Counterfactual-possibility

So I’ve been thinking about this objection I made to the Possible Worlds account of counterfactuals as an undergraduate, and I’m curious whether anyone has read something which deals with this problem (or whether anyone has a rough-and-ready rejoinder).

The objection goes like this: Possible Worlds Semantics (PWS) claims to give an account both of our notion of counterfactual dependence and our notion of possibility.  These are, roughly, the notions we express with the English constructions “If…had been the case, then…would have been the case,” and “It might/could be/have been the case that…”  PWS explicates these notions by saying that the former is true iff the closest world (on some contextually-defined similarity metric) in which the antecedent is true is a world where the consequent is true also.  The later is true iff there is some world accessible to the world of evaluation at which ‘…’ is true.

However, things seem to go screwy when we stick these two notions together.  

Quick question

While reading an influential text on direct reference, I found the following claim:

In the framework I have just sketched, a proper name is a word which must be used in a certain way, even though it may happen to be used in other ways.

I don’t know how to interpret this in a non-inconsistent, or non-contradictory, way.  I wonder, more specifically, how the quoted text differs from the following:

According to the rules we have just stipulated, you must come home every night at 8, even though you may come at other times.

Any proposals?

Home Ain’t Where The Heart Is

The Initial Claim:
The word ‘home’ does not refer to where the heart is because the referent it takes on is not any location but a direction. It’s not where, but which way.

Some Evidence:
Consider words that refer to some location, even indeterminate ones, such as ‘the bar’. Aino and Cade is talking to Maite. Aino says, “We’re going to the bar.” The natural way for Maite to understand this assertion is that Aino and Cade together are going to some bar, whose location may or may not be determined already. However, it would be very weird for Maite to understand Aino to be saying that Aino is going to the bar and Cade is going to the bar, but they might be going to different bars, i.e. different locations.

In contrast, consider words that refer directionally, like ‘left’. Aino* and Cade* is talking to Maite*. Aino* says, “We’re going left.” The natural way for Maite* to understand this assertion is still that Aino* and Cade* are going in some direction together. But it would be less weird for Maite* to understand Aino* and Cade* are going toward different locations if, say, Aino* is facing west and Cade* is facing east. In that case, it is plausible that what Aino* means is that Aino* will go toward south and Cade* will go toward north.

Finally, consider ‘home’.

Against Structured Propositions

Here’s a view about propositions:

A proposition P is a set of ordered pairs <A,G> where the first object is an individual and the second a property. These propositions are generally expressed by declarative statements such as my utterance of the sentence `Alvin is Green’. Call this `Structured Propositions’.

Here’s an argument against this view of propositions.

P1) If propositions are structured then one must either: a) become Meinongian, or b) accept gappy propositions.
P2) According to Russell, Meinongianism entails contradictions, so it’s unacceptable.
P3) Gappy propositions cannot explain informative speech acts where true negative existential are asserted. Such speech acts cannot express gappy propositions. So, gappy propositions are unacceptable.
P4) From P2 and P3, it follows that we should neither be Meinongian nor gappy proposition theorists.
C) Propositions are not structured.

philosopher makes mistake

In “How to Define Theoretical Terms” (1970), David Lewis says the following. Take a theory T that introduced a new term ‘t’. Replace ‘t’ in T with an appropriate variable to form an open sentence R`. Lewis now claims that ‘t’ is correctly defined as follow:

t = the unique x such that R`

Note the uniqueness requirement. If there are multiple realizations of R` (that is, variable assignments that satisfy R`) differing in what they assign to x, then ‘t’ is denotationless. Van Fraassen (1997) argues that, provided only that T is consistent and has an infinite model, such will always be the case.

the illusion of superficially contingent a priori knowledge

I suppose the fact that I think it is easier to get examples of deeply contingent a priori knowledge than of superficially contingent a priori knowledge puts me in the minority. Anyway, Hawthorne (in “Deeply Contingent A Priori Knowledge”) cites Evans’ Julius case as a paradigm example of superficially contingent a priori knowledge:

(E) ∃!x(x invented the zip) → Julius invented the zip

(E) is contingent, I presume, because there are worlds in which someone uniquely invented the zip, but it wasn’t Julius. It is, according to Hawthorne, superficially contingent because the name ‘Julius’ has been stipulated to designate the inventor of the zip, so simply understanding the meaning of (E) puts one in a position to recognize that the actual world verifies (E).

The problem is that there are two readings of (E), one on which ‘Julius’ takes narrow scope with respect to the antecedent, and one on which ‘Julius’ takes wide scope over the whole conditional. I contend that only the narrow scope reading is knowable a priori, but the narrow scope reading is necessary, not contingent.

personal and doxastic justification

In their “The Basic Notion of Justification” (Phil. Studies, 1989), Kvanvig and Menzel incredibly attempt to defend the equivalence (J) by appeal to the lambda calculus:

(P) S is justified in believing p

(D) S’s belief that p is justified

(J) (P) ≡ (D)

Kent Bach and my friend Clayton hold that (P) involves the notion of personal justification — roughly, the kind of justification that is a property of responsible cognitive agents — while (D) involves the notion of doxastic justification — the kind of justification that is a property of justified beliefs. According to them, these are distinct notions and so (J) is a false equivalence; there are cases where an instance of (D) is true of some person, but the relevant instance of (P) is not, and vice versa.

Kvanvig and Menzel give a counterargument which I think is wrong. They begin by assuming that the logical form of (D) is as follows:

presuppositions and the a priori

I’ve written a paper proposing the following constraint on knowability a priori and arguing that it has some wide-ranging implications for the study of the a priori. You can see the paper for more on that. In this post, I’ll be concerned to motivate the constraint and to defend it against some looming objections. Here is the constraint:

(AK) For any p, p is knowable a priori only if, for any presupposition q of p, q is knowable a priori.

Here are several arguments for (AK), or something close enough.^[1]

Necessarily coextensive, yet distinct?

So here’s an Aristotelian puzzle that I do not know how to sort out. It has apparently been reinstated, or a version of it, by Fine. I believe he did not even present it as a puzzle. Anyway, take a look at it, and help me solve it. Otherwise, I’m lost (and so is my paper).

Suppose you believe that properties are the set of their instances. Suppose, furthermore, that you are a modal realist. Aristotle was not, but he does believe in potential and actual bearers of properties, and he does think these are within the extension of a property [Meta, V.26].

In any case, there is a familiar problem with this view: coextensive properties. ‘renate’ and ‘chordate’ have the same actual extension, yet they are different properties. The solution is easy and well known: ‘renate’ and ‘chordate’ are not coextensive because they have different extensions in other possible worlds. Aristotle’s reply would be similar: ‘renate’ and ‘chordate’ are not coextensive because they have different potential instances.

The problem comes with a twisted version of this objection. Suppose you have necessarily coextensive properties, and yet distinct ones. (This is what Fine presents in his ‘famous’ paper against modal accounts of ‘essence’, where he claims ‘essential property’ is not synoymous with ‘necessary property’, I think, however, that Aristotle’s example is better). Aristotle talks about ‘Grammarian’ and ‘Human’. According to Aristotle, this much is true:x is human iff x is a grammarian (or has knowledge of grammar). Yet, ‘Human’ reveals the essence of its instances, and ‘grammarian’ does not.

My question is this: is there any way in which one can sort this case out, and still be extensionalist about properties? Do you know of any extensionalist reply to this? Or should we simply claim that ‘grammarian’ and ‘human’ have the same meaning?

PNRG online

Publicity:
Some of you might not know that some of us have organized the PNRG (Proper Names Reading Group). The PNRG is intended to get all the pro-language enthusiasts together. Our plan is to read one paper a week, and discuss its content by means of the comments given by one of us. Last week Dustin Tucker commented on Kroon’s “Causal Descriptivism”, and the first week I commented Braun’s introductory paper “Proper Names and Natural Kind Terms”. Next week, Thursday 24th, we will learn from Mike’s comments of Stanley’s “Names and Rigid Designators”. We meet every Thursday (except this week), 5-7, Seminar Room. If you are interested and want to glance at the reading list, drop me a line.

Philosophy:
Enough publicity.
In my complementary comments to Braun I dared to argue that the four problems of Millianism (as Braun presents them) really boil down to two. As it turned out, I found that the claims were stronger than the argumentative support I was then giving. Jason Konek and Jon Shaheen pointed this out. They argued against the idea that the so-called “problem of informativeness” could be reduced to the problem of belief ascriptions. Jason exemplified his claim by referring to Eric Swanson’s ‘presupposition’ solution to the problem of informativeness, which, he said, is independent from his solution to the problem of belief ascription. Jon argued differently. He said that the problem of informativeness could be accounted for without appealing to mental states, and so without solving the problem of belief ascription. I still think that any good solution to one of the informativeness-belief-ascription dyad is a good solution to the other.

In this post I want to present Eric Swanson’s claims about these issues. I will argue against Jason that (1) Swanson’s treatment of the puzzles makes it even clearer to see why a solution to informativeness is a solution to belief ascription (and vice versa): and exemplify against Jon that (2) you cannot solve informativeness problems without appealing to mental states.