Re: Cerberus and Quine

From: Paul Holbach (paulholbachSPAMBAN_at_freenet.de)
Date: 02/22/05 

Date: 22 Feb 2005 14:58:14 -0800

> examachine@gmail.com wrote:

> The main problem is this. Talk about Cerberus is trivial. There is no
> need for Quine to have written those passages.
> Those facts about the
> physical existence of Cerberus are known to any sensible person.

Quine doesn´t intend to inform us that it is not the case that
Cerberus exist.
Quine´s intention is to draw some crucial and non-trivial logical
distinctions!

> What I want to say is this: contrary to what Quine thinks, it is
> obvious that there is more than one sense of existence.

That is far from obvious!

> Some well known
> senses are mathematical existence, literary existence,
> and mythological
> existence.

I think your fundamental mistake is to confuse different categories of
existents with different senses of "exist". For example, mathematical
objects (if there are any) are not different from physical objects
because they exist in another sense of "exist" than physical objects
do, but because they belong to different ontological categories.

> If "cardinal" is in the corpus of mathematics research,
> Cerberus is in the corpus of mythological research.
> (Note how I use
> "if" here) These *uses* do not have to make
> the additional claim that
> they are actually referring to physical entities
> in flesh and blood out
> there, ...

The relation of reference may certainly hold between linguistic
expressions and non-physical entities.

> The mythological existence has a DISTINCT MEANING from physical
> existence, it is existence in the VAGUE OR METAPHORICAL
> SENSE, which
> means that the noun phrase in question
> refers to something that is
> object-like, something that could exist, or
> COULD BE IMAGINED TO EXIST.
> That is a more abstract sense of existence than the "ordinary"
> existence which Quine is obsessed with.

Your concept /existence in the vague or metaphorical sense/ is itself
very vague and hardly comprehensible. And what is your nebulous
predicate /being object-like/ supposed to mean?

I´m afraid, all you do is obscure ontology completely!

> The better way to make sense of
> its meaning is, I say, its PHYSICAL EXISTENCE
> IN THE CORPUS OF
> MYTHOLOGY. Within this corpus,
> there are definitions of this
> "theoretical" or "fictional" entity, and
> the sentences there tell you
> "Now, suppose that in some world, this entity existed.
> Then, what would
> happen to this entity?"

One may certainly entertain free thoughts about what might happen to
Pegasus if it existed.
But thinking meaningfully "about" Pegasus doesn´t necessitate there
being something to which the name "Pegasus" refers.

> That's not too far from metaphorical uses of
> words in general. Here, the context sets up a
> similarity-relation
> between ordinary "existence" and "existence" in this
> domain. Surely,
> the students of mythology do not believe that
> these entities physically
> exist, but in an exam they can answer questions like
> "How many legs
> does Cerberus have?". What is the true answer to this
> question? In the
> context of the exam, it is determinate
> (or not according to whether
> Cerberus has been described in detail).
> You can't go Quine, and say,
> this question presupposes the existence of
> Cerberus, which doesn't
> exist, so it's nonsense. It is a sensible question,
> and it has a
> sensible answer, that is also objectively verifiable.

The question "How many heads does Cerberus have?" is non-factual. Well,
how could the number of Cerberus´s heads possibly be a matter of fact,
when--as a matter of fact--it is not the case that Cerberus exists.
So the only logically reasonable answer is as follows:
"The ancient Greeks conceived of Cerberus as a 3-headed hellhound."

This statement is a historical truth, which in no way implies the
existence of Cerberus.

The inference from

"x conceives of/imagines y as F"

or

"x believes y to be F"

to

"y exists"

is clearly invalid!

The remedy here is simply to give up the unwarranted notion that
talking sense always necessitates there being things talked about. The
notion springs, no doubt, from
essentially the same confusion which was just previously railed
against; then it was confusion between meanings and objects named, and
now it is confusion between meanings and things talked about."

[Quine, W. V. (1982). /Methods of logic/ (4th ed.). Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press. (p. 265)(Original work published 1950)]

> What's worse, Quine then rambles on about
> why we should make an
> ontological commitment to such fictional things as "mathematical
> objects", because they are part of the corpus of science.

No, because their existence is implied by the undeniable mathematical
truths we possess.

> Should we make an ontological commitment
> to every word in scientific talk?

No.

> Cannot
> there be any metaphors, any abstractions,
> and abuses of language, any
> distortions, and fictions in scientific talk?
> How is that commitment
> different from commitment to the physical existence of
> Cerberus? These
> are not clear. And we're still wasting bandwidth
> because of these
> immature ideas.

The point is that Quine´s reasons for committing himself to the
existence of mathematical entities prevail over the reasons for
committing oneself to the existence of (equally abstract!) metaphors,
abstractions and fictions.

> Even in the corpus of physics,
> you can find many senses of existence.

Once again, you notoriously confuse kinds of existents with senses of
"existence".

> The existence of a wave function is nothing like
> the existence of an
> observable. The existence of a singularity is not
> like the existence of
> an ordinary region in our universe.
> The existence of "sum of histories"
> is not like the existence of present.
> The existence of time is not like
> the existence of space! The existence of a possibility
> is not like the
> existence of a chair! The existence of an "orbit"
> is not like the
> existence of a spacecraft. The existence of a photon may
> not be like
> the existence of a physical law! I am sincerely
> hoping that, unlike
> Quine, I won't have to explain every trivial thing on earth.

Let me paraphrase this passage of yours so as to reveal its true
meaning:

"A wave function is unlike an observable. A singularity os unliek an
ordinary region in our universe. "Sum of histories" are unlike the
present. Time is unlike space! A possibility is unlike a chair! An
"orbit" is unlike spacecraft. A photon may be unlike a physical law.

Do you discern what I mean?

(It´s especially noun phrases of the type "the existence of a F" which
seem to lead you astray ontologically.)

Whatever entities there may be, different entities are different due to
having different properties, and not due to existing in different
senses of "exist"!

Is that really so hard to see ...?

> The point of being a physicalist is being able
> to distinguish between
> the "true" sense of existence, e.g. physical existence ...

Here, Quine would probably reply that you´re trading ontology for
ideology by simply stipulating that the the true (literal) sense of
"existence" be "physical existence", such that the concepts of being
physical and of existence become (necessarily) co-extensional.
Such a stipulative semantic narrowing of the concept of existence seems
groundless to me!

> ... and other
> metaphorical senses of existence
> that are in our language.
> "There is a party tomorrow" .

If one regards events as entities, as eg Davidson does, then the
there-is construction in "There is a party tomorrow" quite normally
states the future existence of something, viz. a party.
There is nothing metaphorical about "there is" here.
Events and things surely belong to different ontological categories,
but they do not fall under different conceptual senses of "is
there"/"exists".

> There is no point on insisting that there is
> in fact only sense of existence that really corresponds to physical
> existence. We already know that, it follows easily if you are a
> physicalist.

? - What Quine and I emphatically maintain is that the concept of
existence is unambiguous, but what we definitely don´t do is regard
"existence" and "physical existence" as synonymous.

"I shall find no use for the narrow sense which some philosophers have
given to 'existence', as against 'being'; viz., concreteness in
space-time. If any such special connotation threatens in the present
pages, imagine 'exists' replaced by 'is'. When the Parthenon and the
number 7 are said to be, no distinction in the sense of 'be' need be
intended. The Parthenon is indeed a placed and dated object in
space-time while the number 7 (if such there be) is another sort of
thing; but this a difference between the objects concerned and not
between senses of 'be'."

[Quine, W. V. (1982). /Methods of logic/ (4th ed.). Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press. (p. 263)]

> The trouble is that, he isn't consistent with application
> of his own ideas. He thinks Cerberus a fiction, doesn't exist (wow!)
> and then says "but a function space" exists. What!
> In what sense does
> the function space C exist!!!??

I´m not being sure whether Quine explicitly affirms the existence of
the function space, for being a realist with regard to *some*
mathematical objects does not entail being a realist with regard to
*all* possible mathematical objects.
Anyway, I don´t understand your question above, because if the space
function exists, it exists in the very same sense of "exists" as all
other existents do.

Regards
PH

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