Maverick Philosopher

A deflationist is one who denies that there is any property of truth, or at least, any property of truth robust enough to support a substantive traditional-type inquiry into its nature. Truth is either not a property, or it is a rather 'thin' property about which nothing very interesting can be said. An example of an interesting theory would be one that identifies truth with some epistemic/doxastic property such as rational acceptability, or rational acceptability at the ideal limit of inquiry, or with a relation of coherence among beliefs, or with a relation of correspondence to facts, or with what is conducive to our flourishing (the Jamesian good by way of belief), or with that which enhances the feeling of power, or with what God decides, etc. For the classically-inclined, truth is a deep topic; for the deflationist it is very thin beer.

The deflationist, then, is denying that truth has a unitary and substantial nature into which it would make sense to inquire. There is no Truth with a capital 'T.' Does it follow that the deflationist is committed to relativism about truth? Must he say that there is no such thing as objective correctness?

It seems not. For although the deflationist denies Truth, he need not deny truths. There are truths galore on the views of prominent deflationists; it is just that they have nothing nonlinguistic in common in virtue of which they are true. The deflationist tendency is to say that there is no more to Truth than is captured in such equivalences as:

Sentence 'S' (in language L) is true iff S

and

The proposition that p is true iff p.

One version of deflationism is Quine's disquotationalism according to which the function of the truth-predicate is to remove the quotation marks from a quoted sentence. Thus "'Snow is white' is true" says exactly what 'Snow is white' says, namely, that snow is white. And "'Grass is green' is true" says exactly what 'Grass is green' says, namely, that grass is green. And so on. There is nothing common to these sentence in virtue of which they are true. 'True' is just a device of disquotation; it does not pick out a genuine property.

It is easy to see that there is nothing here that is inconsistent with the absolutness of snow's being white or of grass's being green, etc. What's more, deflationary theories of truth would seem to rule out alethic relativism. Suppose a Nietzschean maintains that truth is the property of being power-enhancing, a property of those beliefs that enhance the power of the one who holds them. Deflationism rules out this substantive theory of truth along with every other substantive theory of truth. For if deflationism is true, then Truth has no nature; it is in a sense nothing at all. As such, it cannot be identified with the property of being power-enhancing.

This looks to be a general result. For truth to be relative, it would have to be identified with some relative property such as acceptability or rational acceptability, or rational acceptability by some ideally situated cognizers, or whatever. But such an identification could be made only if truth has a nature. On deflationism, however, truth lacks a nature. So truth on deflationism is nonrelative. Indeed, this seems to be a consequence of the above equivalence schemata. For the schemata imply that every proposition or its negation is true simpliciter, which rules out any proposition or its negation's being true-for-X, for some relativizing factor X.

Can anyone take seriously a philosopher who writes like this? He begins by defining a position that, by his own admission, no one holds so that he can then maintain, vacuously, that he is not an occupant of that position. How's that for fancy footwork?

In his fourth sentence he speaks of "grounds" being "less algorithmic than had been thought." Since an algorithm is a decision procedure, it is less than clear how grounds could be more or less algorithmic. But that's a quibble. The main problem is his confusion of relativists with fallibilists. I readily concede that with respect to all sorts of opinions there are no algorithms for deciding their truth. (Who said there were?) But that is consistent with holding that the true opinions are true absolutely.

What Rorty calls the real issue is indeed a real issue. Is the only support conversational or is there some other kind? But it it clear that one who maintains that the only support for our culture, purposes, intuitions, beliefs, is conversational is a kind of relativist. For he is saying that there is no ground of our beliefs, purposes, etc. except our agreement with one another. But our agreement now is different from our agreement then; and their agreement is different from our agreement. Agreement is a local affair, and time-bound to boot. What the Muslim Brotherhood will let you get away with saying is different from what Rorty and the boys will let you get away with saying. Their warranted assertibles are different from Rorty's. So if truth is warranted assertibility, truth is relative.

Rorty's position seems to have a pernicious and illiberal consequence. Suppose a member of al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood or any such group swots up Rorty's writings and becomes convinced that truth is just warranted assertibility (Dewey) and the good by way of belief (James), and that there is no transcendent truth, and no transcultural Reason whereby transcendent truth can be discerned. Then wouldn't this Islamo-headchopper be fully justified in decapitating Rorty and the boys for the greater glory of Allah? What more justification could he have? He has the agreement of his co-ideologues that exterminating Jews and Crusaders is the path to the door of the 72 black-eyed virgins. He has all the conversational support he needs.

Not believing in transcendent truth or universal Reason, our Rortian headchopper has no reason at all to see in his infidel opponent anything that unites them across the barriers of language and culture. Why should the Rortian Islamist respect the infidel?

What Rorty's relativism does is remove a reason, perhaps the only reason, for one person to respect another when the Other is radically different culturally. That reason is Reason, common, universal Reason of the sort that Kant and indeed the whole rationalist tradition believed in. It is because you, like me are a rational being that I have a reason to respect your personhood despite our differences.

Once God and Reason are dismissed, is there any basis left for respect for persons? We shall have to return to this question.

I argued earlier that absolutism does not entail dogmatism. But it is also the case that relativism is no guarantee of nondogmatism. A relativist about truth and rationality can be just as dogmatic and fanatic as any absolutist.

So again I ask: What is liberal about Rorty's position? A genuine liberalism must appeal to transcultural Reason, something Rorty denies. What keeps his position from collapsing into a bad conservatism, a hidebound traditionalism that takes its guidance from some book like the Qu'ran? That is not what Rorty wants, of course, but does he have a principled means of avoiding it?

I find something right about this passage. In many ways I am an Enlightenment man and a classical liberal. I thrill to Kant's sapere aude! (dare to know) as he invokes it in What is Enlightenment? I am for freedom of expression and open inquiry. I am against indices librorum prohibitorum whether of the Catholic or the Commie variety. I say about myself what Kant said about himself: Ich bin aus Neigung ein Forscher, "I am by inclination an inquirer." As a philosopher, I maintain that nothing is immune from being hauled before the tribunal of reason for interrogation, and that includes the idea that nothing is immune from being hauled before the tribunal of reason for interrogation. So there is a sense in which, in the life of the mind, anything goes, or almost anything.

But what is the point of freedom of expression, unrestrained dialog, and openminded inquiry? Rorty tells us above that openmindedness should be fostered for its own sake. That is a silly thing to say. It would be as silly as if one were to say that a firm adherence to one's convictions, whatever they happen to be, should be fostered for its own sake.

We are openminded not for the sake of being openminded, but because it has instrumental value in the pursuit of truth. Openness of mind and freedom of inquiry are means, not ends. The end is truth. But for Rorty there is no such thing as truth. "A liberal society is one which is content to call 'true' whatever the upshot of such encounters turns out to be." This amounts to saying that there is no truth. For it is easy to see that the "upshot" of a "free and open encounter" in one society may well be different from the "upshot" of such an encounter in another society. The truth, however, is not the sort of thing that can be different for different societies or different epochs or different social classes.

That is just the way truth is. Truth is absolute by its very nature. You cannot say that there is truth and then go on to identify it with some such property as warranted assertibility or rational acceptability or what your colleagues will let you get away with saying. Warranted assertibility is different at different times and places; truth is not. Water is an element was warrantedly assertible by the ancients Greeks; water is HO was warrantedly assertible in the days of Dalton. But neither of these propositions is warrantedly assertible now. If truth were warranted assertibility, one would have to conclude that water has changed it chemical composition — which is absurd.

The PoMo types sneer at this sort of refutation because it is so easy. But this is just a case where simplex sigillum veri. And if Rorty and Co. can't deal with a simple objection, how will they deal with a hard one? Besides, sneering is not refuting.

G.E. Moore's Open Question style of objection suggests itself. You may insist that pleasure is the good, but the question remains open: Is pleasure the good? Similarly, you may posit that truth is warranted assertibility, but it remains an open question whether truth is warranted assertibility. The denial that truth is warranted assertibility is neither a logical contradiction nor an analytic incoherence like 'Bachelors are female.'

Furthermore, there is no contradiction in the idea of truths (true propositions) that are assertible but not warrantedly assertible. The following proposition is assertible: 500 feet below my house there is a piece of rock that has the same shape and weight as Paris Hilton. This might well be true, and it is assertible; but it it not warrantedly assertible. And as I already pointed out, what is warrantedly assertible need not be true. Dalton had warrant for asserting that water is HO, but what he had warrant for asserting was in fact not true.

There are truths that are not warrantedly assertible, and there are warranted assertibles that are not true. So truth cannot be identical to warranted assertibility. Now I would have no objection if Rorty were simply to drop the word 'true.' But that is not what he does, as witness the above passage. He wants it both ways at once. He wants to forward philosophical theses, but without really doing that. He wants to substitute rhetoric for argument but without quite giving up argument. So he ends up giving shoddy arguments, as I hope to show in later posts.

There is also the following consideration, that may be worth developing. It is warrantedly assertible that truth is NOT warrantedly assertible. The warrant is the reasons I have been giving. Therefore, if truth is warranted assertibility, then it is true that truth is not warranted assertibility.

I will say more about Rorty and truth in a subsequent post, but I will end this entry by asking what is particularly liberal about Rorty's view. "A liberal society is one which is content to call 'true' whatever the upshot of such [free and open] encounters turns out to be." But if liberalism is not tied to some notion of Enlightenment, if it does not aim at a displacing of errors, and an arriving at truth, a transcending of partial perspectives and limited horizons, then it is none too clear how Rorty's liberalism differs from a bad conservatism of the sort supported by Wittgenstein's vision of incommensurable language games/forms of life.

If the members of the Muslim Brotherhood decide via "free and open encounters" that the destruction of the Little Satan and the Great Satan are jobs One and Two respectively, then that strike me as none too liberal; but it seems consistent with a pseudo-liberalism of Rortian stripe.

I maintain that truth, by its very nature, cannot be relative to anything, whether individuals, groups of individuals, social classes, historical epochs, biological species, or any other index. To illustrate, consider the proposition P, Global warming is anthropogenic. I don't deny that one can say things like 'P is true for most liberals but false for most conservatives.' One can talk that way and no harm need come of it; but only if it is a loose way of saying that P is believed by liberals but not believed by conservatives. This, however, does not entail relativism; it is consistent with truth's being nonrelative. Indeed, someone who believes that P, believes that P is true, and indeed believes that P is nonrelatively true.

What is objectionable is the notion that there is such a property as relative truth, that the predicate 'true-for-X' picks out some property distinct from the property picked out by 'believed-by-X.' There is no such property as relative truth. There is just truth. Truth is absolute. There is no possibility of truth coming in two kinds, relative and absolute. In the phrase 'relative truth,' 'relative' is an alienans adjective: it functions like 'artificial' is 'artificial leather' and not like 'deciduous' in 'deciduous tree.' Artificial leather is not leather; relative truth is not truth.

More arguments can be given, but suppose you are convinced that truth is nonrelative. My main point is that it does not follow that one who maintains this must also maintain that he is in possession of the truth. For example, I maintain that the proposition P, Global warming is anthropogenic, if true is nonrelatively true, and indeed essentially nonrelatively true. But I am not thereby maintaining that I know that P is true. To maintain that a proposition, if true, cannot be relatively true but must be absolutely (nonrelatively) true, is not to maintain that the proposition in question is known to be true.

Suppose we define a dogmatist as someone who, with respect to the class C of reasonably controvertible propositions, or some proper subset S thereof, maintains that he knows with certainty that the members of C or the members of S are all of them true. An example of a reasonably controvertible proposition is the proposition that God exists. It is reasonable to maintain that God exists, but also reasonable to maintain that God does not exist. (Some atheists are unreasonable people, but not qua atheists.) This is because one can give good, though not compelling, arguments for both the affirmation and the negation. A nondenumerable infinity of propositions that are not reasonably controvertible can be culled from mathematics, not to mention other disciplines.

Having provided a rough, working definition of 'dogmatist,' I now attempt the same for 'fallibilist.' I suggest that a fallibilist is the opposite of a dogmatist. Suppose we agree on the identity of the class C of reasonably controvertible propositions. (Yes, I admit that this is a big 'if.') We can then say that a fallibilist is one who adopts the correct epistemic attitude to the members of C, or the members of C that he is aware of: he does not claim to be certain about what is intrinsically uncertain. He admits that he can be wrong about the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the exact causes of global warming, and so on. He admits that he can be wrong, he admits his fallibility, but without falling into alethic relativism.

My main point, then, is that one can reject relativism about truth without embracing dogmatism. One can be both an absolutist and a fallibilist. Being a fallibilist does not entail being a relativist.

Thus there are four possible positions one can occupy:

1. Nonrelativist dogmatism
2. Relativist fallibilism
3. Nonrelativist fallibilism
4. Relativist dogmatism.

Certain paleoconservatives exemplify (1). Not only do they maintain that truth is absolute, they also maintain that they are in possession of it with respect to items that are reasonably controvertible. If the Pope believes in Papal Infallibility then he would be one of these paleocons. I suppose most relativists exemplify (2), but I fear that many relativists exemplify (4). There are liberals, for example, who are relativists but are surprisingly dogmatic about questions of race and sex and religion. This would be a good topic for a separate entry. My position is (3). I am a nonrelativist about truth but also a fallibilist. I recommend this position to you.

I seek the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters -- and it would make no sense to seek it if it were relative -- but I love truth so much that I want to be sure that I have the genuine article: I fear confusing mere convictions with truths. There is some insight in the Nietzschean adage that "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." But see Nietzsche on Conviction.

It follows that a realist need not be committed to the existence of material individuals or of any concrete individuals. Suppose you believe that everything that exists is either a spiritual substance or a modification of such a substance. You will count as a realist if you hold that these substances exist in logical independence of human representations. Realism is thus consistent with the denial of materialism, the thesis that everything is a material individual or supervenient upon a material individual. But of course a materialist can be a realist, and it is probably true that most are. Frederick B. Fitch maintained (American Philosophical Quarterly 8, no.1 (January 1971): 99-103) the surprising thesis that the only realities are Platonistically construed propositions. That view too is consistent with realism as defined. So a realist needn't be committed to the existence of concrete individuals at all.

Realism as defined is an ontological thesis. As such, it is not to be confused with the semantic doctrine according to which truth consists in correspondence. No doubt correspondence theory entails realism, but not conversely; hence the doctrines are distinct. There is no reason why a realist could not be a coherence theorist.

Some maintain that conceptual relativity entails the falsity of realism. The constructivism of Robert Schwartz, lately discussed, is built on this notion. But what exactly is conceptual relativity? Roughly, the idea is that our systems of representations have an arbitrary and conventional character. We are free to classify things in different ways depending on our interests and purposes. A sentence that is true relative to one system of classification can be false relative to a different system. 'There are nine planets' is true relative to one system of astronomical classification, but false according to another.

Consider a simple world consisting of marbles A, B, and C. How many objects are there in this world? 'Three' sounds like a good answer, and it is a good answer relative to one system of counting. But 'seven' is another answer if one counts not only the marbles but all the mereological sums constructible from them. We then get: A, B, C, A + B, B + C, A + C, and A + B + C. How many objects there are depends on what counts as an object, and this rests on a conceptual decision about the use of 'object.' Both answers are correct, which implies that there is no one privileged counting scheme.

An anti-realist might now argue as follows. If realism is true, then there is a privileged counting scheme with respect to the simple world just described. But there cannot be a privileged counting scheme as we have just seen. Therefore, realism is false.

If this is the argument, it is a bad argument. For realism does not require that there be one and only one conceptual scheme for describing reality. It merely requires that what exists exists independently of our representations of it. If what exists can be described in incompatible ways, it follows that only one of them can be true. Why should one conclude, from the fact of incompatible descriptions, that there is no independent reality being described?

The solar system can be described as consisting of the sun plus eight planets or as the sun plus nine planets. These descriptions are incompatible. Some will conclude that there is no independently real solar system; what there are are two different versions (Goodman) or two different cognitive constructions (Schwartz). But one is not bound to infer this. One can say instead that one and the same independent reality is being described in two different ways.

Reality does not dictate how 'planet' is to be defined: we have definitional latitude. But it does not follow that there is no independent reality. Once we fix the sense of 'planet' then reality supplies an answer as to how many planets there are.

This post draws heavily on John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, 1995, Ch. 7.

This has a Nietzschean flavor: "There are no facts, only interpretations." There is no base level of fact that supplies the uninterpreted material of interpretation. The world is interpretation or cognitive construction 'all the way down.' There is no mind-independent reality.

But isn't Schwartz committed to saying that Reality is such that there is no mind-independent reality and no base level of privileged building blocks? Or is the Schwartzian scheme just another construction among other possible constructions? Does his thesis of thoroughgoing cognitive construction apply also to his thesis that all is construction? Is his conceptual relativism a relative (relativized) relativism, or is it an absolute relativism?

If the latter, then he would appear to fall into contradiction. If all is construction, then how can the structure of cognition be fixed and invariant? How can it be necessarily such that it involves a construing or constructing of something which itself is a construction with no base level of raw givens? How can that be the way things are if there is no Way Things Are?

If, on the other hand, Schwartzian constructivism is a relativized conceptual relativism, an optional way of looking at things that serves the interests and purposes of people of his latitudinarian sort but not the interests and purposes of the more hide-bound among us, then how can he budge us? What can he appeal to to get us to give up our deep-seated belief in one determinate Reality an sich?

I had no trouble at all constructing this little dilemma, but that takes away not one bit of its sting. Absolute relativism is self-contradictory, while relativized relativism is self-vitiating: it allows the opponent to proceed on his merry way secure in his belief that there is after all a Way Things Are independent of us and our schemes and dreams.

But how does Schwartz move from SOME to ALL? If some properties and facts are constructed by us, it doesn't follow that all are. It is obvious that the Big Dipper is a grouping we impose, a conceptual overlay. But we impose it on something, a set of stars. Are stars and planets conceptual overlays? This is not obvious. Overlays over what? Indeed, the opposite strikes many of us as obvious: stars and planets exist in themselves apart from us and our conceptual schemes. The Big Dipper grouping is a human artifact. But could a star or a planet be a human artifact? Of course, astronomers have some latitude in defining what exactly shall be meant by 'planet.' Depending on how exactly they define the term, there will be more or fewer planets. So it is plausible to say that whether there are nine planets or only eight depends in part on us and our purposes. But that there are planets and stars at all does not depend on us. Or at least that is the view we should accept as epistemically innocent until proven guilty.

Suppose astronomers agree to demote Pluto from planetary status. This simply amounts to a reclassification of something that exists however it is classified. I used to be a Large Mammal in the TTLB Ecosystem, but I have been demoted to Marauding Marsupial. But that has no bearing on my (or my blog's) existence or those properties it must have to exist at all. Same with Pluto. Pluto may not be a planet, but it is something, and not a bare (property-less) something, nor just anything at all. Pluto could not be reclassifed as a black hole. No doubt one could classify Pluto as a dwarf planet and then replace 'dwarf planet' with 'black hole.' But that would wreak havoc in astronomy since 'black hole' has an established use. It would also have no bearing on the nature of the thing renamed. One cannot change the nature of a thing by naming or renaming it. It just now occurs to me that 'black' in 'black hole' is an alienans adjective: there is nothing contradictory in the expression, 'A black hole is not a hole.' See similar observations anent 'dwarf planet' and Owen Gingerich's objections thereto.

Pluto is something ontologically definite despite our false beliefs about it and our wavering conceptual decisions with respect to it. It is not indefinitely conceptually malleable. We cannot reclassify it as a black hole or as the mereological sum of all the AIDS-infected human blood in Africa. It has a nature that constrains our lust for classification and reclassification. There may be no fact of the matter as to whether or not it is a planet, but there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not its atmosphere is 98% nitrogen. And the same goes for nitrogen's having an atomic number of 7 and an atomic weight of 14.007. If you say that chemical theory might have been different, that the Periodic Table might be revised, that nitrogen might be reclassified as a non-element, then I will reiterate my point about ontological definiteness. Whatever false beliefs we have about nitrogen, and whatever reversals of conceptual decisions we may enact, there is still a constraint on our theorizing. And any talk of false beliefs presupposes at least the possibility of true beliefs, which again brings us back to a mind-independent reality.

There is obviously a huge difference between saying that the Big Dipper depends on us (obviously true) and saying that the stars so organized depend on us (presumably false and in any case not established). Schwartz wants to obliterate this difference, and the question is: how can he pull it off? The onus probandi is clearly on him, as I am standing on the terra firma of common sense. Common sense says that it is lunacy to suppose that the luna, moon, is conjured into existence, or carved out of some amorphous substance, by our thought and speech, and so on for its parts and their parts, etc. The fact that 'planet' and 'star' can be defined in different ways does not not show that the existence of clear-cut cases of planets and stars is a matter of human projection.

Schwartz thinks he can get to his destination by raising worries about the boundaries of these objects, and how they are fixed. (157) It is no doubt true that planets and such have vague boundaries. Where does the earth and its atmosphere stop and outer space start? There is no well-defined boundary. But when you crash into the moon, you'll know it, even though the moon's boundaries are also vague. Schwartz apparently thinks that earth and moon are ontologically definite only relative to "the background stage-setting afforded by constructing theories and conceptions . . . ." (157)

I don't see it. When Galileo looked through his primitive telescope at the moon, he saw imperfections that we know to be craters caused by the impacts of meteors. But Church officials weren't buying it, and they refused to look. The 'knew' from their Aristotlean cosmology that the moon was perfect and 'quintessential,' composed of a fifth 'essence' or substance more noble than the sublunary kinds (air, earth, fire, and water.) Still, Galieo and his ecclesiastical opponents were referring to the same object, the moon, despite their wildly different background theories. The false beliefs of the Churchmen did not prevent them from successfully referring to the same chunk of reality as Galileo referred to. So why is it only relative to a background theory that we "can pick out definite parts of the heavens . . ."? (157) Is Schwartz presupposing a descriptivist approach to names? And if you, dear reader, are defending Schwartz, are you presupposing it as well?

To sum up. I don't see that Schwartz has provided any decent argument from Some properties are human constructs to All properties are human constructs. There may be no fact of the matter as to whether or not there are nine planets, since it depends on the exact definition of 'planet.' But is there no fact of the matter as to whether or not there is a difference between a planet and a black hole? Of course there is, and it doesn't matter how exactly one defines either of these terms.

2. He gives an argument that he says "rests on little more than the assumption that properties possessed or instantiated by different sets of objects are different properties." (152) This assumption is of course true. But what I will show is that it is impossible to extract Schwartz' constructivist thesis from this near-triviality.

The argument goes like this. Let Ps be the set of all stars, and "let P1 to Pn be all simple combinatorial sets of the stars." (152) Since each of these sets is different, "each may be identified or correlated with a different property." (152) Assume that there is a list indicating which stars are members of which sets. Suppose 'A' is the name of a star, and that we ask: Is A a member of the class of Big Dipper stars? We cannot answer this question merely by inspecting the list of stars and sets of stars, for there is no way of knowing which set is the Big Dipper set. Schwartz is willing to concede that which sets there are is a ready-made fact, one quite independent of us. But which of these sets is the extension of the property BIG DIPPER STAR is not a ready-made fact. We must make a cognitive contribution: we must organize the heavenly bodies into constellations and decide which of them constitute the Big Dipper. "Without this cognitive contribution, there is nothing to A being or not being, having or not having the property BIG DIPPER STAR." (153)

What Schwartz is saying is that we make a property by "determining which set on the list is or is associated with the property BIG DIPPER STAR." (153) Without our making there would be no such property. "Without our contribution, no set is the property, hence no star just is 'by nature' an instance of it." Given that we make properties, it follows that we make facts, for a fact (in the monadic case at least) is just a particular's instantiating a property. "In the ready-made world there are no determinate facts about to which constellation, if any, A belongs." (153)

3. You will have guessed by now that Schwartz wants his we-make-properties thesis to be true of all properties, not just artificial and gerrymandered ones like the property of being a Big Dipper star, properties which are plausibly viewed as projected or constructed by us. Schwartz wants his thesis to hold also for the property of being a star, and for "properties in general." (156) "Property making goes all the way down, or up, as the case may be." (156) The Schwartzian picture is this. In mind-independent reality there are individuals and sets of individuals. But there are no properties and there are no facts. For properties and facts to emerge, our cognitive contibution is required. We decide which sets are which properties.

I hope you will forgive me if I find this absurd. Here is a particularly repugnant passage:

Thus, [star] A may exist in the ready-made world, yet in natura rerum there are no inherent facts about the properties it has. It is no more a star than it is a Big Dipper star and belongs to a constellation. Of course, even in a world lacking determinate qualities A is a member of P23, Ps, and many more sets. (156)

This implies the absurdity that the world in itself is just a collection of bare particulars or property-less substrata. But if A has no properties, then it would seem to lack these properties as well: the properties of being an individual, of being self-identical, of belonging to some sets and not others, of existing, of being distinct from other individuals, of not being a property, of being capable of having properties, of being one among many, not to mention the property of being a member of P23. Why are these features not conceptual impositions or cognitive contributions of human beings? And if they are conceptual impositions, what are they imposed upon?

Here is a simple but powerful reason to reject this sort of wild-eyed constructivism. We are told that ALL properties are made by us. (It is trivial to maintain that some properties emerge from our selecting and classifying activities.) But if all properties are made by us, then that includes our properties, the properties we makers possess. Whether we are purely physical beings, or mental-physical composite beings, or transcendental egos -- whatever we are, as long as we are something, we have properties, and in virtue of some of these properties we are world-creators. It follows that we (individually? collectively?) make the properties in virtue of which we make anything. And this, I submit, is incoherent. The properties that constitute me a world-creator cannot be properties I myself create. Not even God could create the properties that constitute him God and creator. The divine nature (the conjunction of the divine attributes) is not itself and cannot be a divine creation. For if God created his own nature, what is logically prior (the nature in virture of which God is creator in the first place) would be logically posterior -- which is absurd. And surely what God can't do, I can't do, whether I work alone or with others, now, or 'after the Revolution.'

More tomorrow. But before closing, one more point. Above I quoted Schwartz as saying that his argument "rests on little more than the assumption that properties possessed or instantiated by different sets of objects are different properties." (152) Nothing controversial about this: properties with different extensions are different properties. (The converse, according to which properties with the same extensions are the same properties, is false.) But how, from the uncontroversial claim, do we get to Schwartzian constructivism? How do we get to the idea that properties are made by us? There is no way I can see to get to this wild-eyed thesis by squeezing the above near-triviality.

Consider Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light-years from earth. Schwartz’ just mentioned claim implies that this star is a product of a conceptual (not physical) making by human beings. We make it have the properties it has, and we make it exist. Schwartz writes, "Whether there are stars, and what they are like, are facts that can emerge only in our attempts to describe and organize our world." (435)

Read in one way, this sentence is trivially true; read in another way, it is clearly false. The plausibility of Schwartz’s conceptual idealism, I contend, rests on the conflation of these two readings. This is a very common pattern in philosophy. One makes an equivocal statement bearing in its bosom two senses, one that makes the statement appear clearly true, the other that makes it appear informative and substantial.

Reading 1: Whether there are stars, and what they are like, are facts that can BE KNOWN only in our attempts to describe the world and organize our thoughts about it.

Reading 2: Whether there are stars, and what they are like, are facts that can EXIST only in our attempts to describe the world and organize our thoughts about it.

Now (1) is clearly, indeed trivially, true. That Alpha Centauri exists, and that it is 4.3 light-years from earth, could not possibly be known unless there are beings who desire to know, and prosecute the requisite investigations. (2), however, is a stellar falsehood; or at least there is no reason to believe it.

One problem, of course, is the weasel word (fudge word?) ‘emerge.’ Being ambiguous, it can mean come to light, come to be known, but also, come to exist. Thus it seems the Schwartzian thesis is fueled by an equivocation.

A second problem is one I mentioned in the earlier post. A fact that is a true proposition. For example, ‘It is a fact that Chomsky teaches at MIT’ is equivalent in meaning to ‘It is a true proposition that Chomsky teaches at MIT.’ A proposition, however, is a representational entity: it represents something, in the typical case, something distinct from itself. Now propositions can be reasonably viewed as mental entities, entities that exist only ‘in’ minds, i.e., only as the accusatives of mental acts. So of course facts require minds if by ‘fact’ is meant ‘fact that.’ But there is another, more robust, notion of fact. Facts in this second sense are not propositional representations, or any kind of representation, but truth-makers of propositional representations. These are not facts that, but facts of. For example, the fact of Chomsky’s being a leftist. It is even clearer if we omit the ‘of’ which here functions as a mere device of apposition rather than as a genitive: the fact, Chomsky’s being a leftist. This concrete fact composed of Chomsky and the property of being a leftist is the truth-maker of ‘Chomsky is a leftist.’

So although it is reasonably held that facts that (i.e., true propositions) are mind-involving or mind-dependent, it does not follow that facts of (truth-making facts) are mind-involving.

More later.

"We all see the world from where we stand." True enough: we are all influenced by our upbringing, our education, our past experiences, the consequences of our freely chosen past actions, and so on and so forth. My father viewed investing in the stock market as a form of gambling. That is no surprise: he lived through the Great Depression. I didn't live through the Depression, and I do not consider investing in the stock market (done properly!) to be a form of gambling.

Now from facts like these about the different experiences of different people differently situated does it follow that there is no objective fact of the matter on any well-defined question? Obviously not. Ivins' 'argument' is a blatant non sequitur.

In fact, the mistake is so stupid and so crude as to take the breath away. Now I am not saying that every leftist is this stupid and this crude. Nor am I saying that every leftist is a relativist about truth: V. I. Lenin certainly wasn't. But I am saying that lefties and liberals are suckers for this sort of nonsense in a way that conservatives are not. I have just provided two prominent examples: Navasky and Ivins. Both have national reputations, and one has just quoted a piece of idiocy of the other. So please don't complain that I am attacking a straw man, or a 'straw person' if you prefer the PeeCee expression. (And don't forget that P.C. comes from the C.P.)

But what exactly is the mistake? Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but if A and B disagree about X, then there are at least the following possibilities: A is right and B is wrong; B is right and A is wrong; both A and B are wrong; A and B are not talking about the same X; there is no X, no fact of the matter. Given these five possibilities, one can see right away that the fact of disagreement does not prove the nonexistence of objective truth.

Indeed, the existence of disagreement is itself an objective fact, and is presupposed by Ivins' 'argument.' For she is arguing from the premise that people disagree. Now if that is not an objective fact, then her 'argument' collapses from exhaustion before it is out of the starting gate.

But let's be charitable. Is there any sense that can be attached to Ivins' words? Perhaps what she wants to say is that it is often difficult to know what the truth is. No doubt, but we knew that all along. Now if that is all she is saying then she has chosen a very confused way of saying it. Or is she saying that no one is wholly objective all the time? That too would be trivial and not worth pointing out. On the other hand, if she means that no one ever obtains objective truth, then that is simply false.

Or perhaps she wants to say that, since truth is sometimes hard to know, then objectivity is not something we should strive for. But that would involve an 'is'/'ought' confusion, to wit: 'Since it is hard to get at the truth, we ought not try.'

But I think something more sinister is going on. The Left wants power, and one way many leftists think they can get power is by denying that there is truth. For if all is power at bottom, then any point of view can be justified by the mere fact that it exists, attracts enough supporters, and 'empowers itself.' If "The world is Will to Power and nothing besides," (Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht) then truth is whatever serves the interests and needs of any power-seeking entity or constellation of entities. Truth becomes a matter of perspective -- which of course is the essence of Nietzsche's perspectivism. Miss Ivins as Nietzschean?

By the way, this also explains something that otherwise would be hard to ecplain, namely, the Left's fascination with Nietzsche who, on so many questions, is the exact opposite of a leftist. And if you doubt that there are leftists who deny the existence of truth, then I give you the example of Ward Churchill who, in his recent debate with David Horowitz, issued the denial. Interestingly, Churchill's lawyer, who is defending him against the charge of plagiarism, takes the same line: there is no fact of the matter as to whether or not he committed plagiarism; truth is relative.

Some self-referential difficulties attaching to impermanence were addressed in a previous post. Now let's see whether similar difficulties are to be found in the doctrine of anatta/anatman when this is taken unrestrictedly. Roughly, the doctrine so construed has it that nothing possesses self-nature, own-being, substantiality. So let us consider

1. All is empty.

One will be tempted to say that (1) is self-refuting. For if all is empty, then (1) is empty, in which case we are not in the presence of any one, self-identical, determinate thesis with a determinate truth-value. But that is presumably not what is intended by someone who asserts (1). Such a person intends (1) as a determinate thesis that is true. Not only that, the person intends the thesis to be always true and necessarily true. The idea behind (1) is not that it is true now but was perhaps false in the past and will again be false in the future. The affirmer of (1) is not countenancing the possibility that if we just wait long enough some nonempty things will emerge. Nor does the proponent of (1) intend it as contingently true. She is not saying, "It is true in the actual world, but there are a myriad of possible worlds in which it is false." Or, "(1) just happens to be true, but it might have been false." The idea is rather that (1) captures a temporally and modally invariant structure of beings qua beings.

But if so, then (1), if true, is false. So the proponent of (1) must retreat to an empty emptiness doctrine, so to speak, to a relativized version of (1) according to which all is empty including (1) itself.

Now is that a problem for the proponent of (1)? I argued elsewhere that relativized alethic relativism is severely problematic. But what about the present case? Is emptied emptiness -- to give it a name -- coherently maintainable?

I should think there is a serious problem. The earlier difficulty was that, if (1) is true, then it is false. Now the difficulty is that, if (1) is true, then (1) is meaningless. For if it is granted that (1) is empty, then (1) lacks self-nature, a determinate identity, a definite sense or meaning in consequence of which it cannot be either true or false. The problem now is not that (1) proves itself to be false, but that it proves itself to be truth-valueless, which is tanatamount to its being meaningless and no proposition at all.

Michael Krausz, however, thinks there is no problem. He writes,

. . . if the doctrine of emptiness is itself 'empty' then it does no harm to the situation it paradoxically addresses. Rather, the doctrine becomes non-assertable; utterance of it becomes only 'empty' sound. It may be that everything is empty but one cannot assert that. (Bilimoria and Mohanty, p. 102)

Krausz's idea (which he credits to Matilal) is that (1) proves its own non-assertibility. (1), though not assertible as true, might be true nonetheless. It is merely the assertibility of (1) that is problematic, not its truth. It can therefore be coherently maintained that (1) is true just so long as one is careful not to assert (1).

Compare

2. No statement is negative.

(2) applies to itself and so appears to refute itself: if (2) is true, then it is false. But consider a possible world W in which God destroys all negative statements and makes it impossible for anyone to make a negative statement. In W, (2) is true, but non-assertible. (2) does not prove itself to be false; it proves itself to be non-assertible. So why not say the same thing about (1)?

But this defense of (1) will not work. For what (1) implies is that everything is empty or devoid of self-nature: every act of assertion, indeed every speech-act, every content asserted, and every linguistic and other means used to encode or express propositional contents. The problem, therefore, is not just that the speech-act of stating or asserting (1) is self-defeating, but that the propositional content asserted is inconsistent with this content's being true.

And the same goes for any truth-maker you care to introduce. If you distinguish the proposition that all is empty from the fact that makes this truth-bearer true, then the emptiness extends to this truth-maker as well.

So the the analogy between (1) and (2) fails, and (1) collapses either into falsehood or into truth-valuelessness/meaninglessness.

(1) simply must be rejected. This is not to say that a restricted anatta/sunya thesis is not defensible. But (1) in its restricted form, as applying to everything, is indefensible.

Now consider a more philosophically interesting example,

2. All is impermanent.

(2) applies to itself: if all is impermanent, then (2), or rather the propositional content thereof, is impermanent. That could mean one of two things. Either the truth-value of the proposition expressed by (2) is subject to change, or the proposition itself is subject to change, perhaps by becoming a different proposition with a different sense, or by passing out of existence altogether.

Note also that if (2) is true, then every part of (2)'s propositional content is impermanent. Thus the property (concept) of impermanence is impermanent, and so is the copulative tie and the universal quantifier. If the property of impermanence is impermanent, then so is the property of permanence along with the distinction between permanence and impermanence.

In short, (2), if true, undermines the very contrast that gives it a determinate sense. If true, (2) undermines the permanence/impermanence contrast. For if all is impermanent, then so is this contrast and this distinction. This leaves us wondering what sense (2) might have and whether in the end it is not nonsense.

What I am suggesting is not just that (2) refutes itself in the sense that it proves itself false, but refutes itself in the much stronger sense of proving itself meaningless or else proving itself on the brink of collapsing into meaninglessness.

No doubt (2) is meaningful 'at first blush.' But all it takes is a few preliminary pokes and its starts collapsing in upon itself.

Michael Krausz ("Relativism and Beyond: A Tribute to Bimal Matilal" in Bilimoria and Mohanty, pp. 93-104) arrives at a similar result by a different route. He writes:

Paradoxically, because all things are contexted, the idea of permanence cannot be permanent. But it does not follow that in the end all things are impermanent either, for impermanence too is contexted and it too finally drops out of any fixed constellation of concepts. (101)

Krausz invokes the premise,

3. All things are contexted.

Krausz writes as if (3) is unproblematic. But surely it too 'deconstructs' itself. Just apply the same reasoning to (3) that we applied to (2). Clearly, (3) is self-referential. So (3) cannot express an invariant structure of being. It cannot be taken to mean, context-independently, that every being qua being is contexted.

Note also that if (3) is true, then every part of (3)'s propositional content is contexted: the universal quantifier, the concept thing, the copulative tie, and the concept of being contexted are all contexted. What's more, the very contrast of the context-free and the context-bound is contexted.

In short, (3), if true, undermines the very contrast that confers upon it a determinate sense, namely, the contrast between the context-free and the context-bound. For if all is contexted, then so is this contrast and this distinction.

(3) collapses in upon itself and perishes for want of a determinate sense. And the same goes for all its parts. Copulative Being collapses into indeterminacy along with every other sense of Being: the existential, the identitative, the veritative, the locative, the class-theoretic. Being ends up with no structure at all. If Being and Thinking are one, as Father Parmendides had it, then the collapse of Being brings Thinking down with it.

Clearly, we are sinking into some seriously deep shit here, and it is of the worst kind: the formless kind, crap that won't own up to its own crapiness, the kind that deconstructionists, whether Continental or Asian, like to serve up. It is stuff so unstable that one cannot even say that it stinks. Do we really want to wallow in this mess?

Wouldn't it be better to admit that there is an Absolute?

Krausz appreciates that a relativism asserted as nonrelatively true refutes itself. A relativized relativism (RR), however, lacks general force. The issue is whether this lack of general force amounts to an objection to RR. Krausz thinks that it does not. RR may reflect a 'local understanding.'

Well, suppose that among Krausz and his group it is held that truth is relative and that this truth is itself relative. It is held by me and my group that truth is nonrelative. What I say about K is that his view is nonrelatively false and rests on a confusion of truth with local understanding. Clearly, he cannot reply in kind since he has tied his own hands by retreating to RR. He cannot, that is, say that my view is true only for me and my group. He cannot say that my nonrelativism is only relatively true. If he said that, he would be assuming that relativism is nonrelatively true and would thereby fall into self-contradiction. His retereat to RR was a forced retreat. He therefore has to admit that my view is possibly nonrelatively true, and not just for me. He has to admit this because my position is a possible position he cannot exclude. He must admit that it is possibly nonrelatively true that truth is nonrelative. But if so, then it is possible that there be one nonrelative truth. Now possibly there is one nonrelative truth is nonrelatively true. It follows that there actually is one nonrelative truth, which suffices to show that nonrelativism is true.

Since nonrelativism is true, it follows that RR is false. This in turn implies that Krausz and Co. are confusing truth with "local understanding."

Let me sum this up in a somewhat different way. The retreat to RR is forced. This retreat insulates relativism from the charge of self-referential inconsistency. But it also makes it impossible for the proponent of RR to exclude as false or incoherent the position of the nonrelativist. Not being able to exclude the position of the nonrelativist, K. must admit that the nonrelativist position (NR) is possibly true, indeed possibly nonrelatively true. So he must admit that NR is possibly true. But that NR is possibly true is itself nonrelatively true. After all, Possibly p entails it is true that possibly p. So K. must admit not only that NR is possibly true, but also that it is actually nonrelatively true that possibly NR.

And that suffices to show that NR is true, RR is false, and that K. is confusing truth with "local understanding."