Up is Down
The claim is this: Up is down. But, mildly surprisingly, down is not up.
Anyone who disagrees with me on this matter is probably a child-molester or crypto-Nazi.
Cheers,
-Idris
Anyone who disagrees with me on this matter is probably a child-molester or crypto-Nazi.
Cheers,
-Idris
posted by Idris at 6:09 PM
13 Comments:
Wouldn't you like to know...
Seriously, it is crazy to claim that agreement constitutes disagreement. So I don't see how your conclusion follows.
A crypto-Nazi is someone who watches the History Channel. As for "agreement with the last statement just is disagreement with the first", there's a case to be made that this true, and a case to be made that it's false. Here's the case for the truth of the claim:
(1) Up = down
Thus, if I want, I can substitute "down" for "up" whenever I see "up" (assuming identity is transitive, then whenever I see "down", I can replace it with "up", if I want).
Now, let's look at the second claim:
(2) ~(down = up)
Using the substitution rule outlined, in the first paragraph after (1), we can rewrite (2) as
(2') ~(up = up).
This leads to a blatant contradiction. So perhaps we should reformulate our substitution rule: whenever you see "up", you can replace it with "down", but if you replace "up" with "down", then whenever you see something that was originally "down" (that is, was "down" before you substituted anything in for it), you must redescribe it as "up". Using this new substitution rule, we get
(2'') ~(up = down)
And you clearly cannot agree with (1) while also agreeing with (2'').
I've already written too much, so I won't go into the case that there's a reading on which Idris is correct.
Seriously, I am not sure that claims like "water is h2o" should be construed as identity claims. If so Rob's proof won't work, since it gets the logical form of the up-is-down claim wrong.
First, I was wrong about the meaning of crypto-Nazi. It has to do with eating seal blubber.
As for the main stuff, I guess I meant "symmetry", not transitivity.
How could "water = H2O" not be construed as an identity claim?
"water = h2o" presumably counts as an identity claim insofar as it involves the identity sign. (if it is well-formed at all: normally identity takes entities as relata.)
"water is h2o" does not and so does not count as an identity for the same syntactic grounds. It might count as an identity claim for other reasons, of course.
How might "water is h2o" not count as an identity claim?
Maybe it means: "water is made of h2o"... or "Stuff that is water is also made of h2o". These are not obviously identity claims.
Here is one reason to suspect that "water is h2o" is not an identity claim:
"Fred is nice" is not an identity claim. Nor is "water is nice."
These are all prima facie reasons. I mean merely to call for more thinking. _If_ "water is h2o" is extensionally equivalent to a sentence containing a verb of identification, then it will be a complicated one with complicated logic.
I've changed my mind. A crypto-Nazi is the mereological sum of a panda and ice.
Matt claimed that if the "is" in question is the "is" of predication, then the claim that "up is down, but, surprisingly, down is not up" is not, pace Idris, surprising. Well, it might not be surprising to us. But we're philosophers. I think most non-philosophers would find the claim surprising, even though they use the is of identity and predication all the time.
As for Idris's defense of the non-identity status of "water is H2O", well, okay. But I think there is a connation to claims of that kind--and I admit, I can't exactly delimit what kind of claim we're talking about--that the is of identity is involved. That's why I, who am somewhat familiar with the is of predication/identity distinction, was confused when Idris claimed that identity wasn't involved.
It is common for philosoophers to claim that there is an "is" of identity and an "is" of predication and probably other "is"-s. So, like Matt, I am familiar with this claim. However, it is not obvious to me that this bit of received wisdom is true.
So I deny that we know that there is an "is" of predication and an "is" of identity.
In general, the presumption should be against positing ambiguity.
However:
"Fred is nice and, surprisingly, Jim."
This does sound pretty funny. This might suggest that there is something like an ambiguity here.
[On the other hand:
"Water is h2o, and nice to drink"
sounds much better to me... maybe even if we have to postulate something like ambiguity for Fred sentences we won't have to do so for property sentences...]
My suspicion at this point is not that "is" is ambiguous, but that many "is" sentences are elliptical.
Compare:
"Jim is nice and, surprisingly, none other than Fred"
with
"Jim is nice and Fred"
The first of these two is much better to my ear... in fact, it sounds perfectly cromulant. Which suggests to me that "is" is not shifting meaning, but rather that these "is" sentences involve some "filling in" when interpreted.
So there is reason to suppose that the philosophical tradition was onto something, but not something so straightforward as the Clintonian supposition that "is" means different things in different contexts. ...thus my earlier remarks to the effect that the logical forms of these statements are probably surprisingly complex.
Some Details:
Matt wrote:
But then in the second sentence, again assuming "is" of predication, we are denying the claim that a certain object is predicated of a certain property. But that makes no sense.
Alex replies: _Maybe_ it doesn't make sense. This might suggest that your semantic gloss on these sentences is off.
A thought: When an NP denotes a property it might not be so surprising that we can perform the kinds of reversal we see here.
A property, after all, is a kind of entity that might be affirmed to be an attribute of a thing, as well as being itself the bearer of attributes.
Next Detail:
Matt suggests at the end of his most recent comment that if an expression is at one point used to describe an entity and another point used to describe a property, then that word is ambiguous... an inference depending on these kinds of usages would run the risk of equivocation.
I think this is clearly false. I really mean this. Compare: "Redness is abstract" and "Fred is abstract" The latter is false, of course, but I see no especially compelling reason to suppose that "is abstract" has a different syntax or semantics in these two sentences.
Premise: Redness is abstract
Premise: Fred is my neighbor and abstract.
Conclusion: Redness is abstract and Fred is abstract.
Looks good to me. So no equivocation.
It is my impression that distinctions between order are more a part of the philosophical tradition than the linguistic tradition... though I really can't claim knowledge on this point.
I'd guess that one reason for such a difference in the tradition, if there is such, would derive from reflections on sentences like
"Fred is abstract"
In type-theory they postulate type-shifting rules... but this seems ad hoc except in cases in which there is syntactic reason to postulate nodes with type-shifting functions. So _maybe_ you can get some the the n and n+1 order stuff going...
on the other hand, presumably
"Fred is abstract"
and
"Redness is abstract" are syntactically identical.
Anyway: since the following argument is valid, "abstract" probably isn't shifting meaning.
Fred is abstract
Redness is abstract
Fred and Redness are abstract
I think you should have to claim that it is invalid, since on your view it would equivocate.
Gapping Test for Ambiguity-ish-ness
You can test for ambiguity-ish-ness in verbs by looking at constructions that are what might be called "verb-anaphoric". (I just made up that term. It might be inapt.)
Consider:
"Fred pissed off John, and, later, Sally."
This sounds fine. Presumably the verb phrase "pissed off" somehow occurs covertly after "and" and before "Sally". As you say, you "pass over the missing" verb. It is as if, when interpreting it, you fill in the missing syntax.
Now Consider
"Fred pissed off John and the balcony."
This sounds wierd and one explanation for it is that the initial verb, with its semantic interpretation fixed, gets filled in before "the balcony", but since that doesn't capture any plausibly intended meaning, the interpretation crashes... it sounds wierd.
*All this talk is supposed to be pretty intuitive and I am not sure how the technical details are supposed to work out syntactically or semantically. So I cannot say much more about "filling in".
Now most straigtforwardly this kind of gapping test is used to detect ambiguity in verbs.
"Pissed off" has at least two meanings we discover.
But as I put it, it is more strictly a test for "abiguity-ish-ness".
Consider: "John is Fred."
The view I'm coming around to is that there is some filling in going on here.
"John is Fred" Gets interpreted in a way that fills in "none other than" (or some such) before "Fred".
Now back to the wierd example:
"John is Fred and Nice"
The verb gap before "nice" gets filled in with the verb from before "Fred". But now, remember that verb before "Fred" was itself supplemented with "none other than". But "is none other than nice" doesn't work, so the interpretation crashes.
So we have an explanation for the wierdness of this verbal anaphor. But it doesn't require that we construe "is" as shifting in meaning. Instead, we postulate, as seems reasonable on independent grounds, some filling in mechanism.
So I guess maybe I can agree that there could be something to the Clintonian tradition. But it ain't quite ambiguity. Does this make me a crypto-Nazi?
PS: "John is Fred and nice"
sounds a lot less wierd to me than "John is nice and Fred"... strange... I wonder what's up with that? This filling in stuff shouldn't be asymmetrical like this... I don't think so, anyway... hmm...
It's kind of sad that the most philosophical discussion you've had on any of your posts is a joke-post.
I suggest: more joke posts.
It _is_ sad. Grak had to clutch me to his ample bosoms and rock me back and forth last night until I stopped sobbing. Tender housemate moments...
Maybe you're right about the joke posts... Though, what's next: a post titled "On why it is mandatory to perform intrinsically wrong acts."?
sigh...
There's always my philosophy article: "We Must Stop Arguing and Start Hand-Waving".
I wag my little finger at all three of you.
Would Grak eat Panda and Ice. I suppose it depends on whether or not Panda brains are involved. I hope so, or is a cyrpto-Nazi some kind of automata?
I'm upset that this important question (about the nature of cyrpto-Nazis) was lost in the petty dispute about identity relationships.
PS, one should be careful about wagging fingers around Idris, because I'm pretty sure Grak would cruch them, as an appetizer of sorts. I could be wrong. Maybe Grak can tell us more about his dietary needs and likes.
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