jubien, michael – on quine's rejection of intensional entities.pdf

7/27/2019 Jubien, Michael On Quine's Rejection of Intensional Entities.pdf

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On Quines Rejection of Intensional EntitiesMICHAEL JUBIEN

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXVIII (2004)

209

I

t would be very difficult to overstate the importance of the work of Willard

Van Orman Quine in contemporary philosophy and logic. His work has had an

especially profound effect on our thinking about fundamental matters at the very

center of philosophy: in metaphysics and epistemology. In this article I am mainly

concerned with Quines metaphysics, specifically his ontology.

Quines philosophical work exemplifies various important isms. For

example, early in his career Quine was strongly inclined toward nominalism,1

a point of view that may perhaps be seen as an aspect of his overarching

naturalism. But he later came to accept the existence of classes, a concession

sometimes thought (incorrectly) to be his only official departure from a

strictly nominalist point of view. His motivation for this departure, however,may be seen as rather nominalistic in spirit, for he appealed to classes partly in

order to be in a sound position to reject what he took to be less respectable

abstracta.

To naturalism and nominalism we may add extensionalism, which will be the

main focus of this article, and also perhaps a species ofpragmatism. In a certain

way, Quines early nominalism evolved into extensionalism because he came to

believe that strict nominalism could not survive in the hard environment of sci-

entific explanation. Extensionalism was the next-best thing, allowing for the admis-

sion of classes, but holding firm against intensional entities like attributes andpropositions.To move from strict nominalism to strict extensionalism was, in effect,

to withdraw from an original Maginot line of resistance, to a more liberal and

defensible position that nevertheless retained a certain amount of naturalistic

1. See Steps toward a Constructive Nominalism, with Nelson Goodman,Journal of Sym-

bolic Logic 12 (1947):105122.


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210 Michael Jubien

respectability. Quine appears to have thought the shift was small, even slight, but

surely necessary.

In this article I will explore the foundations of Quines extensionalist shift,

and his antipathy toward the intensional. I believe this topic is important because

the last few decades of metaphysics have witnessed a dramatic trend in our general

attitude toward things intensional, a movement from easy rejection toward

perhaps overly easy acceptance, and Quine was certainly the main force behind

the earlier rejection in its mid-twentieth-century manifestation. I believe this is a

good moment to evaluate his very influential thinking on the topic.

*****

It is undeniable that our ordinary talk appears to be committed to such entities as

mind-independent attributes (or properties) and propositions. Quine was fully

aware of this and never denied it. But, as an advocate of a naturalistic and scien-

tific worldview, he could see such entities neither as natural nor as proper objects

of scientific inquiry, and so he sought an ontology that did not include them. At

the same time, he appreciated fully that such entitiesseem required for a complete

understanding of the workings of our thought and language. A major metaphysi-

cal project of Quines most important philosophical work, Word and Object,2 was

accordingly to deliver the evident benefits of attributes and propositions without

commitment to their existence. So let us begin by exploring the roots of his antipa-

thy toward these intensional entities.

A good place to start is one of Quines most celebrated essays,Two Dogmas

of Empiricism.3 The first of the two dogmas is the thesis (famously embraced by

Kant) that there is a . . . fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic,

or grounded in meanings, independently of matters of fact, and truths which are

synthetic, or grounded in fact (20). Quine was intent on undermining this thesis,

and his success was so considerable that the denialof the distinction soon acquired

the status of a dogma in its own right, and one to which many adhere today. Of

course if we reject analyticity, then we should reject the companion notion ofsyn-

onymy as well, for synonymy is sameness of meaning, and if two terms had the

same meaning, then many sentences in which those terms occurred would be ana-

lytic. (Thus: All bachelors are unmarried men.)

The alleged problem with synonymy and analyticity thus traces to meaning

itself. But what was really bothering Quine about meaning? After all, if our words

actually do have meaningssomething that at first blush is hard to denythen it

seems obvious that it mightbe that some pairs of them have the same meanings,

and that if they do, then there really are synonyms and, in their wake, nontrivialanalyticities. Moreover, even if no two linguistic expressions actually had the same

meaning, as long as they did have meanings, the conceptof synonymy (and hence

2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960.

3. The paper appeared in the Philosophical Review in 1951 and was reprinted in Quines

well-known collection, From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

1953). Page references here are to the latter version.


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On Quines Rejection of Intensional Entities 211

analyticity) would make perfectly good senseand also admit of straightforward

analysisdespite a dearth of nontrivial cases. Quine,of course, was not out to deny

the meaningfulness of language. He was instead out to understand it without

appealing to meant entities. He was stalking ontologicalgame:

For the theory of meaning a conspicuous question is the nature of its objects:

what sorts of things are meanings? A felt need for meant entities may derive

from an earlier failure to appreciate that meaning and reference are distinct.

Once the theory of meaning is sharply separated from the theory of refer-

ence, it is a short step to recognizing as the primary business of the theory

of meaning simply the synonymy of linguistic forms and the analyticity of

statements; meanings themselves, as obscure intermediary entities, may well

be abandoned. (22)

In this extremely important paragraph, Quine first asks a question, then

offers a speculation, next apronouncement, and finally a conclusion. Everything

concerning analyticity and synonymy that occurs in Two Dogmas after this para-

graph depends on the conclusion that we may safely set aside the hypothesis that

meanings are entities, and that is why the paragraph is so important. So lets give

it an unhurried examination.

The question seems intended to convey puzzlement about the nature of

meanings and to arouse suspicion in the reader. Here Quine is clearly thinking of

the meanings of terms as abstract entities, like attributes. But it doesnt appear that

their abstractness is what is so puzzling about them, for Quine explicitly charac-

terizes numbers as abstract without apparent scruple, and he also makes an overt

appeal to classes. Rather, he is demanding an elucidation of this particular variety

of abstract entity.

But Quine actually knows a great deal about the sorts of things meanings

are supposed to be, and this was already revealed in the first few paragraphs of

his essay. For example, he noted that the meanings of two terms are capable of dif-

fering even though the terms apply to (exactly) the same thing(s), and he provided

what appear to be straightforward examples (including the meanings of terms that

refer to numbers). Surely this is a substantial piece of information about the sorts

of things meanings are supposed to be. It does leave further possible questions

about their nature unanswered, but so far it is difficult to see, for example, that

numbers or classes are any better off on this score. (For instance, we might wonder

whether numbers are mereologically simple or have proper parts.) Quine does not

explain just what it is that makes his question about the nature of meanings notably

conspicuous. This is indeed disturbing, for he has already supplied us with animportant part of a reasonable answer.

The speculation is a proposed explanation for why a theorist might have

thought that the meaningfulness of terms is best understood by appealing to

meant entities. But it is difficult to give this explanation any credit. Quine is

imagining that the theorist is confused about (or unaware of) the distinction

between meaning and reference. For Quine, the reference of a singular term is

its referent (i.e., the thing that it refers to or names), and the reference of a


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212 Michael Jubien

general term is its extension (i.e., the class of things of which the term is true). But

it really isnt plausible that a contemporary proponent of abstract meanings would

think that meaningful singular and general terms actually referred to (or named)

these meanings.4 Surely the relation between a term and its meaning is something

other than reference.

Oddly enough, what is essentially this response was made by McX in

Quines earlier (and also classic) essay, On What There Is.5 There he wrote:

Let us grant, [McX] says, this distinction between meaning and naming

of which you make so much. Let us even grant that is red, pegasizes, etc.,

are not names of attributes. Still, you admit they have meanings. But these

meanings, whether they are named or not, are still universals, and I venture

to say that some of them might even be the very things that I call attributes,

or something to much the same purpose in the end. (11)

And immediately following:

For McX, this is an unusually penetrating speech; and the only way I know

to counter it is by refusing to admit meanings. However, I feel no reluctance

toward refusing to admit meanings, for I do not thereby deny that words and

statements are meaningful. (11)

Quine then went on to reserve the right either to regard meaningfulness as an irre-

ducible matter of fact, or else to analyze it behaviorally. (The latter, of course, is

what he attempted to do a decade later in Word and Object.)

Thus having a meaning was never plausibly held to be naming a meaning

and, as a result,Quines speculation about why a theorist might have posited mean-

ings is not something he should have been entertaining in 1951, having already

seen through it in 1948 (and, moreover, admitting at the time to having no proper

response). Nor is it a speculation we should seriously entertain a half-century later.

The positing of meanings, like the positing of entities of any other sort, abstract or

concrete, is basically a matter of theory, and this is a point of view that Quine

embraced explicitly at the time (for example, in On What There Is itself). Mean-

ings are posited notbecause a simple conceptual error (or confusion) has occurred,

but because they appear to the positing theorist to help explain a variety of phe-

nomena whose occurrence is not in question, at least for the purposes addressed

by the theorizing.

4. For one thing, it would make an immediate mishmash of our ordinary thoughts aboutgrammar. The Evening Star is bright would either be a concatenation of two terms, each of

which referred to a meaning (if is bright were taken to be a general term) and hence wouldexpress no intuitive proposition at all, or else it would be the predication of the meaning of bright

ofthe meaning of the Evening Star (if bright were taken to be a general term, with is signal-

ing predication), thus expressing the wrong intuitive proposition. (Here I am assuming,with Quine

I believe, that the meaning of the Evening Star isnt a physical object.)

5. Originally published in the Review of Metaphysics in 1948 and republished, with minor

changes, in From a Logical Point of View. (References are to the latter version.)


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That brings us to the pronouncement. Quine writes as if we are compelled

to separate sharply the theory of meaning from the theory of reference the

very moment we avoid the error of thinking that our terms refer to abstract mean-

ings. But it really doesnt follow. For example, one way of avoiding this particular

error could include taking the meanings of certain singular terms, notablyproper

names, to be the (generally) concrete entities we normally take them to denote.

Thus meaning and reference would coincide for this class of terms. What then of

the sharp separation? If the meanings of certain of our terms are in fact their very

referents, then the two theories appear to overlap, or at the very least, the claims

of one theory appear to depend in part on claims of the other, so that no sharp

separation would be possible. Avoiding abstract meanings simply does not settle

the matter of how the theories of reference and meaning are properly related, nor

indeed whether meaning and reference may sometimes coincide. It apparently did

not occur to Quine that such a theory might be entertained since, for whatever

reason, he was thinking at the time of meanings as automatically abstract.

But there is a more important problem with the pronouncement: the claim

about the primary business of the theory of meaning once meant entities are aban-

doned. Quine says this primary business is synonymy and analyticity. But how

could this be correct? For one thing, he makes the claim in the midst of attempt-

ing to undermine these very notions! But let us set this aside. The theory of

meaning, in Quines terminology, is what today would be called natural language

semantics. It is the general goal of this theory to account for and systematize the

meaningfulness of natural language in all of its natural glory. Obviously synonymy

and analyticity (or whatever notions best approximate them should Quine be right

about their ultimate illegitimacy) are involved in only a small fraction of our lin-

guistic behavior, actual and potential. Mostof what we say and write is nowhere

near analytic, nor does it involve approximations of nontrivial synonymy. The

theory of meaning has to account for the meaningfulness of all linguistic phe-

nomena, in as systematic and rigorous a way as possible given the empirical data,

regardless of whether it avails itself of meant entities in the effort.

Quines brief conclusionthat meanings may well be abandonedis there-

fore not well supported in this very important paragraph. Despite this, there is a

definite hint of a more substantial criticism in his conclusion, in the characteriza-

tion of meanings as obscure. But only later would he elaborate this thought in

enough detail to be able to respond to the likes of McX with a credible reason for

refusing to admit meanings.

The elaboration occurred in Quines 1957 presidential address to the eastern

division of the American Philosophical Association. The address was entitled,

Speaking of Objects, and it was published in the Proceedings and Addresses ofthe association in 1958.6 Here are the crucial passages:

The positing of attributes is accompanied by no clue as to the circum-

stances under which attributes may be said to be the same or different.This

6. It is reprinted in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia Univer-

sity Press, 1969). Page references are to this printing.


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214 Michael Jubien

is perverse, considering that the very use of terms and the very positing of

objects are unrecognizable to begin with except as keyed in with idioms of

sameness and difference. . . . (19)

There is no denying the access of power that accrues to our conceptual

scheme through the positing of abstract objects. Most of what is gained by

positing attributes, however, is gained equally by positing classes. Classes are

on a par with attributes on the score of abstractness or universality, and they

serve the purposes of attributes so far as mathematics and certainly most

of science are concerned; and they enjoy, unlike attributes, a crystal-clear

identity concept. . . . (21)

On the surface, this is a simple complaint:We just do not have a proper iden-

tity concept for attributes (whereas we do for classes). Quine says that some

philosophers have noticed this gap and tried to fill it. Carnap, he says, proposed

that . . . two sentences aboutx attribute thesame attribute tox if and only if the

two sentences are not merely alike in truth value for each choice of x, but neces-

sarily and analytically so, by sameness of meaning.7 But he immediately rejects

this proposal on the grounds that it depends on the dubious notion of synonymy.

Of course, for the proponent of attributes, synonymy is not at all dubious. But it

is also clear that relying on it in order to supply a condition of the sort Carnap

proposed would be circular.

This raises the important question of exactly what Quine is seeking when he

demands an identity concept for attributes. For the Carnap proposal is a condi-

tion that, if successful, would determine when two linguistic entities (open sen-

tences or, perhaps better,predicates) are linked to the same attribute. In effect,

it would tell us what is required for any two predicates both to express a single

attribute. Thus, taken at face value, it appears to give a necessary and sufficient

condition for the holding of a certain semantic relation in certain special circum-

stances and, far from providing a standard for the identity of attributes, it seems

to presuppose that this concept is already understood.

Quine rejected the specifics of the Carnap proposal while evidently accept-

ing its form. But then his own example of a successful identity concept is not at

all along the same linesit has a strikingly different form. For the crystal-clear iden-

tity concept for classes is the familiar principle of extensionality: classes x and y are

identical if (and only if) they have the same members. On its face, this statement

provides a necessary and sufficient condition for the identity of classes x and y. This

is nota condition determining when certain sorts of linguistic entities are linked in

some way with the same class. The statement of extensionality neither mentions

nor quantifies over any linguistic entities at all. (Thus extensionality is a worthierintuitive candidate for the term identity concept than Carnaps proposal, which

seems better described as a potential linguistic-co-expression-relation concept.)

What is the source of this remarkable discrepancy, and how might we resolve

it? In the next few paragraphs, I offer a hypothesis about the source, one that I

7. P. 19. (Quine cites Carnaps Meaning and Necessity [Chicago: Chicago University Press,

1947], p. 23.)


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think points toward a resolution. The resolution, however, is not one that would

likely have appealed to Quine. Despite this, I believe it is the inevitable terminus

of a straightforward application of the central elements of his thinking on this

matter.

In the early paragraphs of Speaking of Objects (and later, in more detail,

in Word and Object), Quine offers a speculative developmental explanation for

how our language came to include terms that appear to refer to attributes. The

details of this explanation are not crucial for present purposes and neither is the

question of its plausibility. The rough idea is that the conditions under which we

learn language favor the assimilation of terms like water and red to terms like

mama as regards individuative role: in brief, they function as if they referred

to something. But, unlike mama, such words do not correspond to well-integrated,

single physical entities, as the child soon becomes aware (but of course while

having no conception of scattered mereological sums as potential referents). Water

and redness are nevertheless soon understood to be simultaneously present in dif-

ferent locations, unlike mama. Thus Quine held that there is early pressure that

leads us, later, to take such terms as referring to well-integrated, single entities that

are abstractrather than concrete, to entities that all along were somehow felt to

be present whenever there were red things or water. Later still, these abstract enti-

ties are taken to be the meanings of such words, meanings that apply ubiquitously

to the various scattered manifestations. With such variously applicable abstract

meanings at hand we have the beginnings of a theory of how our language con-

nects with the world at large, a theory that Quine is at pains to debunk.

Thus I suggest that when he was developing these thoughts about ontology,

Quine was conceiving of attributes as meanings, and hence as theoretical enti-

ties of a sort whose central function is to be borne a certain characteristic rela-

tion by pieces of language.8 Putting matters in more current terminology, the

characteristic relation is the expression relation, wherein predicates express attri-

butes, which, as a result, are their meanings. Seen this way, the original discrepancy

may not seem so great after all. For classes are also theoretical entities whose

central function is to be borne a certain characteristic relationmembership

albeit by arbitrary things (often including classes themselves). But a new discrep-

ancy now threatens to replace the old. For if an adequate identity concept for

attributes is needed to determine when two predicates express the same attribute,

then the parallel duty for an identity concept for classes should be for it to deter-

mine when two arbitrary entities are members of the same class . And obviously this

is not accomplished by extensionality.

This failure of extensionality to play a parallel role stems, of course, from

the fact that expression is conceived as a many-one relation whereas membershipis one-many. As a result, Quine might maintain that we should not have expected

8. It is important to stress that calling an entity theoretical is not to dilute its status as an

entity. (For Quine, even physical objects are theoretical entities.) It is merely to suggest that we

have no direct access to such entities, that wepositthat they exist, for example in order to help

explain the flux of experience. The only non-theoretical entities, if there are any, are those of im-

mediate experience.


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216 Michael Jubien

the identity concept for classes to parallel that for attributes in the first place. But

I believe this is an inadequate response. Had Quine not been so absorbed by the

conception of attributes as meaningsand hence by the theory of meaning as the

theoretical basis for their postulationI believe he would have required an iden-

tity concept for attributes to parallel precisely that for classes, and would not have

seen Carnaps proposal as having the appropriate form.

As soon as we set the role of attributes as meanings aside, it becomes appar-

ent that there is a deeper characteristic relation that attributes are borne, a more

fundamentally ontological relation, one having intimately to do with what attri-

butes are. This relation, which exactly parallels class membership, is of course the

relation of instantiation (or exemplification). Typical proponents of attributes may

indeed wish to invoke them in the theory of meaning. But serving as meanings is

not part of the intuitive essence of attributes. According to proponents, there

would have been attributes even if there had never been tokens of linguistic enti-

ties in search of meanings. What is of the essence of attributes is that they are the

sort of things that can be instantiated, just as it is of the essence of classes that

they are the sort of things that can have members. (This, of course, is not to suggest

that a requirement for being an entity of either variety is actually being borne the

relevant characteristic relation by something.)

It would be absurd to think that Quine was unaware of the importance of

instantiation for attributes. But I suggest that the intensity of his effort to come to

a naturalistically acceptable understanding of language led him to underrate it at

this point, and to focus instead on the role of attributes as meanings of linguistic

entities. In his consideration of the ontological credentials of attributes, I believe

Quine was simply distracted from the true heart of the matter.

To summarize,attributes are first and foremost the ontological basis for what

it is for things to be the ways that they are, not the basis for the workings of natural

language. They may indeed also provide us with a basis for a theory of language,

but if they do, it is only because they plausibly achieve this prior and language-

independent metaphysical goal. It therefore seems to me that Quine should not

have been thinking of expression as the relation intrinsically and characteristically

bound up with attributes, but rather of instantiation. Like class membership, instan-

tiation is a one-many relation between arbitrary entities and the posits of a strictly

ontologicaltheory having nothing automatic to do with language. Had Quine been

thinking this way, he would never have seen Carnaps proposal as a legitimate can-

didate for the role of identity concept for attributes. He would rather have been

led in the direction of candidates genuinely parallel to extensionality.

So let us briefly revisit extensionality. This principle states that classes x and

y are identical if and only if they have the same members, that is, if and only if anyentity z belongs to x if and only if it belongs to y.9 Thus it has the logical form of

a universally quantified biconditional the left side of whose matrix is the formula

9. Technically, in certain formal versions of the theory, such as first-order theories with iden-

tity, it is only necessary to assert that sets are identical ifthey have the same members. That they

are identical only ifthey have the same members is a direct consequence of the logical axioms

governing the identity symbol.


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x = y and whose right side states a universally quantified condition, in the vocab-

ulary of the theory of classes, in which x and y occur free. The initial universal

quantifiers on x and y are understood as restricted to classes. In the context of

a fully general theory of classes, the universal quantifier on z on the right side has

a range that includes but is not limited to classes. In pure class theories the range

would include only classes. In certain very restricted impure theories, classes

might be excluded. But both classes and non-classes would be quantified over in

a fully general theory.

Now, it is distinctive of attributes, as Quine explicitly noted, that two may

have precisely the same instances. As a consequence, attributes would not be done

justice by an identity concept that simply mimicked extensionality, with instan-

tiation replacing membership and the ranges of the quantifiers appropriately

adjusted to attributes in place of classes. But suppose the attribute theorist instead

proposed that attributes x and y are identical if and only if they instantiate the same

attributes. This statement has the logical form of a universally quantified bicondi-

tional the left side of whose matrix is the formula x = y and whose right side states

a universally quantified condition, in the vocabulary of the theory of attributes,

in which x and y occur free. It is entirely parallel to extensionality in pure

class theories because the universal quantifier on the right side ranges only over

attributes.10

I believe that this formulation faces no difficulty that is not paralleled by a

difficulty for extensionality, and that it is where Quine should have arrived on his

own principles, taking instantiation to be the characteristic relation bound up with

attributes rather than expression. (I will return to the question of internal diffi-

culties in a moment.) At the same time, this principle clearly involves a substan-

tial commitment to a rather abundant realm of attributes, so that attributes

instantiate further attributes, and there are guaranteed to be enough attributes to

ensure that where x and y are distinct, there is some attribute that one instanti-

ates but the other does not. Thus the proposal might be rejected even by some

who favor attributes. Their misgivings would be of a fundamental metaphysical

nature. But our purpose here is not to assess the principle, just to note its avail-

ability. There may be other principles with a similar logical structure.

Thus I believe the original interpretive discrepancy is best resolved by con-

cluding that something along the lines of this principle would have satisfied

Quines formal demand for an identity concept for attributes. But I also believe

that a fundamental problem would have remained, one that has a counterpart in

taking extensionality to be the identity concept for classes. The problem is that

both principles quantify over the very entities whose identity concepts they are

supposed to be supplying. On Quines explicit principles, we are not in a positionto posit, and hence to quantify over,entities of a given sort until the matter of their

sameness and difference has been settled. But the contemplated principle quanti-

fies over attributes, and extensionality quantifies over classes (in both pure and

general versions of the theory of classes). I am not questioning the truth of either

10. Though details may be arranged so as to extend the range beyond attributes if desired,

thus allowing for a fully general theory.


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218 Michael Jubien

principle; for all I know they are both true. What bothers me is the very idea that

such a principle is neededthat we need an identity concept for entities of the

relevant sort at all. What bothers me is the very idea of, and hence the demand

for, an identity concept for Xs, no matter what sort X might be.

Suppose there are ghosts, or angels, or unicorns, or numbers, or quarks, or

classes. Pick any sort of entity you favor (or disfavor). In order either to postulate

that such entities exist orto deny that they exist, we must havesome idea of what

they are (or would be) like. Given such an idea, the postulation (or denial) may

or may not be right. Such entities may or may not exist. Now, if they really do exist,

then how could it be other than automatic that each one of them is identical with

itself, and that no two of them are identical with each other? How could it be that

they get to stand (or fail to stand) in the identity relation as a result of first

meeting (or failing to meet) some othercondition relying on some otherconcept

(such as membership or instantiation)? And if they really dont exist, is it not nev-

ertheless true that if they had, then each of them would have been identical with

itself (etc.)? How could identity pose a problem for genuinely postulated orgen-

uinely denied entities? Once it is conceded that entities of any sort really have

been postulated (or denied), it seems to me thereby to have been presupposed

that there is no problem about identity for such entities.

Quine certainly writes as if attributes have indeed been postulated, and he

even tells us important things about what they are supposed to be like. Perhaps

he should not have made this concession. Perhaps his underlying instinct was that

attributes are too obscure even to be postulated. Perhaps they are like borogoves,

and no one knows enough about them even to assert (or deny) that they exist. But

this is a very rocky row to hoe. I will not pursue it, except to note that numbers

seem to be no better off, and that many terms enter our language and evidently

refer successfully to things even though early users had very incomplete and often

very inaccurate (perhaps even inconsistent) beliefs about the natures of the enti-

ties involved.

These considerations prompt an obvious and attractive hypothesis. It is that

identity is a concept in no need of analysis, and one that applies in the very same

way regardless of the nature of the entities involved. Mere existence drags iden-

tity along for free, thus providing a more plausible understanding of the Quinean

slogan, No entity without identity. If identity is indeed primitive, then we should

conclude that the search for an identity concept for Xs is misguided at the

outset, regardless of the nature of X.

Closely bound up with this is the issue of whether there is just one concept

of identity, prevailing independently of the nature of the entities in question, or

whether there is a multitude of more restricted identity-like concepts, corre-sponding to a multitude of relevantly distinct sorts of entities. To look for iden-

tity conditions for Xsappears to presuppose that identity is notperfectly general,

that there is a multitude of identity-like concepts, none of them identity itself:

quark-identity, class-identity, attribute-identity, and so on but, shockingly, nojust

plain identity. It is extremely hard to believe that this can be right. It simply does

not seem right that distinct, standardly accepted claims of identity involving dif-

ferent sorts of objects are really covert assertions that different relations are in


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play. If the is in the following sentences is the so called is of identity (a con-

troversial claim for entirely different reasons), then it is hard to believe that it

expresses different relations from one sentence to another: (1) Five is the sum of

two and three; (2) Paris is the capital of France; (3) the null set is the only set with

no members. Perhaps more vividly, it seems that denials of identity between objects

of dramatically different sorts make perfect sense and are of course true. (The

number two is not identical with either Paris or with the set whose members are

the null set and its unit set.) If there is no fully general relation of identity, but

rather just kind-restricted, identity-like relations, then either these claims make no

sense, or else they are covert denials of very surprising kinds. (In saying that two

is not identical with Paris, would we be denying that two is number-identicalor

city-identicalwith Paris?)

I am strongly inclined to stick with our ordinary instincts and to think that

the linguistic evidence that there is just one concept of identity is decisive. Such a

conclusion puts the demand for identity concepts for various sorts of entities

under a heavy veil of suspicion. This suspicion is reinforced by the simple consid-

eration that it really seems that there is no plausible way to analyzefully general

identity. Itseems as simple as a relation could be. It just does not invite analysis

in any simpler terms. This is underscored by the fact that Quines paradigm case,

extensionality, if understood as an analysis, would be an analysis of class-identity

in terms of class membership. It is very odd to think that the latter relation is

simpler than the former, and even odder to think that we could understand

the latter without already grasping the former. We cannot intelligibly ask what the

members of a class are until we somehow already have control of the class. If the

analytic project would thus fail in such cases of restricted identity, we should

surely expect it to fail equally for genuine identity-at-large.

*****

In Word and ObjectQuines primary intensional target ispropositions, and the dis-

missal of attributes comes largely as a corollary. The rejection of propositions in

Word and Object mirrors the rejection of attributes in Speaking of Objects, so I

will mention it only briefly. The central charge is the same: that there is no stan-

dard of identity. And this charge is again pressed under the assumption that such

a standard would have directly to do with relations between linguistic entities and

the contentious posits:

The question of identity of propositions is the question how two eternal sen-

tences should be related in order that, where p and q stand for them, webe entitled to say that [q] is the same proposition as [p] rather than another.

(200)

In more contemporary terms, the claim is that we need a standard for

two eternal sentences to express the same proposition. Quine says that a

typical answerreally Carnaps attribute condition, modified to the case of

propositionsis that they do so when they are synonymous, and he proceeds to


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220 Michael Jubien

undermine this account by appealing to his familiar criticisms of synonymy

and analyticity. He is therefore considering propositions to have the fundamental

role of serving as meanings of sentences and, as with attributes, is not consider-

ing the possibility of a more fundamental ontological account of the alleged

entities.

In the case of propositions, such an account would very naturally have

nothing at all to do with the linguistic expression relation, but rather with the con-

stituency relation. Propositions are generally conceived by their proponents to be

complex entities having constituents, and the constituents of a proposition stand

to one another in various logical relations therein. Once the constituents and the

logical relations are pinned down, so is the proposition.Without offering a specific

proposal (and not favoring propositions myself),11 it again seems inevitable that

any plausible proposal would parallel extensionality (and the above principle for

attribute-identity as well), with p = q on the left side (under proposition-

restricted quantification), and with the right side stating a condition on p and

q involving constituency, logical relations, and quantification over whatever enti-

ties are taken as the constituents of propositions. Of course, the proposed con-

stituents would very likely include both attributes andpropositions themselves.

A proposal of this sort would therefore appear to satisfy Quines formal

demand for an identity concept for propositions, and if plausible, would be much

superior to the rejected synonymy proposal. But it would replicate the problem

of quantifying over the entities whose identity concept it purports to provide. As

before, we seem led inevitably to the conclusion that propositions need no prior

identity concept any more than do entities of any other variety.

*****

One might accept these recent conclusions and still hold that Quine has raised a

serious problem for the positing of attributes and propositions, but that he has

simply mislabeled it as a problem about identity. But I dont believe this is correct.

I will focus on the case of attributes. Quines basic charge is that we do not know

how to fill in the right side of the following universal biconditional:

(1) For all predicates p and q, and attributes x, p expresses x and q

expresses x, if and only if . . . .p . . . . q . . . . x . . . . .

I suggested above that any proposal conforming to (1) seems to presuppose a clear

and prior concept of identity for attributes, simply by quantifying over them. (This

may be brought into sharper focus by noting, trivially, that for arbitrary entities X,Y, and Z, and binary relation R, for both X and Y to bear R to Z is simply for X

to bear R to Z and for Y to bear R to some W, where W Z.) Of course, if we

knew in general what it meant for a predicate to express an attribute, then a sat-

isfactory way of filling out (1) would evidently be at hand.

11. For details, see Propositions and the Objects of Thought, Philosophical Studies 104

(2001):4762.


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In other words, if we could fill in the right side of (2) to Quines satisfaction,

a response to his original complaint would follow immediately:

(2) For all predicates p and attributes x, p expresses x if and only if . . . .

p . . . . q . . . . x . . . . .

Thus it seems to me that the root of the trouble is not attribute-identity, nor the

nature of attributes themselves, but rather a supposed semantic relation that is

invoked by theorists who propose to enlist attributes and propositions as mean-

ings. Quine frequently disparages attributes and propositions as obscure, for

example calling them half-entities, inaccessible to identity (Speaking of

Objects, 23). But we have found that these charges are not well supported by the

considerations he actually advanced. At least, these alleged entities seem in them-

selves to be no more obscure nor inaccessible to identity than do other abstract

entities. But if the intuitive basis of his complaint is really that the expression rela-

tion has not been adequately explained, then Quine may be on firmer ground.

Here I believe there is a useful parallel with astrology. Astrologers hold that

the planets influence human character, behavior, and circumstances. Most of us

find this view to be obscure. But it isnt obscure because the planets are obscure

entities. Its obscure because their alleged influence hasnt been adequately

explained. The problem lies with supposed relations between us and the planets,

not with the planets themselves. Astrologys theoretical entities are themselves

beyond reasonable suspicion.Although this perhaps cannot be said with equal con-

fidence about the entities of intensional semantics, this appears to me merely to

be a consequence of their abstractness, and not a consequence of any of Quines

more specific complaints.

What the intensional semanticist owes us is therefore an analysis or clear

characterization of the linguistic expression relation, or elsemore likelya per-

suasive case that it is reasonable to take it as a theoretical primitive (like mem-

bership or, perhaps, instantiation). Quine would of course respond that no strictly

naturalistic analysis or characterization is available, and that the entities them-

selves are sufficiently obscureeven conspicuously sothat the theoretical edge

that they admittedly provide is outweighed. But we have found the charge of con-

spicuous obscurity to be unpersuasive.

*****

I want to conclude by raising a further question for Quine. Although it is some-

times thought that his only departure from nominalism is his acceptance of classes,there is another departure of perhaps greater significance. In Section 8 of Word

and Object, in defining the important notion ofstimulus meaning, Quine explicitly

appeals to a certain variety of event forms, which he callsstimulations, but which

intuitively are types of stimulations. The stimulus meaning of an occasion sen-

tence is intended to be an extensional and behavioristically acceptable substitute

for the unacceptable intuitive notion of a (reified) meaning. Its supposed to be

the best that a behavioristically inclined extensionalist can do. Quine writes,


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222 Michael Jubien

Yet a stimulation must be conceived for these purposes not as a dated par-

ticular event but as a universal, a repeatable event form . . . [There is] a com-

pelling reason for taking the stimulations as universals; viz., the strong

conditional in the definition of stimulus meaning. For consider again the

affirmative stimulus meaning of a sentence S: the class . . . of all those stim-

ulations that would prompt assent to S. If the stimulations were taken as

events rather than as event forms, then [it] would have to be a class of events

which largely did not and will not happen . . . Certainly it is hopeless non-

sense to talk thus of unrealized particulars and try to assemble them into

classes. Unrealized entities have to be construed as universals. (34)

Stimulus meanings are ordered pairs of (certain) classes of stimulations (in

Quines special sense). The stimulations are supposed to be such as would elicit a

subjects assent or dissent in the presence of interrogative tokens of the occasion

sentences whose subject-relative stimulus meaning is being defined. Examples of

stimulations in this sense include evolving ocular irradiation patterns between

properly timed blindfoldings (34). Thus, and roughly, Quine is taking it that, say,

for him at a given time, there is a certain definite class of ocular irradiation pat-

terns that would elicit his assent when queried Rabbit? and a certain definite

(non-overlapping) class of such patterns that would elicit his dissent. When these

classes are fully enhanced so as to include non-visual stimulations, their ordered

pair is thestimulus meaning ofRabbitforQuine atthe relevant time. (I am sup-

pressing the further parameter of modulus.)

As Quine uses the terms, universals are not necessarily intensional entities.

(For example, he regards classes as universals.)12 But obviously his overall posi-

tion is severely compromised if these universals are intensional. And what assur-

ance have we that they are not?

Quine does not distinguish physical objects and events. They are just the

material contents of regions of spacetime. (See Word and Object, p. 171.) Thus a

temporally extended ocular irradiation is just a four-dimensional physical entity

that includes at least part of (a temporal part of) an eye, undergoing a certain

ongoing and likely varying interaction with light. So why are Quines stimula-

tions not in fact attributes of such four-dimensional spatiotemporal entities? Why

is the event form, being an (appropriate part of an) eye irradiated with such and

such (time- and location-varying) intensity (and frequency, etc.) and in such and

such (time- and location-varying) pattern (etc.), not simply an attribute, whose

instances (if any) are just certain physical objects?

This is a very difficult question for Quine (and his interpreters). It does not

appear to me that he addresses it directly in Word and Objector in his other mainwritings. But it is clear that the project of dispensing with intensional entities

cannot succeed unless stimulations are plausibly seen as extensionaluniversals, like

classes. At the same time, it is clear that they cannot be classes, for the very reason

that Quine provided: to be taken as classes they would have to have unrealized

events as members. Quine (to his credit, I would say) is an unreconstructed

12. See Speaking of Objects, p. 21 (quoted above) and also On What There Is, p. 9.


15/17


opponent of the unrealized, and it is unreasonable to attribute to him any

concession whatsoever on this score.

So stimulations are not classes, and Quines ontological scruples do not

permit them to be attributes, for attributes are intensional entities. Thus they must

be some other sort of universal, a sort that does not feature the undesirable inten-

sionality of attributes. The signal defect of attributes, in Quines thinking, is pre-

cisely that more than one of them may have just the same exemplifications. Is there

room for the view that stimulations are unlike attributes in this respect?

One philosopher who has posited entities that would fill this bill is George

Bealer.13 Very briefly, Bealer distinguishes qualities from concepts, with qualities

structuring the world, and concepts structuring our thinking about the world. To

pick one of his illustrations, we may think of a certain single worldly manifesta-

tion either as triangularor as trilateral. These are two distinct though necessarily

coextensive shape concepts. But the world itself features only one corresponding

shape quality: a shape that we happen to think of in different ways. Thus, while our

concepts may be distinct though necessarily coextensive, the same is not true of

genuine qualities. Necessarily coextensive qualities are identical. Triangularity and

trilaterality are simply two different ways of thinking about what, in nature, is a

single shape. Bealers qualities, then, do not share the proliferative feature of

attributes that makes them so distasteful to Quine. So something like Bealers

qualities may be Quines best option for construing stimulations (and hence stim-

ulus meanings) in a way that doesnt compromise his effort to provide an exten-

sional and behaviorally based understanding of natural language. But there are

difficulties.

If Quine were to take this course, he would be on a slippery slope toward

accepting a single quality for each class of necessarily coextensive attributes that

are normally thought to be exemplified in the world. For there seems to be no

principled way to reify qualities for patterns that are involved in the stimulation

of our sense organs, but to refuse to do so for patterns having nothing to do with

stimulation. The result could prove to be an ontology too rich in universals for

Quines taste. It certainly does not appear that he favors anything like it in Word

and Object.

But there is a deeper difficulty beyond the mere prospect of a possibly

unwelcome ontological inflation. For (what I will now call) stimulation-qualities

play a role in Quines approach to meaning that appears to give them a dimen-

sion of intensionality which, while perhaps not offending on the score of prolifer-

ation, may be expected to offend just as badly on the score of their modal features.

Quine comes very close to this conclusion in saying that [u]nrealized entities have

to be construed as universals (34).The shunned unrealized entities that stimulation-qualities are invoked to

avoid are, intuitively, merely possible events which, had they actually occurred,

would have been stimulations of sense organs. Continuing intuitively, such merely

possible events may or may not have actually realized duplicates. Any case in

13. See Quality and Concept(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). Unlike Quine, Bealer has no

general aversion to intensionality.


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224 Michael Jubien

which there are no actual duplicate events is captured in Quines treatment by a

complete failure of the relevant stimulation-quality to be exemplified (at any time,

etc.). Consider, then, a specific such unexemplified stimulation-quality S that

belongs to the affirmative stimulus meaning of some occasion sentence (for some

subject, time, etc.). For S to do what Quine needs it to do in his account, it must

be that if S had been exemplified in an appropriate setting (including the right sort

of query, etc.), the subject would have assented. Clearly this strong conditional

cannot reasonably be regarded as vacuously true. (For example, that would

evidently consign S to the negative stimulus meaning as well.) But a typicaltreat-

ment of such a conditional would require it to be possible for S to be exemplified

in order for it to be non-vacuously true. And even what little Quine himself

says about such conditionals (in Word and Object) appears to have a similar

presupposition.

Quine has a general suspicion of the often erratic strong (i.e., subjunctive)

conditional,but is willing to bend in cases that reflect dispositions, which he regards

as . . . built-in, enduring structural traits (223). Thus, to say that a dry piece of

sugar would dissolve if immersed in water is merely to say that it is soluble, and

this is held to be unproblematic because solubility is taken to be a structural trait.

In this vein, Quine pins the vital conditional in the definition of stimulus meaning

on a disposition, . . . albeit unnamed: some subtle neural condition, induced by

language-learning, that disposes the subject to assent or dissent from a certain sen-

tence in response to certain stimulations (223). But it is very hard to believe that

a neural condition induced by language-learning could ground a disposition to

assent to a stimulation unless such a stimulation could occur, that is, unless the cor-

responding stimulation-quality could have been exemplified. More generally, the

very notion of a dispositionhowever it might be analyzedseems to rely for its

coherence on the possibility of its precipitating conditions being realized.

Thus Quines account of stimulus meaning appears to require that any unex-

emplified stimulation-quality might have been exemplified, whether we are think-

ing from the perspective of contemporary approaches to the strong conditional or

from Quines preferred perspective of dispositions. But if so, then this is precisely

the sort of de re modal attribution that Quine rails against in Section 41 of Word

and Object(and elsewhere). He finds such attributions to yield baffling . . . talk

of a difference between necessary and contingent attributes of an object (199)

a distinction that . . . however venerable . . . is surely indefensible . . . (199200).

It thus appears that stimulation-qualities may avoid the unwanted, proliferative

intensionality of attributes only at the cost of a covert appeal to the equally

unwanted notion of essence (which Quine characterized in Two Dogmas as . . .

the forerunner . . . of the modern notion of intension or meaning [22]).Ironically, this same specter may be seen to haunt even classes. To the con-

temporary ear, the claim that any class has its members of necessity surely has the

ring of truth. Because this claim is clearly de re, it goes well beyond extensional-

ity (and even beyond its necessitation). But for Quine the real issue isnt truth or

falsity, but rather intelligibility. He is deeply committed to the view that we cannot

really make sense of such apparent claims. But the difficulty of sustaining this posi-

tion is very stark in the case of classes.To illustrate, it seems to entail that we cannot


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make sense of such a question as whether the class whose only member is the

moon would have existed if the moon had not. Since Quine is a committed oppo-

nent of mere possibilia, one expects that he would be very inclined to deny that

the class would exist if the moon did not. The strong conditional involved here is

certainly no murkier than the one involved in the definition of stimulus meaning,

and clearly Quine would deny that there is a class whose sole member is the Foun-

tain of Youth. But his official rejection of essence seemingly prevents him from

arriving at the same (conditionalized) conclusion for the unit class of the moon.

*****

For the reasons detailed above, I find Quines criticisms of intensional entities to

be ultimately unpersuasive.At the same time there is no denying that they did per-

suade legions of philosophers over a long stretch of time, and that their influence

has not yet run its course. What may be more important is that these criticisms

exerted substantial pressure on advocates of intensionality to think very hard

about fundamental questions and make their case in the clearest and most per-

suasive way they could muster. It is a hallmark of all of Quines philosophical work

that it directs us back to very basic issues and compels us to think as carefully

about them as we can.14

14. I am grateful to Gina Calderone, Geoffrey Georgi, Jeffrey King, and George Wilson for

helpful comments on an earlier draft

jubien, michael – on quine's rejection of intensional entities.pdf

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