Russell's The Problems of Philosophy was published in 1912; but he published the short paper, "On the Relations of Universals and Particulars," in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society in the 1911-12 edition. In what follows, I'm going to give a very brief sketch of the argument he presents there. The conclusion of the argument is that there is a fundamental distinction between two radically different sorts of thing: universals and particulars. (The article's title, as we shall see, involves a bit of word-play, as "relations" play a fundamental role in Russell's argument for universals.) I will proceed mostly without commentary, attempting to illustrate the bare bones of the argument.
I. Some approximate distinctions.
Russell begins by reviewing some distinctions to orient us toward the distinction he is trying to get at. The first three are psychological or metaphysical, and the last two are logical.
1. Percepts and concepts: These are the different objects of two different mental activities: perceiving and conceiving. Percepts (what he calls "sense-data" in Problems) are (one sort of) particular, while concepts are (one sort of) universal.
2. Time--Entities which exist in time and entities which do not: Garden variety example of the former would be physical objects (cars, pens, books, planets, etc.). What would the latter include? Presumably concepts (though the whole area is obviously tendentious), but also numbers, ideal shapes, and perhaps things like mathematical laws.
3. Space--(a) entities which are not in any place (e.g. relations); (b) entities which are only at one place at any one time (physical bodies or unities); and (c) entities which are in many places at once (e.g. colors and perceived shapes). Russell has a complex notion of space, depending on the vantage point from which it is described. So he recognizes, e.g. visual and tactical space (spaces of sense data), as well as physical space (the existence of which we can infer but not experience directly).
4. Relations and non-relations: This doesn't neatly map onto our prior distinctions. Relations can relate particulars as well as universals and other relations. (So "Dallas is north of Austin," "Squares have more sides than triangles.")
5. Verbs and substantives: Strictly, Russell is referring to the objects denoted by verbs and substantives. Here he provides some help. Recall that he often thinks in terms of sentence structure. Take a simple example: "Desdemona loves Cassio." Russell analyzes this as a complex in which the relation love relates the two non-relations, Desdemona and Cassio. Take another: "Othello believes Desdemona loves Cassio." Here "believes" relates Othello to our former complex fact of Desdemona loving Cassio. Russell tends to think that at least most verbs are relational in this sense. This distinction is important because it gets at how Russell thinks about universals and particulars. If the two are fundamentally distinct sorts of things, it will at least be the case that particulars cannot do the work of relations or predicates. So universals would just consist of the objects denoted by relations and predicates.
[This basic distinction traces back to Aristotle, who argued, in effect, that substances have to be fundamentally different from qualities. The best way to see this is to consider proper nouns. You can't predicate "is Socrates" of anything. (You can, of course, say, "The annoying pale snub-nosed fellow is Socrates," but this sentence states an identity, and not a subject-predicate combination.]
II. The Common-Sense Notion of Things and Qualities
By the "common-sense" view, R has in mind the bundle theory of the early empiricists, according to which, e.g. an apple consists of a bundle of sensible qualities coexisting in a single perceived space. Russell thinks it rests on the confusion of thinking of actually different sensory spaces as combined. As Hume might say, we are habituated to think of the apple and apple flavor and scent as all occupying the same "space," but they are each different modes of sense perception, so the "common space" is a useful fiction. The apple isn't the same as our senses of it, nor are our senses of it common to one another. He uses this to make a very interesting dilemma, which deserves quotation:
"Realists who reject particulars are apt to regard a thing as reducible to a number of qualities co-existing in one place. But, apart from other objections to this view, it is doubtful whether the different qualities in question ever do co-exist in one place. If the qualities are sensible, the place must be in a sensible space; but this makes it necessary that the qualities should belong to only one sense, and it is not clear that genuinely different qualities belonging to one sense ever co-exist in a single place in a perceptual space. If, on the other hand, we consider..."real" space...then we no longer know what is the nature of the
qualities, if any, which exist in this "real" space."
III. Three Theories
Very broadly, there are three possible stances about universals and particulars (assuming that one or the other exists):
1. Universalism: Only universals exist. There are no particular things, just universal qualities existing in multiple places at different times. To call out a "particular" patch of red is only to indicate its place, not to name a separate kind of entity. To call out two distinct but identically colored patches of red is just to indicate one thing in different places. The position here is more or less that the addition of particulars is unnecessary, since whatever role particulars are supposed to play can be handled by qualities and relational properties.
2. Nominalism: Only particulars exist (Berkeley and Hume). There are no abstract ideas or universals, only particular things--so no general "yellow," but only particular shades; no generic triangle, but only particular representations of triangles.
3. Realism: Both universals and particulars exist.
Russell's general strategy is to offer refutations for 1 and 2, and go on to consider, in some detail, strategies for arguing for 3.
Refutation of Nominalism
The strategy for refuting nominalism is the same one he uses in Problems. Recall that Berkeley and Hume get around positing universals by claiming that there are only particular sense data, say, different patches of white. This poses a problem for them, though: how are we able to recognize different patches as being, in some sense, the same? (Note that this problem exists both for distinct patches of white in a single experience, and for novel experiences of white things. For convenience, let us refer to a single experience of diverse white things as "Case 1" and later recognitions of white things as "Case 2.")
Nominalists typically solve this by saying that the diverse particulars that we give the same labels (like "white") are similar to one another. So, of two patches of the same color in one visual field, the nominalist claims that the two are exactly similar, and that that relation of exact similarity is logically fundamental insofar as it cannot be further analyzed into different predicates (e.g. beige, cream, lighter or darker white, etc.). Similarly with a new patch which we recognize as white. Our new patch bears the same relation of exact similarity to our memory of a color patch which we have baptized "white."
Now, the basic refutation is this: Even on the most simple terms, the nominalist has to recognize at least one relation, that of exact similarity. (If they're forced to grant one universal, why not more?) The harder problem, though, is that this solution doesn't look very plausible, at least insofar as we learn to reliably use quality terms very flexibly. Somewhat worse, if we take it's analysis seriously, it appears to generate a vicious regress. These problems help to illuminate one another.
The Regress: The nominalist claims that we learn how to use color terms by spotting different instances of exact similarity (our Case 1). Let us imagine a simple case of two white patches in our visual field, a and b. We recognize "a is white" and "b is white" are true because aRb, that is, where R denotes the relation, "is the exactly similar color as." (Remember that they can't be the same, because that would imply having a single thing in multiple places.) On this analysis, the predicate white just consists in the likeness relation that a bears to b. How, then, does Case 2 work? Imagine two novel white patches, c and d. Given that Case 1 defines "white," we must say that c bears some relation of color likeness to something else, but note that that something else cannot be a or b alone, since white is defined by reference to the relation between them. The obvious recourse would be to say that c's relation to a is exactly similar to a's relation to b. The regress is vicious because it means that we shall have to explain every novel instance of a quality by providing a higher-order relation of exact similarity to past similarities. This pretty obviously wrecks the nominalist's thesis that the similarity relation has to be basic and not analyzable into more than terms applying to particular bits of sense data. Given our flexible use of predicates of predicates like "white" or "round", it looks like nominalists need to accept some recourse to higher-order relations of similarity between different type-similarity relations.
The Lesson: Even if the nominalists accept only relations of exact similarity, they are forced to recognize universals. Further, Russell takes this to demand their recognition of: concepts (rather than merely percepts, since "similarity" is not a further item on our inventory of sense data); things which do not exist in time (since relations are not on a par with objects--objects can instantiate relations, but they appear to be fundamentally different from them in kind).
The most interesting part of the argument comes next, but I'm exhausted, so I'll leave it there for now. :)
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Sunday, May 18, 2014
A Short Note Introducing Russell's Metaphysics
The topic of universals in ontology is a notoriously thorny one. Of course, ontology itself is a very weird topic, so maybe it would be best to back up a step and start there. Typically, in philosophy departments the words "ontology" and "metaphysics" are used interchangeably. "Ontology" is Greek for "the study of being," and "metaphysics" is Greek for "after physics," a title given to an obscure set of Aristotle's writings by an early editor for (probably!) more or less pedagogical reasons. Aristotle's Metaphysics is a series of tight reflections about, broadly speaking, the general nature and classification of things that exist and their various modes of existence. These reflections were best read after his Physics, because they made frequent use of arguments and theories introduced in it. That's another rabbit hole, though, so let's skip to Russell.
Remember that Russell's basic project is to beef up the philosophical tools of empiricism sufficiently to enable us to speak of the existence of an external world (apart from our ideas of it) in ways that (1) avoid the pitfalls of idealism; while (2) granting that we do not have direct experience of the objective world; and (3) illuminating the ambiguities of language that give rise to confusion; so that ultimately we can (4) show how it is possible to develop scientific knowledge of the external world (in light of our inability to experience it directly).
Russell presents his thoughts on universals in Chapters 9 and 10. Classically, the problem of universals is often approached by way of what is called the One Many problem. Russell illustrates it with the more Platonic example of justice (and later whiteness). The idea, speaking generally, is that properties (or qualities) are often shared by many different individual objects. So, e.g., the apple, the book jacket, and the car outside are all "red"; the wallet, the jacket, and the shoes are all "leather," and (though the linguistic form is importantly different) both Paris and Algiers are "south of" London.
The classical problem gets its start with a simple analysis of very basic sentences consisting of a subject and a predicate, like "The apple is red." Here the subject expression--"the apple" refers to a particular thing, the apple, while the predicate expression, "is red" refers to.... Well, that's really the problem. What does the predicate expression refer to? Classically, the predicate expression is taken to refer to a universal or an abstract idea, but for the empiricist tradition, starting with Berkeley, our simple sentence is just a roundabout way of referring to a collection (or complex) of particular qualities. On this model, "The apple is red" does nothing more than point out two qualities of one region of my visual field--color and shape. All of my experiences of the external world are just experiences of sensory qualities, so all descriptive sentences function to pick out different sensory qualities. One of the very intriguing features of Russell's analysis is that he will accept the empiricist idea that sensations are particulars, while insisting that our ability to think about them coherently, and most importantly, to relate them to one another, must involve knowledge of universals.
More broadly, he thinks that the mind-independent world must include relations, and that these relations are not simply reducible to the objects (in this case, relata) which those relations relate. So, for example, Dallas is (approximately) 730 miles from Atlanta. Here the phrase "is 730 miles from" is a relation that takes two objects. Moreover, it is true whenever we plug into it any two objects (i.e. locations) which are 730 miles apart. Of course, we can quibble about the identity conditions (or precise boundaries) of cities, or the arbitrariness of different possible units of measure, but Russell has done his best to argue that our best evidence points to the existence of a mind-independent world with mind-independent features, and those features prominently include different spatial locations, the mere existence of which suffices to show that there must be distances. (Any plurality of non-overlapping spacial locations in a shared space imply the existence of distance; moreover, any given spatial location of greater than zero dimension must itself possess a quantifiable measure in at least one dimension.)
A quick word on framing: Russell tends to think of philosophical problems in terms of linguistic analysis. So it will often help to frame his thoughts with examples of sentences and propositions. But when we do this, we need to keep in mind that Russell is extremely sensitive to the ambiguities of language. So just to bear this in mind, consider again our apparently simple sentence, "The apple is red."
On the most basic level, this is just a simple sentence of the English language. As such, it is a particular expression of a general proposition. So, for example, we might say "der Apfel ist rot" or "la pomme est rouge," but we generally take those different strings of words to express identical propositional content. And in general, the metaphysical project consists of trying to get clear about propositional content--about what sort of items we need to recognize in order to make sense both of propositional content and the ways in which that content may plausibly match up with the mind-independent world. And when we start thinking about these difficulties, we notice that our original sentence harbors a number of potential ambiguities. So consider the following ways we might analyze it:
(1) An objective fact: There exists one object such that that object is an apple and that object is red.
(2) A subjective perception: I have a (visual) sense-datum such that my sense datum is apple-shaped and red.
(3) A common experience: We each have (different) sense data caused by a single object, such that our sense data are apple-shaped and red.
These might wind up begging certain questions, but a bit of thought about them should help you to understand the type of investigation Russell is up to. He tends to think of terms like "red" and "apple" as thoroughly general in character, and absent further qualification, such terms might refer to:
Remember that Russell's basic project is to beef up the philosophical tools of empiricism sufficiently to enable us to speak of the existence of an external world (apart from our ideas of it) in ways that (1) avoid the pitfalls of idealism; while (2) granting that we do not have direct experience of the objective world; and (3) illuminating the ambiguities of language that give rise to confusion; so that ultimately we can (4) show how it is possible to develop scientific knowledge of the external world (in light of our inability to experience it directly).
Russell presents his thoughts on universals in Chapters 9 and 10. Classically, the problem of universals is often approached by way of what is called the One Many problem. Russell illustrates it with the more Platonic example of justice (and later whiteness). The idea, speaking generally, is that properties (or qualities) are often shared by many different individual objects. So, e.g., the apple, the book jacket, and the car outside are all "red"; the wallet, the jacket, and the shoes are all "leather," and (though the linguistic form is importantly different) both Paris and Algiers are "south of" London.
The classical problem gets its start with a simple analysis of very basic sentences consisting of a subject and a predicate, like "The apple is red." Here the subject expression--"the apple" refers to a particular thing, the apple, while the predicate expression, "is red" refers to.... Well, that's really the problem. What does the predicate expression refer to? Classically, the predicate expression is taken to refer to a universal or an abstract idea, but for the empiricist tradition, starting with Berkeley, our simple sentence is just a roundabout way of referring to a collection (or complex) of particular qualities. On this model, "The apple is red" does nothing more than point out two qualities of one region of my visual field--color and shape. All of my experiences of the external world are just experiences of sensory qualities, so all descriptive sentences function to pick out different sensory qualities. One of the very intriguing features of Russell's analysis is that he will accept the empiricist idea that sensations are particulars, while insisting that our ability to think about them coherently, and most importantly, to relate them to one another, must involve knowledge of universals.
More broadly, he thinks that the mind-independent world must include relations, and that these relations are not simply reducible to the objects (in this case, relata) which those relations relate. So, for example, Dallas is (approximately) 730 miles from Atlanta. Here the phrase "is 730 miles from" is a relation that takes two objects. Moreover, it is true whenever we plug into it any two objects (i.e. locations) which are 730 miles apart. Of course, we can quibble about the identity conditions (or precise boundaries) of cities, or the arbitrariness of different possible units of measure, but Russell has done his best to argue that our best evidence points to the existence of a mind-independent world with mind-independent features, and those features prominently include different spatial locations, the mere existence of which suffices to show that there must be distances. (Any plurality of non-overlapping spacial locations in a shared space imply the existence of distance; moreover, any given spatial location of greater than zero dimension must itself possess a quantifiable measure in at least one dimension.)
A quick word on framing: Russell tends to think of philosophical problems in terms of linguistic analysis. So it will often help to frame his thoughts with examples of sentences and propositions. But when we do this, we need to keep in mind that Russell is extremely sensitive to the ambiguities of language. So just to bear this in mind, consider again our apparently simple sentence, "The apple is red."
On the most basic level, this is just a simple sentence of the English language. As such, it is a particular expression of a general proposition. So, for example, we might say "der Apfel ist rot" or "la pomme est rouge," but we generally take those different strings of words to express identical propositional content. And in general, the metaphysical project consists of trying to get clear about propositional content--about what sort of items we need to recognize in order to make sense both of propositional content and the ways in which that content may plausibly match up with the mind-independent world. And when we start thinking about these difficulties, we notice that our original sentence harbors a number of potential ambiguities. So consider the following ways we might analyze it:
(1) An objective fact: There exists one object such that that object is an apple and that object is red.
(2) A subjective perception: I have a (visual) sense-datum such that my sense datum is apple-shaped and red.
(3) A common experience: We each have (different) sense data caused by a single object, such that our sense data are apple-shaped and red.
These might wind up begging certain questions, but a bit of thought about them should help you to understand the type of investigation Russell is up to. He tends to think of terms like "red" and "apple" as thoroughly general in character, and absent further qualification, such terms might refer to:
- A sense datum (e.g. visual, tactile, taste, olfactory, or auditory sensation);
- A physical object, not subject to direct acquaintance;
- A concept (the mental content by which we recognize novel instances of the kind "apple")
- An abstract quality, instantiated by (at least) diverse sense data, and possibly diverse physical objects);
- A token idea, in the mind of a particular person at a particular time;
- A general idea, common to all people who possess the relevant concept(s).
Notice here that we have a sort of proliferation of one-many problems, which is just one reason Russell thinks a proper analysis of the distinction between universals and particulars is so important. Given the way analytic philosophers of Russell's ilk tend to think about problems like this, were we to develop a transparent logic, we would need to specify, in each meaningful string, which type of object and which type of predicate we intend. Ideally, we should like to be able to trace our most robust scientific knowledge of the world to our corresponding concepts and sense-data. That was the dream at the root of the enterprise. (There's much more to be said here, but the general impulse is rooted in the epistemic primacy of first-person experience. On this picture, although the physical world is ontologically prior to our thoughts about it, our first-person experience is epistemically prior, insofar as it provides the common gateway through which we all have to pass to get to the point of scientific inquiry.)
In my follow-up post, I will summarize a roughly contemporaneous (1911-1912) essay that Russell wrote about Universals, entitled "On The Relations of Universals and Particulars." I hope it will help to expand and reinforce Russell's remarks on the topic in chapters 9 and 10.
Monday, May 05, 2014
Skepticamp!
So the 2014 Atlanta Skepticamp happened this weekend, and it was, as expected, quite fun. There were a bunch of thoroughly enjoyable talks. Topics ranged from critical thinking for our public schools (and especially teachers), to Christian Science, and even Hepatitis C. It was a really rewarding weekend, and both days finished with fairly wide-ranging panel discussions featuring the presenters. Altogether an awesome weekend!
Friday, May 02, 2014
Two Further Reports
Two very late entries to the research, both very good.
This is an overview of the largest study on gun violence in the U.S. to date. The findings are pretty startling. The authors found that for every 1% increase in gun ownership proportions, there was a 0.9% increase in gun homicides.
This is a report that came out some time ago and found, essentially, that guns pose a greater risk to people living around them than to anybody else. Fascinating stuff. The comparative statistics on childhood gun violence are heart-breaking.
This is an overview of the largest study on gun violence in the U.S. to date. The findings are pretty startling. The authors found that for every 1% increase in gun ownership proportions, there was a 0.9% increase in gun homicides.
This is a report that came out some time ago and found, essentially, that guns pose a greater risk to people living around them than to anybody else. Fascinating stuff. The comparative statistics on childhood gun violence are heart-breaking.
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