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Possibility
Possibility offers a new analysis of the metaphysical concepts of possibility and necessity, one that does not rely on any sort of 'possible worlds'. The analysis proceeds from an account of the notion of a physical object and from the positing of properties and relations. It is motivated by considerations about how we actually speak of and think of objects. Michael Jubien discusses several closely related topics, including different purported varieties of possible worlds, the doctrine of 'essentialism', natural kind terms, and alleged examples of necessity a posteriori. The book also offers a new theory of the functioning of proper names, both actual and fictional, and the discussion of natural kind terms and necessity a posteriori depends in part on this theory.
- GenresMetaphysicsPhilosophy
228 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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August 17, 2012
Possibility is a solid metaphysical attempt at locating possibilities in the actual world. One which, unfortunately, I do not believe succeeds. Although I am sympathetic to the project of rejecting possible worlds, Jubien's proposals come at an ontological cost. The cost of this, of course, is Platonism. If you are sympathetic to the Platonist project, then there will be little to complain about here. For those skeptical, you will be slightly disappointed. My approach in this review will be mostly critical of a particular aspect of Jubien's program. Though the main issues occur within a single chapter, the difficulties and failures of Jubien's account of proper names threaten his entire project, and for this reason it is there that I will focus my attention.
First, I will give a limited and brief background. Jubien presents what he terms The Great Divide. This is perhaps the most essential element of Jubien's philosophical inquiry. Many different objects can fall under different descriptions between being analyzed as a pure object in itself or a familiar kind. When something is taken simply to be an object, the parts are essential but their arrangement is inconsequential. Curiously, under different descriptions of familiar kinds, the parts become inessential and the arrangement important.
Some object that this is merely something which ought to be avoided, that it cannot be accommodated since it is inconsistent and thus incoherent. Jubien disagrees. He contends that when we have different attitudes to something based on whether we view it as a simple object or some familiar kind, we are not being inconsistent since we are evaluating that object qua our attitude towards that object.
So if a sculptor models a sculpture out of clay and says, ‘I love this sculpture, but I hate this clay!” she is not being inconsistent in the least. She knows that the sculpture and the clay are the very same, and yet can still have different attitudes in regard to different objectual categories of the same thing. When saying she loves the sculpture, she is saying she loves it qua sculpture. Likewise, when asserting her hatred for the clay, she asserts hatred qua clay.
Jubien describes the attitude to treat these issues as mere inconsistencies as object fixation. This is when one fixes on some object qua object and ignores the attitudes associated with familiar kinds.
According to Jubien, familiar kind objects are properties which are instantiated by different objects at different times as well as different objects in different counterfactual scenarios. So the property of being the specific familiar kind me is instantiated by a number of differing objects at different times and different counterfactual scenarios.
Jubien takes issue with Lewis' attempt to understand 'ways things could have been' as possible worlds and instead takes Lewis' argument to support a face-value interpretation of them as properties.
From platonism, Jubien wishes to accept the Principle of Constitution: that some a is F just if F is a property instantiated by a.
From here, Jubien begins to discuss what he takes to be some fundamental weirdnesses of possible worlds. If, for example, it is necessarily true that all A's are B's then what makes this true according to possible world theories is that in all possible worlds (or all possible worlds which contain A's or B's), A's are B's. But from the intrinsic perspective of a given possible world, no fact within that world makes it the case that necessarily the A's of that world are B's. From the local world perspective it would appear that the truth is contingent. But that contingency then carries over to every other possible world with A's or B's. It is bizarre to think that a contingency from a local world perspective is also a necessity from a maximal worlds perspective. We ultimately have no understanding of why these contingencies are necessary at all.
To further complicate this, this is simply not how we intuitively assign modal categories to things. If we agree that necessarily all horses are animals, we are not intuiting this from a maximal worlds perspective, that is, we are not stating the necessity based off of thinking about whether all horse worlds are also horse-animal worlds. We are instead appealing to the nature of horses themselves and how that nature necessitates their being animals. This necessity is understood as being within the actual world and from this we could choose to assume that in all of the possible worlds which contain horses, each horse is an animal. Possible world theories have things in reverse.
"...we try to imagine something instantiating being a horse but not instantiating being an animal, and we fail. Surely this isn't about infinitely many complex, maximal entities, but rather just about the two properties." (76)
Jubien "...think[s] modality has to do with relations involving the abstract part of the world, specifically with relations among (Platonic) properties. It is here that we find the needed modal oomph." (77)
Jubien appeals to what he characterizes as entity-essences; that is, there is some property of being that entity. The entity-essence of physical objects are object-essences. He takes any thing at all, abstract or concrete as properties of being those things. This naturally follows from the Principle of Constitution.
To these, Jubien adds k-essences. These are for any kind k and any entity x of kind k, x instantiates that k-essence. So object-essences where x is an entity x which instantiates k where k is being a physical object.
Jubien now claims that these properties and essences have entailments such that, for example, being a horse entails being an animal. It is this entailment which secures the modal necessity of the statement.
For a platonist, properties (at least those which are instantiated) actually exist. For these properties to be instantiated as particular properties distinct from others the properties themselves must be intrinsically distinct from other properties. What makes the statement "all horses are animals" true, then, is that the property of being a horse entails the property of being an animal since it is intrinsic of the property being a horse that it is also and animal, and that these two properties guarantee the truth of the statement.
Jubien does not believe any acceptable account of modality may be complete without a theory of proper names. He wishes to introduce a new theory which is neither a Direct Reference (DR) but agrees with Kripke that the descriptive accounts of proper names fail.
To illustrate the need for a new theory, he presents two cases.
In case 1, Jubien asks us to imagine being a sculptor with a specific sculpture in mind named Daffy. When making the sculpture, the artist decides that it does not matter which of the three tubs of clay she has to make it out of and chooses one arbitrarily. From here it is sage to say that Daffy might have been made of different matter. But according to DR, the proper name 'Daffy' stands directly for the specific object. Thus, since Daffy is composed of the specific clay from the arbitrarily chosen tubs, it follows that the specific matter could have been made of different matter.
Case 2 is similar. We assume that Venus was formed from a cloud of dust in space and we also assume that Venus could have been composed of some different dust. But if proper names place some specific object into the proposition, then we have to say that some specific matter (the matter composing Venus) could have been different matter. We have the same absurd conclusion as before. It is impossible for some matter to be different matter, though it is possible for some object to be otherwise composed.
Jubien takes it that DR fails to stress the significance of the Great Divide and rejects it on these grounds. He resolves the apparent contradiction of these cases by appealing to the Great Divide and the instantiation of essences.
In addition, Jubien claims that proper names are always tied to a particular category. Here we are nearing the crux of my criticism. What determines the category of a name, Jubien contends, are the stewards of the name. These are the collection of individuals who fully grasp some name and are capable of using it successfully in a variety of circumstances. "...[T]he category of a name is the narrowest and 'most natural' property, among those its bearers actually instantiates, that the object would also instantiate in every counterfactual case in which the stewards of the name are disposed to continue to apply it." (135) This would be the category a steward of the name would respond with when asked "What sort of object is _____?".
But how can DR be reconciled here. If names have categories, this feature is close to what can be called the meaning of the name?
Although the notion of stewards of a name tied to a category is coherent, I am not convinced. I do agree with Jubien that there is an apparent contradiction present in our use of names and the unmodified versions of DR or description theories, I find the extensional qualification of a category as hard to swallow, especially given Kit Fine's more plausible notion of coordination and manifest consequence presented in his book, Semantic Relationism. For Fine, the same issue can be resolved by showing that some use of a name may stand directly for an object which is strictly identical to itself under another description which generally takes another name (or fails to take a name at all) which stands directly for the very same object where the two uses (or single use) are not coordinated with each other. In fact, this case is much easier to deal with than the more complicated puzzles concerning proper names to which Fine's proposal applies (e.g. Russel's antimony of the variable, Kripke's Paderewski puzzle or Frege's cognitive puzzle). For Fine, it is not some further category of an object which ensures one use of a name over another, but the coordination with the names themselves. This solution is intensional where Jubien's is extensional, and for this reason more parsimonious.
Jubien's notion could not deal with Kripke's Paderewski puzzle either: someone who derives the use of the name Paderewski from two separate occasions where the first he learns that Paderewski is a pianist and the second that Paderewski is a politician. Now, since we are DR theorists and Paderewski stands for the very same object, we should assume under classical consequence that the individual believes that Paderewski is both a pianist and a politician, but he would not assent to this even though he would assert both propositions separately. Jubien's categories do not offer us a solution since 'pianist' and 'politician' are too weak, and if applied as the categories of the name would make those properties essential to its bearer---which would fly in the face of Jubien's entire project to present an intuitive picture of modality. And even if there were some way around this modal difficulty (which I do not think there is), tit would still not answer the question because the additional categories are not exclusive and could be carried over by logical consequence to a proposition the believer would not assent to--i.e. "Paderewski is a pianist and a politician". So Jubien's account would still need a semantic and intensional solution like Fine's, but since Fine's solution also covers the cases Jubien presented above, the need for categories becomes redundant and unnecessary.
"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem".
Fine's solution also deals with another complaint of Jubien's involving the apparent existential conviction the current extensional semantics offers for names within formal logic.
I agree with Jubien that one may read an account of an actual person, take them to be fictional, make true utterances regarding that person without then being existentially committed to them But Fine's view resolves this as well without having to commit one to an extensional semantics of properties and names as categories. Instead, one individual's use of a name is identical to the actual bearer but is taken to be fictional while another's use refers directly to the actual person who is taken to be actual without the two uses being coordinated with each other.
Again, I think this counts more in favor towards Fine's position than it does Jubien's.
Following this, Jubien discusses fictional names and natural kind terms, but it is my opinion that if his account of proper names does not succeed, neither of these do either.
Although I ultimately do not agree with Jubien's conclusions, this is an engaging work and worth the read.
First, I will give a limited and brief background. Jubien presents what he terms The Great Divide. This is perhaps the most essential element of Jubien's philosophical inquiry. Many different objects can fall under different descriptions between being analyzed as a pure object in itself or a familiar kind. When something is taken simply to be an object, the parts are essential but their arrangement is inconsequential. Curiously, under different descriptions of familiar kinds, the parts become inessential and the arrangement important.
Some object that this is merely something which ought to be avoided, that it cannot be accommodated since it is inconsistent and thus incoherent. Jubien disagrees. He contends that when we have different attitudes to something based on whether we view it as a simple object or some familiar kind, we are not being inconsistent since we are evaluating that object qua our attitude towards that object.
So if a sculptor models a sculpture out of clay and says, ‘I love this sculpture, but I hate this clay!” she is not being inconsistent in the least. She knows that the sculpture and the clay are the very same, and yet can still have different attitudes in regard to different objectual categories of the same thing. When saying she loves the sculpture, she is saying she loves it qua sculpture. Likewise, when asserting her hatred for the clay, she asserts hatred qua clay.
Jubien describes the attitude to treat these issues as mere inconsistencies as object fixation. This is when one fixes on some object qua object and ignores the attitudes associated with familiar kinds.
According to Jubien, familiar kind objects are properties which are instantiated by different objects at different times as well as different objects in different counterfactual scenarios. So the property of being the specific familiar kind me is instantiated by a number of differing objects at different times and different counterfactual scenarios.
Jubien takes issue with Lewis' attempt to understand 'ways things could have been' as possible worlds and instead takes Lewis' argument to support a face-value interpretation of them as properties.
From platonism, Jubien wishes to accept the Principle of Constitution: that some a is F just if F is a property instantiated by a.
From here, Jubien begins to discuss what he takes to be some fundamental weirdnesses of possible worlds. If, for example, it is necessarily true that all A's are B's then what makes this true according to possible world theories is that in all possible worlds (or all possible worlds which contain A's or B's), A's are B's. But from the intrinsic perspective of a given possible world, no fact within that world makes it the case that necessarily the A's of that world are B's. From the local world perspective it would appear that the truth is contingent. But that contingency then carries over to every other possible world with A's or B's. It is bizarre to think that a contingency from a local world perspective is also a necessity from a maximal worlds perspective. We ultimately have no understanding of why these contingencies are necessary at all.
To further complicate this, this is simply not how we intuitively assign modal categories to things. If we agree that necessarily all horses are animals, we are not intuiting this from a maximal worlds perspective, that is, we are not stating the necessity based off of thinking about whether all horse worlds are also horse-animal worlds. We are instead appealing to the nature of horses themselves and how that nature necessitates their being animals. This necessity is understood as being within the actual world and from this we could choose to assume that in all of the possible worlds which contain horses, each horse is an animal. Possible world theories have things in reverse.
"...we try to imagine something instantiating being a horse but not instantiating being an animal, and we fail. Surely this isn't about infinitely many complex, maximal entities, but rather just about the two properties." (76)
Jubien "...think[s] modality has to do with relations involving the abstract part of the world, specifically with relations among (Platonic) properties. It is here that we find the needed modal oomph." (77)
Jubien appeals to what he characterizes as entity-essences; that is, there is some property of being that entity. The entity-essence of physical objects are object-essences. He takes any thing at all, abstract or concrete as properties of being those things. This naturally follows from the Principle of Constitution.
To these, Jubien adds k-essences. These are for any kind k and any entity x of kind k, x instantiates that k-essence. So object-essences where x is an entity x which instantiates k where k is being a physical object.
Jubien now claims that these properties and essences have entailments such that, for example, being a horse entails being an animal. It is this entailment which secures the modal necessity of the statement.
For a platonist, properties (at least those which are instantiated) actually exist. For these properties to be instantiated as particular properties distinct from others the properties themselves must be intrinsically distinct from other properties. What makes the statement "all horses are animals" true, then, is that the property of being a horse entails the property of being an animal since it is intrinsic of the property being a horse that it is also and animal, and that these two properties guarantee the truth of the statement.
Jubien does not believe any acceptable account of modality may be complete without a theory of proper names. He wishes to introduce a new theory which is neither a Direct Reference (DR) but agrees with Kripke that the descriptive accounts of proper names fail.
To illustrate the need for a new theory, he presents two cases.
In case 1, Jubien asks us to imagine being a sculptor with a specific sculpture in mind named Daffy. When making the sculpture, the artist decides that it does not matter which of the three tubs of clay she has to make it out of and chooses one arbitrarily. From here it is sage to say that Daffy might have been made of different matter. But according to DR, the proper name 'Daffy' stands directly for the specific object. Thus, since Daffy is composed of the specific clay from the arbitrarily chosen tubs, it follows that the specific matter could have been made of different matter.
Case 2 is similar. We assume that Venus was formed from a cloud of dust in space and we also assume that Venus could have been composed of some different dust. But if proper names place some specific object into the proposition, then we have to say that some specific matter (the matter composing Venus) could have been different matter. We have the same absurd conclusion as before. It is impossible for some matter to be different matter, though it is possible for some object to be otherwise composed.
Jubien takes it that DR fails to stress the significance of the Great Divide and rejects it on these grounds. He resolves the apparent contradiction of these cases by appealing to the Great Divide and the instantiation of essences.
In addition, Jubien claims that proper names are always tied to a particular category. Here we are nearing the crux of my criticism. What determines the category of a name, Jubien contends, are the stewards of the name. These are the collection of individuals who fully grasp some name and are capable of using it successfully in a variety of circumstances. "...[T]he category of a name is the narrowest and 'most natural' property, among those its bearers actually instantiates, that the object would also instantiate in every counterfactual case in which the stewards of the name are disposed to continue to apply it." (135) This would be the category a steward of the name would respond with when asked "What sort of object is _____?".
But how can DR be reconciled here. If names have categories, this feature is close to what can be called the meaning of the name?
Although the notion of stewards of a name tied to a category is coherent, I am not convinced. I do agree with Jubien that there is an apparent contradiction present in our use of names and the unmodified versions of DR or description theories, I find the extensional qualification of a category as hard to swallow, especially given Kit Fine's more plausible notion of coordination and manifest consequence presented in his book, Semantic Relationism. For Fine, the same issue can be resolved by showing that some use of a name may stand directly for an object which is strictly identical to itself under another description which generally takes another name (or fails to take a name at all) which stands directly for the very same object where the two uses (or single use) are not coordinated with each other. In fact, this case is much easier to deal with than the more complicated puzzles concerning proper names to which Fine's proposal applies (e.g. Russel's antimony of the variable, Kripke's Paderewski puzzle or Frege's cognitive puzzle). For Fine, it is not some further category of an object which ensures one use of a name over another, but the coordination with the names themselves. This solution is intensional where Jubien's is extensional, and for this reason more parsimonious.
Jubien's notion could not deal with Kripke's Paderewski puzzle either: someone who derives the use of the name Paderewski from two separate occasions where the first he learns that Paderewski is a pianist and the second that Paderewski is a politician. Now, since we are DR theorists and Paderewski stands for the very same object, we should assume under classical consequence that the individual believes that Paderewski is both a pianist and a politician, but he would not assent to this even though he would assert both propositions separately. Jubien's categories do not offer us a solution since 'pianist' and 'politician' are too weak, and if applied as the categories of the name would make those properties essential to its bearer---which would fly in the face of Jubien's entire project to present an intuitive picture of modality. And even if there were some way around this modal difficulty (which I do not think there is), tit would still not answer the question because the additional categories are not exclusive and could be carried over by logical consequence to a proposition the believer would not assent to--i.e. "Paderewski is a pianist and a politician". So Jubien's account would still need a semantic and intensional solution like Fine's, but since Fine's solution also covers the cases Jubien presented above, the need for categories becomes redundant and unnecessary.
"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem".
Fine's solution also deals with another complaint of Jubien's involving the apparent existential conviction the current extensional semantics offers for names within formal logic.
I agree with Jubien that one may read an account of an actual person, take them to be fictional, make true utterances regarding that person without then being existentially committed to them But Fine's view resolves this as well without having to commit one to an extensional semantics of properties and names as categories. Instead, one individual's use of a name is identical to the actual bearer but is taken to be fictional while another's use refers directly to the actual person who is taken to be actual without the two uses being coordinated with each other.
Again, I think this counts more in favor towards Fine's position than it does Jubien's.
Following this, Jubien discusses fictional names and natural kind terms, but it is my opinion that if his account of proper names does not succeed, neither of these do either.
Although I ultimately do not agree with Jubien's conclusions, this is an engaging work and worth the read.
April 6, 2009
a refreshing metaphysics book. i'm sympathetic to most of michael's views, and he writes clearly and persuasively. my only complaint is that he could entertain some opposing views and give them a bit more force than he does. all in all, a really good book. take that, possible worlds.
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