Abstract
This chapter provides a preliminary account to the notion of points of view. After distinguishing between the epistemological and metaphysical character of points of view, it establishes the later as prior, and argues for its fundamentality. The chapter also offers a negative definition of metaphysical points of view by actually resisting its reduction to other traditional notions, such as natural kinds and scientific models. The chapter ends potencing the novelty of the proposal here defended, Modal Perspectivism, in regard to other contemporary options, allowing for a positive definition of metaphysical points of view according to their structural possession conditions, which establish their role.
In this world without a clue
Nothing is false and nothing true:
All is colored by the hue
Of the glass one is looking through.
—Ramón de Campoamor, Doloras y Cantares,
Las dos linternas (III), Doloras LIX.
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Notes
- 1.
It has become customary to employ PoV to denote the singular as well as the plural denomination.
- 2.
As it will be pointed out later, contingency should not be thought as problematic as one could anticipate. The reason for this is that whatever fact one considers to be grounding something or everything else normally does not pass to be simply a contingent fact. As Bennett says, “the ground of f (or A) is almost something contingent—this particular arrangement of molecules, that particular pattern of physical properties, and so on. Yet f makes something else obtain” (2001: 36). Of course, other authors such as Fine believe that nothing contingent can provide the requirement of necessity grounding entails. See for instance Fine (2012).
- 3.
This notion of conventionality can be found, for instance, in Austin (1962), when he stated that France’s geographical outline could be considered hexagonal for practical reasons, but further specified and fine-grained if required. However, some previous existent is required for the convention to apply. Of course, I am aware that this notion may be highly questionable, but it is for the critics to argue against.
- 4.
It is easier to see now why the first definition of epistemological point of view is misleading. Under this subjective definition, what it determines the correction or incorrectness of the specifications of the changing relations between facts is not the (truth) conditions when one adopts a certain point of view, but literally our making or not of such specifications. This is, of course, at least an awkward conclusion, although some relativist accounts for cases of the so-called faultless disagreement have followed this path. See, for instance, Lasersohn (2005, 2017), Macfarlane (2014), and Stephenson (2007), and Colomina (2015a) for evidence of an objection, among many others. Another related concern has to do with the implications of making our ontology dependent of, or guided by, our semantics. I shall say some things about this in what follows. See also Sect. 1.3 and Chap. 6.
- 5.
Related to this is the problematic of whether Modal Perspectivism accepts the existence of neutral truths. The previous argument may lead to the impression that it does. However, as it will be further explained in Chap. 6 (spoiler alert!) actually it does not.
- 6.
One may think that the argument pretends to separate between different kinds of points of view. However, this is not what it intends. Contrarily, one should think of these epistemic and metaphysical elements as aspects characterizing points of view altogether.
- 7.
Vázquez and Liz (2011: 386) state: “a PoV would be a very special sort of entity. PoV are not reducible to information, they are not psychological entities either, and they are not describable in a purely physicalistic language. Perhaps PoV are ontologically primitive entities.” It is obvious how much it is owned to their definition for pointing out the irreducible character of, at least, some points of view. However, there is no further clarification contained in this definition regarding to what this ontological primitive character is, or how it should be pondered.
- 8.
As it has been repeatedly shown, one of the mistakes more often assumed has been to identify the criterion of truth with the criteria of value and of reality. Perhaps, as Myers (1961) claims, the assumption that systematic monism could build Reality from the intellectual side and climb from truth to moral perfection is one of the reasons because programs such that of Idealism leaded to nowhere.
- 9.
This book shall say very few things regarding these issues. However, for the sake of clarification, some distinctions shall be introduced when necessary to state the differences between the epistemological and metaphysical characters of points of view, and their applications. For instance, it is of high importance to notice that only metaphysical points of view could be fundamental, since epistemological points of view would depend at least on the existence of a metaphysical point of view.
- 10.
This and other related issues regarding the necessary determination of certain properties will be the reason for questioning the traditional distinction between determinable and determinate, and some of its contemporary applications. See Sect. 4.2.
- 11.
See Fine (2012) and Bliss and Trogdon (2014) for some accessible introductions to the concept of grounding.
- 12.
Another big problem for the notion of grounding is whether actually is as explanatory as supposedly their defenders claim. For only putting an example, Wilson claims that the notion of grounding does not offer any kind of substantial explanation that other notions, such the relation between determinables and their determinates may actually offer (see particularly Wilson 2012). I agree, as it is clear from Chap. 4. One may even add that other notions, such as the relation between a whole and its parts, classes, sets and members, and so on, could also have the same explanatory powers. Borrowing a characterization that Putnam applies to Goodman, I may say that I respect formal logic and mathematical sophistication, however I “deplore the current love for formalism for formalism’s sake” (Putnam’s Foreword to Goodman 1983: xiv).
- 13.
The main problem with these theses on grounding is not their mathematical sophistication per se, instead the conclusion that grounding should be grounded, that there is no ungrounded ground. Of course, this would contradict what is one the basic claim of this book: That points of view are primitive ontological entities.
- 14.
As it will be further specified in Chap. 2, it has become conventional to distinguish between two different models under which points of view could be approached. The first one, the theory that interprets points of view under the model of propositional attitudes, deals with their content and its relations with the bearer of such points of view. This model is directly related to the adoption of epistemological points of view as described above. However, the argument of this book will understand points of view under the second model, the model of location and access, which accounts for points of view according to their role, and independent of their internal structure. I have referred to points of view interpreted under this second model as the metaphysical character of points of view. It is now easy to see that by definition an epistemological point of view would always be grounded, dependent on something else, would this be its bearer, its content, or other points of view.
- 15.
Notice that here are at least two main differences with the classical conception of properties. The first one has to do with the fact that properties are understood as adverbs instead of adjectives. The second difference, as it has been pointed above, is the treatment of properties as dispositions. These differences will be further explained in Sect. 4.1.
- 16.
The metaphor would actually work in the same way if we compare it to an ocular device, such as a microscope or a periscope, instead of windows. I thank Manolo Liz for suggesting this analogy.
- 17.
Similar criticism could be used against other metaphysical positions, such as the one defended by Carnap when states: “If someone wishes to speak in his language about a new kind of entities, he has to introduce a system of new ways of speaking, subject to new rules” (1950a: 206). See below for engagement with this and other criticisms.
- 18.
To be fair though, Carnap’s program in the Aufbau has a closer relation to Russell’s atomism than to Wittgenstein’s plan in the Tractatus. For a further explanation of Russell’s space of perspectives related to the notion of points of view, see Vázquez and Liz (2015b: 42–49). For an explanation of the origins and scope of Carnap’s Aufbau from three different angles, see Friedman (1987), Cirera (1994), and Pincock (2005, 2009), betwixt many others. See Pincock (2002) for Russell’s influence on the Aufbau.
- 19.
It is well known the criticism that Sellars (1963) directs to “the myth of the given,” and Sosa’s (1997) answer to “the mythology of the given.” See Sect. 4.2 for further comments.
- 20.
On this point, see also Thomasson (2016b) and Yablo (2014). Quine is not free of guilt either. For instance, as Solomon (1989 and 1990) stated, Quine’s criticism of the analyticity thesis and its posterior defense of indeterminacy are based on the idea that some scientific theories, but not others, can provide a proper explanation to the under-determination of the world. However, Quine’s employment of the Tarskian theory of truth leaves unexplained the fact that the notion of ‘truth as disquotation ’ is not supposed to mean that truth is something merely internal to the theory one defends. See Sect. 5.3 for further details, and Chap. 6 for clarification of the notion of neutral truths.
- 21.
On a similar wise, the Wittgensteinian notion of form of life would not work to analyze the metaphysical character of points of view either. Wittgenstein’s Investigations appeals to the notion of form of life by assuming certain internal structure (content) interrelated in a normative way (Wittgenstein 1953). A very particular way of understanding normativity is in place: Normativity would simply and solely imply certain knowledge of the grammar of our natural language, of how our language is and should be used, or inferential patterns. As it has been stated before, this is a dangerous game, since it commits to the view that the only reality that exists is the one that we can express through language. Something similar happens in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty (Wittgenstein 1969). Given the normativity of our language, it looks like there are things that cannot be explained, or even put into question, because our language only assumes the existence of certain kind of entities but not others. As one can see, this is highly related to the same problematic Carnap ’s distinction between internal and external questions faced. One interesting discussion that comes out from this is related to what would count as a change of perspective in Wittgenstein (see Liz Gutiérrez and Vázquez Campos 2015b: 139), and in general. In Sect. 2.3.1, I will employ some space in distinguishing between “change in,” “change about,” and “change from within” a point of view in the context of the ordinary language philosophy’s discussions regarding the moral point of view . Chapter 5 would provide a general comparison of points of view. See also Colomina (2015b).
- 22.
See Berry (2015) and Daly and Liggins (2014), and also Yablo (2014). Rayo’s Trivialist Platonism has received moderate attention in the last years. See Cameron (2014), Eklund (2014), Greco (2015), Hofweber (2014), Linnebo (2014), Russell (2014), Sider (2014b), and Turner (2015) for additional criticism, and Rayo (2014 and 2015) for a defense of his project. For criticism on Rayo’s denial of asymmetry in ontological dependency, which can be easily extended to its implication of composition as identity, see Cameron (2016).
- 23.
See Boghossian (2003) and Williamson (2007) for a discussion on the problems of the inferential role. See Donaldson (2014), Soames (2014), Turner (2014), and Wilson (2014) among many others, for further criticism of Chalmers’ proposal.
- 24.
One undesirable consequence of accepting the previous statement, for instance, would be that points of view could not be considered as primitive metaphysical entities after all, since accepting the symmetry between points of view and natural kinds would entail the assumption that the existence of points of view are grounded in the existence of natural kinds as well as the other way around.
- 25.
The question of the asymmetry of the grounds of points of view shall be addressed in Sect. 4.1 more in depth.
- 26.
As it shall be further explained later, fundamental entities are those entities in virtue of which everything else must exist. Consequently, to a certain extent, the fundamental character of (facts about) points of view should be considered as a synonymous of ungrounded entities. As Karen Bennett said, this meaning should be distinguished from other meanings such as structural or natural. The main reason would be that, when one wonders about whether by fundamental one means natural, “the tricky question [one raises] is not ‘is grounding grounded?’ but rather ‘is naturalness natural?’ and so forth” (Bennett 2011a: 39, Footnote 10).
- 27.
Not that this would be irremediably bad. However, given the dependence of the causal theory of reference on the extensional/intensional distinction discussed above and to certain notion of causality, as it shall be explained below, one may wonder about the correction of this thesis. Given that to properly attend to the similarities, differences, and implications between the theses of Kripke and Putnam regarding direct reference and its relation to essentialism would deviate our attention too much from our topic, this book will remain neutral about this here. See Kripke (1971, 1972, and 1980) and Putnam (1973 and 1975) for an exposition of the causal theory of reference, and Colomina (2016) for a detailed argumentation of some of the problems from endorsing such a thesis. See Bird and Tobin (2015: 10–14) for some clarifications on the relation between the causal theory of reference and essentialism. See Fine (1994) for some distinctions between essence and necessity. However, Chap. 6 will mention some complications that the externalist causal-historical theory of reference may encounter when it navigates too close to essentialism.
- 28.
Sainsbury seems to have in mind the classical criticism that Chisholm directed to the ordinary language philosophy when stated: “[P]eople sometimes argue over the question ‘Is a whale a fish?’ and yet seem to be in agreement about the properties of whales; usually, in such cases, the word ‘fish’ does not have the same intension for each of the persons concerned. In the whale case… at least one person is using the word incorrectly” (Chisholm 1951: 319). Realize that the same criticism that has been pointed out against intentionalist theories could be applied to this case as well. I shall say more about this controversy involving merely verbal disputes in Chap. 6.
- 29.
This is to say, points of view create scenarios in such a way that “one cannot always substitute necessarily co-extensive terms salva veritate” (Jenkins 2011: 270). See also Nolan (2014: 151).
- 30.
As one would already have figured it out, the position here defended has some similarities with the Promiscuous Realism vindicated by Dupré (1993, 1996). My view shall not deny, however, that there is a hierarchical structure of kinds in the world. Nonetheless, as stated in the prologue, I shall defend that the scope of such structure may vary depending of the point of view adopted, but does not depend upon its determinates. For a criticism of other aspects of Dupré’s position, see Wilson (1996).
- 31.
This does not mean that contradiction cannot appear between or within points of view at all. Epistemological points of view may be in contradiction when different truth-values are present for defining the same fact of the world. Remember that this is one of the consequences of regarding every matter to the internal structure of the point of view at issue. However, given the absence of content in the metaphysical character of points of view, the incompatibility between them must be based on other aspects. See Chap. 5 for a comparison of points of view.
- 32.
It is very important to keep the separation between the logical and mathematical formalism and the philosophical interpretation. In his philosophical interpretation, Hautamäki considers that, when points of view are employed, we construct the entities of the world exactly by using the relevant determinable, which is in accordance with certain interest the bearer(s) of such point of view has. Notice that this is a conceptualist interpretation. My own interpretation is metaphysical: Points of view shape those same determinables without necessity of a bearer, or anybody that may be using them, besides the fact that they coincide with our relevant interests. In addition, realize that I am in debt with Hautamäki’s formal approach, since it inspired my own formal interpretation. For instance, I accept and agree with Hautamäki that state functions are one of the many ways that entities bound to conceptual spaces (or can be used to interpret entities in conceptual spaces). However, as stated before, this is a representational, conceptual interpretation that is far from my own. In my theory (see Chap. 4), I prefer to use state functions not as a representational mechanism, but actually as an ontological instrument that permits to filter the reality according to the requirements and conditions of certain point of view. Notice that here, once more time, the presence of a bearer, or even the content of such point of view, is irrelevant. I thank Hautamäki for the discussion, and for encouraging me to make such a distinction clearer.
- 33.
My suggestion is that Hautamäki’s definition of determinable as “functions of entities” (2015: 204) is at fault here. To think of determinables as adjectives, as properties, would obligate to certain truth conditional content the determinable should have that seems to invalidate Hautamäki’s thesis defending the non-representational character of theories. See Sect. 4.3 for details of how to revise this notion as a filter function, as stated in the previous footnote.
- 34.
In several personal communications, Hautamäki has insisted in the fact that his own theory about points of views has been developed in many works and in different times, and that sometimes one can see certain inconsistences between them. Besides the fact that these works present different approaches to the topic, and I believe Hautamäki is right, it is obvious that all of them have a common element: All of them account for how to better define and formalize points of view in a way that one can deal with contradiction in a sound manner. As it should be obvious by now, Hautamäki and I have the same common ground, but differ in the philosophical interpretation of the formalism created for such a purpose (see previous footnotes as well).
- 35.
Realize that these cognitive categories are not supposed to be incommensurable, like Kuhn’s paradigms are. More about this in Sect. 5.3. In addition, notice that by siding with Giere, Hautamäki’s conceptualism escapes the accusations of subjectivism, since the interests that drive the construction of entities from certain point of view are not depending of a single subject.
- 36.
If one assumes the distinction introduced by Liz and Vázquez (2015a) between Protagorean and Heraclitean relativism to be true, there is a way to get out of this accusation of relativism when speaking of Scientific Perspectivism. This alternate explanation, however, would still be problematic. See Sect. 2.2.1 for details.
- 37.
See Chap. 2 for further clarification.
- 38.
For instance, here is what Schaffer (2012: 122) says: “Grounding is something like metaphysical causation. Just as causation links the world across time, grounding links the world across levels.” This analogy, then, is promoted by the idea that both, causation and grounding, involve some kind of determination relation in virtue of which something is generated or produced, because both seem to be involved and explained by laws, and the kind of dependence both create between the relata (Bernstein 2016: 22–3). However, as it shall be demonstrated, the analogy is not proper.
- 39.
This type of dialectical differences is crucial. As previously shown, it is what puts in trouble the subject’s transcendental movement in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus reconstructive project. In addition, as it shall be demonstrated in Sect. 2.2.7, it is what will problematize Goodman’s worldmaking system. Since Modal Perspectivism is based in some of the theories presented, it shall confront the menace these dialectical differences suppose (see below, and especially Chap. 4).
- 40.
Jenkins (2014a) develops some good points regarding this. See also Jenkins (2014b). For further considerations, see Chap. 6.
- 41.
It is worth to remind that fifteenth century geographers knew the Earth was round. Attempts of providing with a precise measurement of Earth’s diameter and circumference have been around since at least the third century BC, when Eratosthenes estimated both employing the length of shade in Alexandria and the distance between this city and Syene.
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Colomina-Almiñana, J.J. (2018). A World of Points of View. In: Formal Approach to the Metaphysics of Perspectives. Synthese Library, vol 392. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73655-6_1
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