De What Re is de Re Modality Mackie

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De What Re is de Re Modality?Author(s): J. L. MackieSource: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 71, No. 16 (Sep. 19, 1974), pp. 551-561Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2025231 .Accessed: 29/04/2011 15:00

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THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY VOLUME LXXI, NO. I6, SEPTEMBER I9, I974

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DE WHAT RE IS DE RE MODALITY?

jOGICAL and epistemic modalities are metaphysically harmless, I but empiricists tend to be suspicious about any further Li varieties of necessity. What could constitute a necessity

which attaches directly to a thing's being something or having certain properties, and which is not analyzable in terms of what we know or in terms of the meanings we attach to various expressions?

Saul Kripke, however, has put forward a number of very plausible theses involving de re modalities, illustrated with many such ex- amples as these.*

Queen Elizabeth-this very woman-might never have become a queen; but she could not have been born of different parents. It is indeed possible that she was not born of those whom we now believe to be her parents; but given that she was born of them, she was necessarily born of them; anyone not born of them, though she might have done all the things that Elizabeth has done since infancy, would not have been this woman.

This table, which seems to be made of wood, may really be made of ice. But if it is made of wood, then it is necessarily made of wood. A table, like this one to all appearances, might have been made of ice; but it would not have been this table. But this table might have been in a different room, and might have been destroyed before now.

It is possible that gold does not have atomic number 79. But if it has it, then it necessarily has it, and any material in any possible world with a different atomic number, no matter how like gold it was in all its observable properties, would not be gold. Gold could not have had a different atomic number. But this very stuff, gold,

#"Naming and Necessity," in Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman, eds., Semantics of Natural Language (Dordrecht: Reidel; New York: Humanities, 1972), hereafter referred to as SNL, pp. 253-355.

55'

552 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

might not have been yellow, and might not have had the other properties by which we now recognize gold.

This view is built upon a sharp distinction between epistemic modalities and modalities of another sort; to be necessary and to be known or even knowable a priori are not the same, and we can in fact have either without the other. It is not clear whether this sort of modality should be called logical, but at any rate it is quite different from logical necessity and possibility about concomitances of general features. Nor are these modalities causal. It is causally necessary that something with atomic number 79 should have the observable and testable features that gold now has; but, Kripke would say, the causal laws might have been different. And the things which in his sense Elizabeth might have done are not confined to those which it was ever causally possible that she should do. If we call these de re modalities, they would seem to include at least three subclasses. For an individual person or thing, its having had whatever origin it actually had is necessary, but its subsequent history might have been very idifferent. Also, both for an individual and for a natural kind-gold, tigers, light, heat-its having whatever constitution it actually has is necessary: tigers are necessarily non- reptilian; heat is necessarily molecular motion. But what it does or causes is contingent: heat might not have given us the sensation of heat. That is, there are necessities of origin contrasted with contingencies of development, and necessities of constitution contrasted with contingencies of operation. There are also constraints of thing- kind: Julius Caesar could not have failed to be a man.'

These doctrines, as I said, seem plausible: but what are they about? To what subject or subjects are they a contribution?

One subject of Kripke's lectures is obviously the meaning and use of proper names. He is concerned to criticize several variants of Frege's view and to defend something like Mill's view, but also to argue that the latter should be extended to apply to some general words. But the subject of necessity seems to be partly separate from that of naming. Kripke says, "Not only is it true of the man Aristotle that he might not have gone into pedagogy; it is also true that we use the term 'Aristotle' in such a way that, in thinking of a counterfactual situation in which Aristotle didn't . . . do any of the achieve- ments we commonly attribute to him, still we would say that was a situation in which Aristotle did not do these things" (SNL 279). But I presume that we can turn this round and read "Not only do we use the term 'Aristotle' in that way, but also it is true of the man I David Wiggins has drawn my attention to these.

DE WHAT RE IS DE RE MODALITY? 553

Aristotle that he might not have gone into pedagogy etc." The claims about de re counterfactual possibilities, about what this very man might have done, are additional to the claims about how proper names and certain general words are used. It has, indeed, been argued 2 that Kripke's criticism of Frege fails, because proper names still behave like definite descriptions with large scope. Whether this is so or not, it is clear that Kripke's characteristic points about necessity could have been made with respect to individuals introduced not by names but by definite descriptions with large scope: "Concerning the teacher of Alexander, he might never have taught anyone, but he could not have failed to be a son of Nicomachus, though Alexander might well have had someone other than a son of Nicomachus as his teacher."

This second topic, necessity as opposed to naming, seems to be that of how we handle counterfactual possibilities and identity in relation to one another. Kripke is very forthright about possibilities. "'Possible worlds' are stipulated, not discovered by powerful tele- scopes" (SNL 267). But we can and do stipulate that in a counterfactual possibility certain things happen to this very individual. We do this, Kripke claims, in a characteristic way. "One is given ... a previous history of the world up to a certain time, and from that time it diverges considerably from the actual course" (SNL 314). The possibilities in the consideration of which de re modalities arise are such divergences. And though Kripke doesn't quite say this, he could add that when we are considering such divergent-from-the- actual histories, we secure the identity of persons and things through the transition from the actual to the merely possible by means of the same continuities that ordinarily secure identity within the actual world.

I think that we can develop from this an understanding of the necessities of origin.

We have a picture something like that of Diagram (i). The actual career of, say, Nixon is shown by the continuous line from t1 to t3. The dotted line diverging from it represents something that Nixon might have done and experienced from t2 onwards till t4. We take this as a possible career for Nixon because in this possible course of events the man who is doing things on the dotted line from t2 to t4 is related to the actual Nixon from t1 to t2 by just the same sorts of continuity by which the actual Nixon from t2 to t3 is related to the actual Nixon from t1 to t2-

2 For example by Michael Dummett in Frege: Philosophy of Language (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 110-151.


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Diagrams

But this diagram suggests another: Diagram (ii). That is, we might consider possibilities that converge with actuality instead of diverging from it or, what comes to the same thing, that diverge from actuality backwards instead of forwards in time. Here we contemplate a possible person who is conceived at to, not at t1, whose career from to to t2 is different from that of the actual Nixon, but whose actions and experiences from t2 to t3 are exactly like those of the actual Nixon. To make this case symmetrical with that


of Diagram (i), let us suppose that this person's likeness to the actual Nixon from t2 to t3 goes right down to the arrangement of all the molecules in his body. Kripke would say that this wouldn't be Nixon; it wouldn't be the same man. Yet we could have the same sorts of continuity connecting the t2-to-t3 career on the firm line with the t0-to-t2 career on the dotted line as in Diagram (i) connected the t2-to-t4 career with the tl-to-t2 career. There are indeed some difficulties in working out this symmetry. If the possible person who starts at to is to have, from t2 to t3, exactly the same history as the actual Nixon, and yet to have memory links with the dotted- line history from to to t2, there will have to be sufficient resemblances between the latter and Nixon's actual history from t1 to t2, or else the actual Nixon will have to be supposed to have, after t2, pseudo- memories of an appropriate sort. But there is no difficulty in principle in patching the story up. It might be objected that the to-t2-t3 career will be causally impossible, that a man causally couldn't have exactly the same career from t2 to t3 joined on to either of two alternative earlier careers, the actual t1-to-t2 one and the possible tO-to-t2 one. But this objection is irrelevant, since Kripke's modalities are not causal. Rather he would say that, even if we do contemplate the conceivable even if not causally possible to-t2-t3 career, we cannot claim that the possible person whose career it is would be Nixon. Even where the actual and possible paths are exactly alike, from t2 to t3, we should put in a dotted line beside the firm one: our possible person maintains his own identity through t2, but he never becomes Nixon and so never was Nixon.

Still, there plainly is an alternative, more liberal view which would allow identities to be preserved in possible histories that diverge backwards as well as in those that diverge forwards. There is also a third, less liberal, Leibnizian view that even forward divergences destroy identity. Leibniz would say that, though God might have made a person who had the t1-t2-t4 career of Diagram (i), this person would not have been Nixon. This possibility, Leibniz would insist, is not correctly described by saying that Nixon might after t2 have done something other than he actually did; it is rather that God might have made not Nixon but another man whose early career only was just like Nixon's,3 so that in Diagram (i) also we need a dotted line running alongside the firm one from t1 to t2. Kripke's view, therefore, is intermediate between the liberal view that preserves identity in counterfactually possible divergences

3 "Essais de Th6odic&e" in G. W. Leibniz, Die Philosophischen Schriften, Gerhardt, ed. vol. vi, p. 363.


both backwards and forwards and the Leibnizian view which denies identity in either case.

Leibniz's view would clearly not be a correct account of how we actually handle possibility in relation to identity: we do commonly entertain the possibility that this very man might have done other than he did. Believers in free will think that some such actions are also causally possible, but even determinists say that though it was not causally possible, it was still conceivable that this man should have done otherwise, without prejudice to his identity.

But the more liberal alternative cannot be so easily ruled out. It is not clear that if we considered the tO-t2-t4 possibility in Diagram (ii), we should say confidently, "But that person wouldn't be Nixon." The truth is rather that we don't normally consider that sort of possibility. The counterfactual possibilities-might-have- beens-that interest us are nearly always forward divergences from actual history. Still we can concede this much to Kripke, that among the possibilities that we ordinarily consider it is the origin of- an individual person or thing that is necessary for that very individual, whereas all its subsequent history is contingent.

But why do we handle possibility and identity together in this way? And is the resulting de re modality just a feature of how we talk and think, or is there some deeper metaphysical truth which our thinking tries-perhaps successfully-to capture? Kripke relies on "intuitions"; but are they intuitions about our natural ways of thinking and speaking or about some further metaphysical truth? (Of course, if there is a metaphysical issue here, the Leibnizian alternative might be revived: perhaps, although we commonly allow identity to be preserved through forward divergences, we are wrong to do so.)

Looking around for a possible explanation of these ways of thinking and speaking, we may find useful a slightly different sort of diagram which is used by, for example, Prior, von Wright, and Lucas.4 In this, small circles represent actual or possible states of the world, and lines joining them represent causally possible developments. (Time is represented as discrete, but this is a harmless simplification.)

In Diagram (iii), if the present state of the world is (a), it is causally possible that the next state should be either (b) or (c), and

4 A. N. Prior, Past, Present and Future (New York: Oxford, 1967), p. 127; G. H von Wright, Woodbridge Lectures on Causation and Determinism (New York: Columbia, not yet published); J. R. Lucas, A Treatise on Time and Space (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973), pp. 268-272.


so on. If the present state is (d), the lines from (a) through (c) to (g) and (h) and from (b) to (e) and (f) represent lost, defunct, possibilities, what might have been but was not and now cannot be.

All these writers favor structures like that of Diagram (iii), a tree branching out toward the right, that is, toward the future. But we might well consider such structures as those of Diagrams (iv) and (v), and also a reversed tree and a simple line as in Diagrams (vi) and (vii).

That is, we might allow for convergent as well as divergent possibilities, or for convergent ones only, or for neither convergence nor divergence. Determinism, in the sense that every event has preceding sufficient causes, would confine us to diagrams of either type (vi) or type (vii). Traditional determinism would, I think, confine us to type (vii), denying that a total state of the world could have come from any variety of antecedents. Libertarians favor type (iii), but there seems no reason why they should not admit types (iv) and (v): if causal laws allow alternative developments from the present state, should they not also allow a particular state to have come from alternative antecedents?

There is, however, a reason why the sorts of possibility shown in Diagrams (iv), (v), and (vi) tend to be ignored. Even if it is causally possible for (d) in any of these to have come either from (b) or from (c), still there is just one immediately preceding state, say (b), from which it actually did come. The past is fixed, even if it is not causally fixed by the present. So if in each diagram the top horizontal line represents the actual course of events, (c), (a), and (e) in (vi) were at no time real possibilities, though they are causally possible sources of the actual state (f), whereas if in (iii) the present state is (a), all the others shown are still real possibilities, while if the present state is (d), still (c), (e), (f), (g), and (h) are real might-have-beens: it was at one time really possible that each of these should come about. But some convergences represent real possibilities: for example, in (iv) (d) really might have come from (c), though it actually came from (b).

We have thus an asymmetry between past and future possibilities, even if the causal possibilities as such are symmetrical. Though the present state causally could have come from more than one antecedent, it did come from just one, and the only way in which it really could have come from some alternative antecedent is by that alternative's being a possible result of some earlier possible divergence from actuality. Could we restore the symmetry


by saying that it is equally true that though (given indeterminism) the present state causally could give rise to alternative subsequent states, there is just one state that will actually follow? The future, someone might say, is as metaphysically fixed as the past, even if it is causally open, just as, on this view, the past is causally underdetermined by the present. But this logical fatalism, if separated from both causal determinism and divine foreknowledge, has seldom carried much weight.5 In our ordinary thinking we suppose that, if the future is causally underdetermined, more than one possibility is really open, whereas the past is closed, even if it is causally underdetermined by the present.

In fact our ordinary thinking, particularly about human action, is libertarian. We take it that there are genuinely open alternatives for the future, but not for the past. And this results from our combining causal underdeterminism with the view that the past is fixed just by having occurred.

It is, I suggest, this way of thinking that gives rise to the necessities of -origin and contingencies of development. But, it might be objected, these concern possibility in association with identity; where, in the present story, does identity come in? Well, see what happens when we simply add the identity of persisting individuals to our recent scheme. If the present state is (a) in (iii), and it includes Nixon, then each of its alternative successor states (b) and (c) can also include this very man. So when the actual course of events has run on through (b) to (d), we must say that the now defunct possible sequence through (c) to (g) would also have in- cluded this same man. It is not only a might-have-been, but also a might-have-been for Nixon. But our ordinary way of thinking allows for no similar convergent possibilities, except where these follow previous divergences. So, going back to our earlier diagrams, our ordinary ways of thinking provide that Nixon may, at t2, pur- sue either the firm or the dotted line in (i), and consequently that, speaking at t4, we can say that, although he did follow the firm line, he might have followed the dotted one. But they do not allow anything like (ii), though they do in principle allow for what is represented in Diagram (viii); he might temporarily have gone off the rails without this having any lasting effect.

Thus the libertarian view of causal possibilities, conjoined with 5 G. Ryle, Dilemmas (New York: Cambridge, 1956), pp. 15-17; but contrast

A. N. Prior's discussion of Diodorean modalities, e.g., in Past, Present and Future, op. cit., pp. 2 and 3.


the view of the past as fixed, would yield the main principles of our handling of identity in relation to what might have been. I admit that, to yield the full Kripkean account of the necessities of origin and contingencies of development, these principles must be extended to apply to contracausal as well as merely counterfactual possibilities. But it is not surprising that we should so extend them once they have been formed in the context of causal underdetermi- nation. If we start considering identity through contracausal possibilities, what could be more natural than to use as a model the ways in which we automatically handle identity through counterfactual possibilities?

If this explanation is correct, we should not have come to contrast necessities of origin with contingencies of - development if our natural thinking had been deterministic [if we had seen the causal possibilities as confined to the linear path of Diagram (vii)], or if we had not seen the past as more fixed than the future. If there is any metaphysical truth underlying these de re modalities, then, it will be the truth of causal underdeterminism together with the past's being fixed just by having occurred, and with the absence of any symmetrical Diodorean fatality about the future.

It may be objected that there is a rival explanation of our in- clination to allow forward but not backward divergences from the actual.6 Backward divergences create the possibility of competing claimants. If we consider a possible world in which some person is conceived at to as in (ii), has a career different from that of the actual Nixon up to t2 but thereafter just like that of the actual Nixon, we must also be able to consider a possible world in which. as well as this person, there is one who is conceived at t1 by the union of the sperm and ovum that in the actual world produced Nixon, who has the actual Nixon's career for a short time after- wards, but then is, say, dropped on his head in infancy and survives only as a human vegetable. Diagram (ix) illustrates this possible world, the two individuals being represented by a line of dots and a line of dashes. (The continuous line does not represent any person in this possible world, but only indicates, for comparison, Nixon's actual career.) The line-of-dashes man has a better claim to be Nixon than the line-of-dots man. Since there could be this stronger claimant, we must not say even with regard to a world from which he is absent, in which we have only the line-of-dots man, that the

8 This was suggested by M. G. J. Evans.

560 - THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

latter is Nixon. And this explains why we should, and do, deny identity through counterfactual backward divergences.

However, the competition for the role of Nixon has arisen, in (ix), only because we have both a backward and a forward divergence, and either of these could be said to leave room for a possible competitor. The real force of the objection lies in the claim that the line-of-dots man is the stronger competitor. Intuitively, this seems correct. But this is just the original asymmetry in our thinking over again, the very thing we are trying to explain, and cannot without circularity be cited as an explanation. It may be argued that the line-of-dashes man is made of the same material, originally, as the actual Nixon, and that is why he has the stronger claim to be Nixon: the necessity of origin here rests on a necessity of constitution. But we could say equally that the line-of-dots man is made of the same material, finally, as the actual Nixon: the necessity of constitution does not in itself set up the required temporal asymmetry.

It may be argued that constitution plays some part in the necessities of origin, since these do not apply to nonmaterial entities. Marxism, say, or Cubism, that very doctrine, might have originated in different ways. But this is so merely because a doctrine is iden- tified by its purely general features. A movement, on the other hand, is an individual, and my intuitions at least are against saying that anything that originated differently could have been the same movement as the actual Marxism or Cubism. I conclude that contrast between the necessity of origin and the contingency of development is not essentially connected with constitution, and as yet I can find for this contrast no genuinely alternative explanation to the one I have proposed.

So far I have explained only the necessities of origin. I think that somewhat similar accounts can be given of the necessities of constitution and the constraints of thing-kind, but I cannot develop them here. If such explanations are correct, it will follow that these de re modalities are, in a very broad sense, de dicto after all. Though these necessities apply to individual things and natural kinds ("This man could not have . . . ," "Gold could not have . . . ," etc.), that they so apply is primarily a feature of the way we think and speak, of how we handle identity in association with counterfactual possibility. They reflect implicit rules for the ascription of identity, for the recognition of the same person or thing or stuff or species, in neutrally described merely possible situa- tions. The topic of names (and certain general terms) comes in be-

A PROLEGOMENON TO MEINONGIAN SEMANTICS 56I

cause such names (etc.) are intended to belong to things (etc.) whose identity is determined by these rules.

If this is correct, then these de re modalities need not in them- selves offend empiricists. But, as I have indicated, there may be metaphysical assumptions that underlie our ways of handling identity, and these, of course, may be open to dispute.

J. L. MACKIE

University College, Oxford

A PROLEGOMENON TO MEINONGIAN SEMANTICS *

It is strange . . . that Meinong's object-theory should have been regarded by some as a bewildering and tangled 'jungle', it resembles rather an old formal garden containing some beautiful and difficult mazes.

Meinong's round square could be stitched, with complete seamless- ness, into the fabric of Carnap's Meaning and Necessity.

J. N. Findlay IN section i of this paper I will describe Meinong's jungle. In section ii I will attempt to reconstruct it as a formal garden. And in section iII I will try to place it within the tradition of

semantics to which Carnap's Meaning and Necessity belongs. I make the following claim to historical accuracy: although I don't know what Meinong meant, if I had said what I know him to have said, I would have meant the following.

I. THE JUNGLE

Ideally I would begin with a good exposition of Meinong, but that would take too long. Instead I'll give a rough sketch, which may be a ,caricature.t

Meinong's theory of objects is about objects. What are objects? This much is clear: anything that could be an object of thought is an

* I am indebted to R. Chisholm, G. Fitch, E. Gettier, K. Parsons, R. Routley J. Farrell Smith, J. Vickers, K. Wilson, and (especially) to K. Lambert. Two papers which bear some similarity to this one are H. Castafieda, "Thinking and the Structure of the World," and R. Routley, Exploring Meinong's Jungle, both unpublished manuscripts.

t This is based principally on the accounts in A. Meinong, "The Theory of Ob- jects," in R. Chisholm, ed., Realism and the Background of Phenomenology (New York: Free Press, 1960), hereafter abbreviated "M," followed by arabic numerals for section numbers; and in J. N. Findlay, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values (New York: Oxford, 1963), chs. ii and vi, hereafter abbreviated "F," followed by arabic numerals for pages or roman numerals for chapters. The quotations from Findlay, above, come from this book, pp. xi and 327, respectively.

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De What Re is de Re Modality Mackie