ABSTRACT: One of the most imposing problems facing the modern theist philosopher is the ‘problem of Hell,’ or the problem of how to make the Bible’s depiction of Hell as a place of eternal punishment logically consistent with the generally held theist idea that God is perfectly loving. This issue has been dealt with by a number of philosophers; some have attempted to re-imagine Hell into something less severe than eternal punishment, and some have attempted to give justifications for the traditional version of Hell. An overview of these various views and attempts will conclude that universalism—the idea that all souls must eventually be saved—is the view most compatible with a loving God. However, this paper will go on to argue that universalism’s inconsistency with the Biblical portrayal of Hell still creates a problem for the theist philosopher; as the Bible is the primary authority for the idea of Hell, any inconsistency between the Bible and our logical conclusions must make us doubt the Bible’s authority on the matter of Hell. And, as doubting the Bible in one aspect frees us to question its veracity in others, it will be argued that the problem of Hell ultimately allows us to wholly reject the Bible’s authority.

Even for those who whole-heartedly accept the idea of a loving and perfect Christian God, the thought of that God sending sinners and unbelievers to burn forever in Hell can be highly unnerving. Many believers find that the concept of Hell puts them in a bit of a bind; on the one hand, Hell is clearly a well-established idea within Christianity, and on the other, it seems almost unthinkable that a truly loving God could ever allow his creations to suffer infinitely for sins committed in a finite life. Some philosophers, such as Lewis, have used this apparent contradiction as grounds to reject Christianity and support atheism. Theist philosophers have responded by putting forward several possible solutions to the problem. For example, some attack the idea of ‘eternal’ punishment, and argue that all souls will eventually be saved (or annihilated) so that Hell will one day stand empty. Others allow for eternal punishment, but suggest that Hell is not literally a fiery lake of torture. Still others accept the fiery lake but argue that some people freely choose Hell, or that infinite punishment is somehow justified. Out of these various solutions, the idea that all souls will eventually be saved seems to follow most logically from the concept of a perfectly loving deity. Many philosophers who agree with this position, universalism, drop the issue here. However, it is highly arbitrary to pluck the idea of Hell from the Christian Bible and then fail to accept all the characteristics that the Bible attributes to Hell; the Bible is, as it turns out, alarmingly consistent in its portrayal of Hell as a place of eternal, consciously endured pain. This being the case, I must conclude that there is a contradiction between the Biblical idea of Hell and the Christian idea that God is perfectly loving; as both cannot be true, I believe it is the Biblical idea of Hell that must be rejected, and that such a rejection strongly supports a total rejection of Biblical authority.

For the purpose of later comparison, we can begin with a brief overview of the Biblical concepts of ‘Hell’ and ‘God’, the Bible being used here exclusively because it is the source that has most informed our modern understanding of both God and Hell. The Biblical facts about Hell, as Christians themselves are often quick to point out, are that everyone “will exist eternally either in heaven or hell,” (that is, heaven and hell are the only two options), that Hell is “conscious torment,” and that Hell is “eternal and irreversible” (Litke). As Lewis reminds us, such a view of Hell is actually somewhat necessary in Christianity because the whole point is that “Jesus was born to save us from something. The condition from which we have been redeemed must be truly horrible. What can be horrible enough except for eternal punishment?” (Lewis, p. 476).

Standing in contrast to this terrible, eternal Hell is the Biblical concept of God. Christians believe in a God that is omnipresent (for example, see Psalm 139:7-12), omnipotent (Genesis 18:14), unchanging (Psalm 102:25-27), omniscient (Psalm 139:2-6), and eternal (Jeremiah 10:10). God is thus incredibly powerful, but God is also merciful (see Daniel 9:9) and perfectly just (Deuteronomy 32:4); by ‘just,’ it seems to be meant that God will neither allow righteous and/or innocent people to suffer nor evildoers to have any sort of impunity. (This does seem to leave open the possibility for mercy, for it can be assumed that someone who asks God’s forgiveness is experiencing spiritual pain which may count as sufficient punishment for sins.) Perhaps the most significant Christian concept of God, though, is the idea that God is perfectly loving because God is love itself. This is made plain in 1 John 4:8, which says that anyone “who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” With this idea of God at its core, Christianity apparently sets itself up as a love-centered religion, and most believers firmly hold that their god is a god of perfect justice and perfect love.

The philosopher’s concept of God is very similar to the believer’s (or at least to the believer’s as just given), and the theist philosopher in particular usually assumes with the believer that God is morally perfect, perfectly just, and perfectly loving. We can thus turn to the various ways in which theist philosophers have tried to reconcile this idea of a perfect God with the idea of Hell. In all of the following attempts, Hell is assumed to be a reality in at least some form or other; this is maintained partly because Hell comes up so frequently as a concept in scripture, but also because several philosophers believe that God’s ‘perfect justice’ does indeed demand some sort of painful punishment for evildoers that goes beyond making them feel sorrow for what they have done. The two ‘facts’ of a perfect God and an existent Hell being assumed, the nature of Hell is then decided in each argument by what the philosopher deems logically compatible with God’s perfection. It should be noted that some philosophers’ definitions of Hell will be seen to differ drastically from the Bible’s, but this can usually be attributed to the treatment of belief in a perfect God as more basic than the belief in a strictly doctrinal Hell; as we will find, most theist philosophers who find the idea of a perfect God and the Biblical Hell incompatible choose to alter their idea of Hell rather than give up their idea of a perfect God. Again, then, the philosopher’s goal in each case is simply to find the most reasonable resolution of the main issue: under what circumstances could God allow Hell?

Addressing first the most radical alteration of ideas about Hell, we start with the theory of universalism, supported by philosophers such as Thomas Talbott and Kerry Walters. Universalism holds that a loving God must eventually save everyone, and that while there is something we could call ‘Hell,’ it is by no means a place of eternal torment. Rather, ‘Hell’ in the universalist definition is essentially purgatory, endured only for so long as people choose to be there. In other words, people may be punished in ‘Hell,’ but it is punishment inflicted with the aim of reforming sinners, and this reformation eventually comes about for everyone. As Talbott says, anything less would imply that either the sinner somehow deserved eternal punishment (which universalists reject as even possible for humans who live finite lives), or that sinners are allowed to keep sinning and thus to keep choosing separation from God in Hell (which also strikes the universalist as rather absurd). The theories that punishment is deserved and that sin does continue in Hell will be addressed shortly, but the universalist’s main objection to a traditional Hell seems to be that it would constitute a logically impossible victory of the human sinner over almighty God; in Talbott’s words, “Why should creating beings with free will (of the standard libertarian kind) include even the possibility of God’s justice (or his love) suffering an eternal defeat?” (Talbott, “Freedom,” p. 432). Or, to put it another way, a God who creates human beings and who, being omniscient, supposedly knows each individual completely should be able to ‘outsmart’ even the most freely resistant souls and bring them into a position to be saved. God should, according to the universalist, be seen as a “grand master in chess who permits a novice to move freely…and still manages to checkmate the novice in the end” (Talbott, “Freedom,” pp. 432-33).

The primary objections to universalism are that it limits free will and/or undermines justice, but both of these objections fail to really harm the argument. As for free will, the idea is supposed to be that if we know that we will all eventually succumb to God, it is no longer really a choice—but this doesn’t make a great deal of sense. Firstly, Walters correctly points out that even though “it is logically possible for an individual to refuse grace, it is not necessary that she do so” (Walters, p. 178). True free will must therefore include the possibility that all individuals will freely choose salvation, and, to bring us to the second point, why should they not? If the choice we face has only two options, that of either God (love and salvation) or Hell (the torment of separation from that love and salvation), “it seems perfectly reasonable to suppose that it is not the external coercion of God which ultimately wears away our original (and freely chosen) attitudinal obstinancy. It is rather the pain and misery…which we’ve brought on ourselves that erodes our resistance” (Walters, p. 181). Or, in the words of Talbott, “how could anyone, rational enough to qualify as a free moral agent, choose an eternity of horror over an eternity of bliss…?” (Talbott, “Freedom,” p. 429).

The other objection to universalism—that God’s perfect justice will be unsatisfied if the ‘bad’ people are initially punished but are ultimately taken to Heaven and treated just like the ‘good’—holds no more weight than the free will argument. There is, for example, an obvious difficulty in saying that a finite human being could have done something so terrible that it justly deserves infinite punishment (again, the defense of this idea will be given further on). Another problem with this objection is that it can be reasonably met by the universalist’s contention that there will be “a proportionality between the degree of obstinate wickedness and the degree of purgative suffering necessary to enable the sinner to freely choose an attitudinal change”—that is to say, the natural rewards of evil will punish the evildoers until such time as they are persuaded to repent (Walters, p. 183). A further way to meet the objection lies in Talbot’s assertion that God’s justice is not at all opposed to His mercy, for God’s “mercy demands everything his justice demands, and his justice permits everything his mercy permits…‘mercy’ and ‘justice’ are but two different names for God’s one and only moral attribute, namely his love” (Talbott, “Punishment,” p. 153). This seems like a plausible idea, and it is made especially attractive by the unity it attributes to God’s character; rather than being driven sometimes by the need to bring souls to happiness in Heaven and sometimes by the need to punish evildoers so as to afford justice to the victims of evil, God is driven only by love for all souls. As it stands, then, it would seem that despite contradicting the Biblical version of Hell, universalism presents a reasonable picture about what could be expected of a loving God.

Other ideas about re-imagining Hell into something less dire don’t strike me as equally plausible. For instance, an alternative theory dealing with the problem of ‘eternal’ punishment is annihilationism, the view that God will simply erase intractable wrongdoers from existence. This theory looks at Hell as “a metaphorical description of non-being”; it is meant to assure us that God doesn’t punish sinners any longer than justice demands, and perhaps doesn’t punish them at all before annihilating them (Kvanvig, p. 60). However, this still seems nonsensical. In the case that sinners are punished first, we have what is arguably the moral repugnance of punishment that is non-reformative; there may be some who are in favor of this, but it seems to me utterly unnecessary, cruel, and inconsistent with God’s supposedly loving nature. (This is by no means a conclusive objection, but I cannot presently take on a fuller exploration of ideas about justice.) In the case that sinners are not punished but are simply annihilated, we are left with the question of why God would have created such people in the first place; if we answer, say, that they were instrumental in bringing others to God, this still fails to seem satisfactory. Could God’s resourcefulness not have found other ways to bring certain people to belief? Does he not care for the souls used as conversion tools? In any case, can we really just discard entirely the idea that Hell is put to use, seeing as it is such a persistently present concept in Christianity? There may be some way to smooth over all these difficulties, but I do not know it, and on the whole universalism still seems more compatible with the Christian idea of God as a being of perfect love.

The third and final alternative to universalism is the idea that Hell is painful separation from God, but is not really ‘torture’ (or is at the very least bearable), and is thus a rational choice that someone could make. As Yandell argues, it may be possible that a Hell that is “a punishment, known to be a punishment, involves no fellowship with God, is bleak on any sensible standards…might still be the longish end of a life that one could rationally prefer to not existing at all” (Yandell, p. 90). There might simply be some people who are so determined not to come to God that they prefer to spend eternity apart, not facing the horror of oblivion but neither accepting the supposed horror of subordination to a will other than their own. The immediate problem here is an issue that Talbott raised earlier; how could an agent rational enough to be called ‘free’ ever prefer their own misery to the joy of being with a perfectly loving deity? In the short term it is perhaps understandable, and even over years, but across infinity? A loving God would not keep someone in Hell if they freely turned to Him (and would not punish them unless such a turn was still possible), so any change of heart must bring them to God. Wouldn’t this change be bound to happen eventually, as in universalism?

Of the ‘softer’ versions of Hell, universalism thus remains the most likely—but what of the justifications for traditional models of Hell? What of, for instance, the idea that eternal torment in Hell is justified by libertarian free will? In the words of Van Holten, “I am not sure whether God’s love entails that he may not create persons with libertarian free will, all the while knowing they will not be saved. If his infallible foreknowledge is compatible with the creature’s freely choosing damnation, then presumably, God is not to blame for it,” just as God is not to blame for any evil actions a person may have chosen to take during their lifetime (Van Holten, p. 51). As I see it, part of the problem with this criticism (aside from questions about the intelligibility of libertarian free will) is the idea that anyone forced to a decision between God and Hell could ‘freely choose damnation’; if we continue to assume that God is perfectly loving and that Hell is a place of torment, such a choice is in no way rational, and it seems highly doubtful that it could ever be made in full consciousness by a rational agent. And if it is not a rational choice, then is a person’s mere uncertainty about God during their finite lifetime really to be punished with infinite pain? Furthermore, it seems incorrect to compare evil action, allowed on Earth so as to bring about other goods, with the choice not to believe in God, which simply leads to an eternity in Hell. Perpetual, punishment, if it really does go on for infinity, can’t bring about any positive results; it’s whipping a dead horse, so to speak, to know that the person in Hell will never get better but to continue to torture them anyway. It quickly begins to seem cruel and unfair to punish the sins and bad choices of a finite life with the infinite suffering of non-reformative punishment, and again, such cruelty would seem incompatible with a loving God.

What if, though, we move to the second argument contradicting universalism, and expand the libertarian free will argument to say that the sin continues once in Hell; that is, we could say that a sinner retains their free will, continues to choose Hell over God, and thus solve the difficulty of eternal punishment for finite sins. As Seymour puts it, “Any individual human sin, it is true, is finite in seriousness; but an everlasting series of sins is infinite in seriousness and so deserves infinite punishment. By preserving freedom in the afterlife we can suppose it possible that the damned commit such a series of sins” (Seymour, p. 83). However, we again run into problems; for example, we are once more confronted with the absurdity that any could, in full freedom, choose Hell. The universalist Talbott objects that “only someone mired in illusion or deception of some kind would be free, given the standard libertarian analysis, to choose evil…the way in which clarity of vision and knowing the truth compels obedience is very different from the way in which the medieval practice of pressing might compel a plea of guilty or not guilty” (Talbott, “Freedom,” p. 428). I agree that it seems unbelievable that anyone should, for eternity, keep choosing to suffer Hell if they knew the true nature of Hell and God, and likewise incredible that a loving God would leave someone in the dark for eternity so that they could never make the rational choice of happiness with God.

Nevertheless, there persists the idea that some sinners must be in Hell for eternity, and one argument claims that this is because there simply is no possible world in which we are all saved. Craig argues that “it is possible that some persons out of self-will or perversity would freely reject God no matter what the circumstances He placed them in,” and that the complexity inherent in a world actually makes it unsurprising “that there should be no feasible worlds available to God in which all persons are freely saved (unless, perhaps, those worlds are radically deficient in other respects, say, by having only a handful of people in them)” (Craig, p. 308, p. 300). In other words, Craig argues that the world is such a complicated mechanism that the billions of little pieces (that is, souls) can never work together in complete harmony; there will always be some pieces that fall off or become damaged, and likewise there will always be some souls who face damnation. Craig further argues that since the blessed in Heaven will suffer if they know of the suffering in Hell, God will simply shield the blessed from this knowledge; the “tragic fact that every world feasible for God is one involving persons who are lost would not force Him to refrain from creation or to annul creaturely freedom lest the blessedness of the saved be undermined, for it is possible that the reality of lost persons is a fact the pain of which He alone shall endure for eternity” (Craig, p. 308).

This argument for the inevitability of Hell would be fine if we imagined God as a mere supernatural ‘organizer,’ a being who is given billions of fixed personalities and must sort them into certain circumstances so that the greatest number of souls end up in Heaven. However, I find this argument far less reasonable when God is also considered as our creator. After all, God not only makes the conditions, he makes the people, and that means heavily influencing the genetic and psychological factors that will guide each person’s choices. This being the case, I find it difficult to imagine that there is no possible world at all in which all individuals choose God. Craig argues that universalism does not prove the logical necessity of universal salvation, but it is precisely here that he seems to miss the point; after all, universalism just says that there is at least one possible world in which everyone is saved and that this is the world God would have chosen to create. It is, in fact, Craig who fails to prove logical necessity, for he gives no reason to believe that damnation is a logically necessary consequence of free will. And I have further problems with this argument; in what way, for instance, is a world with fewer people ‘deficient,’ if all of these people eventually get the ultimate joy of eternity with God? And how could God be justified in deceiving the blessed about the condition of the damned?

I am thus unimpressed by all the arguments that Hell must be (or even logically could be) a place of infinite suffering, and I maintain the position that universalism is the best available philosophical option. Universalism seems to be not only the idea of Hell most compatible with a loving God, but also seems to make the most intuitive sense. It is also worth pointing out that the vast majority of objections to universalism are grounded in the fact that it disagrees with the Bible; in other words, the objections are not philosophical or rational in nature, but are rather based on scripture. And must a philosopher really take scripture into account?
Well, yes, for in this case it would seem shortsighted to do otherwise. As demonstrated earlier, the philosophical concept of God is at the very least heavily inspired by the Bible, and ultimately rests on Biblical authority for justification. The concept of Hell likewise relies on Biblical authority, but if this is the case, then it seems completely illogical to ask what kind of Hell we could rationally expect from God without checking our conclusion against the Bible itself. And, as also demonstrated earlier, what the Bible says is clear, consistent, and decidedly opposed to the views of the anti-Hell philosopher. As Litke points out, it is flatly contradictory with scripture to accept the “second chance view” (the view that one can escape or be redeemed from Hell), “Universalism,” or “Annihilationism.” What, then, are we to do with the philosophical conclusion of universalism, the Bible’s depiction of Hell, and the idea of a loving God that is held by theist philosophers and by Christians in general?

Faced with the contradiction between the Biblical assertion of an eternal Hell and the logically superior universalist view, our options can be summarized as follows:

1. Finite sin can deserve infinite, non-corrective punishment.
2. God is not perfect, or has standards of morality that differ from ours: the Bible is wrong in saying that God is morally perfect, or we are wrong in thinking that our ideas of morality accord with God’s.
3. Hell does not exist (or is never used), and the Bible is misleading about Hell.
4. Hell does not exist (or is never used), and the Bible itself is simply wrong and unreliable.

The first option has no arguments in its favor that I find convincing, and is irreconcilable with any God deserving of worship and love. The second option simply states that God isn’t deserving of worship and love, so Hell could exist as a place of torment, but then any individual worshipper would be morally culpable in praising a God capable of such “divine evil” (Lewis, p. 480). This does not seem to solve anything, for it is completely incompatible with everything the Christian asserts about a perfect God and especially contradicts the common theist belief that God is morally perfect. The third option could be a way out for the Christian, but it also seems ridiculously arbitrary; why trust the Bible about so many aspects of faith, but not Hell? One could claim that Hell-talk is some sort of metaphor, but aside from the fact that Hell is talked about in a consistent and blisteringly straightforward manner, it is also insisted on repeatedly by Christ himself (as in Mark 9:47-48). What reason could there be, then, to reject traditional notions of Hell without also rejecting the authority of Christ? It would thus seem that we are left with nothing but the fourth option; as the existence of both a loving, perfect God and a Hell of eternal punishment are incompatible, the Bible that says that both of these things exist should be concluded to be wrong. Of course, both God and Hell being such vital components of Christianity, and the Bible being its primary voice of authority, the foundations of the religion itself become very dubious at this point.

Again, I am inclined to accept universalism as the only outcome that a perfect, just, and loving God would find acceptable. However, I also agree with Lewis when he says that universalism is essentially “a fantasy”; it is divorced from all characteristics of Hell as given in the Bible, and without taking scripture at its word, what is the basis for any talk about Hell at all (Lewis, p. 481)? And for that matter, if there is no way to logically salvage an important Christian tenet like Hell without ignoring everything that Christians appear obliged to believe about Hell, then doesn’t the depth of the contradiction make rejection of the Christian Bible seem a more rational route? What’s more, as Lewis points out, theists may even be guilty of wrongdoing if they do not make such a rejection; modern Christians often “dodge the consequence [of Hell] by keeping it all in soft focus,” but if one worships and loves a God who creates the Biblical Hell, a place with “billions of damned souls writhing in eternal agony,” what does that say about one’s morality (Lewis, p. 480)? For Christians who wish to be rational in their theism, it would thus seem that the problem of Hell calls for a hard second look at belief.

Works Cited

Craig, William. “Talbott’s Universalism.” Religious Studies 27.3 (1991): 297-308. JSTOR database. 17 Jan. 2011 .
Holy Bible: New Living Translation. Wheaton: Tyndale, 2004.
Kvanvig, Jonathan. “Review: [untitled].” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 36.1 (1994): 59-61. JSTOR database. 2 February 2011 .
Lewis, David. “Divine Evil.” Arguing About Religion. Ed. Kevin Timpe. New York: Routledge, 2009. 472-481.
Litke, Sid. “What the Bible Says About Hell.” Bible.org. 1998. 18 Jan. 2011 .
Seymour, Charles. “Hell, Justice, and Freedom.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43.2 (1998): 69-86. JSTOR database. 17 Jan. 2011 .
Talbott, Thomas. “Freedom, Damnation, and the Power to Sin with Impunity.” Religious Studies 37.4 (2001): 417-434. JSTOR database. 17 Jan. 2011 .
Talbott, Thomas. “Punishment, Forgiveness, and Divine Justice.” Religious Studies 29.2 (1993): 151-168. JSTOR database. 17 Jan. 2011 .
Van Holten, Wilco. “Hell and the Goodness of God.” Religious Studies 35.1 (1999): 37-55. JSTOR database. 10 Jan. 2011 .
Walters, Kerry. “Hell, This Isn’t Necessary after All.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 29.3 (1991): 175-186. JSTOR database. 10 Jan. 2011 .
Yandell, Keith. “The Doctrine of Hell and Moral Philosophy.” Religious Studies 28.1 (1992): 75-90. JSTOR database. 10 Jan. 2011 .

Erin McDonnell (’13) is a Philosophy and Studio-Art Double-Major at Cornell University

ABSTRACT: The present study seeks to put together a critical assessment of the role that that “Will,” actualized through techné, played in Aristotle’s physics. It will be shown how said concept of Will led to a theoretical fissure of the Aristotelian cosmos between the natural and the artificial, which was finally detrimental to the sustainability of his scientific proposals. Furthermore, light will be shed on the incompatibility between Aristotelian physics and mathematics, an area of knowledge that was to become the primordial tool of modern scientific inquiry. As a manner of conclusion, brief remarks will be made on the progress—if any—of science across history in light of Karl Popper’s views on the subject.

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn argued that the dynamic evolution of science is not explained by the linear accumulation of new knowledge. On the contrary, science undergoes periods of theoretical revision that often destroy, not build upon, previous paradigms. Aristotle, whose ideas regarding physics dominated most of the history of western thought, formulated a framework of the cosmos where a rational account of Will brought about the principle that governs the world around us. The present study has been broken into two sections. The first section seeks to shed some light on the role that “Will,” actualized through craftsmanship, played in Aristotle’s physics. Secondly, some of the reasons that finally lead to a scientific paradigm shift away from Aristotle’s theories during the Age of Enlightenment will be examined.

I

It is difficult, from a modern perspective, to understand exactly what the study of physics meant for the ancient Greeks. When we talk about physics, we often refer to the study of matter, its properties, and its motion. Physics, in the modern sense, governs over everything that we can perceive through our senses (light, sounds, objects of any sort, etc). Yet, this is not what Aristotle had in mind. The word physics etymologically stems from the Greek word physus, which is often translated to English as “nature.” However, “nature,” a relatively ambiguous word in the first place, did not have the same meaning for the Ancient Greeks. When discussing nature[1], or physus, they were referring to something that had to do with change and growth. We could say, to use the word in the Aristotelian sense, that the “nature” of an acorn is to become a tree or that the “nature” of an egg is to become a chicken. Nature, for the ancient Greeks, entails a principle of motion that is dictated internally by the object’s essence[2].

Objects such as animals, plants, the earth, water, air and fire, belong to the Aristotelian class of natural entities (192b8). He claimed that such subjects have an independent and spontaneous Will to change into various forms. Static entities, such as a stone or the sand in a dessert, were not strictly speaking the main constituents of Aristotle’s natural world. Stones can move only insofar as the river’s current carries them along or insofar as a human grabs them and throws them in the air, for instance. Likewise, the dunes of the dessert move, not due to an internal principle of motion that guides their behavior, but only to the extent the wind blows them across the plains. However, stones and sand do belong to the natural world in the sense that they are constituents of an entity that has an internal principle of motion —earth, in this case (193a15). In Aristotle’s words, nature is “a type of principle and cause of motion and stability within those things to which it primarily belongs in their own right and not coincidentally” (Aristotle 192b22). Unlike the wind, animals, or water, stones and sand do not have a spontaneous Will to act.

Objects that are a product of human craftsmanship (of techné), such as a house or a bed, are certainly not part of nature (Aristotle 192b15). According to Aristotle, these kinds of things come to be not due to an internal principle that dictates what it is for them to become, but they are only insofar as a human being manipulates them or crafts them according to their various uses —their being is contingent upon the Will of humans. According to Aristotle, we, individuals endowed with the ability to make choices and capable of initiating motion, are able to shape wood into a bed in order to fulfill a functional purpose —in this case, resting more comfortably on an elevated surface. Likewise, we are able to literally “give form” to a lump of bronze that lacks a crafted shape. This takes us to the four causes that are necessary in order to explain the change of an entity that does not inherently contain the principle of spontaneous movement. The four causes are: (1) the material cause, which explains the physical component of the entity; (2) the formal cause, which explains the form or shape to which a thing corresponds; (3) the efficient cause, which is what we generally mean by “cause,” the original source of the energy that allows for the change; and (4) a final cause, which is the purpose it fulfills. For instance, bronze (the material cause) is shaped (the efficient cause) in order to constitute a statue (the formal cause) by the artist, who designates the purpose of its existence (the final cause). Thus, in Aristotle’s view of the cosmos there is not only matter and form, but also purpose. He says, for instance, that the existence of bricks is not coincidental; they have the purpose of becoming the material cause of a house (Physics, 200a25).

Aristotle, I believe, uses the previous principle of change in artificial objects in order to develop an analogy that may apply to natural objects as well, with certain adjustments. The logic, though very similar, has two basic differences. Let us proceed to construct the analogy in gradual steps: In regards to the material cause, just like the statue is made out of bronze, a musician is made out of flesh and bones. In terms of the formal cause, just like bronze constitutes the statue, flesh and bones constitute the form of the human being who is trained in the art of music. Yet, with regards to the efficient cause, the reasoning is somewhat different for natural and artificial objects. We discussed previously how natural objects have an internal principle of motion which artificial entities lack. In that sense, while the craftsmanship of the artist is a necessary condition for a statue to come to be, a man can become a musician by virtue of his own Will. Consequently, while bronze is potentially a statue contingent to the existence of an artist that makes the process come to be, a human is potentially a musician by virtue of his own ability to chose to become one. In that sense, the change that governs upon artifacts is contingent upon the Will of an external mover, contingent upon techné. Ultimately, with regards to the final cause, there is also a significant distinction between natural and artificial objects. In artificial objects, as discussed, an unmoved mover provides the final cause. For instance, the artist designs the end of the statue, and he will initiate motion in order to actualize what is potentially a statue (256a11). In natural objects, on the other hand, a first unmoved-mover gives the purpose. “We find, then, that among things that come to be and are by nature, things that are for something,” says Aristotle (199a8). This has to be the case since we would have an infinite regress otherwise, had we not had a first unmoved mover to designate the purpose of existence of the natural objects. An infinite regress, for Aristotle, is unfeasible. It is necessary for anything that moves, to be moved by the activity of some mover. This may be due to the intervention of an unmoved mover, like for artificial entities, or due to the involvement of a first mover that is not moved by anything else[3] (256a15). Since motion must be “everlasting and must never fail,” Aristotle posits the existence of an eternal, ever powerful first mover (258b10). Aristotle’s teleological world eventually leads to the thesis of a creator, a designer, a first mover. In The Metaphysics, Aristotle says, “there is something that initiates motion without being moved, something that is everlasting and a substance and actuality” (1072a25).

It must be the case—thought Aristotle— that what is true of the relationship between the artist and the statue, is true about the natural world and the first unmoved mover. Just like we shape the bronze and give a meaning, a telos, for the statue to be, the first unmoved mover gives us —natural entities— the essence, end, and meaning of existence[4].

Aristotle’s world, hence, is one governed by Will. That is one of the reasons he rejects the existence of randomness; everything has a reason to be, be it due to the Will of a natural entity —through techné— or else the Will of the first unmoved mover. It is true, however, that he does say that animals, entities of nature, do not have the capacity of Will. The fact that spiders build webs is not due to personal Will or deliberation but due to instinct—claimed Aristotle. This is evidence of the teleological design present in nature, he concluded. Since a spider’s web or a bird’s nest cannot come to be out of sheer randomness, and since birds and spiders do not have the capacity of Will or, as a result, techné, then they must be a direct creation of an external entity. In other words, it would seem to follow, animals and plants are entirely bound to the Will of the first unmoved mover.

II

Aristotle’s physics were the scientific paradigm until Galileo. However, Galileo’s observations of Venus’ phases, which were incompatible with the Ptolemaic model of the cosmos, over which Aristotle had a great deal of influence, set the evolution of science on a completely different path. It would be futile to enumerate particular flaws in Aristotle’s Physics in light of what is accepted today in modern science. Indeed, it is unlikely that “heavy things naturally move downward and light things upward,” as Aristotle claimed (200a3). A modern scientist would explain that the earth’s gravity causes all matter to move towards the earth’s core —what Aristotle called downward?— but denser fluids put pressure on lighter fluids in a way such that the latter seem to go upwards, away from the earth’s center of mass. However, Aristotle’s “mistaken”[5] argument regarding gravity seems like one that someone with the information and technology available to him at his time could reasonably make.

Therefore, it is more important to focus in broader aspects that —I believe— finally led to the paradigm shift away from Aristotle’s theory. At the most basic level, Aristotle made a big assumption when he divided the cosmos between natural and non-natural entities. In contrast, I do not see, based on what I can perceive, anything in reality that does not belong to the realm of nature. In other words, because humans shape their surroundings in different ways, the surroundings themselves do not cease to be natural. There is no fundamental distinction between the relation of a spider to its web or the relation of a human being to his or her house. In that sense, we either have no free Will, assuming that is the intrinsic nature of animals, or both animals and we have the capacity to develop techné, where free Will is a necessary condition.
Aristotle might argue in return that a house or a bed are not natural since they do not have the capacity to be self-sustaining. Aristotle argues, “a man comes to be from a man, but not a bed from a bed. In fact that is why some say that the nature of the bed is not the shape but the wood, because if it were to sprout the result would be wood, not a bed” (192a10). In that sense, a bed requires an “artificial” action by a human, a bed-maker, in order to exist. That is, Aristotle claimed, a proof that there is a distinction between the products of nature and the products of human beings (which can create objects that are outside of nature, or in other words artificial). However, just as a bed, a mule (the offspring between a female horse and a male donkey) does not have the capacity to be self-sustaining either. Mules are sterile; a mule does not come to be from a mule! Yet, it is very clear, even for Aristotle, that a mule is a natural creature[6]. Therefore, it is not the case that a natural object must be self-sustaining—mules are not, after all. Consequently, reductio ad absurdum, there is no reason to suppose that a bed is not a natural object. Similarly, a volcano, what Aristotle would define as a process of “nature,” is the consequence of tectonic pressure underneath the earth’s crust. A volcano does not come to be from a volcano. Yet, again, a volcano is clearly a natural process. Furthermore, we can create machines that can put together other machines like themselves. As a result, theoretically, machines (which would not be part of Aristotle’s natural world) can come to be from machines.

Beds, as Aristotle rightly argued, do not come to be from beds. Indeed, a human being is a necessary condition to bring about their existence. However, a human being by itself is not a sufficient condition to bring about the existence of another human being. The growth of a fetus requires nutrients external to the mother, oxygen, a certain temperature, etcetera. Thus, it is not the case that we —according to Aristotle, natural beings— move and shape a static and independent world spontaneously. We are both shapers and shaped by our surroundings[7].

Why was this distinction between the natural and the non-natural so misleading for Aristotle’s theories? He saw that human beings, through craftsmanship and Will, could bring about changes in order to create artificial objects that, he thought, were not part of nature. An artist, through his talent and Will to act, could actualize a lump of bronze or marble that could potentially become a statue. By use of the analogy previously described, I think Aristotle thought that a similar method applied to natural processes. The first unmoved mover is to natural agents what natural agents are to artificial objects. In other words, God is to humans what Michelangelo is to the David. He thought that the end of our existence and our essence had to be defined by a macro first unmoved mover —a supernatural Will. Darwin was a fundamental figure in challenging the views of those that, like Aristotle, saw the human being as a special and elevated entity.

The work of the ancient atomists, Leucippus and Democritus, would resemble more what science was to become after the scientific revolution that Copernicus started in 1543 with the publication of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium. The atomists believed that there was no meaningful end or purpose in nature. All there is is atoms colliding against each other in the void. Atoms, they believed, are indestructible; the have always been and will always be. Since all there is is matter, and matter can be calculated mathematically, everything that will happen, like mathematical proofs, has to happen necessarily—a deterministic view, in other words. Aristotle, on the other hand, rejected the explanatory powers of mathematics (194a), an instrument that would become the nucleus of the scientific world after Galileo. The Atomists asked not “What purpose did this event serve?” like Aristotle, but “What earlier circumstances caused this event to be?” (Russell 67). From a pragmatic point of view, it seems to be the case that the latter question, the one the Atomists dealt with, has given us more answers regarding the reality that surrounds us. In other words, as Thomas Kuhn would say, modern physics increased the power to predict natural phenomena by embracing a non-teleological view. The former question, Aristotle’s question, led science in the road of superstition and theology for centuries.

After Newton, adopting related principles to those outlined by the Atomists, it seemed like scientific knowledge had finally reached solid foundations and the future of the discipline would only build up[8]. However, just like with Aristotle, we were mistaken. Albert Einstein revised most of the principles that were thought to be rock-solid. Consequently, Karl Popper proposed a theory of the development of science that cannot achieve ultimate certainty about anything. The material world, he claimed, exists independently from the human mind. Given the fact that their ontological nature is separate, the physical world is ultimately impenetrable and incommensurable to the human intellect. Therefore, like in other fields, problems start to arise when individuals and institutions become fanatical on their views of “certainty.” However, how is Popper so certain? I am troubled with whether or not Popper’s theory can be turned against itself. Could it be that his theory could be revised opening the possibility to find scientific certainty? After all, Popper is arguing that we can never be certain about knowledge, and I suppose that also applies to his own theory. So, will science ever reach certainty? I think it is impossible to know[9]. But again, how could I be even certain about that?

Works Cited

Aristotle. Introductory Readings. Indianapolis: Hackett Company, 1996. Print. (refer to this source for both Physics and Metaphysics)

Bertrand, Russell. A History of Western Philosophy. New York: Touchstone, 1967. Print.

Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Vol. 3. University Of Chicago, 1996. Print.

Popper, Karl. Open Society and its Enemies. Abingdon: Frank Cass, 1973. Print.

Notes

1. Thereof, the word “nature” will be used in accordance to the Ancient Greek connotation unless stated otherwise.
2. The essence of X is the answer to the question: What is F?
3. It is interesting how it seems impossible for Aristotle to have an effect without a proper cause in nature, but when he talks about the first mover having this particular quality the paradox instantaneously dissolves.
4. Such explanation is parodied in Voltaire’s Candide.
5. According to Karl Popper science can only work in the negative sense. That is, a scientist may only, with certainty, reject a theory as non-scientific but cannot, with certainty, put forward a theory as scientific.
6. After all, mules seem to have the “internal” principle of motion that Aristotle emphasized so much.
7. It would me interesting to wonder whether, in some ways, a bed can be a first cause. Imagine that your new bed is very uncomfortable. After a week of sleeping on it, you realize that you have developed problems in your back and you have to go to the doctor. Could it be said that the bed is the unmoved cause of these back problems? Aristotle would say no immediately (only natural objects are first causes). However, I think the answer to this question is not so clear.
8. In the Open Society and Its Enemies, Popper heavily criticized Plato, Marx, and Hegel (tracing the theories of the latter two to Aristotle) for formulating teleological theories of history and science that unfold in accordance with universal laws.
9. If we are aware that our theories have holes that remain unexplained, it seems clear that we have not reached ultimate certainty. On the other hand, even if it seems we have reached a “perfect” theory, we do not know what the future will bring and there is always the possibility that in the future a brilliant scientist will make us realize how wrong we were about what we though was certain (after all we ended up revising Newton’s physics).

Juan M. Botero-Duque (’10) is a Philosophy and Economics major at American University.

Abstract: In this paper, I examine David Lewisʼ treatment of vagueness as a problem of “semantic indecision” and conclude that this position on vagueness is inconsistent with the metaphysics of his theory of modal realism, with specific regard for counterparthood and the counterpart relation. To reach this conclusion, I employ a thought experiment in which an exact counterpart of Lewis is subjected to a series of possible worlds treatments designed to satisfy Lewisʼ criteria for counterparthood, as well as to test the limits of semantic treatments of higher-order vagueness. In doing this, I find that Lewisʼ suggestions for dealing with vagueness fails to pick out counterparts at several points in this series, even when given a satisfactorily precisified set of criteria for the qua relation. Rather than a clear candidate for counterparthood, one encounters instead a problem of infinite regression that could destabilize the whole project of Lewisian de re modal realism. I conclude by noting that accepting metaphysical vagueness into the Lewisian theory of modal realism changes nothing in the overall theory, and may in fact be the only way to save the theory from its problem of infinite regression.

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I. Background

The sentence “All bachelors are unmarried.” and the sentence “The author of this paper is typing on a computer.” are both true. However, these two sentences are not true in the same way. To understand how they are different, let us examine how each sentence can be considered true. In the first example, truth appears to be a function of the meaning of the word “bachelor” in relation to the rest of the sentence. This is because the first example states a specific and important property of the concept of being a bachelor. It is almost a kind of definition, and its truth is derived from the relationship between its form (what kind of sentence it is) and its semantic content (what the sentence means). The first example sentence demonstrates that the relationship between the form and the content of a sentence is one way to measure the truth of a sentence. The second example presents an exception to this rule. The form of the second example sentence does not follow the pattern of the first, yet (much to the authorʼs chagrin as I watch the clock) it is still true.

So what does it mean to say that the two sentences are true in different ways? In this case, it means that they arrive at being true by taking two different routes. The first example must always be true; the word “bachelor” carries somewhere in its meaning the idea of being unmarried, and the property of being unmarried is a definitive property of the word “bachelor”. The second example need not be, but by all respects still is, true. Truths that must be true, like the first example, are called necessary truths. This means that there is some quality of the words of the sentence or the things being discussed by the words in that sentence which requires the sentence to be true. The second example illustrates what is called a contingent truth. Contingent truths are not true in virtue of structure or meaning per se, but rather are true with regard to a given situation. Another way to put this is to say that there is no quality about me that would require, as a matter of necessity, that I be sitting at my desk writing this paper. I could just as easily be sleeping, or going for a walk, or touring the country with my world famous band instead.

Hypothetical statements like the one above, which gives some examples of ways in which my life might have been different, are called “counterfactuals”. Counterfactuals are just what they sound like: statements that consider cases in which the facts are contrary to the way things actually are. Often stated in the form of conditionals (“If X then Y”), counterfactuals are aimed at examining the ways in which the world could (and could not) be different by positing alternate situations for conceptual analyses. Take the statement “If I werenʼt writing this paper, I would be asleep right now” as an example. The purpose is to assert that under specific circumstances that are contrary to the actual ones (“If I werenʼt writing this paper,”), a different set of statements about the world would turn out to be true, and I would be in bed.

What counterfactuals illustrate is called “modality”, or the measure of necessary or contingency. It would seem that in order to be able to evaluate modality correctly, and in doing so evaluate the truth-value of the sentence in question, there must be some properties, or kinds of properties, of the thing being discussed that remain true about that thing across all counterfactual statements. Here, I must bring up another distinction, one concerning interpretations of things about which the modalilty is in question. With regard to modality, there are two ways to gloss a given sentence. One such way is called a de re reading (from the Latin for ʻof the thingʼ). The other reading is a de dicto reading (meaning ʻof the wordʼ). De re readings of sentences are concerned with the modality of the actual physical thing(s) referred to by the terms of a sentence. De dicto readings are concerned with the modality of the words of the examined sentence itself. This differentiation is relevant to the ways by which the truth-value of a given sentence can be evaluated as necessary or contingent. To illustrate the difference between a de re and a de dicto reading, examine the sentence “The President of the United States could be a woman.” Under a de dicto reading, this sentence means that it is possible for a woman to become the President of the United States. Under a de re reading, this sentence means that the legal status of Barack Obamaʼs marriage is in serious jeopardy under current law.

In contemporary analytic philosophy, the truth-values regarding the modal properties of a sentence are often evaluated in terms of “possible worlds”. Though there is significant disagreement about the nature of these worlds, such as when it is appropriate to assign de re or de dicto readings to statements made about them, it must be the case that possible worlds are at minimum conceptual spaces in which one can run thought experiments to determine the necessity of a truth-value of a sentence. The classic examples used to illustrate this are “Aristotle is Aristotle” and “Aristotle is the teacher of Alexander”. Under a de re reading, it is simple to see that the first statement must always be true, because if there is an “Aristotle” about whom this statement can be made, then that Aristotle must be self-identical. However, there is no quality about such an Aristotle that necessitates that he be “the teacher of Alexander”. Rather, this is something that happened to be the case only as a matter of course and not as a matter
of the things involved those circumstances.

Note the inherent import here of a robust idea of identity. When employing possible worlds as a measure of modal properties, especially under a de re reading, identity is assumed as a most basic property. Generally, identity can be understood with the following two premises: (1) All things are self-identical and (2) no two things are identical to each other in all ways. Identity is a philosophical issue unto itself, however due to the limited scope of this paper it must suffice to say that identity is the metaphysical property of self-sameness. As such, an issue like metaphysical vagueness would appear to be an important area to explore when discussing de re modality, if only because in any dialogue that takes as its subject the modal properties of things must start first with an understanding of the thing about which modal properties are to be discussed. If one is to understand how a thing could have been different, as well as how it could not have been different, then one must first encounter that thingʼs identity. In this paper, I will contrast David Lewisʼ treatment of de re modality (Lewisian modal realism) against that of another philosopher, Saul Kripke. I argue that modal realism necessarily admits of metaphysical vagueness, and until that theory is modified to accept this fact, modal realism is not a feasible theory of modality.

II. De Re and Vagueness

Saul Kripke explores de re interpretations in his work Naming and Necessity. In this lecture series, Kripke abandons the skepticism of his predecessors such as Quine about de re readings. He argues that rigid designators, which are terms that pick out the same thing across all possible worlds (where that thing exists), are the appropriate means of evaluating claims de re. Examples of rigid designators are names, numbers, and natural kind terms such as “water” or “gold”. Under this treatment, possible worlds need be nothing more than hypothetical scenarios run in oneʼs mind. For Kripke, to exist is to be the extension of a term.

The Kripkean treatment of de re modality is what is called “ersatz” modality (ersatz meaning substitution) and is semantic in nature. This is to say that Kripkean possible worlds are constructs of meaning located in the mind, and are intended to exemplify counterfactual possibilities about actually extant things. Kripke does not assert that using possible worlds to evaluate modal claims has any ontological implications. As such, a Kripkean treatment de re allows for the existence of “transworld identity” which means that the singular identity of a thing being discussed can be distributed over all possible worlds. Another way to put this is to say that for Kripke, the “Aristotle” in any of the worlds in which Aristotle was not the teacher of Alexander is self-identical to the Aristotle in this world.

David Lewis accepted the premise of possible worlds re-introduced to analytic philosophy by Kripke. The function of possible worlds for Lewis is almost exactly the same as for Kripke; they measure the necessity of a claim. However, according to Lewis, possible worlds are real physical places—as real as our own world—in which real things exist. This is Lewisian modal realism. As Lewis discusses at great length in On The Plurality of Worlds, there are innumerable such real worlds, and the inhabitants of these worlds are the subjects of the counterfactual conditionals that possible world scenarios evaluate. Among other things, Lewis asserts that counterfactuals are evaluated by means of a relation of counterparts in possible worlds to things in the actual world. This means that when we say something could have been different in any way from the way it actually is (for example, to say that I might have been a concert violinist instead of a philosopher) is to say that there is some possible world in which the counterpart of that thing actually is that way (my counterpart is a concert violinist in some possible world).

In §4 of his book, Lewis argues that possible worlds are spatiotemporally isolated from each other. He also argues that spatiotemporal location is a necessary property of identity, and that the criteria of identity can only be sufficiently met by sharing exactly all the same qualities, including spatiotemporal location. From these two premises arise the need for the counterpart relation to take the place of transworld identity, because identity can only be granted to objects that are at least spatiotemporally identical, and also because in Lewisʼ theory individuals in different possible worlds are separated and thus anything in one world is spatiotemporally isolated from anything in another. What will eventually run Lewis aground here remains unproblematic for Kripke because Kripkeʼs specific theory of possible worlds has no ontological implications and all he needs to grant identity is that a termʼs extension be the same across all possible worlds. However, for Lewis it is clear that it is not possible to grant identities across possible worlds because their referents differ in spatiotemporal location, so he must create some new theory to take its place.

The counterpart relation is the theory that Lewis proposes for this purpose. It is the basis for being able to assess counterfactuals in Lewisʼ account. The counterpart relation is one of “relevant similarity”, or comparative similarity of desired properties between token-specific candidates for counterparts across possible worlds. That which makes an individual in another world a counterpart of an individual in the actual world is an overall comparison of similarity among all possible candidates in any given possible world. Counterparts are only counterparts to each other in virtue of a given “qua relation.” For example, if a counterfactual involving having a certain number of hairs on oneʼs head is being discussed, the proper way to assign counterparthood would be to say that person X in World 1 (W1) is a counterpart of person Y in W2 qua Xʼs and Yʼs number of head-hairs. Thus, one person can be a viable candidate for the counterpart of another person if and only if those two people, as Lewis states, “closely resemble [each other] in important aspects.”

There is no room in Kripkeʼs ersatz treatment of possible worlds for vagueness to arise as an issue. In virtue of the fact that there are no ontological assertions made by ersatz possible worlds, there can be no ontological vagueness. Furthermore, because rigid designators grant identity across possible worlds and the fact that to have an extension, as far as Kripke is concerned, is to exist, there can only be semantic vagueness in the evaluations of modal claims.

This is not the case for Lewisʼ theory of modal realism, though. Modal realism is a large and complex theory that leaves much room in which the problems of vagueness might take hold. Notably, however, Lewis famously decries the whole project of metaphysical vagueness:

The only intelligible account of vagueness locates it in our thought and language. The reason it’s vague where the outback begins is not that there’s this thing, the outback, with imprecise borders; rather there are many things, with different borders, and nobody has been fool enough to try to enforce a choice of one of them as the official referent of the word `outback.’ Vagueness is semantic indecision. (Lewis 1986, 212)

Many such quotes fill the pages of On The Plurality of Worlds. The idea is always the same: the world is not vague, but rather it is our representations of the world, our words, that are. That David Lewis, the famous metaphysician, is so vehemently opposed to metaphysical vagueness is a bit shocking at first. Why should someone so deeply involved in metaphysics, especially someone whose project is specifically a refutation of a larger semantic theory, seek the solution to the problem of vagueness in a semantictheory? If nothing else, this is strikingly counterintuitive.

Much like others who found vagueness to be a problem of language and not of the world, Lewis seeks to eliminate vagueness by precisifying problematic language:

If a sentence is true over an entire range, true no matter how we draw the line, surely we are entitled to treat it as simply true. But also we treat a sentence more or less as simply true, if it is true over a large enough part of the range of delineations of its vagueness. (For short: if it is true enough). (Lewis 1983, 244)

Here Lewisʼ position on how to deal with problems of vagueness is clear. Because vagueness is “semantic indecision,” the proper manner by which it should be dealt with is to look at the way sentences admit of vagueness and re-evaluate how they are interpreted. Vague sentences are “true enough” to be considered true when they are true over some sufficient range (the “large enough part of the range”) of precisifications. Lewis avoids dealing with the question of what counts as “true enough” by calling this itself a vague matter. This is for Lewis, however, not an important enough issue to pursue, as is evidenced in the next paragraph of the text:

When is a sentence “true enough”? Which are the large parts of the delineations of its vagueness? This itself is a vague matter. More important for our purposes, it is something that depends on context. What is true enough on one occasion is not true enough on another. The standards of precisions in force are different from one conversation to another. (Lewis 1983, 244-245)

One should assume, at risk of otherwise creating a straw man argument, that Lewis expects his own semantic prescription for handling vagueness should be sufficient to explain away the vagueness he himself admits is inherent in how he tells us to handle such problems. However, in at least one case, Lewisʼ account is not a sufficient method of explaining away vagueness as semantic indecision.

Consider the following scenario: there is a series of possible worlds in which at one end there is one and only one possible counterpart of Lewis, and he is a spitting image of Lewis in every single possible relevant manner. At the other end of the series, there is a world populated entirely by just one single rooster. This set-up is consistent with how Lewis assumes possible worlds work. Now, assign to this series, in the search for counterparts, the highly precisified set of criteria for counterparthood that is exactly and only the breadth of wingspan and the volume of caw. Lewis would acknowledge that his spitting image meets all the relevant criteria to be his counterpart. He would agree as well that he is not a counterpart of the rooster at the far end of this sequence, being that he meets no relevant criteria for being its counterpart and thus is not, in any way, a viable candidate of counterparthood.

If one observes the series of worlds that starts in the world of the lonely rooster and ends in the world in which there is an exact duplicate of Lewis illustrates a possible worlds sequence of a Lewis/rooster chimera that runs in reverse. Actual-world Lewis would admit that there is one world in this series in which the counterpart relation ceases to be sufficient enough under the relevant criteria for the thing in that world to count as a counterpart of the rooster. By extension, in virtue of the nature of the relevant criteria of this sequence, it is logically true (assuming that counterparthood is cardinal) that there is also some point in this sequence at which the Lewis/rooster chimera ceases to meet any relevant criteria for Lewis-counterparthood.

The problem that Lewis is forced to acknowledge, by his own justification of the counterpart relation, is that there remain penumbral cases of counterparthood in this series. Specifically, there are at least some worlds in which it is indeterminate whether or not the most Lewis-like thing in that world can be rightly called a counterpart of Lewis qua the relevant criteria, but are still, definitely, the counterparts of other non-Lewis counterparts in the series qua those same criteria. Every case in this series in which the chimera is more like a non- counterpart of Lewis, but is still a Lewis/rooster chimera, yields an indeterminate counterpart relation for Lewis. Each further attempt to create more precise semantic boundaries for vague predicates such as “is a counterpart of Lewis” serves only to shift the problem up by one degree of order; there is no way in Lewisʼ treatment of vagueness for there to be enough precisification to eliminate vagueness as a problem of semantics alone.

III. Saving Modal Realism

The basic premises Lewis works from are as follows:

1. The world is made of material things
2. Modal realism is true
3. All possible worlds are spatiotemporally and causally isolated
4. Spatiotemporal location is a necessary quality of identity
5. Counterpart theory is the means of measuring counterfactuals across spatiotemporally isolated worlds
6. Vagueness is semantic in nature

My thought-experiment shows that modal realism is philosophically unsound if Lewis accepts a theory that uses counterpart theory and eschews metaphysical vagueness, because his prescribed semantic treatment of vagueness results in an infinite regression. However, the counterpart relation is essential to Lewisʼ modal realism, and thus cannot be given up without losing the larger theory. It is the only way he can account for being able to assess counterfactuals. In the above example, I have shown that even under Lewisʼ strict semantic treatment of vagueness, there no precise cut off point at which a thing in the example series is still be enough like Lewis that, were there no other Lewis-like things in its world, it could be determined whether or not that thing would still be Lewisʼ counterpart.

Meeting all of Lewisʼ criteria for hyper-precisification of the relevant criteria fails to eliminate vagueness of the counterpart relation in the above example. I submit that this is the case because the notion of counterparthood and the counterpart relation are based in comparative overall similarity. The problem with such evaluations is that the terms of these evaluations are themselves vague predicates. Thus, we enter an infinitely reiterating argument that fails to address the issue at hand (that being the location of vagueness as being in language or the world). It is a necessary consequence of precisely this is that Lewisʼ system does not function to evaluate modal properties with any hope of being other than accidentally correct. As such, Lewisʼ theory of modal realism with vagueness as a semantic problem is less than a sufficient account of de re modality.

However, I propose that if Lewis were to add to Premise 6 that vagueness can be semantic and metaphysical, he would no longer face an issue of infinite regression. Lewis argues against metaphysical vagueness because he conceives of identity as a most basic property, which he effectively argues to be unique self-sameness, and his argument against vague objects is based on the fact that he assumes there is a finite answer to the question “how many objects are in the world?” Lewis is correct to state that if vagueness is metaphysical, then it would be a fact of the world that there is no finite number of objects in the world. However, why should it be assumed that there is a finite number of objects in the world? I can think of no compelling reason to assume this to be the case, and Lewis certainly fails to give a sufficient account supporting his personal predilection for there being a finite number of things in the world. At every opportunity, he fails to address the issue as he turns questions of metaphysical vagueness into questions of semantic vagueness.

For Lewis to accept vague objects, he is not required to give up any other part of modal realism. Revising Premise 6 as I have prescribed has no impact on the previous five premises. However, the real issue at hand here is that extending Premise 6 to acknowledge the existence of vague objects might be the only way for Lewisʼ modal realism to survive. Rather than supporting modal realism, his position on vagueness as a problem only of semantics actually undermines his project of modal realism. There is no sufficient argument provided as of yet that can semantically explain away problems of vagueness. The problem of infinite regression that Lewisʼ solution entails makes it unjustified and therefore philosophically unsatisfactory. The existence of vague objects is not only simply the more logical solution, but may possibly be the only way he can salvage modal realism from its problem of infinite regression.

Works Cited

1. Kripke, Saul. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1972, 1980
2. Lewis, David. On The Plurality of Worlds. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing. 1986.
3. Lewis, David. “Counterparts of Persons and Their Bodies.” The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 68 (1971). 203-221.

Jaime Harrell (’10) is a Philosophy major at University of Maryland College Park.

Art courtesy of gromyko.

Abstract: This paper discusses the central argument of A World of States of Affairs by David Armstrong, which is intended to posit states of affairs as fundamental ontological entities. This ‘truth-maker’ argument is intended to conclude that states of affairs are what make propositions true; I explore this position and the response by David Lewis, which is a tentative rejection of Armstrong’s position in favour of a supremely permissive combinatorialism.

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The sentence “the sun is bright” expresses a true proposition. What, if anything, makes it true? The tentative answer by D.M. Armstrong, which may be found in his fine A World of States of Affairs is that some state of affairs (a technical term which will be defined), some constituent of a state of affairs, or some combination of these makes such propositions true (assuming that brightness is a property which does not depend on a relation between two or more things). This hypothesis and a response to it by David Lewis will be considered.

Armstrong considers those propositions which have been thought about or stated. Truth attaches to some of these propositions (he does not elaborate this attachment.) It is these truths which states of affairs and their constituents correspond to in the ‘truth-making’¹ process. For clarity, truth-makers will be spoken of as corresponding to propositions rather than truths.

Armstrong’s general hypothesis is that states of affairs and their constituents are ontologically exhaustive-there is nothing else. The constituents of states of affairs are particulars (individual things with their properties mentally abstracted from them, as far as this is possible), properties, external relations, and, in the case of higher-order states of affairs, lower-order states of affairs.

‘Constituent’ is used here rather abstractly. For example, properties and relations are types of states of affairs, or universals. The nature of universals will be discussed when we contrast them with particular properties, or tropes. External relations are distinguished from internal relations: those things which are externally related do not necessitate their relationship. ‘The Morning Star’ having the same referent as ‘the Evening Star’ is an external relation; the Morning Star’s identity to the Evening Star is an internal relation.

The necessary and sufficient condition for a state of affairs can now be given: either a particular has a property or, alternatively, there is an external relation between particulars. Every state of affairs and constituent thereof is an actual and contingent part of this world. This is to say that none are merely possible, yet the existence of any is not necessary.

Armstrong seems to assume that truths require something which makes them true. The proposition expressed by “the sun is bright” is not true simpliciter. It will be seen that a state of affairs-the sun’s being bright-is the most probable candidate for making it so. Why does Armstrong perceive this connection between the proposition and this state of affairs? It must be kept in mind that he is, in A World of States of Affairs, influenced by philosophers such as Wittgenstein (in his earlier philosophy) and John Anderson. They held that reality has a propositional structure.

Some propositions require truth-makers; some constituents of states of affairs require an ‘instantiation’:

We are making the venture that the world contains both particulars and universals. It would certainly seem that if this is so, then something is needed to weld them together (Armstrong 114-115)

In the present example, the particular is the sun and the universal which is ‘welded’ to it-which it instantiates-is the property of brightness. This state of affairs does not make the proposition expressed by “the sun is bright” true by a causal process; it is a process unlike making a light turn on by flipping a switch.

The truth-making relation is internal. The necessity of the relation is evident from the proposition “a truth-maker makes its corresponding proposition true.” This proposition is analytic: it cannot be false due to the meaning of its words. Armstrong makes the point in terms of possible worlds. If there is a particular truth-maker for a proposition, then there is no possible world in which the truth-maker exists but the proposition is false.

Armstrong arrives at his hypothesis of states of affairs as truth-makers by evaluating and rejecting less viable candidates. Corresponding to his scheme, we will consider the sun, the pair of the sun and brightness, and a version of trope theory as potential truth-makers of the proposition expressed by “the sun is bright.”

First of all, it is plainly absurd for the sun without any of its properties to be the ontological ground for the sun’s having a property. Secondly, the sun and the property of brightness are not necessarily tied together on Armstrong’s view. There is some possible world in which the pair exists but the sun does not instantiate brightness. Because of this world, it is not necessary-it is not the case in all possible worlds-that the proposition expressed by “the sun is bright” to be made true by the pair of the sun and brightness.

Armstrong is less dismissive of the trope view. Properties and relations have so far been treated as universals. Theories which hold that universals are real may acknowledge their abstract nature in some sense. The sun, a powered light bulb, and any other bright thing have brightness, so we can conceptually abstract this property from these things. But as a universal, brightness exists au)to_n e)n th~ au(tou~ xw&ra as a type of state of affairs. Universals-properties and relations-are entirely present in anything which instantiates them. Furthermore, the brightness of some particular thing is identical to the brightness of something else. The sense of identity which I use is no less strict than self-identity.

The reality of universals can reasonably be denied by a trope theorist. A trope is an instance of a property or relation-the particular brightness of a lamp or the distance between the sun and me at some instant.² The brightness of a lamp is not identical to the brightness of the sun; they are two different properties.

There are many variants of trope theory. If a pair consisting of a particular and a universal cannot be a truth-maker, can a pair consisting of a particular and an instance of a property? Armstrong immediately rejects those theories which hold that things have tropes contingently. If lamp L₁ has brightness B₁ contingently, there is a possible world in which they exist independently. The proposition expressed by “L₁ has B₁” cannot, then, hold an internal relation with the pair L₁ and B₁.

Trope theories which posit a necessary tie between particulars and their tropes are somewhat reluctantly rejected. Armstrong dislikes the amount of necessity in the world which follows from these theories. If every instance of a property (and, perhaps, every instance of a relation) exists necessarily where it does, we have a world view quite different from Armstrong’s thoroughly contingent-though tentative-ontology.

Armstrong also rejects those trope theories which deny the existence of particulars. Such theories are known as ‘bundle’ theories because particulars are postulated as mere bundles of tropes. The principal problem Armstrong has with such theories is that states of affairs are not purported to be any ontological addition to bundles of tropes. He even considers tropes to be constituents of states of affairs in such circumstances.

States of affairs and their constituents are thus the most likely truth-makers for contingently true propositions. Furthermore, necessarily true propositions-propositions of mathematics and logic, for example-have no truth-makers beyond these entities. A proposition may possess truth from many truth-makers. Consider the proposition expressed by “at least one person exists.” This proposition is made true by each state of affairs wherein a person has those properties which define her as a person. Somebody being rational and somebody being an animal are examples of such states of affairs. Since either of these states of affairs also makes the proposition expressed by “either at least one person exists or the moon is made of cheese” true, there may be many true propositions for a single truth-maker.

David Lewis is disconcerted by an element of necessity in this theory. Consider some particular star and the property of brightness. These constituents are distinct entities. The state of affairs wherein that star is bright is a third distinct entity. Yet if the particular star we have selected has the property of brightness, the state of affairs necessarily exists; if the sun lacks the property of brightness, the state of affairs necessarily does not exist.

Lewis considers these conditions strange for an independent entity. If the state of affairs is an independent entity, it should be able to exist or to not exist, regardless of the particular star, the property of brightness, or any other distinct entity.

This flows from the ontology which Lewis holds, wherein any combination of possibilia is permitted. Possibilia are “wholes and parts admitted by the most permissive sort of mereology” (Lewis, 2004, p. 250). They can actually exist or be merely possible; spatiotemporal regions, force fields, gods, and spooks are all included.

There is thus a tension between states of affairs and the extreme ‘combinatorialism’ which Lewis endorses. Lewis responds by cautioning against using terms of the form ‘the state of affairs wherein A has B’ interchangeably with ‘A has B’ without seriously considering whether the former is distinct from the latter. He never, however, explicitly states that the two have equivalent referents.

Armstrong’s argument for states of affairs is based on the requirement for a truth-maker; Lewis therefore considers this need. He agrees that some part of the world should, seemingly, be a truth-maker for every contingent truth. Whether or not one believes in the reality of universals-and Lewis does not-this intuition is, perhaps, common. It is certainly easy to agree with Lewis that Armstrong’s coherent metaphysic provides a simple and effective solution to a complex problem.

Works Cited

Armstrong, D. M. A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Lewis, David. “The Truthmakers.” Times Literary Supplement 13 Feb. 1998: 30.

Lewis, David. “New Work for a Theory of Universals.” Metaphysics: A Guide and Anthology. Ed. Tim Crane and Katalin Farkas. 2^nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 249-261.

Footnotes

ABSTRACT

The following is a brief introduction to the origins and logical flaws within St. Anselm’s famous Ontological Argument for the existence of G-d. Throughout the time since Anselm first formulated his argument, logicians and philosopher, including Kant, Gödel, and Aquinas, have struggled to reveal its apparent flaws. Through the study of this complex argument in the philosophy of religion, several advances in modern logic have emerged, including an understanding of the sensitive treatment of how to classify existence, whether it is a property of an object, or a quantifier within a logical system.

Throughout the years since St. Anselm of Canterbury first published the original version of his ontological argument for G-d’s existence in the Proslogium, many have come to criticize and analyze the logic behind his famous argument. What separates this argument from others in providing a formal proof for G-d’s existence, was that it had used entirely a metaphysical, a priori method of establishing the existence of G-d, rather than an empirical method as was used by the cosmological argument. St. Anselm was the medieval Archbishop of Canterbury, who lived roughly during the 11^th century C.E. (A.D.) Anselm began his argument, claiming that there were two types of existent beings within this world, those who were necessary, that is beings who were needed to exist and contingent beings who existed, but whose existence was not entirely necessary. (3) He then continued to define G-d as “something that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” (1) Anselm then referred to Psalm xiv. 1 stating, “Or is there no such nature, since the fool has said in his heart, there is no God?” (1) He wished to eliminate the fool’s atheistic doubts, which were represented within the psalm, by proving that G-d existed, at least within the fool’s understanding. If he could establish this assumption, then he could lay out the rest of his argument. According to Anselm, even the fool could wholeheartedly admit that he has the ability to imagine “something that than which nothing greater can be conceived,” and that the fool could admit to having this notion within his understanding, even if he fails to see that G-d exists within reality. (1) He continues to claim that if something exists both in reality and within the imagination, then such an existence is greater than something, which exists solely within one’s mind. (1) By accepting this proposition, a reductio argument (a contradiction) can then be formulated, because by the combination of Anselm’s definition of G-d (that which none greater can be conceived), and the fact that the existence of something within the mind and external to the mind is greater than something merely within our minds, it must be by the definition of G-d, that it be existent outside our minds as well. Thus by the reductio argument, G-d must exist externally according to Anselm. Anselm states, “… assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater…Therefore if that than which a greater cannot be imagined is in the understanding alone, that very thing than which a greater cannot be imagined is something than which a greater can be imagined. But certainly this cannot be.” (1) He draws a contradiction from this statement and thus by reductio ad absurdum, he concludes that there must be “something than which a greater cannot be imagined, both in the understanding and in reality,” which is G-d. (1)

Several criticisms of the argument had followed after Anselm first formulated it. The first such criticism was by a contemporary of Anselm, Gaunilo of Marmoutier, a Catholic Monk who rejected Anselm’s rationalization, attacking the reasoning behind the argument, using his perfect island example. His explanation of the problem with the ontological argument went as follows: all have the ability to distinctly conceive of a greatest, largest, most perfect island, but that such a concept within one’s understanding does not entail that such an island exists within reality. Gaunilo didn’t attack any of the premises of Anselm’s argument, but rather followed the argument’s logical steps to come up with a rather insane conclusion, thus weakening Anselm’s reasoning. If the argument had indeed been taken seriously, one could conceive of a perfect island, even a perfect dog, fish, or turtle, or anything for that matter, that must be true to exist within our mind’s understanding and thus exist in reality, by the very definition of “that which none greater can be conceived.” It appeared that Anselm’s argument had suggested that through the definition of something, one could define anything into existence. (2) There are however some notable problems with Gaunilo’s objection, because it used an example of an island, the sort of object, whose properties and qualities of perfection fail to have intrinsic maximum limits of degree, (ex: length, amount of trees, etc. fail to have an ultimate maximum conceivable degree of perfection), unlike Anselm’s argument which is a proof for the existence of G-d, whose properties are intrinsic maximums (maximum good, maximum truth, etc.). Thus according to philosopher C.D. Broad, Gaunilo’s objection cannot be fully applied to Anselm’s situation. (2)

St. Thomas Aquinas, an Italian, Catholic theologian and philosopher also criticized the ontological argument, claiming that the argument only had the ability to work for those who accepted the proposed definition of G-d given by Anselm, whereby many people felt that the definition of G-d might not necessarily be “that which none greater can be conceived,” but rather many believed G-d to be in the form of a body like the resurrected body of Jesus. (2) He continued to explain that G-d was an infinite being, and that finite beings such as ourselves might never come to fully comprehend such a greater being. Even if we take Anselm’s definition of G-d to be “that which none greater can be conceived,” literally, we as finite beings, could only turn to finite examples to be able to comprehend the definition of G-d, and might not fully be able to understand G-d through comparisons within our finite world and understanding of things. (2)

Immanuel Kant, the famous Prussian philosopher, had several objections to the ontological argument, found within the Critique on Pure Reason. Kant argued against Anselm’s premise that things which exist both in reality and in the mind, are greater than those things which solely exist within the mind. He proposed that adding such a premise to the ontological argument, forces existence to be viewed as a property of a concept, and that existence cannot be thought of as a property (later on it would come to be defined as a type of logical quantifier). (2) Because modern logic hadn’t been available to Kant during the late 18^th century, he had creatively used the relationships between subject and predicates of sentences to indicate why existence should not be categorized as a property, where a predicate represents the properties of the subject of the sentence or concept. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga had simplified Kant’s ambiguous argument, which used a confusing subject predicate relationship, into a more modern perspective using logic. Plantinga explained that one should consider the example, that of the concept of a bachelor, which is defined as an unmarried man. By the definition of a bachelor, B the bachelor had certain properties (P1, P2, P3,…, Pn). (5) Using Anselm’s logic, a bachelor would be a contingent concept, “that is to say, it is not necessarily true that there are things to which this concept applies…the proposition there are bachelors, while true, is obviously not necessarily true.” (5) One could then claim that there had indeed been a super bachelor SB, with the property of existence E so that SB has all of the properties of being a bachelor and the new property of existence, SB(P1, P2, …., Pn, E). (5) It would appear that we had just defined a SB into existence by the new property E we assigned to it. Even after we have defined the concept of a SB with the property E, this does not entail that there are in actuality any SB, “all that follows is that…All the superbachelors there are exist.” (5) It also follows that because SB holds all of the properties that a B holds, every SB is a B. If a SB exists, then a B must also exist, but remember a B is contingent and so SB must also be contingent and so, it then becomes apparent that every B must also be a SB. It appears, as mentioned previously, that using such logic, one could define any concept they wished into existence, providing existence or being was used as a property in the sense Anselm had used in his argument. (5)

The most fascinating aspect of Anselm’s argument had not been the proof itself, but rather the criticisms, which arose by philosophers across the centuries, as a response to the logical formulation of the proof. The argument had sparked an increased curiosity into the study of the metaphysics of existence through the search for the inherent flaws within the constructs of Anselm’s argument. It is interesting to note, that even within the root of the word ontological, there lies the root, ont which is Greek for being and existence. Once more, for almost one thousand years, the argument seemed not only to inspire others, including Descartes, Leibniz, Goedel, and Plantinga, to improve upon Anselm’s proof and create their own formulations of ontological arguments, but also to analyze the argument and gain insight into the nature of logic through the study of metaphysics. Such inspiration ultimately led to several major advancements in our understanding of logic and the nature of existence and how it is to be handled in logical systems. The ontological argument sparked much debate, and as Bertrand Russell proposed, it is much harder to put one’s finger on exactly why the argument was flawed, rather than to be able to say that it was indeed flawed. (4)

Works Cited

1. “Anselm (1033-1109): Proslogium.” Medieval Sourcebook. 1998. Fordham University. <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/anselm-proslogium.html>.

2. Himma, Kenneth E. “The Ontological Argument.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006. Seattle Pacific University. <http://www.iep.utm.edu/o/ont-arg.htm>.

3. “Ontological Argument.” Wikipedia. 13 Mar. 2008. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument#Anselm.27s_argument>.

4. Oppy, Graham. “Ontological Arguments.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2007. Metaphysics Research Lab, CSLI, Stanford University. <http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/ontological-arguments/#GodOntArg>.

5. Plantinga, Alvin. “A Modal Version of the Ontological Argument, From God, Freedom and Evil.” Philosophy of Religion. Comp. William L. Rowe and William J. Wainwright. Ed. Robert Ferm. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. 109-125.

Matthew Rowe (’10) is a Philospohy and Physics double major at Carnegie Mellon University

By ERIK HINTON

Elizabeth Anscombe’s notorious claim in The First Person, that “I” is not a referential term, has suffered an unfair history of discredit. Although, I will ultimately conclude that Anscombe’s position is untenable when argued to apply for all uses of “I”, to deny the irreferentiality of “I” in many common uses is equally wrong-minded. The assumption which undermines both Anscombe’s argument and criticisms thereof is that “I” must always be either referential or not. While this claim seems to be intuitively true, our clinging to the fixity of “I” is purely a result of a fear that to sacrifice the fixity of “I” would be to sacrifice the fixity of self. I will show in what follows that we latently accept an “I” that is, at times, referential, and, at others, not. In doing so, we shall salvage Anscombe’s argument in part.

First, we must dispel a possible misunderstanding of Anscombe’s argument: that its putative failure arises from an unclear notion of “I-reference.” Perhaps, objectors to Anscombe’s argument merely afford “I-reference” a greater latitude of meaning than Anscombe, and this is to account for the fact that what Anscombe finds to be true runs absolutely counter to the common-sense conceptions of the matters. However, Anscombe defines, quite clearly, what she has in mind by saying that “I” is irreferential.

Reference simply is the indicating of some object by some word or expression. The general logical formulation of “reference”-a position Anscombe is not satisfied with-is that for a word or expression to refer to something, it must be exchangeable salva veritate with another name for that thing, when that thing is the subject of some assertion. To this definition of “reference” Anscombe wishes to add that referring terms are in some way intentioned to their objects, although the reference may be incorrect. When she says that the “I” does not refer, she is denying that “I” is a true subject of a sentence in that it does not signal something in the world. There is nothing which “I” “gets hold of” and, furthermore, the “I” is not intended to get a hold of any such object.

Anscombe begins her argument against “I” as a referring term by asking to what “I” would refer were it to indeed refer. She eliminates any other possibilities other than the Cartesian Ego by illustrating with her “man in a tank” example that even if we were completely unaware of our bodies we could still use “I.” If we were blinded and anesthetized in a tepid tank, we would presumably be unaware of our bodies but we would still have “I” thoughts such as “I will never let myself get in this situation again.” Therefore, our bodies cannot be the referent of “I”. The only option left for which to the “I” to refer is some immaterial soul or mind or ego.

At this point, Anscombe recognizes her argument as something of reductio ad absurdum in that if “I” does refer, Descartes must have been right, a position she sees as impossible. If “I” always refers to one’s Cartesian Ego, there is required some identification of the referent across “I” thoughts. This consistency of self-identification is an improper one that requires the positing of some continuous “self” which only leads to confusion. Take the amnesiac. Is his “self” then changed by his loss of memory because it presents itself to him as a discontinuity? The amnesiac uses “I” fine even though his earlier identity is not accessible to him. Many such difficulties arise when we try to posit identification as a continuous self required by the Cartesian Ego. Such an idea leads to a dispute that is, “…self-perpetuating, endless, irresolvable…” (Anscombe 58).

Furthermore, Anscombe notes that “I” might even refer to more than one subject, were it to refer at all. There is certainly a possibility that “I” could have collective reference, a position which Anscombe reinforces by reference to religious life.

From these two objections with “I” as reference, Anscombe concludes that “I” is not a referring term. As she has just demonstrated, “I” does not always “get hold” of the right object because either, in her Cartesian Ego objection, the “self” is not properly an object, or, in her several referent objection, the “I” may refer to sometimes one thing, sometimes more. However, the “I” can also never get hold of the wrong object because the thought or use of “I” demands that there be something which speaks or uses “I”. Even though cases are imaginable where what one says of themselves with “I”, this only shows that one can be wrong about what they self-attribute and not about the (alleged) reference of I. Therefore, the only resolution is to accept that “I” does not get hold of any object whatsoever; “I” is not referential.

This conclusion, as often argued, is patently incorrect. Anscombe’s argument is largely compromised by her insistence that when someone makes an I-statement they must possess and assert a full sense of self. Although her tank argument is convincing, in that I-statements can refer to the speaker in a way that does not require bodily reference, it does not entail that some self must be posited and grasped by the speaker. Gareth Evans writes:

“…it does not follow that in order to elucidate the intention of satisfying ‘x refers to x’, we need a grasp of the self-conscious Idea-type that we have of ourselves. Indeed, it seems plausible that the explanatory direction goes the other way: the fully self-conscious use of ‘I’ can be partly explained, precisely, as a use in which the subject knowingly and intentionally refers to himself (satisfies lx (x refers to x))” (Evans 258-9).

While Anscombe’s argument seems convincing for statements such as “I am John Smith”, statement such as “I am six feet tall” do little to uphold Anscombe. Truthfully, though, even the former sentence may avoid any apprehending of the self. Imagine the actor who is playing John Smith or someone who has assumed the anonymous identity of “John Smith.” In such cases, “I am Jon Smith” may be as simple as “My name is John Smith” and does not require Anscombe’s grasping hold on the “self.” Clearly, Anscombe is incorrect in resolving that if ‘I’ refers it must refer to a Cartesian Ego, her reductio conclusion. [Could be more clearly worded. Something like "Clearly, Anscombe is wrong to conclude that if 'I' refers it must refer to a Cartesian Ego." MH]

However, it is from this failure in Anscombe’s argument that many conclude the opposite of Anscombe, that ‘I’ is referential. To do so is to make the unfortunate mistake of throwing the baby out with the bath water and neglecting the value of Anscombe argument, namely her demonstration of how I-statements could be meaningful and understood without being referential. What is necessary to reconcile Anscombe with her objectors is to adopt a model of I-statements in which “I” may be referential in some cases and non-referential in others.

If the notion that “I” may be sometimes referential and sometimes not seems to run against linguistic sensibility, this is only because one has not separated words themselves from their uses. Strawson writes, “We are apt to fancy we are talking about sentences and expressions when we are talking about the uses of sentences and expressions…Meaning…is a function of the sentence or expression; mentioning and referring and truth and falsity, are functions of the use of the sentence or expression” (Strawson 7). With this model we will demonstrate that the problems we have with “I” result from conflating the word with its use. It should prove uncontroversial that a word (or in Strawson’s terminology, an expression) can be used to sometimes refers, sometimes not.

Consider, for reference, the word “it”. As Anscombe writes in a parenthetical, “…no one thinks that “it is raining” contains a referring expression, “it”…” (Anscombe 55). [Interestingly, Shakespeare did: "The rain it raineth every day"] Clearly, there is a use of “it” and, indeed, many uses of “it” in which the expression “it” does not refer. “It is cold today”, “It is five o’clock”, “It is ten miles to the store”. All such “impersonal expressions” as they are commonly called, feature an “it” that is not used to refer to anything. “It” is merely a grammatical construction to indicate a state of affairs in a certain way, much like “I” does in Anscombe’s proposed model of self-attribution.

However, in other cases, the far more common uses of “it”, the expression is certainly used referentially. “What color is the ball?” “It is blue.” In this exchange, “it” is used to clearly refer to the ball. We naturally countenance such a dual use of “it”, why, then, should “I” not enjoy a similar double use character?

Most of the cases presented when “I” is discussed feature some abstract existentiality such as “I am John Smith.” From these statements, all kinds of elaborate thought experiments are concocted in which the speaker is confused about his identity, unaware what his name is, joking about his name, etc. This led Anscombe to posit that were “I” to be referential it would have to indicate some “self” which is untenable when pushed to these extremes, these odd cases of language. This is an apt reaction and indeed these “John Smith” examples do seem to run counter to an “I” which refers to a Cartesian Ego. There seems to be no problem in denying that “I” is referential in these cases. Anscombe’s assertion that these sentences have no subject and are merely construction of self-attribution seems correct.

However, from this conclusion, we cannot infer that “I” must always be irreferential. The preceding cases were merely instances of “I” used without reference. Consider the sentence “I am six feet tall.” No “self” needs to be posited to assert the height of the subject. “I am six feet tall” seems to be no different from “The body of the speaker of this sentence is six feet tall” or (to use Anscombe A-users example) from “A is six feet tall”. In fact, were it possible for a body to speak this sentence without having a mind, we would not find it strange. If a machine reported “I am six feet tall,” we would likely happily countenance the usage. However, a machine saying “I am John” would be met with greater apprehension and would likely be translated in the listener’s receptivity into “My name is John” or “I have been called John.” Thus, Anscombe’s reductio falls apart.

This is simply because “I” is being used in a different way. We must not assume that referentiality is stored within a word. Rather it is a product of referential use. If we adopt such a model of “I” we will quickly see the problems with its grammar vanish. Like most problems that arise when we prod our language past the conventional usage which does not trouble us, the problem of “I” proves to be a specter born out of muddied conception of word and use.

Works Cited

Anscombe, G.E. M. “The First Person.” Mind and Language. Ed. Samuel Guttenplan. Oxford:

Clarion P, 1975.

Evans, Gareth. The Varieties of Reference. Ed. John McDowell. New York: Oxford UP, 1982.

Strawson, P. F. Logico-Linguistic Papers. Grand Rapids: Ashgate, Limited, 2004.

Erik Hinton (’10) is a Philosophy & Film Studies double major at University of Pittsburgh.

Cover art courtesy of winstoncamille.

Essentially, humans have evolved to be able to infer through computing and processing information at a complex level – more than any other biological being. This feature most likely occurred through the process of natural selection according to the theory of evolution, and thus human beings have adapted to such feature. Although it took sometime to develop computational skills, it is proven that humans have adapted adequately tracing back to antiquity based on our evidence provided by historical and anthropological records. And humans have continued to fulfill their cognitive capacities by developing more complex cognitive skills up through the present day. To illustrate this point, let us assume that the first evolved human may not have understood the inference used in the proposition ‘2 + 2 = 4’, but today, a young child could exercise her computational skills and combine two objects with another two objects and come to the conclusion that two and two make up four, though the child might not know the language, depending on her age.

Moreover, it appears that the computational adaptation has become a genetic trait among humans. Since humans are constantly thinking, and there are many out there that devote their time to inquiring especially into scientific problems, which entails rigorous reasoning, inference is a common phenomenon on a daily basis. We use inference in mathematics, physics, logic, chemistry and most, if not all, of the “professional” disciplines, but it is not just limited to these subjects, it is also used in more simple things such as directions, cooking a meal, and other ordinary activities that people partake daily. Sure, what I have given thus far is just a generic description of the use of inference, but what is an inference exactly other than reasoning between things to derive a conclusion? By this, I mean, what is the nature of inference?

The activity of inference concerning one’s experience is usually founded with symbols or objects, and because of external factors playing a fundamental role in the inference, it seems plausible that the phenomenon, in part, has somewhat of a metaphysical nature from a mind-world perspective. My aim in this essay is to explore the nature of inference and attempt to show how it may be possible that inferences made about the external world, in part, are not just something of a physical nature that is contained and occurs only within the brain, which I think most people nowadays believe that it is only a physical process and consciousness all together is contained within the brain. In doing such task, I will inevitably show that inference requires the two branches of consciousness – access and phenomenal consciousness where the latter will draw on the active externalism thesis.

§1. An Explanation of the Nature of Inference (Roughly Speaking)

As I have just stated, the activity of inference based on an experience is usually founded with symbols or objects to begin with. To use a basic inference in logic for example, imagine using modus ponens. I have a conditional statement, then an assertion (the antecedent of the conditional statement) and from that I can derive a conclusion (the consequent of the conditional statement) inferentially.

So:

A → B
A
∴ B

Or I could use a simple mathematical expression similar to the one in the introduction – a combination of one and two leading to the result of three:
1 + 2 = 3

In my above examples, I ought to conclude that both examples are familiar cases of simple inference that philosophers and mathematicians are well acquainted with. Each are represented by symbols, but inferences are not limited to just being represented by symbols, they can be represented with objects (through experience) as well. Now, a neuroscientist may advocate that these inferences are a purely physical process occurring within the brain. It might be due to some chemical signal, firing of neurons, and so on. A computer scientist and artificial intelligence supporter would most likely say something similar but in terms of computer hardware. With all of the new discoveries in neuroscience and intelligent systems, it would be hard for one to doubt that inference is entirely of a physical nature that only occurs within the brain (or computer system). However, the problem at hand is the lack of clarity of this being a physical phenomenon entirely. The water is still cloudy so to speak and I cannot be certain that this conclusion is accurate without a more thorough look.

I am not going to deny that the biological components of the brain, in part, play a crucial role in human inference. In fact, because of biological neural networks, information can be transmitted and processed through chemical signals. But there seems to be another part that is missing and is not explainable through these neural systems. The feature, partially being developed by the brain, is something beyond matter when we look at inference from a mind-world perspective. There is a relation between mind and world where certain aspects of the world are an external extension of the mind – meaning that consciousness is not just contained within the head – and this view is commonly referred to as active externalism (1) (Chalmers & Clark, 1998). Similarly, Alva Noë appears to be a supporter of this line of thought as well, but has applied it to experience, and this application to experience is what I will be most concerned with throughout the paper. In “Experience Without the Head,” Noë states:

…what we experience visually (for example) may outstrip what we actually see. From this it follows not that experience could not be in the head. What follows, rather, is that it might not be, or rather, that some aspects of some experiences might not always be. A modest conclusion, but one that allows that, at least sometimes, the world itself may drive and so constitute perceptual experience. The world can enter into perceptual experience the way a partner joins us in a dance, or – to change the image slightly – the way the music itself guides us (Noë, 2006).

Noë makes the modest conclusion of “well, it might be or might not be,” which seems to be “iffy” on the subject, but I don’t think that such modesty is needed. There are instances given that serve as proof for the active externalism thesis (2). And active externalism also appears to be obvious in the case of inferences made about the external world because one is unable to make an inference on the most basic (or complex) events that occur within the world if there are no external objects (or symbols of representation present) given to make an inference from. The objects themselves give us a starting point to make inferences.

One may argue, however, that we do not need external objects (nor symbols) given to us through experience to make an inference relevant to the external world, but rather, some inferences can be made based on innate knowledge (3), or the protester may attempt to coin this knowledge as a priori, but it is obvious that ‘a priori’ here is being used in the wrong sense. Moreover, it seems absurd to believe that we have any sort of innate knowledge, especially with what empiricism has taught us over the past few centuries. It does not seem absurd, however, to have a priori synthetic knowledge in the correct sense. What I have expressed as a counter-argument above does not address a priori knowledge in the correct Kantian sense. If we were to take Kant’s actual proposal of there being a priori synthetic knowledge, then yes, I do believe that an inference can be made independent of perceptual experience, but this is much more difficult to explain, which would entail an extensive analysis, and is a different topic for a different day. We can conclude, however, that Kant would agree that experience “awakens” our faculty of knowledge and, for our sake, a priori synthetic knowledge will have to take the backseat to experience as far as we will be concerned. What I am trying to get at is explaining how we make inferences about the external world in a general sense and not to nit pick at our knowledge of space, time, geometry and the like – I am taking for granted that these types of knowledge are already presupposed. Therefore, experience must play a role in the foundation of inferences made about the external world. Once there are objects that are given to one’s perception for that person to make an inference on, the inference, in part, appears to be a quale. Why does it appear to be a quale? It is because there is an unexplainable, sensational gap, in terms of matter, between mind and world at this point in time. Let me use a diagram to illustrate this:

Now the use of the term ‘gap’ (also referred to as the “explanatory gap” by some) is ambiguous here, but what I think the gap, preventing consciousness being declared one-hundred percent fully physical due to the brain, is qualia and in this case, inference, in part, counting as a quale. The problem here is a sensational one, and inference can be partially of access consciousness, but I believe that it can also be partially of phenomenal consciousness (4) (Clark, 2000), where the phenomenal feature of inference is the unexplainable part in terms of matter. The reason for it being split into two parts is due to the one aspect being part of the computational (access) – cognitive processing – and the other being sensational (phenomenal) through perceptually experiencing objects, which contain different qualities that can be sensed, within the world to make inferences on.

When one perceives say a man and woman kissing, she would infer that they are a couple (5). The image would be processed within the brain to make the inference that they are a couple, but the inference begins before the brain receives the image because the experience of the event is necessary to make the inference at all (the perceptual experience is the foundation of the inference) and this is where the unexplainable gap of inference occurs sensationally, or if it were not the case that certain aspects of the world function as an extension of the conscious mind by aiding our mental processes, then this inference would not be possible to make because one would not have the representational mental image of the man and woman kissing. Thus, the cause of the inference does not begin with computation in the brain; the cause of inference in most cases lies in one’s perceptual experience of the external world.

With this explanation of the two parts of consciousness being required in making an inference relevant to the external world, it appears that I am taking a Kantian approach. As Kant had described in his Critique of Pure Reason, the faculty of knowledge is distinguished by sensibility and the understanding. Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, which yield us intuitions, and the understanding allows intuitions to be thoughtful, which concepts arise. The effect of an object on the faculty of representation is called sensation. And the intuition that is in relation to an object through sensation is empirical. So, an empirical intuition gives us appearances of objects that can later become knowledge (Kant, 1929). If we stand on this latter notion only, however, we might run into a problem with giveness or simply putting it, fall into Sellars’s “Myth of the Given.” Luckily for us, that is not the case. Even though empirical intuition gives us appearances of objects, it cannot by itself constitute knowledge. Rather appearances are thought spontaneously through the understanding and concepts of the appearances develop from the understanding. Thus, I think it is safe to say that through concepts, we can have knowledge. Similarly, my approach to inference takes a resembling line of thought with emphasis on a holism of phenomenal and access consciousness being relevant in one making an inference. By only having the perceptions of objects, we cannot call that knowledge. Not only is that problematic, but the perceptions cannot be computed through phenomenal consciousness and thus we have no inference at all. In support of this idea, imagine perceiving an object at one instance and the object later becomes a concept that is cognitively accessible. If the object changes over time and we perceive it after the change, then we have a new perception of the object, which becomes a concept and clashes with the previous concept of that object. So the latter would replace the former, I think, and we would have a new cognitively accessible concept. However, such a process cannot occur in phenomenal consciousness because we would not recognize the change in the object that occurs between perceptual instances. So there is a dependence on access consciousness needed here to process images and output a conclusion inferentially. The dependence, however, is necessarily reciprocal, and that is the stressing point of this paper.

There still may be confusion lingering around on how inference, in part, can be a quale since what I have mentioned thus far are objects in general and not subjective qualities. However, I will attempt to address this issue now. When one perceives anything in the world, the perceiver’s experience of objects leads her to perceive qualities of the objects as well. The qualities are contained within all objects and necessarily predicate those objects. I do not think that it would even be conceivable to imagine an object absent of “secondary” qualities. For example, if a mysterious object had appeared to me in which the object looked though as the color was absent due to some aspect of the object being unfamiliar to me, I would be wrong in allowing myself to think this way because my perception surely could be matched up somewhere on the color spectrum. Moreover, since objects are the foundation of inferences made about the external world, and all objects necessarily contain various qualities within themselves, then that implies that the cause of inference (perceptual experience) necessarily contains qualia, and thus qualia is a necessity in phenomenal consciousness of an inference, which would make itself a broader version of qualia accounting for every sensational property and not just an individual sensation such as ‘seeing red’.

§2. An Attempt of Clarification

Clearly, my theory would seem obscure to most and it could be due to misunderstanding the theory since it is quite a task to explain it coherently6, but let me attempt to explain it analogously to a popular thought experiment. In Frank Jackson’s thought experiment about Mary and the black and white room, Mary was confined to a black and white room and was never exposed to any other colors. She knew everything there was to know about the physical world through her books on chemistry, physics and neurophysiology. One day, Mary was taken out of the room and shown a ripe, red tomato. Mary had no idea what the property red was since she had never experienced it before. Therefore, Mary learned something new and proved that she did not know all there is to know about the world (Jackson, 1986).

Similarly, imagine mechanical Mary, who is exactly the same as a human, in a room that is completely dark with no lighting of any sort. A constant temperature is kept so that Mary cannot sense a variation. There are no sounds, smells or things to be tasted in the room and the scientists of the experiment have developed devices that would temporarily disable Mary’s sense of taste, smell, touch and hearing, but she would remain a conscious being. Since the room is extremely dark, Mary would not be able to use her sight to view anything other than blackness. After several years, mechanical Mary is taken outside of the room and exposed to the real world and the scientists re-enable her senses. Obviously, she has no clue of what anything is that she perceives. But since she is like a human in every way, she has computational skills programmed in her. The scientists sit her at a little children’s play table with two wooden blocks on one side and two on the other. Mary sees the one set of blocks and instinctively moves her arm towards the blocks. The back of her hand smashes into the blocks causing the blocks to fall on the floor. Like a child, Mary recollects on the act and impulsively lets out a laugh, and then she begins to move her other arm towards the set of blocks that remain on the table and proceeds to push them onto the floor as well because she thought that the act was funny and it made her feel happy. So she inferred that by doing it again, she would obtain the same result.

From this experiment, the scientists have learned that mechanical Mary performed a basic computational inference through performing an instinctive act, which caused a mess and made Mary laugh and feel happiness for the first time. She had inferred by doing the same procedure again to the other set of blocks, she would obtain the same result. However, while confined to the black room, she had never inferred anything of this nature before other than the fact that she exists, but nothing about the actual world and her environment because she had never experienced anything sensationally beyond staring at the blackness of the room. Thus, an inference about the external world is dependent on perceptual experience. The world provides objects that eventually become representational mental states, which are sent and computed in the brain for one to make inferences on. Let us not forget that the objects give rise to non-representational mental states also. And since this type of inference is dependent on objects, inference extends over mind and world, which would entail inference partially due to cognitive processes and partially due to sensation where the latter is unexplainable in terms of the physical because of subjectivity and qualia being contained within the experience, which are necessary components in the perception of objects, and I think inference can be declared as a quale itself in certain respect on the phenomenal consciousness side.

Furthermore, the thought experiment regarding mechanical Mary also illustrates that the success of Mary’s adaptation to her environment is dependent on the active externalism thesis. Even though this is a fictional case, we are shown that if it were possible to insert a human into the situation with all of the necessary conditions, then we could conclude that the success of the adaptation to the environment is dependent on the environment providing the human with external “instruments” that would serve as an extension of the person’s consciousness by aiding their mental processes, which will allow them to make inferences.

To conclude, I have argued that inferences made on worldly experience rely on a holistic process. Not only is access consciousness, which does the work of computing information to output a conclusion, but phenomenal consciousness, where the inference begins, is required also since it is the starting point of the inference itself. Overall, I believe that this new analysis of inference has created another roadblock for physicalism since phenomenal consciousness entails subjectivity and qualia in perception. Qualia have been problematic for physicalists in the philosophy of mind and also have prevented a plausible materialist position of the mind from being developed.

References

Chalmers, D. & Clark, A. (1998) “The Extended Mind,” Analysis 58, pp. 10-23

Clark, A. (2000) “A Case Where Access Implies Qualia,” Analysis 60: 265, pp. 30-38

Jackson, F. (1986) “What Mary Didn’t Know,” Journal of Philosophy 83: 5, pp. 291-295

Kant, I. (1929) Critique of Pure Reason, Translated by Norman Kemp Smith, New York, NY:
Palgrave Macmillian, pp. 65-67

______(1977) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Translated by James Ellington,
Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, pp. 10-11

Noë, A. (2006) “Experience Without the Head.” In Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne
(Eds.) Perceptual Experience, New York, NY: Oxford University Pres

Sellars, W. (1997) Empricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Footnotes

(1) This is a generalization made of Chalmers and Clark’s theory of the extended mind.

(2) See Chalmers & Clark, 1998. The Tetris case and the thought experiment regarding Otto who has Alzheimer’s.

(3) One might question why I have brought up innate knowledge. They may assume that I am still dwelling on the Cartesian notion of the mind having some innate knowledge, but rest assured that is not the case. It is the case, however, that some linguists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and even philosophers today still believe that the mind has some innate concepts. Thus, this counter-argument is not all that improbable.

(4) See Clark, 2000. Access consciousness, in brief, is when content of a mental state is available for control of rational action for use of verbal reports or reasoning. In contrast, phenomenal consciousness involves experiential properties such as ‘what it is like’ to see red and the like (qualia). This is a thesis that has been defended by Ned Block and others.

(5) The inference need not be true. P & Q will φ iff P & Q are a couple. It is not the case that this statement is necessarily true. P could be a man where Q is his mother, which would entail, in a strictly normal sense, that they are not a couple. In the latter case, the above statement would be false. Moreover, I am not particularly concerned with the truth or falsehood of the inference, just the inference in general.

(6) As you will notice, section one is somewhat scattered and ill-structured. But when read in its entirety, I think it forms a bigger picture.

L.J. Elkin (’09) is a Philosophy major at University of Pittsburgh.

In section eight of his Discourse on Metaphysics, Leibniz states: “…the nature of an individual substance or of a complete being is to have a notion so complete that it is sufficient to contain and to allow us to deduce from it all the predicates of the subject to which this notion is attributed.” This paper will first delve into the meaning of this definition and many of its logical consequences. An analogy will be drawn between Leibniz’s conception of the universe and the branch of mathematics known as dynamical systems in order to give a more complete understanding of necessity, contingency, and the implications these have on free will.

The formal definition above of a complete notion means that a substance and its characteristics and actions are inseparable. The detail about actions is the most unique to Leibniz’s account of a complete notion for while few people would disagree with the fact that the notion of my ‘self’ includes all my physical characteristics (although Leibniz could argue that matter is nothing but a phenomenon), a Leibnizian complete notion (LCN) would also include everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen to me (me being a representative case for all substances, meaning this argument applies in general). (I will discuss this concept and its implications on free will later.) Every substance must have such a complete notion because a substance is nothing more than the common subject to which many predicates belong. Grammatically, I, the person and substance, am only what could follow in a sentence whose subject is Shane Steinert-Threlkeld (or others depending on who is communicating; for example, I am the real substance to which various subjects [“that kid in the library cubicle,” i.e.] refer). While “God alone could recognize them,” a complete notion of a person contains within it “vestiges of everything that has happened to him and marks of everything that will happen to him” because all the predicates of a substance are completely interrelated in a way that one is not separable from the rest (602). I would not be writing this paper right now if I had not enrolled in this course; my LCN must contain these predicates, which contain infinitely more predicates through a continued regress.

Section 9 of the Discourse details many of the consequences of an LCN. There exist no two substances that resemble each other completely while remaining distinct. Either the two notions that one thinks of as separate substances actually represent the same substance or the knowledge one has of the notions does not constitute an LCN. If one has an LCN for two distinct substances, the two LCNs will not be the same. Therefore, the complete resemblance of two separate substances constitutes an illusion brought about by lack of knowledge, by having incomplete notions. Furthermore, “a substance can begin only be creation and end only by annihilation” (602). This claim follows logically from the fact that a substance contains all predicates from its past, present and future; these predicates will include creation and annihilation which precludes either from happening while the substance truly exists.

Additionally, a substance cannot be divided into two. If such a division were possible, then some predicates would belong to one of the new substances and the rest to the other. Recall, however, that the reason each substance has an LCN is that all its predicates depend on each other. Predicates of a substance, therefore, cannot be separated from any of the others. This same argument works in reverse; one substance cannot be created from two. If possible, the new substance would have two sets of predicates entirely distinct from one another and therefore would not be a substance since its predicates would not completely interrelate. Because a substance can begin and end only through creation and annihilation and substances cannot be recombined, “the number of substances does not naturally increase and decrease, though they are often transformed” (602).

Perhaps the most remarkable consequence of the LCN is that “every substance is like a complete world and like a mirror of God or of the whole universe” (602). Leibniz explains this idea by analogizing each substance to a city seen from various vantage points. Another way of thinking about this result comes from the question that launched modern chaos theory: does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? While this question refers to the sensitivity of a dynamical system to its initial conditions (an idea returned to later), its image reflects the nature of substances, for even though I may not think I feel the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil and the technology does not exist to measure such a miniscule effect, the flap still has an effect on me and every substance in the world. Leibniz makes this point parenthetically in section 15: “in fact every change affects all of them [substances]” (606). Since every change affects every substance, each of its predicates contains implicitly the similar predicates of every other substance (which are interrelated within each substance), the LCN of a substance, being the total of all its predicates, does mirror the entire universe. My LCN, in containing the affect of a butterfly’s flap, contains enough information (location of the butterfly, atmospheric conditions, laws of physics, etc.) to determine the affect the flap had on every other substance in the whole universe. So it goes for every action and every substance (though the form of the implicit containment will differ).

The course that a dynamical system (essentially a set of interdependent functions over time) follows is extremely sensitive to its initial conditions. Returning to the original notion of the butterfly effect, the universe, according to Leibniz, resembles a dynamical system in which God chose the initial conditions (footnote 1). God’s omniscience allows him to see all possible courses for all possible universes and, Leibniz argues, he has chosen the most perfect one. This analogy of the universe to a dynamical system (which is hardly an analogy given that the theory of dynamical system began as an attempt to model “simple” systems in the universe, i.e. the path of a pendulum, the weather, etc.) can extend to include Leibniz’s account of necessary and contingent truths. Even though the universe contains only one set of initial conditions and will follow only one course, the facts that would exist if another course had been chosen are contingent. That I am writing this paper now is a contingent truth because its opposite, even though not physically possible (I cannot both write and not write at the same time), does not represent a logical impossibility. From this perspective, the necessary truths—a truth whose opposite leads to a logical impossibility—are the rules that govern the dynamical system and thus determine the possible courses of the universe. If these rules were not true, the universe could not possibly exist as it does.

This distinction between necessary and contingent truths has many implications for the nature of human freedom in Leibniz’s conception of the universe. While at first glance it may appear that there is room for free will since the facts of our everyday lives are contingent truths, a closer inspection reveals a different realization. Returning to the dynamical system analogy, we see that even though I could theoretically be doing something other than writing this paper right now, because the course of the dynamical system that is the universe has been determined already, it has been inevitable for as long as I have existed that I would be writing this paper in this cubicle at this moment in time. Because only God has complete knowledge of the governing laws of the dynamical system, of all of the necessary truths of the universe, I did not know three weeks ago that this is where I would be right now. Whence comes the illusion of free will. God, however, has always known this fact because my complete notion includes it; I would not be who I am if I were not exactly here right now.

Even though my LCN possesses in it everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen to me, this sort of determinism does not mean that everything that happens to me does so necessarily since the things that happen to me are contingently true. They are true in this universe (which according to Leibniz is both the only and the most perfect one) that I live in but not in all possible universes. It is not necessary that anything that happens does happen, for it is theoretically possible that something else could have happened. But everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in the universe has been determined by God’s choice of this, the most perfect universe.

While this brand of determinism may seem depressing, to an extent it is very satisfying, especially to anyone with a rationalist bent. According to Leibniz, everything God does is orderly (this makes sense with the dynamical system argument in that he operates within the governing rules of the system) and so “what passes for extraordinary is extraordinary only with some particular order established among creatures; for everything is in conformity with respect to the universal order” (600). If one accepts the Leibnizian conception that God has chosen the most perfect universe, then one should be grateful for having incomplete knowledge of complete notions. The human experience would be extraordinarily less rich without the constant quest for what is not yet known. To want to discover the universal order by which extraordinary is ordinary is to be a human being. Even though accepting Leibniz’s metaphysics means accepting a certain degree of determinism, it also instills a great sense of wonder and the greatest richness possible to the human experience. While many people are satisfied to ignore the great metaphysical questions that Leibniz addresses, those who do entertain them will find the process of scientific and philosophic inquiry as something resembling a gift from God.

Works Cited

Cahn, Steven M, ed. Classics of Western Philosophy. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006.

Leibniz, Gottfried. “Discourse on Metaphysics.” Cahn 598 – 618.

–“Monadology.” Cahn 619 – 626.

1. Leibniz could not himself say this because the formal theory of dynamical systems did not yet exist. The theory does, as a matter of fact, depend heavily on calculus, a branch of mathematics which Leibniz is widely credited with discovering.

Shane Steinert-Threlkeld (’11) is a Philosophy & Mathematics major at Johns Hopkins University.