Abstract
This chapter centers on two different but related problems. First, it focuses in clarifying why the discussion about metaphysical points of view cannot be considered as a merely verbal dispute. To do so, I distinguish between verbal disputes and merely verbal disputes, and show that, besides the illusion that the dispute about the existence of metaphysical points of view seems to be based upon the different terminology employed by different points of views to represent the world, this is not the case because a substantial deeper dispute is in place, one that requires meta-linguistic negotiation. Second, the chapter shows how, if metaphysical points of view and indeterminacy are considered as fundamental, the language employed to differently represent the ways the world might be actually capture the changing and conflicting shifting reality that the world is, being the nexus between metaphysical and epistemic points of view.
The prospect of paradox looms here. If what is said is sometimes an aspect of style, and style is a way of saying what is said, a tactless logician might point to the unwelcome consequence that what is said sometimes is an aspect of a way of saying what is said—a formula with the ambivalent aroma of a self-contradictory truism.
—Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, p. 26.
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Notes
- 1.
Amongst the many different deflationary accounts in existence, how these approaches are usually called, one can count Ramsey’s Redundancy theory, Rorty’s Coherentism, Strawson’s Performative theory, Tarski’s Semantic theory of truth, and Quine’s Disquotational theory, and a number of recent Minimalist and Contextualist theories. All of them show very important differences that I am not going to assess here. This would be a very interesting enterprise, and it deserves its own book.
- 2.
There are many deflationist theories about truth in the current literature. However, I will focus my energy in what follows in analyzing Hirsch’s position. See especially Hirsch (2002, 2005, 2008a, b, 2009, 2011, 2013a, b).
- 3.
I am intentionally leaving aside Hirsch’s Quantifier Variance principle, in clear resemblance with Quine’s, according to which there are many possible and equivalent ontological languages to describe the world (see Hirsch 2002).
- 4.
However, how it shall be demonstrated later, there is a possibility to defend the idea that, besides the fact that it seems to be a dispute at the object-language level where the two parties are using the same word with different meanings, this dispute can be interpreted pragmatically and at the meta-linguistic level as a debate about which meaning of the word is actually the one we ought to use (in certain situations, or given any relevant interests). At this level then, the meta-linguistic level of practice, the dispute could be read as a meta-linguistic negotiation, as a dispute “about which of the senses of ‘athlete’ it is best to use” (Plunkett and Sundell 2013: 17), and the possibility of attending to a substantial dispute comes back. If this is true, then I must agree with Thomasson (2017) and Belleri (2017) that these meta-linguistic negotiations are pragmatically convey, and might serve as a connection point between metaphysical and epistemological points of view (see Sect. 6.2).
- 5.
Besides this is a verbal dispute, notice that this kind of dispute shows a disagreement regarding facts, since what actually can settle the situation is whether the word, ‘bring’ in this case, is in fact a noun or not. Given that in English almost any noun can be used as a verb, the clarification of the situation may require of some contextual elements. Anyway, one should appeal to the particular structure of a language, the syntax, to settle these facts, and only within this structure it makes sense to speak about such verbal disagreement as a dispute about words. Compare, for instance, with the fact that in English you need a complete sentence to say “I went out moose hunting,” while in the Chulym language that can be done simply by using one verb (see Harrison 2010). Is this simply a question of settling if the word in question is in fact a verb or not? Notice that the same can expand to include the proposition that both bits of language express, opening a very interesting metaphysical question that I shall not discuss here.
- 6.
See Malcolm (1942) and Chisholm (1951).
- 7.
Mutatis mutandis, Jenkins (2014b: 12) considers the existence of what she calls “merely conceptual disputes: Disputes in which mental representation plays the role played by language in a merely verbal dispute.” I personally believe that this second notion is very interesting. However, I also think that both kinds of representations, the linguistic and the mental, are different, which will require a differentiation of the two disputes highlighted and will, then, require different treatments. I will not go into more details about this here.
- 8.
And the same may be said for the general role of philosophy as well. I have repeatedly heard that everybody is entitled to their opinions, that to speak about things such as the stuff of the world, preferences, and even values is nothing more that the expression of personal opinions, and that this is backed up by freedom of speech. However, it should be very obvious by now that if what is at stake here is the facts behind these statements, then not every opinion is equally valid, not even in philosophy. The reason why is that to unravel ontological questions or to settle some nomological issues is not the same that to speak about politics or football (even though I also believe that some ‘science,’ or at least expertise, it may be required to speak about these with authority as well), since it is expected that everyone can have an opinion, sometimes even well-informed, about the second matters but not necessarily about the former issues. (Read this way the discussion about whether Suarez cheated or not, in Almotahari 2017). This is a concern that Manolo Liz has communicated to me in multiple occasions, and that I deeply share.
- 9.
Realize that this point actually will complicate the conclusion that merely conceptual disputes are not substantial, since it is obvious that the whole point would lie on the fact that both parties actually have different mental representations.
- 10.
Notice the similarity with some semantic claims recently offered in favor of denying the existence of the so-called faultless disagreements, supposed contrary sentences stated by two different parties that after all could be taken as true at the same time, since either they would be about different things or may not be faultless at all because there is a fact that may settle the question for once and forever only for one of the parties. See Colomina (2015a) for further details. The same applies to epistemic disagreement, and even to the dispute regarding whether knowledge is the norm of assertion. No more details about these polemics shall be discussed here.
- 11.
However, Thomasson denies, against the extended view, that Carnap did actually defend the quantifier variance thesis. See Thomasson (2015: 69–80).
- 12.
In a similar fashion, Anderson (2017: 2) introduces the notion of hermeneutical impasses: “Hermeneutical impasses are instances in which agents engaged in communicative exchange are unable to achieve understanding due to a gap in shared hermeneutical resources. Hermeneutical resources are roughly set consisting of cognitive tools used for sense-making, e.g. concepts and conceptions, and expressive tools used for communicating experiences to others, e.g. locutions and manners of speaking.”
- 13.
And even if they were merely verbal disputes, this would be irrelevant, since “this would be compatible with the fact that the sides engaged in the verbal dispute disagree in a relevant sense at a metaphysical level… [and] they are engaged in a metalinguistic negotiation” (Belleri 2017: 2212). This is a defense of the idea that, as we saw earlier, the dispute may be verbal at the object-level, and this would still be compatible with the fact that there is a meta-linguistic negotiation at the upper level.
- 14.
As Thomasson (2017: 15) says, “if we see the possibility of metalinguistic negotiations, then there is no need to require that speakers use terms with the same meaning in order to allow that they may be involved in a genuine and significant dispute. Disputants may be charitable interpreted as using key terms differently in ways that lead them to literally express compatible propositions without giving up the idea that they may be involved in a genuine dispute at the level of pragmatics.” To be able to do so, however, one should accept that meaning cannot be disconnected of the sentence occasion, and this is actually only maximally local analyzable, as I have defended in Colomina (2017).
- 15.
This opens the question of how we should think of meta-linguistic negotiation. For instance, Belleri (2017: 2215, Footnote 10) says: “I tend to favour an account of metalinguistic negotiations as conversationally implicating normative claims as to which linguistic options should be favoured, but I should note that there is no consensus about the issue in the current debate about ontological disputes. Thomasson (2017), for example, portrays the participants to the metalinguistic negotiation in metaphysics as being engaged in what she calls “metaconventional uses,” which displays instances of competing linguistic norms and do not strictly speaking communicate any further propositional content.” Thomasson (2017: 23), contrarily, believes that thinking of metalinguistic negotiations as implicatures is wrong. Why? She appeals to Quine (1953: 16), who states that “our ontology is determined once we have fixed upon the overall conceptual scheme which is to accommodate science in the broadest sense.” This neo-Quinean view involves communicating views about what conceptual scheme we should adopt, about our own interests. We have then to look for the linguistic behavior, since ordinary speakers are not commonly tuned into subtle points about what they are saying, and distinguish this from what they are pragmatically conveying, and they should resist this because what they are doing is discussing the true nature of things. The discussion is, then, about what the meaning of a relevant expressions should be; this is to say, meta-linguistic negotiations have to do not with getting the listener to recognize the speaker’s belief, but rather to use a given term in order to reinforce or revise the ways the term has to be used (Thomasson 2017: 23–4). The problem with these approaches is, precisely, to try to go back to propositions. If propositions are in place, then truth conditions independent of the ways that we represent the world have to settle the question because (1) Parties are speaking about the same thing in different contexts, and then there is no disagreement, or (2) They do speak about the same thing and in the same context, which necessarily leads to one of them to be at fault. My solution passes for accepting that they may be pragmatic presuppositions, which are settled by the speech communities, but only because an epistemic interest is backing up the adopting of a certain metaphysical point of view over the others. However, there is a plurality of fundamentals still at the grounding level that allow for different truth conditions to be at the same time, even though they can only be seen when a representational point of view determines them.
- 16.
It has been shown that the main problem comes from believing that the so-called principle of Tolerance, or Charity, defended by both Quine and Carnap in different terms and the majority of deflationary theorists is actually right to speak about semantic issues, but maybe not correct to address metaphysical matters. To me, it is even offensive, if not condescending, to appeal to criteria of tolerance because includes something like a patronizing way to accept other points of view without actually the willingness to deeply engage with them. In addition, mainly when associated to the idea of the possibility of the existence of a neutral vocabulary that will liberate any vocabulary from metaphysical terminology, as a positivistic view would insist, one adds nothing but hypocrisy to the dismissing idea that other cultures are allowed to be a-scientific, but only when they do not actually believe that their vocabularies reflect the truth about the facts, like for instance the scientific discourse does.
- 17.
In fact, well understood, this is to say, without appealing to essentialist mechanisms, as stated in Chap. 2, the causal theory of reference offers ways to interpret this connection in a proper manner. For instance, as Putnam (1975) or Kripke (1971, 1972) defended, a term may refer to some kind present at the introduction of the term that entirely fails to satisfy the beliefs or descriptions that contemporary people associate with that term. If this is so, the word actually does not pick out a natural kind, even though that may perfectly be the belief of the majority of its users, but actually picks out simply upon a social construction, or simply a mistake (as Evans 1982 points out): What the speakers actually agreed to refer by the use of such word. I have been defending this position for many years in a number of papers in Philosophy of language, some of them in collaboration with my good friend Vicente Raga Rosaleny. See, for instance, Colomina (2011).
- 18.
As many have highlighted, see for instance Nolan (2005) and Pickel (2017), Lewis defended a similar point when defended that “a satisfactory inventory of universals is a non-linguistic counterpart of a primitive vocabulary for a language capable of describing the world exhaustively” (Lewis 1999: 12).
- 19.
One example of a non-Newtonian fluid is Ooblek, a mixture of corn flour and water with a consistency similar to uncooked custard, which is a runny liquid until you apply stress to it, after what suddenly acts like a solid. You can hit a bowlful of Ooblek with a hammer and, instead of splashing everywhere, the particles would lock all the material together. You can even roll it into a solid ball in your hand, or put it under the stress produced by the bass of a speaker (like you saw in a The Big Bang Theory’s episode). If you stop moving it though, or disconnect the speaker, it reverts to liquid and oozes out through your fingers. In this case, the Oobleck’s viscosity increases with applied stress. Do not believe though that all non-Newtonian fluids are so ‘alien,’ or require of certain kind of artificial mixture. Think of that jar of solid honey you have not use since the past winter, and how it would become liquid again if you apply some heat, or if you keep stirring it. Or remember that to get that fantastic and fluffy consistency to the frosting of your cake you simply have to keep stirring the cream. Or that a couple of taps at the bottom of the tomato sauce container will make for it to squirt out, since the tapping shall help the sauce to liquefy.
- 20.
A property is interest relative if whether or not a thing has it depends, at least in part, on whether some things’ interests are furthered or satisfied. The extension of an interest-relative property might change because (i) interests themselves change, or because (ii) what satisfies an unchanging interest changes as a result of external factors (Fara 2008: 326).
- 21.
This conception of state of affairs, well combined with a correct theory about the ways that we represent and a performative theory about the ways that we express such representations is proven effective to address some relevant issues in Philosophy of language, and society more broadly. See Colomina (Forthcoming).
- 22.
Defining classical pragmatist positions as anti-realist, and even irrealist, has been the normal interpretation, given the relativist flavor of some of their claims. Take as an example the following: “The ultimate evidence of genuine hazard, contingency, irregularity, and indeterminateness in nature is thus found in the existence of thinking” (Dewey 1925: 69). Fortunately, some new work is re-thinking that tradition in different terms. See, for instance, Godfrey-Smith (2016). As demonstrated in Chap. 2, distinguishing between Heraclitean and Protagorean relativism may allow for the re-interpretation of some mistaken assumptions.
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Colomina-Almiñana, J.J. (2018). A Pluralist Notion of Truth for Metaphysical 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_6
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