Maverick Philosopher

Is the obligation to know the law a moral obligation, a legal obligation, or both? But we ought not assume that there are any moral obligations apart from legal obligations.

Suppose, then, that the only obligations there are are legal obligations: there are no moral obligations as a species of extra-legal obligations. There are no obligations logically antecedent to legal obligations. On this supposition, to be obligated to do X is to be legally obligated to do X in the sense that if there were no positive law that expressed the obligation to do X, then there would be no obligation to do X. Accordingly, the supposition is that obligatoriness collapses into legal obligatoriness.

Now if all obligations are legal obligations, if obligatoriness just is legal obligatoriness, and there is an obligation to know the law, then this obligation is a legal obligation. If so, this obligation must be codified in some law L that mandates that one ought to know the law. L, then, is the positive law that states that one ought to know the law. It follows that L mandates that one know all laws including L. Thus L mandates that one know that L is a law and what it requires. It mandates that one know that it is legally required that knowledge of the laws is legally required.

Now either I know L or I don't. If I don't, then I should since ignorance of the law is no excuse. But how can I be obligated to know a law that I do not know when my obligation to know the law is not something antecedent to the positive law but is expressed only in the actual positive law? This is what is puzzling me.

I am obligated to know L. But this obligation can only be a legal obligation on our supposition. Thus there is a law, namely L, that legally obligates me to know it. But I can be under this obligation only if I know L. If I don't know L I am under no obligation to know it. This is because, on our supposition, the obligation toknow L cannot be logically antecedent to L.

I conclude that our supposition is false, the supposition that the only obligations there are are legal obligations. The obligation to know the law cannot be a legal obligation; it must be a moral obligation. It follows that the moral is logically antecedent to the legal, and does not collapse into the legal.

Now I am quite convinced (for other reasons) that the moral is logically antecedent to the legal. But I am not so sure that above reasoning is correct or even clear enough to be evaluated.

Take 'fact.' For some, it is a matter of definition that a fact is a true proposition. But as I use the term, a fact is the truth-maker of a true proposition. Suppose you use 'fact' as interchangeable with 'true proposition.' Then I can accommodate you by distinguishing between facts-that and facts-of. Thus, the fact that Bill is blogging is made true by the fact of Bill's blogging. But we must sort out these definitional questions if we are to make any progress with the substantive issues. A substantive question would be: Are there facts? Obviously, we cannot make any headway with this until we agree on how we are using 'facts.'

The same holds no matter what the subject matter, and understanding this is a mark of an educated person. There is no point in debating whether Obama is a socialist until one has defined or at least explained 'socialist.' Would that the gasbags of contemporary punditry appreciated this simple point!

Returning to 'fact,' if you say that a fact is a true proposition, then I will ask you how you are using 'proposition.' Do you mean the sense of a context-free declarative sentence? Are propositions for you abstract objects? Are you Fregean when it comes to propositions? But now we need to get clear about 'abstract' and 'object.' Do you use 'object' and 'entity' interchangeably? Or can there be objects that are not entities and entities that are not objects? (An hallucinated pink rat might count as an object that is not an entity, and a being that has never been the accusative of any intellect might count as an entity that is not an object.) Someone who uses 'object' in such a way that there is no object without a (thinking) subject is not misusing the word: that is a traditional use. But equally, a person who uses 'object' to mean entity is not misusing it either. So the use of 'object' needs clarification.

'Object' is used in at least three ways, none of them wrong: (i) object = entity; (ii) object = intentional object = accusative of a mental act; (iii) object = particular. I just used 'particular.' But what is a particular? I would explain 'particular' by contrast to 'universal' and say that a particular is any item that is unrepeatable, while a universal is any item that is repeatable.

I just used the word 'item.' What do I mean by that? As I use it, 'item' is the most noncommittal of terms, the ultimate in terminological neutrality. It does not beg any questions or import any theories. An entity (from L. entitas, from ens, being) is anything that exists or has being, with 'existence' and 'being' being used interchangeably. 'Item,' however, is broader than 'entity' since an item may or may not exist. An item is anything one can think about or refer to in any way. Suppose a Meinongian distinguishes among existence, being, and Aussersein (extrabeing). Then 'item' is neutral with respect to that three-fold distinction. 'Item' commits me to nothing except self-identity. Cf. Latin idem. An item is an item. No item is self-diverse. Self-diversity is of course an item, but it is not self-diverse! Why is self-diversity an item? Because I just referred to it. Nothing is self-diverse, and nothing can be self-diverse, so this 'property' cannot be a property of anything. Yet we are now thinking about it and saying truth things about it: self-diversity is not self-diverse; it is what it is; it is not possibly instantiated; it is diverse from self-identity; etc.

But what about the Meinongian item, the self-diverse item? Is it self-diverse or not? This looks to be a puzzle for a Meinongian, but since I am not a Meinongian I don't have to solve it.

Returning to 'abstract' and its opposite, one might use 'abstract' and 'concrete' as follows: X is abstract (concrete) iff X is causally inert (causally active/passive). But I know of at least one name philosopher who uses 'abstract' interchangeably with 'nonspatiotemporal.' On this usage, God would be an abstract object, while on the first definition God would be concrete.

Note that an abstract entity on either of these two definitions can be a substance (another word with about ten meanings!), i.e., a being capable of independent existence. But 'abstract' is used by philosophers as diverse as Hegel and Keith Campbell (the Aussie trope theorist) to refer to non-independent objects. And indeed, their use is the classical, and etymologically correct, use.

I have merely scratched the surface of terminological fluidity in philosophy. I could write pages more (and you hope I won't). The main point is that, before 'cutting loose,' one must carefully define one's terms and reflect on how they cohere with one another.

The Unavoidability of Terminological Fluidity

The fact of terminological fluidity is undeniable. It is unfortunate in that it impedes understanding and communication. Time is consumed by mere terminological clarification. But nothing can or should be done about it. For the terminology we craft, and the distinctions we draw, may limit or enable or otherwise interfere with the claims we advance. Suppose there were a Central Terminology Authority (CTA) and it ruled that 'exist' shall mean: to be instantiated. It would follow from this terminological fiat that no individual can exist. For it is obvious that no individual can be instantiated: 'Socrates has instances' is nonsense. And yet it makes sense to speak of the existence of individuals. Or if the CTA were to rule that 'cause; is to be defined as a relation between events, this would rule out agent causation, which is the classical notion of causation.

Terminological fluidity must be tolerated in a discipline as open-ended as philosophy. Kierkegaard compares philosophizing without dogma to sewing without a knot at the end of one’s thread. His thought is that the reasoning process must be anchored in premises whose truth is beyond question; otherwise, one will never arrive at a fixed conclusion. This invites the rebuttal that to philosophize with dogma is not to philosophize at all. Philosophy is radical reflection: it cannot take anything for granted, as immune from examination. This is the very idea of philosophy. If so, then a fixed and unquestionable terminology is as anathema to the true philosopher as unquestionable premises.

The requisites of an office are the properties that must be possessed by anything that occupies the office, if anything does occupy it. Thus, among the requisites of the office of U. S. president, there is the property of being at least 35 years of age. Among the requisites of the divine office we find the familiar omni-attributes or 'perfections,' omniscience, etc. Both the presidential and the divine offices are individual offices in the sense that, if they are occupied, then they are occupied by an individual. Note that the requisites of an individual office are first-level properties of the office-holders, if there are any.

Tichý finds two fallacies in the above Cartesian argument.

The first is that it assumes that existence is a first-level property, a property of individuals. For if existence is one of the requisites of the divine office, as it must be if existence is a perfection, then existence is a property that can be meaningfully attributed to individuals. But we have seen that for Tichý, existence is not a property of individuals but of offices. It is the second-level property of being-occupied.

The second mistake in the Cartesian argument is that it relies on the following fallacious argument-pattern:

P is a requisite of office O
Therefore
The occupant of O instantiates P.

The argument-form is indeed invalid. Let O be the office of King of France. Let P be being human. P is a requisite of O. But it doesn't follow that the occupant of the office of King of France is human. For there is no occupant. Similarly, even if existence were a requisite of the divine office, it would not follow that the occupant of the divine office exists. For the office may be unoccupied. All we can safely infer from the fact, if it is a fact, that existence is a requisite of the divine office is that, if the office is occupied, then the occupant exists.

This is a very old objection, and it strikes me as sound. The concept of God is the concept of a being possessing all perfections. Now let it be granted that existence is a perfection, a "great-making property" in Alvin Plantinga's phrase. From these premises we may validly infer that the concept of God is the concept of a being that exists, indeed, the concept of a being that is as inseparable from its existence as the idea of a mountain from the idea of a valley, to revert to a Cartesian analogy. Still, how does this get us to the conclusion that God exists? For all that this argument shows, the concept of God might fail of instantiation: there might not be anything that falls under it. If something instantiates the God-concept, then that thing has an essence which includes or entails existence. But from this one cannot validly infer that something does instantiate the God-concept, or occupy the divine office.

Of course, Tichy does not grant that existence is a perfection, a great-making property of God. For his whole point is that existence cannot be attributed to individuals. This yields a much more radical objection to the Cartesian ontological argument, an objection one finds already in Frege, but not before Frege: Kant does not anticipate Frege's exact point about existence, contrary to what many, including Tichy, think. (To establish this would require a separate post.) In The Foundations of Arithmetic, we read, "Because existence is a property of concepts, the ontological argument for the existence of God breaks down." (p. 65) This amounts to a very radical criticism since it implies that 'God exists,' interpreted as the attribution of existence to an individual is meaningless.

Now I reject this more radical Fregean objection to the ontological argument. First, it implies a theory of existence open to powerful objections, a couple of which are sketched here. Second, the argument for it is not compelling, as explained here.

Thus few if any will say that Jones, an adult human, lacks the right to life when he is sleeping, or passed out drunk, or under general anaesthetic, or temporarily incapacitated due to an auto crash, or having a serious stroke or heart attack, or reversibly comatose, or in some similar state. Nor would we say that Jones' right to life varies with his alertness (or any other mental variable) or his age. Suppose a male is at his prime (all things considered) at age 50. Few would say that a person under or over 50 has less of a right to life. And if anyone were to say that, I wouldn't consider it worthwhile to discuss moral questions with him.

RP, explicitly stated, is CP. Now suppose someone, call him 'Peter,' tries to mount an argument against CP. He begins by reminding us of a couple of conceptual truths:

CT1. A capacity C's being unexercised at time t excludes C's being exercised at t. (This is an analog of the principle that a thing's being a potential F at t excludes its being an actual F at t.)

CT2. The properties that make an exercised capacity exercised, or supervene upon a capacity's being exercised are not properties of the corresponding unexercised capacity. (This is an analog of the principle that the properties that make an actual F actual are not properties of the same thing when it was potentially F.)

From these conceptual truths, Peter then infers that CP is false. He reasons as follows. "Since the right to life supervenes upon the exercise of such capacities as rationality, agency, and the ability to make and implement plans, there is no right to life when none of them are being exercised." Suppose Peter's argument is sound and shows that CP is false. Then Peter's argument will have 'proved too much': it will have proved that RP is also false since CP is just an explicit statement of RP.

Of course, Peter might bite the bullet in one of two ways. He might concede that RP entails CP and reject both of them. Or he might cleave to RP while prising it apart from CP. He would then be holding RP in tandem with CCP. Either way, I would consider the discussion to be at an end. For then we would lack common moral ground for profitable discussion.

The right thing to say is that a person's right to life, which supervenes upon such capacities as rationality and agency, is had by the person not just at the times at which the capacities are exercised but at other times as well. It is the person's having of the capacity (whether exercised or not) that confers the right to life.

Young children lack even the capacities associated with moral personhood and rights-possession. But they have a second-order capacity, the capacity to develop these capacities. The potentialist grounds the right to life in the potential to develop the first-order capacities. If one argues against the potentialist by invoking the truisms that the potential is not actual and the properties of the actual are not properties of the potential, then one should also argue that first-order capacities are not enough to ground a right to life, and that the actual exercise of these capacities is necessary. But then one must accept the counterintuitive consequence that a person's right to life is had by him only when he is fully exercising such capacities as rationality, agency, and the ability to make and implement plans.

In numerous previous posts, with the help of commenters, I have made precise the sense of 'potentiality' in play in PA and PP and have refuted various objections to PP including Joel Feinberg's "logical point," Peter Lupu's somewhat similar objection, as well as some of the probative overkill or proves-too-much objections. There is still an objection or two to turn aside, but the time has come to give positive arguments for PP.

To understand PP one must understand that it grounds the pre-natal right to life in the very potentiality of a genetically human individual to develop, in the normal course of events, into a being that actually possesses such rights-conferring properties as rationality. Therefore, if there are any post-natal genetically human individuals to which we ascribe rights on the basis of their potentiality to develop into individuals that actually possess rights-conferring properties, then subscription to PP is already a fact and its extension to the pre-natal cases will be mandatory unless there can be shown to be a morally relevant difference between the pre-natal and the post-natal cases. Now there are such post-natal cases. Therefore, since we already accept and apply PP to these post-natal cases, we ought to apply it to the pre-natal cases as well unless there is a morally relevant difference between the two sorts of case.

Consider post-natal humans from birth on to the age of seven or so. Do they have rights? Liberals, who believe in all sorts of rights, will presumably maintain that children have rights to health care, education, food, shelter, clothing and what all else. But underlying all of these is surely the right to life without which none of the others has any purchase. Now what is the basis for ascribing rights to neonates or one year olds? They cannot walk or talk, syllogize or philosophize. Chess is out of the question as is cell phone use. They cannot even control their bowels. They are helpless and in a sense good-for-nothing. They don't cook or clean or shop or work or pay taxes. They are more useless than cats who at least can fend for thmselves and control the rodent population. There is little that is actual about them. They don't realize much value or exercise the capacities that confer value or a right to life. And yet, as matter of fact, we consider them precious.

On what basis, then, do we ascribe value and rights to them? We value them for their promise and potentiality. We value them for what they will, in the normal course of events, become. I am not saying that there is nothing actual in young children that we value. We may value their openness to experience, their curiosity, their ability to learn, their sheer existence. But their potentiality outweighs their actuality and this potentiality is the ground of our ascription to them of the right to life and other rights that presuppose this fundamental right. So my first argument goes like this:

1. We ascribe the right to life to neonates and young children on the basis of their potentialities.
2. There is no morally relevant difference between neonates and young children and fetuses.
3. Principles -- in this case PP -- should be applied consistently to all like cases.
Therefore
4. We should ascribe the right to life to fetuses on the basis of their potentialities.

What I am arguing is that we already do accept PP and that we ought to be consistent in its application. To refuse to apply PP to the pre-natal cases is to fail to apply the principle consistently.

"I will not weaponize space," said Obama recently. That empty promise comes too late, and is irresponsible to boot: if our weapons are not there, theirs will be.

The very notion that outer space could be reserved for wholly peaceful purposes shows a deep lack of understanding of the human condition. Show me a space with human beings in it and I will show you a space that potentially if not actually is militarized and weaponized. Man is, was, and will be a bellicose son of a bitch. If you doubt this, study history, with particular attention to the 20th century. You can bet that the future will resemble the past in this respect. Note that the turn of the millenium has not brought anything new in this regard. Older is not wiser. All spaces, near, far, inner, outer, are potential scenes of contention, which is why I subscribe to the Latin saying:

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

If you want peace, prepare for war.

One must simply face reality and realize that the undoubtedly great good of peace comes at a cost, the cost of a credible defense. A credible defense is what keeps aggressors at bay. I mean this to hold at all levels, intrapsychically, interpersonally, intranationally, internationally, and in every other way. Weakness provokes. Strength pacifies. That is just the way it is. Conservatives, being reality-based, understand what eludes leftists who are based in u-topia (nowhere) and who rely on their unsupportable faith in the inherent goodness of human beings.

Here we have one of those deep differences between conservatives and leftists. Vote for the candidate of your choice, but just understand what set of ideas and values you are voting for.

The argumentative structure of this passage may be set forth as follows:

1. If God were an individual, then it would be a contingent matter whether God is benevolent.
2. It is not a contingent matter whether God is benevolent.
-----
3. God is not an individual.

(2) is readily granted, but (1) is hardly self-evident. Why can't it be the case that God is necessarily benevolent but also an individual? Tichý appears to be assuming that all individuals are 'bare,' where a bare individual is one that has the following features: (i) it lacks a nature or essence and is therefore not a substance in Aristotle's sense of prote ousia; (ii) the properties it has are not rooted in it or emergent from it but tied to it by an external tie of exemplification; (iii) the properties it has are all accidental, none are essential. Tichý's statment that "any individual is conceivably malicious" is what commits him to a doctrine of bare individuals. What he means, of course, is that any individual is possibly such as to lack any property it actually possesses, and possibly such as to possess any property it actually lacks. (To make this rigorous we probably have to add: any property that it not trivial or transcendental such as self-identity.)

Some philosophers argue that bare individuals are incoherent. But this is not at all clear since noted philosophers have plausibly defended them. Gustav Bergmann famously championed them under the moniker 'bare particulars' and David Armstrong finds use for what he calls 'thin particulars.' J. P. Moreland ably defends them in his Universals, p. 148 ff. et passim. I discuss them favorably in sections 7 and 11 of Chapter VI of A Paradigm Theory of Existence. Of course, to understand bare individuals you must not confuse them with what could be called 'nude individuals,' individuals having no properties at all. Obviously, all individuals come 'clothed' in properties. The question concerns how they have their properties. Let us provisionally grant that there are bare individuals and that all individuals are bare. The rest of Tichý's argument is as follows:

4. Either God is an individual or God is an office.
3. God is not an individual.
-----
5. God is an office.

'God,' therefore, does not name an individual, but an office, and the existence of God is not the existence of an individual, but the being-occupied of the divine office. But this is puzzling. If God is an office, then what should we call the individual that fills the office if the office is filled? No doubt, if God exists, then the divine office is filled. But filled by what? The office is obviously distinct, really distinct, from the office-holder, and the office-holder is not a mere feature or property of the office. Presumably, what Tichý must say is that the divine office, if filled, is filled by a bare individual. He cannot say that it is filled by God, for God is the divine office and this office does not fill itself. So the divine office, if filled, is filled by a bare individual.

Now this bare individual — which we cannot name — instantiates the requisites of the divine office but does so accidentally because it is bare. Among the requisites of the divine office are omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. So the bare individual which holds, fills, or occupies the divine office is accidentally omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Since this bare individual is what instantiates the omni-attributes, it ought to be called 'God.' But it cannot be called 'God' if the (1)-(3)argument above is sound. And it cannot be called 'God' for the further reason that God possesses his omni-attributes essentially.

The divine office itself, of course, is constituted by the requisites of omnscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence, but it does not instantiate them: the divine office is not omniscient any more than the office of U. S. president is a U. S. citizen. So how can God be the divine office as Tichy maintains? God is omniscient, but the divine office is not.

My conclusion is that Tichy's conception of God is incoherent. He is driven to say that 'God' does not denote an individual but an office. But if God is the divine office, then he cannot instantiate the omni-attributes: no office instantiates its requisites any more than a concept instantiates its Fregean marks (Merkmalen). (The concept bachelor, for example, has male as a mark, but no concept is male.) On the other hand, if God, as one might naturally suppose, is the office-holder of the divine office, then God is a bare individual who has his attributes accidentally, which is absurd, as Tichy himself points out.

Could God be the divine office together with its office-holder? This is not what Tichy says, and in any case it would destroy the divine unity and necessity. God is a necessary being, but Tichy cannot make sense of this. For whatever instantiates the requisites of the divine office contingently instantiates them due to the fact that any office-holder of the divine office must be a bare individual. But this is equivalent to saying that God exists contingently if he exists.

This is an old argument that has been given too many times by too many philosophers, some of them distinguished, for example, by A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth, and Logic, p. 43. The argument can be set forth most perspicuously as follows:

1. If existence were a property of individuals, then affirmative singular existentials would be tautologies and negative singular existentials would be contradictions.
2. It is not the case that affirmative singular existentials are tautologies and negative singular existentials contradictions.
Therefore
3. Existence is not a property of individuals.

Although this oft-repeated argument is valid in point of logical form, it is a very bad argument. I of course concede the minor. The general affirmative existential 'Cats exist' is not a tautology, and neither is the singular affirmative existential 'Felix exists.' And the general negative existential "Three-headed dogs do not exist' is not a contradiction any more than the singular negative existential 'Cerberus does not exist.' The problem resides with the major premise.

What I will argue (and have argued in A Paradigm Theory of Existence, pp. 113-114) is that premise (1) rests on the ancient modal fallacy of confusing the necessity of the consequent (necessitas consequentiis) with the necessity of the consequence (necessitas consequentiae).

(1) derives whatever force it has from a paradoxical feature of reference. Given that there is no reference to the nonexistent, if I say of an existing thing that it exists, it seems I have said nothing, or at least nothing that can fail to be true; and if I say of an existing thing that it does not exist, then it seems I have said something that cannot fail to be false. Thus it seems that attributions of existence to individuals are tautologically and thus necessarily true, and that denials of existence to individuals are self-contradictory and thus necessarily false.

To see why (1) is false we must distinguish between sentences and the propositions they are used to express, and keep in mind the modal fallacy mentioned. One commits the fallacy if one makes the inferential move from 'Necessarily, if p then p' to 'If p, then necessarily p.' For example, it is necessarily true that if I am sitting, then I am sitting. But it does not follow that if I am sitting, then necessarily I am sitting -- surely I might not have been sitting.

Sentences of the form a exists (where 'a' is a nonvacuous individual constant) have the peculiarity that they cannot be used to express a falsehood. Sentences of this form can thus be said, in a loose sense, to be necessarily true. But all this means, speaking strictly, is that necessarily, if a sentence S of this form is used, then the proposition expressed by S is true. This, however, does not entail that the proposition expressed by S is necessarily true. To think otherwise is to commit the above modal fallacy.

Although it is true that, necessarily, every use of a sentence of the form a exists expresses a true proposition, it does not follow that every use of a sentence of the form a exists expresses a necessarily true proposition. The necessity of the consequence does not entail the necessity of the consequent.

To put it another way, it is pragmatically impossible for one to use 'Socrates exists' or 'I exist' to express a false proposition; hence it is pragmatically necessary that whenever one uses such a sentence one expresses a true proposition. But the pragmatics of sentence utterance has no bearing on the modal status of propositions. The possibility of my nonexistence is not ruled out by the pragmatic impossibility of my using 'I do not exist' to express a true proposition.

So (1) above is false and Tichý's argument collapses. We have been given no good reason to think that existence is not a property -- in a suitably broad sense -- of individuals.

Let Tom be our example. Tom could be a man, a cat, a tomato; it doesn't matter as long as we are talking about a concrete individual. (Tichý uses the dated example of Jimmy Carter.) We can and do say of an individual that it is red, ripe, benevolent, bald, blue-eyed, etc. Saying such things we ascribe properties to individuals. But if we say of an individual that it exists, are we ascribing the property of existence to the individual? Does 'Tom exists' ascribe the property of existence to Tom? Is existence a property of individuals? (Please don't confuse this question with the question whether existence is a property. Existence could be a property by being a property of a non-individual such as a property.)

I think it is obvious that existence cannot be a property of individuals in exactly the same way or in exactly the same sense of 'property' that redness, ripeness, etc. are properties of individuals. Every philosopher worth his salt is alive to the distinction between what a thing is and whether it is and the equivalent distinction between describing a thing and saying that there is a thing of a certain description. This all well understood, one could still maintain that there is a sense in which existence is a property of individuals.

Tichý, however, takes a more radical tack that is very similar to the Frege-Russell line. Both Frege and Russell denied that existence is a first-level property, a property of individuals. Their view is not merely that existence is not a property that could enter into an individual's description, but that it is not a propery of individuals at all. What existence is is a second-level property, a property of concepts, properties, propositional functions, descriptions and cognate items. Thus both of these luminaries of logic deny that existence can be meaningfully attributed to individuals. One cannot meaningfully say 'Socrates exists,' for example, or 'This tomato exists.' Russell famously opines that 'Socrates exists' is on all fours with 'Socrates is numerous.' But one could meaningfully say 'Philosophers exist' or 'Tomatoes exist.' For what one is doing when one says that philosophers exist is talking about the concept philosopher and saying of it that it is instantiated. In Russellian jargon, one is saying that the propositional function x is a philosopher is sometimes true.

Tichý's doctrine of existence is essentially the Frege-Russell doctrine dressed up in different terminology. Where Frege and Russell have concepts and propositional functions, Tichý has offices a term he uses in an extended sense. Thus one can speak not only of the office of president but also of the 'office' of Richard Burton's wife, an erstwhile 'office-holder' of which was Elizabeth Taylor. "Existence is a perfectly good property, only a property instantiable not by individuals but by offices capable of being filled by individuals." (p. 407) As I see it, the difference between Frege and Tichý is merely terminological:

FREGE: Affirmative existentials affirm instantiation of concepts, and negative existentials deny instantiation of concepts.

TICHY: Affirmative existentials affirm being-filled of offices, and negative existentials deny being-filled of offices.

For Tichy, then, existence is a property all right, but it is a property of offices, not of individuals. Existence is the property of having an occupant. Accordingly, 'The U. S. president exists' affirms of the office or role of U. S. president that it has an occupant, and 'The king of France does not exist' denies of the office or role of king of France that it has an occupant. In neither case is reference made to any particular individual. So although G. W. Bush is the present president of the U. S., 'The U. S. president exists' is not about him but about the role that he happens at present to occupy.

An important distinction in Frege is that between the marks (Merkmalen) of a concept (Begriff) and the properties (Eigenschaften) of a concept. To coin an example, the concept bachelor has unmarried and male among its marks just as the concept cygnet has swan among its marks. But no concept is either unmarried or male or a swan. Thus the marks of these concepts are not among their properties. Conversely, being instantiated, which is a property of both bachelor and cygnet, is not a mark of either.

Tichý makes the same distinction but couches it in different terminology. Instead of speaking of the marks of a concept, he speaks of the requisites of an office. "In general, the requisite of an office is any property such that, for any world w and time t, if x occupies the office in w at t then x instantiates the property in w at t." (408) And instead of speaking of the properties of a concept, Tichý speaks of an office instantiating a property.

FREGE: The properties of a concept are not among its marks, and the marks of a concept are not among its properties. For example, being instantiated and being immaterial are not among the marks of the concept cat, and being an animal and being four-footed are not among the properties of the concept cat. No concept is four-footed or an animal. And if being immaterial were among the marks of cat, then anything that is a cat would be immaterial, which is absurd.

TICHY: The properties of an office are not among its requisites, and the requisites of an office are not among its properties. For example, one of the requisites of the office of U. S. president is being a U. S. citizen. But the office itself is not a U. S. citizen. And the properties of the office, such as being filled or being temporarily vacant, cannot possibly be properties of any office-holder. Bush may be 'vacant,' but not in the sense here in play.

Tichy thus repackages Frege's Merkmal/Eigenschaft distinction in different terms. Applying the distinction to existence, we can say that for Tichý existence can be ascribed to an office, but it cannot be a requisite of an office. "It would be ridiculous to insist, for instance, that in order for an individual to be the U. S. president, he must, aside from being human, a U. S. citizen, etc., also exist." (409) To put this in Fregean lingo: existence can be ascribed to a concept, it can be a property of a concept, but it cannot be a mark of a concept. It would be ridiculous to insist that for an individual to instantiate the concept cat, it must, besides being four-footed, an animal, etc., also exist.

Critique

It is precisely here that I must object most strenuously to both Frege and to Tichý. Is it not the most obvious thing in the world that Bush cannot occupy any office unless he exists? Or that an individual cannot instantiate the concept cat unless the individual exists? How can it be reasonably denied that existence is a requisite or a prerequisite for any individual's falling under a concept or filling an office? It is this simple fact that Frege, Russell, Tichy, and innumerable others are blind to. Of course, if you rule that existence can only be a property of concepts, properties, propositional functions, Tichian offices, or cognate items, then you simply, by this fiat, ENFORCE the absurdity of attributions of existence to individuals. For if existence is the being-instantiated of a concept, then, from the plain fact that no individual is a concept, it straightaway follows that it is absurd, a category mistake, to attribute existence to individuals. But this enforcement move has all the advantages of theft over honest toil to cop a phrase Lord Russell himself employed in a different connection.

I am not denying that '___exist(s)' sometimes functions as a second-level predicate as in 'Philosophers exist.' My point is that it also has an irreducible first-level use as in 'Peter exists.' When I say of Peter that he exists, I am not saying of some office that it is filled by Peter. For what office would that be, even acquiescing in Tichy's extended use of 'office'? Is there a Peter-office or a Peter-role? Peter is an individual and it is not at all clear how Peter's being Peter could be an office or a role, or how his existence could be the filling of, or playing of, a role. Can any role nail down the haecceity of an individual?

Well, suppose there is a Peter-office and that Peter occupies it. Still, he must exist in order to occupy it, and this his existence cannot be the being-occupied of the role without vicious circularity. You move in a circle of embarrassingly short diameter if you say that Peter's existence is his occupation of a role when he must exist in order to occupy any role.

More of this critique later. I need to get a bike ride in before the sun sets. Perhaps I will blog my way through the whole of Tichy's article.

0. The actual world is the total way things are. A merely possible world is a total way things might have been. Let that be our intuitive starting point.

1. The actual world is a possible world. This is because everything actual is possible. But of course the actual world is not merely possible. Mere possibility and actuality are mutually exclusive.

2. There is a plurality of possible worlds. This is because the possible outruns the actual: the set of actualia is a proper subset of the set of possibilia. So if there are possible worlds at all, there are many of them. If you say that there is only one possible world, the actual world, then that leads to the collapse of modal distinctions, or, to put it less dramatically, the extensional equivalence of the possible, the actual, and the necessary. Not good. But I will not here argue for the reality of modal distinctions. That is something we are now presupposing.

3. There is and can be only one actual world. This follows from the maximality property of worlds. Whatever one's exact conception of a world, worlds are all-inclusive totalities. (So much is built into the very word, 'world.') If a world is a(n abstract) state of affairs, as A. Plantinga maintains, then it must be a maximal state of affairs: one that includes every state of affairs with which it is logically consistent. If a world is a (Fregean) proposition, then it must be a maximal proposition: one that entails every proposition with which it is logically consistent. If a world is a mereological sum of concreta, as D. Lewis holds, then it must be a maximal mereological sum of concreta. These maximal objects are so big that, to employ a chemical metaphor, they are 'saturated': adding another member to them would 'precipitate' a contradiction. So there cannot be two or more actual worlds.

4. There must be an actual world. It cannot be the case that every world is merely possible. If every world were merely possible, then that would be the case, actually the case, which implies that the total way things are would include its actually being the case, which implies that there is, after all, an actual world. So it cannot be the case that every world is merely possible. Think about it.

5. Possibilities come in world-sized packages: necessarily, if state of affairs S is possible, then there is a world W such that W includes S. This amounts to a denial of 'isolated' or 'worldless' possibilities. I am now blogging, but I might have been now sleeping, where 'now' picks out the very same time. Let S = BV's sleeping now. Had S been actual now, everything would have been different in a few major ways and in an infinity of miniscule ways. So if I had been sleeping now a world different from the world that is actual would have been actual.

6. Actuality is absolute, not world-relative. If by #2 there is a plurality of possible worlds, and by #3 there is only one actual world, then there is a distinction between merely possible worlds and that privileged possible world that is the actual world. Although every world is actual at itself, only one world is actual simpliciter, actual period. Compare: although every time is present at itself, only one time is present simpliciter. This comparison of course assumes (controversially) that the B-theory of time is false, the theory according to which time is exhausted by McTaggart's B-series, the series of events ordered by the relations earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with. I am assuming that in addition to the B-relations there are also the monadic A-properties of pastness, presentness, and futurity, and that these properties are instantiated. 'Now' of course is an indexical expression: it picks out the time of its tokening. Tokened at midnight, it picks out midnight, at noon, noon. But is 'actual' an indexical? Does its reference depend on the context of utterance so that, tokened in this world it refers to this world, tokened in another, to that other? That's what David Lewis maintains, but I say 'actual' is not an indexical. When I say that this world, our world, is actual, I mean to ascribe to it the monadic property of actuality, a property which only one world can have.

There are many possible worlds, but only one is actual. Furthermore, the one that is actual might not have been actual. So the one that is actual is contingently actual. If that were not the case, the merely possible worlds would not be possible. For whatever is possible, is possibly actual. The worlds that do not bear the privilege of actuality could have borne it.

7. X exists in/at world W =df were W actual, X would exist.

8. X is a contingent being =df X exists in some but not all possible worlds. It follows from this definition that something, Pegasus say, can be a contingent being even if it does not exist. If the word 'being' throws you, substitute 'item.'

9. X is a necessary being =df X exist in all possible worlds.

10. X is an impossible being =df X exists in no possible world.

11. X is actual =df X exists in thw actual world, the one world that happens to be actual.

12. Puzzle: It looks as if, on the one hand, 'The actual world is not actual' is a contradiction. On the other hand, it is surely the case that the actual world might not have been actual. The puzzle is solved by distinguishing two uses of 'the actual world.' It can be used as a Kripkean rigid designator that picks out one particular world, this world, our world, and does so in every possible world. Used in this way, 'The actual world is not actual' is possibly true. But 'the actual world' can also be used as a definite description that applies to whichever world happens to be actual. Used in this second way, 'The actual world is not actual' is a contradiction.

13. But what exactly is a possible world? I take an abstractist line. Worlds are maximal (Fregean) propositions or maximal (abstract) states of affairs. They are not maximal mereological sums of concreta, pace David Lewis. If worlds are propositions, then actuality is truth. That is one interesting consequence. Another is that worlds are abstract objects which implies that the actual world must not be confused either with the physical universe (the space-time-matter system) or with that plus whatever nonphysical concreta (minds) that there might be. And if worlds are abstract objects then they are necessary beings. (See #9 above.) So every possible world exists in every possible world.

If actuality is truth, and individuals cannot be true (in the exact sense in which a proposition can be true), then perhaps there is a problem with #11 above.

Peter maintains that possible worlds are "maximally consistent descriptions of the world." This is on the right track, except for a couple of problems. One is that descriptions are presumably linguistic entities. If so, they are contingent in which case they exist in only some possible worlds. I won't spell it out, but this seems to imply that possible worlds cannot be linguistic entities. They cannot be say maximally consistent sentences of English. The other problem is that 'world' occurs both in Peter's definiens and in his definiendum. Presumably, he doesn't mean to tell us that a possible world is a maximally consistent description of a maximally consistent description.

Now Peter, how much of the foregoing can you swallow?

A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.

Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.

[. . .]

In short, bad news is an investor’s best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.

Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

You might think it would have been impossible for an investor to lose money during a century marked by such an extraordinary gain. But some investors did. The hapless ones bought stocks only when they felt comfort in doing so and then proceeded to sell when the headlines made them queasy.

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in the real value of cash accounts.

Equities will almost certainly outperform cash over the next decade, probably by a substantial degree. Those investors who cling now to cash are betting they can efficiently time their move away from it later. In waiting for the comfort of good news, they are ignoring Wayne Gretzky’s advice: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”

I don’t like to opine on the stock market, and again I emphasize that I have no idea what the market will do in the short term. Nevertheless, I’ll follow the lead of a restaurant that opened in an empty bank building and then advertised: “Put your mouth where your money was.” Today my money and my mouth both say equities.

I have but one quibble. Mr. Buffett tells us that cash equivalents are "certain" to depreciate in value. How can he be so cocksure about that? Is he certain that deflation is not in our future? If he cannot predict the markets, as he says, then he can't predict interest rates either. Nevertheless, although one cannot be certain that deflation is not in the offing, it is more likely that continuing inflation is.

We discussed each of the foregoing, but this post will focus on (1). The question is not whether (1) is true or false, but whether it is meaningful. Now in one sense, (1) is perfectly meaningful: it is a grammatical English sentence and each word in it is meaningful. But the same is true of 'The average thought has a volume of two cubic centimeters.' The latter sentence, however, embodies a Rylean category mistake and is meaningless for that reason. The question is whether a similar sort of meaninglessness or incoherence infects (1). So the question is not whether (1) is true, or whether it is linguistically meaningful, but whether it picks out a coherent thought. I claimed that (1) picks out a coherent thought, while Peter disagreed with me.

My existence is an actual state of affairs and my nonexistence is a merely possible state of affairs. Peter agreed to this, and he agreed that 'I exist, but I might not have existed' is true in this parsing: I exist & possibly, I do not exist. This of course is not to be confused with Possibly (I exist & I do not exist.) And it is obvious to both of us that 'possibly' is to be read ontically, not epistemically, and as picking out broadly logical possiblity or what some call metaphysical possibility.

Thus there are two states of affairs, my existence and my nonexistence, the first actual, the second merely possible. Now it seems to me that these two s