Referring to Things That No Longer Exist

Referring to Things That No Longer Exist

Roderick M. Chisholm

Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 4, Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind. (1990), pp. 545-556.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583%281990%294%3C545%3ARTTTNL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0

Philosophical Perspectives is currently published by Blackwell Publishing.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/black.html.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. Formore information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

http://www.jstor.orgMon Jun 4 08:38:09 2007

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1520-8583%281990%294%3C545%3ARTTTNL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0

http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html

http://www.jstor.org/journals/black.html

Philosophical Perspectives, 4 Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind, 1990

REFERRING TO THINGS THAT NO LONGER EXIST

Roderick M. Chisholm Brown University

Introduction

If we take tense seriously and have no illusions with respect to everlasting existence, we should be puzzled about how it is that we are able to refer to those things that once existed but no longer exist. It is reasonable to suppose (1) that Socrates no longer exists and (2) that we may refer to him. We may judge, say, that he was the first great philosopher to die by drinking hemlock. To make a judgment about someone, it might be supposed, is to put oneself into a certain relation with that person. But if Socrates no longer exists, how are we able to put ourselves into any relation with him?

Of course, there are ever so many ways in which we may be related to Socrates and to any other thing that no longer exists. One may resemble Socrates by walking in just the same way that he did. The American voters will cause George Washington to have a successor he otherwise would not have had. We may thus seem to reach back into the past and cause things that no longer exist to change in various ways. Relating ourselves to things that no longer exist and even acting upon such things would seem, then, to be familiar phenomena. And our question is, not whether such things occur, but just how it is that they occur.

A consideration of how it is that we refer to what no longer exists will show us how to deal with the other types of relation that we seem to bear to such entities. What I will say is intended to throw

546 / Roderick M. Chisholm

light, therefore, not only on the nature of referring, but on certain fundamental metaphysical questions.

Referring to Things that Do Exist

The "problem of reference," as we here understand that expression, refers to the problem epitomized by Wittgenstein's question: "What makes my thought about you a thought about you?" a question that Wittgenstein had put in a variety of different ways.' If we attempt to formulate an intentional solution to this problem, as I believe we must, we will defend two theses: (1) it is in virtue of their structure that our intentional properties enable us to refer to entities other than ourselves; and (2) we can find out what this structure is by reflecting upon these properties. The approach, therefore, is Platonistic; it presupposes that there are properties and that not all of them are exemplified.

Consider judgment-judging something to be such-and-such. The traditional view was that making a judgment involves a relation between a person and what has been called a "proposition." If I judge that there are unicorns, say, then there is such a thing as the proposition that there are unicorns. It was held that this proposition is a kind of ens rationis-a thing that is capable of being grasped or conceived by rational beings. And it was also held that persons- things like you and me-a re rational beings. As a rational being I can conceive the proposition that there are unicorns and I can accept or reject this proposition. If I accept it, then, according to the traditional view, I judge that there are unicorns.

Let us, for the moment at least, accept this traditional view: propositions are what constitute the content of our intentional attitudes. (I shall return to this assumption below.)

The propositional theory, somewhat oversimplified, is this: if a person x accepts the proposition that the only thing that is so-and-so is such-and-such, and if an object y is the only thing that is so-and- so, then x may be said to judge with respect to y that it is such and such; and x's judgment, therefore, is directed upon y. This is how my judgment is supposed to be directed upon you. A preliminary formulation of the intentional theory, then, may be put schematically in this way:

Referring to Things That No Longer Exist / 547

x judges y to be F =Df (1) y is the thing that is C; and (2) x judges [accepts the proposition] that the thing that is G is F.

But this preliminary account may be more latitudinarian than it should be.

Consider this example, adapted from one suggested by Keith D~nne l l an .~Suppose I am the Chairman of the local Temperance Union and am attending the Union's annual party. (1) I accept the proposition that the man I am looking at is a member of the Temperance Union; (2) 1 accept the false proposition that the man I am looking at is the only one at the party who is drinking a martini (I don't realize that there is only water in the glass); (3) putting two and two together, I accept the proposition that the only one at the party who is drinking a martini is a member of the Temperance Union; and (4) the only one at the party who is drinking a martini is, not the man I am looking at, but the person who is standing behind me.

I believe that Donnellan is right in suggesting that, in the situation described, my judgment was not directed upon the person standing behind me; it was not a judgment with respect to him. Yet there is a sense in which my judgment might be said to have "pointed to" the person behind me.

Our formula, then, does not tell us what it is to make a judgment that is directed upon a certain thing. But it does tell us what it is to make a judgment that points to a certain thing. Let us re-interpret the formula, therefore, as a definition of pointing to:

Dl x makes a judgment that points to y as an F =Df (1) y is the thing that is G; and (2) x judges that the thing that is G is F.

A judgment may point to a thing y without being directed upon y, without being a judgment with respect to y.

If my judgment is a judgment with respect to you, then certain epistemic conditions have been fulfilled. I have some information about just who it is that I am referring to. This means that I stand in a special epistemic relation to the property by means of which I then single you out. If I judge that the G is F, if you are the G, and if my judgment is directed upon you, then it is reasonable for me to believe that the G exists. Making use of the comparative epistemic concept expressed by "more justified than," we may say more


generally that if my judgment is a judgment with respect to the C , then I am more justified in judging that the C exists than in not judging that the C exist^.^

Hence we might consider saying:

y is such that x judges with respect to it that it is F =Df (1) y is the C; (2) x is more justified in judging that the C exists than in not judging that the G exists; and (3) x judges that the C is F.

But the epistemic condition in this formulation is not yet sufficiently rigid. A person may judge in such a way that a thing y satisfies the terms of this definition and yet his judgment is not a judgment with respect to y. This may happen when the judgment is a compound judgment involving a case of mistaken identity. A thing y may satisfy the terms of this definition and yet not be such that x makes a judgment with respect to it.

Consider the compound judgment I made at the party: "The person I am looking at is the only one here who is drinking a martini and, since he is also the head of the Temperance Union, the head of the Temperance Union is drinking a martini." (We should remind ourselves that most judgments are considerably more complex in their content than may be suggested by the sentences in which we ordinarily express them.) If the person standing behind me is the only one at the party who is drinking a martini and if I have been assured on reliable authority that there is just one person at the party who is drinking a martini, then the proposed definition above would require us to say that my judgment is a judgment with respect to the person in front of me and also a judgment with respect to the person behind me. But clearly the judgment formulated above is a judgment with respect to the person in front of me and not a judgment with respect to the person behind me.

And why do we say this? The judgment involves several different descriptions: namely, "the

person I am looking at," "the person drinking the martini," "the person behind me," and "the head of the Temperance Union." The first of these is, for me, at least as justified as any of the others. I am not more justified in judging that anyone of the other three descriptions exists than in judging that something of that description exists.


What we should say, then, is this:

D2 y is such that x judges with respect to it that it is an F =Df (I) y is the G; (2) x is more justified in judging that the G exists than in not judging that the G exists; and (3) x judges in such a way that (a) x's judging includes judging that the G is F and (b) if it includes judging that the G is the H, then x is not more justified in judging that the H exists than in judging that the G exists.

We could say, then, that intentionality "follows the lead of the closest descriptions." In other words, if my judgment is directed upon you, then, of all the descriptions that the judgment involves, one that you fulfill is at least as justified for me as any of the others.

One may object: "But surely I can be said, in this example, to have judged with respect to the head of the Temperance Union that he is drinking a martini. And if this is the case, then your analysis is mistaken."

The reply is that my compound judgment, which includes several identity judgments, is not itself directed upon the head of the Temperance Union even if one of its component judgments ("The head of the Temperance Union is drinking a martini") is directed upon the head of the Temperance Union. There is, of course, no contradiction involved in asserting a statement of this form: "x is not F, but x has a component that is F." (Compare: "The chair does not have the same weight as the book, but one of its components has the same weight as the book"; "The judgment is not non-compound, but one of its components is non-compound.")

Here, then, we have an intentional theory of judgment, an intentional theory of what it is that makes my judgment a judgment about you.

Let us now turn to the question of what it is to make a judgment about something that no longer exists.

An Intentional Antinomy?

Our problem may be put in the form of a possible antinomy. The thesis would be: "Socrates has the property of being judged about by us." And the antithesis would be: "It is false that Socrates has the property of being judged about by us."


A. Proof of the Thesis (1) We make judgments about Socrates.

Therefore (2) Socrates is judged about by us.

Therefore (3) Socrates has the property of being judged about by us.

B. Proof of the Antithesis (1) Socrates no longer exists. (2) What doesn't exist has no properties.

Therefore (3)It is false that Socrates has the property of being judged

about by us.

One might put "the proof of the antithesis" more briefly this way: "Socrates can't be judged about by us. When he was there to have the property of being judged about by us, we weren't there to give it to him. And now that we are here to give it to him, he is no longer here to receive it."

Some Misguided Approaches

(1)One possible move is to deny the first premise of the antithesis and to say that Socrates does exist. This is suggested by Russell's somewhat puzzling discussion of change in the Principles of Mathematim4 Russell wrote:

[Clhange is due, ultimately, to the fact that many terms have relations to some parts of time which they do not have to others. But every term is eternal, timeless, and immutable; the relations it may have to parts of time are equally immutable. It is merely the fact that different terms are related to different times that makes the difference between what exists at one time and what exists at another. And though a term may cease to exist, it cannot cease to be; it is still an entity, which can be counted as one, and concerning which some propositions are true and others false.

If we take tense seriously and have, therefore, a "robust sense" (to use Russell's phrase) of what is temporal, we will not seriously suppose that things that have ceased to exist may yet, somehow, continue to be.


(2) Another possible move is to reject the second premise of the antithesis and to argue, as Meinong did, that nonexistent things do have properties. But this is a most drastic step to take and one which, for many of us, is counter-intuitive. Before taking it, we should ask whether there are other types of nonexistent thing that may be said to have properties.

Intentional examples ("The devil is feared by him") would be question-begging. What, then, of "Pegasus has wings" and "Sherlock Holmes was a detective"? These, too, may be thought of as intentional as implying that someone told a story according to which Pegasus has wings or Sherlock Holmes is a detective.

Are there other grounds for thinking that nonexistent things may have properties? There are the examples from Meinong:

(a) The golden mountain is golden. (b) The mountain I am thinking of is golden.

It seems reasonable to follow Russell in the case of (a) and say that the sentence is false. But what of @)? It is deceptively like

(c) The mountain I am climbing is steep.

Depending upon the context, we may put the judgment in some such way as this:

(b') l am thinking of just one mountain; and I am thinking of a mountain as being golden.

(3)Will the introduction of tensed quantifiers solve our problem? In this case we might say: "There existed an x such that x was Socrates and x was going to be judged about by us." This move would leave us with our problem. If Socrates was such that he was going to be referred to by us, it would follow that at some later time one could say of him, "Now he is being referred to by us." But when would this be-if Socrates ceased to be before we came into being?

Tensed Properties

If we take tense seriously, then we will distinguish three modes of properties-past, present and future. In other words, for certain properties (those that one can lose and then take on again), there will be the past-tense version, the present-tense version and the


future-tense version of that property. Hence we may distinguish the three properties: walking, having walked and going to walk. Most, but not all, things that are now walking have all three.

For many properties, the present-tense version-say, walking-will be such that it can be taken on and then lost any number of times. This is not true of properties in the mode of the past-for example, having walked. These are all lost at the same time-when the subject ceases to be. But they may be taken on at different times. And analogously for future-tensed properties-for example, being such as to be going to walk. All one's properties in the mode of the future are taken on at the same time-namely, when one comes into being; but they may be lost at different times.

Since certain properties have three temporal modes, there are also three modes of exemplifying such properties: (i) one may be such that one has the property; (ii) one may be such that one did have the property; and (iii) one may be such that one is going to have the property.

It will be objected: "Surely that's multiplying distinctions beyond necessity. We don't have to say: 'You did have the property walking.' We need say only 'You do have the property having walked.' And, similarly, we don't have to say 'You will have the property walking.' We need say only 'You do have the property going-to-walk."'

This suggestion will not do in the case of subjects that have ceased to be or haven't yet come into being. We cannot say of Socrates that he has the property of having walked, and we cannot say of your great grandson that he has the property of being such that he is going to walk.

Moreover, we must distinguish between "Jones was such as to have walked" and "Jones was such as to be walking." The former but not the latter could have been true at a time at which Jones was no longer able to walk.

Hence there are these 9 possibilities:

(i) x is such as to be walking [to have F]; (ii) x was such as to be walking; (iii) x will be such as to be walking; (iv) x is such as to have walked [to have had F]; (v) x was such as to have walked; (vi) x will be such as to have walked; (vii) x is such as to be going to walk [to be going to have F]; (viii) x was such as to be going to walk; (ix) x will be such as to be going to walk.


Our ordinary languages-not only ordinary English-have difficulty with the distinction between (ii) and (iv) and that between (iii) and (ix).

Let us say that one property implies another property provided only that the first property is necessarily such that whatever has it either did have, does have, or will have the second. I presuppose: (1) walking does not imply having-walked; (2) walking does not imply going-to-walk; (3) it is logically possible to be walking at the first moment of one's existence; and (4)it is logically possible to be walking at the last moment of one's existence.

Representing "implies" by "+", we now note briefly certain logical relations holding between these locutions.

(iv) (ii);+

(v) + (ii); (vi) + [(i) or (ii) or (iii)]; (vii) + (iii); (viii) + [(i) or (ii) or (iii)]; (ix) + [(iii) and (vii)].

We should also note that, although "x has F'and "x has G" together imply "x has F and G," no such conjunctive principle holds for the past and future modes of having. It is not the case that "x had F" and "x had G" together imply "x had F and G." And it is not the case that "x will have F" and "x will have G together imply "x will have F and G." (This last observation may seem to do violence to our ordinary language. Suppose we say, of a lady who married her deceased husband's brother, "She has been married to a clergyman and also to his brother." Our statement would not normally be taken as an accusation of bigamy. But so far as the philosophical purposes of language are concerned, we should not make such a statement if the lady had never been such as to be married to a clergyman and also to his brother.)

Eliminating Past-tensed and Future-Tensed Quantifiers

If there was something that no longer exists, or if there will be something that does not yet exist, don't we need temporal quantifiers to refer to those things? In such a case we would have: "There existed an x such that. . ."; "There exists an x such that. . ."; and "There will exist an x such that. . ."


We need only the present-tensed quantifier. We may avoid the others if we combine what we have said about tensed properties with our Platonistic assumption: the assumption, namely, that properties and other abstracta are eternal objects.

If there once was a philosopher who drank the hemlock and who no longer exists, then there always will be something-for example, the property blue-which once was such that there is a philosopher who is drinking the hemlock. And this something once was such that there will be something that is drinking the hemlock.

Let us say, then:

D3 There existed an x such that x was F =Df Either (a) there exists an x such that x was F or (b) there exists an x which was such that there exists a y such that y is F. D4 There will exist an x such that x will be F =Df Either (a) there exists an x such that x will be F or (b) there exists an x which will be such that there exists a y such that y is F.

Thus we eliminate the tensed quantifiers, defining them by referring to tensed-properties and to abstract objects.

Solution to the Supposed Antinomy

We may now say how it is that we refer to things that no longer exist-even though there are no such things for us to refer to.

D5 x makes a judgment that points to the thing that was G and points to it as an F =Df There exists something which was such that the G exists; and x judges that there existed a y such that y was both the G and an F. D6 x makes a judgment that is meant to point to the thing that was G and to point to it as an F =Df (1) x makes a judgment that points to the thing that was G and points to it as an F; and (2) x is more justified in judging that there existed a y such that y was the G than in not so judging.

It is in this way, then, that one can make a judgment that points to Socrates and one can make a judgment meant to point to Socrates; one can do this even though there is no relation such that I bear that relation to Socrates and even though Socrates no longer exists.

What of the other ways in which we may seem to put ourselves into relations with things that no longer exist?


We contemplated a person who resembles Socrates in that he walks exactly the way that Socrates did. Sentences of the form, "x walks just the way that the G did" may be explicated this way: "(1) There exists something which was such that there exists something which is the G and which walks in manner F ; and (2) x walks in manner F."

And how do we act upon things that no longer exist? What happens when we cause George Washington to have a successor he never had before? On such occasions, there exists something-it could be the property blue-which (a) was such that the first President of the United States does exist, @) which was also such that the first President of the United States ceases to exist, and (c) which is such that there is someone whom the American voters cause to be the President of the United States.

What is it for something to cease to be? It is for the thing to be such that it has no future-tense properties just as to come into being is to bewch as to have no past tensed properties. More exactly, "x is coming into being" tells us that x is such that there is no property P such that x did have P; and "x is passing away" tells us that x is such that there is no property P such that x is going to have P.

An Alternative Approach

What I have been saying presupposes that propositions are what constitute the content of our intentional attitudes. An alternative is to view this content as consisting of properties and not of propositions. I have defended this view elsewhere and will note only briefly how it may be adapted to what I have been saying here.5 Given this alternative approach, we would take as undefined:

The property of being F is such that x attributes it directly to y.

We would presuppose that if x attributes a property directly to y, then x is identical with y. Then we could have:

D7 x indirectly attributes to y the property of being F =Df There is a relation R such that: (1) x bears R only to y, (2) x is more justified in directly attributing the property of bearing R to just one thing than in not directly attributing that property, and (3) x's directly attributing includes directly attributing the property of bearing R to just one thing and to


a thing that is F; and (4) if it includes directly attributing the property of bearing R to the thing x bears S to, then x is not more justified in directly attributing the property of bearing S to just one thing than in directly attributing the property of bearing R to just one thing. D8 x judges with respect to y that it is F =Df x directly or indirectly attributes to y the property of being F. D9 x judges with respect to the thing that was G that it is F =Df (1) There exists something which was such that the G exists; (2) x judges with respect to x that it is such that there exists something which was such that there is something which is the G and an F; and (3) x is more justified in judging with respect to x that it is such that there exists something which was such that the G exists than in not so judging.

Notes

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953), p. 177. Compare also Wittgenstein's Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, Vol. I (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982): "What makes this sentence a sentence that has to do with him?" (P. 43).

2. Compare Keith Donnellan, "Reference and Definite Descriptions," Philosophical Review, Vol. LXXV (1966), pp. 281-304.

3. Alternatives to the locution "more justified than" are "more reasonable than" and "epistemically preferable to." I have discussed this comparative concept in detail in Theory of Knowledge, Third Edition (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1989). 1 there try to show that a comparative epistemic concept is essential to the theory of knowledge.

4. See Bertrand Russell, Principles of Mathematics, Second Edition (Cambridge: The University Press, 1937), p. 471.

5. See The First Person: An Essay on Reference and Intentionality (Eirighton and Minneapolis: Harvesters Limited and The University of Minnesota Press, 1981).

Documents

Referring to Things That No Longer Exist