On That Which is Not

8/18/2019 On That Which is Not

1/20


2/20

SAMUEL C. WHEELER

ON THAT WHICH IS NOT

This paper presents arguments that, very probably, none of the

ordinary 'middle-sized' objects of the 'given' world exist. In parti

cular,there are no

persons,as

ordinarily conceived, nor, perforce,any psychological states of them. Since this may conflict with what

seems to be thought, the way will be prepared by a sketch of the main

presuppositions of the theory of reference which lies behind the

general argument that all such counter-common sense claims must be

false. The point of the long digression is to begin to destroy the

rational grounds for resistance to the sorites1 arguments which est

ablish the main point. After presenting the sorites arguments, a brief

criticism of ways of avoiding the conclusion is presented.

I. THE ARGUMENT THAT MOST OF WHAT MOST PEOPLE

BELIEVE IS TRUE

In this section I sketch two theories of reference, the second a

modification of the first. I then show how the second theory of reference

entails the conclusion that most 'ordinary' common-sense beliefs are

true; that is, that common sense is for the most part correct and that

what appears to conflict with it either doesn't actually or is false.

A. Theory of Reference I: Frege-Russell Resemblance

What, after all, is it for a term to apply? Our terms have as their extension whatever fits

their sense. Reference is a function of sense. So, given that we are talking about

anything when we are using a given term, what we are talking about when using that

term is determined by the sense expressed by that term. The internal features of the

concept determine its reference. If the term applies, then, by what it is to apply, the

object we are talking about will have the important features that are built into the

concept, i.e. will fit the sense of the term. (Imaginary quotation)

This is the basic form of what I call 'the resemblance theory ofreference'. Exactly how 'features' or 'senses' of concepts are con

Synthese 41 (1979) 155-173. 0039-7857/79/0412-0155 01.90.Copyright ? 1979 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, and Boston, U.S.A.


3/20

156 SAMUEL C. WHEELER

ceived and which features of concepts are part of the sense and so

have to belong to the objects the terms apply to vary from version to

version of this theory.

Theory I has the weakness that it does not provide an empirical

way of determining what the sense of a term is. What sense a

term-for-a-person has, that is, might well be a private matter, even

when the sense itself is an objective entity. The 'expression' relation

between a word or thought-component and a particular sense is left to

some kind of intuitive insight-

we know what we mean, when it is ourown word. More importantly, for our purposes, the basic form of the

resemblance theory of reference does not give any guarantee that we

are talking about anything at all. What is to prevent the natures out

there from diverging in essence from the senses our terms express to

such an extent that nothing fits our terms? Since the sense expressed

by a word is, as itwere, not clearly connected to what is outside when

the term is used, nothing in principle prevents massive failure of

reference. In short, the basic form of the resemblance theory of

reference does not provide a rejoinder to skepticism or to metaphysical revisionism.

B. Theory la: Quine-Davidson and British Resemblance Theories

This theory overcomes the above difficulties by getting something

functionally analogous to sense into empirically available phenomena.I will briefly describe the Quine-Davidson version of this theory, and

then argue that Wittgensteinian and 'ordinary language' philosophers

presuppose virtually the same principles about how language connects referentially to the world.

Version a: Quine-Davidson2

If we are talking at all, what we are talking about is determined by what we say in

which situations. Roughly, our occasion-sentences have a stimulus-meaning or an

'outside correlate' meaning. A language has been translated or radically interpreted as

far as empirical data goes when the appropriate correlations between what is out there

(for us) and the person's responses have been established. The reference of a term in

an occasion sentence is constrained by these outside correlates. The constraint may not

be sufficient to determine reference, but at least what there is to go on in hypothesizing


4/20

ON THAT WHICH IS NOT 157

reference is given by the outside correlates, the empirical substitute for Fregean senses.

All there is to the 'sense' of a term is manifested in these outside correlates, i.e. in a

person's or a culture's dispositions to use that term. So, look for senses in the patternof a person's or a culture's speech behavior. (Imaginary quotation)

On this theory, given that a sentence is true if and only if what it is

best translated or interpreted as obtains, most of what most peopleare inclined to say is true. (This holds in general, for Davidson; for

observation sentences, for Quine.) That is, translation and inter

pretation must, by the nature of reference, be 'charitable'. Given thatthought is language-like insofar as the same requirements must be met

for thought-tokens to refer, most of what most people in a culture

think will be true as well.3

Version b: British

It is somewhat difficult to pin down a 'British' theory of reference in a

form acceptable to its practitioners, since so many of the philoso

phers I have in mind, such as the later Wittgenstein,4 Austin,5 andRyle6 tend to eschew theories in favor of detailed descriptions of the

'ordinary' use of our terms. Since they eschew theory, they eschew

any technical use of 'refers' or 'applies', so that their 'theory of

reference' can be called such only via locutions of indirect discourse.

Their implicit views of language and its relation to the world,

however, lead them to the most uncompromising defense of com

mon sense. According to their conclusions, virtually every central

belief 'built into' language by way of the judgements we learn in

learning a language is true. So it is important for my purposes to bringtheir theory of reference into some kind of relation with theory la in

its Quine-Davidson form.

What further premise would yield a valid argument from the

premise that a certain philosophical theory violates the rules for the

use of a given term or concept or family of concepts to the conclusion

that the philosophical theory is mistaken? I think that only a version

of theory la will make this argument valid and that theory la is behind

almost all dissolvings of problems and 'analyses of the grammar of

in this tradition.To argue that theory la is behind every such analysis would require


5/20


detailed analysis and argument for the case of each of the philoso

phers in question. I think it is clear, though, that a theory of essen

tially similar to Davidson's in 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual

Scheme',7 is implicit in most such philosophers' work. The British

theory, though, contains some modifications, and is complicated by a

different conception of how strongly empirical sense determines

reference.

On the generalized 'British' theory, ignoring individual differences,

concepts have a sense which is identified with their use, a complicatedsocialized and contextualized version of 'outside correlate meaning'.

The use of a term is, roughly, given by the sort of situation in which

the term is to be applied, according to the rules of the language.'Correctness of application', which seems to be the general surrogatefor truth, is determined by the rules of the language, which them

selves seem to be a function of what most people in the language

community say in paradigm situations. An application of a term is

correct (i.e. a sentence is true) if and only if what is in fact the

situation is in the set of situations where the term 'is to be used'.For reasons I do not fully understand, these philosophers differ

from Quine and Davidson in not finding reasons to believe that there

is 'slack' between use and reference. 'Rules', possibly by some subtle

normative force, are sufficient alone to give determinate results as to

what is being referred to. This might be regarded as a consequence of

their strategy for avoiding the paradoxical results of an unrestricted

application of the resemblance theory of reference. Supposereference is strictly determined by sense, and sense is determined by

what people say in what circumstances. Then, if it makes sense toapply this to an isolated individual, all, not most, of what this

one-person culture says will be true. This is because there is alwayssome extension, given by exactly the set of situations in which the

person applies the term, which will, by the theory, be what the personmeans by the term. Since it is senseless that a person can be speakingtruths when any alternative utterance he could make would also be a

truth, it has to be denied that there can be one-person linguisticcommunities. Thus 'private languages' are declared to be impossible.

That is, to apply the resemblance theory of reference to get the resultthat most of what most people say is true rather than that anything


6/20


that anyone could say is true, the unit of rule-discovery or inter

pretation is made the culture as a whole. A culture as a whole

generates rules by some kind of majority practice, so that error byindividuals is possible. Since there can be no private language, and so

no reference which is not everyone's reference, speculation about

ontological relativity makes no sense. So 'aquiescence in the back

ground language' is the only alternative that makes sense.

On the 'British' theory, reading 'use' for 'sense', truth is a function

of use, and so, reference is a function of use. Once again, thecorrelate of the sense of a term is brought out into the world, so that

meaning or use determines correct application. Thus correct ap

plication, over a culture as a whole, is guaranteed.

On both versions of theory la, then, reference is still a function of

sense. But sense is constrained, if not determined, by what is there in

a situation in which the speaker is disposed to use a given term. Sense

has its criterion, if not its being, in the outside world. Thus sense and

reference are virtually correlative on theory la, at least in that each

puts limits on the variation of the other. What distinguishes thistheory from theory I is that what a person or culture means is

determined by seeing what is true when an expression is used and

making meaning correspond to what is the case. Then since reference

is a function of sense, most of what a culture agrees on will turn out

to be true by the very nature of what it is for a term with a given

meaning to be true of an object.

Now, given the above picture of language and thought and its

relation to the world, there is a standard reply to philosophical

doctrines which challenge widely held beliefs in great numbers:'You're misusing language'. Alternatively, 'You're misinterpreting the

truth-conditions of this predicate/construction for English speakers.'If theory la is true, the revisionary metaphysician and the skeptical

epistemologist must be misusing or mis-paraphrasing language

because, by the nature of the case, most of our beliefs must be true.

Thus arguments which conclude that we are mostly wrong in a whole

area of belief are, provably, invalid or unsound. How they go wrong

according to this theory of reference may take subtle and skillful

analysis; the conclusion that they are wrong is foregone. Suchrefutations include paradigm case arguments, arguments about how a


7/20


concept is learned, arguments about when we say a person has a

concept, analyses of suspect arguments in terms of 'extending a

concept beyond its range of use', arguments against the very idea of a

conceptual scheme, and many others.

Attacks on common sense based on supposed inconsistencies be

tween science and common sense are similarly treated by adherents of

theory la. Since our ordinary beliefs can't be radically wrong, we justhave alternative descriptions, different families of predicates with their

associated application-constraints, or different purposes for differentequally correct predicate-systems.

II. THE DEATH OF THE RESEMBLANCE THEORY OF

MIND-WORLD RELATIONS

Kripke8 and Putnam9 have shown that the above theory of how

language links up to the world does not coincide with our ordinaryuse of terms such as 'refer', 'about', 'names', 'discussed', etc. Theory

la, then, is self-contradictory. That is, the theory that says that our'use' of a term determines its meaning is not the theory of meaning

and reference that the use of our idioms of reference embodies. A

'use' analysis of our referential concepts shows that use is not

meaning. So reference is not a function of sense, in general, accord

ing to the theory that it is.

I should explain how Kripke's and Putnam's demonstrations work.

Consider the intuition we have about what we would say in situations

in which it turned out that, for instance, we had accepted the sentence

'Aristotle was a Megarian philosopher who proposed the paradox ofthe heap and invented other fallacies'. In the appropriate circum

stances, we would say we had a false belief about Aristotle. This is a

manifestation of our use of 'about' or of the sense of 'about'.

Intuitions about what we think is the case in such situations are

intuitions about what we 'would say' in such situations. By most

theories of reference, such intuitions are the basic data for a theory of

the sense of the term 'about'. Analogous remarks apply to the other

referential terms Kripke and Putnam discuss. By the resemblance

theory of reference, the relation of aboutness and the other referential relations must be whatever sets of ordered pairs accord with these


8/20


dispositions to apply referential terms. But any such relations contain

ordered pairs of terms and entities such that the sense of the term

doesn't fit the entity as well as it fits some other entity. The relations

the resemblance theory of reference assigns to referential notions

contain pairs of concepts and entities the resemblance theory would

not predict. Thus a 'use' analysis of reference shows that use does not

determine reference.

Some remarks are in order about the scope of these results. Kripke,

by examples such as the Aristotle example, has shown that theresemblance theory is false for proper names. Putnam, by his 'Twin

Earth' examples10 and others, has shown that Theory I and la are

false of natural kind terms, such as 'water', 'cat', etc. His argumentsseem to apply to any property-words which pick out what we regardas real properties. Whenever we have a case of a term such that we

hold that its correct application is not a matter of our decision but

rather of how things are, we have a case in which our intuitions are in

disagreement with the resemblance theory of reference.

Kripke's and Putnam's results may not directly apply to terms forwhich our intuitions are that whatever our society chooses to say is

correct. Terms such as 'is married', 'is a bachelor', 'was duly elected'

seem to designate properties for which the resemblance theory is

correct, if they designate properties at all. In such cases, there is,

intuitively, no possibly recalcitrant objective fact to pose a danger of

making most of our applications of a term mistaken. This is because,

prima facie, it is our agreement on what to say that 'defines' these

terms. Kripke's and Putnam's results fail to apply, if at all, then, only

in cases of properties which are social artifacts, properties whosebeing is social.

Even for properties which seem to be social artifacts, the resem

blance theory may not be correct. Putnam uses the example of

'pediatrician',11 which does not seem to name a natural kind, but

rather a kind of socially defined occupation. 'Pediatrician', though,does seem to have come to rigidly designate a group of people. Thus

it could turn out that pediatricians are not doctors, if pediatricians all

turn out to be Martian spies and to have just made a pretense of

rendering medical aid, while in fact shipping little children to Martianforced labor camps.


9/20


From a realistic point of view, the resemblance theory claims that

all property-terms have reference in the way that 'bachelor' and 'dulyelected' appear to have reference, i.e. by socially deciding an exten

sion. Only on an idealistic conception of the world, though, could it

be claimed that all of our terms for kinds and properties are social

artifacts. On a realistic view, there is a world out there which can

deviate from our conceptions of it, so that the content of a conceptiondoesn't determine its object.

Even if the resemblance theory is right for sentences using socialartifact terms, though, we don't get the result that truths about the

world are guaranteed. Every artifact-term seems to require in its

definition some reference to intuitively real kinds, such as

'bachelor =df unmarried male person'. Thus there is no guarantee thatmost particular universally agreed on applications of the term are

true. 'Person' is a natural kind term, so that the theory embodied in

that concept may not be true. So it may be guaranteed that most

widely agreed-on sentences of the form, 'If A is a male person, then

he is a bachelor' are true, given that 'married' is a socially definedterm known not to apply to A. But it will not be guaranteed in anysocial way that most agreed-on sentences of the form, 'A is a

bachelor' are true. If we are wrong about what it takes to be a person,it could turn out that most of the things we all agree in calling

bachelors are not. If, for instance, a thing has to have a soul to be a

person, even though our concept involves no such thing, none of our

paradigm bachelors will be bachelors if none of them have souls. The

hypothetical beliefs involving social artifact terms may be guaranteed

to be mostly true by a 'use' analysis, but claims about how the worldreally is with respect to such properties get no such guarantee. Onlyon the view that all terms are social artifacts will any facts about the

world follow from universal beliefs.

Kripke's and Putnam's results, then, show that in no case can there

be an argument that reference is a function of sense. No replacement

theory is established by Kripke's and Putnam's results, however; onlythe negative result that the resemblance theory is wrong. It is true

that the content of our referential concepts seems to embody a kind

of causal theory of reference where the caused items are mentalisticand intentional items. Furthermore, various social phenomena seem,


10/20


intuitively, to be built into real reference as conditions in this causal

relation. But apart from a resemblance theory of reference, we haveno compelling reason to conclude that therefore reference is some

kind of causal relation. We certainly have little reason to give our

theory of reference the complexities that accommodating our varied

intuitions about what refers to what, when, would entail.12

An apparently unnoticed consequence of Kripke's and Putnam's

results is that the invulnerability of the purported truth of the

ordinary views of men is destroyed. If a concept's reference is notdetermined by making its content both determine reference and be

determined by whatever is out there when we use it, then a conceptamounts to a theory which may be radically mistaken. 'Criterial'

features of a concept may be mostly false of what the concept is true

of. Conceptual analysis will be merely that, with no very clear

consequences for what is the case. If the replacement theory for the

resemblance theory is some causal account, by now familiar stories

are available in which there is radical misinformation 'built into' the

concepts, intuitions, and beliefs of a society.Furthermore, what can be true of one concept can be true of most

of our concepts. On the causal alternative again, where the referent of

a general term is the kind of which the causal sources of our conceptare members, we could have a situation where all special analyticcontents of concepts were empirically false. Apart from a resem

blance theory of reference, we can be talking about the real world

and getting it all wrong. If the resemblance theory is wrong, there is

nothing impossible about truly massive error.

A more poignant possibility is that our terms may not refer toanything. On a causal theory, if there is in fact no kind out there to

which all or most baptism cases belong, then we are talking about

nothing with that concept. Similarly with singular terms for fictional

entities. If what 'reference' refers to turns out not to be very often

instantiated, most of our terms will fail of reference.

Whether or not a causal theory correctly describes the essence of

reference, if there is such a thing, the fact that the resemblance

theory is wrong eliminates the major arguments that massive error is

impossible. Massive error, of course, will need to be supported byarguments from a better-off standpoint than common sense. The fact


11/20


that we seem to make massive errors will have to be given an account

from that standpoint. I argue in the following section that this last

possibility, that most of our terms for objects don't refer, is in factthe case. I believe that our errors and the apparent paradoxes that

arise from this 'vanishing of objects' can be explained in terms of a

theory that recognizes at most the micro-particles of physics andcertain complexes of them as genuine objects. This is not a skepticalclaim. I am not saying that we are as likely as not to be wrong about

the existence of and features of ordinary objects. I argue that we arevery probably in fact mistaken and that there are no such things.

III. SORITES ARGUMENTS

Sorites arguments are generally regarded as sophisms or puzzles. I

think the reason they have been so regarded is that by the resem

blance theory of reference, their conclusions are demonstrably false.

The resemblance theory is not the primary motivation for rejecting

sorites arguments, but it is the main reason. The main motivation, Ibelieve, is irrational nostalgia. With the death of the resemblance

theory of reference, I think it is clear that sorites arguments are

sound, for the most part.I use sorites arguments to make intuitive what I think is plausible on

other grounds. I think that to be objectively real requires having an

essence. For an object to have an essence is for there to be objectivenecessities true of it, that is, natural laws. There appear to be very

good laws about micro-particles while the laws about medium-sized

objects are very poor, so full of ceteris paribus clauses as to be mererules of thumb. Since there seems to be little hope of a reduction of

medium-sized object kinds to complexes of micro-particle kinds,there can either be two unrelated systems of objective kinds or the

objects with the worse laws must go. For reasons I have explained

elsewhere,131 think the medium-sized objects must go.I begin with a pair of premises:

(a) If a putative property is a real property, then it is a matter of

fact whether an object has that property or lacks it.

(b) Whether a purported object exists or not is a matter of fact. Apurported object either exists or doesn't exist.


12/20


I take these to be basic 'realistic' principles of ontology, which state

what it is to be and to have a property. There are two general kinds of

sorites arguments relevant to my purposes in this section which I will

present in turn.

A. Property-type Sorites Arguments

No person who is not tall can become tall by growing one micron. By

premise (a) though, at every micron-point in the growth of a personhe either has the property of being a tall person or lacks it. Unless a

single micron can make the difference between having this propertyand lacking it, no person can become a tall person by continuous

growth. Since we are very sure that any precise borderline between

having this purported property and lacking it is absolutely arbitrary, it

seems clear that there is no property of being a tall person. Since it is

up to us, it is not a matter of any fact about the world. Since there is

no property, nothing has it. There are no tall persons. There are, of

course, in the range of cases where the question seems to arise, aninfinity of properties of the form 'is n meters in height' where n is a

positive real number. What has been shown is that no set of such

properties constitutes the property of being a tall person. So there are

no tall persons.

It doesn't help to have three or more truth-values or to decide that

'neither tall nor not tall' is a middle category. The same fuzziness that

obtains between 'true' and 'false' and between 'tall' and 'not tall' will

occur between any two adjacent truth-values and between any two

adjacent categories along the dimension. And this fuzziness showsthat there is no property there, if we are right that no preciseborderline is correct. (Sophisticated versions of alternative logics are

briefly dealt with in the next section.)All that is possibly real in such cases would be a relation on a

dimension. In the case of a predicate such as 'bald', such a relation is

probably not even there. That there is such a relation would dependon some kind of ratio of hairs to surface normally hairy combined

with considerations about distribution. Several such relations might

preserve transitivity, conform to our intuitions roughly, and givedifferent orderings of pairs of men. No relation would be selected by


13/20


our intuitions as clearly the relation that 'balder than' denotes. So

'balder than' unlike 'taller than', may not even denote a relation.

Property-type sorites arguments can be extended to substance

terms and count-nouns, as long as there seem to be 'defining properties' which are fuzzy and for which borderlines are intuitively arbi

trary. To show that there are no rational agents, imagine an entity

becoming gradually less rational, believing fewer and fewer truths,

making sounds which are harder and harder to translate without

attributing inexplicable error, and behaving in ways that become moreand more difficult to rationalize. Analyses of agenthood in terms of

success with intentional explanation or interpretation, such as Den

nett's14 lend themselves to a sorites-type evaporation of 'agent' as a

substance-determiner.

In the case of paradigm property-continua such as 'tall person', I

have argued elsewhere15 that we are sure that no place in which a line

is drawn is objectively right, and have explained this as confidence

that no laws of nature apply above any cutoff point which do not

apply below. This amounts to confidence that there is no real cutoffpoint in the nature of things. With persons, our confidence that it does

not matter objectively what one says is less clear, since a lot hangs on

whether an entity is called a person.On reflection though, the property-sorites argument should con

vince one that the only objects that exist are ones with a preciseessence. Only precise essence can constitute the being of a genuine

logical subject or of real properties of logical subjects. And objectswith precise essences seem to exclude persons, tables, chairs, etc. It

seems very implausible that, at a certain point in the elimination ofthe essential 'property' of such objects some drastic change should

take place which made one of those objects an objectively distinct

entity, where what kind of thing it was changed.The problem with generalizing property-sorites arguments is that

we have to construct dimensions for putative essential 'properties'and have to have some grounds for thinking that we have the rightessential properties. Since the resemblance theory of reference is

wrong, however, the features that we take to be essential may well

not be. It could turn out, that is, that something very unimportant toour concept of person is in fact essential to the nature of persons.


14/20


B. Ungefs Sorites Arguments

A more easily generalizable sorites argument, due to Peter Unger,16 is

the composition/decomposition sorites. This consists of taking a

putative object such as a table and extracting in the most favorable

'table-preserving' way one atom at a time. (In this kind of sorites,such extraction is assumed to be physically possible.) Surely one

atom cannot make the difference between a table being there and

there not being a table there. But equally clearly, there are no 0-atomtables. So there are no tables. The only principle this argument needs

is premise (b) that every 'object' either exists or not, after each

diminution. The argument has the form: If there are tables, then if

losing an atom most favorably preserves tablehood, then there are

0-atom tables. But there are no 0-atom tables and removing a singleatom would preserve tablehood. So there are no tables. Tables are not

beings.Such arguments can be interpreted as showing that where there

seems to be thought to be a table, there is at most a complex ofatoms. A sequence of complexes of smaller and smaller size is

analogous to the dimension on which 'taller than' is defined. In this

case also, there is no subset of that sequence which is the object of

common sense, though there may be a definable artificial complex

object at each point up to the last in the diminution. That there is

even a single relation 'is more tabloid than' along this sequence is

questionable, since many 'acceptable' relations could be defined.

In the case of persons, Unger's argument starts with brains, since

almost everyone would say that after a brain-transplant, he has a newbody, not a new brain. So, keeping the brain in the right sort of

nutrient bath, the extraction without replacement proceeds. Now, the

nutrient bath itself would not be considered to be part of the personand neither would further life-support systems that might have to be

attached to the person as the decomposition progressed. When we are

eventually down to one atom, most people would agree that there is

no person there. And most prople would agree that a single atom's

addition cannot turn a non-person into a person. A composition

version of the same argument comes up in disputes about abortion. Ifa fertilized egg is not a person but a thirty year old is, then during


15/20


some one-second interval a person must have come into being. Since

this seems physically unlikely, there are probably no persons.What it would be for an ordinary object, a person, or any object to

exist, would be for some one-atom reduction to make a natural,

objective difference. That is, for an object to exist is for there to be a

genuine law of nature which applied at one point but which failed to

apply at the next point.What this sorites establishes is that ordinary objects and persons as

we conceive them do not exist. It is logically possible that there is aprecise molecular complex entity of some sort out there which is

what we are referring to when we seen to refer to something with the

qualities of, for instance, a person. But there seems to be no reason to

think so and fairly good scientific grounds to think not. In any case,

the ordinary conceptual scheme certainly does not support the postulation of such an entity, since ordinary intuitions about when an

object survives a diminution, namely that it always survives tiny

diminutions, are what the sorites argument uses to evaporate putative

objects.I believe that every such argument is valid, both of the property

type and of the composition/decomposition type. I believe that for

nearly every ordinary object, and for most ordinary properties, the

premise that a single atom will not make the difference between a

property being there or not is true. Thus I believe that very few

ordinary objects are real.

IV. WAYS OUT

(1) Alternative logics seem to have been the most frequent res

ponse by people who take sorites arguments at all seriously. The

alternative logics I have seen depend either on treating membership in

a set as probabilistic, on treating membership in a set and truth as

partial,17 or on multiplying truth-values.

Probabilistic membership in a set, literally interpreted by a realist,seems to require violation of principles such as that no two persons

with all the same physical dimensions can be such that one is a tall

person while the other is not. On the probabilistic set-membershiptheory, if taken literally, if two persons have exactly the same height


16/20


and are both in the set of tall persons with a probability of 0.5, thenone may be tall while the other is not. If physically indiscriminable

individuals must belong to the same kind, objectively, then probabilistic set-membership makes no literal sense. Some proponents18 of

this theory do not take it literally, but rather as a remark about how

many acceptable arbitrary borderlines an object is above or below. But

this is to recognize that there is no property there.

Partial set-membership is a nearly equivalent version of the above

theory which is immune to the above objection. However, the notionof partial set-membership seems to apply more properly to Masonic

orders than to real objects in the world. An object must have an

essence, that is, objective features losing which amount to its extinc

tion. Similarly, for a real property, a thing either has it or lacks it. The

notion of being partly in a kind or partly having a certain propertyamounts to the admission that what we have is a dimension rather

than an essence which can determine the being of an object. For a

real essence or a real property, either a thing has it or lacks it. Real

propositions, likewise, are either true or false. More truth-values donot make sense ontologically for the obvious reasons.

The above remarks obviously beg the question against these well

thought out and elaborate theories. I deal with these theories so

briefly, though, because I think it is clear that they presuppose a

resemblance theory of reference and assume that realism is false.

Furthermore, the motivation for accepting these complex alternatives

to our very simple ontological principles is the assurance the resem

blance theory gives that our patterns of verbal behavior must be made

mostly true. If reference were a function of societal dispositions toapply a term, we would expect that reference would be probabilistic,since response-patterns are. Properties would be statistical social

artifacts. But on a realistic view, such probability-distributions have

nothing to do with what is out there, only with our descriptionbehavior. (This is not to say that a theory of our description behavior

is trivial or useless. I think Zadeh, Fine and others are dealing with

interesting problems, but not with the problem of this paper.) Our

description-behavior, apart from the resemblance theory, can deviate

massively from what is the case. Our behavior in response to stimulimay be probabilistic, but what properties a thing has and whether a


17/20


thing of a given kind exists or not is not. When there are no rational

grounds for thinking ordinary logic ismistaken, its conclusions should

be accepted. With the death of the resemblance theory of reference,there are no rational grounds for changing logic; only nostalgic ones.

(2) People might respond to the conclusion we have reached via the

sorites arguments with the claim that ordinary objects are ontologic

ally primary while the objects of physics are instrumental parasites.Thus the fact that the essence of ordinary objects make no sense in

micro-particle terms is taken as a mark against the reality of microparticles, and not vice-versa. This would amount to a super-Aristotelianism, where the real essences were those of medium-sized

objects, with atoms being fictions. The fundamental nature of the

world is just as we perceive it. However such a theory might go in

detail, essentially the same sorites arguments go through with small

chips of tables, for instance, rather than atoms. Such a theorist would

be committed to the claim that, after some minute chip has been

removed from a table, the table has ceased to exist, even though we

admittedly are not aware of this and it is not clear from our conceptthat this is so.

Such a reactionary realism must concede, though, that this ceasingto exist will be a theoretically isolated phenomenon, even in terms of

a 'medium-sized object' system of basic scientific terms. Not only will

the existence or non-existence of the table not be connected with anylaws of particle physics, it will not even be connected with any laws

about ordinary objects. This is because there are no precise laws

which connect ordinary object terms that we have any evidence for.

So that there are precise but unknown breakoff points for tables andtrees seems to be absolutely unfounded either intuitively or

scientifically. The thesis is not supported by intuitions because our

intuitions hold that every point is arbitrary. It is not supported

scientifically because of the very unlawlikeness of the generalizationsthat look to be forthcoming about medium-sized objects. That is, if

there is a distinct vanishing point of the tablehood of an object in

terms of chip removal, no necessary connection to dinners or to

chairs seems to break down. If you could pull a chair up to the thing

before, you still can.The discovery of objective breaking points seems to be impossible


18/20


in the case of medium-sized objects for exactly this reason. Since the

laws are either imprecise or nonexistent, the discovery of exactlywhen an object has vanished cannot be made by checking anythingelse. Only the activity of nous, an intuitive apprehension of essence,can do this, but nous seems to tell us in this type of case that there isno precise essence.

There are probably more ways people might try to avoid the

conclusion. What I have been urging is that, apart from a resemblance

theory of reference, there is no reason to think that the conclusion isfalse and therefore to be avoided. Apart from a superficial appearanceof paradox19 and a negative emotional response to the disappearanceof loved ones, nothing blocks acceptance of the result.

It is not self-contradictory in any important sense to write this. I

regard it rather as a tractarian ladder. The predictive success of

physics gives us every reason to believe that the fundamental objectsare micro-particles. A little reflection on developments in the theoryof reference leads us to entertain the possibility that we make

massive errors in our ordinary judgements about what exists. Ourintuitions give us reason to think that intuitive persons and other

middle-sized objects are not the sort of thing that can be vanished by

extracting an atom or inducing one error. Thus, by the compulsion of

the sorites arguments, we conclude that persons and their ilk are not

any real sort of thing at all. Where we seem to see the properties and

natural kinds of the ordinary world there are only fluxing clumps of

micro-particles and continuous dimensions. The conclusion entails

that there are no persons and so no 'theory of reference' whose

results were used in the argument. But this is harmless, since theargument is a reductio ad absurdum of the 'given' world.

In the past, bad science could allow souls, spiritual substances, etc.,to be as reasonable as anything else. The main point to make about

such bizarre theories and other tempting ways out is that there is no

longer any reason to think one of them is more likely than the

conclusion reached in this paper. Logically, there is no reason to

adopt a faith or to change logic. The 'bold stroke' of accepting the

conclusion of sorites arguments is only emotionally bold. Philoso

phically and rationally, it is the most plausible course. Rescues fromthese conclusions, prima facie, are irrational, amounting to either


19/20


blind faith in gods or unitary spirits or blind faith that science will find

water-molecule-like accounts of personhood. They are motivated bythe unpleasantness, not the implausibility, of the conclusion.20

University of Connecticut

NOTES

1I use the term 'sorites' in this paper to refer to chain-arguments with paradoxical

results, not just to any chain-argument.2

Quine, W.V., Word and Object, Ch. 2, (M.I.T. Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1960); and

Davidson, Donald, 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme', Presidential address in

Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 47, 1973-74, pp. 5-20, and

'Truth and Meaning', Synthese 17, No. 3, 1967.3

This argument is made most explicitly in Richard Rorty's 'The World Well Lost',Journal of Philosophy 69, No. 19, 1972, pp. 649-665.4Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, (The Macmillan Company: New

York, 1953).5

Austin, John, for instance 'A Plea for Excuses', in V.C. Chappell, ed., Ordinary

Language (Prentice Hall, Inc.: Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1964), pp. 41-64.

6 Ryle, Gilbert, for instance 'The Theory of Meaning' in V.C. Chappell, ed., Ordinary

Language. The Chappell book, Richard Rorty's The Linguistic Turn, (University of

Chicago Press: Chicago, 1967), and Charles Caton's Philosophy and Ordinary Lan

guage, (University of Illinois Press: Urbana, 1963) give an adequate picture of the

British theory of reference.7

Davidson, Donald, 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme', loc. cit.8

Kripke, Saul, 'Naming and Necessity', in D. Davidson and G. Harman, eds.,Semantics of Natural Languages, (D. Reidel: Dordrecht, Holland, 1972), pp. 253-355.9

Putnam, Hilary, 'The Meaning of Meaning', inMinnesota Studies in the Philosophy of

Science, Vol. 7, (University of Minnesota Press, 1975), pp. 131-193.10

Putnam, Hilary, op. cit., p. 139 if.11

Putnam, Hilary, op. cit., p. 163.12This account of what Kripke and Putnam have shown is given in Sam Wheeler's

'Reference and Vagueness', Synthese 30 (1975), 367-379.13

Wheeler, Sam, 'Reference and Vagueness', loc. cit., p. 375.14

Dennett, Daniel, Content and Consciousness (Humanities Press: New York, 1969).15

Wheeler, Sam, 'Reference and Vagueness', loc. cit.16

Unger, Peter, 'I Do Not Exist', manuscript. See also 'There Are No Ordinary Things'

Synthese, this issue. The arguments I use in applying this sorites argument-type are

condensations of his arguments.17

An example of this alternative is L.A. Zadeh's 'Fuzzy Logic and Approximate

Reasoning', Memorandum No. ERL-M479, Nov. 12, 1974. (Electronics Research

Laboratory, College of Engineering, University of California, Berkeley).18

For example, Kit Fine in 'Vagueness, Truth and Logic', Synthese 30 (1975), 265-300.19It might seem paradoxical to reach the conclusion that there are no persons, since


20/20


there has apparently arisen the illusion that there are persons, and it would seem that

there must be real persons to have that illusion. I think the best that might be made of

persons is that there may be a dimension of instants of regions of the Platonic flux on

which the relation 'is more personal than' or 'is more intentionally active than' can be

defined. The full account of exactly what status ordinary objects and persons mighthave when they are not entities is a large topic for another paper. Roughly, if we can

imagine mistakenly that tables and computers are logical subjects, we can equally

imagine that we are logical subjects. The theory of persons this paper accommodates

resembles Hume's bundle-theory. The constituents of the bundles are instantaneous

states of complexes of micro-particles, though, rather than sense impressions. Also, no

clear ontological line divides what's in the bundle from what's out of it. Thus illusory

illusions can arise in 'personal' regions without there being any entities which are

persons.20

I would like to thank the philosophy department at the University of Connecticut,and especially John Troyer and Jerry Fodor, for helpful discussion. The paper would

not exist even on the ordinary view without the encouragement of Peter Unger and the

use of some of his arguments in the composition/decomposition sorites.

On That Which is Not

Documents

Transcript of On That Which is Not