Dan Korman just posted a nice little discussion on Hawthorne’s objection to common sense ontology here. I don’t dispute anything Korman says, but this has inspired to test drive another response to this kind of argument that I’ve been kicking around for awhile.
Here’s the quote from Hawthorne that Korman uses.
“Barring a kind of anti-realism that none of us should tolerate,
wouldn’t it be remarkable if the lines of reality match the lines that
we have words for? The simplest exercises of sociological imagination
ought to convince us that the assumption of such a harmony is
altogether untoward, since such exercises convince us that it is
something of a biological and/or cultural accident that we draw the
lines that we do.”
The response begins by noting that what it takes for a predicate like “is an object” to get its meaning is partially determined by two variables – intention and use. I don’t have a fully worked out view on if one factor always matters more than the other or if one trumps the other in some instances (and vice versa), but I’m not sure I need to.
Ordinary speakers of English don’t typically intend or use the predicate “is an object” to apply to things not recognized by the common sense ontologist. So the extension of is an object on either view about how meaning gets fixed will be roughly what the common sense ontologist says it is.
If the extension of “is an object” is determined by either the intentions of ordinary speakers of english, then it doesn’t seem to be miraculously that the way in which we use words tracks what objects there are. Same for if use determines the extension of “is an object”.
So, I guess I don’t understand why the common sense ontologist is committed to some weird miracle?
Now I think something had better be wrong with my reasoning, and I’m hoping someone will tell me what it is. Because what I’ve justed offered looks like it’s dangerously close to a kind of conventionalism or relativism about what objects there are. That seems bad.
(Also, I think Hawthorne might say that I’ve just pushed the problem back. He could say – it would be remarkable if our word object carved nature at its joints in some interesting and metaphysically fundamental way.)
I am not sure I get the picture. Suppose that I say that the meaning of “cup” is determined by intentions and use. Moreover, ordinary speakers of English don’t typically intend or use the predicate “is a cup” to apply to cups not recognized by the common sense ontologist. If the extension of “is a cup” is determined by either the intentions of ordinary speakers of English or how they use the term, then it doesn’t seem to be miraculously that the way in which we use “is a cup” tracks what cups there are.
This speech makes sense to me. But maybe that is because there were, roughly, a lot of different candidate meanings for “is a cup” before we started introducing the term. We could have used or intended to use the predicate “is a cup” to apply to pencils or to things that are either cups or computers. There is no miracle because no matter where we aimed in our intentions and use we would have hit some class of objects. But, the same cannot be said about “is an object”. That predicate is supposed to be the most general predicate we have. There isn’t anywhere else we could have aimed it and succeeded in fixing a meaning.
One might think that “is an object” is not perfectly general. Maybe, in some sense, all sorts of entities are candidates for being within the extension of “is an object” and we are not lucky because we would have fixed on some class of those entities no matter where we aimed our intentions. If this is the view you are expressing, then your speech makes sense to me. But, now we are coming dangerously close to some kind of Meinongianism that might not be acceptable or perhaps we, in the most broad sense, believe in (literally) all kinds of entities and we just use “is an object” to apply to some of them. But, this doesn’t seem right. A denier of strong views about composition doesn’t believe in some fusion of my computer and the lint in your pocket while denying that it “is an object”. He denies the existence of any sort of entity of any category that is composed of my computer and the lint in your pocket. So, I am inclined to think that this defense of common sense ontology is not successful.
What you say in the last paragraph is what I had in mind, and it does seem to put us dangerously close to something unacceptable (Meinongianism perhaps). I was thinking it might put us dangerously close to a kind of relativism (or conventionalism).
And you’re right that, given what I say, we seem to be admitting the fusions of all these other things that we wouldn’t call ‘objects’ – but that already admits something the common sense ontologist wants to reject.
So, I guess maybe we should regard ‘is an object’ as some special kind of predicate.
Hey Andy,
Sorry I am commenting on an old post. I am interested in this argument from Hawthorne and I have a response. But, almost everyone I have told it to has given me a strange look. Here is my response:
It is not surprising that our words carve the world at its joints. After all, we go about our lives seeing that there are various objects and that other things don’t compose objects. I see that there is a rock on my desk and I see that the loose bits of dirt and twigs in the front yard don’t compose anything. As a result I say things like “there is an object on my desk” and “those twigs don’t compose anything with that dirt”. In other words, we use our words the way we do because we are justified in believing that the world has a certain structure and we are justified in believing that the world has that structure because it really does have that structure.
Someone might worry about a world where the matter that makes up the rocks in the our world is arranged in just the way it actually is yet doesn’t compose anything. I am not confident that that world is a possible world. Moreover, I also think that the agents in that world are justified in believing that there is a fairly large thing in front of them when they are confronted with some matter arranged rock-wise. Moreover, they are justified in introducing a term that they think applies to whatever that matter composes. Unfortunately, they are simply mistaken.
Marc Moffett has suggested that the issue is over conceptual voluntarism. His idea is similar to mine but not quite the same. I might accept that some strange community can introduce terms that don’t carve reality at its joints. But, those communities are either acting irrationally or they happen to be trapped in a world where the joints are so weird that their rational beliefs about the joints are simply mistaken.
Hey Joshua,
If you were in my presence and uttered this response, I would not have given you a strange look.
This seems like a worthy response to Hawthorne – especially if you have some view about epistemic justification that I endorse. We have strong seemings about which things are objects and which things are not – that might yield justification that those things are objects.
Of course something needs to be fleshed out. You say: “we are justified in believing it has this structure, because it has that structure”
If we were evidentialists or phenomenal conservative types, then we’d need to explain why the world having a certain structure would cause us to have the seemings we have. I think that could be done, and if it could – I think I’d like this response a lot.