Abstract
Few critics of the received view in metaphysics that ontological disputes are generally substantive have stirred as much response as those that have developed Carnapian arguments turning on considerations of language and interpretation. The arguments from deflationists like Thomasson (2009, 2014) and Neo-Fregeans like Hale and Wright (2009), focus on features of actual language use, others like those from Hirsch (2002, 2009) focus on interpretation. In this paper, I offer a novel challenge to the latter sort of argument. I argue that through their use of the principle of charity, they have unacceptable consequences beyond the ontology room: the best accounts of some natural language phenomena—most importantly, presupposition—cannot be maintained.
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Notes
As formulated it looks like Hirsch’s argument overlooks the semantic externalism many accept is at work in linguistic communities. Hirsch sidesteps complications from semantic externalism by asking us to suppose the speakers come from different imaginary linguistic communities such as the Nihilese or Universalese linguistic communities. The difference between these two imaginary linguistic communities is roughly that the former talks as if there are no composite objects, the latter talks as if any objects compose another object. These added complexities to Hirsch’s argument are not important for the argument of this paper so I will set them aside.
See, for example, McGrath (2008) which argues that Hirsch neglects charity to expressibility and gives too much weight to charity to truth, and Jackson (2013) which argues which argues Hirsch’s conditions for a dispute being verbal are too strong and too weak. See also Hawthorne (2009) and Marsh (2010) for related objections.
See Stalnaker (2014) on explaining presupposition, epistemic modals, and certain conditionals using the common ground in an update view of discourse.
I say “most” ontological debates because Hirsch thinks that his argument does not work for some ontological debates. For example, debates between Platonists and Nominalists cannot be deemed merely verbal in light of his argument because he thinks there is not an adequate translation scheme between Platonist sentences and Nominalist sentences. For more discussion, see Hirsch, (2009: 252–256).
Davidson (1973).
In essence, it’s not possible to get the intuitively correct predictions of presupposition on semantic accounts of presupposition in the spirit of Strawson (1950). This gets called “the projection problem” which is first discussed in Morgan (1969). Alternatives to semantic accounts of presupposition that yield intuitive predictions involve some kind of update view of discourse in the spirit of Stalnaker (1972).
This does not mean that philosophers always begin a conversation with an intention to debate some proposition. This may be something that evolves later in the conversation. The update view provides a simple model or heuristic device for understanding language and communication. Likewise, with simple examples of debates like the one discussed here.
This is not to grant that van Inwagen or Lewis are speaking alternative languages. These equivalences may hold even if all parties speak the same language.
In cases like the debate over whether someone has had a drink, usually one person asserts a claim (e.g., Betty says “Sally has had a drink”) and the other person reacts with surprise (e.g., Darla reacts with surprise and says “She definitely hasn’t!”). Given an update view of discourse, situations like this should perhaps be viewed as a case where one party (Darla) mistakes the other (Betty) for attempting to add a proposition to the common ground that should not be added (the proposition she would express as “Sally has had an alcoholic drink.”).
This might involve rejecting the idea that there could be more than one candidate quantifier meaning for existential quantifier expressions like “there are.”.
See Sider 2009 for an argument to this effect.
Sider offers another popular account of verbal dispute via his analysis of a non-substantive question:
A non-substantive question is one containing an expression E whose [candidate meanings] are such that (i) each opposing view about the question comes out true on some candidate; and (ii) no candidate carves at the joints in the right way for E better than the rest (2011: 49).
It should be uncontroversial that the question of whether Sally has had a drink is non-substantive according to Sider’s criterion, as it is doubtful that Darla’s understanding of “drink” is more or less joint-carving than Betty’s. However, it’s likely that Hirsch and those sympathetic to more deflationist views will not want to adopt an account of verbal dispute which uses the notion of “joint-carving,” a notion Hirschians and other deflationists are liable to contend is hopelessly obscure. Sider’s is not the only account in town.
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Phillips, C.K. Common Ground and Charity in Conflict. Acta Anal 38, 311–321 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-022-00523-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-022-00523-2