Can one be funny in analytical philosophy?

IT is sometimes said that the world might itself be vague. Rather than vagueness being a deficiency in our mode of describing the world, it would then be a necessary feature of any true description of it. It is also said that amongst the statements which may not have a determinate truth value as a result of their vagueness are identity statements. Combining these two views we would arrive at the idea that the world might contain certain objects about which it is a fact that they have fuzzy boundaries. --Gareth Evans

"Is Gareth Evans (the philosopher) funny?" I ask myself in reflecting on his famous "Can There Be Vague Objects?"*

By this I do not mean the kind of funny in which one uses a principle denied by the opponent as an undisputed premise in one's argument against them.** This kind of funny is generally an expression of situational power--one can assert and get away with it. It is a byproduct that accompanies the clever in a certain milieu.

I also do not mean the kind of funny that presents itself as rigor, yet does not axiomatize or stipulate the rules of the sentential operator.*** In fairness to Evans, there is funniness here because Evans might respond that this problem, while real, is really his unnamed opponent's problem. It's not clear that the principled metaphysical indeterminatist has a right to a definite logic of vagueness.

I also do no mean the kind of funny that comes from proving that no single language, which presupposes Leibniz law, can coherently speak of vagueness while ignoring that, perhaps, two (incompatible) languages might do the job. There is something funny in presupposing that a way (let's stipulate) the one-and-only-world is, has to be matched by something in a one-and-only-language. (This funny is built into the idea that the world and a true description of it, must somehow match or map characteristics.)

I also do not mean that it is funny, although it surely is, to presuppose S5 as somehow constraining how we should think about what coherently can be said about a vague world or a vague object.  Whatever one might wish to say of the (modal) logic of vague objects, if any, the Necessitation Rule should be denied in it. 

No, rather, really, it would be funny if Evans had, in fact,intended to show what he could not say, and get that past the austere referees at Analysis. For his paper starts (see the quote above) by introducing a purported statement that is identified with nobody in particular at no particular time ("sometimes"), or place. The imagined speaker is a to use the logician-economist, Johnson's terminology a determinable, without having been made determinate (recall). And as I think I first learned from Jessia Wilson, this very possibility can be a quite natural state of affairs. It's really funny because we have known such all along.

 

 

*I am indebted to  my students in Natuurfilosofie, especially Inge De Bal, Boris Demarest, Wim Vanrie, Laura Georgescu, Madalina Giurgea; they should not be blamed for my silly fascination with the unsaid caused by too much time with Derrida. They certainly should not be held accountable for the fact that I did not read all the important scholarship on Evans' paper before writing this post. [I do welcome learning about pieces that anticipate or refute my musings!]

**In Evans' famous piece, his premise (3) is necessary, I think, for his argument to go through. But it begs (ahh) precisely the question, to assert that an identity statement is not vague. 

*** In Evans' famous piece a sentential operator is allowed to follow classical rules for negation elimination and introduction. But it is no means obvious that when one is dealing with the indefinite(s), what the rules for negation elimination might be.

Comments

[Michael Kremer]

Eric: As I know you know (from Facebook correspondence), David Lewis defends Evans's argument (in a way he claims to be vindicated by correspondence with Evans) in his paper "Vague Identity: Evans Misunderstood." As Lewis reconstructs Evans's argument, it is not an argument against the claim that there are vague identities. According to Lewis, Evans is "taking for granted that there are vague identity statements," and "that a proof to the contrary cannot be right." On Lewis's reading the argument is against the conjunction of two theses: there are vague identity statements and that (this is due to the fact that) the world itself is vague. (Lewis: "what is in trouble is the value-objects view combined with the view that vague identity yields identity statements with indeterminate truth value.")

According to Lewis, "On this interpretation, every bit of what Evans says fits into place." Now Lewis is trying to defend Evans against a different criticism than the one you have made here (I take your criticism to be essentially, begging the question, with both the use of (3) and the appeal to classical negation principles). The question is whether we can fill in the details of an argument in which the moves you question can be defended a la Lewis. I am not sure, but I might try, if I have a bit more time. I'm going to stop now and think about it.

But I'll just add that on your final "funny" and showing and saying, I don't really get it. Quantification is not vagueness, is it? If I say "Some days I have a drink before dinner" what I have said is determinately true or false (true, in this case). I have not said anything vague. It is of course the case that I have left it indeterminate on which days I have a drink before dinner. But so?

That would be true even if I had just used disjunction. If I had said "I will post a comment on this post either tomorrow or the next day" would you say that I had thereby said something determinable and not determinate, so that I would have managed to say something vague (in the sense of "vague" at issue in Evans's article)?

Anyway, I will give a little more thought to the Lewisian idea I gestured at above and if I find I can do something with it I will try. I do warn that I have other things I should be doing right now... so even if I post something more, I probably won't be able to go multiple rounds.

[Eric Schliesser]

Dear Michael,
First, thank you for taking the time to respond and to insist that I re-read Lewis now. I am mulling his piece. (I am pretty sure that in the post I was not making the standard criticism that Lewis debunks. But it is possible I failed to grasp Evans' main point.) [I should also say that as a scholar, I am pretty dubious about post-hoc reports about purported intentions by authors.]
Second, I am wondering, why must (as Lewis claims) the "vague-objects view" say "that a name like 'Princeton' rigidly denotes a certain vague object"? [In teaching Evans' piece, I had trouble getting my head around his use of names, so maybe I am really confused over something.] It strikes me the vague-objects view ought to deny this.
Third, you have understood my main criticisms. (But note that I also pointed out that there were hidden assumptions about language/world mapping that seem open to challenge.)
Finally, on my final funny, I may have been trying to be too clever on Evans' behalf.