Invited Talks

Title: ANTI-REALISM ABOUT SINGULAR PSYCHOLOGICAL CAUSATION

Abstract: Michael Dummett famously argued for the dethroning of truth and falsity in the theory of meaning. That is, we should not think of our use of language as being regulated by our grasp of truth-conditions. Our acquisition of language is a matter of our learning when it’s right to say what, and what the consequences are of accepting a statement. We can display our understanding of language only through the use we make of it. At first, this approach seems very helpful in thinking about our understanding of causation. A simple, plausible idea is that for X to be a cause of Y is for manipulating X to be a way of changing Y. Causes are levers we can use to make a difference to their effects. Though it seems illuminating, this analysis seems bound to be circular. The trouble is not exactly that it requires the idea of a causal connection between X and Y to explain the idea of a causal connection between X and Y. The problem is that in spelling out what it is to be manipulating X one seems compelled to use causal concepts.

Manipulating X is a matter of causally affecting it, and the manipulation must not itself directly affect the outcome Y, for instance. Here Dummett’s idea that we can distinguish between an explicit and an implicit grasp of a definition seems helpful. We can think of an understanding of causation as displayed in our capacity for agency. We do in fact act on X, without necessarily reflecting on our own agency, and when we observe our actions on X to be correlated with changes in Y we conclude that X causes Y. Our understanding of this conclusion is then further displayed in the consequences it has for our further agency. This is a plausible picture that works well with developmental accounts of how children learn about causation, and also fits with the key role that scientists give to experiment in establishing causation. At least, it works very well when we consider general causation, a relation between variables. The picture is less persuasive when we consider singular causation, a relation between concrete individual events. Suppose I find out that my father’s death many years ago was caused by the action of some unknown individual. I might find this out by learning the details of a forensic investigation from back then. This might have big practical implications for the rest of my life. But the implications for agency here seem to have little to do with my having learnt anything about what I can manipulate to affect what. If we consider only the use of causal concepts, we must acknowledge that the inputs to my causal judgement here seem to have little to do with the consequences of my judgement. Two quite different sorts of consideration seem to have been haphazardly bolted together in giving the grounds of my judgement and its consequences. It’s only when we give due weight to my grasp of the truth-conditions of the singular causal judgement that we can find intelligible the relation between the grounds and the consequence of the judgement. So we have to explain how my grasp of truth conditions here can be acquired and displayed.

Title: Is Language a Rational Activity?

Abstract:  Dummett famously claims that language is a rational activity, in the sense that it is guided by the first-personal recognition of reasons.  I question that claim by appeal to the idea that the capacity for language use is more primitive than, and a prior condition of, the capacity to recognize reasons.  I suggest that Dummett’s claim is motivated in part by the assumption that the only alternative is to view language use as a causal process in which human beings figure as natural objects rather than intelligent agents.  But I argue that that assumption is mistaken.  We can respect the intuition that linguistic capacities are more primitive than rational capacities while still maintaining that their exercise involves a distinctively human form of intelligent agency.

Title: Dummett's View that the Meaning of 'Natural Number' is Inherently Vague

Abstract:  In “The philosophical significance of Gödel’s theorem” (1963), Michael Dummett declares that as a consequence of the indefinite extensibility of Gödel incompleteness, “the meaning of ‘natural number’ is inherently vague”.  Against this view, I hold that there is a notion of arithmetical truth intrinsic to the meaning of ‘natural number’ which is not indefinitely extensible nor vague, and coincides with the theorems of first-order Peano Arithmetic.  On this notion, a true sentence in the language of arithmetic is an arithmetical truth just in case it can be proved by first-order logic from sentences in the language of arithmetic that follow directly from a clear and conceptually correctunderstanding of the structure and arithmetic of the natural numbers.

Title: Reconceiving Proof and the a priori: a Fourth Way

Abstract: In his book Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics, Michael Dummett insists upon the a priori character of mathematical proof. While he asserts various implausible consequences of rejecting this a priori character, he gives no positive theory of the a priori with the resources to address objections to it. In this paper, I offer an account of proof and the a priori that aims to integrate epistemology, the theory of understanding, and a truth-conditional account of content. The approach outlines a Fourth Way, distinct from those Quine, Gödel, and Carnap (and other varieties of conventionalism). The approach does, however, require rejection of Dummett’s conception of the relation between meaning and metaphysics.

Title: Is there any such thing as Fregean Ontology?

Abstract: In Chapter 14 of Frege: Philosophy of Language Dummett observed that when we pose the fundamental question of ontology, ‘What is there?’, our intention is to ask, ‘What kinds of thing are there?’; and from this he inferred that any approach to the question must be informed by an understanding of what the relevant kinds are.  Dummett then suggested that Frege set a new course for ontological enquiry by establishing that the central ontological kinds are the logical categories that constitute the Fregean hierarchy, the categories of object, first-level concept, and so on.  I will hold that this suggestion is mistaken.  Moreover, that it is mistaken is, I will suggest, a consequence of a distinctive feature of Dummett’s own interpretation of Frege, namely the contrast he draws between simple and complex predicates, or more generally between expressions which contribute their meanings to the meanings of sentences they help to constitute, and those whose meaning is derivative from that of sentences in which they might be discerned.  Dummett acknowledges that this distinction remains implicit in Frege’s works, essential for a correct understanding of his thought but hardly emphasized – indeed scarcely mentioned – by Frege himself.  Although it is also discernible, in various half-formed guises, in Russell and the early Wittgenstein, it became fully explicit only in Ramsey.  His treatment of it makes clear that the Fregean logical categories are not ontological categories at all, in that there is no stable, context-independent answer to the question of what falls under them.  A consequence of this is that logical principles have a kind of generality distinct from that possessed by what Wittgenstein called ‘material generalizations’, generalizations over kinds of entities; and it is surely those to which ontology must attend.  

Title: Recognitional Capacities and their Uses

Abstract: Michael Dummett used the term ‘recognitional capacity’ in his discussion of Fregean senses for singular terms in Frege: Philosophy of Language. In the context of contemporary philosophy of language, the role of recognitional capacities is in metasemantics rather than semantics.  A recognitional capacity for a given property is a capacity to know whether an individual has the property, when the individual is suitably presented to one under favourable conditions. ‘Property’ here is understood broadly, e.g., there is the property of being a given individual and the property of being a member of a given natural or social kind. Having such a capacity is of course compatible with occasional error and indecision when one attempts to employ it. Speakers of a natural language typically associate many words in their vocabulary with recognitional capacities for the property referred to, though such an association is not required for linguistic understanding (one can understand the noun ‘spy’ without having a recognitional capacity for spies) and different speakers may associate a given word with very different recognitional capacities without meaning different things by it (one can understand the noun ‘cuckoo’ while recognizing cuckoos by their song or by their look). Such recognitional capacities surely play a major role in the metasemantic story, whatever it is, about how such words get their reference.  The talk will discuss three specific applications of the category of recognitional capacities.