criticise John Searle’s claim, advanced in his path-breaking book, The Construction of Social Reality,9 that the building blocks of the social world are the institutions which make social facts like citizenship, money, government, property, marriages, and sporting events possible.10 Institutions are products of collective intentionality. The mischief in Searle’s neo-insititutionalist thesis is its downright idealism. Metaphorically speaking, institutions are not the building blocks of social reality but its scaffolding, simply reinforcing them from 6 We have already developed this neo-unilitarian thesis in the paper “After-Revolutionary Political Philosophy” (in print). 7 Cf. Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 6 ff. 8 These can be compared with Elisabeth Ansombe’s “brute facts”. Cf. G. E. M. Anscombe, “On Brute Facts”, Analysis 18 (1958), pp. 69–72. 9 John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, New York: The Free Press, 1995. 10 Another prominent supporter of philosophical neo-institutionalism is David Bloor. Cf. for example his, “What is a Social Construct?”, Facta Philosophica 3 (2001), pp. 141–56.

249 outside in order to facilitate their cohesion. However, an institution does not produce the connection; it only has a supporting function. When removed, the constructions often remain standing. In other words, institutions are the superstructure of social life. Their basis, however, is everyday practical life with its material and cultural objects situated in space and time. We can also express our idea by stating that social objects are the basic elements of social theory whereas institutions are its secondary elements. In support of this conception, we refer to Wittgenstein’s On Certainty (§ 99) which insisted that the system often changes because of the material that flows through it. Searle, in contrast, accepts that the system leads. An even more serious argument against Searle’s neo-institutionalism is that institutions emerge on the basis of a certain level of development of the social objects. Indeed, the institution of driving licenses was set up only after the car industry developed. Furthermore, even such prima facie “perennial” institutions as the family and the state emerged only at a certain stage of production of goods.11 But our theory of social objects is also directed against the mainstream conception that the “subject-matter of sociological studies are the phenomena and the processes of different forms of collective human lives, the structures of different forms of human communities and groups.”12 The main argument against this conception is that we join a community or a social group, or we simply stay in it, in the same way we join other social objects: following an act of practical judgment (assessment) of an object. In other words, for us, the social groups themselves are social objects. To be more specific, they are social objects of the second group in our classification of social objects from § 2. Moreover, institutions (which are surely relational) themselves can be treated as objects—in particular, as objects of our practical judgments. 11 Cf. Friedrich Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats; in: K. Marx und F. Engels, Gesamtausgabe, Abt. 1, Bd. 29, Berlin: Dietz, 1975. 12 Jan Szczepański, Elementarne pojęcia socjologii, Warszawa: Państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe, 1963, p. 9.

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4. Example: Stock-market ontology Typical examples of social objects are products of the stock market. The ontology of the stock market is the ontology of goods and commodities, produced by companies and corporations. Characteristic of this kind of ontology are the constant changes in objects which may be successfully described with the resources of marketplace ontology. These changes are set up by the preferences (practical judgments) of individual persons who accept certain goods, and reject others. This is a dynamic, set in motion by market-tastes which are socially formed—they are determined by social-psychological patterns. In more concrete terms, individual market-tastes and preferences are products of collective intentionalities that divide consumers into Nissan-buyers and Toyota-buyers, etc. The goods and commodities are produced by organic wholes other than institutions: they are created by companies and corporations. These are group-individuals which in many respects behave like persons (i.e. objects): they have their professional philosophy, specific style, etc. (In contrast, institutions are not person-like—they are characteristically faceless.) In short, they have their own worlds (cf.: “Welcome to the Nissan world!”), formed through the collective intentionality of their producers and consumers. They identify their individuality through brands, which construct various proprietary goods: Versace suits and dresses, Salamander shoes, Levis’ jeans, Daimler-Benz cars, etc. Changes in stock-market ontology find expression in stock-market diagrams and indexes. 5. The surface of social life The “river of time” (Russell)13,14 brings ever new social objects to, 13 We picked up this phrase from Russell’s celebrated essay “On History”: “On the Banks of the River of Time, the sad procession of human generations is marching slowly to the grave.” Bertrand Russell, “On History”, in: idem, Philosophical Essays, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1910, pp. 60–69; here p. 69. 14 Paraphrasing William James, we can also speak of the “stream of life”.

251 what we shall call, the “surface of social life”.15 On this point we again follow Wittgenstein (this time, in the interpretation of Theodore Schatzki) who spoke in a somewhat similar sense about the surface of human life.16 We shall restate this idea of Wittgenstein thusly: The surface of social life consists of ever new and changing social objects. Furthermore, our reist social ontology conceives of the objects of social life as solid planks (or as Lego bricks17). For our convenience, we can present the particular social constructions (individuals) as resembling Otto Neurath’s boats, composed of such and such planks, navigating in the “river of time”. Being exposed to the resistance of the environment (to the ravages of time) during its journey (throught every social storm and squall), the boat’s planks (the social objects) need repeated renovation. Moreover, such acts of mending are to be accomplished immediately, without pause. Indeed, as Quine convincingly showed, the boat of social life (of ordinary language, in particular) cannot be harbourred and repaired in a drydock. Here we embrace Barry Smith’s social theory that sees social reality as a complex construction, consisting of many layers.18 These often have sub-parts that are interlocked into one another. They can be conceived of as assembly-structures (Montagebaustrukturen) in which different parts are hierarchically super-structured one over the other. We can easily replace them; or we can increase the size (the zoom) of particular objects, sometimes at the cost of others; or move them in another direction; etc. We shall call this method of conceiving social objects and individuals that of assembly-construction. 15 This is the next topological concept we shall introduce in our analysis. 16 Cf. Theorore Schatzki, “Elements of a Wittgensteinian Philosophy of the Human Sciences”, Synthese 87 (1991), pp. 311–29. Apparently, this interpretation of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations can be easily connected with the formal ontology of the Tractatus we reconstructed in § 1. Indeed, both have a clear topological stance. 17 In this suggestion we follow some contemporary ontologies that see ontological individuals as Lego bricks. Cf. Jan Westerhoff, Ontological Categories: Their Nature and Significance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 92, 113. 18 Cf. Barry Smith, “Ontologie des Mesokosmos: Soziale Objekte und Umwelten”, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 52 (1998), pp. 521–540.

252 Using the method of assembly-constructing social reality, the reist social philosopher can easily grasp (imagine) quite different social situations, many of which otherwise remain in shadow (indeed, they are often counter-intuitive). II The second part of this essay is an attempt to apply our reistic social ontology and the method of assembly-constructing social reality it underpins to the practice of historical study in particular. The tenor of our approach is directed against Dilthey, Rickert and Collingwood’s empathy conception of humanities in general, and of history in particular. Most importantly, while the concept of empathy is psychological (it presupposes identification with the feelings of the subjects of history), our reistic method is thoroughly objectivist. In what follows, we shall demonstrate three realms of application of this approach: (i) genealogical studies; (ii) explanations in history; (iii) investigations of the “metaphysics” of social life. 6. Genealogical studies One point of interest in investigating social reality is that while some of its planks (social objects) are to be repeatedly renewed, many of them at very high speed, others are old, even ancient.19 One important effect of the social world’s functioning this way is the vision of this very moment, of this particular social individual, as composed of planks of rather different provenance and pedigree: some of them are quite new, while others are ages old, etc. As a matter of fact, the social individual whom we contemplate at this particular moment is a mottled patchwork of social objects. This means that elements of historically different social objects mingle together to form new individuals. Mixed that way, their history cannot be reconstructed with the naked eye. The effect is that social individuals often appear opaque: we must first investigate the genealogy of their elements, continually changing their place, size and order. 19 To use Otto Neurath’s idiom, the “planks” of social life have different degrees of “stability”. Cf. Otto Neurath, “Die Enzyklopädie als ‘Modell’ ”, in: M. Stöltzner and T. Uebel (eds.), Wiener Kreis, Hamburg: Meiner, 2006, pp. 375–95; here pp. 382 ff.

253 Metaphorically speaking, correct genealogical analyses bring to light the “anatomy” of social individuals in a way similar to how the computer tomography brings to light the constitution of parts of our body that are hidden from the naked eye.20 This way of functioning of social life is especially well illustrated in the history of technology: indeed, changes in the old or the birth of new, objects and instruments of technology are exemplarily abrupt. One example: The marking of forest trees was introduced in Germany in 1856 and has never changed since then. During the same time, however, many other practices in forestry have been transformed, some of them radically. In other words: the social individual of German forestry is composed of quite heterogeneous elements, and their genealogy is to be set up in a special reistic study. That social life can be seen as resulting from such abrupt (and often contingent) and disproportional changes in the social objects and practices that compose social individuals is well documented in literature and other narrative arts. We would like to give as an example here the recent (2005) movie Good Night, and Good Luck! directed by George Clooney. The film presents the historical figure of the late CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow (who successfully fought Senator Eugene McCarthy in the early 1950’s), as chainsmoking in the CBS studio. The obsessive accentuation of this, nowadays, absurd practice was purported to revive the atmosphere of times long gone by. To summarize, we see these social constructions (individuals) as a series of ever-changing social objects that build up different sets. Some of them assert themselves, other vanish. The winning objects can be also ordered into two groups: (i) those which prevail for a short period of time only; (ii) a small group of real champions that dominate life for centuries or even millennia—examples are parts of Roman law; parts of Rome’s sewerage system; etc.

20 In the humanities, in the history of philosophy in particular, the method of genealogical analysis finds expression in the sub-discipline of conceptual history. Cf. Gunter Scholtz (ed.), Die Interdisziplinarität der Begriffsgeschichte (Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, Sonderband), Hamburg: Meiner, 2000; Reinhart Koselleck, Begriffsgeschichten, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006.

254 7. Explanations in history Besides their genealogical order, social objects have other levels of dependencies that can be discussed “in terms of antecedent, motive, means, conditions, influence, explanation, and the like”.21 These dependencies too can be seen as having assembly-structures—a point which allows us to use the resources of the social ontology we developed in §§ 1–4 to help us better understand the processes of human history. Indeed, history is primarily interested in changes of social reality—as a matter of fact, we have already shown that social reality consists of a universe of ever changing social objects. It is safe to say that, generally, changes in social objects happen in two ways: evolutionary and revolutionary. We have already discussed the first type of change in § 5, which explains why are we now concentrating on revolutionary changes. These alter the social situation radically. They can be results of: (i) complex actions like big and decisive battles (of Waterloo, Gainsborough, Stalingrad, etc.); (ii) decisions taken by prominent figures in history like Napoleon or Churchill; (iii) radical ideological, economical, etc. shifts—for example, those that ruined the Roman Empire and caused its fall.22 These changes too can be seen as taking place according to our “assembly-structures” ontological model.23 Indeed, social structures have a clear hierarchy and are strictly ordered one over another. Furthermore, every change rearranges social objects into new constructions, also transforming objects’ roles and importance (their hierarchy) in the new constructions (individuals)—in fact, that is why the changes are so important in social life. Most importantly, a change in the position of one object leads to 21 Cf. M. Howell and W. Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods, Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press, 2001, p. 129. 22 Two examples: Edward Gibbon argued (in 1776–88) that The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was caused by ideological changes, while Max Weber (in his Römische Agrargeschichte, 1891) pointed to the changes in rural economics as a possible reason. 23 On ontological changes cf. N. Milkov, “Stereology”, in N. Callaos (ed.), Proceedings of the 6th World Multiconference of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (SCI 2002/ISAS 2002), vol. XVIII, Orlando (Florida), 2002, pp. 518–23.

255 changes in the overall system. An example: in a recent book, the claim has been made that a series of ten decisions made between May 1940 and December 1941 determined the course of World War II; all other events of the war can be substantially seen as their effects.24 Traditionally, historical changes have been considered clear cases of “causal” connections, the efforts of historians being primarily concentrated on their explanation. In such cases, the task is to reveal which change (for example, which decision) was the fundamental one and which followed from it. As we have already argued elsewhere,25 however, that there is no logic and also no causality in this realm. This conclusion explains why we are reluctant to speak about the laws of history. Instead, we feel that the task of history is to reveal which of the social objects (planks) in a social construction of the past, or of that specific form of life, are leading, or more fundamental, in the sense that the other objects are ontologically dependent on them, and to describe their structure. Furthermore, the historian sets out how change transformed the degree of importance of the objects in the new social individual. This is the task of describing the mechanism of historical processes. 8. The inward part of social life The next step in enriching our social ontology is the assumption that people connect social objects with what we shall call specific “metaphysics”. This means that people “believe in” the social objects with which they are engaged. These are objects of their intentionality: the agents plan to carry out actions with the help of the objects; they connect great expectations or disappointments with them.26 This form of practical attitude towards social objects sets up the inward part of social life, as opposed to its surface. A typical example in this regard might be the daily metaphysics we 24 Cf. Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940 –1941, London: Penguin Books, 2008. 25 In support of this thesis cf. N. Milkov, “Mesocosmological Descriptions: An Essay in the Extensional Ontology of History”, Essays in Philosophy 7:2 (2006), pp. 1–19. 26 Cf. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987 (1st published 1861).

256 develop: (i) in our inter-personal relationships—the affection we have for our loved ones, the hate for our enemies, etc.; (ii) in groups (political, sporting, etc.) partialities, such as our affection for FC “Liverpool”, or for the American football club the “Pittsburgh Steelers”; etc.27 We do not, however, just have attitudes (intentionality) toward social objects; we also act with them. In other words, on the basis of these objects, different practices and actions are developed. Furthermore, the practices often involve instruments, objects, and performances that cope successfully with the tasks of life.28 In this sense, we are proud of them and, more importantly, we are at peace with them.29 Practices in use at this or that particular moment and place determine people’s way of life. Unfortunately, there is a considerable incongruence between social objects and ways of life. Indeed, in the course of time, social agents start to feel that social objects might be improved; and they actually improve them. For example, instead of reaping the harvest with a sickle they do it with a combine; or, instead of reaching their friends on foot, they do it by car. The problem is that they now start to consider the old social object obsolete, or “disproved”. In consequence, it is abandoned and consigned to oblivion. Nobody marvels at its metaphysics; nobody enjoys working with it any more. Another problem is that social objects are often used by different generations, so that by their continued use, they often get so badly worn that the historian must first reconstruct them in the splendor of their initial form. Apparently, just like human beings, social objects can be disregarded, even ‘ganged up on’. Unfortunately, this disregard often makes history opaque: we regularly fail to understand it in its full complexity. 27 Cf. N. Milkov, “The Cement of Social Alchemy: A Philosophical Analysis of Social Groups’ Identity”, Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 4 (1996), pp. 234–40. 28 Cf. Ernst Tugendhat, Egozentrizität und Mystik, München: Beck, 2004. 29 Cf. S. Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. This point explains why sometimes even simple jobs are seen by the agents as adventures: we try to be better than others in accomplishing them, and to do them better than was done in the past. Cf. Gerd Spittler, Founders of the Anthropology of Work, Berlin: Lit, 2008.

257 Truth to tell, what was disproved by introducing a new social object was simply the old object, or instrument—not the old object together with all the actions that have been successfully accomplished with its help; all the beliefs and hopes attached to it in the whole context of its use; the feeling of successfully accomplished action; the joy we have in working with it; etc. In other words, progressivism fails to give an account of the connection of social objects with different ways of life. In what follows in this section, we are going to suggest three ways of overcoming the progressivist fallacy, using our idiosyncratic approach to the social sciences: (i) We can make use of some new developments in history, in particular, of the expanding discipline of experimental archaeology.30 The objective of the latter is to reconstruct (to revive) former ways of life in a most authentic way: to “put on the shoes” of the old agents, imitating them.31 In a sense, this is a conservative program, the task of which is to revive past ways of life in their full form,—not through empathy, however, but through reconstructing its objects together with the practices that were carried out with their help. (ii) From a more general perspective, we can try to identify a more or less constant (invariant) human form of life (as different from a “lion’s form of life”, etc.32), which is the kernel of social life, or its inward side. It repeats itself practically unchanged—with purposes, motives and habits of the same form33—in different ways of life. In the words of Hermann Lotze, the human form of life is the course of the world (der Weltlauf), “the same ever-green shoot from which colourful blossoms of history shoot up all the time in cycles”.34 30 Cf. James Mathieu (ed.), Experimental Archaeology, Replicating Past Objects, Behaviors and Processes, Oxford: Archaeopress, 2002. 31 The “logic of imitation” was widely followed in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In particular, the doll-models method for imitating car accidents used in a Paris court served him as an inspiration for his picture theory of language. 32 We deal with this concept under the influence of Wittgenstein. See on it Newton Garver, This Complicated Form of Life, Chicago: Open Court, 1994. 33 These can be considered the universals of the human form of life. 34 Hermann Lotze, Microcosm, vol. 2, 6. Auflage, 1923, Leipzig: Meiner (1st ed.

258 Now, a specific task of our reistic social theory and the method based on it is to bring to light the universal movements of the human form of life, as expressed over the course of history in the attitude of humans to different, ever-changing social objects. Roughly, humans construct an endless series of social individuals, repairing and renewing them all the time, using quite different elements (planks) in so doing. One of the tasks of the reistic social philosopher is: (a) comparing the various planks (objects) and social individuals—old and new,—trying to set out how they were connected to the “tree of life” and also how they are connected to one specific element of the “tree” (for example, with our eternal desire for happiness); (b) comparing how we reach it in different stages of human history, etc. (iii) Our method can also suggest how to direct our exploration when the task is searching for authentic social individuals. Examples: contemplating the “river of time”, we soon realize that we can play football without soccer-shoes—and that this is absolutely the same game as the one we play with soccer-shoes. We also see that it is possible to drive a car without seat-belts (as we did it in the 1960’s); or ride a motorcycle without a helmet, etc. In this way we seek to find out if this or that is an object essential for a social construction (individual) or is just its “ornament”. In other words, our objective is to bring to light the “substance” of the social construction (individual). By way of concluding this section, we shall suggest another general model that can serve both for overcoming progressivism in the humanities and for a better understanding of past events. More especially, we assume that our approach can also help us to see social objects of the past, documented in memories, narratives, old movies, old pictures, etc. as complex objects which have two sides: one quite contemporary, upto-date, and another old one which we, or the generations before us, resolutely abandoned some time ago. More importantly, the two sides of these past objects are directly connected (topologically) with one another: they stick tightly together, and that is precisely what makes old social objects completely transparent and so understandable to the observers of every new generation. 1858), p. 345.

259

9. Epilogue The ontology we presented in this paper is rather programmatic and so incomplete. This explains why our analysis is not comprehensive and poor in detail. For example, we have said practically nothing about social relations (we do not deny them but simply consider them secondary in respect to social objects), and hardly nothing about social events (instead, we suggested analysis of changes and processes). Furthermore, our reistic social theory does not follow reism in the form in which its founding father, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, developed it. We simply used the general idea of reism in order to better articulate our own idiosyncratic social theory. Be that as it may, we hope that our approach can help us to better understand the multiplicity of social life, including its past forms in their full scope. References Anscombe, G. E. M. (1958). “On Brute Facts”, Analysis 18 (1958), pp. 69–72. Bittner, R. (1992). “One Action”. In: Rorty, A. O. (Eds.) (1992). Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 97– 110. Blackmore, Susan. (1999). The Meme Machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bloor, David. (2001). “What is a Social Construct?”, Facta Philosophica 3 (2001), pp. 141–56. Garver, Newton. (1994). This Complicated Form of Life. Chicago: Open Court. Cavell, S. (1979). The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dickens, Charles. (1987). Great Expectations. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1st published 1861).

260 Engels, Friedrich. (1975). Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats; in: K. Marx und F. Engels, (1975). Gesamtausgabe, Abt. 1, Bd. 29, Berlin: Dietz. Howell, M.and Prevenier, W. (2001). From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press. Kershaw, Ian. (2008). Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World, 1940–1941. London: Penguin Books. Koselleck, Reinhart. (2006). Begriffsgeschichten. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Lotze, Hermann. (1923). Microcosm, vol. 2, 6. Auflage. Leipzig: Meiner (1st ed. 1858) Mathieu, James (Eds.) (2002). Experimental Archaeology, Replicating Past Objects, Behaviours and Processes. Oxford: Archaeopress. Milkov, N. (1996). “The Cement of Social Alchemy: A Philosophical Analysis of Social Groups’ Identity”, Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society 4 (1996), pp. 234–40. Milkov, Nikolay. (2001) “Tractarian Scaffoldings”, Prima philosophia 14 (2001), pp. 399–414. Milkov, N. (2002). “Stereology”. In: N. Callaos (Eds.) (2002). Proceedings of the 6th World Multiconference of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (SCI 2002/ISAS 2002), vol. XVIII, Orlando (Florida), pp. 518– 23. Milkov, N. (2006). “Mesocosmological Descriptions: An Essay in the Extensional Ontology of History”, Essays in Philosophy 7:2 (2006), pp. 1–19. Milkov, Nikolay. (2011). “After-Revolutionary Political Philosophy” (in print). Neurath, Otto. (2006). “Die Enzyklopädie als ‘Modell’ ”. In: M. Stöltzner and T. Uebel (eds.) (2006). Wiener Kreis, Hamburg: Meiner, pp. 375 – 95.

261 Russell, Bertrand. (1910). “On History”. In: Philosophical Essays. (1910). New York: Simon and Schuster, pp. 60–69. Schatzki, Theodore. (1991). “Elements of a Wittgensteinian Philosophy of the Human Sciences”, Synthese 87 (1991), pp. 311–29. Scholtz, Gunter (Eds.) (2000). Die Interdisziplinarität der Begriffsgeschichte (Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, Sonderband), Hamburg: Meiner. Searle, John. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. New York: The Free Press. Smith, Barry. (1998). “Ontologie des Mesokosmos: Soziale Objekte und Umwelten”, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 52 (1998), pp. 521 –540. Spittler, Gerd. (2008). Founders of the Anthropology of Work. Berlin: Lit. Szczepański, Jan. (1963). Elementarne pojęcia socjologii. Warszawa: Państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe. Thomasson, Amie. (2005). “Ingarden and the Ontology of Cultural Objects”. In: Arkatiusz Chrudzimski (Eds.) (2005). The Ontology of Roman Ingarden. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, pp. 115–136. Tugendhat, Ernst. (2004). Egozentrizität und Mystik. München: Beck. Westerhoff, Jan. (2005). Ontological Categories: Their Nature and Significance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1973). Letters to C. K. Ogden, Eds. by G. H. von Wright. Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. (1974). Philosophical Grammar, Eds. by R. Rhees, trans. Anthony Kenny. Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, conversations recorded by Friedrich Weismann, Eds. by McGuiness, B. F. (1979). Oxford: Blackwell.

XIII. Revisiting Sartre’s Ontology of Embodiment in Being and Nothingness Dermot Moran Abstract: In Being and Nothingness (1943) Sartre includes a grounding-breaking chapter on ‘the body’ which treats of the body under three headings: ‘the body as being for-itself: facticity’, ‘the body-for-others’, and ‘the third ontological dimension of the body’. Sartre’s phenomenology of the body has, in general, been neglected. In this essay, I want to revisit Sartre’s conception of embodiment. I shall argue that Sartre, even more than Merleau-Ponty, is the phenomenologist par excellence of the flesh (la chair) and of intersubjective intercorporeity while emphasising that touching oneself is a merely contingent feature and not ‘the foundation for a study of corporeality’. Key words: Phenomenology, Embodiment, Sartre, Intercorporeality 1. Introduction Embodiment has recently emerged as a central topic in philosophy of mind and in the cognitive sciences in the attempt to understand consciousness especially as it engages with the world perceptually and cognitively. The manner in which humans are embodied knowers has importance consequences not only for epistemology but also for ontology. What kind of entity is a living, embodied, conscious human being? How does the living animate body relate to material things as well as to other living bodies? Recent cognitive science has further recognized that the objectivist approach fails to capture something significant concerning embodied personhood and that there is need for a first-person phenomenological account of the experiences of the subject as understood from the subjective point of view. In this regard, many philosophers (including Hubert Dreyfus, Charles Taylor, Sean Dorrance Kelly, and others) turn to Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (1945) as well as to his

264 later studies, for their rich account of the body-subject. In this paper1, however, I want to revisit Sartre’s account of the body in the chapter entitled ‘The Body’ (Le corps) in Being and Nothingness (1943, hereafter ‘BN’)2 and in particular examine it as an attempt at an original phenomenological ontology of the body. Sartre’s phenomenology of the body is different from that of Merleau-Ponty in significant respects but is no less original and provocative. A return to Sartre may help us appreciate the range and depth of phenomenological thinking about embodiment. 2. Sartre’s Phenomenology of Embodiment The chapter on ‘The Body’ (Le corps) in Being and Nothingness (1943) offers a long, difficult, many-layered and challenging analysis of embodiment.3 In terms of its subsequent impact, it was soon eclipsed by Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of incarnation, and Sartre’s account fell into neglect.4 Sartre’s approach, however, is very interesting and original. It 1 An earlier version of this paper was read at the Sofia International Conference on Ontology – 2009 (SICO’09), The Stakes of Contemporary Ontological Thinking, 18 – 20 June 2009; Sofia, Bulgaria. I wish to thank the participants for their comments, in particular Vesselin Petrov, Ivan Kolev, Roberto Poli, Johanna Seibt, and Fabrice Pataut. 2 Jean-Paul Sartre, L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), trans. Hazel Barnes as Being and Nothingness. An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (London: Routledge, 1995). Hereafter ‘BN’ followed by the English pagination and then the pagination of the French original. 3 Of course, one should not assume that everything Sartre says about the body is to be found in the chapter bearing that title. In fact, the body pervades the whole of Being and Nothingness. In particular, the discussion of hunger and desire, for instance, in the chapter on ‘Concrete Relations with Others’ continues the analysis of the experience of one’s own body and of the fleshly presence of the other. 4 For recent studies of Sartre’s treatment of the body, see Katherine Morris, ed. Sartre on the Body, Philosophers in Depth Series (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), and Kathleen V. Wider, The Bodily Nature of Consciousness: Sartre and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U.P., 1997). Earlier discussions include Xavier O. Monasterio, ‘The Body in Being and Nothingness’, in JeanPaul Sartre: Contemporary Approaches to His Philosophy, ed. Hugh J. Silverman and Frederick A. Elliston (Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press, 1980); Phyllis Sutton Morris, Sartre’s Concept of a Person: An Analytic Approach (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1975) and Joseph Catalano, A Commentary on JeanPaul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (New York: Harper & Row, 1974).

265 is also phenomenological through and through. Sartre draws on the then available phenomenological treatments of the body, to be found in Edmund Husserl5 and Max Scheler6 (but also strongly influenced by his reading of Heidegger’s account of Dasein’s situatedness and facticity in Being and Time7). His ability to reconstruct the phenomenological approach is all the more remarkable given that, at the time of writing Being and Nothingness, he would have had no direct access to the canonical 5 Sartre was familiar with Husserl’s published works, especially Logical Investigations, Ideas I, Lectures on Internal Time Consciousness, Formal and Transcendental Logic and Cartesian Meditations, but it is highly unlikely that Sartre had read Husserl’s Ideas II, though he presumably learned about it from conversations with his friend Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who had read a typescript of the work in the Husserl Archives in Leuven in 1939. Similarly, Husserl does not appear to know the Crisis essays which had been published in an obscure journal, Philosophia, edited in Belgrade, in 1936. In fact, Sartre is remarkable for his ability to successfully reconstruct Husserl’s position on the basis of little direct familiarity with Husserl’s texts. Sartre’s discussion of the role of the image in imagination and memory, for instance, in The Psychology of Imagination (1940) has to have been distilled from scattered remarks found in Logical Investigations and Ideas I rather than based on the material subsequently published in the Husserliana series and recently translated by John B. Brough as Edmund Husserl, Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898-1925) (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005). Sartre obviously learned a great deal about Husserl and the phenomenological approach to the lived body also from his reading of Max Scheler. For instance, at BN, p. 330; Fr. 395, Sartre discusses Scheler’s distinction between the pain of a toothache and the intention toward it (wishing it would end, rejecting it, accepting it with resignation, etc.) 6 For an interesting survey of the role of the body in Scheler’s writings, see Daniela Vallega-Neu, ‘Driven Spirit: The Body in Max Scheler’s Phenomenology’, Epoche vol. 9 no 1 (2004), reprinted in idem, The Bodily Dimension in Thinking (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005), pp. 43-58. 7 M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (1927), 17th Edition (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993), trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, Being and Time (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962). Of course, the body as such is hardly made thematic by Heidegger in Being and Time. For an interesting discussion, see David Michael Levin, The Ontological Dimension of Embodiment: Heidegger’s Thinking of Being’, in Donn Welton, ed., The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), pp. 122-149. Nevertheless, Sartre takes his concept of facticity from Heidegger, and also discusses the practical encounter with tools and useobjects in a typically Heideggerian way. Heidegger’s description of how the friend one encounters on the street is closer than the feeling of one’s feet walking would also be confirmed by Sartre, see Being and Time § 23, p. 141; German p. 107).

266 Husserlian phenomenological discussion of the body in Ideas II8, for instance. He managed to have a solid grasp of many of Husserl’s views (presumably through his studies in Germany in 1933 and conversations with other French Husserlians such as Raymond Aron and Merleau-Ponty, as well as Simone de Beauvoir). Perhaps the most striking feature of Sartre’s account is that it is he who introduced the notion of ‘flesh’ (la chair), now more usually associated with Merleau-Ponty, and develops the flesh as that whereby intercorporeity, that is the interactions between human bodies, is possible. For Sartre, flesh is the locus of contingency and intercorporeity. Flesh is ‘the pure contingency of presence’, Sartre writes [BN, p. 343; 410].9 Fleshly incarnation is the living testimony to my contingency. I simply find myself in the kind of body I have. I do not choose it but must come to terms with it. Our deep sense of ourselves, for Sartre, is as a non-thingly living flesh, neither pure object nor pure consciousness. Moreover, for Sartre, it is the experience of this flesh precisely in its sheer irrational contingency 8 Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, hrsg. Marly Biemel, Husserliana IV (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer as Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989). Hereafter ‘Ideas II’ followed by English pagination, Husserliana (hereafter ‘Hua’) volume and German pagination. Sartre of course read Husserl’s published writings, but had little access to the unpublished drafts, except through conversation with his close friend Maurice Merleau-Ponty who was receiving material from Herman Leo Van Breda, Director of the Husserl Archives in Leuven even during the German occupation. See Hermann Leo Van Breda, History of the Husserl-Archives (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007). 9 Sartre develops the notion of the ‘flesh’ (la chair) from Husserl’s conception of Leibhaftigkeit, the bodily presence of the object in perception. Indeed, Sartre already talks about the ‘flesh of the object in perception’ in an earlier, 1940 study, L’Imaginaire, see J.-P. Sartre, The Psychology of Imagination (London: Methuen, 1972), p. 15. The French translation of ‘leibhaftig’ in Husserlian texts (as also cited by Merleau-Ponty and Levinas) is ‘en chair et en os’, meaning literally ‘in flesh and bone’.

267 that gives rise to the peculiar existential dis-ease that Sartre calls ‘nausea’ (la nauseé). All flesh, for Sartre, has this nausea-provoking character [BN, p. 357; Fr. 425]: ‘A dull and inescapable nausea perpetually reveals my body to my consciousness’ [BN, p. 338; 404].10 Furthermore, my body is constituted in relation to other living bodies, a relation both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty call ‘intercorporeity’. My flesh interacts with and even constitutes the other’s flesh, especially in the acts of touching and, more especially, in moments of tenderness and caressing: The caress reveals the Other’s flesh as flesh to myself and to the Other … it is my body as flesh which causes the Other’s flesh to be born [quit fait naître la chair d’autrui, BN, p. 390; 459-60]. For Sartre, much more than for Husserl or Merleau-Ponty, the body as I encounter it through others is a contested domain: ‘Conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others’ [Le conflit est le sens original de l’être-pour-autrui, BN, p. 364; Fr. 431]. There is, one could say, a socialized body. Despite the life-death struggle with the other, according to which the other person seeks to objectify me in fundamental ways, the other at the same time fulfils a necessary function: the other reveals to me something I cannot learn on my own: how I really am [see BN, p. 354; Fr. 421]. In fact, Sartre rejects the analogical constitution of the other’s body on the basis of my experience of my own, since I must already have the other as object and have myself as object (which requires already being in the gaze of the other). It is, paradoxically, the other who assists me in constituting myself for myself. 3. A Three-Fold Ontology of the Body What is particularly unusual in Sartre’s approach, but which is particularly relevant for this study, is that he claims to be offering an ontological approach. The subtitle of Being and Nothingness is ‘an essay on phenomenological ontology’. Sartre is of course taking his lead from Heidegger here, who proposed phenomenological ontology as a new ap10 It is clear that Sartre genuinely experienced a kind of nausea in encounters with the body and with the external environment. These experiences are described in fictional form in Sartre, La Nausée (Paris: Gallimard, 1938), trans. Robert Baldick, Nausea (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965).

268 proach in Being and Time (1927). But Sartre thinks there is a particular role for ontology. Moreover, he maintains that the philosophical tradition has misunderstood the body because the orders of knowing and the orders of being have been confused. Failure to distinguish between different ‘ontological levels’ [plans ontologiques, BN, p. 305; Fr. 367], or as he says ‘orders of reality’ [ordres de réalité, BN, p. 304; Fr. 366], or ‘orders of being’ [cf. l’ordre de l’être, BN p. 305; Fr. 367],11 is the cause of our philosophical problems. The issue concerns what has primacy in our accounts. Those who have made the objective body-for-others the basis of all understanding of the body have ‘radically reversed the terms of the problem’ [BN, p. 358; Fr. 426]. In effect, as Sartre evocatively puts it, this is ‘to put the corpse at the origin of the living body’ [BN, p. 344; Fr. 411]. Sartre now wants to develop a set of reflections that follows the order of being, the ontological order, the various ‘levels’ (plans) of our understanding of the body. This ‘ontological’ approach is reflected in the tripartite structure of the chapter: ‘The Body as Being-for-itself. Facticity’ (Le corps comme être pour soi: La facticité); ‘The Body-for-Others’ (Le-corps-pour-autrui), and what Sartre simply calls ‘The Third Ontological Dimension of the Body’ (La troisième dimension ontologique du corps). As we shall see, the first two levels map the distinction between body as grasped by oneself (for itself) and the body as perceived or seen by others (including the other’s own body). I have one kind of knowledge of the body within my experience and another experience of the body given through the perspective of the other, the body as it is ‘for me’ and the body as it is ‘for the other’ (pour l’autrui). Sartre also characterizes these dimensions as ‘le corps-existé’, the body as existed or lived, and ‘le corps-vu’, the body as seen from the perspective of the other [BN, p. 358; Fr. 426]. Not only must these two ontological dimensions be distin11 Merleau-Ponty, too, frequently speaks of the ‘order of being’. The distinction between the ‘order of knowledge’ and the ‘order of being’ is frequently found in Scholasticism. Things as they are encountered first in knowing may not have ontological priority.

269 guished; they are, according to Sartre’s radical claim, ‘incommunicable’ and ‘irreconcilable’: Either it [the body] is a thing among other things, or else it is that by which things are revealed to me. But it can not be both at the same time. [BN, p. 304; Fr. 366] There are ‘insurmountable difficulties’ [BN p. 303; Fr. 365] involved in attempting to unite an account of experiential consciousness (arrived at from within) with the more common ‘externalist’ [du dehors, BN, p. 303; Fr. p. 365] account of the living body possessing organs, nervous system, etc. The failure of previous philosophy is that it has, mistakenly and indeed absurdly, attempted to unite the paradoxical first-person experience of one’s consciousness12 with a conception of body that is in fact derived from others, or, as Sartre puts it, ‘the body of others’ [corps des autres, BN, p. 303; Fr., p. 365]. For Sartre, one cannot begin (Cartesian style) from the interiority of reflective consciousness and then attempt to graft on the physical body. One cannot assume that the thirdperson body belongs to the same ontological order as that of the transcendence-transcended. 4. The Body is the For-Itself Throughout Being and Nothingness, Sartre invokes the distinction between the ‘in-itself’ (en-soi) and the ‘for itself’ (pour-soi) in different and sometimes incompatible ways. This distinction, inherited from German Idealism, cannot be read as a simple ontological distinction of two orders of being. Sartre, following Heidegger, insists that ontology can only be done through phenomenology. The in-itself is always experienced through the for-itself and likewise the for-itself is supported by the in-itself. Sartre takes an important step forward when the body is identified with the for-itself: The body is nothing other than the for-itself; it is not an in-itself in the for-itself; for in that case it would solidify everything [BN, p. 309; Fr. 372] 12 Paradoxical, because our immediate first-person experience of the body is not actually of the body but rather of the transcending of the body, its having been surpassed.

270 Sartre, therefore, identifies the lived body (my body—not the objective body of the other) with the for-itself. The body as a for-itself ‘is never a given (un donné) that I can know’ [BN, p. 309; Fr. p. 372]. It is everywhere something that is surpassed and hence, in Sartre’s language, ‘nihilated’. The body is that which I nihilate [ce que je néantise, BN, p. 309; Fr. 372]. On the other hand, the body provides the ‘situation’ of the for-itself as the foundation of its possibilities. It ‘indicates’ my possibilities of being in the world. Sartre’s strong claim is that the body is the very order of the world as ordered by the for-itself. It is the body which gives the subject its orientation and point of view. However, Sartre repeatedly points out that we ‘surpass’ or ‘transcend’ the body in seeking to experience the world. We go beyond our sensations, eye movements, and limb-movements to apprehend the world directly and are not immediately aware of our bodily movements. This leads Sartre to explore some essential ‘paradoxes’ (Merleau-Ponty’s term in The Visible and the Invisible) or oppositions that belong to our embodiment. For Sartre, paradoxically, while the body is that which necessarily introduces the notion of perspective and point of view, at the same time the body is a contingent viewpoint on the world. Our body is the very contingency of our being; our facticity. Consciousness never ceases to have a body (or to be a body) even when that body does not intrude as in the case of being in pain. This perpetual apprehension of the body is what Sartre calls ‘nausea’ and which he takes to be there prior to all feelings of disgust, vertigo, etc [BN, p. 338; Fr. 404]. This nausea is a kind of ontological un-ease with having a body, with being limited to a point of view which can only ever be partial. Sartre’s for-itself is not closed off from the in-itself but is already in the world, it is best understood as a ‘relation to the world’ [rapport au monde, BN, 306; Fr. p. 368]. The body belongs to a lived space, where there is left, right, here, there, up, down, and so on. These lived mutual relations (from which the subject cannot be abstracted) can only be suspended in an abstract scientific view of space, a ‘world without men’ [BN, p. 307; Fr. 369].

271 5. The First Ontological Dimension As a phenomenologist Sartre begins with the body as lived in the first-person perspective, the manner in which, as Sartre puts it ‘I exist my body’ [J’existe mon corps, BN, p. 351; Fr. 428]. This is the body experienced not as a thing but as a ‘non-thing’, almost a transparent medium for my experience of the world. In this regard my body is surpassed towards the world. In contrast to the ‘objective body’ [the object of ‘objectivating knowing’, savoir objectivant, BN, p. 355; Fr. 423], Sartre maintains there is an immediately, but somewhat indefinitely, intuited body13 (akin to Merleau-Ponty’s ‘phenomenal body’ with its schéma corporel).14 Most of the time, this felt body is not objectified but rather is experienced in a diffuse, amorphous, and almost invisible and impalpable manner (which is precisely its mode of appearing). This non-apprehended body swims in the world, as it were, unnoticed. The lived, experienced body (le corps-existé) is not to be construed as an ‘object’ at a remove from consciousness, and certainly not a material object. Rather the body is best understood as a ‘psychic object’, that is almost a project of consciousness or the way a consciousness becomes enfleshed: The body is the psychic object par excellence—the only psychic object. [BN 347; Fr. 414]15 The body in this sense permeates our psyche. The psychic body is experienced from within, from which perspective it is, in a sense, invisible, ‘impalpable’, even ‘ineffable’ [ineffable, BN, p. 354; Fr. 421].16 13 Sartre frequently emphasises that this body is immediately intuited. see, for instance BN, p. 357; Fr. 424 where Sartre speaks of the stomach as ‘present to intuition’. 14 Underscoring this theme, in Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty writes: ‘We have relearned to feel our body; we have found underneath the objective and detached knowledge of the body that other knowledge we have of it in virtue of its always being with us and of the fact that we are our body’ [PP, p. 206; Fr. 239]. 15 Sartre refers to the body of the other person as a ‘psychic object’ [BN 393; Fr. 463]. 16 Merleau-Ponty makes a similar claim about the inapprehensibility of my body in Phenomenology of Perception: ‘Insofar as it sees or touches the world, my body can

272

The way we experience our body cannot be readily mapped onto the body as understood in the medical sciences. I do not know experientially that I have a brain or endocrine glands [BN, p. 303; Fr. 365]; that is something I learn from others (even a ‘headache’ or ‘brain-freeze’ does not reveal the brain as an ‘in itself’). Likewise, I don’t know experientially or phenomenologically the inner anatomy of my body. Of course, I have, to put it in different terms, a ‘folk anatomy’ – where I think I feel my heart, stomach, ribs, liver, and so on. This is guided by a kind of inner sense of our organs, the felt beating of the heart, the felt expansion of the lungs and so on. This can be more or less well informed by science, more or less accurate, and this scientific map of the body structure, while it is superimposed on the felt body, does not necessarily coincide with the body as felt, as immediately experienced in what earlier psychologists misleadingly called ‘inner perception’. Sartre makes this clear in his discussion of his experience of an ulcerous stomach: At this level, however, “the stomach” is an inexpressible; it can neither be named nor thought. Objective empirical thought … is the knowing of a certain objective nature possessed by the stomach. I know that it has the shape of a bagpipe, that it is a sack, that it produces juices … In any case, all this can constitute my illness, not as I enjoy possession of it, but as it escapes me. The stomach and the ulcer become directions of flight, perspectives of alienation from the object which I possess. [BN, p. 356; Fr. 424] This intuitively felt body becomes obtrusive in illness (I become dizzy and lose my balance), failure (the stone is too heavy to lift), disability (I cannot feel my leg), or in psychosomatic conditions (in anorexia nervosa I experience my body as too gross17), or, as Sartre emphasises therefore be neither seen nor touched. What prevents its ever being an object, ever being ‘completely constituted’ is that it is that by which there are objects” [PP, p. 92; Fr. 108]. Here Merleau-Ponty is referring to Husserl’s claim that the body is always incompletely constituted. 17 There is a huge literature on the manner in which anorexics relate to images of their own and others’ bodies (as shown in photographs), see, for instance, Monique A. M. Smeets, and Stephen M. Kosslyn, ‘Hemispheric Differences in Body Image in Anorexia Nervosa’, The International Journal of Eating Disorders, vol. 29, no. 4 (2001), pp. 409-416.

273 with great force and originality, in the look of the other. 6. The Second Ontological Dimension Sartre’ account of the second ontological category – has again two aspects. First there is the constitution of the ‘objective’ body as that which is the normal model of the body in the sciences. Second, and this largely follows Heidegger’s account of Zuhandensein, there is the body which mediates the instrumentality of things in the world and itself (as hands, eyes, etc.,) is revealed as an instrument of instruments, ‘being-atool-among-tools’ [BN, p. 352; Fr. 420]; a centre of reference in the world. The material objective body is the body as understood in an idealized way by the objective sciences (physics, biology, physiology, and so on); it is the body one hears about from others. It is, in Sartre’s pithy phrase, the ‘body of others’ (le corps d’autrui), the body in the region of the anonymous other. Sartre here speaks about ‘the physical point of view’, the ‘point of view of the outside, of exteriority’ [le point de vue du dehors, de l’extériorité, BN, p. 305; Fr. p. 367].This second dimension includes the manner in which my body is utilized by the other (and utilized by myself occupying the role of third-person observer of my body), e.g. the way I encounter my body as a ‘tool of tools’ in its instrumental interaction with things in the world. Sartre says: ‘We do not use this instrument, for we are it’ [BN, p. 324; Fr. 388]. Sartre has interesting things to say about this tool which is not experienced as a tool. Of course, this understanding of the body (and specifically ‘the hand’) as the tool of tools goes back to Aristotle (‘the soul is analogous to the hand; for as the hand is a tool of tools, so the mind is the form of forms and sense the form of sensible things’, De Anima, Book III Part VIII). 7. The Third Ontological Dimension The third dimension is the most complicated and difficult to grasp – it is exploring the manner in which ‘I exist for myself as a body known by the Other’ [BN, p. 351; Fr. 419], what has been characterized as ‘the

274 body-for-itself-for-others’.18 This is the body in its intersubjective, intercorporeal, socialized dimension. The body, Sartre says, is a site of action-- including interaction. According to this ontological dimension, I experience my own body not on my own, but as reflected in the experience of it by others, the dialectics of which Sartre has explored perhaps more than any other phenomenologist (with the exception of Levinas). For example, Sartre writes: I cannot be embarrassed by my own body as I exist it. It is my body as it may exist for the other which may embarrass me. [BN, p. 353; Fr. 421] This third dimension of the body includes the manner in which I experience it under the ‘omnipresent’--but often empirically ‘absent’--look (regard) of the other, as in the case of shame, shyness, or embarrassment, where I experience how the other sees me. I am as Sartre says ‘imprisoned in an absence’ [BN, p. 363; 430]. The other is a kind of ‘internal hemorrhage’ [BN, p. 257; Fr. 315] in my world; who robs me of the total control I seek to exercise over it. Sartre’s three-fold ontological distinction is awkward since the ontological categories appear to overlap (since the body can be experienced in two different ways in relation to others--as instrument or object or by me as seen by the other) and also because there are not three bodies as the ontological distinction might imply. However, there is something both original and insightful about his approach. He claims that my experiencing my body in the gaze of the other does not make my body a simple object to me, rather I experience the ‘flight of the body which I exist’ [BN, p. 354; Fr. 422]. In other words, the other both presents me as I really am and also takes control of my body-image away from me. For instance, one cannot completely control the impression one makes on others; even the actor is depend in a certain sense on the manner the audience receives him or her. According to Sartre, the other is entwined with my body from the start. Sartre begins not with the body seeing or tou18 See Martin C. Dillon, ‘Sartre on the Phenomenal Body and Merleau-Ponty’s Critique’, in Jon Stewart, ed., The Debate between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty [Evanston, IL: Northwestern U. P., 1998], pp. 121-143, see especially p. 126.

275 ching itself but with the body as seen or touched by the other. There is, in Husserlian terms, a co-constitution going on between my body and the other which challenges more traditional approaches to the constitution of the other’s body through empathy, as found especially in Scheler.19 8. The Transcendence of my Consciousness towards the World According to Sartre, most of the time my conscious awareness is not directed towards this vaguely felt, internally apprehended body, but rather my intention is toward the ‘world’ or more exactly toward my world in the first instance. In Sartre’s language, the body (itself a transcendence beyond my immanence) is itself transcended in an act of intending towards the world; the body becomes a ‘transcendence transcended’ [BN, p. 347; Fr. 414]. Against this, Sartre argues, the psychologist’s concept of subjectivity is of an immanence which cannot get outside of itself [BN, p. 314; Fr. 377]. Furthermore, while there is a profound sense that the body is available to me as an object, when I see and touch parts of my body, I am in these situations, for Sartre, still experiencing my body from without, from what Sartre calls the point of view of an ‘other’: ‘I am the other in relation to my eye’ [BN, p. 304; Fr. 366]. Following similar remarks I can see my eye as a sense organ but I cannot ‘see the seeing’ (ibid.). I see my hand, Sartre acknowledges, but only in the way that I see the inkwell (this experience is well documented in Sartre’s other writings e.g. in Nausea). For Sartre, I cannot see the sensitivity of the hand or even the ‘mineness’ of my hand: For my hand reveals to me the resistance of objects, their hardness or softness, but not itself. Thus I see this hand only in the way that I see this inkwell. I unfold a distance between it and me ... [BN, p. 304; Fr. 366] This notion of a ‘distance’ between the ego and the experience of body is something already discussed by Husserl (see Ideas II § 54 where Husserl speaks of the body as ‘over against’ the ego) and by his student 19 For a discussion of empathy in the phenomenological tradition, see Dermot Moran, ‘The Problem of Empathy: Lipps, Scheler, Husserl and Stein’, in Amor Amicitiae: On the Love that is Friendship. Essays in Medieval Thought and Beyond in Honor of the Rev. Professor James McEvoy, ed. Thomas A. Kelly and Phillip W. Rosemann (Leuven/Paris/ Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2004), pp. 269-312.

276 Edith Stein. Stein writes that sensation (e.g. pain) is always localized somewhere at a distance from the ego.20 There is a kind of experienced distance between myself and my body yet my body cannot be separated from me.21 Husserl and Merleau-Ponty both emphasize the continued presence of the body felt from within in all cases of perceiving, whereas Sartre maintains that our perceivings objectify, externalize and alienate what we perceive and also displace us from ourselves. What Sartre calls ‘thetic consciousness’ is objectifying, for Husserl, is reifying and objectifying. I see the bodies of others (in scientific textbooks, etc.) and conclude that I have a body like that of others. Physicians and others have an experience of my body, but they experience it as a piece of the world, ‘in the midst of the world’ [au milieu du monde, BN p. 303; Fr. 365]. This is the body in its ‘being for others’ [être-pour-autrui, BN p. 305; Fr 367]. Sartre’s originality is his claim that my own body is present to me in this way most of the time. I see my hand as something relatively extraneous from me, at a distance from me, as an object in the world.22 There is then a kind of ‘for-others’ objectivity of the body. 9. Being in a Situation Rejecting the traditional philosophical attempt to unite mind and body as hopeless, Sartre maintains that the starting point for any phenomenological description has to be the recognition that our naïve experience is first and foremost not of the body strictly speaking at all, but rather, of the world, or the situation. As Sartre asserts early in Being and Nothing20 Edith Stein, Zum Problem der Einfühlung (Halle, 1917; reprinted München: Gerhard Kaffke Verlag, 1980), p. 46; trans. Waltraut Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, The Collected Works of Edith Stein Sister Benedicta of the Cross Discalced Carmelite 1891-1942, Volume Three, 3rd revised edition (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1989), p. 42. 21 Of course this experienced distance can become pathological as in those cases of body dismorphia where the person thinks part of his or her body is an alien adhesion. 22 Sartre describes this feeling of distance from his hand very evocatively in La Nausée (Nausea).

277 ness: Our being is immediately “in situation;” that is, it arises in enterprises and knows itself first insofar as it is reflected in those enterprises.” [BN, p. 39; Fr., 76] Sartre reiterates this claim in the chapter on the body: … the body is identified with the whole world inasmuch as the world is the total situation of the for-itself and the measure of its existence. [BN, 309; Fr. 372] Sartre emphasizes in all his writings that we are first and foremost in the world or ‘in the situation’. This ‘in-the-worldness’, so to speak, of our experience is the central lesson that Sartre believes phenomenology has given to correct both traditional empiricist and idealist approaches to the relation of subject and object. For instance, in his short but important 1939 essay, “Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea of Husserl’s Phenomenology,” Sartre declares that Husserl’s phenomenology has put us in direct contact with the world and restored the world to us: Consciousness and the world are given in one stroke: essentially external to consciousness, the world is nevertheless essentially relative to consciousness. And again: Husserl has restored to things their horror and their charm. He has restored to us the world of artists and prophets: frightening, hostile, dangerous, with its havens of mercy and love.23 For Sartre, phenomenology has decisively rejected all efforts to give a representationalist account of knowledge whereby somehow external reality is represented in the mind of the knower. Sartre wants instead to empty the knower out into the world; to overcome the false concept of consciousness as a box with contents (Husserl also rejects this conception of consciousness). While, on one standard approach, consciousness may be considered an ‘absolute interiority’ [BN, p. 305; Fr., 367] which 23 J.-P. Sartre, “Une idée fondamentale de la phénoménologie de Husserl: l’intentionnalité,” Situations I (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), p. 32, trans. by Joseph P. Fell, “Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea in Husserl’s Philosophy,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 1 No. 2 (May 1970), pp. 4-5; reprinted in Dermot Moran and Tim Mooney, eds, The Phenomenology Reader (London & New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 383.

278 somehow is directly accessible to itself (in illustration, Sartre quotes Descartes’ Meditations claim that the soul is easier to know than the body), Sartre in fact rejects this notion as a construction of idealism. Furthermore, Sartre connects this, as it might be termed, ‘externalist’ orientation of intentionality as found in Husserlian phenomenology with Heidegger’s notion of Dasein as ‘being-in-the-world’ [In-der-Weltsein, which Sartre translates as être-dans-le-monde, BN, p. 306; Fr., p. 368] with its facticity and finitude. Sartre absolutely accepts the facticity of embodiment. I have the body I have in this place and time; that is an absolutely meaningless, contingent truth. That is ‘facticity’. Sartre’s adoption of the Heideggerian concept of being-in-the-world overcomes any kind of pre-Kantian conception of the world as divided into ‘things in themselves’ and subjects. For Sartre, all being is experienced in and through subjectivity; just as subjectivity is essentially and primarily world-directed. In Being and Nothingness Sartre writes: Man and the world are relative beings (des êtres relatifs), and the principle of their being is the relation. [BN, p. 308; Fr. p. 370] Sartre, therefore, fully accepts and indeed emphasizes the revolutionary character of describing human existence as ‘being-in-the-world’. Our experience is world-oriented; we find ourselves in the midst of worldly situations. We transcend or surpass (dépasser) ourselves towards a world. Attempting to give his own twist to the Heideggerian conception, Sartre gives this notion of ‘being-in-the-world’ a more dynamic sense: ‘to be is to fly out into the world’24. Sartre thinks the Husserlian phenomenological conception of ‘transcendence in immanence’ means essentially that the whole thrust of human subjectivity is to overcome or cancel itself out, ‘nihilate’ itself (néantiser, in Sartre’s terminology) by intending towards the world. Intentionality is world-directedness; human desire and knowing is towards-the-world and already in the world. Sartre frequently speaks of the manner in which the embodied consciousness 24 Sartre, ‘Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea in Husserl’s Philosophy’, The Phenomenology Reader, op. cit., p. 383.

279 has to ‘surpass’ itself. This ‘surpassing’ (dépassement) constitutes the essence of intentionality understood as self-transcendence.25 It is because of our intentional directedness to the world that we have to overcome, surpass, transcend the body. But of course, this surpassing of the body does not by any means eliminate the body: The body is necessary again as the obstacle to be surpassed in order to be in the world; that is, the obstacle which I am to myself. [BN, p. 326; Fr. 391]. For Sartre, our transcendence towards the world is part of what he takes to be our original ‘upsurge in the world’ (surgissement dans le monde).26 But it is we ourselves who decide these very dimensions by our very upsurge (notre surgissement) into the world and it is very necessary that we decide them, for otherwise they would not be at all. [BN, p. 308: Fr. p. 370]. All through Being and Nothingness, Sartre speaks of this ‘upsurge’ (surgissement) of the pour-soi towards the world. This ‘upsurge’ has both a certain necessity and a certain contingency, this combination going by the name of ‘facticity’. A significant part of Sartre’s claim is that by intending the world, humans also constitute or make the world. The world comes into being at the same time as our intentional engagement with it. For Sartre takes the nature of the ‘for-itself’ as necessarily surpassing the world and also causing ‘there to be a world by surpassing it’ [BN, pp. 326-27; Fr., p. 391].27 Indeed, it is my flesh that so to speak ‘creates’ the flesh of the 25 For further analysis of Heidegger’s reading of intentionality as transcendence, see Dermot Moran, ‘Heidegger’s Critique of Husserl’s and Brentano’s Accounts of Intentionality’, Inquiry Vol. 43 No. 1 (March 2000), pp. 39-65. 26 Merleau-Ponty also speaks of the ‘unmotivated upsurge’ (le jaillissement immotivé du monde) of the world in his Phenomenology of Perception (PP xiv; Fr. viii). 27 This is what Joseph Catelano calls the ‘world-making’ capacity of humans, see his ‘The Body and the Book: Reading Being and Nothingness’, reprinted in Jon Stewart, ed., The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty (Evanston, IL: Northwestern U. P., 1998), pp. 154-171, see especially, p. 165. Catelano characterises

280 other, and so on. Nevertheless, despite the fact the object of our experience is the world (things, events, projects), it is also true that the world is experienced in and through the lived body. Sartre, following Husserl’s phenomenological tradition, insists that consciousness can only be consciousness as embodied or incarnate: the body is the ‘condition of possibility’ for the psyche [BN, p. 338; Fr. 404]. Consciousness is necessarily and essentially embodied. Embodiment situates and locates consciousness, gives it the orientation and point of view that makes it possible as consciousness, as for-itself. Sartre writes: … the very nature of the for-itself demands that it be body, that is, that its nihilating escape from being should be made in the form of an engagement in the world. [BN 309; Fr. 372] I am in contact with the world through my body: Things are experienced as heavy or light, near or far. There is a visual scene because I have eyes that can see and also be seen. As Merleau-Ponty says: ‘to see is to enter a universe of beings that display themselves, and they would not do this if they could not be hidden behind each other … in other words to look at an object is to inhabit it’. Moreover, he says: Apart from the probing of my eye or my hand, and before my body synchronizes with it, the sensible is nothing but a vague beckoning. [PP, p. 214; Fr. 248] The room feels warm because we are sensitive to heat. Other bodies too present themselves in a special way. We experience them as sensitive (Sartre claims, however, that we distance ourselves from that experiencing in our ordinary behaviour). In pre-reflective normal consciousness we are entirely oriented to and in the world. We are worldly through and through. We are, in Husserl’s words, ‘children of the world’ (Weltkinder). We are, for Merleau-Ponty, ‘connatural with the world’ [PP, p. 217; Fr. 251]. Sartre too emphasizes that the world is a world that has been humanized by us: ‘the world is human’ [BN 218; Fr. 270]. EverySartre’s account as ‘anthropocentric’.

281 where in the world, all one encounters is oneself. The world is coloured because we have eyes that pick up colour. The steps appear as something we can climb up. As Sartre puts it: The body is the totality of meaningful relationships to the world … The body in fact could not appear without sustaining meaningful relations with the totality of what is. [BN, p. 344: Fr., 411] Sartre’s claim is that consciousness is primarily an active engagement with the world which is not necessarily explicitly conscious of itself at the same time. Explicit, reflective self-consciousness is not a part of our original, ‘unreflected’ or ‘pre-reflective’ conscious engagement with the world. As he puts it in his 1936 essay ‘The Transcendence of the Ego’, if I am chasing a streetcar, there is only consciousness of the streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken, nothing else.28 There is a bus to be caught; there is a road surface to be walked, and so on. I experience all instrumentalities (handles, tools) because I have a body and yet I don’t somehow encounter my body. Rather I encounter objects that are to be lifted, that are to be walked around. There is, Sartre says, a quality to reality that is well captured by the Latin gerundive or future passive participle: Carthago delenda est; Carthage is ‘to be destroyed’ (for the Romans), and yet ‘to be served’ (for the Carthagenians). Reality is always revealed in the intentional project of the subject engaged in the situation. Sartre’s insistence on the lack of self-consciousness of our original ‘positional’ or thetic consciousness requires him to play down the level of immediate consciousness of our body and our perceivings. He claims instead that we have an ‘immediate, non-cognitive relation of the self to itself’ [rapport immédiat et non cognitive de soi à soi, BN, p. xxix; Fr. 19].

28 J.-P. Sartre, “La Transcendance de l’égo. Esquisse d’une déscription phénoménologique,” Recherches philosophiques, 6 (1936/7), pp. 85-123, reprinted as a separate book, La Transcendance de l’égo (Paris: Vrin, 1966), trans. Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick, The Transcendence of the Ego (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1957, reprinted 1972). Hereafter ‘TE’ followed by English page number and then French page number of the 1936 article. The reference here is ‘TE, p. 49; Fr. 94).

282 Merleau-Ponty makes a similar--if somewhat more carefully modulated--claim concerning our preoccupation with the world, and our mutual embodied belonging with it. For Merleau-Ponty, as for Sartre and Husserl, consciousness is essentially embodied: Insofar as, when I reflect on the essence of subjectivity, I find it bound up with that of the body and that of the world, this is because my existence as subjectivity is merely one with my existence as a body and with the existence of the world, and because the subject that I am, when taken concretely, is inseparable from this body and this world. [PP, p. 408: Fr. 467] Merleau-Ponty goes on to make an important point which is also relevant for Sartre’s ontological exploration of the body: The ontological world and body which we find at the core of the subject are not the world or body as idea (le monde en idée ou le corps en idée) but on the one hand the world itself contracted into a comprehensive grasp, and on the other the body itself as a knowing body. [comme corps-connaissant, PP, p. 408; Fr. 467] The usual concepts of objective world in itself and objective body as such have to replaced with the phenomenological concept of an animate lived embodiment in the world as the living context for the embodied subject who has an immediate but almost impalpable sense of itself. Moreover, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes in his Phenomenology of Perception, even in moments where our intimate consciousness of our body takes the upper hand, this by no means cancels out the world: Even if I become absorbed in the experience of my body and in the solitude of sensations, I do not succeed in abolishing all reference of my life to a world. At every moment some intention springs afresh from me, if it is only toward the things round about me which catch my eye, or toward the instants, which are thrown up, and which thrust back into the past what I have just lived through. I never become completely a thing in the world; the density of existence as a thing always evades me, my own substance slips away from me internally, and some intention is always foreshadowed. [PP, p. 165;

283 Fr. 192-3] 29 Merleau-Ponty goes on to talk, in terms reminiscent of Sartre, about the manner in which the body becomes prey to an ‘active nothingness’ [un néant actif, PP, p. 165; Fr. 193] when it reaches forward to its projects, to its temporal futurity. Sartre’s ‘third ontological’ level concerns the body as personally experienced in relation to others. Here Sartre wants to introduce the necessary intersubjective dimension into the discussion of the body, the socialized body. 10. Lived Body: Omnipresent but Inapprehensible For Sartre, as we have seen, in our experience the body is somehow ‘inapprehensible’ and yet always present. It is this ‘inapprehensible given’ [cet insaisissable donné, BN, p. 327; Fr. 392]. ‘I exist my body’ [j’existe mon corps, BN p. 329; Fr. 394; see also p. 351; Fr. 418], yet the body in itself is ‘inapprehensible’ and ‘ineffable’. Sartre here is repeating Husserl’s position, also maintained by Merleau-Ponty, that the body is somehow present in all perception.30 It escapes our consciousness and it is not objectified in our incarnate acting and doing. In fact, the body as lived is difficult to localize. Sartre’s specific contribution (which will be followed by Merleau-Ponty) is his evocative description of the manner the body spreads itself over things with which it is in contact. Sartre writes: My body is everywhere: the bomb which destroys my house also damages my body insofar the house was already an indication of my 29 The claim that our experience is primarily world-oriented is now commonplace in much philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Recently, for instance, Jesse Prinz, Gut reactions. A Perceptual Theory of Emotion (Oxford & New York: Oxford U.P., 2004), has argued that even emotional ‘bodily’ feelings do not have the body as their intentional object; rather, these feelings, although caused by bodily changes and felt “in” the body, are primarily about significant events or objects in the world. As Prinz puts it, emotional bodily feelings register bodily changes but represent things going on outside the body. 30 For an interesting discussion of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on the body, see Taylor Carman, ‘The Body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’, Philosophical Topics vol. 27 no. 2 (1999), pp. 205-226.

284 body. This is why the body always extends across the tool which it utilizes: it is at the end of the cane on which I lean and against the earth; it is at the end of the telescope which shows me the stars; it is on the chair, in the whole house; for it is my adaption to these tools. [BN, p. 325; Fr. 389] Sartre describes the body as omnipresent because it is our way of being inserted into the situation. 11. Vision, Touch and the ‘Double Sensation’ Sartre’s phenomenological discussion of the body focuses especially on the concept of living flesh, especially as experienced in touching and being touched as well as in being seen (which has priority over seeing). Sartre in particular singles out the phenomenon of the double sensation which had earlier been discussed by Husserl and others. The phenomenon of the ‘double sensation’ was a recurrent theme in nineteenth-century German psychology,31 and it is likely that Husserl learned of the concept of ‘double sensation’ from the Göttingen psychologists who worked with his colleague Müller. Husserl employs the term ‘double sensation’ (Doppelempfindung) in his Ideas II § 36 [pp. 152-54; Hua IV, 14447], and, indeed, he had already discussed the phenomenon even earlier in his Thing and Space lectures of 1907.32 There he discusses the example of one hand touching the other, and the manner in which sensations of touching can be reversed into sensations of being touched. Husserl here speaks of this ‘intertwining’ and of the constitution of the physical object with the constitution of the ‘ego-body’ (Ichleib). Husserl is interested in the interaction between the sense of vision and that of touch in the way in which they build up and disclose the uni31 The phenomenon of fingers touching each other, or one hand touching the other is discussed by Weber as well as by Wilhelm Wundt and others. There is also a mention of it in Section 56 of Titchener’s Manual of Experimental Psychology (1924), pp. 383-84. 32 Husserl, Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907, ed. Ulrich Claesges (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), Hua XVI, trans. by R. Rojcewicz, Thing and Space: Lectures of 1907, Collected Works VII (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997). Hereafter ‘DR’ with English and then German pagination. The reference here is DR § 47, p. 137; XVI 162.

285 fied spatial world we experience.33 In Thing and Space § 47 he claims that the ‘ego-body’ (Ichleib) is a unique kind of entity different from physical objects. Husserl’s first point is that visual experiences (seeing the visual scope) are not experienced as ‘localized’ in the body in contradistinction to the way in which I locate touch sensations in the body. Vision in this sense is ‘transparent’. Husserl then discusses the fact that although I touch the smoothness or roughness of the object, I also have a sense of that smoothness ‘on or in the appearing finger tips’. He goes on: If with my left hand I touch my right, then along with the touch sensations and the kinaesthetic sensations there is constituted, reciprocally, the appearance of the left and right hands, the one moving over the other in such and such a manner. At the same time, however, i.e., with a reversal of the apprehension, the self-moving appears in an other sense, which applies only to the body, and in general the same group of sensations which have an objectivating function are apprehended, through a reversal of the attention and apprehension, as subjectivating and specifically as something which members of the body, those that appear in the objectivating function, “have” as localized within themselves. [Thing and Space, p. 137; Hua XVI 162] In Ideas II § 36 he is interested in the manner in which the lived-body (Leib) is constituted as a ‘bearer of localized sensations’. These ‘localized sensations’ he also calls ‘sensings’ (Husserl uses the neologism Empfindisse), which are not directly sensed but can be brought to attention by a shift of apprehension. ‘Localization’ means, for Husserl, both that the sensations are somehow distinguished with regard to a certain 33 For a useful recent overview of the phenomenology of touch which discusses Merleau-Ponty’s hand touching hand scenario in the light of current analytic philosophy of mind, see Matthew J. Ratcliffe, ‘Touch and Situatedness’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies vol. 16 no. 3 (2008), pp. 299-322. See also Mark Paterson, The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies (Oxford & New York: Berg Publishers, 2007) which contains a good review of classical and contemporary approaches to touch. For an eclectic set of studies on the concept of touch in different disciplines, see Constance Classen, ed., The Book of Touch (Oxford & New York: Berg Publishers, 2005).

286 place in the body, and that they present the body as objectified in space in a specific ‘fleshly’ way [see Ideas II, p. 153; IV 145]. In Ideas II § 36 Husserl introduces the situation of one hand touching another: in this case, the right hand touching the left. The touching hand has to make movements in order to feel the smoothness and softness texture of the touched hand. This touching gives rise to sensations which Husserl calls ‘indicational sensations’ of movement and with them come the ‘representational’ sensations or ‘appearances’ of smoothness. These representational senses of smoothness in fact belong to the touching right hand but they are ‘objectivated’ in the touched left hand. But Husserl goes on to say that in the touched left hand I also have sensations which are active and ‘localized’ within it. In other words, the left hand is sensitive to being touched and this sensitivity is its own peculiar kind of sensation complex. If I speak of the physical thing, “left hand,” then I am abstracting from these sensations … If I do include them, then it is not that the physical thing is now richer, instead it becomes Body (Leib), it senses. [Ideas II, p. 152; IV 145] As with Sartre, to grasp the hand as a hand is to abstract from or, as Sartre would put it, ‘surpass’ this field of sensory experiences and objectify the hand as a distinct object on its own. If I apprehend the hand with its sensings, Husserl continues, then I am apprehending a living body, Leib. In this context, Husserl speaks of the sensation being ‘doubled’ [Ideas II, p. 153; IV 145] when one hand touches or pinches the other. Husserl claims that each hand experiences this ‘double sensation’. Each hand has a sensing and a sensed and both occur simultaneously. Moreover, Husserl restricts this ‘double sensation’ to touch: ‘in the case of an object constituted purely visually we have nothing comparable’ [Ideas II § 37, p. 155; IV 147]. Likewise: ‘I do not see myself, my body, the way I touch myself’ [Ideas II § 37, p. 155; IV 148]. I do not constitute my eye as an external object in the same way I constitute the touching hand as an object over and against a second touched object. All Husserl will allow is that the eye can also be a centre for touch sensations (the eyeball can be touched, we can feel the movement of the eye in the eye-socket,

287 through ‘muscle sensations’, and so on). Husserl concludes: The role of the visual sensations in the correlative constitution of the body and external things is thus different from that of the sensations of touch. [Ideas II § 37, p. 156; IV 148] Merleau-Ponty develops this account of the double sensation, borrowing heavily from David Katz’s study in his discussion of touch in The Phenomenology of Perception [see esp. pp. 315-17; Fr. 366-68]. For instance, Merleau-Ponty draws on Katz to support the claim that temporality is an integral aspect of touching. Not only must the fingers be moved over a surface in objective time, but the temporal extension of the touched sensation is an important feature in our sense of the spatial continuity of the surface. As Merleau-Ponty writes: Movement and time are not only an objective condition of knowing touch, but a phenomenal component of tactile data. [des donnés tactiles, PP, p. 315; Fr. 364] In contrast to Husserl, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the parallels and continuities between touch and vision which are more usually contrasted in regard to constituting the sense of materiality and spatiality. For instance, it is often thought that the sense of touch disappears when one lifts one’s hand off one kind of surface before touching another surface. Merleau-Ponty, on the contrary, thinks a kind of indefinite sense of touch remains. It is not, Merleau-Ponty, says ‘a tactile nothingness’ but ‘a tactile space devoid of matter, a tactile background’ [PP, p. 316; Fr. 365]. Similarly, for both Katz and Merleau-Ponty, there is a kind of tactile memory. When I touch the surface of a material (e.g. silk or fur), I have a sense of what that surface feels like and I will expect that sense in future contacts with the material. There is a kind of ‘memory’ in my body for what it feels like to lean against a wall, to have my back touching the chair and so on. Through this memory I gain a sense of the ‘constancy’ of the object [PP, p. 317; Fr. 366]. Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the manner in which touch brings body and world literally into contact with one another, unlike the situation of sight (which gives me the sense that I am ‘everywhere and nowhere’:

288 Tactile experience, on the other hand, adheres to the surface of the body; we cannot unfold it before us and it never quite becomes an object. Correspondingly, as the subject of touch, I cannot flatter myself that I am everywhere and nowhere; I cannot forget in this case that it is through my body that I go to the world. [PP, p. 316; 365] 12. Sartre and the ‘Double Sensation’ As we have seen, Sartre clearly distinguishes between my body as it is experienced (ambiguously and non-objectively) by me and the body as it is for the other or even for myself but now occupying the perspective of another. These different ‘bodies’ are in opposition and in fact are, for Sartre, irreconcilable. That these two different views of the body are incompatible is reinforced by Sartre in his discussion of the phenomenon of the double sensation. Sartre claims that the phenomenon of double sensation is not essential to my embodiment; it is something contingent.34 It can be inhibited or entirely removed through morphine, making my leg numb and insensitive to being touched. The anaesthetized leg is not the same leg which belongs to my possibility of walking, running, playing football, etc. To touch and be touched belong different orders of reality, according to Sartre, and it is philosophically pernicious to conflate these different ‘orders’ or ‘levels’ of being.35 When one hand touches the other hand, I directly experience the hand that is being touched first. It is only with a certain reflection that I can turn back and focus on the sensation in the touching hand. Sartre maintains that this constitutes ontological proof that the ‘body-for-me’ and the ‘body-for-theother’ are different intentional objectivities.

34 Sartre’s account of the double sensation is rarely discussed but see Ann Murphy, ‘Sexuality’, in A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), p. 491 and also Donn Welton’s essay ‘Soft, Smooth Hands: Husserl’s Phenomenology of the Lived-Body’, in Donn Welton, ed., The Body. Classic and Contemporary Readings, op. cit., p. 48. I believe Welton misses the originality in Sartre’s account. 35 See the interesting discussion by David Vessey, ‘The Body as Anstoss in Sartre’s Account of Constitution’, paper presented at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy Boston, 1998.

289 Sartre is challenging fundamental aspects of Husserl’s account. Husserl’s account is focused on the sensational ‘matter’ involved in perception and the differences between seeing and touching. Sartre, on the other hand, sees the ‘double sensation’ as a misleading phenomenon which occludes the true ontological situation of the different phenomenological bodies. Furthermore, Sartre departs from Husserl in not thinking vision and touch differ in regard to this doubling. The seeing is not the same as the object seen, for Sartre, and indeed, the two are incomparable dimensions of being. Moreover, for Sartre, mutual sensing cannot take place simultaneously and can be frustrated by anaesthetics. This ‘double sensation’ is not an essential characteristic of embodiment. Interestingly in the later Merleau-Ponty there is an effort to develop a more metaphysical or indeed ontological approach, an attempt to overcome traditional dualisms in philosophy and to project the ‘flesh’ as the ambiguous and unitary first principle, an ‘element’ (in the sense of the four elements) of Being [VI, p. 139]. Merleau-Ponty writes: If we can show that the flesh is an ultimate notion, that it is not the union or compound of two substances, but thinkable by itself, if there is a relation of the visible to itself that traverses me and constitutes me as seer, this circle which I do not form, which forms me, this coiling over of the visible upon the visible, can traverse animate bodies as well as my own. [VI, p. 140]. In his famous chapter on ‘The Intertwining—The Chiasm’ in The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty tries to articulate that phenomenological sense in which we find ourselves as perceivers in a world of the visible. That visible seems to have its own ‘in itself’ character: ‘The visible about us seems to rest in itself’ [VI, p. 130] yet we form part of it. We don’t have any sense that we create the visible, yet we ourselves are visible within this sphere of visibility: ‘my seeing body subtends my visible body and all the visibles with it’ [VI, p. 138]. Merleau-Ponty’s answer is to try to express this ‘intertwining’ of visible and vision which is for him at the heart of the notion of flesh and at the heart of the bodyworld relation. Merleau-Ponty’s metaphysical use of the double sensation is, how-

290 ever, the opposite of Sartre’s. Merleau-Ponty wants to claim, paradoxically and counter-intuitively, that both vision and touch have this doubleness. This is a very important point. Seeing our body is a way of orienting to other things in a visible way. My particular orientation is contingent but there must be some orientation in my ‘upsurge’ in the world. 13. Conclusion Sartre’s account of the body is subtle, complex, and many layered. It is of course largely a promissory note for a kind of larger study which he himself never carried out. However, his view of the body is a healthy corrective to what is often seen as his rather crude Cartesianism. Sartre is often criticized for his metaphysical claims concerning the gulf between different orders of being (for-itself and in-itself), but, in fact, his phenomenological account overcomes this crude ‘Cartesian’ dualism by stressing our embodied-being-in-the-world. It is true that Sartre invites confusion by using the term ‘ontology’ where he is speaking about matters that are phenomenologically manifest. While Sartre’s account of the body is not as deeply informed by psychological studies as Merleau-Ponty’s36, on the other hand, in some respects, his account of intersubjective embodied relations (shame, desire, the erotic caress) is more concrete and dynamic. As we have seen, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre disagree to a certain extent about the role of our self-perceivings. Whereas MerleauPonty, following Husserl, emphasizes the ineliminability of the felt body in all perceiving, Sartre maintains that our perceivings objectify what we perceive. Hence, for Sartre, the phenomenon of ‘double sensation’ or ‘touching-touched’ is contingent, irrelevant and indeed falsely described 36 Merleau-Ponty is deeply influenced, as we have seen, by David Katz’s studies of vision and touch, and also by studies such as Jean Lhermitte, L'Image de notre corps (Paris: Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Critique, 1939), which introduces the idea of the ‘body image’ which Merleau-Ponty refers to as ‘le schéma corporel’ (translated by Colin Smith as ‘body image’). For further discussion of this concept, see Shaun Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), who explains Merleau-Ponty’s ‘schéma corporel’ as the ‘dynamic functioning of the body in its environment’ (p. 20).

291 in psychology. For Sartre, the ability to touch oneself or see oneself is a merely contingent feature of our animality and cannot provide ‘the foundation of a study of corporeality’ [BN, p. 358; Fr. 426], whereas for Merleau-Ponty, especially in his last unfinished The Visible and the Invisible, following Husserl, it becomes the very essence of flesh and our ‘entwinement’ (l’entrelacement) in the world. References Carman, Taylor. (1999). ‘The Body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’, Philosophical Topics vol. 27 no. 2 (1999), pp. 205-226. Catalano, Joseph. (1974). A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. New York: Harper & Row. Catelano, Joseph. (1998). ‘The Body and the Book: Reading Being and Nothingness’, reprinted in Stewart, Jon (Eds.) (1998) The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Evanston, IL: Northwestern U.P., pp. 154-171 Classen, Constance. (ed.) (2005). The Book of Touch. Oxford & New York: Berg Publishers. Dillon, Martin C. (1998). ‘Sartre on the Phenomenal Body and MerleauPonty’s Critique’. In: Stewart, Jon (Eds.) (1998). The Debate between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Evanston, IL:Northwestern U.P., pp.121-143 Gallagher, Shaun. (2005.) How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heidegger, M. (1962). Sein und Zeit (1927), 17th Edition (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993), trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (1962). Being and Time. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Husserl. (1907). Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907, Eds. Ulrich Claesges (1973) The Hague: Nijhoff; Hua XVI, trans. by R. Rojcewicz (1997). Thing and Space: Lectures of 1907. Collected Works VII. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Husserl, Edmund. (1991). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und

292 phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, hrsg. Biemel, Marly. Husserliana IV. Dordrecht: Kluwer, trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (1989) as Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Husserl, Edmund. (2005). Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898-1925) (translated by John B. Brough). Dordrecht: Springer. Levin, David Michael. (1999). The Ontological Dimension of Embodiment: Heidegger’s Thinking of Being’. In: Welton, Donn (Eds.) (1999). The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 122-149. Lhermitte, Jean. (1939). L'Image de notre corps. Paris: Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Critique. Monasterio, Xavier O. (1980). ‘The Body in Being and Nothingness’, in Jean-Paul Sartre: Contemporary Approaches to His Philosophy (1980), Eds. Hugh J. Silverman and Frederick A. Elliston. Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press. Moran, Dermot. (2000). ‘Heidegger’s Critique of Husserl’s and Brentano’s Accounts of Intentionality’, Inquiry Vol. 43 No. 1 (March 2000), pp. 39-65. Moran, Dermot. (2004). ‘The Problem of Empathy: Lipps, Scheler, Husserl and Stein’. In: Amor Amicitiae: On the Love that is Friendship. Essays in Medieval Thought and Beyond in Honor of the Rev. Professor James McEvoy, (Eds. Thomas A. Kelly and Phillip W. Rosemann) (2004). Leuven/Paris/ Dudley, MA: Peeters, pp. 269-312. Morris, Katherine (Eds.) (2010). Sartre on the Body, Philosophers in Depth Series. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. Morris, Phyllis Sutton. (1975). Sartre’s Concept of a Person: An Analytic Approach. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Murphy, Ann. (2006). ‘Sexuality’. In: Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Wrathall, Mark A. (eds.) (2006). A Companion to Phenomenology and Existential-

293 ism. Oxford: Blackwell. Paterson, Mark. (2007). The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies. Oxford & New York: Berg Publishers. Prinz, Jesse. (2004). Gut reactions. A Perceptual Theory of Emotion. Oxford & New York: Oxford U.P. Ratcliffe, Matthew J. (2008). ‘Touch and Situatedness’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies vol. 16 no. 3 (2008), pp. 299-322. Sartre, J.-P. (1936/7). “La Transcendance de l’égo. Esquisse d’une déscription phénoménologique,” Recherches philosophiques, 6 (1936/7), pp. 85-123, reprinted (1966) as a separate book, La Transcendance de l’égo. Paris: Vrin; trans. Williams, Forrest and Kirkpatrick, Robert (1957). The Transcendence of the Ego. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (reprinted 1972). Sartre. (1938). La Nausée. Paris: Gallimard, trans. Baldick, Robert (1965). Nausea Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1943). L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique. Paris: Gallimard, trans. Barnes, Hazel (1995) as Being and Nothingness. An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. London: Routledge. Sartre, J.-P. (1947). “Une idée fondamentale de la phénoménologie de Husserl: l’intentionnalité,” Situations I. Paris: Gallimard,), trans. by Fell, Joseph P. (1970). “Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea in Husserl’s Philosophy,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 1 No. 2 (May 1970); reprinted in Moran, Dermot and Mooney, Tim (eds.) (2002). The Phenomenology Reader. London & New York: Routledge. Sartre, J.-P. (1972). The Psychology of Imagination. London: Methuen. Smeets, Monique A. M. and Kosslyn, Stephen M. (2001). ‘Hemispheric Differences in Body Image in Anorexia Nervosa’, The International Journal of Eating Disorders, vol. 29, no. 4 (2001), pp. 409-416. Stein, Edith. (1917). Zum Problem der Einfühlung. Halle; reprinted

294 (1980) München: Gerhard Kaffke Verlag; trans. Stein, Waltraut (1989). On the Problem of Empathy, The Collected Works of Edith Stein Sister Benedicta of the Cross Discalced Carmelite 1891-1942, Volume Three, 3rd revised edition. Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Vallega-Neu, Daniela. (2004). ‘Driven Spirit: The Body in Max Scheler’s Phenomenology’, Epoche vol. 9 no 1 (2004), reprinted in idem, (2005) The Bodily Dimension in Thinking. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp. 43-58. Van Breda, Hermann Leo. (2007). History of the Husserl-Archives. Dordrecht: Springer. Vessey, David. (1998). ‘The Body as Anstoss in Sartre’s Account of Constitution’, paper presented at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy Boston, 1998. Welton, Donn. (1999). ‘Soft, Smooth Hands: Husserl’s Phenomenology of the Lived-Body’. In: Welton, Donn (Eds.) (1999). The Body. Classic and Contemporary Readings. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Wider, Kathleen V. (1997). The Bodily Nature of Consciousness: Sartre and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind. Ithaca, NY: Cornell U.P.

XIV. On the effects of a fictitious encounter between Alfred North Whitehead and Gilbert Simondon Emeline Deroo Abstract: Alfred North Whitehead and Gilbert Simondon never knew one another. They actually belong to two different historical and philosophical landscapes. However, it remains surprising, when we investigate their thoughts, to notice how close their claims are as to the reversal of a metaphysical tradition that has too long used inadequate categories to understand some key notions, like change, process or becoming. Whitehead and Simondon each set up a philosophical system respecting at the same time rationalistic and empiricist requirements. We aim to show here that a joint reading of these two authors can help us in defining new stakes in contemporary process ontology. Key words: Metaphysical empiricism, axiomatic plane, process of individuation, relation, singularities. 1. Introduction My aim is to suggest the very first lines of a fictitious dialogue between Whitehead and a French philosopher of the second part of the twentieth century, Gilbert Simondon. This encounter is a fiction insofar as the two philosophers were not actually acquainted. However, despite the absence of any factual influence, we cannot help being surprised by a significant proximity between them. I will try here to display some of these elements of proximity as well as their relevance for the sake of a new way of reading Whitehead today. Thus, I will point out the connection between Whitehead and Simondon through two topics, namely the construction of an axiomatic plane on the one hand, and the development of a processual and relational ontology on the other hand. Before starting this exercise, I should warn the reader about the intentions of this paper. Comparison remains a difficult and perilous mode

296 of thought given that, as Isabelle Stengers writes, “comparison always entails the risk of reducing philosophical thoughts to a matter of opinions to be compared from an outside, apparently neutral standpoint, that is by an unmoved reader”1. In order to avoid this trap of levelling, we should therefore consider that “the point is to try to learn to feel affinities and divergences which are not psychological, but are related to the very exercise of thought”2. Through the first topic, my aim is less to compare the content of these two philosophies strictly than to sketch out an encounter from a methodological point of view and to display a proximity as to the way their systems are built. It is only after that preliminary exercise that we will try, in the second part of this paper, to suggest some generally interesting connections between their ontologies. 2. Simondon and the philosophy of individuation The first step to get into Simondon’s philosophy of individuation is understanding his criticism of a whole philosophical tradition. At the very beginning of his main thesis entitled Individuation in the light of the notions of form and information, Simondon informs us of his determination to get rid of the idea of a “principle of individuation”. This principle comes in two main forms (of course often criticized by him): there is a substantialist version and a hylemorphic version. According to Simondon, a postulate is hiding behind research after the principle of individuation, and this postulate consists in alleging that individuation has a principle. Actually, the substantialist and the hylemorphic doctrines have in common research after such a principle prior to individuation. That is supposed to explain the genesis of the individual. But Simondon shows that putting forward a principle prior to the process of individuation doesn’t enable us to understand this process of individuation and, on the contrary, involves many problems (like the impossibility of understanding the process from the standpoint of its effects). In fact, his claim is the following: the process of individuation has to provide us with the expla1

Stengers, Isabelle. (2009). Reading Whitehead with Deleuze. In: Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson. Rhizomatic Connections. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 28. 2 Ibid., p. 30.

297 nation of the individual and not the opposite. In this sense, starting the analysis with the already individuated reality is definitely misleading, for Simondon. Yet, we may ask: why should we consider individuation as primordial in order to grasp the reality of the individual rather than operating the other way round? Simondon would answer by making a distinction. Being can be understood in two different ways: there is the individuated being, the one which we generally consider as the unique reality of being, a stable and homogeneous being, but there is also the being prior to any individuation, namely the concrete and complete being not yet individuated, which Simondon thus calls the pre-individual. According to him, this latter form of being is the field of infinite and indeterminate potentialities, or to put it differently, the pre-individual is the primary reality of being3. The first philosophical gesture accomplished by Simondon is therefore a reversal of this deeply entrenched tradition, which takes the individual rather than the individuation as its ground. I hereby mean the tradition which favours the “result” instead of the “process”. This reversal mainly consists in asserting that the individual is only a relative reality, firstly because “it is not the whole being” and secondly because “it results from a state of being in which it didn’t exist as an individual nor as a principle of individuation”4. Thus, the individual is only the incomplete result of a process and not a substance coming out of nowhere. Within this processual framework, becoming and being are no longer opposed. But the very fact of bringing being and becoming together should maybe not be understood in a dialectical way since, according to Simondon, dialectics still overly separates becoming from being. Becoming is “a dimension of being”. Moreover, it is a “capacity for the being to cause a phase difference in itself”; in other words, becoming is “a mode of resolving an initial incompatibility that is rich in potentials”5. Accordingly, being (understood as not yet individuated) corresponds to a system containing a potential energy. From here on, a tension produced 3

By the way, Simondon compared it several times with the Greek notion of apeiron. 4 Simondon, Gilbert. (2005). L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information (henceforth ILMI), Millon, Paris, p.25. Translation is mine. 5 Idem.

298 by incompatible potentialities will be growing within this system, which will cause a phase difference, that is to say, an individuation. The process of emergence of an individual therefore consists in the resolution of a tension between potentials. Because of these incompatibilities, the preindividual is a field of possibilities that is characterized both by unity and “more than unity”. In fact, unity, identity and coherence are the various properties that apply to the individual but not to preindividual being, which is constantly extending beyond these categories. As a consequence, knowing that the equilibrium of this kind of system is quite precarious, Simondon has found an alternative to the duality of the concepts stable/unstable simply by borrowing the notion of metastability from thermodynamics (a physical system is in a metastable state when only one modification concerning its parameters is enough to break the equilibrium6). In scientific terminology, Simondon found relevant notions that could easily be adapted into a philosophical vocabulary which often contains too many static categories. Of course, what is presented here is only a general outline for, besides the development of an ontological framework, Simondon strives to describe more particularly each of the three main fields of individuation, namely the physical, the vital and, then, psychological/social individuation. Simondon wanted to emphasize a kind of underlying continuity in nature. A bit like Whitehead, he thought for instance that there are no absolute ontological differences between physical and vital individuation7 insofar as it is rather a question of rhythm. Recent debates on the topic among scientists don’t seem to prove Simondon wrong. Nevertheless, some distinctions are made between inert matter and life and the most significant one involves the relation to the milieu. In fact, physical individuation is instantaneous and is only produced once, which implies a definite separation from the milieu, whereas vital individuation is continuous, permanent. Thus, given that all the potentials are never exhaus6

See Combes, Muriel. (1999). Simondon: individu et collectivité. Pour une philosophie du transindividuel, PUF, p.11. 7 In short, differenciation between the two fields is more a necessity for our knowledge and understanding than a reality in nature. See Simondon, ILMI, p. 323.

299 ted, the living individual is not only a result but also an agent of individuation because it maintains a relation to its associated milieu, which means that it carries a load of preindividual potentialities; or to put it differently, the living being is an open system with a tension entailed by the presence of potentials, a tension that Simondon calls the “internal resonance”. Consequently, this preindividual nature associated with the living being is precisely what allows future individuations. 3. Process thought through axiomatization Now I would like to explain briefly how Whitehead and Simondon built their process philosophies on a set of axiomatic rules devoted to the clarification of a broad field of experiences. Indeed this axiomatic plane is not – far from it – expressed in exactly the same way in the two philosophical works, but it will be easier to understand what they both have in common if the axiomatization is presented in contrast to Bergson’s immanent position8. Actually Bergson is a key figure here insofar his philosophy contains exactly what Whitehead and Simondon wanted to overcome. We will thus be given a glimpse of the link between Whitehead and Simondon through what they were opposed to. Despite the deep Bergsonian influence on both Whitehead and Simondon, we do notice a sharp opposition concerning the status of thought and philosophical explanation. In Bergson, thought, in the form of intuition, can allegedly catch the real in its flowing essence. Broadly speaking, Bergson thought that a purely analytic mind would fail to grasp this real in its creative advance because as soon as you distance yourself from the real in order to understand it, you just fix it and thus only get pieces of it; we could go on indefinitely adding up the various static approaches to the same subject. Intuition is the only way to reach a reality in its duration, whereas analysis will always remain an incomplete and relative knowledge because of the fixed views it maintains on the real. Though Bergson greatly influenced both Whitehead and Simondon9, in both of them, we nonetheless observe an axiomatic relation be8

On this topic, see Didier Debaise, The Emergence of a Speculative Empiricism: Whitehead Reading Bergson in Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson: Rhizomatic Connections, Op. cit., pp 77-88. 9 They both indicate several times throughout their works how indebted they are to

300 tween thought and the real, while in Bergson, on the contrary, there is only one plane, the plane of the universe, and the role of intuition is to penetrate the heart of this plane, which is life itself in its true duration. In other words, according to Bergson, the only way to think the event is to settle into it, but that is exactly what Whitehead and Simondon avoid by setting up a conceptual scheme: they assume a distance from the real in order to think it. They thereby show how a certain proximity to a particular object, e.g. an event, may not necessarily be the best way to get to know it. But what exactly is this axiomatization? What shape does it take? Let us first say a few words about some affinities and divergences between Whitehead and Simondon. In both cases, the purpose is to suggest a way of circumscribing the real in a speculative way, e.g. building a unitary, non-anthropocentric mode of explanation, which entails applicability to a multiplicity of modes of existence. It should also be noticed that this speculative pattern is not at all static since it only takes on meaning in its confrontation with an experience it is supposed to illustrate. In this way, of course, processes involve and affect thought as much as the real taken as an object by that thought10. As a consequence, the existence of a paradigm here is only justified by its pragmatic counterpart insofar as this philosophical pattern is never situated outside of processes. That means, I feel, that Whitehead and Simondon hereby show their ability to avoid the sort of criticism addressed at Bergson: they show how experience should always stand by the philosopher, indicating the point where a system needs to be improved. The difficulty of this kind of enterprise – namely a coherent articulation ongoing between metaphysics and experience – is indeed finding the right balance between a comprehensive view and a non-reductionist tendency: this is why Whitehead and Simondon are both conscious that metaphysics is an adventure that we continually have to begin again. Bergson, but accounting for that legacy would take too long and probably not be that relevant here. 10 In Simondonian terms: « L’individuation du réel extérieur au sujet est saisie par le sujet grâce à l’individuation analogique de la connaissance dans le sujet ; mais c’est par l’individuation de la connaissance et non par la connaissance seule que l’individuation des êtres non sujets est saisie », ILMI p. 36.

301 Yet, even if their claims bear a strong resemblance, they are founded on two different premises. We might say that the first difference which ought to be noted lies in their scientific affinities11. While Whitehead is more inspired by the biological pattern, since he wants to set up a philosophy of “organism”, Simondon uses a physical paradigm and claims that a complexity of organization is not a privilege of biological phenomena12. This Simondonian position can only be understood through his ambition to return to a philosophy of Nature, and to that end he definitively had to put aside the notion of individual and treat it as derivative and secondary. Indeed Whitehead also criticizes what is judged as being too substantialist in the classical notion of individual but he nevertheless provides us with a renewed notion of individual (a new “res vera”), which is his nodal concept of actual entity. In accordance with Whitehead’s ontological principle, everything in the universe must be explained in terms of one or several actual entities, therefore given that every actual entity is the subject of a concrescence, which means that ultimately every experience is the experience of a subject, we call this conception “pansubjectivism”. Consequently, there is a contrast between the Whiteheadian cosmology, woven around the notion of actual entity and Simondon’s valorisation of Nature as a preindividual and a-subjective field from which objectivity and subjectivity derive. This contrast as to the subject’s status also entails some consequences involving causality. In the preindividual field, there is no subject, even one understood as mere intentionality. That means, in Alberto Toscano’s words, that “it is not possible to postulate the auto of an informational or causal autonomy in the form of a whole that would effectively regulate the interaction of

11

It seems worthwhile noticing that Whitehead and Simondon are probably not the only philosophers who have felt concerned about current natural sciences during the twentieth century but it seems more likely that they are among the only ones who built a metaphysical system able to give a meaningful systematic appropriation of some scientific issues (maybe a bit like Kant tried to do regarding Newton’s Principia in the eighteenth century, of course regardless of the result). 12 Yet his position doesn’t imply reductionist consequences as I will try to show. For example, He also uses the embryo as a paradigm and he shows that if we want to account for vital phenomena, we should proceed by a double movement of transposition and complexification, a movement called transduction.

302 its discrete parts”13. Alberto Toscano claims that this is precisely the Simondonian concept of disparation which “allows us to think the individual outside of any principial or teleological anticipation of its becoming”14. Since Whitehead makes a distinction between the micro-level where final causes determine the interiority of the entity, and the macrolevel where efficient causes regulate the flux of events, he appears to inherit a double causality (efficient and final causes) as it is stated in the Kantian definition of the organism, while in Simondon, on the contrary, there is no teleology at all, notably because individuation is not thought of as the operation of a subjectivity, even a primitive or neutral one. However, this opposition needs to be adjusted. At this stage of the analysis and to anticipate what will be explained further, it is worth noting that there are strong reasons for believing that the analogue of the Whiteheadian actual entity is not the individual in Simondon, but rather the germ, the singularity which brings about individuation and then the individual. In other words, the actual entity in Whitehead and the individual in Simondon should not be regarded on the same level. Consequently, we should qualify this confrontation between Whitehead and Simondon, which has been stated by A. Toscano in his book The Theatre of Production, and add this interesting analogy to the first opposition. Even if Simondonian singularity is not directed by a subjective aim as is the case with Whiteheadian singularity, they nevertheless possess a common function: the power of structuration and direction. Like the actual entity, the Simondonian concept of singularity displays a capacity for partly determining15 what is beyond itself and this despite its insignificance (for example in terms of energy) with regard to the macroscopic level. Here is a brief explanation of the two axiomatic patterns.

13

Toscano, Alberto. (2006). The Theatre of Production. Philosophy and Individuation between Kant and Deleuze. New-York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 151. 14 Idem. 15 Of course the word « partly » needs to be further specified here. A detailed analysis of the theory of singularities should enlighten us about the exact role of singularrities in the structuration of spatio-temporal events.

303 3.1. Simondon and crystallization Simondon studied the process of individuation by means of the paradigm of crystallization. Using a physical paradigm in order to analyse other modes of individuation – like vital or psychological individuation – might be seen as an unjustifiable physicalist approach. However, Simondon actually avoided this trap since his paradigm progresses by complexification, which means that physical individuation is a condition for vital individuation but never a cause; therefore the analogical process always works by being a transposition of the initial paradigm and at the same time a composition: thus a simple reduction to a physical phenomenon is forbidden. The analogical working is a method grounded by Simondon on an ontological postulate called transduction. In fact the structuration of a system always starts from a germ, just as it occurs for example in a crystal. This germ is also-called a singularity by Simondon, something which breaks the equilibrium and entails an individuation, a new structuration. Thus the notion of transduction means the propagation of a structuration within a metastable system. Accordingly, the operation of transduction is better thought of through the image of a crystal which continually grows by extending its structure. In a debate following his lecture at the French Society of Philosophy in 1960, Simondon explained that “there is to some extent identity between the method I use, which is the analogical method, and the ontology I suppose, which is an ontology of the transductive operation in the act of taking shape”16. 3.2. Whitehead and the categorial scheme Let us now turn to Whitehead, before explaining what is at stake in a reflection taking its source in both thought systems. The categorial scheme appears to be an “opened synthesis” of categorial principles devoted to the explanation of experience (in a broad sense). By “opened synthesis”, I mean two things: firstly, a “synoptic vision” which provides the elements of a rational generalization and secondly, this vision must be seen as an “asymptotic approach”17 since Whitehead was far 16

G. Simondon, Forme, information, potentiels in Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie, p. 35. Translation is mine. 17 Whitehead, A.N. (1978). Process and Reality (henceforth PR), corrected edition edited by D.R. Griffin et D.W. Sherburne. New York: The Free Press, p. 4-5. On

304 from having the ambition of ending the story (this is the opened side of synthesis): we note that he is deeply conscious that too wide a generalization is not relevant at all because it turns out to be unable to account for complexity. In both philosophical systems, the way of functioning (not yet considering respective details) is similar in many respects: we are dealing with a unitary speculative mode of explanation applied to a multiplicity of levels of experience. To carry this philosophical program through, a preliminary condition worth noting is to avoid focusing only on a conscious human being’s experience (the system has to be open to various modes of existence) and to highlight the importance of scientific data. If we need not recall that the traditional opposition between science and philosophy remains a disaster that has long enfeebled philosophy18, it still remains remarkable that Whitehead and Simondon, to a certain extent, appear as the two ambitious philosophers of the twentieth century who tried to build a complex philosophical system purely in a mathematician’s way, meaning not in the sense of a mathematical content, but rather through a mathematical gesture which consists in posing a set of technical propositions without trying to demonstrate them, and then in testing their relevance in experience. 4. Processual and relational ontologies Before dealing with the ontology that furnishes the scheme, we want to underline the proximity between the two authors as to their endeavour to build a system combining speculative and empiricist criteria. Now that we have outlined Whitehead and Simondon’s constructivist claims, our aim is to explore the ontology at work within their schemes. On the one hand, this will therefore allow us to carry on the dialogue between the two philosophers and, on the other hand, interrogate the interplay between the structure and its conceptual content – knowing that this structure is not static. Now we can focus our attention on the three fundamental principles this topic, see Dumoncel, Jean-Claude. (1998). Les sept mots de Whitehead ou l’aventure de l’être, E.P.E.L., Paris, chap.,1 section 2. 18 See Prigogine, Ilya, Stengers, Isabelle. (1986) [1979]. La nouvelle alliance, Gallimard, Paris, chap. III.

305 stemming from Whitehead’s categorial scheme in order to bring to the fore some parallels as well as contrasts between Whitehead and Simondon. First of all, there is an obvious kinship between Whitehead’s principle of process (the ninth category of explanation in the categorial scheme) and Simondon’s assertions about the identity between being and becoming. Considering becoming as the essential dimension of being indeed constitutes the very ground of process philosophy. Yet we should underline the fact that considering the real in its flowing essence is not the only point of proximity, otherwise it would be of minor interest. In both cases, there is in addition a systematic construction behind the commonplace according to which ‘all things flow’. Whitehead clearly pointed out this almost trivial position in describing his aim: “That ‘all things flow’ is the first vague generalization which the unsystematized, barely analysed, intuition of men has produced”. Whitehead added further that “the elucidation of meaning involved in the phrase ‘all things flow’ is one chief task of metaphysics”19. Simondon’s project can be understood as an echo of this progression towards a coherent system since it concerns a philosophical ontogenesis, which means for him a general ontology of becoming or a study of being in its multiple phases. As a consequence, in Whitehead and Simondon, we find a web of ontological dynamic categories describing the general structure of processes around which they weave a particular study of the many levels of experience. As far as the principle of relativity is concerned (that is the fourth category of explanation), we can again notice similarities with Simondon through a set of three strongly welded notions, namely relativity, relation and potentiality. Moreover, the relational dimension of their ontology is what allows Toscano to link the two philosophies by calling them “interactive ontologies of individuation”20. According to Whitehead, this principle of relativity alludes to a general fact in the universe which is the “appropriation of the dead by the living”, or put differently, the fact for a subject of becoming a potential with regard to future individuations: “All relatedness has its foundations in the relatedness of actual entities; and 19 20

PR, p. 208. Toscano, A. Op. cit, p. 63.

306 such relatedness is wholly concerned with the appropriation of the dead by the living – that is to say, with ‘objective immortality’ whereby what is divested of its own living immediacy becomes a real component in other living immediacies of becoming”21. Simondon puts forward a similar explanation according to which the individual is relative since it is in relation, and this fact of relatedness is precisely what brings about new individuations. In Whiteheadian terms, we could say that the individual is not only a subject but also an object available for further individuations. Thus, each level of individuation can be a preindividual state for the next level. In both cases, it seems that the relativity of an individuated being can be explained via two elements. First, by its relatedness: we mean here that an individual is not conceivable without its relations22 given that relations precede every reality as individuated. The second point which accounts for relativity is the presence of potentialities which are germs of new processes. Potentialities are never totally exhausted because every individuation puts aside a large number of configurations which remain available for the future. Now the ontological principle (namely the eighteenth category of explanation) allows us to shed light on a relevant contrast between Whitehead and Simondon. This principle defines actual entity as the cornerstone of Whitehead’s philosophy. As he said himself: “Actual entities are the only reasons; so that to search for a reason is to search for one or more actual entities”23. Everything which is real must be explained in terms of actual entities. On his side, Simondon never deeply studied what is prior to metastable systems; he never examined the very nature of singularities which are precisely the conditions of structuration for systems. When we jointly read Whitehead and Simondon, we are naturally tempted to draw a parallel between Whiteheadian actual entity and Si21

PR, p. xiii-xiv. « Les véritables propriétés de l’individu sont au niveau de sa genèse, et, pour cette raison même, au niveau de sa relation avec les autres êtres, car, si l’individu est l’être toujours capable de continuer sa genèse, c’est dans sa relation aux autres êtres que réside ce dynamisme génétique » ILMI, p. 90. 23 PR, p. 24. 22

307 mondon’s individual, for at least two reasons. Firstly, these two notions are defined by their processual nature and the two philosophies are mostly concerned with a description of their mode of be-coming through what they call individuation or concrescence. For example, for both of them, what seems essential is the endeavour to reach a compatibility, which is on one side a kind of provisional stabilization of the individual and which is also, on the Whiteheadian side, the realization of the subjective aim promoted by a relevant contrast, namely a contrast excluding incompatible feelings. Secondly, the actual entity in Whitehead and the individual in Simondon share quite the same function in the process since they have the twofold status of being product and agent of individuation. However, it would be bewildering if not misleading to carry this shaky comparison on to the extent that it conveys a confusion of levels24. Actual entity belongs to the field of ultimate and non-perceptible components of any real fact whereas with Simondon’s concept of individual, we are already situated at this ordered level of reality – the spatio-temporal level. Consequently, while societies are in Whitehead’s framework what needs to be explained by singularities, for Simondon on the contrary, societies or systems are elements of explanation and singularities are merely described by their functional role but are never the very subject of inquiry. In fact, we should rather say that they both develop a theory of singularities but they use two different ways to define this notion. Whitehead defines the concept in its nature and describes the singularity with regard to its particular characteristics whereas Simondon defines the singularity with regard to its function beyond itself. Accordingly, we can assert that from the confrontation of these two philosophies, we obtain a means of building a philosophy of spatio-temporal events like societies (together with their capacities), but it has to be grounded on the analysis of singularities which provide us with the conditions of emergence of every organized system. Our project thus consists in opening up a new prospect of thinking rather than in merely suggesting a risky comparison.

24

This trap has been spotted by Didier Debaise. I’m borrowing his idea here.

308 In Whitehead, societies remain an opened ontological issue25 because on the one hand, the ultimate processual element is not the society but the actual entity and, on the other hand, Whitehead asserts that a society is not reducible to a mere aggregate of entities, or even to ordered series of entities: “A society is more than a set of entities to which the same class-name applies: that is to say, it involves more than a merely mathematical conception of order”26. In Simondon, the same idea is expressed: an individual is not reducible to the singularity which has caused a new individuation; in other words, a system is not reducible to the germ which has led to the appearance of its structure. The singularities, as germs, indeed trigger off the process but they do not contain the whole line of the upcoming event. The point is that you cannot just leap from the singularity to the society or the individual. It means that, with regard to a society or an individual (like spatio-temporal events), singularity plays the role of potential. In other words, the potentiality is situated at the level of singularities. The very problem is therefore to understand from the middle what happens between the singularity (as a potential) and the society, that is to say how determined characters appear and, eventually, how order arises. 5. Conclusion: ontology after Whitehead Throughout this short paper, we have wanted to show how it might be relevant to read Whitehead in the light of a philosopher like Simondon. Though the context in which Simondon worked was markedly different from Whitehead’s, we have seen that they both paved the way for a new systematic processual ontology. Surprisingly, and despite some irreducibility, they develop two quite complementary lines of thought so that they turn out to be insightful companions if we focus on the relation between singularities and the structure to which they contribute. Indeed, the point here is to understand the appearance of novelty and order and also – maybe mostly – the alternation between them. What does that mean? It means that even if the novelty brought on by each singularity is a central topic for Whitehead as well as for Simondon, this notion of novelty doesn’t however take place in a philosophy of 25 26

See Debaise, Didier. (2006). Un empirisme spéculatif, Vrin, Paris. PR, p. 89.

309 creation since every element of novelty is submitted to an impassable datum, to what is already given (the actual world for Whitehead or preindividual being for Simondon). In this sense, we may underline that the question of order is eminently important and unavoidable in process philosophy; otherwise we would (still) be dealing with a mere apology of pure and continuous creation for itself. References Combes, Muriel. (1999). Simondon: individu et collectivité. Pour une philosophie du transindividuel, PUF. Debaise, Didier. (2006). Un empirisme spéculatif. Paris: Vrin. Dumoncel, J-C. (1998). Les sept mots de Whitehead ou l’aventure de l’être. Paris: E.P.E.L. Prigogine, Ilya, Stengers, Isabelle. (1986) [1979]. La nouvelle alliance. Paris: Gallimard. Robinson, Keith. (Eds.) (2009). Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson. Rhizomatic Connections. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Simondon, Gilbert. (1960). Forme, information, potentiels in Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie, n° 1960-54-5. Simondon ,Gilbert. (2005). L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information. Paris: Millon. Toscano, Alberto. (2006). The Theatre of Production. Philosophy and Individuation between Kant and Deleuze. New-York: Palgrave Macmillan. Whitehead, Alfred North. (1978). Process and Reality, corrected edition edited by D.R. Griffin and D.W. Sherburne. New York: The Free Press.

Analytic Table of Contents Table of Contents Contributors Acknowledgements Preface Vesselin Petrov I. Analysis—synthesis Roberto Poli 1. Introduction. The Need for a New Vision 2. Analysis and Synthesis 3. Wholes and Their Parts 4. The Three Main Kinds of Whole 4.1. Simple wholes 4.2. Partial wholes 4.3. Integral wholes 5. Levels of Reality 6. Whole-Whole Ties 7. Wholes, again 8. Conclusion References

1

19 19 22 27 28 29 30 31 33 36 39 40 40

II. How can we verify metaphysical hypotheses? On necessary connection between metaphysics, ontology and science Bogdan Ogrodnik 43 III. Logical analysis and its ontological consequences: Rise, fall and resurgence of intensional objects in contemporary philosophy Bruno Leclercq 53 1. Brentano’s theory of judgement 53 2. Ontological consequences in the Brentanian School 60

312 3. Frege’s theory of judgement 4. Ontological consequences in the Fregean School 5. Intensional objects strike back References

67 71 78 92

IV. Causality: ontological principle or explanatory scheme? Anguel S. Stefanov 1. Introduction 2. Different types of causality 3. Difficulties confronting CTC 3.1. Hume’s Criticism 3.2. Uncaused Phenomena 3.3. Irreducibility of final to efficient causation 3.4. Backward Causation 3.5. Infringement of CTC in the Quantum Domain 4. Possible Responses 4.1. To Hume’s Criticism 4.2. To Uncaused Phenomena 4.3. To Irreducibility of Final to Efficient Causation 4.4. To Backward Causation 4.5. To Infringement of CTC in the Quantum Domain 4.6. Recapitulation 5. Ontological grounds of CTC 6. Conclusion References

97 97 98 99 100 101 102 102 103 103 103 105 106 107 107 109 109 112 113

V. The metaphysics of secondary qualities: Defending responseintentionalism Nenad Miščević 1. Introduction 2. Against the primary quality view 3. Response intentionalism 4. Conclusion References

115 115 117 121 133 134

313 VI. Process Ontology in the Context of Applied Philosophy Vesselin Petrov 137 1. Introductory notes 138 2. Process ontology as applied ontology 140 2.1. The present state of applied process ontology 140 2.2. Some examples of process ontology as technology 143 2.3. Generalizations 149 2.4. Process ontology as philosophy and its methodological role 151 3. Conclusion 153 References 154 VII. Sparse and dense categories: what they tell us about natural kinds Lilia Gurova 157 1. Some terminological preliminaries 158 2. Dense and sparse categories 161 3. Implications 164 References 166 VIII. Ontology of Ability: A Defense of Counterfactual Analysis of Ability Marina Bakalova 169 1. Analysis of dispositional properties 170 2. The Conditional Fallacy 171 3. The Primeness Argument against the Analysis of Abilities 174 4. Defense of a Metaphysical Analysis of Ability: The Primeness of Apt Performance 177 References 181 IX. Naturalizing Mathematics and Naturalizing Ethics Fabrice Pataut

183

X. On the intricate interplay of logic and ontology Rosen Lutskanov

211

XI. The Politics of Radical Experience M. Weber

229

314

XII. Towards a Reistic Social–Historical Philosophy Nikolay Milkov 1. Reistic formal ontology 2. Social objects 3. An object-oriented approach in social philosophy 4. Example: Stock-market ontology 5. The surface of social life 6. Genealogical studies 7. Explanations in history 8. The inward part of social life 9. Epilogue References

245 245 247 248 250 250 252 254 255 259 259

XIII. Revisiting Sartre’s Ontology of Embodiment in Being and Nothingness Dermot Moran 263 1. Introduction 263 2. Sartre’s Phenomenology of Embodiment 264 3. A Three-Fold Ontology of the Body 267 4. The Body is the For-Itself 269 5. The First Ontological Dimension 271 6. The Second Ontological Dimension 273 7. The Third Ontological Dimension 273 8. The Transcendence of my Consciousness towards the World 275 9. Being in a Situation 276 10. Lived Body: Omnipresent but Inapprehensible 283 11. Vision, Touch and the ‘Double Sensation’ 284 12. Sartre and the ‘Double Sensation’ 288 13. Conclusion 290 References 291 XIV. On the effects of a fictitious encounter between Alfred North Whitehead and Gilbert Simondon Emeline Deroo 295

315 1. Introduction 2. Simondon and the philosophy of individuation 3. Process thought through axiomatization 3.1. Simondon and crystallization 3.2. Whitehead and the categorial scheme 4. Processual and relational ontologies 5. Conclusion: ontology after Whitehead References Analytic Table of Contents

295 296 299 303 303 304 308 309 311