By Travis McIntyre

Abstract: This paper concerns the concept of reference within the field of semantics. W. V. Quine argues in his Word and Object that the relation between words and the objects they refer to is metaphysically indeterminate; there are no facts in the world which can determine what objects words refer to. This paper refutes this thesis by expanding the available facts for establishing reference from behavioral facts (stimulus meaning) to include mental facts which include peoples‟ intentions (intentional semantics). I go on to point out how this new set of facts does not entirely escape Quine‟s indeterminacy thesis. There remains an epistemic problem of knowing what objects given words refer to. This epistemic problem seems to fall under the general skeptical problem of under determination of theory by data. But the paper shows that the epistemic problem is a more significant threat than under determination of theory by data.

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Semantics is a crucial aspect of language and much has been written on it since the start f the field. One of the most fundamental concepts within semantics is the reference relation. It is the relation between words in a language and the objects they refer to. Intuitively, this relation is and must be determinate in that there are facts in the world which determine what object a given word refers to. If this relation is in determinate, language would be of little use because what is being referred to would be unknowable. But there are several philosophers who have questioned the determinate nature of language and concluded that language cannot have a determinate reference from words to objects in the world.1

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The second chapter of W. V. Quine’s Word and Object is devoted to showing that the reference of words to the world is indeterminate. Further, Quine takes the meaning of words to be metaphysically indeterminate: there are no facts in the world which can give words a definite meaning. This paper explains why the metaphysical claim about the nature of language is fallacious. But while the metaphysical claim is fallacious, there remains a genuine epistemic problem about the inability for someone to know what someone else is referring to when using a particular word. This problem reduces to under determination of theory by data, so in order for the epistemic problem to be significant there must be a difference between the under determination of theory by data found in the sciences (e.g., physics, biology, etc) and that of semantics. This paper shows that a significant difference between the under determination of theory by data found in the natural sciences and that of semantics exists. Therefore it shows that Quine‟s case for metaphysical indeterminacy entails a genuine epistemic problem for the relation of reference from words to objects in the world.

Notes

Art courtesy of maxspider.

By Gary Wang

In Hannah Arendt’s earlier work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, imagination is caught by totalitarian ideology leading to a denial of experience and a complicity in evil.[1] In her later work, Eichmann in Jerusalem, she explicitly condemns Eichmann’s “lack of imagination” as evidence of his inability to think and as paradigmatic of her diagnosis of totalitarian evil as banal[2]. In her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, Arendt’s discussion centers on how imagination is central to the faculty of judgment to possibly resist evil.[3] The relationship between Arendt’s conceptions of imagination hinges upon the existence of a space of appearances in which speech can extend the possibilities of representative thinking. Otherwise, the faculty of imagination runs amok allowing for logicality to replace thinking.

I. Ideological Consistency

For Arendt, totalitarian ideologies emphasize their internal consistency rather than their subject matter since its “movement does not spring from experience but is self-generated…because it transforms the one and only point that is taken and accepted from experienced reality into an axiomatic premise.”[4] While the factual basis of ideology arises out of specific historical circumstances in Europe, the consistency in which it must be implemented disregards “the fortuitousness that pervades reality”[5]. Reality is fortuitous precisely because “facts have no conclusive reason whatever for being what they are; they could always have been otherwise” meaning that retrospective explanations for facts themselves do not determine why events occurred; rather they reconcile factuality with human comprehension[6]. Ideology assumes and seeks to prove that its explanations for human events are determinate.

However, ideology is not an explanation for the present, or what is, but rather a consistent explanation for “the secrets of the past, the intricacies of the present, [and] the uncertainties of the future”[7]. As a result, there’s no stable basis from which one can begin something new since the foundation upon which to form opinions is “shifting and shuffling in utter sterility”[8]. Since events constantly change, ideology, in order to adapt, must constantly vary its rationalization for events but the ideology’s core premise – such as the existence of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy – remains unchanged since this ‘fact’ is precisely hidden from sensory experience. To uncover the concealment, ideologies appeal to “a sixth sense that enables us to become aware of it…The concept of enmity is replaced by that of conspiracy, and this produces a mentality in which reality – real enmity or real friendship – is no longer experienced and understood in its own terms but is automatically assumed to signify something else.”[9] Ideology perverts common sense, from that which “regulates and controls all other senses and without which each of us would be enclosed in his own particularity of sense data which in themselves are unreliable and treacherous” by denying reality the possibility to appear and instead subsuming all objects in experience to fit the ideological explanation.[10] The connection between devaluing common sense and the uses of imagination will become important later on.

So, the dialectical movement in ideological argumentation explains past setbacks in terms of future success so that the distinction between past and present is erased foreclosing the possibility the present ideological explanation can be contradicted. Any potentially contradictory event is explained in reference to the true conspiracy accessible only to a perverted common sense made possible by historical changes in the subject’s epistemology.

II. Common Sense to Common Sense Reasoning

Arendt traces the distrust of one’s own senses to Galileo and Descartes. The invention and practical success of the telescope proved that all events were valid according to universal laws “beyond the reach of human sense experience” and “beyond the reach of human memory” forming what Arendt terms, the Archimedean point[11]. This epistemological breakthrough occurs when Galileo transfigured geometry to algebra, dominated by internally consistent symbols, which spawned the modern tendency of “reducing terrestrial sense data and movements to mathematical symbols” giving a “non-spatial symbolic language” to scientific discovery[12]. In this new language, nature, to be understandable, has to reflect the logical structures of the mind. So, consciousness transforms sensory data into consistent symbols in order to formulate universal laws to understand nature after the telescope proved that self-evident sense experience was fallible. The key difference between pre-Galilean and modern ways of understanding sense experience is that the former relies on the possibility of nature’s self-evident disclosure and the latter relies on actively subsuming the sense experience of nature under the structures of human consciousness thereby pre-empting self-evident disclosure. The relationship of this new epistemology, where human beings must actively reach into appearance, to totalitarian ideology’s pretension to fashion human nature will become important later on. At this point, Arendt introduces the distinction, which will become critical later on, between “the capacities of the human mind for understanding…without true comprehension”[13] with the former concerned with how an event can be described consistently with respect to language and the latter concerned with the meaning of the event in its particularity. The difference depends on imagination’s relationship to language.

Consequently, common sense is no longer the five senses working together self-evidently and instead is the common sense reasoning of self-evident logic that structures human consciousness indicating the radical flight of self-evidence from the giveness of sense data to the different sense of giveness in the formal rules of logic. This flight – confirmed when the senses common to generations of individuals before the telescope were exposed as fallible – revealed for Descartes and modern science that “intelligibility to human understanding does not at all constitute a demonstration of truth, just as visibility did not at all constitute proof of reality.”[14] The fact that individuals could live their day to day lives believing the sun revolved around the earth and the fact that their belief was demonstrably false indicated that everyday experience can just as likely be a guarantor of fallibility as infallibility. As a result, sense experience and human reason, governing what’s intelligible, are both suspect since “Being…is tremendously active and energetic: it creates its own appearances, except that these appearances are delusions.”[15] Thus, truth becomes hypothetical truth subject to demonstrable confirmation over time rather than truth’s correspondence to a given reality: truth must be continually demonstrated in the future[16].

In light of science’s demonstrations of truth, philosophy withdraws to an analysis of the structures of consciousness in order to analyze sensation not sense data[17]. This retreat to consciousness means that objects no longer have an “unalterable identical shape of its own” since it’s “an object of consciousness on the same level with a merely remembered or entirely imaginary thing”[18]. With the fallibility of the senses and understanding established, the only sense that individuals have in common is “their faculty of reasoning”[19] or the deduction of conclusions by applying axiomatic rules of logic such as the law of non-contradiction in thought and language. The movement of logic is embedded within the structures of consciousness but not what’s contained in consciousness. Its coherence is strictly the internal consistency of its symbols. The force of logical movement arises from the fact that “the structure of one man’s mind is supposed to differ no more from that of another than the shape of his body.”[20] Thus, common sense reasoning, or logicality, coerces the Cartesian subject into accepting its conclusions by rooting itself in the Cartesian subject’s identity as a human being solely on its common and self-evident capacity to reason. The way in which the consistency in logical language can foreclose the possibility of meaning will become important later on.

III. Loneliness and the Space of Appearances

The emergence of Cartesian doubt within the subject, the heralding of demonstration as the criterion for truth, and the historical developments in Europe during the 19th and early 20th century, constituted the genealogical elements of the modern experience of loneliness that is the “essence of totalitarian government”[21]. The breakdown of classes into masses, the loss of authority in traditional institutions, and the denigration of social relationships, leads to an atomized society of mass, as opposed to isolated, loneliness[22].

The fundamental structure of consciousness is the two-in-one where the self recognizes its own internal difference as the basis for its own identity.[23] Consciousness becomes actualized, or made real, in the activity of thinking which is the self’s dialogue with itself. This occurs under the existential condition of solitude, where the self withdraws from all worldly activity in order to think. However, the self’s two-in-one dialogue in solitude is also lost under the condition of loneliness because the reality of the self and the world as a space of appearances are interrelated. Given that thinking – an equivocal dialogue of the self with itself – is a private experience without certainty nor necessary conclusion, the self is confirmed “through the spoken word in which he identifies himself as the actor, announcing what he does, has done, and intends to do” or when the self’s actions can be described by others.[24] Language then must not be used “to veil intentions but to disclose realities” because without trust between individuals, the degree to which reality is intersubjectively valid will be limited. Without the possibility of being recognized as the speaker or actor, the self loses trust in oneself since there’s no escape from the equivocality of thinking. One is not sure if what one is thinking is real or if sensations correspond with reality since one’s sensory experiences are suspect without intersubjective confirmation[25]. However, when the self appears in the presence of others, it confirms its identity as one because its very appearance, by speech or action, necessitates the cessation of the two-in-one split of thinking. The stream of consciousness by itself cannot deduce the body or the validity of one’s thoughts; it can only deduce the certainty of doubt.

The space of appearances is not physically limited or purely subjective. Even in solitude, the self can imagine the possible positions of others and thus move “in a space that is potentially public”.[26] However, under conditions of loneliness, individuals are susceptible to the temptation to find meaning in ideology by exchanging one’s capacity to think about oneself in the past, present and future for one’s capacity to grasp certainty for all time.

IV. The Appeal of Ideology

Just as Cartesian doubt and scientific rationality define what constitutes truth as active experimentation with appearances, ideological mental activity collapses the past and present into the potentiality of the future in the attempt to actualize its already given claim to universal validity precisely by mastering all human affairs[27]. Thus, ideology relates to reality, a set of haphazard events, in the same way modern science relates to nature, a seemingly random set of sensory data. Both impose a law of their own, born from the structures of consciousness in the form of logical reasoning, onto reality in order to explain it. The totalitarian elite don’t accept the ideology they propagate as factually true or false but have in common with modern science, the hypothesis that everything is[28]. Both seek to persistently test the hypothesis of omnipotence. Without the possibility for sensation or understanding to be self-evident, logicality is elevated since it “is as independent of experience as it is of thinking” since its premise is self-evident[29].

The question becomes what sense of self, does the consistency of logic appeal to? What Cartesian Doubt leaves unscathed are the structures of consciousness themselves, the rules of logic guiding the deduction from premises to conclusions. So when one asserts A is B and that B is C, the concept A already contains within itself the concept C given the acceptance of the first two premises. This example, the transitive property of equality, is consistent with itself in the mind regardless of sensations and thoughts. A, B, and C are symbols that can represent any object provided they represent them accurately. Yet, it’s impossible to evaluate if the symbols of logic represent reality merely based off the consistency of symbols with each other.

So, the sense of self that grounds the self-evidence of logical thinking are the structures of one’s consciousness supposedly common to all human beings and are valid regardless of the specific thoughts, desires, and sensations appearing in consciousness itself. It’s this very commonality that allows for Stalin’s secret police to extract false confessions[30]. Arendt writes:

“Before the alternative of facing the anarchic growth and total arbitrariness of decay or bowing down before the most rigid, fantastically fictitious consistency of an ideology, the masses probably will always choose the latter and be ready to pay for it with individual sacrifices …because in the general disaster this escape grants them a minimum of self-respect.”[31]

The structures of consciousness are self-evident while sensations and thoughts are suspect. This means, the consistency of the structures of consciousness become more important than what’s contained in consciousness since logical consistency can’t be doubted. As Arendt writes, “the inner coercion whose only content is the strict avoidance of contradictions that seems to confirm a man’s identity outside all relationships with others” is self-propelled logical deduction.[32] This indicates that what makes loneliness unbearable is that it intensifies the equivocality of thinking and denies the human need to confirm one’s senses, thoughts, and ultimately, one’s identity. Given the loss of self-evidence and the possibility for the intersubjective confirmation of one’s own sensations and thoughts, individuals tried to escape loneliness by replacing the uncertainty equivocal nature of thinking with dogma. As a result, the first premise of totalitarian logic must remain axiomatic and ignore contrary evidence because it is the foundation for the totalitarian subject to confirm its senses, thoughts and identity to itself.[33]

The blindness to receiving new experiences are manifestations of a lonely self searching for confirmation and coincidentally, the internal consistency of totalitarianism appealed to that search by virtue of its coherence in explaining the past and present in terms of a future that can never be validated by experience. In these instances, logicality does not regulate thinking but exploits the uncertainty of experience to fashion the meaning of all events consistently in order to self-referentially reconcile the sensations with one’s identity.

This identification of the self with an abstract ideology results in fantastical delusions of grandeur: the appeals to History and Destiny. The language of ideology appeals to a transcendent ‘meaning’ that serves to interpret reality consistently. Ideological language divorces itself from experience and the finality of the past. No events can interrupt the self-consistency of the language because the appeal of the language itself lay in its internal consistency. However, in order for people to function in everyday life under ideological conditioning, they, “through sheer imagination” were “spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experience deal to human beings and their expectations.” That is, the faculty of imagination can make present in the mind, what is sensually not present, because Cartesian Doubt has “processed into an object of consciousness on the same level with a merely remembered or entirely imaginary thing” the actual objects given to the senses[34].

The masses, via sheer imagination, reinforce the internal consistency of totalitarian language precisely by giving leeway for euphemisms of ‘History’ and ‘Superhuman’, to mean anything and therefore nothing minus something transcendent with no regard for particulars. Ideological language gave people “the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, [and] unique” indicating that lonely individuals willingly had the illusion that their actions would be remembered and thus confirmed in their reality[35]. People used imagination to confirm the reality of their identity by identifying themselves with totalitarianism’s transcendent meaning in order to try and escape from the painful uncertainty of loneliness.

V. Representative Thinking

Imagination could also provide the means to escape blind ideological indoctrination. Arendt, drawing on Kant, locates imagination as the faculty that synthesizes the already ordered manifold of intuitions and then renders that manifold intelligible by synthesizing it with a concept.[36] In order for the manifold of intuitions, ordered by the concepts of understanding, to be recognized under a concept, the imagination already has to produce an image or schema for the concept to subsume the manifold of intuitions.[37] It allows for the collection of colors in the shape of a tree to be to be called a tree by bringing the manifold of intuitions under a concept but prior to the intuitions there must have already been an image in the mind associated with the concept that allows the intuitions once given to the senses to be connected with the concept.

Imagination is also the first step for the possibility of impartial and reflective judgment. But first, thinking precedes judgment under solitude.[38] Thinking, as exemplified by the Socratic dialogues, has a tendency to “‘unfreeze’… words (concepts, sentences, definitions, doctrines)” by undermining the applicability of concepts to describe all the particulars supposedly beneath them.[39] Thinking exposes this gap between the general concept and various particulars since Being is never totally manifest in appearance but only reveals hints of itself.[40]

For Arendt, representative thinking (political judgment) involves imagining “how I would feel and think if I were in…” the position of another but not as if one were the Other; the distinction being the difference between representing the Other’s possible standpoint in imagination and blindly adopting the Other’s actual perspective or trying to adopt their private mental states[41]. To even have a standpoint implies having a basis to stand from – the facts and experiences informing opinion and action – but the “experience of trembling, wobbling motion of everything we rely on for our sense of direction and reality” under totalitarianism perverts the use of imagination by constantly shuffling the ground underneath judgment precluding the development of a standpoint and the recognition of another’s standpoint.[42] Under conditions of loneliness, judgment is impossible since there is no one to hear them and no one to validate them.

For Arendt, the more positions represented in imagination, the more impartial the judgment[43]. Without the spectators to constitute a space for appearances, no action or speech could appear meaningfully because they could never survive their ephemeral existence. Yet, Arendt’s account of representative thinking describes how representing another’s possible standpoints informed by their physical characteristics, desires, or experiences could generate within the spectator a new experience of thinking because a different set of particulars are the object of thought. For example, if the spectator imagined herself as another race, her opinion of affirmative action may be enlarged. However, Arendt’s own account of representative thinking lacks a way to weigh between different positions and instead asserts that imagination “ascends from these particularities to some impartial generality” (italics mine).[44] What follows is an attempt to highlight the differences between Arendt’s account of representative thinking and her account of reflective judgment in order to then modify her account of representative thinking. The crucial difference will be Arendt’s assumption that impartiality means reflecting on possible standpoints rather than actual ones.

VI. Representative and Reflective Judgment

Normally, judgment involves the application of concepts to particulars but in the judgment of the unprecedented imagination becomes important. According to Arendt’s reading of Kant, reflective judgment – when the concept is derived from the particular rather than applied onto it – discriminates based off the inner senses (smell and taste) because “the it-pleases-or-displeases-me is immediate and overwhelming” meaning the inner senses judge objects in their particularity.[45] On the other hand, the objects of the three outer senses (hearing, sight, touch) can be represented by imagination because they “share their properties with other objects”[46]. The representational nature of the outer sense and the discriminatory nature of the inner senses combine to create the experience of reflective judgment where one’s immediate pleasure at the perception of an object is subject to “another choice: one can approve or disapprove of the very fact of pleasing”[47]. The emphasis is on taste rather than logic because then debate, the defining feature of politics for Arendt, would be compulsive rather than persuasive. Imagination functions by removing the object from direct sense perception and instead subjecting it to inner sense, which is necessarily discriminatory.

Here, the second order reflective judgment is ultimately governed by communicability which presupposes common sense or the “sensus communis”[48]. In the context of judgment, common sense is broadly understood as “an extra mental capability…that fits us into a community” implying the possibility that judgments can be validated intersubjectively.[49] The sensus communis assumes a distinction between communication and expression.[50] The latter is the ability to let others know one’s needs, desires, and wants or all the What attributes of a person, but the former is the ability to persuade others requiring an ability “to think from the other person’s standpoint; otherwise one will never meet him, never speak in such a way that he understands.”[51] The possibilities of language will later illuminate the relationship between communication and imagination in terms of thinking from the standpoint of a possible Other.

The judging spectator represents another’s possible position and then must weigh the pleasure arrived at that position with her own position in terms of communicability which tests the degree self-interest that must be removed in judgment. The less partial the judgment, the more intelligible it will be to others and more intersubjectively valid it will be. What guides the spectator’s own weighing between various possible standpoints and her own are the examples the spectator imagines.[52] The example can be “some incident and some person” and they are valid only within a particular community of spectators.[53] Specifically, their actions don’t provide a general rule to apply to all particulars but rather manifest, in their enactment, a principle that inspires. Arendt writes:

“Principles do not operate from within the self as motives do…but inspire, as it were, from without; and they are much too general to prescribe particular goals, although every particular aim can be judged in the light of its principles once the act has been started. For, unlike the judgment of the intellect which precedes action, and unlike the command of the will which initiates it, the inspiring principle becomes fully manifest only in the performing act itself.”[54]

Socrates and Jesus manifested their principles in their action, speech and lives. Hence, the communicability of one’s reflective judgment is governed with reference to which examples the community of spectators has in their minds[55]. Just as the ‘image’ or schema of the tree must be imagined in a community, in order to recognize a manifold of intuitions as a tree, the example must be present in the minds of the spectators to guide the discussing the relative merits of everyone’s judgments.

VII. Speech in Judgment

However, there’s a tension between Arendt’s account of representative thinking (‘Truth and Politics’) and reflective judgment (Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy) in terms of the context in which the judgment or opinion occurs. As Roland Beiner writes:

she is tempted to integrate judgment into the vita activa, seeing it as a function of the representative thinking and enlarged mentality of political actors, exchanging opinions in public while engaged in common deliberation. On the other hand, she wants to emphasize the contemplative and disinterested dimension of judgment, which operates retrospectively, like aesthetic judgment…Arendt, achieves a final resolution by abolishing this tension, opting wholly for the latter conception of judgment.[56]

On one hand, the representative thinker is forming an opinion to act. On the other hand, the spectator judges retrospectively without aiming to act. If Beiner is right, then Arendt lacks an account of political judgment except “when the chips are down”.[57] Her analysis of conscience occurs in marginal situations[58] and the spectator imagines the possible rather than actual judgments of others[59]. Moreover, there’s no mention of examples to guide representative thinking.

However, Arendt’s articulation of political speech is central to modifying her account of judgment in order to describe the conditions of representative thinking. The key is her emphasis on representing the possible standpoints of others as opposed to adopting the “actual views of those who stand somewhere else” since the former is the movement of impartial judgment and the latter is blind empathy.[60] However, her distinction means that the judging citizen does not pay attention to any actual standpoints articulated in anyone’s actual speech but imagines their possible standpoints which are “the conditions they are subject to, which always differ from one individual to the next, from one class or group as compared to another.”[61] However, could the range of possible standpoints be limited by self-interest in ways that are impossible to remove without actually listening to the standpoints of Others?

Arendt assumes the space of possible standpoints comes into being in the absence of self-interest by letting imagination automatically create the possible positions of others to then be reflected on. For example, the citizen, in judging from the hypothetical position of a black college student, could support affirmative action on the basis that they are black but just as validly oppose affirmative action because others wrongly attribute their accomplishments to race. Either way, by assuming that all possible standpoints are determined by attributes, the citizen can inadvertently import her own biases, even biases unrelated to self-interest, onto the range of possible standpoints which limits the variety of viewpoints considered. If attributes don’t imply interests or standpoints, how can imagination in the absence of self-interest fill the space with other possible standpoints?

VIII. Language and Imaginative Imitation

Arendt’s account ignores the possibility that the Other’s speech can extend the citizen’s imagination by undergoing an event of disclosure. She assumes the “only condition for this exertion of the imagination is disinterestedness” and concludes paradoxically that not listening to the actual positions of other’s is somehow impartial.[62] The range of standpoints considered in representative thinking must be actual rather than possible. First, thinking in solitude has already liberated the citizen from her interest by removing her from being directly affected by the particular. In the Socratic dialogues, thinking loosens the meaning of concepts by exposing the inconsistency between them and the particulars they are supposed to describe. Thus, to be disinterested is to loosen the way one thinks words mean so that one can be open to the other possible meanings.

Now, the citizen exerts her imagination by representing the Other’s speech in the inner sense. Here, she can imagine herself as the speaker of the Other’s speech thereby thinking from her identity where she is not. Since Arendtian speech discloses the Who of a person not the What, imaginatively imitating the Other gives the citizen the possibility to expand what words could possibly mean for her by seeing its use by the Other. This attempt is neither fruitless nor blindly empathic because she’s not trying to understand the Other’s speech through her own understanding of the possibilities of meaning in language. Rather, imagining oneself using the Other’s words generates new possibilities of meaning since one is necessarily exposed to previously discounted or ignored uses of language.

Analogously, in the experience of reading a text, words appear in the inner sense when imagination takes the literal sight of the letters on the page and reproduces them as sound in the inner sense. This use of the imagination stages a confrontation between the reader’s personal configurations of words and the text’s new configuration and it’s up to the reader’s inner sense to feel comfortable with the way language is used in the text. To comprehend what an author means is to already to have imaginatively imitated his or her words in your voice.

The degree one feels comfortable speaking in one’s voice the words of another indicates how meaningful the others words are. In the same way, the degree to which the citizen can comprehend the perspective of the Other is how easily the citizen can use the Other’s configuration of words in her own voice. This is because the speaker may not know all the possible meanings of his speech, but his speech already has to be meaningful to him when he speaks it. The irreducible gap between the meaning of the speech to citizen and the way in which the speech makes sense to the speaker is what imaginative imitation seeks to bridge in order to expand the possibilities of language for the citizen.

Arendtian speech is “finding the right words at the right moment” because persuasion relies on the possibility for meaning to be shared.[63] Unlike the impersonal consistent rules of logic, the language in an Arendtian speech emphasizes eloquence by constantly transgressing the boundaries of the consistency between concepts.[64] By contrast, Himmler’s language rules were dangerous not because they were hateful but because they prevented people from thinking in their own language by prohibiting people from describing particulars outside the terms of the language rules.[65] Thus, clichés are meaningless because their indiscriminate usage prevents them from being meaningful to anyone; no one’s inner sense discriminates when hearing a cliché because the configurations of words in a cliché aren’t unique to anyone. Paradigmatically, “Eichmann’s inability to think was closely connected to his in ability to speak” because his impoverished stock phrases guarded him from reality by precluding him from being able to describe particulars in his own voice.[66] His euphemisms were so successful that they prevented him from recognizing or judging the abhorrent situation he was in the midst of. The language rules closed the space of appearances between individuals and within them by denying them the conceptual resources to distinguish themselves in their speech. Hence, the possibilities for thinking and speaking mutually presuppose each other.

In this way, the absence generated by disinterest entails being receptive to the ways other perspectives describe particulars. As such, Arendt’s argument that sign language cannot substitute itself for speech presupposes that the meaning in language can be shared amongst people whereas a sign language is purely expressive and therefore its meaning can’t be shared[67]. Indeed, the sensus communis presupposed by Arendt and Kant is really the stock of common words, phrases and sentences used by a community to describe particulars. In order to for one to persuade, it must be possible to be think in a language that others can comprehend, which presupposes already imagining oneself using language in the ways the Other does. Therefore, impartial judgment considers the actual judgments of others in order to expand the meaning of one’s own concepts in describing a particular. The comfort in which one can do this is the second order judgment that is subject to intersubjective communication.

By contrast, the emphasis on consistency in totalitarian ideology suppresses the possibility for language to be meaningful. Deduction guides the analysis of concepts but the meaning of those concepts depends on the limits of one’s own imagination. Without a space of appearances, imagination has no experience of language to draw upon since no one’s Who can be disclosed. Moreover, the emphasis on consistency, as opposed to creativity, as the fundamental relation between words tends to limit what can be communicated as well as the ability to comprehend the unprecedented. Most importantly, the way in which loneliness is unbearable reflects an inability for one’s words to be meaningful since one’s speech can’t be heard and therefore one’s thoughts lack the confirmation needed to trust them. The ability to impartially judge then is closely related to the ability to imagine other possible meanings in language.

Footnotes

[1] The Origins of Totalitarianism pg 351

[2] Eichmann in Jerusalem pg 288

[3] Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy pg 68

[4] The Origins of Totalitarianism pg 471

[5] Ibid pg 352

[6] Between Past and Future “Truth and Politics” pg 242

[7] Origins of Totalitarianism pg 469

[8] Between Past and Future “Truth and Politics” pg 258

[9] Origins of Totalitarianism pg 471

[10] Ibid pg 476

[11] The Human Condition pg 263

[12] Ibid 265

[13] Ibid pg 270

[14] Ibid 275

[15] Ibid 276

[16] Ibid 278

[17] Ibid 280

[18] Ibid 282

[19] Ibid 283

[20] Ibid 284

[21] The Origins of Totalitarianism pg 475

[22] Ibid pg 317

[23] Responsibility and Judgment “Thinking and Moral Considerations” pg 184

[24] Ibid pg 179

[25] The Origins of Totalitarianism pg 477

[26] Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy pg 43

[27] The Origins of Totalitarianism pg 469

[28] Ibid pg 387

[29] Ibid pg 477

[30] Ibid pg 473

[31] Ibid pg 352

[32] Ibid pg 478

[33] Ibid pg 478

[34] The Human Condition pg 282

[35] Eichmann and Jerusalem pg 105

[36] Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy pg 81

[37] Ibid pg 81

[38] Responsibility and Judgment “Thinking and Moral Considerations” pg 165

[39] Ibid pg 175

[40] Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy pg 80

[41] Between Past and Future. “Truth and Politics” pg 241

[42] Ibid 258

[43] Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy pg 43

[44] Between Past and Future. “Truth and Politics” pg 242

[45] Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy pg 64

[46] Ibid pg 66

[47] Ibid pg 69

[48] Ibid pg 70

[49] Ibid pg 70

[50] Ibid pg 70

[51] Ibid pg 74

[52] Responsibility and Judgment. “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy” pg 145

[53] Ibid pg 145

[54] Between Past and Future “Truth and Politics” pg 242

[55] Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy pg 84

[56] Ibid pg 139

[57] Ibid pg 139

[58] Responsibility and Judgment. “Thinking and Moral Considerations” pg 188

[59] Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy pg 43

[60] Between Past and Future “Truth and Politics” pg 241

[61] Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy pg 43

[62] Between Past and Future “Truth and Politics” pg 242

[63] The Human Condition pg 26

[64] Ibid pg 180

[65] Eichmann in Jerusalem pg 106

[66] Ibid Pg 49

[67] The Human Condition pg 179

Works Cited

1. Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace. Jovanovich, 1973. Print.

2. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1958. Print.

3. Arendt, Hannah. ed. Kohn, Jerome. Responsibility and Judgment. New York: Random House Inc. 2003. Print

4. Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann and Jerusalem. New York: Penguin Group. 2006. Print

5. Arendt, Hannah. ed. Beiner, Roland. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1982. Print

6. Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future. New York: The Viking Press, Inc. 1968. Print.

Gary Wong (’11) is a Philosophy major at Whitman College.

Art courtesy of quaerion.

Abstract. In their article “The Extended Mind” (1998), Andy Clark and David Chalmers introduce a theory of extended cognition. In this paper I explain what extended cognition theories maintain by examining one such theory in particular- namely the Extended Mind thesis (EM), which Clark and Chalmers put forth. Following this, I consider two popular objections raised against EM- one based on concerns about what exactly constitutes a “part” of a cognitive system, and the other based on the intuition that the biological body is what marks the natural boundary between humans and their environments- and provide a defense of EM from each of these objections.

1.1. Introduction

In the past, philosophers have thought of the biological brain and body of the agent as being the sole physical substrates that make up the mind. But, over the last decade a theory of the mind has emerged which suggests that a human’s mind, in particular one’s mental states and cognitive processes, may at times “extend” into the environment that immediately surrounds their body. According to the Extended Mind thesis (EM), parts located beyond the agent’s body can serve as the material vehicles of the agent’s mind and, in such cases, these relevant parts should be viewed as constitutive parts of the mind. In this sense, contrary to what has been traditionally thought, EM claims that the mind “extends” beyond the body.

This paper has three major parts: first, I will outline the central claims of EM and the arguments put forth by Andy Clark and David Chalmers in favor of it (section 2.1.) and follow this with an example of the theory (2.2.); second, I will consider two objections to the theory, one based on concerns about what exactly constitutes a “part” of a cognitive system and the other on the intuition that the biological body is what marks the natural boundary between humans and their environments; and third, I will provide I defense of EM against both objections, in each case arguing that the theory is able to withstand the objection raised against it.

2.1. The Extended Mind thesis

Andy Clark and David Chalmers first introduced EM in an article called “The Extended Mind”. In this article the authors make two central claims- one regarding cognitive processes and the other regarding mental states. Mental states include things such as propositional thoughts, experiences, beliefs, desires, feelings, and so forth. Cognitive processes, on the other hand, are processes that take place within an agent’s mind, or cognitive system, such as “retrieval of memories, linguistic processes, and skill acquisition.”[1] The first claim EM makes is that an agent’s cognitive processes can be partially constituted by portions of the world that are not bound by their brain-and-body.
How I have phrased this claim is important since if, instead of “not bound by their brain-and-body,” I were to have said “non-biological” or “parts of their external environment, I would be begging the very question that EM is attempting to address. After all, the theory aims to redefine the very notion of what is internal or external to the agent. So, to say, for example, that an agent’s cognitive processes can be partially constituted by “parts of their external environment,” would be to assume that the relevant portions that lie beyond the agent’s body are external to the agent and a part of the agent’s environment, and thus, that they are not a part of the agent or the agent’s mind. Similarly, it would be wrong to use the phrase “non-biological” in this case since Clark and Chalmers remain open to the possibility that one agent’s mind may be partially constituted by the mind of another agent (further discussion of this in 4.3.).[2] Thus, by claiming the mind can be realized by vehicles outside of the traditional “shell” of a human (their brain and/or body), EM is arguing that what is internal to a human agent is not (always) just what is internal to its body. After all, if parts of the world beyond an agent’s body really are the physical realizers of that agent’s cognitive process then these parts should be seen as internal to the agent.

The second claim of EM is that an agent’s non-occurrent mental states, such as beliefs and desires, can be partially constituted by portions of the world that are not bound by their brain-and-body. A non-occurrent belief is one that is not currently being entertained, whereas an occurrent belief is one that you are entertaining right now. For example, if I were to ask you whether you believed the sky to be blue in color, you would surely say yes. If so, then before I had asked you this question, your belief that the sky is blue would have been non-occurrent (unless you were already entertaining the thought). But, having been asked about your belief regarding the color of the sky, you likely brought that belief into consciousness and thus, what was once your non-occurent belief has now become your occurrent belief that the sky is blue.

The distinction between occurrent and non-occurrent beliefs is important as Clark and Chalmers are clear that the EM thesis only makes claims about non-occurrent mental state extension, and not occurrent mental state extension.[3] This is likely because it is often held that our occurrent mental states have a phenomenally conscious feel to them, that is a feeling of “what it is like” to be in that occurrent mental state, but Clark and Chalmers both hold that consciousness cannot not be realized externally from the brain-and-body (although they are silent about why this is). So, in order to avoid committing themselves to the claim that consciousness extends, Clark and Chalmers limit their claims about extended mental states to non-occurrent ones. Furthermore, to avoid the same result with regards to their first claim, they must also limit the extension of cognitive processes to those that are not conscious.

Thus, for those who take the view that all cognitive processes and all mental states are conscious and occurrent, such as Galen Strawson, EM would be implausible since it only makes claims about mental states and processes that do not display consciousness. The view that all our mental states must be occurrent, however, does not seem plausible to me, and Clark and Chalmers would agree[4], because it denies the highly intuitive claim that one can have a belief, a desire, or knowledge that they are not currently entertaining. Still this is the position that Brie Gertler endorses in “Over-extending the Mind”[5] (denying premise four of the argument for EM, see section 3.1.) and also what Clark and Chalmers’ believe to be “the most consistent way to deny” EM.[6]

2.2. Otto and Inga: An illustration of EM

In The Extended Mind, Clark and Chalmers provide an example that attempts to draw a parallel between two people who want to go to the museum: one whose mind “extends” the other whose mind does not.[7] The latter individual is Inga. After deciding that she would like to go to the museum, Inga quickly recalls that the museum in located on 53rd street, so she proceeds in that direction. In this instance it is clear that Inga has successfully relied on her working memory to access the information she needs to find her way to the museum. Meanwhile, a man named Otto suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and thus can no longer rely on his memory to recall all of his standing beliefs. Otto is forced to rely on a notebook that he stores all of his important information in such as phone numbers, directions, medical information, and so forth. After deciding to go to the museum, Otto quickly reaches for his notebook, reads that the museum is located on 53rd street and promptly heads in that direction. He relies on his notebook on a regular basis, takes it with him everywhere he goes, and writes in it often so that he will not forget important information.

Clark and Chalmers argue that “in relevant respects the (two) cases are entirely analogous: the notebook plays for Otto the same role that memory plays for Inga.”[8]
In other words, if we consider the information in Otto’s notebook, then it seems that it plays the same explanatory role as the information in Inga’s memory. For example, in both cases we can explain why they headed toward 53rd street with reference to their desire to go to the museum and belief that it was located there. Inga’s belief was there before she accessed it (non-occurent) and likewise, Otto’s belief was in his notebook before he accessed it. To be sure, this is not the claim that Otto’s behavior is identical to Inga’s, but rather that “taken as a single integrated system, Otto-and-the-notebook exhibit enough of the central features and dynamics of a normal agent having… the dispositional belief (about the location of the museum) to warrant treating him as such.”[9] Thus, a proponent of EM would grant that in many trivial ways Otto’s actions do differ from Inga’s, but still would contend that what is relevant is the role that the information about the location of the museum plays in each case, and in Otto and Inga’s cases, the information plays the same functional role.

3.1. A representation of an argument for EM

In this section I will flesh out each of the premises of an argument for EM, spending the most time on what I believe are the most important premises. In doing this, I will introduce and spell out both the ‘parity principle’ and Clark and Chalmers’ conditions of a cognitive system. Gertler has extracted the following argument from Clark and Chalmers’ Otto and Inga example:[10]

1. “What makes some information count as a standing belief is the role it plays.”
2. “The information in the notebook functions just like [that is, it plays the same role as] the information constituting an ordinary non-occurrent belief.”
3. The information in Otto’s notebook counts as standing beliefs. (1,2)
4. Otto’s standing beliefs are part of his mind.
5. The information in Otto’s notebook is part of Otto’s mind. (3, 4)
6. Otto’s notebook belongs to the world external to Otto’s skin.
7. The mind extends into the world. (5, 6)

3.2. Premise one and the Parity Principle

The first premise of this argument states that what matters in labeling some thing as a part of a cognitive system is not its location or physical identity, but rather the “role that it plays.”[11] This premise follows from what Clark and Chalmers label the parity principle, which contends that if an object in the environment is playing the same role as an object that, were it located in the head, we would certainly count it as part of a cognitive system, then we should count the object in the environment as a part of the cognitive system also. So, if the information Inga’s mind (about the location of the museum) would surely count as a part of her belief (about where the museum is located) because of the role it plays in her memory, then, since the information in Otto’s notebook (about the location of the museum) plays the same role in his memory, it ought to count as a part of his standing belief as well.

If it weren’t the role that mattered but the physical identity, for instance, if the vehicles of cognition had to be biological (and within the body of the agent), then any non-biological resource, such as Otto’s notebook, would instantly be disqualified as cognitive. The parity principle is used to avoid this outcome. It maintains that regardless of how the information is physically realized, if the information in both cases plays the same functional role in driving the agent’s behavior, then it should be given the same cognitive status. After all, with no justifiable reason, it would be both ad hoc[12] and question begging to assume a priori that only a certain type of matter- biological matter -can constitute standing beliefs.

So, it follows from the parity principle that whatever turns out to be the necessary functional role for a thing to play in order to count as a part of a cognitive system it will have to be described without reference to any particular physical properties and in a sufficiently abstract way as to allow that the relevant functional role could be played by something beyond the agents body. At the same time, the cognitive system cannot be described so abstractly as to include all sorts of things as constitutive parts of the system. Otherwise too many things would be included as parts and EM would threaten to “over-extend” the mind. For example, the information in Inga’s head should count as her standing belief not because it is biological or internal to her body, but rather because of the role it plays in her successful retrieval of memory, which then causes her to head towards the museum. This presupposes that there actually exist some way of describing the relevant “functional role” that is sufficiently abstract to be realized both internally and externally to the agent’s body.

3.3. Premise Two

The second premise of the argument for EM claims that the information about the location of the museum plays the same functional role in Otto’s case as in Inga’s case. To outline this functional roll Clark and Chalmers provide three (tentative) conditions[13] to be met in order for any thing to be granted “recognition as part of the physical substrate of a cognitive system:”[14]

1. Constancy: The use of the resource must be a constant in the agent’s life.
2. Accessibility: The resource must be directly and easily available.
3. Reliability: The agent must trust and endorse the resource without hesitation; rarely doubting it’s veracity.

A fourth condition, which they are more tentative about labeling as necessary, requires that the information in the resource must be there as a consequent of having been consciously endorsed at some point in the past. It seems evident that these conditions are met by our ordinary, non-extended mental states and it is difficult to deny that Otto does not meet these conditions, since Clark and Chalmers developed the Otto and Inga example in order to support their argument for EM.[15] Thus, it seems the best way to object to the second premise would be to claim that parts of cognitive systems, like mental states and cognitive processes, meet some further condition not on this list. The two objections that I consider in the second part of this paper take this approach in rejecting EM.

So, because the information in both cases meets these conditions and we would surely call the information in Inga’s mind her non-occurrent belief, then, given the parity principle, the third premise of the argument follows: we ought to call the information in Otto’s notebook his non-occurrent belief as well (P3). And, if the information in the environment serves as the material vehicle of a part of Otto’s beliefs (P3), and his beliefs constitute a part of his mind (P4), then it follows that the information in the environment is a constitutive part of Otto’s mind (P5). Furthermore, it is clear that something like a notebook is a part of the world external to an agent’s skin and body (P6). Thus, portions of the would external to Otto’s body (the information in his notebook) serve as the physical substrates of a part of his mind (namely, his belief about the location of the museum), and in this sense Otto’s mind “extends” into the world (P7).

4.1. Problems facing EM

My discussion in this paper will be limited to a consideration of two objections, both of which I will defend EM against. Neither of these objections are to the parity principle itself, but rather, they both deny the similarity between cases of extended cognition and regular cognition that is needed for the principle to apply. In other words, both of these objections object to either the necessity or the sufficiency of the functional role, as Clark and Chalmers’ have described it, in determining whether or not some resource is a part of a cognitive system. While I recognize that there are other important and compelling objections that one could make to EM, unfortunately I will not be able to consider all of them in this paper.

4.2. Sufficient conditions for “parts of cognitive systems”

The first objection I will consider would likely arise if one were uncomfortable with the results of EM, believing that it casts too broad a definition of what is mental. In this case they could object to the joint sufficiency of the conditions proposed for a cognitive system- constancy, accessibility and reliability (as discussed in 3.3.) This would require that there is some quality unique to all parts of cognitive systems that the three conditions fail to pick out. For example, if one could find a condition that is common only to our internal mental states, of the sort Inga has, and not present in Otto’s case, then the two cases would not be analogous and so, the principle would not apply. One quality that has often been thought of as being unique to biological cognitive systems is their capacity to produce intrinsic content. It is argued that this marks a distinction between the biological substrates that traditionally compose cognitive systems and potential non-biological realizers like Otto’s notebook.

This notion of intrinsic content rests on the view that mental states are intentional states, which is to say that they “have content; they are typically about things.”[16] This is not unique to mental states, however, since certain non-biological things, such as books and road signs, also have content and so should equally be labeled intentional. So, according to this view, it therefore possible to draw a distinction between things with derived intentionality and things with intrinsic intentionality. Frederick Adams and Kenneth Aizawa define derived content as content that is assigned by “intentional agents who already have thoughts with meaning.”[17] Non-derived content, or intrinsic content, on the other hand, does not require “the independent or prior experience of other content.”[18] If something has content, then “it is either mental or the content is derived from something that is mental.”[19] So, derived content is a product of intentional agents. It is argued that this marks an important variance between Otto’s case and Inga’s case- Otto’s notebook has derived content only and thus, it is argued that, its intentionality does not make it mental, whereas Inga’s memories are not derived, and therefore they do count as mental.

4.3. Responses to Intrinsic Content

In this section, I will argue that the objection based on the inclusion of intrinsic content as a necessary condition to be met by all parts of a cognitive system is actually no threat to EM. As Clark points out in “Intrinsic content, active memory and the extended mind”, the argument for intrinsic content is flawed for several reasons. First of all, the notion of “intrinsic content” is not uncontroversial and is surely not universally accepted.[20] Secondly, Adams and Aizawa give no reason to believe that external, non-biological structures are (logically or contingently) incapable of having intrinsic content. We should not assume that this is the case and as Clark points out in the future we can imagine there might be technology that has advanced enough to change this reality. For instance, imagine that we identified some internal part as a vehicle of intrinsic content. Now imagine that part is replaced with a “functionally equivalent silicon part.”[21] If the agent could still experience mental states with intrinsic content, then this should defeat concerns about intrinsic content as a criterion for mentality.[22]

Furthermore, even if we grant the claim that intrinsic content is a necessary condition for being considered a part of the mind, EM would still be true in cases where one agent’s standing beliefs are realized by biological structures outside its body, for example, in the mind of another agent (who is capable of intrinsic content). After all, according to this objection it is only the fact that non-biological structures are incapable of intrinsic content that would prevents Otto’s notebook being recognized as a part of his cognitive system. Thus, there is no reason why the biological realizers of an agent’s cognitive system must be located within their own brain or body. For example, Clark and Chalmers suggest that “(i)n an unusually interdependent couple, it is entirely possible that one partner’s beliefs will play the role for the other as the notebook plays for Otto.”[23] All that is necessary for the resource to count as a part of the cognitive system in this case is that it is capable of intrinsic content and meets the other three conditions laid out by Clark and Chalmers.

Finally, Clark’s third response is that even if intrinsic content is accepted as a valid notion and if non-biological structures were incapable of displaying it, this would not compromise EM. This is because in a system not every constitutive part of that system will necessarily have the qualities that the entire system, as a whole, has. According to Clark, all that is necessary for a given part to count as a vehicle of a mental state “is that it be appropriately linked… to representations whose content is (as Adams and Aizawa insist) intrinsic.”[24] Adams and Aizawa make this very same point about the relationship between systems and their components themselves, only in a different discussion, when they attempt to clarify Clark and Chalmers’ positions in EM.[25] Still, although they demonstrate that they are well aware of this relationship suggested by Clark, they do not seem to consider it when raising their objection to EM based on intrinsic content.

To spell out Clark’s claim I will use the example that Adams and Aizawa give of an air-conditioning system. In such a system only a portion of the components are responsible for actually cooling the air. The other parts play different roles- some “duct the air about the building, compress the refrigerant, directs the flow of refrigerant, monitors the room temperature, and so forth.”[26] Thus, for an air-conditioning system to be labeled as such it has to cool air. Cooling air, then, is a necessary feature of an air-conditioning system, and yet, not every part of an air-conditioning system actually cools air. I would contend that, in the same way, original content may be a necessary condition for cognitive systems, but this does not entail that every material vehicle responsible for a given mental state must display original content. Furthermore, I do not see how even a defender of intrinsic content could deny this, since one would have to hold the same view with regard to brain-and-body bound mental states as well.

Surely no one would argue that every neuron and atom of grey matter displays intrinsic content just because the whole mental state that arises from a system composed of neurons and grey matter does. In fact Adams and Aizawa as much as concede this point themselves: “Having argued that, in general, there must be non-derived content in cognitive processes, it must be admitted that it is unclear to what extent every cognitive state of each cognitive process must involve non-derived content.”[27] And, because we must remain neutral on where parts are located, as not to the beg question, we should apply the same standard to extended mental states. Thus, if EM is correct and mental states can extend into their environment, there should be requirement that external portions of the mental state be capable of intrinsic content in order to be recognized as constitutive parts.

5.1. Appeal to the dual boundaries of perception and action

Another objection to EM is based on the intuition that the natural boundaries that separate the mind from the external environment are the dual interfaces of perception and action and that these boundaries align with the boundaries of the body. In other words, the first claim is that our minds affect the world through our actions and likewise, our minds are affected by the world through our perceptions. If this is the case, then it follows that perception and action are the interfaces through which contact is made between our environment and us. The second claim of this objection is that these interfaces align with our body such that we perceive through bodily senses and we act through bodily motions. And, given these two claims, it follows that the mind must be body-bound.

For example, it is argued that because Otto must perceive the information in his notebook, this means that they will lie beyond his perception, and thus beyond the natural boundary that separates him from the world. Inga, however, does not need to engage in bodily perception to access her belief in the way that Otto does. In her case, her belief is realized by physical substrates located on the “inner” side of the perception and action boundary. So, because Otto must engage in this crucial act of bodily perception (and action) to access his beliefs, he would be taking in an extra step(s) that is not necessary in “ordinary” cases, such as Inga’s. What is more, because of this extra step that Otto takes, he would have a completely different phenomenological experience than Inga. If this is the case, then Otto and Inga’s cases are not entirely analogous and so the parity principle may not be applicable.

5.2. Response to the appeal to perception and action

There are a number of possible responses that a defender of EM could give to this objection. The first that Clark and Chalmers make is to point out that the objection begs the question.[28] This is true, after all, it is the legitimacy of this very boundary- between an agent and her environment- that is in question and that EM is trying to define (as discussed in section 2.1.). So, a defender of EM might agree with the first claim of this objection- that perception and action are the dual interfaces that separate the mind from the world- but reject the second premise- that we perceive and act only through our bodies. After all, it is the second claim where the question begging is really taking place. By rejecting the second claim we could allow that the mind lies strictly on one “side” of our perceptions and actions, and remain uncommitted as to where perception and action occur.

Consider Walid, for instance, who is blind and relies heavily on his white walking stick to aid his mobility. Since the stick is his only reliable way to detect objects in his path, Walid uses it constantly and must keep it with him at all times.[29] For Walid, this stick is more than just a helpful mobility tool- he uses it fluently and feels as though he were touching the pavement at the end of his stick. That is, he perceives the world at the end of the stick, not just his hand gripping the stick.[30] I believe that in this case we can accept that Walid’s perception is not limited to his bodily senses, and thus, we can reject the second premise and conclude that (under the right conditions) cognitive processes can extend to include non-biological structures. As long as the process remains explanatorily similar in every relevant way to how a person with regular vision might function, then as the parity principle contends, we ought to label both instances as cognitive processes.

I believe this response to be compelling, since as Clark and Chalmers argue, it would be incorrect to allow which “side” of the body-boundary the process falls on to bias us. Thus, the example of Walid seems to help in the defense of EM, however, it does not work so effectively in defending the example of Otto and Inga. It doesn’t seem reasonable to say that Otto’s perception is not limited to his bodily senses because he perceives what is inside the notebook. In seems more likely that in Otto’s case, unlike Walid’s, the interfaces of perception and action do align with his body. Furthermore, the Walid example does not overcome the objection over Otto and Inga’s different phenomenological experiences either. After all, Walid would surely be having a different phenomenological experience of walking down a busy sidewalk than a person with 20/20 vision.
Clark and Chalmers’ second move is to downplay the difference between the phenomenological experiences of Otto and Inga. They do this by arguing that in both cases the agent will still have some phenomenological experience and, though the experiences may be different, this should not affect their equal status as non-occurrent beliefs.[31] Chalmers expands on this idea by making an appeal to the notions of ‘introspection’ and ‘mental action’.[32] According to him, if these notions can be taken as parallel to (‘real’) perception and (‘real’) action, respectively, in the traditional sense, then the parity principle will apply.

This response will work only if there are no substantial differences between the notions of introspection and perception, or between mental action and action. I take this parallel to be a little far-fetched myself and Chalmers recognizes that not everyone will be sold on this parallel, so he correctly predicts the possible replies that will follow. For example, one who opposes EM could insist that introspection does not seem to involve bodily sensory perception in the way that “real” perception does. And likewise, mental actions do not involve any physical action.[33] Furthermore, one could insist that the differences in phenomenological experiences are too essential to be downplayed. Otto has a particular “perceptual and agentive experience” that Inga would not have, and so the cases are not analogous.[34]

6.1. Conclusion

In this paper I have attempted to give a thorough exposition of the central thesis of EM- that the material vehicles that realize certain mental states and cognitive processes of a human’s cognitive system are at times located beyond the body of that agent. I have laid out the arguments put forth by Clark and Chalmers in defense of EM and explained the rationale behind them. In the second part of this paper I discussed two popular objections to the second premise of the argument for EM (as laid out in section 3.1.) and in each case I have argued that EM is able to overcome these criticisms. While I believe that I have successfully defended EM from these objections, I understand that, other serious objections still face the theory. But, unfortunately, I could not address them all on this occasion.

Bibliography

Adams, Frederick and Kenneth Aizawa. “The Bounds of Cognition.” Philosophical Psychology, 14 (2001) 43-64.

Adams, Frederick and Kenneth Aizawa. “Defending non-derived content.” Philosophical Psychology. (2004).

Aizawa, Kenneth. “Clark’s conditions on Extended Cognition Are Too Strong.” (2005).

Chalmers, David. “Foreword to Andy Clark’s Supersizing the Mind.” Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action and Cognitive Extension. (Oxford, 2008) ix-xvi.

Chalmers, David. February 6, 2009. “Fodor on the extended mind.”

Clark, Andy. “Intrinsic Content, Active Memory, and the Extended Mind.” Analysis, 65 (2005): 1-11.

Clark, Andy. “Coupling, Constitution, and the Cognitive Kind: A Reply to Adams and Aizawa.”

Clark, Andy. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action and Cognitive Extension. (Oxford, 2008).

Clark, Andy and David Chalmers. “The Extended Mind.” Analysis, 58 (1998): 7-19.

Fodor, Jerry. “Where is My Mind?” London Review of Books. February 2009. Review of Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action and Cognitive Extension by Andy Clark.

Gertler, Brie. “Overextending the Mind?” Arguing about the Mind. Brie Gertler and Lawrence Shapiro, eds. Routledge, 2007.

Notes

1. Andy Clark and David Chalmers. “The Extended Mind.” Analysis, 58 (1998): 4.
2. Ibid, 10. It should also be noted that it is preferable to use the term “agent” in this case instead of “human” in order to allow for the possibility that human minds may include other non-biological realizers (as when a blind man relies on a seeing-eye dog), or even that animal minds themselves may extend (if they can be shown to adequately engage in tool use, for instance).
3. Clark and Chalmers, 6.
4. Clark and Chalmers agree. Ibid, 4.
5. Brie Gertler, “Overextending the Mind?” Arguing about the Mind. Brie Gertler and Lawrence Shapiro, eds. Routledge, 2007, 11.
6. Clark and Chalmers, 9.
7. Ibid, 6.
8. Clark and Chalmers, 6.
9. Andy Clark, “Intrinsic Content, Active Memory, and the Extended Mind.” Analysis, 65 (2005): 7.
10. Gertler quotes the first two premises from Clark and Chalmers, The Extended Mind. Gertler, 2.
11. Clark and Chalmers, 7. This is also what Gertler labels as premise one of the EM argument, 2.
12. Gertler agrees, 7.
13. Clark and Chalmers, 9.
14. Andy Clark. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action and Cognitive Extension. (Oxford, 2008), 88.
15. Gertler, 8.
16. Jerry Fodor. “Where is My Mind?” London Review of Books. February 2009. Review of Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action and Cognitive Extension by Andy Clark, 5.
17. Frederick Adams and Kenneth Aizawa. “Defending non-derived content.” Philosophical Psychology. (2004), 1.
18. Ibid 1.
19. Fodor, 5.
20. Clark, “Intrinsic Content, Active Memory, and the Extended Mind”, 4.
21. Ibid, 4.
22. Here we see an example of how functionalist reasoning is applied to support the EM argument.
23. Clark and Chalmers, 10.
24. Clark, “Intrinsic content, Active Memory, and the Extended Mind”, 4.
25. Frederick Adams and Kenneth Aizawa. “The Bounds of Cognition.” Philosophical Psychology, 14 (2001), 50.
26. Aizawa, 2.
27. Adams and Aizawa, “The bounds of cognition,” 50.
28. Clark and Chalmers, 9.
29. The stick fulfills all of Clark and Chalmers’ three conditions- consistency, accessibility and reliability (see section 4.3.).
30. Clark gives a similar example of a blind man, Supersizing the Mind, 31.
31. Clark and Chalmers, 9.
32. Chalmers, “Foreword to Andy Clark’s Supersizing the Mind,” xii.
33. Ibid, xii.
34. Ibid, xii.

Abstract. I aim to resolve a difficulty that has plagued post-Kuhnian philosophy of science. This difficulty stems from a simultaneous commitment to two theses: (1) that successive paradigms are incommensurable to such an extent that they define different puzzles and therefore different worlds, and (2) that each paradigm ‘improves’ on the one it replaces in a non-trivial way. I work through Davidson’s objection to the idea of a conceptual scheme (of which a scientific paradigm is a special case), as well as Kuhn’s response, to get in view a notion of ‘incommensurability’ that admits substantive conceptual differences between theories while still allowing for a non-arbitrary choice to be made among them. I argue that Kuhn’s response adequately addresses Davidson’s concerns, and work out in a deeper way than Kuhn how this response can pave the way for an account of scientific progress.

Surely one of the most puzzling aspects of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions is his simultaneous insistence that (1) successive paradigms are incommensurable to such an extent that they define different puzzles and therefore different worlds, and (2) each paradigm ‘improves’ on the one it replaces in a non-trivial way. Given the puzzle-solving nature of normal science, asking which paradigm is better than another seems as silly as asking whether chess is better than checkers; each has its own set of rules, legitimate problems, and accepted solutions, and therefore ‘truth’ and genuine, cumulative progress make sense only relative to a particular paradigm. F=ma in Newton’s system, but not in Einstein’s, and asking which is closer to the way the world ‘actually is’ is impossible, since there is no way in which the world ‘actually is’ apart from a given set of categories to rend it apart. Kuhn says that the improvement is unidirectional and irrevocable, and he lists some criteria for so judging: “Accuracy of prediction, particularly of quantitative prediction; the balance between esoteric and everyday subject matter; and the number of different problems solved.”[1] All of these criteria, though, depend crucially on ‘sameness of subject matter’. It would be absurd to judge a scale for measuring weight better than an instrument for measuring radioactivity on the basis of accuracy; they need to be measuring the same sort of thing. But Kuhn also insists, for instance, that a pendulum and a constrained fall are two genuinely different entities; true statements about one may be false statements about the other. Judging one way better than another depends, therefore, upon sameness of subject matter in some sense; but what sense could that be given the nontrivial ways in which different paradigms really do define different worlds?

At the root of this confusion lies the troublesome question of what precisely ‘incommensurability’ means. This issue, or some variant of it, vexes interpretation of Structure and post-Kuhnian philosophy of science. My aim is to sort out, in at least a preliminary way, what precisely Kuhn can mean by ‘incommensurability’, given his description of normal science as puzzle-solving and his insistence on the reality of scientific progress through paradigms. I draw the basic Kuhnian frame from Structure, but my main thematic focus will be on Davidson’s critique of Kuhn’s position in On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme (VICS), and Kuhn’s response in Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability (CCC). Though these essays are not in direct dialogue—Davidson addresses conceptual schemes in contexts broader than science, and Kuhn answers many critics, not just Davidson—the main lines of argument presented therein cut fairly deeply into the confusion surrounding the notion of incommensurability itself, and I shall therefore take them as archetypal instances of the sorts of arguments at issue. I argue that Kuhn’s distinguishing between interpretation and translation adequately addresses Davidson’s structural critique of the notion itself, but that Kuhn fails to address the question how scientific progress is possible. I take this to be a sin primarily of omission rather than commission, and I propose a way of using the above argument between Kuhn and Davidson to pave the way toward a more complete and intelligible account of scientific progress through paradigms.

I proceed in three parts. First I sketch the main thrust of Davidson’s argument in VICS, and work through Kuhn’s response to that type of criticism in CCC. Then I evaluate Kuhn’s response, asking what of Davidson’s argument it does and does not address. Finally, I briefly use Kuhn’s distinction between translation and interpretation to develop a more explicit account of scientific progress than does Kuhn, one that does not undermine genuine failure of translation between paradigms.[2]

I

Davidson’s goal in VICS is to show that any assertion that there are incommensurable (untranslatable) conceptual schemes is either trivial or false.[3] His argument is long and slightly meandering, but the basic idea remains relatively consistent throughout. Without getting mired in too much detail, the basic form is this: First he reduces the claim of incommensurable conceptual schemes to sets of mutually untranslatable languages. Then he describes the various metaphors people use to talk about different conceptual schemes, showing that each of them implicitly depends upon some sort of calibration between the languages. (For example, the metaphor of each scheme providing a different point of view depends on a common coordinate system on which to plot them.) Then, in the meatiest part of the essay, he exposes a crucial assumption underlying of the very idea of conceptual schemes: the scheme/content dualism. The idea behind it, he says, relies on two separate but not entirely unrelated metaphors: a scheme either organizes or fits something, and the something that it organizes or fits is either experience or the world.

He attacks each of the metaphors separately. The first, that of organizing experience or the world, cannot function as a metaphor for separate conceptual schemes because it depends upon already individuated entities to organize in the first place. One cannot organize a simple entity. But given already individualized entities, we can talk about other languages lacking in particular entities within the world only if the two languages largely “share an ontology common to the two languages, with concepts that individuate the same objects.”[4] Local failures can only be made intelligible in the light of overwhelming similarity. The metaphor of organizing experience fares little better, since a language must do more than organize experience—it must form entities out of those experiences, and thereby populate an actual world. But, as observed above, local untranslatability between worlds given by various languages depends on a largely similar ontology; if two schemes were drastically different, then we could not talk about one using the other at all. Failures must be highly localized, in a way that fails altogether to make sense of genuinely different conceptual schemes.

Davidson then dispenses with the second metaphor, that of a scheme ‘fitting’ experience (or the world as it is experienced), by arguing that it depends upon some sort of raw, unmediated notion of ‘sensory experience’ that cannot be made intelligible in any way other than talk of ‘being true’. What does a sentence within a theory fit, exactly? The sentence ‘it is cold’ fits exactly those cases in which it is cold. That is to say, ‘it is cold’ fits a state of affairs. But that is just to say that the sentence is true. Nothing more fundamental than this may be expressed, since no thing makes sentences true; at the root of ‘fitting’, therefore, lies the irreducible notion of ‘truth’. “Our attempt,” he says, “to characterize languages or conceptual schemes in terms of the notion of fitting some entity has come down, then, to the simple thought that something is an acceptable conceptual scheme or theory if it is true.”[5] But we cannot make any sense whatever of ‘truth’ independently of our ability to translate into a language we understand; ‘truth’ makes sense only when stated within a comprehensible language. Thus even this ‘fitting’ metaphor implicitly depends upon the ability to translate purportedly untranslatable languages.
Above is a rather sketchy picture of the argument that Davidson gives; there are other considerations, but no substantially different style of argumentation. The overwhelmingly important idea underlying all of it is that asserting the existence of incommensurable conceptual schemes already depends upon a basic structure and ontology that they share; if there were a conceptual scheme so different from ours that it could not be translated, then it also could not be talked about, and in no real way could be called a conceptual scheme in the first place. The ability to translate other schemes is, then, a necessary condition for talking about them at all.

It is precisely this kind of criticism with which Kuhn primarily concerns himself in CCC. He organizes complains against his position into two main groups. The first contends that “if there is no way in which the two [languages] can be stated in a single language, then they cannot be compared, and no arguments from evidence can be relevant to the choice between them” (670).[6] This is the puzzle that began this paper. The second, related criticism is that “people like Kuhn tell us that it is impossible to translate old theories into a modern language. But they then proceed to do exactly that, reconstructing Aristotle’s or Newton’s or Lavoiser’s or Maxwell’s theory without departing from the language they speak everyday” (670). It is the latter criticism that fits Davidson’s, and it is the one to which Kuhn devotes most of his attention. Working through Kuhn’s response to the latter criticism will shed light on the former.

Much of Kuhn’s response in CCC is quite technical, addressing such things as Ramsey definitions and the Quinian translation manual, but, luckily for us, the main argument against Davidson’s type of position is clear and relatively straightforward. People like Davidson, Kuhn says, err by failing to distinguish translation from interpretation. Translation is something “done by a person who knows two languages,” where “the translator systematically substitutes words or strings of words in the other language for words or strings of words in the text in such a way as to produce an equivalent text in the other language” (672). The exact meaning of ‘equivalent’ can quickly become a thorny issue, but Kuhn does not concern himself with it: “let us simply say that the translated text tells more or less the same story, presents more or less the same ideas, describes more or less the same situation as the text of which it is a translation” (672). The point is that translation is a direct function from sets of symbols in one language to sets of symbols in the other. Interpretation, on the other hand, depends only upon an initial knowledge of a single language. The interpreter is confronted by a text that is completely unintelligible to him, and his goal is to make sense of it. He “observes behavior and the circumstances surrounding the production of the text, assuming throughout that good sense can be made of apparently linguistic behavior” (673). The ability to interpret does not imply the ability to translate; an interpreter can give sense to ‘gavagai’ without ever being able to find an equivalent English word. Going back to scientific paradigms, an interpreter can make sense of Aristotle’s theory without ever being able to translate it into Newton’s or Einstein’s.
Once we make this distinction, Kuhn says, Davidson’s type of argument loses almost all of its bite. Recall that his argument revolved around the claim that talking about or giving any sense whatever to another conceptual scheme presupposes a way of translating it into one’s own. Kuhn can now simply say that it does indeed presuppose the ability to interpret the other scheme, but not to translate it. There need not be equivalent symbols in one scheme as another; not all languages are isomorphic.[7] To address this argument, Davidson would have to show either that the distinction between translation and interpretation is not a real one, or that the ability to interpret another conceptual scheme still renders ‘incommensurability’ impotent.

II

In the preceding section I stayed quite close to the Davidson’s and Kuhn’s structure and language. As I noted, though, the two are not in completely direct dialogue, and the preceding section may make it seem as though the two are, in a certain sense, talking past each other. In particular, while Davidson’s main point is a critique of the scheme/content dualism, Kuhn nowhere mentions any such thing in CCC. It is my aim in this section to show that, while Kuhn does not address the scheme/content dualism directly, his distinction between translation and interpretation undermines much of Davidson’s argument against the very idea of it, and that the rest of Davidson’s argument unfairly attributes to Kuhn a dependence on ‘raw, unmediated experience’—a concept that Kuhn directly repudiates in Structure. All of the above argument will assume the reality of the distinction between translation and interpretation; I conclude the section by arguing that the distinction is indeed a real and apt one, and that it gives clearer sense to ‘incommensurability’ that does Structure itself.

Let us assume, then, the reality of Kuhn’s distinction. Can Davidson still show that Kuhn is nonetheless guilty of an untenable dualism between scheme and raw content, or does Kuhn’s distinction undermine that argument? Davidson attacked mainly the metaphors people use to give sense to distinct conceptual schemes, and to those metaphors I here return. Kuhn’s position now amounts to saying that two schemes are different if and only if they cannot be translated—which is to say, if there is no isomorphism from strings of words in one scheme to strings of words in another. To take an example, this is to say that there is nothing in Einstein’s system that directly corresponds to Newton’s ‘force’. This is not to say that the two systems have nothing to do with each other—remember, interpretation is always possible—but the point is that the symbols in one system do not correspond directly to symbols in the other. Einstein and Newton speak of the same world in the sense that experiments in Newton’s system can be explained in Einstein’s, but the symbols they use to describe that world are not inter-translatable.

To this example let us apply Davidson’s argument directly. The idea, he would say, is that both systems ‘fit’ or ‘chop up’ the experience of observing a moving object, or simply a moving object within the world. (I use Davidson’s quadripartite division, without inquiring which one fits Kuhn’s language best; in truth, all metaphors are at work in interrelated ways, making it prudent to consider them all.) The two theories cannot be said to ‘chop up’ anything while remaining genuinely separate theories because to speak thus presupposes already individuated entities, and thus an ontology common to each of them—they are really largely the same theory, expressed in different symbols. As for each theory ‘fitting’ something (sensory experience or the world), to say that they ‘fit’ the world or experience is just to say that they are largely true; but to judge that something is largely true one must be able to translate it into his language. Thus they are inter-translatable.

With the distinction between translation and interpretation in hand, it becomes clear that the above line of reasoning proves only the ability to interpret the other theory, not the ability to translate it. Just because the theories are nontrivially co-referential, at least insofar as a Newtonian and an Einsteinian would agree that they are both describing ‘that entity moving on the table’, gives no faith for supposing that the concepts that they use to describe the entity are isomorphic. Indeed, Kuhn argues persuasively and at length that they are not; the terms in Einstein’s system and in Newton’s, while they both pick out many of the same particular physical entities, really do mean different things, and, crucially, stand in different relations to each other.[8] Thus the theories are interpretable but not translatable, and Davidson’s argument is moot.

There is, however, one part of Davidson’s complaint that could be brought to bear on Kuhn’s picture—that is, if Kuhn held any such thing in the first place. Part of Davidson’s argument against the scheme/content dualism—indeed, the part of it that Kuhn nowhere mentions in CCC—is the insistence that it relies on something like ‘raw, unmediated experience’ or ‘formless content’ out of which conceptual schemes give shape. And indeed, if Kuhn’s system did depend on this, he would be in considerable trouble, for Davidson’s argument would still have a solid foothold. Clearly something is amiss here, though, since one of the notions Kuhn actively repudiates in Structure is the idea that we can make any sense whatever of raw content unmediated through already existing concepts. Davidson would have to show, then, that for all of Kuhn’s insistence that there is no such thing, his theory stealthily depends on the notion. The question then becomes: Does talking of a conceptual scheme at all depend upon unmediated content to which the scheme may be applied (either to break up the content or to fit the content)? Davidson argues that it does; there is no scheme without raw content to put into it.

The argument that Davidson provides is one that depends mostly on grammar. The grammar of ‘schemes’ seems to require something to fit into a scheme. The scheme, that is, provides what Davidson calls ‘posits’. “It is reasonable,” he says, “ to call something a posit if it can be contrasted with something that is not. Here the something that is not is sensory experience.”[9] The posits then ‘fit’ or ‘break up’ the raw experience. This structure depends, it seems, on raw experience to break up in the first place. Thus having different schemes make sense only if ‘raw experience’ makes sense; ‘raw experience’ does not make sense; therefore there are no different schemes. At least, that is the basic idea.
I argue that, though this is a tempting line to take, it is overhasty and leaves room for substantial objection. It is enough to undermine Davidson’s argument to show that the metaphor can depend on something other than raw, unmediated experience, and that is what I intend to do, following a pseudo-Kuhnian line. I agree that there is no way of talking about sensory experiences apart from any set of categories or concepts; else there would be no experience, only dumb perception (I use the distinction in Kant’s sense). But this is not the only way of rendering intelligible two untranslatable ways of talking about experience. There is no way of talking about a pendulum or a constrained fall apart from those (or other) determinate categories; Davidson then infers that talking about both of them as different schemes about the same sort of thing depends upon each of them fitting the same raw, unmediated sense perception. But why not take a merely pragmatic approach? The two schemes pick out the same entity if and only if an inhabitant of one scheme and an inhabitant of another agree that it is the same entity—a necessary step in interpretation, and one that does not necessarily imply translation. They need not try to sort out what raw experience underlies their schemes—indeed, they need not even posit such a thing. It is enough that they can interpret each other well enough to understand that it is the same physical entity—that their schemes are, in at least this case, locally co-referential. Their having a scheme need not depend on raw, unmediated experience; it need depend only on the mutual ability to interpret each other. Thus raw experience need not make sense in order for conceptual schemes to make sense. All that is required is interpretation. In this way, then, there can be untranslatable schemes—or at least, Davidson’s argument that there cannot be falters. The scheme does indeed give rise to content, but it is not ‘raw, unmediated’ content. The scheme is what makes any content at all possible, and the ability to interpret allows the two schemes to pick out some of the same things without requiring ‘raw experience’ underlying them, whatever that could be.

Therefore, if the distinction between translation and interpretation is a real and apt one, Davidson’s argument fails, and there we can indeed make sense of untranslatable (though not uninterpretable) schemes.[10] I do not intend to give an exhaustive argument for the reality of the distinction, but I shall address two possible complaints against Kuhn’s distinction that someone like Davidson could make. The first is that the bar for translation is so high as to include only relatively specialized formal languages. The second is that the claim of the ability to interpret but not to translate various schemes still amounts to a trivialization of the notion of conceptual schemes.

Translation is something that occurs between symbols; one can program a computer to do it, and no reference to the world is required. I substitute ‘casa’ for ‘house’ without knowing or caring what content these terms have. This is why translation is so clean, and why it provides an extremely strong notion of ‘sameness’. But is such a thing usually possible at all? Defining the distinction thus seems to render much of what we call ‘translation’ mere interpretation. Indeed, Kuhn says, “if a gloss is required, we shall have to ask why.”[11] But my copy of Being and Time includes hundreds of linguistically relevant footnotes; if that is not a translation, what is? Clearly base 10 arithmetic and base 3 arithmetic can be translated in this strong sense; there is absolutely no loss of information, merely different symbolic ways of expressing the same exact thing. But besides mathematical and computer languages, it seems as though there can never be such a thing as genuine translation. Thus the distinction is inapt at best and pigheaded at worst; most every sort of calibration between languages worth talking about is just interpretation.

It is worth remembering, though, that the primary question at issue in this paper is the nature of scientific paradigms. A scientific paradigm, whatever it is, depends on formal and mathematical vocabulary. Normal science may well be an activity learned by doing something, but the something that one does is to try to fit nature into the mathematical equations that characterize one’s paradigm. Seen in this way, the distinction is still an apt one. As Kuhn demonstrates in Structure, the equations that govern special relativity really cannot be translated into the equations that govern the Newtonian universe; they consist of entirely different mathematical apparatuses. This holds even of the less mathematical sciences, like chemistry. Kuhn argues at length that a phlogiston cannot be translated legitimately into modern terminology without destroying intelligibility. Interpretation is therefore necessary; one must look to the world, not only to symbols. Furthermore, something like translation can obtain here: I can do Newtonian physics in Spanish or English while still doing the same physics. The distinction therefore makes sense at very least when dealing with the activities of science. I leave its impact on more everyday uses of the term undecided, but I do not think it is a stretch to say that my copy of Being and Time does indeed require a bit of interpretation to supplement what is otherwise a translation (implying some sort of local untranslatability between German and English). Indeed, since interpretation is required to learn another language in the first place, translation must always be founded on prior interpretation.

The second complaint that someone like Davidson could lodge against the distinction is that even admitting the ability to interpret another scheme renders the very idea of a conceptual scheme trivial. If any other scheme can be interpreted, then why call them different at all? We can describe one in terms of the other fairly well, if not symbolically faithfully, and therefore truth-values of one can be evaluated with respect to the other. ‘Incommensurability’ winds up amounting to a failure only to substitute symbols for symbols, not actually to compare the two theories in a meaningful way. Theories are untranslatable in Kuhn’s sense, but so what? They still amount to more or less the same thing, differing only on were the boundaries for concepts are drawn.

This complaint is more substantial than the last. It calls for a more extended discussion, one that will need to get clear on what sort of ‘sameness’ we can ascribe to different scientific paradigms. We have said that the ability to interpret requires at least being able to tell when two theories are largely co-referential; in order to understand Newton’s theory, we need to be able to pick out some of the same entities as described by Einstein’s theory, and, while failing to make systematic symbolic substitutions a la translation, still interpret the former to the extent that we can see that ‘what it is about’ can be made to resemble in some way the entities that populate Einstein’s universe. The worry here, then, is that this amounts to saying that the theories really are the same in a non-trivial way—they pick out the same entities, and thus the claim that they are ‘incommensurable’ amounts to saying nearly nothing of importance for anything a philosopher of science might want to ask. Since they are about the same entity, where the theories differ, one or both are simply wrong, and the bite of incommensurability is gone.

We are finally at the point of addressing the question with which this paper began: how is there incommensurability but still ‘sameness of subject matter’ in some nontrivial sense? I answer that we need a distinction between types of ‘sameness’, one that will hopefully dispel these worries. The idea is this: Two theories can be largely co-referential within the world while still defining completely different worlds. Here is how it works:

Recall the pendulum and the constrained fall. In order for us to be able to interpret the one that is not within our paradigm, we need to be able to say that the two refer to the same entity in some cases and in some sense. That is, I agree with an Aristotelian that this particular physical object, which I observe within the world, and which he calls a constrained fall and I call a pendulum, is the same. How do we determine that it is the same? With a particular, physical entity within the world, this is not difficult—we can pick it out by pointing, or, to be more pedantic, by picking up the entity and moving it, and mutually verifying that it was the selfsame entity that we moved.[12] Our theories are co-referential at least in this sense. But this does not undermine the sense in which Kuhn says that the two entities are genuinely different entities. That is, the theoretical apparatus that we use to refer to the entity differ completely. One entity falls with difficulty; the other keeps going with difficulty. One essentially falls, while the other essentially keeps going according to sinusoidal equations. These are two different descriptions that, in this particular case, can be brought to bear on same entity. And we can agree that our theories are co-referential in many cases. Going forward one major paradigm, I can describe most particular physical entities using Einsteinian or Newtonian vocabulary; I acknowledge that it is the same physical entity, but depending on which way I describe it, I subsume the physical entity under a different theoretical model. ‘Space’ means different things depending on whether you ask Einstein or Newton, but when I ask it to bear on a particular thing—asking whether this table is in space, for instance—they agree.
Perhaps the analogy will be cleaner if we abstract into the world of mathematics. Whatever sort of space we live in, it is homeomorphic to R^3 (this just means that locally it looks and acts very much like R^3). I can describe this world, though, by using linear algebra (treating it as an actual instantiation of R^3), or algebraic topology (treating it as curved in some more complicated structure). Whichever way I adopt, I commit myself to a genuinely different way that the world looks. But in any local neighborhood (ours, say), we mostly agree on how the world behaves. Given any particular entity within this world, we agree that it looks three-dimensional, and that, whatever version of space we adopt, this particular entity is in space. It is only when we abstract to the theoretical that we differ—that is, when we ask what ‘space’ means. Thus we have genuinely different theories about how the world looks, but these theories agree on the behavior of most particular entities within the world. The table is really a different thing depending on which way I adopt—but it differs in the theoretical description, not in the physical instantiation. The equations for describing motion are completely different in either model (they are not at all translatable), but they can both approximately fit any particular entity I can observe. I propose that in a quite similar way this is how scientific paradigms can describe completely different worlds yet remain locally co-referential. They can agree that they are each ‘about’ some of the same particular entities, but still disagree about the fundamental nature of any particular entity. [13] A pendulum and a constrained fall refer to the same physical entity, but describe two different entities. This difference is, at very least, not wholly trivial—at least insofar as the difference between a curved space and a non-curved one is not trivial. The analogy is not perfect, since in mathematics both spaces are subsumed under a strict well-defined notion of ‘topological space’, and also the two spaces can be mapped onto each other in a continuously invertible way, whereas nothing of the sort is possible between scientific paradigms, but the basic idea holds nonetheless. The ‘sameness of subject matter’ with scientific paradigms comes from asking the theory to bear on the world, just as the ‘sameness of subject matter’ with R^3 and a curved space comes from being able to describe the world in one way or the other in such a way as to make the world look genuinely different whichever way we adopt.

III

Now that we have a more explicit account of incommensurability—incommensurable theories may be interpreted but not translated, interpretation entails discovering where theories are mostly co-referential, theories can be largely co-referential while defining genuinely different worlds—we are in a position to give a better account of scientific progress. The problem, as Kuhn describes it in CCC, is that if two paradigms define genuinely different worlds, then “no argument from evidence can be relevant to the choice between them.”[14] This is because each theory includes different and untranslatable entities. Newtonian space is flat, while Einsteinian space-time is curved; phlogiston is not translatable into oxygen. But given that the entities are different, how can one appeal to evidence in support of one theory over another? Scientific paradigms seem different from natural languages in this respect: one need not decide whether Spanish is a better language than English. The scientific community, though, must decide between Newton and Einstein. The two theories are mutually incompatible. But any argument from evidence, it seems, could not privilege one theory over another. Since theories define different puzzles and hence worlds, different things are admissible as evidence in each theory. Evidence about a constrained fall may not be evidence about a pendulum, since they are essentially different entities.

Adding to the difficulty, Kuhn says, is the fact that each theory is circular at its base. An Einsteinian cannot appeal to evidence to undermine a Newtonian’s version of space, because the latter defines space in a particular way. To be more concrete, consider the equation ‘F=ma’. Here we define force as ‘that which, when applied to a certain mass, yields constant acceleration’, and then we go on to define mass as ‘that which accelerates constantly when a constant force is applied’. Kuhn argues that neither of these terms is primitive. No argument from evidence could undermine this system, because it is self-justifying (and so is Einstein’s). Furthermore, each of these systems uses its equations to establish what counts as evidence in the first place; a Newtonian could say to an Einsteinian that the latter’s ‘evidence’ for the curvature of space was simply not about space in the first place, because space just means something flat. How could we possibly appeal to evidence to privilege one over another if the standard for evidence varies?
With the conclusions of the preceding section in hand, the answer to this puzzle (which Kuhn mentions but abandons in CCC) follows with at least some clarity. Incommensurable means untranslatable, but not uninterpretable. An Einsteinian can interpret Newtonian physics without ever translating the concepts and equations it employs into his own paradigm. And a necessary step in interpreting another scientific paradigm is determining where it is co-referential with one’s own. One cannot interpret Newtonian physics properly without being able to describe a Newtonian object in its own language, and to identify it as the same object one can also describe using the Einsteinian model. We established the necessity of ‘sameness of subject matter’ at least in this sense, and argued that it depends on interpretation, but not on raw sense-data.

I now invoke the criteria for judging ‘betterness’ that Kuhn provides in Structure: “Accuracy of prediction, particularly of quantitative prediction; the balance between esoteric and everyday subject matter; and the number of different problems solved.”[15] These criteria do depend on sameness of subject matter in some sense, and now we are in a position to say what sort of sense that is. Since interpretation allows the inhabitant of one theory to give sense to the other and locate the places where the two theories are co-referential, one can ask which theory makes, for instance, more accurate quantitative prediction. An Einsteinian cannot translate Newton’s experiments into the mathematical vocabulary of relativity, but he can explain ‘the same’ experiment using either paradigm, and ask which one can predict the behavior of the particular entity more accurately. This does not describe an act of translation, but rather an act of interpretation. The other criteria Kuhn lists likewise make sense under this model; I can solve ‘more’ different puzzles using Einstein than I can using Newton, and I am not comparing checkers and chess. I can interpret the puzzles of either one, I just cannot translate one theory into the other. In particular, and perhaps most importantly, Einstein’s theory can interpret and satisfactorily deal with the crises that destroyed Newton’s theory, while explaining equally well many of the other things that Newton predicts. This may be the most important sense in which one theory is better than the other: one has not yet reached crisis, while the other has, and the better theory can explain (interpret) the crisis of the other theory in its terms. Since scientific theories imply what sort of entities there are in the world, those theories are beholden to the behavior of the entities they predict. Einstein’s equations may not be translatable into Newton’s, but once we have each theory with each admitting certain things as evidence, each theory is beholden to the observed behavior of the entities within the world. Again, this need not imply a raw sense-data language describing the entities. All that is required is that the theory gives rise to certain entities, and that these entities which are in the world then hold the theory accountable. Einstein’s theory can be accountable to the behavior of the entities in more cases than Newton’s, even if the theories are incommensurable.

The above gives a coherent picture that can account for scientific progress without undermining real incommensurability between paradigms. I shall conclude by extending Kuhn’s puzzle-solving metaphor in a way, hopefully, that will better illustrate the above picture.

Normal science is puzzle-solving; it has the characteristics of a game, with entities defined by certain rules. Thus the activity of doing normal science is much like playing chess. But there are no crises in chess; why do they occur in normal science? The answer is that doing normal science is like playing a game with nature, where nature has not agreed on the rules beforehand. As soon as someone thinks to treat nature as though one could supply determinate rules that govern its behavior, one begins to play the game, and one makes certain moves (experiments) to observe how nature responds. A paradigm develops when a group finally agrees that a certain base level structure of the game can be taken for granted, and the group begins testing it, making new moves and filling in more details. Occasionally, though, nature makes a move that the paradigm explicitly disallows—remember, nature did not agree to play our game. Crisis then occurs, and the foundational structure of the game must be reevaluated. Neglecting all of the intermediary steps, a new paradigm develops to account for the anomalous move. The makers of this paradigm have the benefit of all of the past moves, and so their paradigm must also account for them. The new paradigm then creates what may well amount to an entirely different game structure, and must completely reinterpret nature’s actions prior to the crisis that were explained adequately well with the old paradigm.[16] The paradigms must be mutually interpretable enough to call each individual move ‘the same’, but the rules that describe the game may be completely different, having absolutely nothing to do with each other except that they agree on some particular cases of moves. This does not imply a raw sense-data language describing the moves, since one cannot have any notion of moves apart from a particular game. The games must only be mutually interpretable. And, finally, the two games are incommensurable. The rules of one game may be untranslatable with respect to the rules of the other. In this sense the game looks completely different from the perspective of either set of rules. But the later version of the game is nonetheless an improvement on the earlier one, since it can interpret all of the moves that the old one could interpret and more. The games are not inter-translatable, but there is progress nevertheless. Paradigm shifts work in a similar way.[17]

I have argued, following the general outline of the above metaphor, that scientific paradigms can be incommensurable while still allowing for a non-trivial account of scientific progress through paradigms. The key is interpretation, which can undermine both the structural complaints Davidson lodges against the very idea of a conceptual scheme itself, and the complaint that asking which of two incommensurable theories is better is impossible. These questions now have adequate answers, grounded in Kuhn’s distinction between translation and interpretation, and the distinction between mere co-reference and having the same meaning (defining the same world).

Notes

1. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1996. 206
2. Throughout the paper I use ‘translation’ and ‘interpretation’ in the senses Kuhn reserves for them (see below), except when quoting or channeling Davidson, for whom there is no such distinction.
3. For the purposes of this paper, I treat a scientific paradigm as a special case of what Davidson calls a conceptual scheme. Whether this substitution is entirely fair I leave undecided, but at very least, Davidson and Kuhn treat them thus.
4. Davidson, Donald. “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.” In The Essential Davidson. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2006. 203
5. Davidson, Donald. “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.” In The Essential Davidson. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2006. 205
6. The remaining citations in this section are all from Kuhn, Thomas S. “Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association Two (1982): 669-688.
7. Technical vocabulary is often odious, but sometimes helpful; here I believe it to be the latter. An isomorphism is just a function that is one-to-one and preserving all the relevant structures. The term, while in use primarily in mathematics, can also be used of non-formal languages: ‘Ich habe drei Beine’ is isomorphic to ‘I have three legs’. Each word in one sentence has an equivalent in the other without intermediary loss of meaning, and the way in which they are put together yields the same sense. By contrast, ‘to be’ cannot be translated into Spanish in this way; we have two choices, ‘estar’ and ‘ser’, between which we choose depending on context. By ‘translation’, Kuhn means something like a loose version of ‘isomorphism’.
8. See Structure, 101.
9. Davidson, Donald. “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.” In The Essential Davidson. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2006. 204
10. Actually, there are probably some cases of uninterpretability, but they are far removed from those with which we are concerned. For example, it may well be that one cannot interpret chess using the rules for scrabble. But these are highly localized and contrived games, not large-scale conceptual schemes for describing something like the world. And, in any case, both chess and scrabble can be interpreted in English.
11. Kuhn, Thomas S. “Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association Two (1982): 672
12. Of course, this can be difficult when there are no living Aristotelians. But even in this case we are not totally helpless; we can read the description of their experiments, and use our interpretive powers to reconstruct what it was that they were doing.
13. Different theories often commit one to the existence of different physical entities—some theories include electrons while others do not, and so no statement about ‘electrons’ can be interpreted in the theory that does not—but interpretation nonetheless requires that we can find some entities that both theories can describe (tables, for instance).
14. Kuhn, Thomas S. “Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association Two (1982): 670
15. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1996. 206
16. It is important that one does not obtain the same game structure with more complicated cases and exceptions to the old game. A necessary condition for science, it seems, is precisely not accepting exceptions to general rules. The picture, then, is not as though nature is playing chess, and up until move n no pieces have been able to jump any other piece, and at move n+1 nature uses the knight to jump over another piece, and we modify the game to allow for this one particular move. At that point we must reevaluate what the entity ‘knight’ is, and supply general rules that account for all observed cases of its behavior. Even this case could be accounted for with modification, and for the most part we would need to make little departure from normal science. For more profound paradigm shifts we may have to redo the entire game—for example, if we thought we were playing chess and all of a sudden nature moved its piece off of what we thought was the board.
17. Readers of Kuhn will note that I am oversimplifying slightly; in particular, Kuhn says that there are almost always anomalies within paradigms, and that not all anomalies lead to crisis. I do not here address what other characteristics an anomaly must have in order to lead to crisis. This is another issue, one that does not seem to get adequate treatment in Structure. His account there is mainly sociological, going something like, “Well, some do and some don’t, and we can tell which is which based on how the scientists within the paradigm respond to it,” without asking what particular characteristics of an anomaly tend to evoke that response.

Ethan Jerzak (’10) is a Philosophy and Allied Fields major at the University of Chicago

Cover art by atomfuer

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: The evolution of artistic expression is often understood to be co-productive with a certain apprehended teleology of culture: “progress”, a notion itself instantiated by false axiomatic assumptions concerning biological evolution. These meditations will seek to critically interrogate teleological assumptions by de-structively mapping the future evolution of artistic expression through a radically empirical attention to the flows of cultural raw materials, media-structures, mediums, memes and messages. By attending to processes associated with growing media digitzation, inter-connectedness and fragmenting attention span, these meditations will seek to illuminate a cultural milieu which is comprised of unprecedented structural homogeneity yet capable of equally unprecedented artistic diversity.

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I. A Biology of Art

The evolution of artistic expression is much like the evolution of biological species. In both cases, the raw material is a product of mutant variation—in biology that variation appears random, in the case of art it is attributed to creativity and, increasingly, strategic deviation from established convention. Across the field of this variation, certain selection pressures determine whether or not certain mutations survive. In biology, those mutants with advantages over previous versions of the organism are apt to proliferate, and that mutation becomes more prevalent in the variation. In artistic expression, different mutations enjoy widespread acclaim and are rewarded by the market, which in turn creates incentives for other artists to produce in a similar vein, or in other words, to embody their own artwork with this new mutation. I will here reflect on the quixotic nature of these mutations in an attempt to circumvent the rigid trajectory so often imposed by historians and social theorists, which assemble the historically constructed chronological assemblages into an artificial linear teleology. Whether this then becomes understood as progress away from barbarism or corruption of a prior Golden Age cannot redeem its arbitrariness. The attribution of some defining purpose of history or Spirit of an Age to ritual, formulaic and aesthetic representation has long characterized critical response to art of all different stripes, and must be resisted. These reflections will hopefully serve as a futurist’s de-structive genealogy[1], which seeks to expose the arbitrary construction of such grand narratives and the bricolage nature of historical condensations of aesthetic culture, as well as suggesting how the cultural raw materials of media structure, medium, meme and message might more forcefully manifest and as these expressive trajectories proceed apace.

The change of creatures, languages and memes over time is often referred to through the language of evolution. However, such language carries unfortunate teleological baggage which requires critical interrogation. One crucial misunderstanding of evolutionary theory can be epitomized in the axiomatic phrase: ‘survival of the fittest.’ This phrase is extremely un-useful, because people who use it almost always define ‘fittest’ as ‘those that are apt to survive’ and empiricists define ‘those that are apt to survive’ based on ‘those that have survived in the past’. Therefore the expression is converted into the tautology: ‘those that survived survived.’ In practice, whatever is meant by ‘fittest’ need not have a central role in determining survival. A meteor descending surprisingly out of a cloudless blue sky can destroy the world’s smartest and strongest man as surely as it can destroy a paraplegic infant. The millions dead of earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, hurricanes on the one hand and colonialist violence, structural starvation, modern genocides, and terrorist attacks on the other, were unlucky, not unfit. The high propensity of events to happen unexpectedly or for a reason entirely un-related to so-called ‘fitness’ increases the corresponding likelihood that even if there were some ideal organism or some ideal artwork, neither organic nor artistic evolutionary course would veer in that direction.

This misunderstanding, in biology referred to as determinism (or the idea that biology can determine an organism’s superiority independent of an assessment of that organism’s environment) is behind some of the most misguided political actions of the twentieth century. In reality, an entity is only fit relative to its environment. Since an entity’s environment is always operating under changing conditions and is always being partially re-composed through the mutation of other entities, the definition of “fitness” must also be in constant flux. In biological evolution, rising temperature may make thick fur a draw-back when it had once been an advantage, and if those animals have trouble surviving than maybe other animal’s sharp teeth and carnivorous digestive systems will be forced to subsist on vegetable matter, as in the case of the panda which must consume huge quantities of bamboo for it’s meat-designed digestive system to extract sufficient nutrients. In artistic evolution, if a large-scale war is in the making, such political foreshadowing may make impressionistic paintings of bucolic rural pleasantries seem naïve or overly sentimental, disconnected from the current mood or even propagandistic. This was the case among the artists of the ill-fated Weinmar Republic as the approach of the second world war neared. If the government intervenes in the artistic sphere, as in the case of socialist countries, then that will function as powerful selection pressure determining what mutations  actually succeed (although censorship itself is a selection pressure on the population of subversives that ensures that only the most insidiously subversive works become popular). These are examples of the ways in which selection pressures, both market and non-market, determine what forms of artistic expression become prevalent, both drawing on and informing the culture that intertwines them, and give inspiration to new artists to carry on and strategically depart from their work.

A momentary linguistic note: I am using the general term of ‘artistic expression’ to be inclusive of anything that the reader properly deems to be art. While small libraries could be filled with the books that have been written over the question ‘what is art?’ I submit that while it is relatively difficult (and somewhat fruitless) to arrive at a precise (or concise) definition of art, we can amusingly reverse Justice Stewart’s quip concerning the definition of pornography by saying that at least you can know it when you see it. In some ways the process of questioning the boundaries of its own social definition is an intrinsic element of the artistic process, manifest in objects, persons, performances, happenings and so on. Definitions here are not answers to questions that anyone should be asking. Or, as one of my college professors put it: “Art inspires. What’s inspiration? Exactly.”

II. Contemporary Selection Pressures

If we are interested in the future of artistic expression, we must first begin by asking what selection pressures exist, and whether they are primarily directed at artist, art-object, art-buyer or general art consumer. My observations here are not meant to be exhaustive, but primarily to address one particular trend which I feel is unique to our time-period and will have more to do with influencing the future of artistic expression than any other. That trend is the increasing demands placed upon the human attention span. We live during a historical epoch where everyone is expected to be a multi-tasker. Many of the people I know regularly do 4-5 things at once, whether they are working or relaxing. Those activities include: listening to music, checking email, writing email, reading news, checking a social networking service such as Facebook, sending messages through that social networking service, reading a blog or blog-aggregator such as Digg, searching for random cultural factoids and background on Wikipedia, playing some type of internet-based computer game, looking through collections of bizarre or cute images, text-messaging, and watching television, to name a few of the ones that jump most quickly to mind. For those who prefer to focus on labor as the locus of social behavior, it is easy to see how this trend is co-productive with a efficiency-oriented attempt to socialize white collar workers for constant multi-tasking by managers who correctly believed that in the short-term this strategy would increase worker productivity.[2] This multi-tasking socialization effort has proved almost disastrously successful.

This selection pressure is unique for a number of reasons. It exists in a category of persistent and unplanned mass social trends that has few historical precedents. Unlike a war or an economic crash which historically seem to come and go and operate somewhat cyclically, the trend of increasing use of computers throughout the economy shows no signs of calling it quits. And as that computing use becomes more integrated into economic, and subsequently, social life, it is rapidly becoming more sophisticated. Moore’s Law, named for Intel cofounder Gordon Moore, is an observation that the number of transistor on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every eighteen months, making the increases in emerging hi-tech capacity literally exponential.[3] Can you imagine someone a decade ago contemplating the possibility of youtube? Blogs that generate enough revenue that anyone can start one for free? Now youtube videos have become something of a sub-genre unto themselves and blogs of publications like Time magazine and Foreign Policy are outpacing the readership of their print editions. To many, this phenomenal acceleration of high technology seems more enduring even than the governments that may preside over them. One need only to look at the frequent failures and inconsistencies of Chinese internet censorship to see how the conceptual technology and memes that allow information to be organized are outpacing their antiquated opponents by leaps and bounds.

Another element to consider is the target. Of these more enduring forms of pressure, such as censorship or market demand, previous pressures have targeted the production rather than consumption of artistic expression. Censorship targets the writer more than the reader, the artist who can’t sell her paintings suffers more than the patron who can’t buy them, at least materially. The hi-tech pressure on the human attention span affects everyone, but as a selection pressure on artistic expression, the consumer is the focus. Focusing on the consumer has historically not been easy, because of the large numbers of consumers and their de-centralized location relative to artists who have gallery representation and must connect with the art market in order to become profitable. I should note that when I say consumers, I am referring to a new sort of consumer that high technology has made possible, a consumer that consumes without expense, that allows artists to produce money through popularity alone that generates revenue through advertising. This consumer of artistic expression need only view an image or a film in order to have participated in the act of consumption, as opposed to the traditional mechanism of consumer participation; spending money. In this, these new consumers can be juxtaposed against traditional art buyers who are also easier for previous selection pressures to reach, through attendance of gallery openings and art auctions and consumption of a specific sub-genre designed for art buyers. New consumers can be anyone, interested in the professionalized “art world” or not. They vote with their feet (or hands, on their keyboard) instead of their purses and increasingly in is those votes that have come to signify artistic success, along with the traditional markers of critical acclaim and premium market price.

III. Future Mutations

Just as the selection pressure of increasing demands placed on the attention span target the consumer, the consumer transfers that pressure onto the art object. If most consumption of artistic expression in the future occurs at the same time as a number of other activities, then it is reasonable to assume that artistic expression will rise to meet that need. If you are listening to music while you watch TV with the sound off (or on low volume) and write emails to people, you will want to listen to music that is more like a soundtrack rather than a discrete art-object unto itself. You will want that television program, let’s say the news, to communicate its message wordlessly. You will want your form of communication with others to be short and direct. Already, we can observe patterns in music, network news and communication which complement the needs of a consumer base which spends its time doing many things at once.

It is easy to decry the consumer-culture influences as leading only to the pointless and ugly simplifying of artistic expression into uninspiring and repetitive drivel. There are certainly many examples to point to of musicians that sound almost exactly the same as other musicians, television shows with characters that look and act like characters on other television shows, clothing that is designed to blend in with the clothing that others are wearing and so on. It is hard to doubt that the fragmenting of attention span is having a homogenizing influence on artistic expression.

Take the music industry as a good example. Radio disc jockeys have in large part been replaced as music selectors with the Scott SS32 radio automation suite[4], a program developed by Google which shuffles a playlist of 4-500 tracks and tells the DJ when to talk and when to break for ads. These playlists are assembled by market research companies which study the reactions of demographically homogenous groups to hundreds of 7-second song clips. Each member of the market group votes up or down whether or not to add the song to the playlist.[5] Because of this vetting process, music producers are increasingly using digital technology to polish songs to elide anything that sounds like an error, and add elements that make them sound like recognizable hits. This process is becoming an industry standard if it isn’t already.[6] We could blame greedy music producers or soul-less corporatism for this tendency, but the reality is that they are responding to the same selections pressures of a culture that increasingly does many things at once and therefore has less attention to understand a more complicated or non-conforming art object when it comes in over the radio. Next time you listen to the radio (which will probably be while you are driving) think about how long it takes you to decide whether or not to stay with a station that’s playing a certain song, and then think about whether or not you are making that decision primarily based on how innovative or how familiar that song seems to you. The fact of the matter is that the fragmenting of attention has created a market in which it is profitable to conform.

The music industry is an extreme example, however, and we can look at many forms of new media which form new parameters that encourage both homogenization and deviance. youtube is one of the best example of this formula: the medium homogenizes all content to the format of a short, several minutes-long streaming video, but the content is remarkably varied. In the evolution of artistic expression, just like biology, every homogenization along selective traits both decreases the likelihood of variance outside of those traits while increasing the propensity for specialization within them. Once all birds have evolved beaks, different groups of birds will evolve beaks more adept at eating certain foods, such as nuts, creating evolutionary niches. The same principle applies here. Once the pressure of fragmenting attention has concentrated mass-consumed artistic expression in selective mediums, innovation in content and specialization can occur within those mediums and at their periphery.

To continue with the youtube example, at the periphery of the genre of free, short, web-based videos, one might look at the evolution of internet pornography into parallel fragmented search engines such as eskimotube, which in turn organizes sub-genre videos based on viewer predilection into separate, linked search engines and then streams those videos in the same way that youtube does. I should note that I use the word “periphery” only to describe social acceptability and the question of whether or not such productions are legitimately ‘artistic’. If, however, we looked at actual web traffic one would find that internet pornography swamps most other forms of hi-tech consumption of images and video by astounding magnitudes. As this genre and its manifold accompaniments have become more readily accessible through the exact same medium as youtube, they have created separate user-communities viewing different content based on fetishistic and racialized viewing preferences which, in turn, continues the process of internal specialization into different sub-genres that are organized and presented in different electronic fora.

The example of internet pornography is an important case study because it is an instance where numerical superiority of consumer preferences has yet to make a real impact on the social culture of consumption in terms of acceptability. According to the Internet Filter Review’s statistical information for 2006, 70 per cent of all internet pornography access occurs between the 9-5 workday, 20 per cent of men admit to accessing pornography at work, 1 in 3 companies has had to terminate employees for inappropriate web activity and 10 percent of men surveyed admit that they have an addiction to internet pornography. These statistics indicate that internet pornography has not merely a fact but a way of life for literally millions of American workers. While this may be surprising, it shouldn’t be, given that the internet pornography industry currently outpaces the revenues of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink combined.[7] This is a prime example of the way in which an aesthetic environment, widely considered deviant, becomes integrated into an overlapping series of such environments within the workplace as people seek everyday ways to satisfy their need to see sexual images. While such a need may be sexually motivated, like it or not, it may also be many workers dominant interaction with any sort of creative production outside of advertising. As this trend and others like it continue to grow and permeate the cultural milieu, they will in turn form a profound selection pressure which will provide the criteria for success or failure of future aesthetic mutations.

Here we can talk about art as not an art-object but as a series of overlapping components: content, medium, and media-structure. For a youtube video of a puppy chasing its tail, the tail-chasing would be the content, the short streaming video would be the medium and the network of youtube.com would be the media structure. While Marshall McLuhan’s quip that the medium is the message may at one point have been true, increasingly it is the media-structure that is dominating the medium which in turn reflects upon the content. Art objects are homogenized, hollowed out, shortened, stripped; the messages are apparent, explicit, easy-to-grasp; the presentation is designed to get attention, to shock and to titillate. These goals will form the principles that the market will use to designate the evolutionary winners in the new highly fragmented field of artistic expression, and it is those winners that will inspire artistic progeny.

For those who will say that the field of so-called “high art” (painting and sculpture) are immune from such influences, I would point to the meteoric ascendancy in the art world of the neo-Warholian Takashi Murakami whose work both thrives under and embodies the aforementioned selection pressures. His art alternates between dividing and combining the abstractly innocent and explicitly sexual, featuring sugary, bright colors and a surplus of cartoon eyes. There are now many artists like him, and increasingly this “high art” is virtually indistinguishable from the “graphic designs” which now appear on custom t-shirts or album covers. Both exemplify the type of eye-catching, provocative artistic expression which was once only a peripheral mutation and now is becoming dominant. This is the type of artistic expression that can catch a person’s attention when that attention is divided between many things. This is the visual equivalent of the type of song that you don’t change the station on because you want to see where it goes, what it does, even though it is not familiar. The challenge of new art will be increasingly to innovate along the lines that they can get enough attention from enough distracted consumers that they will be able to tell a story, represent an idea, or simply be beautiful. In the merging of communications technology through the connected artistic-economic spheres, it is too often this last criteria, subjective to begin with, that gets completely left out. Hopefully, it will be possible for a talented artist to develop new strategies in this difficult environment, to clear a space in which to reclaim it.

IV. Mutations Adapt

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a noise? Probably. If an artist creates an art-object and no other person experiences it, is it art? Perhaps. If yes, the drug addict is the highest and most prolific form of artist. If no, then it implies that art is not located in the artist or the art object, but rather occurs in the space of the encounter between the consumer, whether viewer, listener, feeler or so on, and the art object. Just as all art-objects appear to become more simplified as a result of the proliferation of high technology and the increasing demands placed on the human attention span, the artistic experience itself is becoming more varied and complex. Consider a music producer who is putting together a song with a rock band. Many of the component parts will be quite simple, a simple base line, a steady rhythm, a guitar player, a singer. Recorded separately each track of each instrument may seem mundane and even boring. If there is improvisation, it will likely be done only by one instrument at a time. Yet when the finished song is assembled, it sounds professional and innovative even though that innovation is distributed to only one instrument at a time. The artistic experience is increasingly being accomplished more by the consumer than the work of art, and it being assembled by the consumer at the site of consumption from various component parts, in the same way that a single song is assembled out of different tracks of instruments. The person who listens to music while watching television has assembled, for the moment of experience, a different artistic encounter than either medium would be absent the other. In this way, the rich bricolage artistic experience is accomplished through strategies that we are only just beginning to realize. For now, this assemblage and process of assemblage is not considered art. I would wager that before long, it will be.

The future of artistic expression is with the consumer, not the artist. After decades of killing the author and burying the artist, they really may be dead. New artists will create raw materials for the consumers to assemble artistic experiences with. Perhaps centers will open that will combine mixed media for individual or group performances. We are already beginning to see something like that through artistic collaboration which makes use of high technology, such as those of the poet Anne Carson with choreographer Robert Curry. Commercially, companies will be able to profit by contracting with inter-media artists to produce aesthetic environments that combine complementary assortments of music, film, news media, television, and reading material along with appropriate lighting, temperature and perhaps even scents.

For now, the consumer, often unknowingly fashions these aesthetic environs from surrounding mediums willy-nilly. This will become more planned as more people understand how acclimated consumers have become to a mixed-media environment. It has become increasingly common for bands to pair their performances with film clips in addition to lighting shows, and to experiment even further with projection technology, integrating action in the film with a chorus or climax of their music, such as in the case of RJD2 or Black Moth Super Rainbow. That is one of the beginnings of the new media integration that will occur as people increasingly don’t have the patience to experience any art-object in quantity, but find the jarring over-lap of different incongruous elements to be aesthetically unpleasant. New art will not have a center but will exist as experiences occurring at the intersection of many different mediums and content, where the content will sometimes jump from medium to medium. Some of it will be planned and organized, much of it will simply happen. New forms of planning will generate new genres as well as new mediums for new forms of composure, which will in turn demand new strategies for integration into these new aesthetic environs. Cultural nay-sayers and pushers of cheap nostalgia and sentimentality may continue whining about the virtualization of aesthetic experience, wishing for the “reality” of the ‘60s to return. Such critics do a disservice to themselves by making their criticism irrelevant, much like Adorno’s reactionary complaints about jazz. This future of artistic expression offers possibilities of variance and mutation greater than ever before in the history of humanity. As consumers, it is ours to synthesize.

Endnotes

[1] Marzec, Robert P. An Anatomy of Empire symploke – Volume 9, Numbers 1-2, 2001, pp. 165-168

[2] Butcher, David R. “National Productivity, Multitasking Efficiency, Individual Engagement” Industrial News Room, July 5, 2006

[3] Wolf, Gary “Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity” Wired Magazine, 3/24/08

[4] see “Radio Automation” information at http://www.google.com/radioautomation/products.html

[5] The Word “Why records DO all sound the same” February 26,2008

[6] Ibid.

[7] Jerry Ropelato, “Internet Pornography Statistics” Internet Filter Review, 2006 [http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html]

Edmund Zagorin (’11) is a Philosophy and International Affairs major at University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

Art courtesy of larkie

ABSTRACT: Many commentators are extremely critical of Heidegger’s ambiguous conflation of Being-with and das Man in Being and Time. The text of Division One, Chapter Four shifts between an ethically neutral and ontologically necessary account of Dasein’s Being-with-others and an ethically saturated and contingent account of the same phenomenon, leaving the reader confused as to whether Heidegger is accepting sociality as a necessary and inexorable condition of human existence or a pervasive yet ultimately contingent impediment to authentic existence. In this paper I identify the point of confusion in Heidegger’s text and survey the dominant exegetical treatment of the text, which usually only takes one of Heidegger’s two contradictory claims as true. I then posit an alternative hybrid reading of the text in which the two dominant readings are integrated. I argue that, though Heidegger’s text is confused, the underlying idea is consistent, and what manifests as a logical contradiction in the text masks what is evidently Heidegger’s actual claim that the human condition is inherently contradictory. Dasein is then necessarily fallen, yet necessarily strives for authenticity.

—

“And so I believe in improvisation and I fight for improvisation.

But always with the belief that it’s impossible.”

-Jacques Derrida.¹

Bracketing any differences between Derrida and Heidegger, and focusing on their similarities, Derrida’s claim about improvisation aphoristically captures the internal tension in Heidegger’s das Man quite nicely. In its open and clear contradiction it plainly demonstrates the internal tension stemming from the struggle between social existence and improvisation, and yet Derrida’s willingness to express this internal tension seriously suggests that the concept at hand is not entirely unstable, though in considerable tension. For Heidegger, this tension stems from the seemingly unintentional equivocation within the text of an existential/ontological das Man that structures intelligibility and communication, and an existentiell/ethical das Man that acts as a barrier to becoming an authentic Dasein. The reader is left unsure as to whether to interpret das Man as a necessary, positive condition of Dasein, or as a contingent and undesirable hindrance to authentic existence. Are we to condemn or embrace das Man?

I do not deny that the writing of chapter IV of Being and Time on Being-with and das Man is unmistakably confused, and even contradictory as it stands; nevertheless I do believe that a consistent theory of das Man can be extracted from the text which incorporates both the existential/ontological reading of das Man and the existentiell/ethical reading. The resulting picture of Dasein illustrates a kind secular fallenness² in the human condition, a necessary characteristic of Dasein against which it must fight aggressively in order to exist authentically, though this is a task it can never fully complete. For Heidegger, the human condition is fundamentally sick, though salvation paradoxically presents itself as a possibility.

Heidegger writes Chapter IV in order to flesh out more fully the character of Dasein, his stand-in term for human existence. The provisional characteristics that Dasein (1) is able to question its own Being and (2) that it exhibits ‘in each case mineness’ were only provisional indicators of a general familiarity we had with Dasein, and now that Being-in-the-world has been phenomenologically described in greater detail, a fuller account of the “who?” of Dasein can emerge.

But how are we to begin to ask the question of the ‘who?’ of everyday Dasein? What preestablished and uncontroversial knowledge can we import? Heidegger initially entertains a Cartesian approach, positing the givenness of the ego in self-reflection. Surely this is indubitable? But the problem Heidegger finds with this approach is that in its everydayness, Dasein-qua-ego is far from indubitable; in fact, it is almost absent to awareness: “In clarifying Being-in-the-world we have shown that a bare subject without a world never ‘is’ proximally, nor is it ever given. And so in the end an isolated “I” without Others is just as far from being proximally given.” (BT 152/116)

Having discarded any kind of isolated Cartesian ego as a starting point for discovering the ‘who of everyday Dasein,’ Heidegger has taken one step backward; another potential starting point has been discarded. Where to begin? Heidegger suggests that the foregoing phenomenological account of the equipmental totality may provide us a clue: “In our ‘description’ of that environment which is closest to us—the work-world of the craftsman for example—the outcome was that along with the equipment to be found when one is at work, those ‘Others’ for whom the ‘work’ is destined are encountered too.” (BT 153/117) If this equipmental totality is so basic that it establishes the very framework of significance for Dasein³, then it seems that this ready-to-hand network is a fundamental, inextricable structure of the Being of Dasein. To bracket out the ready-to-hand from an account of Dasein would be to bracket the very source of significance and intelligibility. The remaining ‘Dasein’ would be beyond recognition. So Dasein is inextricably bound with its existential network of ready-to-hand equipment, as it coordinates the very topology of intelligibility.

But Heidegger recognizes that even prior to this network of ready-to-hand equipment, there is a concept of Others: “The Others who are thus ‘encountered’ in a ready-to-hand environmental context of equipment, are not somehow added on in thought to some thing which is proximally just present-at-hand; such ‘Things’ are encountered from out of the world in which they are ready-to-hand for Others [emphasis added].” (BT 154/118). For every piece of equipment, there is an antecedent undifferentiated Other, as its creator, as its user, as its designer, etc.. The ready-to-hand cannot be understood independent of Others. It follows then, that if the network of ready-to-hand entities, the existentiale source of significance and intelligibility, is equiprimordial with Being-with, then Being-with is an inextricable existentiale structure of the Being of Dasein. Dasein is necessarily a public being; it is always already with Others. Phenomenally, ‘Others’ manifest a presence more loudly than any isolated ‘ego’ of Dasein itself. The ‘Others’ are prior to Dasein’s reflective self in everyday comportment.

But since we form a part of the ready-to-hand totality, and since the roles Daseins play in this network are interchangeable, ‘Others’ are not differentiated from each other nor ourselves: “By ‘Others’ we do not mean everyone else but me—those over and against whom the “I” stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself—those among whom one is too.” (BT 154/118) In fact, rather than some indubitable ego, the who of everyday Dasein is “encountered proximally and for the most part in terms of the with-world with which we are environmentally concerned. When Dasein is absorbed in the world of its concern—that is, at the same time, in its Being-with towards Others—it is not itself.” (BT 163/125). Later on Heidegger reveals that “the Self of everyday Dasein is the they-self…In terms of the “they” and as the “they”, I am ‘given’ proximally to ‘myself.’” (BT 167/129) Heidegger is claiming that in everyday coping we understand ourselves from the point of view of society, as an undifferentiated constituent, rather than a unique ‘I’. We act, view ourselves, and judge our actions based on the perspective of the ‘they’, rather than a selfsame ‘me’.

Heidegger describes three interesting phenomena that illustrate Dasein’s discovery of itself in its everydayness as das Man: distantiality, averageness, and levelling-down. Together they are called ‘publicness.’ ‘Distiantiality’ is a constant, impulsive, and unconscious reference to the norms of das Man that Dasein uses to gauge the propriety of its actions: “In one’s concern with what one has taken hold of, whether with, for, or against, the Others, there is constant care as to the way one differs from them…The care about this distance between them is disturbing to Being-with-one-another, though this disturbance is one that is hidden from it.” (BT 164/126) ‘Averageness’ results from distantiality, and is its ultimate goal: “The “they” has its own ways in which to be. That tendency of Being-with which we have called “distantiality” is grounded in the fact that Being-with-one-another concerns itself as such with averageness, which is an existential characteristic of the “they”.” (BT 164/127) These first two are presented as value-neutral existentiale by Heidegger. For Heidegger they are neither to be celebrated nor condemned.

Levelling-down is the outlier in this laundry list of existentiale of das Man. Whereas distantiality and avergeness were described in value-neutral language, Heidegger’s tone promptly switches to poetic sorrow and even disgust in describing leveling-down:

In this averageness with which it prescribes what can and may be ventured, [das Man] keeps watch over everything exceptional and thrusts itself to the fore. Every kind of priority gets noiselessly suppressed. Overnight, everything that is primordial gets glossed over as something that has long been well known. Everything gained by a struggle becomes just something to be manipulated. Every secret loses its force. This care of avergeness reveals in turn an essential tendency of Dasein which we call the “levelling down” of all possibilities of Being. (BT 165/127)

There is an unmistakeable ethical import here. Das Man is not value-neutral in Heidegger’s eyes with respect to leveling-down. Individual human excellence is reduced to mediocrity, and true improvisation is reduced to mimicry of the norms inscribed by hegemonic das Man. Levelling-down renders human potential uninteresting, superficial, and pre-choreographed.

This lament of leveling-down prompts Heidegger to introduce ‘authenticity’ and ‘inautheticity’ into the text as ethical modes for Dasein to relate to das Man. Dasein is diffused into das Man and lost to itself in its everydayness.

In these [diffused] modes one’s way of Being is that of inauthenticity and failure to stand by one’s Self…The Self of everyday Dasein is the they-self, which we distinguish from the authentic Self—that is, from the Self which has been taken hold of in its own way…If Dasein discovers the world in its own way and brings it close, if it discloses to itself its own authentic Being, then this discovery of the ‘world’ and this disclosure of Dasein are always accomplished as a clearing-away of concealments and obscurities. [emphasis added] (BT 166/128-167/129)

Here it is clear that Heidegger advises ‘clearing-away of the concealments and obscurities’ imposed by das Man, and an autonomous discovery of the world ‘in its own way’ independent of das Man’s hegemony. But what are we to make of Heidegger’s earlier efforts to show that das Man is a necessary and inexorable existentiale of Dasein? How could we claim independence from a necessary structure of Dasein? How are we to treat this advice?

The traditional reading of das Man is an ‘existentialist,’ ethical reading. This reading highlights the Kierkeggardian influence in Being and Time. Das Man becomes an elaboration on Kierkegaard’s “the truth is never in the crowd.”⁴ This reading takes seriously the strong ethical language Heidegger uses to describe levelling-down, and they adopt Heidegger’s advice to actively resist the conformist leveling that das Man enforces, and to independently and authentically ‘take hold’ of their Being ‘in their own way’. Advocates of this reading, such as Frederick Olafson, recognize that this reading cannot be maintained if Heidegger’s claim is taken seriously that das Man is an inextricable existentiale of Dasein which governs all intelligibility. To solve this, Olafson seeks to undermine Heidegger’s argument for the equiprimordiality of ready-to-hand and Being-with. He claims that Heidegger has not shown that Being-with is an existentiale:

“[Heidegger’s claim] would have to take into account such facts as that what I uncover as a hammer, say, has been previously used (and thus uncovered) as hammer by others and it is normally from these others that I have learned what a hammer is and how to use one” ⁵

In the phenomena Olafson is raising, the individual exists prior to the socialization of practices, and so Being-with das Man must be added on later, rather than a necessary existentiale of Dasein. But this is a bad example. Olafson’s criticism cannot undermine the primordial social practices that are not explicitly taught, such as gender performativity and distance standing. Olafson’s critique of the primacy of Being-with is unsatisfactory.

Recent exegetical work of Hubert Dreyfus and Taylor Carman seeks to question the purely negative and ethical reading of das Man. In contrast, they choose to preserve Being-with as an existentiale, and abandon its link to inauthenticity. Dreyfus in particular sees das Man as dictating and negotiating the shared social practices that Dasein is unconsciously socialized into. Dreyfus focuses on the numerous passages in which Heidegger emphasizes that authenticity has no ethical import⁶. He sees strong textual evidence that das Man is the ultimate source of meaning and intelligibility, focusing on passages such as “The “they”, as the “nobody”, is by no means nothing at all. On the contrary, in this kind of Being, Dasein is an ens realissimum, if by ‘Reality’ we understand a Being that has the character of Dasein.” (BT 166/128) Here Heidegger is identifying the social phenomena of God with the reification of das Man, with a similar idea to Durkeim’s “God is society, writ large.” In other words, das Man, as the outgrowth of Being-with, governs and writes the highest-order of truth available to Dasein (or any Being). Dreyfus sees passages like this making the same claim that Wittgenstein makes when he posits the ultimate grounding of knowledge on shared practices.⁷ Dreyfus advocates the abandonment of the existentiell/ethical component of das Man as the reading most charitable to Heidegger’s initial project as an existential analytic of Dasein.

Whereas Dreyfus acknowledges that there are some undeniably negative consequences of das Man, Carman attempts to suggests that das Man is ethically harmless and impeccable. He suggests “Being “lost” in the one and not being able to find oneself and grasp one’s self as one’s own sound like inauthenticity, and indeed it sounds like something bad. But in fact, as we have seen, in normative contexts Heidegger draws not a twofold but a threefold distinction between authenticity, inauthenticity, and an “undifferentiated” average everydayness.” Carman here claims that das Man has no ethical content, that the hegemony of das Man has no impact on one’s authenticity. However, he goes on to say with regard to the ‘leveling’ and loss-of-Self in das Man, “we might say civilization is founded on an act of violence—in this case the mundane violence involved in fitting my own self-understanding into the, as it were, “one-size-fits-all” concept of personhood.” So clearly even on Carman’s value-neutral reading of das Man, there is some lamentable impact on Dasein’s freedom of expression and individuality. Neither reading, the existential/intelligible nor the existentiell/ethical, has been able to fully distance itself from the other, and thus the contradiction remains. It seems as though Heidegger is making a claim that can only be read as Dasein expressing a necessary contradiction.

It seems to me that the best that we can do with this contradictory text is to step in for Heidegger and suggest a hybrid of his two conflicting das Mans, preserving as much from both as we can. Hopefully, this will reduce the contradictions in the text to carelessness and reveal what Heidegger actually believed, and would have said in moments of greater clarity. I suggest the following:

Olafson, Dreyfus and Carman claim that neither reading of das Man can incorporate the other without contradiction, but it seems to me that these interpreters are dogmatically unwilling to entertain the idea that the human condition may be internally contradictory. A distinction should be made between a logically contradictory theory and an observation that Dasein’s condition is in conflict with itself. Perhaps we can reduce the former in the text to the latter. One desires to smoke despite desiring to be healthy, one desires to eat more than ones fill, and one desires recreation more than a productive work schedule allows. Could it not also be true that one chases the specter of authenticity even though the human condition necessarily denies complete access to it? This would suggest that Dasein is born fallen, and can only marginally save itself, though not completely.

Das Man is the source of inauthenticity, but not the essential characteristic of it. Conformity, a natural quality we inevitably exhibit as social creatures, is the source of conformism, a dogmatic and panicked unreflective and unconscious adherence to the contingent expression of das Man in our particular society. However, becoming authentic, it seems Heidegger believes, is not to overthrow the fetters of essential conformity, but contingent conformism. We can never step out of the background of shared social practices that structure intelligibility and significance. What we can do is recognize the contingency of the particular form that das Man takes within our social world, instead of taking it as dogmatically and unreflectively correct. This makes the most sense of Heidegger’s closing claim that “Authentic Being-one’s-Self does not rest upon an exceptional condition of the subject, a condition that has been detached from the “they”; it is rather an existentiell modification of the “they”—of the “they as an essential existentiale” (BT 168/130). This would mean that authentic Dasein stays within the realm of conformity, and thus Being-with, significance and intelligibility, but actively resists its tendency to solidify into dogmatic conformism, continually recognizing the contingency of shared social practices, and thus allowing Dasein some space for potential relative uniqueness and relative improvisation; though to completely overthrow shared social practices and to purely improvise from scratch would be ultimately impossible. One can only press against that limit inscribed by das Man.

As I have shown, Heidegger’s text on das Man is internally contradictory as it stands. Heidegger posits Being-with as a necessary existentiale of Dasein’s existence, and then asks authentic Dasein to step outside of it. Both the existentiell/ethical and the existentiale/intelligibility readings have not been able to eliminate this contradiction. I suggest that we make a distinction between conformity to das Man and dogmatic conformism as an attitude toward das Man. Heidegger recognizes the necessity of the former, but condemns the latter, though he does not make this adequately clear in the text. Recognizing this deflated claim, we can reduce Heidegger’s contradictory claim to a claim about the internal tension in Dasein’s condition.

References

Dreyfus, Hubert L. Being-in-the-World Div. I : A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. New York: MIT P, 1991.

Carman, T. ‘Autneticity.’ in Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Mark A. Wrathall, eds. A Companion to Heidegger. Grand Rapids: Blackwell Limited, 2008.

Dreyfus, H. ‘Interpreting Heidegger on “Das Man”’, in Inquiry, 37 (1995) pp. 423-30

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. New York: Harper San Francisco, 1962.

Mulhall, Stephen. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Polt, Richard. Heidegger. New York: Cornell UP, 1999.

Joseph N. Rees (’10) is a Philosophy major at American University.

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John Stuart Mill, one of the most prominent British philosophers of the 19^th century, has had a tremendous influence on political philosophy, ethical theory, and much of the liberal thought which has dominated contemporary Western culture. His libertarian viewpoints are espoused in his essay On Liberty, which is an unwavering defense of individual liberty and freedom from limitations imposed by society. A few years later, Mill published his essay Utilitarianism, in which he argues that utility is the fundamental principle of morality. The principle of utility, or the greatest happiness principle, states that right actions are those which produce the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people, and wrong actions are those that produce the greatest unhappiness. Mill’s advocacy of the concepts of happiness, freedom, and individual liberty, serves as the groundwork for his Utilitarian theory of ethics, and the two works Utilitarianism and On Liberty are perhaps the two most important essays which express his viewpoints.

However, when comparing the two texts, one cannot help noticing an inherent tension between them. Mill’s discourse in On Liberty, is supposed to be written in a Utilitarian spirit. Can Mill truly provide an adequate defense of the protection of individual liberty and freedom, while approaching the issue from a Utilitarian standpoint, which emphasizes the promotion of society’s utility at the cost of individual happiness? Mill’s fundamental principle of utility presupposes that happiness is the only thing to be valued as a goal, and for its own sake. In order to remain consistent with Utilitarianism, the notions of individual liberty and freedom can only be valued as vehicles toward that same goal. In other words, freedom can only be valued instrumentally, because it promotes happiness. It cannot be valued in and of itself as a natural right. This apparent tension between the two texts also manifests itself within On Liberty as Mill himself struggles with reconciling the two notions of freedom and utility. It will be necessary first to analyze the tension within On Liberty, before delving into the relation between Utilitarianism and On Liberty. In this paper, I will argue that Mill contradicts the principle of utility through his arguments for the protection of liberty, because he yields to the fact that liberty should be pursued for its own sake.

There are several examples within On Liberty, which portray the concept of liberty[1] as valuable only as a vehicle toward the end goal of promoting happiness. These examples prove Mill’s consistency with Utilitarianism, because only happiness is valued in and of itself. In the first example of the instrumental value of liberty, Mill says, “In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is, therefore, capable of being more valuable to others. There is a greater fullness of life about his own existence, and when there is more life in the units there is more in the mass which is composed of them.”(On Liberty 60) In essence, this is an argument based on the principle of utility. According to the quote, individuality is valued because it promotes happiness for the individual, which, in turn, promotes happiness for society as a whole. Later in the text, Mill also points out that “originality is a valuable element in human affairs” and that “it is necessary further to show that these developed human beings[2] are of some use to the undeveloped.”(Ibid., 61) He also supports “mental freedom”(Ibid., 33) on the grounds that it allows for the development of an intellectually active society. These quotes serve to illustrate that part of Mill’s argument for the defense of liberty does seem to include extrinsic value, which is consistent with Utilitarianism. As long as liberty is valued as a means to the end of happiness, the principle of utility is not undermined.

On the other hand, there are also many instances where Mill appears to be accepting the inherent value of liberty as a goal in itself, rather than as a vehicle toward the end goal of happiness. In the first chapter of On Liberty, Mill begins by introducing “one very simple principle.”(Ibid., 9) This is very dangerous for Mill, because according to Utilitarianism, the sole fundamental principle for human beings is the principle of utility. Furthermore, he goes on to describe this principle and states that “the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection.”⁶ This principle is regarded as the “harm principle” and serves as one of the major arguments within the text. An individual can act with absolute and complete liberty as long he or she does not cause harm to another. With this statement, Mill seems to be placing liberty in a protected position, regardless of whether the recognition of liberty would promote utility. There are several examples in which Mill seems to express liberty as being inherently valuable. For instance, chapter three begins with the title, “Of Individuality, As One of The Elements of Well-Being.”(Ibid., 53) This title is very important, because it does not define individuality as a means to well-being, or happiness, but as part of well-being. If the notion of individuality were included within the principle of utility by definition as part of happiness, then such a statement would not be contradictory. Since the principle of utility is defined as simply pleasure and absence of pain, there is no indication that individuality has any inherent good according to Utilitarianism.

At this point, it is noticeable that there is a clear internal contradiction within Mill’s argument in On Liberty. He seems to be insisting that his “harm principle”, is a protected principle distinct from utility, while at the same time insisting that liberty is only defended because of the principle of utility. The “harm principle” espoused in the text allows the individual to act with absolute freedom as long as no one else is affected by his actions. This seems to imply that the principle of utility has no jurisdiction within the personal sphere of the individual as long has the individual’s actions are “self-regarding.”(Ibid., 74) However, if the individual’s freedom was recognized only instrumentally, then even this personal “self-regarding” sphere could be interfered with in order to promote utility.

Although Utilitarianism and On Liberty are not directly related or in dialogue with each other, Mill’s ideas on “public utility” and “private utility” in his later work help explain the tension in his earlier work. Mill explains this distinction in Utilitarianism. He says private utility is “the interest or happiness of some few persons” (Utilitarianism 19) and public utility means to promote utility “on an extended scale.”⁹ When viewing On Liberty through the lens of private versus public utility, it becomes clear what Mill is actually saying. He is arguing for the protection of liberty, for its own sake, only at the level of private utility. In contrast, liberty is valued instrumentally, in terms of public utility. For instance, Mill says an action “which neither violates any specific duty to the public, nor occasions perceptible hurt to any assignable individual except himself, the inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human freedom.”(On Liberty 80) Mill is saying that in cases where freedom and utility conflict, freedom will be valued regardless of the private utility that would be promoted by stripping away that freedom. However, by valuing freedom for its own sake, regardless of its private utility, the greater public utility will be promoted. In essence, Mill seems to insist on the inherent value of freedom, but uses the promotion of public utility at a larger scale in order to cover this flaw and remain consistent with Utilitarianism. This viewpoint is also made clear at the very beginning of the essay when Mill explains his intentions for On Liberty. In the introduction, he says “I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.”(On Liberty 10) Mill must have anticipated the apparent tension that readers would recognize in his work, and with this statement explains that he will protect liberty at the private level, but will also remain faithful to Utilitarianism by valuing liberty as a means of promoting utility on a larger scale.

The reconciliation of the two notions of freedom and utility is so difficult, that Mill’s argument, an attempt to solve this tension, is bound to raise many questions. Is Mill entitled to make such a claim? Is it consistent to accept the principle of utility as fundamental at an extended scale, but place limits on it at the private level? Can liberty be valued intrinsically when viewed through one lens, but extrinsically in another?

The following quote from Mill’s response to an objection in Utilitarianism, may make the answer to this question clearer. The response is to the objection that Utilitarianism is too demanding by asking an individual to promote happiness for an entire society. He says “private utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to attend to.”(Utilitarianism 19) With this statement, Mill is making it clear that cases of public utility are only “exceptional”, and in general, individuals should only be considered with private utility. If each individual is only concerned with private utility, the level at which liberty is protected and valued for its own sake, then the realm of public utility or the “greater good” seems irrelevant at a subjective level. If an individual’s morality is defined strictly in terms of private utility, then it would make no difference whether liberty would be valued intrinsically or extrinsically at a larger scale, because the realm of public utility would not be a factor. In this sense, from the subjective standpoint of individuals, Mill accepts that liberty is inherently valuable, pursued for its own sake, and protected from the influence of utility. The instrumental value of liberty at the level of public utility cannot be argued for on Utilitarian grounds, because it has no practical significance for the individual in Utilitarianism.

In this sense, Mill ends up unintentionally yielding that liberty is inherently valuable in On Liberty. His argument for its value as a vehicle to promote happiness in terms of greater public utility, is inconsistent with Utilitarian principles and results in a principle of liberty that is protected and independent from the principle of utility. As a result, Mill cannot solve the apparent tension between On Liberty and Utilitarianism, because his defense of liberty leads to the undermining of the principle of utility. Furthermore, it would be necessarily impossible for him to reconcile both positions, because a true defense of liberty and freedom cannot rest on extrinsic value in the Utilitarian sense, but only on intrinsic value. If the notion of liberty is valued only as a means to an end, its very nature would be different depending on what the end may require. The very concept of liberty seems to escape this notion, and insists on being defended as a natural right to be recognized in and of itself. This is made evident through Mill’s failure in his argument. Ultimately, Mill is placed in a position where he can either defend liberty while renouncing the principle of utility, or he can maintain the principle of utility at the expense of a defense of true liberty.

Endnotes

[1] It is important to note that the term “liberty” is used by Mill as an umbrella term throughout the essay, and includes the concepts of freedom, individuality, and originality.

[2] The developed human beings Mill refers to are those people who have fully developed their faculties freely and openly through the exercise of their freedom of individuality and originality. These people are regarded as those who have attained a very high level of happiness because they have satisfied their utmost intellectual desires. Through this development, these human beings would be useful to society in countless ways by exercising their faculties for the benefit of society.

Works Cited

Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978.

Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001

Raafay Syed (’12) is a Philosophy and Public Health Studies major at The Johns Hopkins University.

Art courtesy of =drezdany.

Abstract: Ever since Plato described knowledge in the Theaetetus and the Meno, three criteria, namely justification, truth, and belief (JTB), have composed the traditional philosophical definition of knowledge. In his 1963 paper “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Edmund Gettier attempts to disestablish the traditional definition of knowledge. He utilizes a thought experiment in which a person appears to meet the knowledge criteria yet still does not seem to have knowledge. In this paper we clarify and specify the definition of knowledge, breaking the justification criterion down into three separate criteria, saving the common sense intuition and the traditional definition of knowledge from The Gettier Problem. All the while this new understanding of knowledge and justification still allows us to consider many everyday knowledge claims to be knowledge (i.e., it is parsimonious but not too restrictive).

—

In his 1963 paper “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Edmund Gettier claims justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge because “it is possible for a person to be justified in believing a proposition that is in fact false” 1. Gettier demonstrates how chance events can turn a seemingly justified false belief into a seemingly justified true belief using a thought experiment about Smith, a man applying for a job. Smith has “strong evidence”2 that the other applicant, Jones, will get the job (maybe the boss told Smith) and that Jones has ten coins in his pocket (maybe Smith saw Jones counting them). Accordingly, Smith believes that “(e) the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket”3. Yet, Smith gets the job, not Jones, and unbeknownst to Smith, he, too, has ten coins in his pocket. According to Gettier, although Smith thought Jones would get the job, events just so happened to make his belief (e) true and justified. Therefore, Gettier claims one can have justified true belief while “it is equally clear”4 that the belief is not sufficient for knowledge. It is unclear what Gettier meant by “clear”; he seems to be referring tosome kind of intuitive notion of knowledge or the practical everyday layman’s conception. The intuitive or practical notions, while rough, appear to be a useful guide toward a more complete understanding of knowledge.

In order to make sense of the intuitive notion of knowledge Gettier refers to, one needs a new conception of justification. Gettier’s description of justification unintentionally and merely illustrates apparent justification. Only apparent justifications can lead to belief in “a proposition that is in fact false”5. If one has enough information and uses it correctly, one no longer treats apparent justification, which can lead to falsity, as actual justification. For example, if Smith only allowed reliable evidence to justify his beliefs and Smith knew that the boss’ statement about hiring Jones was unreliable, then it would no longer appear to justify Smith’s belief. In Gettier’s conception of the traditional knowledge criteria he does not distinguish between apparent and actual justification.

The traditional requirements for knowledge, according to Gettier, are as follows:

S knows that P IFF

(i) P is true,
(ii) S believes that P, and
(iii) S is justified in believing that P.6

To prevent a misinterpretation, like Gettier’s assumption that justification can lead to false belief, it is beneficial to understand the traditional justification requirement, (iii), as a shortened version of the following:

(iii)   S’s believing that Q makes S believe that P,
(iv)    If Q is false or if Q has no impact on the truth of P then Q will not make S believe that P and
(v)     Were S to have perfect information about everything, (iii) would still be true.

Such an understanding eliminates S’s ability to confuse apparent justification with actual justification. Smith’s knowledge claim in Gettier’s thought experiment violates (v) when P is “the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket,” and Q is “the boss said that Jones will get the job and Smith saw Jones count ten coins in his pocket.”7 Smith’s claim violates (v) because if Smith had the whole story the boss’ statement would no longer make him believe P so long as (iv) is true. Smith would realize that it is possible that despite Q, P could be false because the boss’ statement is unreliable. The statement merely appears to be justification if S does not have access to the information that the boss is unreliable. In other words, (v) guarantees that there is no further information that S could attain that would render Q false or show it not to have an impact on the truth of P.

A consequence of (v) is that S would probably have many reasons to believe P. Generally, not all reasons are created equal (i.e., some reasons are better than others). For example, in the court of law, DNA evidence linking someone to a crime is better than eyewitness testimony because DNA evidence is more reliable. However, with perfect information all reasons become equally good. For example, eyewitness testimony is just as reliable as DNA evidence if one can be certain of what the witness observed and that he or she is telling the truth. Criterion (iii) will still be upheld even if, given perfect information, one has what is generally considered to be reasons better than Q. If one has perfect information then reliability issues vanish, making all true and relevant reasons equally trustworthy.

Meeting the five criteria prevent a knowledge claim from falling victim to Gettier-style chance. The criteria distinguish between apparent and actual justification. Skeptical arguments can arise when attempting to ascertain whether a claim meets criteria (i), (iv), and (v). Like in Gettier’s “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” the difficulty will remain unaddressed here. This new conception of knowledge and justification is a good first step in figuring out when someone has knowledge. They allow for a continuum of confidence about whether a particular claim is knowledge. The more one learns about the world, the more confident one can be that a particular claim is knowledge. So, as long as one has the correct understanding of justification, yes Gettier, justified true belief is knowledge.

Endnotes

1 qtd. in Huemer 444

2 qtd. in Huemer 445

3 qtd. in Huemer 445

4 qtd. in Huemer 445

5 qtd. in Huemer 444

6 qtd. in Huemer 444

7 qtd. in Huemer 445

Works Cited

Gettier, Edmund. Epistemology : Contemporary Readings. Ed. Michael Huemer. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Alex Ehrlich (’09) is a Accounting and Taxation major at Hofstra University.

AJ Durwin (’10) is a Philosophy major at Hofstra University.

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