Thinking About Universals

In chapter IX of The Problems of Philosophy (1912) Russell makes a good case for the existence of universals in a roughly platonic sense. He ends with these stirring words: “The world of universals, therefore, may also be described as the world of being. The world of being is unchangeable, rigid, exact, delightful to the mathematician, the logician, the builder of metaphysical systems, and all who love perfection more than life.” (100) Let me add other characteristics of universals as traditionally conceived: they are undivided, non-spatial, non-temporal, non-mental, real, knowable, independent of particulars, capable of instantiation, yet not intrinsically instantiated. I want to focus on that last characteristic: in the platonic world (the word is appropriate) universals exist in a uninstantiated form—they are not exemplified in any particular. Hence they are not distributed in space or divided in their being: they are free-floating entities existing in their own right. While particulars cannot exist without dependence on universals, universals can exist in complete indifference to particulars. So they are not essentially and intrinsically instantiated: their original mode of being is not instantiated being. But in the world of sense their mode of being is to be instantiated: there are no universals in the world of sense that are not attached to a particular. You don’t see universals floating around without being tied to particulars. So in these two spheres of reality universals take quite different forms—particular-free or particular-bound. Particulars, however, take only one form—universal-bound.  We can thus say that universals enjoy a double life: in one world they are thus and so, in another they are such and such. The very same entity can appear in quite different guises, quite different incarnations—here unattached to any particular, there attached to particulars at the hip. It is as if the universal undergoes a transformation—a metamorphosis—when it makes the trip to the world of sense. It looks very different at the other end. It undergoes an ontological makeover.

            Plato introduced us to the idea of the cave as an analogy for having no acquaintance with universals as they are in themselves, seeing only particulars (mere shadows of reality). When a cave dweller escapes and encounters the world outside the cave he experiences a brand new reality and has trouble conveying his newfound knowledge to the other cave dwellers. This tells us that knowledge of universals as they intrinsically are is not attainable simply by sense perception, even though particulars exemplify universals (perceptibly so); we need to use our reason, the divine part of the soul. But we can construct another parable that illustrates the transformation wrought upon universals by their exemplification in the world of sense. Suppose there are people that live only on the surface of the planet and know nothing of caves: they have never been inside the earth and imagine it to be a solid block containing no cavities. Imagine there is no night on the surface, just constant sunlight. These surface dwellers are the analogue of beings that know only universals and never particulars; the world of underground caves is unknown to them. They are blissfully ignorant of darkness and shadows. Then one among them discovers a cave and enters its gloomy interior, thereby discovering a new reality. She is amazed by this new world, so different from the one she is accustomed to, but she has trouble explaining to the other surface dwellers what a cave is and is generally pooh-poohed by them. This is the condition of someone who knows only the world of abstract universals by the use of reason and is suddenly given senses through which particulars can be perceived. She had no idea that universals could be hooked up to particulars in this way, assuming them to be essentially autonomous entities. In fact, she doesn’t recognize them at first, finding them to be pale imitations of the real thing; it takes a while before she realizes that these funny little nuggets of appearance are in fact the dear old universals she knows from her use of reason. Ah, she thinks, so universals can actually become attached to things existing in space! Like Alice, she finds life very peculiar in her new world, a kind of distorted simulacrum of normal life outside the cave. The universals have changed into reduced parodies of their usual radiant selves.

            I am saying all this to dramatize the point that universals, as traditionally conceived, exist in two quite different forms, according as they are instantiated or not instantiated. This means that our knowledge of them is also of two types: sense-based and reason-based. They can be perceived and they can be thought about, but they are perceived as instantiated and thought about as uninstantiated. That is, they can enter thought in their pristine form, but they cannot be objects of sense in that form, but only in their instantiated form. There is thus a double epistemology corresponding to their double ontology. I think Russell fails to see this and thus fails to grasp that universals are epistemologically problematic. He writes in chapter X, “On Our Knowledge of Universals”, as follows: “It is obvious, to begin with, that we are acquainted with such universals as white, red, black, sweet, sour, loud, hard, etc., i.e. with qualities that are exemplified in sense-data. When we see a white patch, we are acquainted, in the first instance, with the particular patch; but by seeing many white patches, we easily learn to abstract the whiteness which they all have in common, and in learning to do this we are learning to be acquainted with whiteness.” (101) Here Russell uncritically subscribes to the empiricist’s abstractionist theory of general concepts, not realizing that the step from perceived whiteness to the concept of whiteness in general is not as small and smooth as he appears to think. For the latter concept is of whiteness as uninstantiated but the former experience is of whiteness as instantiated. How do we get from concrete perceived instances of whiteness in space and time, as exemplified by particulars, to a concept of whiteness as unchangeable, undivided, uninstantiated, non-spatial, non-temporal, and intrinsically independent of particulars? If universals in the platonic world are as different from particulars as Russell urges, how is it possible to move from the latter to the former, as the quoted passage suggests? The answer is that it is not possible—abstractionism is a broken theory.  [1] That is why rationalist philosophers, beginning with Plato, have adopted a non-perceptual theory of our knowledge of universals: we have innate ideas of universals that represent them in their original pristine form (allegedly: see below). That is, they adopted a double epistemology of universals to go with their double ontology; they didn’t try to leverage our pure concepts of universals from our perception of the particulars that exemplify them. Nor did they attempt, like Russell, to combine a robust platonic ontology of universals with a simple empiricist theory of concepts of them (Plato would be horrified). No, if you accept the platonic ontology of universals you need to recognize that empiricist epistemology won’t work for them; another epistemic faculty is necessary in order to account for our knowledge of universals. This is particularly true for knowledge of propositions that concern only relations of universals—a priori knowledge, as Russell says.  [2] If you want to stay empiricist in your epistemology, you can’t very well accept a platonic ontology—you need to go nominalist or conceptualist or Aristotelian or skeptical. Russell here lazily combines his mathematician’s fondness for platonic ontology with his British empiricist predilections regarding knowledge. The brief passage I quoted contains a gaping epistemological hole whose existence it is hard to believe he didn’t notice.

            So what should be said about the epistemology of universals under a platonic conception? It seems to me that an admission of inadequacy is in order. First, we do not acquire an adequate conception of universals by perceiving their instances, since (among other things) perception only presents them in instantiated form, which is not their original intrinsic form; nor is this conception derivable from perception by some intelligible procedure. If this were our only access to universals, we would be cognitively closed off from what they really are. But second, our actual intellectual grasp of them leaves much to be desired: we have only the most hazy and sketchy conception of what they like in themselves. Any mental images we might have corresponding to whiteness, say, do little to further our knowledge of the universal; but in their absence only the word provides a solid handle onto what we are talking about—and it is just a word. Notice how negative the list of characteristics is that define universals for us; we are shooting in the dark at an elusive target.  [3] I think it is even unclear whether our thought concerning universals represents them as instantiated or uninstantiated: we know that the platonic tradition says the latter, but earnest self-reflection leaves the question up in the air (I suspect many people would reject the tradition on this point). We really have very little idea what these entities are like—yet if they exist they must have a determinate nature. They can’t be as wispy and airy as they seem. Plato was right to teach that they are extremely hard to know, requiring diligent training and focus; but I see no evidence that any course of training has actually succeeded in bringing them limpidly into our ken. They remain as elusive—as tantalizing—as ever.  [4] I don’t think this casts doubt on their robust reality, but it does suggest that our knowledge of them is shaky and possibly inaccurate. Perhaps they are natural mysteries. Perhaps our grasp of them is like our grasp of the quantum world—just not very penetrating. Perhaps they belong to a world that our epistemic faculties are not well designed to comprehend; we do better with basic cave epistemology. Plato discovered a part of reality that is only dimly glimpsed by us. For those with different epistemic faculties it might present itself very differently. Russell should have considered the possibility that our knowledge of universals is inherently limited and sorely lacking in clarity and distinctness.

  [1] Many criticisms have been made of the theory, which I won’t rehearse, but let me just note a couple of points arising from Russell’s breezy discussion. First, does he really believe that young children consciously go through this process of reasoning in order to come up with the general concept of whiteness? Does he think parents and teachers instruct children to do this in order to acquire general concepts? Second, where do we get the idea of what is in common between things? Isn’t this a general concept that precedes all occasions of (alleged) abstraction? And don’t we see what is in common precisely by already having the universal concept we are supposed to be acquiring? When you judge that snow and milk are similar don’t you judge that both are white?

  [2] All knowledge, whether a priori or a posteriori, involves universals, but a priori knowledge is concerned with relations between universals in their uninstantiated form, while a posteriori knowledge is concerned with universals in their instantiated form. Thus we can define the difference between the two types of knowledge by invoking the concept of instantiation.

  [3] Here is a puzzle for you: if you could see the universal Whiteness, would it look white? Maybe it only looks white when it comes exemplified in a particular; in itself it has no color. Then how does it make things look white?

  [4] The idea that we have acquaintance with universals in our cognitive encounters with them seems particularly strained: to suppose that they come before the mind in naked form, fully revealing their contours and texture, is surely wide of the mark. Rather, they remain maddeningly out of reach, especially when no image accompanies their appearance in thought. This is why they have always seemed so speculative and suspicious to the epistemology obsessed. We are acquaintance-deficient with respect to them.

A Problem For Direct Reference

According to the theory of direct reference, the meaning of a name (and possibly an indexical expression) is the object that is its reference—typically an ordinary concrete object. The weak version of the theory says that this object is at least part of the meaning of the name; the strong version says that the object is the whole of the name’s meaning. In either case we can say, according to a standard formulation, that the object enters the proposition expressed by the sentence containing the name: it is a constituent of the proposition so expressed. Just as senses or intensions or concepts are said to enter into propositions, so objects themselves can be said so to enter. Thus a singular proposition is said to be an ordered pair of an object and a property, not just an assembly of properties. Meanings can be partly composed of objects—extensions not intensions.

            But objects have properties: some people hold that they are just aggregates of properties (bundles, sets). So aren’t properties a part of the package? If objects are contained in the proposition, don’t properties come along for the ride? If properties can be constituents of propositions in their own right, they can also feature in propositions as borne by the objects that instantiate them. Objects can hardly leave their properties behind when they step into propositions—they would not be objects at all if they did that. No, the object brings its properties into the proposition too—all of them (it doesn’t shed some and retain others). But if the object is the meaning, then these properties are also contained in the meaning. The parts of the object clearly accompany it into the heart of the proposition, and so do its actual properties; an object is a complex thing and its complexity survives in the warm environment of the proposition. The idea of direct reference is that the proposition contains at least the reference, but then it also contains what the reference contains—properties as well as parts. If it contains properties as detached from objects, it need not contain more than the properties in question (and their logical entailments); but if it contains objects, it will also contain all the properties that the object possesses. Thus the meaning of a name, so far from being simple and austere, is replete with properties—many more than under a classical description theory. The object itself guarantees that.

            This has a rather startling consequence: all true sentences containing names are analytically true. For every property we can truly predicate of the object is already contained in the meaning of the name via the object named. The properties get uploaded into the proposition via the object and hence anticipate whatever might be truly predicated of the object. If only a single property occurs in the subject position, then we don’t have this consequence—there will only be one analytic truth generated by the name—but if the object brings all its properties along with it, then every true sentence containing the name will be analytic. That means every such sentence will be a necessary truth. Not an a priori truth to be sure, because speakers can’t be expected to know every property of the denoted object, but a truth that follows from meaning alone. This Leibnizian conclusion falls directly out of the direct reference theory, unless some way can be found to block it. It’s like putting a bunch of objects into a drawer: the objects will be in there but so also will their properties—the objects don’t stop having their properties just by being put in a drawer. Take a peek inside and you will see the properties lurking in there. The proposition doesn’t contain bare particulars but propertied particulars. If objects are literally bundles of qualities, then you will be putting such bundles into the drawer—or the proposition. This is not a consequence of the direct reference theory that I have ever seen acknowledged, but it appears inescapable.

            But there is an even more startling consequence in the immediate offing, which I hesitate even to mention. Some may see in the derivation just rehearsed a welcome refutation of the direct reference theory, but what if I told you that the same result, or something very like it, applies no matter what the theory is? Glee might then turn to panic—or hysterical incredulity. Here is one way to put the point: when properties enter into propositions (i.e. sentence meanings) they too have properties—for instance, the property of being instantiated, or the property of being co-instantiated with another property in a certain object. For example, the property of being red has the property of being instantiated by British post boxes and also the property of being co-instantiated with roundness in a cricket balls. Properties thus bring with them other properties that are not analytic entailments of the given property; and this gives rise to what may be called surprise analytic truths—as that redness has instances and is the color of cricket balls. If the property itself has certain properties, then this property will bring these other properties along with it, thereby generating surprise analytic truths. Or consider senses: these too have assorted properties—having a certain reference, being currently grasped by the Queen of England, being sometimes too complex for humans to get their minds around, etc. So when a Fregean Thought contains such senses must it not also contain the properties of those senses? They come with the territory, just as in the case of objects and theirproperties. Why do we assume that only some properties of senses properly belong to the meaning of a sentence expressing them—why not all? By what magic might some properties of senses be incorporated and some not?  [1]Frege compared senses to aspects of references, but aspects are themselves rich with attributes—a given aspect might be an aspect of Mount Everest, or frequently found with another aspect, or apprehended by some individuals but not by others.  So aspects of the aspect are going to find themselves wherever the aspect finds itself—lodged inside a sense. We are beginning to see the outlines of a general problem—the problem that whatever we choose to constitute meaning carries within it too much to be a meaning, as meaning is normally understood. We want meaning to be a thin slice of reality, so to speak, but the available theories always make it a good deal thicker than we bargained for. We could call this the thickness problem—and it threatens to undermine the notion of meaning as we have it. How do we stop too much of the world from getting into the proposition? How do we stop meanings from absorbing too much of reality? Any entities they comprise are bound to be carrying a cargo of extra baggage—to be overstuffed, overly inclusive. The entities will have features that make them (allegedly) suitable to function as meanings, but they will also have other features that are irrelevant to meaning: the features arrive in a package that can’t be broken apart. In the case of direct reference theory, we want the object to be in the proposition for various theoretical reasons, but the object presents other features that disqualify it from doing the job of meaning, notably the totality of its properties. We end up having to say that every true sentence containing a name is analytically true, and that the meaning of sentences containing names can never be fully grasped. It looks like we are headed for the conclusion that meanings cannot be made up of entities at all. But what else could they be? What else could anything be? Objects, senses, properties, functions, and images—all these are entities that bear more properties than meaning intuitively bears. So how could any of them be meaning? But then how could meanings exist at all? We are headed straight for skeptical paradox. Nor will use get us out of trouble, since uses too contain more than meaning does—vocal noises, laryngeal movements, events in the motor cortex, etc. Anything that exists in the empirical world has an abundance of properties that go beyond anything that could constitute meaning, so how could meaning be identical to anything like that? Empirical reality is just too thick to constitute meaning, too multilayered. And abstract entities such as we find in mathematics won’t work either: meaning isn’t mathematical, and anyway the problem will recur in a new guise—for mathematical entities are too ontologically rich as well. Propositions are sparse etiolated things, sliced very thin, but any facts we can mention, empirical or abstract, have too much depth, too much substance, too much thickness. The point is very vivid in the case of the direct reference theory, but apparently much the same problem afflicts theories that deal in more rarified entities. It looks like there is no way out, as a matter of principle. It looks like we have a problem, Houston. Meaning is having difficulty getting back down to earth.  [2]

  [1] References don’t present the same problem: they can be as rich and extensive as you like without generating unwanted analytic truths. This is because they are not construed as part of meaning in the Fregean picture, so there is no risk of them stuffing meaning with too much material. But senses are meant to be constitutive of meaning (which is commensurate with linguistic understanding) and so cannot accept any old properties into their constitution–yet they have many properties that go beyond what meaning intuitively contains.

  [2] I am as shocked as the next man by the argument of this paper and I keep thinking there must be a simple answer to it, but so far I have been unable to find one. I put it out there with some misgivings. Perhaps I should announce that I thought of it while trying to interpret an obscure text by an unknown philosopher consanguineous with L. Wittgenstein. It’s certainly a killer argument.

The Virtuous Lie

Kant held that all lying is wrong, even when the consequences of telling the truth are terrible. Most people have disagreed: sometimes lying is the right thing to do in cases in which truth telling would have bad consequences (e.g. the Nazis looking for the fleeing Jewish girl). The idea is that lying is always prima facie wrong (to use Ross’s terminology) but that in some cases net utility overrides this wrongness; not perhaps any degree of negative consequence but when the bad consequences are extreme enough. Surely it is right to lie if a whole civilization is at stake! What is not considered, however, is whether it can be right to lie even when the consequences of telling the truth are not bad. Can it ever be right to lie when the consequences of doing so are worse than the consequences of telling the truth? That sounds impossible, since consequences are the only conceivable way that the prima faciewrongness of lying can be overridden; there has to be something to counterbalance the wrongness of lying—and what could that be but the securing of good consequences? The only morally permissible lie is the beneficial lie: there can be no other valid reason for telling a lie.

            But this ignores another possible reason for lying: the binding force of a promise. Suppose you have a friend, Phil, who is rather short; and suppose Phil has an enemy, Bert, who is pettily obsessed with Phil’s height in relation to his own (he is an inch taller than Phil). Bert has been trying to find out Phil’s height so that he can loudly boast of his vertical superiority to Phil, but hitherto has been unable to ascertain this information. Phil asks you to promise not to tell Bert his height because he knows it will fill Bert with unseemly glee, and you agree. Bert subsequently asks you to tell him Phil’s height. If you tell the truth Bert will be overjoyed, relishing his petty rivalry with your friend Phil; but if you lie Bert will be disappointed and grumpy. Should you lie or tell the truth? If you tell the truth you break your promise to your friend, possibly being motivated by utilitarian considerations; but if you lie, you fail to maximize the amount of happiness in the world (let’s suppose Phil knows nothing of your encounter with Bert). This would be a lie that has no good consequences defined in terms of net utility. I say it would be right to lie in these circumstances, yet utility cannot be the reason. The reason is obvious: you made a promise to Phil, and that promise imposes a moral obligation on you. Now if it turned out that keeping that promise would result in the death of innocent people even Phil would agree that the promise should be broken, but not just because Bert would be made marginally less happy than the alternative. Promises must be kept even when utility is not maximized—as when you keep a promise to meet someone for lunch even though a more attractive option has presented itself.  [1]So lying can be the right thing to do just because you have promised (for good reasons) to lie—even when utility is not maximized. The promise overrides the lack of utility maximization. So virtuous lies can occur even in cases where consequences indicate otherwise. This is one of those cases in which your moral duties all things considered favor lying but not because one of these duties is to ensure the best possible outcome in respect of consequences.

            But isn’t the example abnormal? We don’t usually promise to lie, though we often promise to tell the truth. That may be true as a matter of statistical fact, but it doesn’t reflect a necessary truth. Consider a society ravaged by disease in which visible signs of the disease mar people’s physical appearance. There may be a general promise, implicit or explicit, not to remark on such signs—it just hurts people’s feeling to be reminded of their condition. This promise has binding force even if it is slightly worse for people in the long run if they don’t know what they look like—not catastrophic but real. Once the promise is in effect it creates a prima facie obligation to maintain the lie, even when the consequences of doing so may be slightly worse than insisting on the truth. Promising to lie is like promising to do anything: it creates a duty to act as promised—except in cases in which the consequences are dire enough to overrule the promise. Thus there could be a society in which this kind of virtuous lying is common and expected. There will be no general prohibition in this society against lying. We can even formulate a moral rule: it is morally wrong to tell the truth if you have promised to lie (insert the usual caveats). You ought to lie if you have promised to lie, just as you ought to do whatever you have promised. So Kant was wrong even by his own non-consequentialist standards: a pure deontologist can accept that lying is sometimes right, because the rule of promise keeping applies to lying too. Lying can be required by the rules of morality even when its consequences are less than optimal.  [2]

  [1] Ross gives the compelling example of carrying out a deceased person’s will: if the deceased has willed his property to John, it is wrong to allocate it to Jim on the ground that you think (correctly) that Jim will be made marginally happier than John. Promising as such carries moral weight irrespective of consequences.

  [2] It is tempting to conclude that lying is never intrinsically wrong, i.e. wrong just by being a lie. In the case of Phil and Bert you do nothing wrong in lying; the wrongness of lying, which is indeed generally wrong, depends on the surrounding context.

Conceding Intelligence

In footnote 76 of Naming and Necessity Kripke writes: “I have been surprised to find that at least one able listener took my use of such terms as ‘correlated with’, ‘corresponding to’, and the like as already begging the question against the identity thesis. The identity thesis, so he said, is not the thesis that pains and brain states are correlated, but rather that they are identical. Thus my entire discussion presupposes the anti-materialist position that I set out to prove. Although I was surprised to hear an objection that concedes so little intelligence to the argument, I have tried especially to avoid the term ‘correlated’ which seems to give rise to the objection.” (p.149) He then goes on to point out that such terms don’t presuppose the anti-materialist position, being quite neutral on it. The identity of this “able listener” is not disclosed and I would expect that he must feel a surge of acute embarrassment whenever recalling this artful footnote (I especially like Kripke’s use of “so he said”). The “objection” in question is utterly ridiculous and Kripke’s reply to it perfectly devastating; one wonders how anyone could say anything quite so idiotic. I can almost hear the dripping sarcasm in Kripke’s voice as he stoops to deal with this nonsense.  What could possess a person, able or otherwise, to voice anything so silly? Was he simply not thinking at all? Was Kripke’s ready answer not even contemplated by this “able listener”? What did this individual think Kripke would say? Did he not notice that Kripke is pretty astute logically and would be unlikely to make such a glaring and obvious mistake? At most a point of clarification might have been requested—but not an accusation of grotesque logical blunder. One imagines Kripke thinking as this “objection” is raised, “Does this guy really think that I am capable of such an elementary mistake? Does he think I am that dumb?” And then he has to manufacture a way of replying that doesn’t expose the questioner as a compete fool—hence the tiptoeing around with “able listener” and “so he said”. He has to try to maintain a degree of politeness in the face of abject imbecility. This is a highly unedifying occasion, but not an uncommon one.

            And so he came up with the timeless and convoluted phrase “concedes so little intelligence to the argument”: that is, the objector is not allowing even a minimal degree of intelligence to the person offering the argument, viz. Saul Aaron Kripke. Consider that for a moment: the guy is listening to Kripke’s groundbreaking and (to put it mildly) highly intelligent lectures and says to himself, “This supposed big shot has just committed an elementary blunder and I am going to speak up and expose his stupidity for all to see”. He thinks he has the perfect gotchawhile in fact he has shown how desperate he is to score points off the speaker, or is perhaps as dense as his question suggests (can anybody be that dense?). I think this episode should be engraved on the heart of every American philosopher young or old—and isn’t it a distinctively American moment? Hesitate before ascribing an elementary mistake to an obviously sharp and distinguished philosopher! Maybe you have got something wrong; maybe you have misunderstood: it is vanishingly improbable that such a speaker would be guilty of an error of this magnitude. Don’t just leap into the fray and accuse the speaker of logical ineptitude or total ignorance! You will only go down in history as the biggest twit ever to walk the face of the planet. Do you really want to be that guy? Do you want to be the guy who told Kripke he doesn’t understand what the identity theory says? Try to find the intelligence in what is being said by an obviously intelligent person! Don’t daydream of the glorious and spectacular takedown you imagine is within your reach! The kind of stupidity exhibited by this anonymous “able listener” (and has he ever come forward to own the “objection” Kripke so deftly demolishes?) deserves to be given a special label so that it is always at the forefront of the eager objector’s consciousness: maybe the Failed Kripke Gambit or the Reverse Stupidity Mistake or the Unintelligent Unintelligence Accusation. By conceding so little intelligence to Kripke’s (highly sophisticated) argument the objector revealed himself to be the one sorely lacking in that quality. To put it simply: Don’t make dumb objections! Think before you speak! Don’t just assume that smart people say silly things! If you think that the speaker has made an obvious mistake, frame your question carefully so as not to impute a complete lack of intelligence to said speaker. I can’t tell you the number of times in my career I’ve been reminded of Kripke’s footnote as I say to myself, “Does this guy really believe I am capable of the kind of foolishness he is attributing to me?”  [1] Then I have to come up with some polite way to avoid replying, “The person not thinking clearly here is you not me, for the following obvious reason…” So I urge would-be objectors to bear Kripke’s footnote in mind and try to concede a little more intelligence to the speaker. Just keep in mind the simple words “footnote 76” and you won’t go far wrong.        

  [1] And of course it’s not only guys who come up with this kind of stuff—but it is mainly guys. No doubt it springs from a misguided desire to compete, or else a simple lack of thoughtfulness. The same point applies to book reviewers (I name no names).