Update!!! (Finally...)

Wow, it's been a long time since I've blogged on here - about three years! That's what happens when you have two more kids come along and finish off your dissertation! So, update on what's happened since the last post:

October 3-4 2008: I participated in the first Midwest Philosophy and Theology Conference at Lincoln University and met some awesome people there in the process. My paper was entitled "A Mea Culpa for the Felix Culpa?: A Greater Goods Response to the Problems of Evil and Hell" and was an exploration of theodicy or defense without appealing to libertarian freedom (although, as I indicate at the end of the paper, I think the best theodicy or defense will probably need to combine these approaches in some way). The proceedings can be found here. I recommend Anderson and Lim's papers, which were very interesting.

Just a couple weeks later: new baby!!!

Spring 2009: Pacific APA in Vancouver. I gave an abridged version of half of one of my dissertation chapters. For the abstract, along with those of the rest of the meeting, see here.

March 2009: Move to the Bay Area.

Fall 2009: Finish dissertation! Time, Tense, and Mind: A Case Study in Metaphysics and Perspectival Representation is all done! Now if only I could get a job...

Spring 2010: Nope, instead, I get into the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley in their Masters of Biblical Languages Program (since the only logical thing after not being able to find employment is go back for another degree...). As a master's student, I am affiliated with one of the GTU's member schools, so my choice is the DSPT (Dominican School for Philosophy and Theology) - which is interesting since I'm not Roman Catholic - with Sister Barbara Green as my adviser.

Fall 2010: Start my new program. That's about where I am now. I'll post some more new stuff as I'm able (we had yet another baby in March!).

Quick Thoughts on Some Remarks by Dummett

So I decided to read Michael Dummett's Truth and the Past to see if there was anything relevant for my dissertation. I suppose some of it may be, but I want to focus on some of the things he says in his penultimate chapter, "The Metaphysics of Time". Some of his arguments or considerations offered in this chapter are particularly weak or bordering on the question-begging (although, to be fair, these were just a series of lectures that have now been published in book form, so the brevity of some of the discussions is perhaps a little understandable). Of the four-dimensional model of the universe (by which he seems to mean a strange version of a tenseless, perdurantist view), for instance, Dummett says:

The four-dimensional model [...] deprives the world we observe of genuine change; there is only that of our awareness as we travel into the future. The model is grounded on the conception of our consciousness as moving through the static four-dimensional reality along the temporal dimension.

Now, first of all, no one that I know of holds a view like this. This reads like some unholy combination of a tenseless physical world coupled with a tensed mental world or else a timeless physical world coupled with a temporal mental world. Either way, no tenseless, perdurantist view is going to own up to anything like this. But Dummet continues:

A proponent of the four-dimensional model may deny this. We are, he says, irregular four-dimensional tubes (or hypertubes), with the peculiarity that consciousness attaches to our temporal cross-sections. Nothing changes: it is just that our different temporal cross-sections are aware of different things.

This is better, but it is still question-begging - the variation of an object along its temporal dimension, on a tenseless, perdurantist view just is the changing of the object. The perdurantist does not repudiate change, they give an account of it. Dummett misses the point here entirely. He continues:

This image is misconceived. Consider a description of other hypertubes, whose axes lie along a spatial dimension. To us these would appear long, very short-lived objects; if we learned that a different consciousness attached to each segment of one of the tubes, we should regard them as strings of distinct creatures. But if we were told that a different consciousness attached to each cross-section of such a tube at an angle orthogonal to its axis, and that the different consciousnesses varied continuously, we could make nothing of this at all.

It's not clear who the "we" is here (Van Inwagen and Dummet perhaps?), for quite a few people seem to be able to make sense of such things. Such a thing may be impossible, but it certainly seems intelligible or conceivable in a pretty strong sense. As we will see elsewhere, Dummett seems to like to think that if some view is contrary to a deeply entrenched belief of his, it must be unintelligible. Forget the fact that lots of other people seem to find it the opposite - or even to find that the denial of the perdurantist view is unintelligible itself!

Another less than stellar paragraph comes a few pages later, where Dummett writes:

Why should truth be explained in terms of knowledge? The question is whether it is possible to swallow the conception of a reality existing in utter independence of its being apprehended. [...] My question is whether it is intelligible to suppose that the universe might have been devoid of sentient creatures throughout its existence. What would be the difference between the existence of such a universe and there being no universe at all? To express the question theologically, could God have created a universe devoid of sentient creatures throughout its existence? What would be the difference between God's creating such a universe and his merely conceiving of such a universe without bringing it into existence? What difference would its existence make? It seems to me that the existence of a universe from which sentience was perpetually absent is an unintelligible fantasy. What exists is what can be known to exist. What is true is what can be known to be true. Reality is the totality of what can be experienced by sentient creatures and what can be known by intelligent ones.

It's not really clear here why we should take any of this seriously at all. This is all not so much argument as much as dogmatic assertion of Dummett's own crazy views. Of course, if one is already completely convinced of an antirealist view and think that such a view is necessarily true, one will likely find the scenario discussed here unintelligible. But that shows absolutely nothing. I could also hold crazy views about other things such that a very plausible view will then seem to me to be unintelligible. But that doesn't make the latter fact any evidence for my view - rather, it presupposes it. This is a particular example of how, unchecked, some badly formed intuitions and a lot of stubborness can snowball and lead one into incredibly implausible views. After all, many people will find the impossibility of Dummett's scenario unintelligible. After all, we normally do not think that the existence of stars or the wider universe is somehow dependent on us. That seems just as crazy (more, in fact) as the denial of the reality of the past that Dummett is so eager to escape from.

And notice his rhetorical questions! Here's a good example of the sort of thing I tell undergraduates not to do - introduce rhetorical questions in the place of actual argumentation, particularly when your opponents may very well have an answer for you. In this case, it seems perfectly clear what the difference would be between the universe existing or not, or being created by God or merely conceived. If the universe exists, all sorts of properties are instantiated, there are events occurring, etc. You may as well ask what the difference would be between me existing and me not - obviously, if I did not exist, certain properties would not be instantiated nor would certain events occur had I not been around. But the answer for the existence or non-existence of the universe is exactly parallel. To deny this as Dummett does would make the existence of the external world dependent on us so that it is literally metaphysically impossible that the universe could have been destroyed or ended up in some state such that sentient life never happened. This seems, to say the least, rather implausible.

As for being created versus merely conceived, that also seems too plain to even deserve mention - if God merely conceives of something, it does not exist, whereas if he creates it then it does. And so the differences will be just those between existing and not existing (as for his "What difference would it make?", if it is asking something beyond this, I have no idea what it is or why it would be relevant). He says, "It seems to me that the existence of a universe from which sentience was perpetually absent is an unintelligible fantasy," but, on the contrary, it is his view that seems the unintelligible fantasy. He says, "What exists is what can be known to exist. What is true is what can be known to be true. Reality is the totality of what can be experienced by sentient creatures and what can be known by intelligent ones," but all this is perfectly compatible with realism - it is only incompatible if we make these out to be actual analyses, where the epistemic claim in each statement is analyzing the metaphysical one. But even if we accepted these statements, there seems no good reason to read them this way. After all, the right hand side contains what already appear on the left, thus making such analyses circular and hence no good in developing any kind of theory. But there seems no other option for a view like Dummett's. Dummett simply seems to be confused, like most antirealists, and to have canonized that confusion as dogma.

UPDATE (7/27/08): I've just discovered that an Anthony Rudd in a 1997 Phil Studies article entitled "Realism and Time" makes an argument against the B-theory of time very similar to that of Dummett's against 4Dism, with all the same horribly mistaken assumptions. Rudd's arguments in this piece are, to put it politely, quite weak.

Is Tense Common Sense? (Plattitudes, Attitudes, and Experiences)

Tensed theorists often claim that their theories are common sense. Growing block theorists claim their theory is the common sense view, moving spotlight folks claim theirs is the common sense view, presentist claim theirs is the common sense view, etc. And this is somehow supposed to provide evidence or at least a presumption in favor of their pet version of the tensed time. But what on earth makes them think this in the first place? I suppose it must involve things like fitting various common platitudes and asymmetric attitudes about time or our experience of time or agency. But I'm skeptical about their claims, to say the least. Note first that it's pretty implausible that each of these views is the common sense one or general common sense. And I think that it's a fair piece of evidence against the identification of, say, a view like presentism with common sense that many people find the debate between it and an opposing view like eternalism to be simply vacuous at best. If common sense is indeterminate enough to leave up in the air an issue such as that between eternalism and presentism, I think that's pretty good reason to say that presentism is not the common sense view. It seems to me in general that common sense is either indeterminate between or vacillates between tensed and tenseless views of time. My money would be that common sense doesn't on it's own go either way, though individuals may take it a step farther in one direction or another. Ordinary thought simply does not deal in such high powered metaphysics to a great enough extent in this area to go either way.

But what about all those platitudes, attitudes, and experiences? Well, tenseless theorists can accept and explain all of these too! It is not contrary to the tenseless theory to say, in ordinary speech, that, for instance, time flows or that "time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'...into the future". Or even that "the future is not yet and the past is no more". What I think tensed theorists are latching onto isn't the plausibility of their own theories but the apparent implausibility of tenseless ones as accurate accounts of what's behind such platitudes, attitudes, and experiences. Sometimes when one looks at tenseless theories of time, it can seem that something is missing in accounting for such things. Tensed theorists, I take it, think they can give us what they think are the things are felt to be missed. But, I contend, they actually fail precisely in this regard in almost the same ways and in general at least as bad as (as sometimes worse than) tenseless theorists. (See Alan's post here and our discussion following for a possible example of the sort of stuff I'm talking about in this post)

This last fact - that the apparent gap between our attitudes, platitudes, and experiences, on one hand, and tenseless views, on the other, is just as bad if not worse between our attitudes, platitudes and experiences and tensed views - usually goes unnoticed (though not always - many people have pointed this out in particular cases of these gaps). This is at least partly because of tensed theorists' misleading terminology and (mis?)appropriation of 'common sense talk' as well as intricate ontologies and metaphysics hidden (or put aside to avoid committing to any particular view) behind the soothing, ordinary speech. It all lends an air of authority and authenticity and faithfulness not possessed by most tenseless theorists' talk, largely because tenseless theorists often eschew common talk and often seem to be denying its worth (sometimes this is precisely because, unfortunately, they are!). This is also due to the prevalence and entrechedness of the common misperceptions of what tenseless eternalists believe (see my earlier post on this).

No theory, however, can fill in the gaps I've mentioned - something will always seem missing from any account. Tensed theorists think that because tenseless theorists "fail" in this regard that they therefore succeed, but that is simply not so. In my dissertation, I am arguing that this is true, show that the most plausible account of our mind's access to, uses of, and representations of time explain where these gaps come from - and do so in a way that is in itself neutral between the two big camps. And that this is just one piece in a larger fabric of our conscious, perspectival access to the world and all the associated perspectival/nonperspectival gaps that arise because of it. Tensed theorists in time - as well as other folks in other areas - make a peculiar mistake relating to our representations' relation to the world, one that is widespread in areas from metaphysics to ethics. Or so I argue. So there is absolutely no support for tensed theories from common sense - not even from our plattitudes, attitudes, and experiences.

More Rough Notes on Tracking and Tracking Systems

At least two kinds of tracking – plotting and (semantic) fix maintenance. Talk of ‘tracking time’ here used in the second sense.
Two kinds of maintenance tracking – dynamic state and static state. Dynamic state tracking involves producing a succession of representations which is meant to reflect how things are with what is being tracked at the very time of the tokening (so if tracking A’s height, might token ‘A is 5’6”’ to reflect A’s height at the time of the tokening).
Static state – static state tracking involves using a single representation which (or part of which) has a succession of extensions or propositions expressed to reflect how things are with what is being tracked at the very time of the tokening (so ‘now’ refers to a different time at each time but without itself changing). First person thought may be a limiting case of static state tracking where the succession of extensions of the first person aspect of the representation (within a given a system) are identical (e.g., as used by a single subject, the referent of ‘I’ is going to be identical – the subject using it – across moments). Fully explicit indexical thought will be static state thought since explicit indexicals will be static state trackers of whatever they are meant to refer to.
Past/future tense thoughts may be either ‘n units before now’/ ‘n units after now’ (perhaps to a certain diminishing precision) or ‘before now’/ ‘after now’ and so track what came before or after a time.For the first-person tracking system (the system for tracking me), we don’t need a system which changes states over time – merely such that it can take us from representations to action (e.g., gets me to run away when tokening ‘IS is being chased by a bear’). As far as 3rd person representations go, it chooses which ones are relevant for action. Two ways: Fixed choice of first person representations (which are static state trackers of the agent deploying them) and can then use those and their connections to 3rd person ones (that is, it acts on all 1st person representations and 3rd person representations connected to those – e.g., ‘I am IS’ plus ‘IS is being chased by a bear’ gets me to run), or directly chooses the 3rd person ones somehow (e.g., makes me act on all decisions about what IS ought to do).

Notes on Tracking Systems, Indexical Systems, and Indexicals

Tracking x – an activity that involves retaining/maintaining a semantic or cognitive “fix” (reference, mere indication, or attention or some other focused attitude). An activity that, at each successive time, updates the fix on the item to reflect the new time. A tracking system is just a system which functions to track something. To keep track of x generally involves maintaining some sort of “cognitive fix” at each time t on the current slice, stage, or state of x. So, for instance, keeping track of the number of green marbles in a jar involves at each time having some kind of fix on the current number of marbles in the jar that are in fact green. Keeping track of, say, Peter involves at each time having some kind of fix on the current stage of Peter. And so keeping track of time, understood in this way (that is, keeping track of the current time), is just to maintain a cognitive fix at each time t on the current slice of time – which is just t itself – so that keeping track of time involves simply having a fix on the current time at that very time. Other ways of keeping track of time might involve, say, keeping track of whichever time is two hours in the future. This would involve maintaining at each time t a cognitive fix on whichever time, at t, is two hours in the future. Or keeping track of the temporal distance from some reference event.

A tensed system is just a system for tracking time and a clock is a tensed system which maintains its semantic fix on the current time (given that it is functioning properly, that is) by constantly changing states to reflect the change of time. “Now” tracks time, but without any changing of states, so it counts as tensed but not clock-like in any sense. It can itself, though, be part of a tensed, clock-like system or used to express states of or relations to such a system. A system can then exploit these coordinations between tensed system or representation and time to act in a timely manner.

A tracking system, perhaps, then can also be considered a tensed system since by tracking something over time one is thereby also implicitly tracking time in relation to it since it is keeping track of items or facts at successive times.

Tenseless representations cannot so closely match the representational state of a tensed system as tensed ones since only the tensed ones have some of the tracking capabilities of such a system and so can express the representational state of a tensed system in a constant, unchanging manner. Non-indexical representations cannot do such a thing – they cannot track time on their own and hence cannot be used to directly express the representational state of a tensed system in such a close way. So even if tensed and tenseless representations express the same tenseless propositions or facts, only the tensed ones will most closely match the cognitive role of the tensed system itself – only they share the feature of tense with the system that can in turn be exploited by the larger agent for action. Tensed representations, then, provide better “translations” for the states of tensed systems.

Indexicals themselves are not essential for action, but indexical systems are. Indexicals themselves are essential only for adequately expressing states involving such systems. Most primitive representations are probably indexical or perspectival in some way yet also probably lack explicit indexicals. Rather than I AM HOT NOW, we would more likely simply have HOT and rather than THERE IS NOW FOOD THREE FEET TO THE RIGHT OF ME, we would have THERE IS FOOD THREE FEET TO THE RIGHT. The difference between humans and most other animals, then, may be our explicit indexical concepts. Self-consciousness, perhaps, involves the acquisition of an explicit ‘I’ concept which, given the plethora of first-person representations – the person parameter of which ‘I’ makes explicit – enables us to attach an explicit I THINK to our thoughts so that we might think our thoughts and have the ability to be self-consciously aware of our thinking them. (NOW is also perhaps a step in making explicit our implicit parameters – in this case, of time. NOW may help in the construction of tenseless specifications of the temporal parameter or at least in connecting representations where the parameter is non-specified with the tenseless ones. NOW, then, may perhaps help us in forming objective timelines and stories about the world.)

Like the case of a tensed system, we need a first-person system for “tracking” me and making sure I do what I need to do. This would be needed if we are to take general thoughts about what agents should do in various situations and make them effective and carried out by the agent. Take only third person representations. We would need a system to coordinate these with the agent and get the agent to do actions assigned to that agent rather than others. This system decides which third person representations to act on and thus represents appropriately designated agents as me. More likely, the whole system leaves the person-parameter implicit and uses these apparently subjectless (there is only an implicit subject) representations to act by acting on these and only these. This is the parameter made explicit by ‘I’. So I am implicitly referred to in many of my representations and acts of awareness – and hence implicitly aware of myself – even when I do not show up, say, as an explicit object of thought or perception. It takes more mental energy, though, to unpack the reference and become explicitly aware of oneself in a first-person manner.

Quick Note on Autism and the First-Person

I recently read Eros Corazza's excellent book Reflecting the Mind which, despite the title, was basically a phil language book. I was struck, however, with one particular passage where he spoke of autistic people (I'm pretty sure he was talking about only some autistic people as I personally know at least one who doesn't have this problem) as having a hard time with personal pronouns like 'I' and 'you'. Corazza seemed to suggest that because they were not fully competent with these words that they had no first-person thoughts or concepts, etc. But that seems to me to tie the first-person too closely to language. Without first-person thoughts of any sort, there would be no genuine action at all - but autistic people can perfectly well perform actions (even if not always in the same ways or with the same skill as others). Their bodies don't just happen to move the way they do.

My counter-diagnosis would be that those who have a hard time with first-person or similar linguistic terms have such a hard time not because they lack no first-person representation (after all, some may still be able to use their own names in the way a non-sufferer would use 'I'), but rather because becoming competent with such terms requires knowing and applying a context-sensitive linguistic rule which requires a good grasp of understanding other perspectives and how the references of these terms change accordingly from one to another. It's a difficulty with "linguistic empathy", not thinking in the first-person.

Indexicals and Phenomenal Concepts

In this post, I want to connect up the contents of my previous two posts (found here and here). Indexicals connect up to non-indexical representations by showing up in non-indexical places in thought (for instance, 'now' shows up where the temporal parameter should be, 'I' where the personal parameter should be, etc.). Since it takes such a place in thought, it is thus is subject to a minimal amount of conceptualization and is conceptually connected to non-indexical concepts concerning the appropriate parameter it falls under. For instance, 'now' is conceptually connected to temporal concepts since it takes over the role of the temporal parameter at the level of explicit representation. Hence, we are aware of or at least attuned to the general function of 'now' as a representation with a certain kind of usage. And this is at least part of why indexical information "disappears" from the objective, third-person perspective - precisely because such information takes on an explicit role of a certain kind without explicitly assigning any particular value to the parameter it stands in for, and all of this is something of which we can be consciously aware of in the first person. This is why the 1- and 2-intensions of indexicals end up differing and why many of us are not tempted to think that there is any here or I or now in any kind of context-free sense.

With phenomenal concepts, however, we don't have all of this - hence, there is no "dissolution" of phenomenal information from the objective point of view. So even if phenomenal concepts end up being indexical-like in some important way (or recognitional or whatever), this important difference - that it doesn't take the place of a non-indexical parameter - helps make the difference between them and indexical concepts or other perspectival concepts. They simply do not have the conceptual role that normal indexical concepts do, even if their semantics may in some ways be similar.

Linguistic indexicals, for instance, "disappear" since we need to know third person truth conditions to interpret others' usage - and sometimes even our own. And this may sometimes be necessary even in our own thoughts - to know the links between our indexical concepts and the concepts relating to whatever these indexicals are standing in for. But with pure phenomenal concepts, things are a bit different - there is no need for a separate parameter cashed out using non-phenomenal concepts for which phenomenal concepts fill in. And hence there isn't such need to reinterpret what others say in phenomenal terms into non-phenomenal terms. If phenomenal concepts refer to features which can be reduced to the non-phenomenal, since these features would be so complex and outside the ability of most of the human race to get an accurate, specific and non-deferential cognitive fix on in non-phenomenal terms we would ordinarily have no need to have separate explicitly non-phenomenal parameters which phenomenal concepts fill in for - and, indeed, if phenomenal features are anything like brain states of a certain sort then not only would we ordinarily have no need but none of us at the present day (as far as I know) are in a position to even have such parameters. So we do not have such parameters and hence, even if the phenomenal is subsumed under the physical, there will not be much of anything in the way of conceptual connections between phenomenal and physical or functional concepts - even if phenomenal concepts are in some ways like indexicals.

Tensed Thoughts 2.0

Assume all my representations are tenseless representations and I need to use them to act. Are these enough, representation-wise? Since we are talking about creatures which act at a time, for action, we need to coordinate the proposed action with time or else any success we meet in our endeavors will be a wild accident at best. So given tenseless information about a time at which I am located and need to act at, I need to be able to act reliably at that very time. This requires keeping track of the time in some way. To be reliable in coordinating tenseless temporal information with action, then, we need to make certain temporal information relevant in the proper way or action - or intention-in-action-producing at the relevant times. So, in other words, we need at least one clock-like-functioning system which somewhat reliably coordinates action with which times are appropriate to act at and so which tenseless representations are appropriate to act on. This system could take on multiple forms and, indeed, we may need more than one of these. Clock-like systems could include systems that act as timers, oscillators, accumulators, digital clocks, etc.

Now consider a speedometer. A speedometer represents a lot of different speeds. But that by itself is not its function - its function is to indicate (via the pointer) what the speed of the vehicle currently is. So lots of speeds are represented but only one in particular is represented as the speed of the vehicle - and this is done without explicitly representing anything but the speed itself. Now consider a carbon monoxide detector where a light labeled "Carbon Monoxide" lights up whenever the compound is present. Clearly, this detector represents carbon monoxide but its function is to detect the presence of carbon monoxide. So when the light is lit up, it represents carbon monoxide as present - even though its presence is not itself explicitly represented. This works even if the detector tokens a full representation which doesn't mention the presence of carbon monoxide, so long as the function of the system is still the same. So if the light is labeled "Carbon Monoxide is Very, Very Bad", the lighting up of the light and thus the system's coordination of the presence of the compound with the representation is still representing carbon monoxide as present despite this fact being extrinsic to the representation itself.

What we can learn from looking at these few examples is that if it is the function of a system to detect, indicate, or otherwise track that some F is G, and it does this by tokening a representation of F, it thereby represents F as G. Now apply this to clock systems. Clock-like systems can represent a lot of different times or be involved in coordinating times with representations which explicitly refer to a lot of different times. It is the function of the clock-like system to track the current time. And by doing so, it represents that time as being present or being now. So a clock-like system is essentially a tensed system - simply put, just a system for keeping track of the time. That is, we really do need tense after all - not simply tenseless representations.

What a tensed system like a clock in effect does is to attach temporal representations to the appropriate time in such a way as to be in a certain way infallible. This is especially apparent in the case of representations where time is not explicitly represented at all and yet which are still only about temporal matters (and are hence in this sense tensed) - the time enters into the represent implicitly or is represented by itself. An explicit NOW concept is perhaps at least partly a placeholder making explicit the implicit presence of the current time. Tensed systems and representations, then, constitute a kind of direct access to time that we need as agents to act.

If we have a system for keeping track of the time without necessarily requiring an explicit representation of time, it may be more economical for us to token representations which leave reference to the present time implicit. In that sort of case, an ordinary thought about the present time and one simply about how things are simpliciter or tenselessly may very well take the same explicit surface representational form – that is, there may be no syntactically present-tensed verbs at least at the explicit surface level. So we get things like 'Fred is cold' and 'Fred is human' where the first is to be interpreted tensedly whereas the second (arguably) is not (a less contentious example might be one involving a mathematical sentence). Yet both have the same surface explicit surface syntax.

In the tensed representations of this sort that lack a NOW or similar concept or locution, no explicit piece of the representation represents the time (the time of the representation itself does this). The temporal 'at t' parameter which is in the truth conditions is hence not explicitly specified, which is why tenseless and tensed representations of these sorts will look the same. In these present-tensed representations, it is the time of the representation itself (roughly) that enters as the value of the implicit parameter. In other, perhaps less primitive ones, we may have a sentence with an implicit temporal parameter that is not pointed at the present but where the value of the parameter is some time which is particularly salient or otherwise demonstrated. So 'Go to my house' may have the current time as its value - I want you to go now - or it may have some other time contextually specified - such as some time soon, or after you've picked up my laundry, etc.

As mentioned earlier, NOW perhaps, then, acts as something which makes the parameter itself explicit, often indicating the time of the representation but without specifying explicitly which exact time that is - it is a stand-in for that time, whichever it may be. So NOW can be used to explicitly disambiguate representations that can take one or more tensed readings and/or a tenseless one. This might explain part of the reason why NOW always takes wide scope in sentences (particularly modal or temporal ones), since it's really the implicit current value of the temporal parameter that enters into the semantics – the NOW simply indicates its presence or place in those semantics.

All of this perhaps explains part of why tensed views of time are so attractive or natural to many people (put aside whether such views are true or not) - since there is no surface difference between present-tensed and tenseless representations, it is easy to confuse being F at t (where t is the current time) with being F simpliciter. If there is no explicit parameter – just NOW as a placeholder – then it will be easy to confuse ‘being F’ with ‘being F now’. And since NOW is a relatively simple concept, irreducible to tenseless ones, etc., then if one mistakes properties of representations for properties of what is represented (or for properties of what is expressed) one will take it that NOW expresses a relatively simple property which is not reducible to any tenseless ones – that is, there must be irreducibly tensed properties. And not only that, since the reference of NOW shifts over time, given this same confusion we will get confused notions of tensed “temporal passage”. A kind of primitive use/mention confusion.

Additional note: NOW is, perhaps, thus different from PRESENT. PRESENT seems to mean something akin to LOCATED AT or IN THE PRESENCE OF. So 'A is present' "means" 'A is located at' or 'A is in the presence of'. Unlike NOW, PRESENT does not take wide scope. Since this sort of representation is tensed, what is really going on is that the temporal parameter which would complete the representation and tell us at what time A is located is left implicit. So PRESENT takes a temporal parameter like many other predicates and doesn't specify a time at all on its own but will pick up that parameter, like any other similar predicate, from that governing whatever clause in which it happens to be embedded. (Compare the difference in parameter between 'A is present now', 'A is present at noon', etc.)

A Quick Note on Chalmers on the Phenomenal Concept Strategy

Chalmers (in numerous places) objects to the phenomenal concept strategy as a response to his explanatory gap argument against mainstream forms of physicalism. On most versions, he says, they make phenomenal concepts out to be indexicals or demonstratives. Yet indexicals and demonstratives have different 1- and 2-intensions whereas phenomenal concepts do not (hence why, from a third person point of view - according to Chalmers - when considering the truth conditions of someone else's indexical or demonstrative thoughts or other representations, the indexicality disappears, whereas this is not the case for pure phenomenal representations).

However, I think Chalmers is way too quick. If phenomenal concepts or representations are at least partially self-reflexive or represent phenomenal properties with those very same properties then we will have phenomenal concepts which do not have differing 1- and 2-intensions after all. And the phenomenal concept strategy will still work fine for physicalists of most stripes. It is simply a mistake for Chalmers to think that any sort of reflexivity or being recognitional makes a concept somehow automatically indexical or demonstrative. If it is essential to the concept that it has the content it does and hence does not have differing intensions then it will not be an indexical or demonstrative concept, contra Chalmers. So more work would need to be done to defend Chalmers' arguments agains this popular strategy.

The Function of Clocks and the Purpose of Tensed Thoughts

So it's been a long while since my last post. The end of the quarter, vacations, illnesses, a desire to fast from the blog world for a short time to recover, and a bad bout of food poisoning all conspired to keep away for a while. This is the first time I've looked at any blog in a while, so hopefully I'll start to get back into the swing of things and get back into posting on my own blog and having discussions on others. It'll be interesting to see what happened in some discussions I was involved with when I suddenly went MIA.

In any case, this post is a follow-up to the previous one. I'm not really happy with the argument of the last post - there are a number of points that are really weak or where the argument I now think isn't so good. So I'm going to try another take on why we need tensed thoughts here in this post. (Where the "we" in question is just finite, spatiotemporal agents who act at only particular times and places adjacent to their own particular times and places and do so as a result of (sometimes) deliberation and (all the times) intention)

Since we are talking about creatures which act at a time, for action, we need to coordinate the proposed action with time or else any success we meet in our endeavors will be a wild accident at best. So given information about a time at which I am located and need to act at, I need to be able to act reliably at that very time. This requires keeping track of the time in some way. To be reliable in coordinating temporal information with action, then, we need to make certain temporal information relevant in the proper way or action - or intention-in-action-producing at the relevant times. So, in other words, we need a clock-like system which somewhat reliably coordinates action with which times are appropriate to act at and so which representations are appropriate to act on.

Now consider an odometer. An odometer represent a lot of different speeds. But that by itself is not its function - its function is to indicate (via the pointer) what the speed of the vehicle currently is. So lots of speeds are represented but only one in particular is represented as the speed of the vehicle - and this is done without explicitly representing anything but the speed itself. Now consider a carbon monoxide detector where a light labeled "Carbon Monoxide" lights up whenever the compound is present. Clearly, this detector represents carbon monoxide but its function is to detect the presence of carbon monoxide. So when the light is lit up, it represents carbon monoxide as present - even though its presence is not itself explicitly represented. This works even if the detector tokens a full representation which doesn't mention the presence of carbon monoxide, so long as the function of the system is still the same. So if the light is labeled "Carbon Monoxide is Very, Very Bad", the lighting up of the light and thus the system's coordination of the presence of the compound with the representation is still representing carbon monoxide as present despite this fact being extrinsic to the representation itself.

What we can learn from looking at these few examples is that if it is the function of a system to detect, indicate, or otherwise track that some F is G, and it does this by tokening a representation of F, it thereby represents F as G. Now apply this to clock systems. Clock-like systems can represent a lot of different times or be involved in coordinating times with representations which explicitly refer to a lot of different times. It is the function of the clock-like system to track the current time. And by doing so, it represents that time as being present or being now. So a clock-like system is essentially a tensed system - simply put, just a system for keeping track of the time.

What a tensed system like a clock in effect does is to attach temporal representations to the appropriate time in such a way as to be in a certain way infallible. This is especially apparent in the case of representations where time is not explicitly represented at all and yet which are still only about temporal matters (and are hence in this sense tensed) - the time enters into the represent implicitly or is represented by itself. An explicit NOW concept is perhaps at least partly a placeholder making explicit the implicit presence of the current time. Tensed systems and representations, then, constitute a kind of direct access to time that we need as agents to act.

Why Essential Indexicals Are Really Essential: The Case of Tensed Thoughts

For my dissertation, I've been thinking a lot about essential indexicals and related phenomena and wondering if we could come up with an actual argument that would show that they or some other sort of "perspectival" element sare essential for us rather than merely appealing to intuitions gleaned from thought experiments with grocery carts and ripped bags of sugar. Like most things in philosophy, it probably won't be a knock-down, prove-it-once-and-for-all sort of argument, but that's okay - it still needs to be done. Here's my first pass at such an argument as it relates specifically to temporally perspectival (tensed) thoughts (note that it is extremely rough and a lot of the discussion is oversimplified or not spelled - these are just quick notes I typed out on my computer and in need of polishing over the next few months):

Why do we need tensed representations (count representations which pick out a time via indexicals, demonstratives, first-person representation, etc. as tensed for my purposes here)? Assume we only had tenseless representations. To have these, we need to explicitly represent times in all our representations of what is the case at a time (or times). So when it is some time t, we need a representation T represents t and, to get us to act at the right time, T needs to get us to do at t the actions to be done at t. Two things are needed here: T must be about t and T must in ordinary circumstances only and almost always cause the appropriate actions at t (or t+1). Consider these requirements in reverse order.

For the latter to happen, T must either only show up at all at t or only show up in a certain way at t (say, in the right functional “box”). How would a system, however, acquire such a T? Inference cannot fully explain this since T must either be inferred from a tenseless or tensed representation. As a matter of logic, a tenseless representation cannot follow from a tensed one. And as far as following from a tenseless one, that (or those) would be the T needing explanation. To constantly keep track of the time, T must be something like one syntactic “date” in a system of dates coordinated with actual times via some kind of clock-ish system.

It looks like such a clock system is required if we are only going to used tenseless representations to get us to act. But now that we have the beginnings of an explanation of how the system acquires T, we need an explanation of the semantics for T and the system of temporal representations associated with it, governed by the internal clock. Either the semantics for this system is determined via description or it is not. If it is, then one option is that it is through determining one time via description and then the other times by their relations to this one time. The other option is that they are interdefined in some way.

If it is determined via description in the former way then the only way to do this is by describing events that occur at that time (or using a description of that time which describes it as coming before or after to a certain degree the events of another time). This will involve either a purely qualitative description or else some sort of description involving using a rigidly-designating name of an event (or indexicals – but that’s not allowed). If it’s purely qualitative then there’s no guarantee that we’ll pick out a specific time or even the right time (we might get the description wrong or more than one time could fit it). And that’s bad if we want to act at the time represented. If, on the other hand, it uses the mental concept of an event then either we are directly hooked up to the even with reference not being determined by description or the reference is in fact by description. If by the latter, we have the same problem over again. The former, however, seems unlikely – how would we get hooked up in this way with a specific particular event without some indexicalish phenomena going on?

It looks like determining the semantics of the system via determining the reference of one representation via description won’t cut it. How about if it’s more holistic? Here we have an even greater chance of being off since, given that the syntactic times are all interdefined and will presumably involve descriptions of what goes on at some or all of the times being represented. The problems with specificity might be better but the chance of error is increased.

If, however, the reference is not determined via any sort of description then we have the same problem as with referring to events – it looks like this requires the use of some kind of indexicalish activity. Since these seem to be the only options for getting us to act in a timely and appropriate way using tenseless representations alone and they either do not work or end up involving tensed representation, it looks like we really do need tensed representation.

Explanations of why we need other sorts of perspectival representations are going to be similar (perhaps including first-person and phenomenal concepts).

Representation, Description and Motivation: A Quick Note

Some quick ideas I'm trying out:

Anytime something is linked directly to motivation or action in a timely way (i.e., tensed or first person representations, ethical representations maybe, etc.), the representation in question which represents the motivating or action-involving fact to the thinker is not fully descriptive but is linked to some outside entity in a more direct, not-so-description-determined way. Tensed representations link us in direct, non-descriptive ways to times, first-person ones link each one of us to ourselves, and so on.

This might give some weight to moral realists or even moral naturalists. For judgment internalists, "moral representations" are ceteris paribus intrinsically motivating. Moral antirealists often point this out to try to shore up their claim that moral "representations" aren't really representational of any kind of moral reality after all. And even moral realist non-naturalists may want to press the Open-Question argument and point out that it is always open to ask whether any particular natural properties is really good. And this argument may be even stronger if it is pointed out that goodness is motivating for us whereas we may not necessarily feel so motivated when it comes to some merely natural property.

The paragraph above the previous one may hold some kind of ammunition for the realist or naturalist against their foes. Moral terms or concepts may indeed not be fully descriptive and yet may refer perfectly well to particular properties - even natural ones. These properties, perhaps, would not under a non-moral description be intrinsically motivating. What moral representation does is put the representation in a form where we can be linked to these moral properties more directly, with less mediation by description, so that these properties can motivate us in the proper way similar to the way a third-person description of the same fact would not motivate me or produce actions of mine in the same appropriate way as a first-person representation of that fact would.

Cockburn and Dummett on Understanding Statements About the Past

So I've been reading David Cockburn's (boy, I bet with a name like that he got made fun of as a kid) book Other Times. It's very different from anything else I've read on time since it takes a weird Wittgensteinian behavioristically anti-realist "No, I'm not an anti-realist" stand that threatens to collapse into either a strong anti-realism or a confused realism. A few comments on some stuff I've read:

Cockburn's take on Dummett is that Dummett thinks that it is wrong to think that there is a common core, "A is F", which, when one understands that and also has a general understanding of the past and future tenses, one can then understand "A was F" or "A will be F". Cockburn's Dummet (CD hereafter) thinks that, instead, to understand "A was F" is to know, for instance, what counts as present evidence for that - which will depend on the kind of event in question. On CD's view, it's not enough to have the general understanding of the tenses plus an understanding of the present-tensed version of the sentence. But isn't it? If one knows what being A and being F are, one knows the kinds of causes and effects associated with them to some degree. If one (perhaps expertly) deeply understands "A is F", one needs to understand what being A and being F are. But that, combined with a general understanding of the past tense, will also yield knowledge of what counts as present evidence for the past tense claim that A was F.

On pg. 61, Cockburn says that a 'fundamental aspect of our use of a sentence' is 'the ways in which it may feature in the justification of actions and emotions. This feature...is not one we should expect to be able to derive from other feature of its use... We cannot even characterise those supposed 'other' features of the use of a sentence independently of the actions and emotions with which it is characteristically linked.' I'm not sure there's sufficient evidence for this sort of claim. It's not clear how justification can be fundamental unless we become some sort of behaviorist or something close to it. Even then, I'm not sure what justification would even mean. If the entire meaning of a sentence is captured in its inferential role and we leave no room for reference or reality or correspondence to external facts, this is an extreme anti-realism. Otherwise, either the facts expressed will themselves determine the sentences' inferential role or, more in line with Cockburn's ideas, the inferential role of a sentence will determine the facts. That is, if p justifies q then, given that facts are "chosen" from the world that match the given inferential role, the fact expressed by p will be the sort to ground such a justification or be a reason - not just any old facts, but the ones that actually fit the role. Either way, we still can ask about what in reality is playing that role. Cockburn doesn't seem to allow this - his whole focus is on sentences and our behavior but he fails to deal with what those sentences correspond to.

Notes on Ludlow: Ch. 10

**WARNING: Technical Post**

In chapter 10, the antirealism or verficationism shines through strongly. Whereas previously Ludlow noted that we tend to evaluate claims about the past or future based on current evidence, he now seems to say that claims about the past or future are really claims about this evidence (in which case, it's not really evidence except in the trivial sense where we count something as evidence for itself). This, of course, is an unargued leap that he seems to take without being aware of it - if one is to be a presentist, there are a number of ways of grounding past or future truths other than simply in the evidence for such truths. Perhaps Ludlow's linguistic discussion is supposed to provide some such evidence, but it seems to me inconclusive at best, a confusion of assertibility conditions and truth conditions that one would only expect if one were already persuaded of some kind of antirealism.

Indeed, the move seems to be completely unwarranted unless one has already ruled out the alternatives or are assuming some kind of verificationism about meaning. But then it is hard to see how we can rule out many similar, obviously bad moves (notice a pattern developing in this book?). We might, for instance, note that we evaluate claims about other people or places based on personal, spatially proximate evidence. If we follow Ludlow, we would have to conclude that claims about other people or places are just claims about evidence internal to me or where I am at. But this seems to me to be clearly false - solipsism just isn't a viable option. Perhaps someone may object that the evidence we consider can be located in other persons than me or places than the one I am at. It's just mediated by more proximate events, objects or processes. But then we could give exactly the same answer for time - we can be, for instance, in possession of temporally remote evidence about stars via current light processes now reaching the earth from these stars. The same thing goes for fossils, which interestingly, Ludlow thinks are really what sentences purportedly about dinosaurs are really about. But that's just crazy (darn it!).

The main problem Ludlow deals with in this chapter has to do with inferences like the following:

(2)

I am hungry.

--------------------------------------------------

Next Tuesday it will be true that I was hungry.

Now, it might be the case that all evidence for today's hunger disappears by next Tuesday. But then, in that case, it will not be true then that I was hungry today. Ludlow discusses two ways out of this. The first is to say, for instance, that a future tense version of a sentence is true iff the sentence in the present tense is true. So even though there will be no evidence for my hungriness Tuesday, the prediction of future truth is still true. Even though at that later time it ends up not true that I was hungry. This is a pretty weird way out and not very plausible.

The second alternative is to say that the content of my sentences changes over time. So the above inference is going to work even though the evidence for the premise will be long gone because the words purportedly ascribing hungriness to myself change in meaning. But we have no idea what meaning they will take on later, nor for that matter what meaning they had previously. We may, however, not be able to get out of the first strategy here. After all, the proposition that next Tuesday it will be the case that I was hungry seems to follow from the proposition that I am hungry. Since it doesn't make any sense to speak of propositions changing their contents (since, presumably, propositions just are certain sorts of contents), explaining the inference in cases of evidence loss cannot rely on this second strategy. So it looks like Ludlow is going to have to be faced with taking the first alternative after all, which doesn't seem like a good idea.

The main issue behind all of this is whether we can "lose" facts about the past - whether past facts about people or places or events or whatever can simply disappear from reality. And that just seems implausible. The past, whatever else we may say about it, seems firm and fixed and not subject to erasure. Intuitively, this kind of change doesn't seem possible. Despite claims for presentist views that they are common sense, the issues brought up in this chapter I think show that it is indeed quite far from it (or at least Ludlow's version is), Ludlow's protests to the contrary.

Notes on Ludlow: Chs. 7-9

**WARNING: Technical Post**

In Chapter 7, Ludlow begins to construct an alternative, tensed semantics. Parts of this have a strongly antirealist, idealist, or verificationist sort of feel about them. In fact, Ludlow seems to agree with uberantirealist Michael Dummet, stating, 'As Dummet (1969) has argued,a semantic theory that accounts for an agent's semantic knowledge must show how portions of the language are learned from the evidence available to the language learner' (p.99). I'm not sure that this is really correct as it pushes us towards an untenable kind of antirealism about practically everything. And I'm not sure whether Ludlow wants to be committed to such a view. Then again, he seems to flirt with idealism throughout the book, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. To continue the quote,

But now consider how we learn to use past-tense expressions such as (4).
(4)
Dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
We do not evaluate this sentence by imagining some time earlier than now and determining whether at that time (4) is true. Rather, we evaluate (4) by right now conducting the sort of investigation that is appropriate for past-tense statements like (4). (For example, we might study fossil records.) Likewise for any past-tense statement. We have certain procedures for determining whether a past-tense proposition is true, and these procedures do not involve the evaluation of a proposition at some time past; rather, we simply evaluate the proposition in a particular way - a way which is independent of how we evaluate present-tense and future-tense propositions.
Consider the future-tense proposition (5).
(5)
The economy will recover in the third quarter.
Clearly we do not evaluate such a proposition by picking some time in the third quarter and determining whether it is true at that time that the economy is recovering. Rather, we evaluate it by studying the currently available economic data. Crucially, our evaluation of (5) can proceed without our ever attending to a corresponding present-tense proposition at some future time index.

It's not quite clear to me how any of this is relevant to the debate over tense. After all, the tenseless theorist can simply grant that Ludlow is correct that we look at present evidence to determine the truth of past or future tense statements. The mistake is to infer from this that when we determine the truth or falsity of past or future statements we are not thereby determining whether a certain tenseless fact holds. Using present evidence and not attending de dicto to any present-tense proposition at some future time index is perfectly compatible with this. The only way one could think otherwise would be to assume that tensed r-mirroring truth-conditions must also be m-mirroring truth-conditions. And that, as I've been arguing is clearly a mistake. After all, the same sorts of things Ludlow says about tensed statements could be said about first-person or 'here' sentences as well.

But he continues,

If this picture of the underlying robust theory is correct, then it immediately leads to a second advantage for the A-theory [tensed] proposal under discussion - in fact, a striking epistemological advantage. The B-theorist is in the untenable position of asserting that there is actually reference to past and future times and/or events. However, this flies in the face of everything we know about reference. We are in neither a perceptual relation nor a causal relation with future events, and our causal connection with most past events is tenuous at best. In regard to times, the idea that there could be reference to such abstract objects surely requires major adjustments to current epistemological thinking.

This argument or set of arguments here seems to be a non-starter. I'm not sure how anything Ludlow says makes reference to or quantification over future or past events or times at all problematic. That our causal relation to past things is tenuous seems irrelevant since all that is needed for causal theories of reference is causation - not "super duper not-so-tenuous causation". And if we have a causal theory of reference, then it is reference to present things that is problematic since causation is a cross-temporal relation. That we do not have any causal relation with future things is, I think, not as clear as Ludlow seems to think, but let's give him that for the moment (I tend to think it's false, actually). But quantification or reference do not necessarily require causal relations - one can fix the reference of a name, for instance, by introducing it via an identifying description without having any clear causal contact whatsoever with the object satisfying the description. And quantification over certain entities does not seem to require being causally related to all of them and there's no clear reason why we would need to be. In addition, on most theories of time, times are not abstract but rather concrete objects. In any case, they are treated the same sort of way as places or parts of space. We seem to be able to refer to or quantify over space or regions thereof, so why not times? There seems to be no difference here. All of Ludlow's criticisms here could just as well be thrown against the view that other persons or object outside of myself exist and that we quantify or refer to them. If Ludlow were correct, his views would be pushing us towards a dangerous ontological solipsism where only I exist or an epistemic or semantic solipsism where only I can be referred to or quantified over by myself.

Ludlow ultimately comes to think that his semantics leaves presentism as one of the only plausible, consistent accounts of time. But if we accept presentism for time based on the problems outlined in the book, it seems that similar problems for first-person sentences or 'here' sentences are going to force us into the ontological solipsism mentioned above. After all, if presentism is a main way to get out of McTaggart's Paradox for time, solipsism will be an analogous way to get out similar paradoxes for persons.

Indeed, Ludlow's tensed semantics could be transformed into an analogous first person or 'here' semantics. Ludlow claims in Chapter 8, for instance, that apparent reference to times like 'June 24, 1972' can be paraphrased away as 'when standard calendars read "June 24, 1972"' and that normal tensed sentences will actually be decomposed as complex sentences composed of two tensed sentences joined by 'when', 'after' or 'before'. But we can do the same sorts of things with apparent reference to places and decompose 'here' sentences as complex sentences composed of two 'here' sentences joined by 'where', etc. So 'Paris' becomes something like 'where standard tracking systems read "Paris"'. If we do want reference to times, we can build times up as collections of when-clauses, according to Ludlow. But then if we want reference to places, we can build them up as collections of where-clauses. Perhaps we can do this sort of thing with persons as well - only I exist, but I can refer to other persons as collections of who-clauses (?).

At the end of Chapter 8, Ludlow shows that his theory can apparently get him out of one formulation of McTaggart's Paradox. But it's far from clear that it can escape a reformulation to match Ludlow's theory. Heather Dyke's formulation, suitably adjusted to face Ludlow, seems, for instance, like it would cause Ludlow particular trouble.

Chapter 9 consists in listing some psychological considerations that may or may not help the tensed theorist. I think they do not - the tenseless theorist should be at ease with all the data discussed. In fact, that's just the sort of data one would expect if the New Tenseless Theory were true - people think tensedly. In fact, some have argued that the data actually favors the tenseless theory. In addition, not all of the discussion is clear or very clearly well-motivated. Some of the discussion of and quotes from Merleau-Ponty, for instance, is metaphorical and opaque at best and of unclear relevance to the topic or the use Ludlow seems to want to put it to. So I think chapter 9 is inconclusive at best.

The last-ish notes are soon to com.

Notes on Ludlow: Chs. 5-6

**WARNING: Technical Post**

In the beginning of Chapter 5 Ludlow says,

A first attempt at a semantical theory consistent with this [the tenseless] picture would be to give "tenseless truth conditions" for tensed sentences. That is, we want the right-hand sides to be free of A-series predicates (including 'past' and 'future' as well as temporal indexicals. (p.77)

Such a theory, as Ludlow sketches in the remainder of the chapter, would involve use of temporal language committing us to the existence of other times standing in various temporal relations (or, if we wanted to adopt more of a reductionist or relationalist picture, the existence of events standing in various temporal relations).

In the next chapter, Chapter 6, Ludlow details what he takes to be problems for the tenseless theory. The main problem is something I already addressed in my post on Chapter 3 - Ludlow thinks that the tenseless theory cannot deal with 'the indexical nature of temporal discourse'. This is just the problem with the man in the house of mirrors again. To give just one example, Ludlow claims that the following two sentences as said on March 12 express different semantical knowledge and that the tenseless theory cannot deal with this because it will have to give them the same truth conditions (in the rest of the chapter, Ludlow also, despite earlier toying with the theory, rejects token-reflexive theories for temporal language (rightly, I believe)):

(1) My fifth anniversary is (this) March 12.

(2) My fifth anniversary is today.

He also notes, with Prior, that it seems that one is not thanking goodness for any tenseless fact when one is thankful that a painful dentist visit is over with but the tenseless theory seems to require that this is what one is thankful for.

The answer here is a fairly easy one - distinguish between, on the one hand, Ludlow's "semantical" truth-conditions which are intended to mirror the speaker's perspective and way of representing things (we can call these r-mirroring truth conditions, since they are supposed to mirror our way of representing the world), and, on the other, "metaphysical" truth-conditions which are supposed to capture the metaphysical structure of the world as it matches up (or fails to do so) to our representations (we can call these m-mirroring truth conditions, since they are supposed to mirror the metaphysical structure or "joints" of reality). "'e is now' is true iff e is now" can be a correct account of the truth conditions as represented by the knower (that is, the r-mirroring truth conditions) but it can still be true that what makes 'e is now' true is the tenseless fact that e is at t (these are its m-mirroring truth-conditions). That is, it can still be true that a mental or public tokening of 'e is now' at t is true iff e is at t since at t 'e is now' and 'e is at t' express the exact same fact, just with a different representational form - the former is needed for action whereas the latter is not sufficient so that when one represents the truth conditions one needs, for action, to represent them in the latter way - in an r-mirroring rather than m-mirroring way. If they are represented as ' 'e is now' is true iff e is the time of this utterance', for instance, that will not be sufficient for action or sufficient to know that e is now since i don't know this utterance is now.

So ultimately I don't think the failure Ludlow notices in providing tenseless r-mirroring truth conditions is really relevant to whether or not we should be tenseless theorists. A tenseless theorist just isn't committed to giving r-mirroring truth conditions. Indeed, this can be seen as the characteristic difference between the Old Tenseless Theory of Russell and company and the New Tenseless Theory of Mellor and others - the Old theorists were trying to give r-mirroring truth conditions and that was shown, as Ludlow has shown once again, to be a failure. The New theorists, on the other hand, have abandoned that project as hopeless and wish instead to give us tenseless m-mirroring truth conditions while allowing that we cannot give tenseless r-mirroring truth conditions for all tensed language. I think this is where Ludlow fundamentally misunderstands what Mellor is trying to do.

This is similar to what's going on in phil mind over property dualism (the view that there are irreducibly mental properties). The phenomenal concept strategy tries to show that physical descriptions do not miss anything in the world that can be captured by phenomenal descriptions but that this is compatible with the conceptual irreducibility of the phenomenal to the physical - that is, phenomenal descriptions must be given phenomenal r-mirroring truth conditions but that's compatible with giving them physical m-mirroring truth conditions.

On the last page of the chapter, Ludlow is somewhat cryptic about why tensed truth conditions or tensed beliefs require a tensed reality:

If the world contains only B-theory resources, then precisely how do we avoid having a B-theory psychology?

The illusion of a possible way out here is fostered by thinking that there could be psychological concepts that are, as it were, disembodied - cut off from the actual world in important ways. How can a psychological property (call it foo) that bears no relation to tense in the actual world have anything to do with tense?

It is no good to say that our abstract property foo is tensed because it is grounded in our time consciousness or temporal perception. That merely keeps the question one step removed. Then we must ask what it is about time consciousness or perception that makes them tensed. Why do we call consciousness or perception tensed if it does not correspond to something tensed in the actual world?

[...]psychological states (particularly perceptual states) are individuated in part by relations to the external world. In this case, that means that if the world is not tensed then it is difficult to see how our perception of the world could be tensed. (p.96)

I'm not quite sure what the problem is here - the tenseless theorist has perfectly reasonable accounts of how our tensed psychological states hook up to the tenseless world. It is necessary for our representations in general to fed into our cognitive systems in certain forms for them to be useful to us - in order for the ordinary descriptive facts of the world to be useful for action they need to represented by us in certain special ways. Facts about time are like this too and we call our special-functioning representations tensed when they have this function with relation to time. Tense has to do with the structure of our representations, not the facts they are about. Just because our representations have particular features doesn't mean the facts they represent have to have those features. So much should be pretty darn obvious. So this plea at the end of the chapter just seems to me to be pretty lame.

Four chapter to go...

Notes on Ludlow: Ch. 4

**WARNING: Technical Post**

In chapter 4, Ludlow supports a strong view about the relationship between language and reality - he seems to think that a correct semantic theory (in his sense) for a given language will tell us what there is. Here he seems to confuse what use of a given language would commit us to and what there actually is. Just because, for instance, use of English commits to me to the existence of, say, grobbles, does not mean that grobbles really exist. A semantic theory, then, might tell us some of the metaphysical commitments of a given language, but that on its own does not tell us anything yet about metaphysics itself. Take an axiom he gives, for instance:

(1') For all x, Val (x, snow) iff x = snow

Ludlow thinks that the truth of 1' commits us to the existence of snow. But that doesn't seem right at all - it only commits us to there being snow if we also suppose that 'snow' has a semantic value in Ludlow's sense, which it might not. Contra Ludlow, 1' doesn't appear to have any metaphysical commitments at all.

In the rest of the chapter, Ludlow applies these thoughts to events and names, etc. Though I won't go into details, I just didn't get his discussion of names at all. Maybe I would have to have read some of the papers he cites towards the end of that discussion.

Yet again, more later.

Notes on Ludlow: Ch. 3

**WARNING: Technical Post **

In chapter 3, Ludlow supports the idea that the character or role of indexicals ought to find their way into the semantics for such terms. For an example, consider this quote of his (p59):

In a house of mirrors, someone might point at a man who is about to be attacked by a dog, saying 'He is being attacked by a dog', and I may assent to this judgement, not realizing that I am about to be attacked. Intuitively, someone who says 'You are about to be attacked by a dog' is saying something more than the first speaker. To say that this extra information lies outside the province of semantics seems to be surrendering all too quickly.

But "saying something more" in what sense? Is that "something more" really something semantic and if so what is that "something more"? Perhaps it is just something more in the sense that it is of a different form and admits of a different cognitive, practical, or functional role. But that need not mean that this something more must show up in the truth conditions of a sentence unless we are liberal in what we ascribe to the sense of a sentence. If we don't do this, then it is not clear, without further information, whether Ludlow really disagrees with his opponents here since they are just forming truth conditions for differing purposes. After all, it's not clear to me that the "something more" is really "extra information" at all rather than old information in a different, more useful (or differently useful) form. Even if there is extra information carried by the different sentences, why think that this is semantically rather than pragmatically conveyed. Why think that just because a sentence carries information that this must fall into its semantics? Every spoken sentence, for instance, carries the information that it is spoken at a specific time by a specific person who is in certain brain states, etc. But clearly if we allow all the information carried by an utterance into the semantics, that would not be a good idea - the whole notion of semantics would be stretched to the breaking point.

Let's say that the extra information for a word like "you" is that it refers to the person being addressed, so that "you are the person I'm addressing with this utterance" is true iff the person I'm addressing with this utterance is the person I'm addressing with this utterance. But if we want to such truth-conditions to capture as much as possible, as Ludlow seems to want, then is clearly not acceptable - the sentence on the right hand side clearly does not have the same sense (in the widest sense) as the sentence mentioned on the left. For one thing, they have differing cognitive significance. I can, for instance, know that the former is true without having any clear idea whether the latter is true. And the former is contingently true whereas the latter is necessarily, and trivially, true.

Ludlow's proposed fix here is not persuasive in the least. He proposes that a sentence like (25) "It could have been the case that you are not the person I'm addressing with this utterance" is to be analyzed (? - it's not clear whether he's saying it's synonymous or that this really what the sentence is like at the level of logical form or what) as (26) "It could have been that the person I'm addressing with this utterance is not the person I'm addressing with this utterance". That sentence seems ambiguous between de re and de dicto readings and Ludlow seems to think that we should treat the original sentence as the de re version of its analysis. But it's not clear why it should be the de re reading rather than the de dicto. Or why we should take the alleged fact that 26 gives us the truth conditions for 25 as reason to think that 25 has a similar structure.

Consider the following exchange between Paul Teller and me on this sort of account for the word "now", where "e is now" is true iff e is the time of this utterance:

Paul: If there is a model then there are questions about scope Consider (1) "E might have occurred now" We could read this as
(a) Possibly [te is the time at which e occurs, tu is the time at which the utterance occurs, and te = tu]
I don't think this reading can be given to (1), but we'll have to consult with the experts whether this is just bad ear on my part. It seems to me that the natural reading is
(b) tu is the time at which the utterance occurse, (viz, in the real world) and possibly [te is the time at which e occurs and te = tu that is there is some possible world in which e occurs at the time in which the utterance occurs in the real world.

Me: The trouble here is that in (1) we have a possibility operator applied to a single sentence - "e occurs now" - which does not apparently have the internal structure specified in the above truth conditions. I'm not quite sure how the logical form of a sentence using "occurs" would get written out (since sentences about events are tricky like that), so let's use a simpler example:
(2) e is now
Again, applying a possibility operator to (2) does not seem to produce a sentence that has the internal structure of the truth conditions provided by either of the examples above. This is because (2) seems, grammatically, to be an atomic sentence and hence lacks the structure to support the scope ambiguity you mention above. (2), in logical notation, seems to come out as
(3) Ne
and applying a possibility operator to this we get
(4) Pos (Ne)
There seems to be only one scope possible for the possibility operator here - that is, to operate over the entire sentence, which means that to evaluate the truth of (4) we must look in every possible world and see if there is one where (3) is true. To find a possible world where (3) is true is just to find one where the truth conditions for (3) are met. And since the token reflexive theory requires that the truth conditions for (3) require a token of the sentence to exist, (4) requires there to be some possible world where a token exists - so something like (a) would be the correct truth conditions, not (b). That the statement of the truth conditions for any of these sentences is complex and can have varying scope for possibility operators is besides the point since the fact that the statement of a sentence's truth conditions has a certain structure does not entail anything about the structure of the sentence itself. Consider the following statement of truth conditions for "Jerry is a bachelor":
(5) "Jerry is a bachelor" is true iff Jerry is unmarried, marriagable, and male. Now consider the following sentence:
(6) Jerry is necessarily a bachelor.
If we treat (6) in the same way (4) is treated by (b) above then we can get the following incorrect truth conditions for (6):
(7) (6) is true iff Jerry is unmarried and necessarily (Jerry is marriagable and male)
But clearly (7) is not correct - where a modal operator applies to an atomic sentence, there is no way to move the operator further inside the sentence - the operator clearly applies to the entire sentence. EVEN IF the statement of the truth conditions for the atomic sentence is not itself atomic.

So one of Ludlow's proposals, to give a kind of token-reflexivy analysis of the truth-conditions for indexical sentences, is not going to be very promising unless all we are after is extensional equivalence (which Ludlow is clearly not - he wants to load up sense as much as possible and stick it all in the truth-conditions or have it "displayed" there if he can). Of course, if all we are after is extensional equivalence, anyone - opponents included - could be happy with these sorts of truth conditions.

Ludlow's other proposal is to take it that (28a) 'I walk' is true iff I walk. The trouble is applying this sort of T-schema to other people's utterances of the same thing. One way to take care of this is to say that the truth conditions we use are different when others are speaking. But that seems rather ad hoc, especially if the truth conditions are supposed to display the sense of such a sentence. But since I use 28a for 'I walk' it should not matter whether I say it or not since the sense seems to be the same no matter who uses it. But then that's not very plausible since when someone else says 'I walk' they are not saying that I walk. Clearly, then, if we are to use differing truth conditions in our evaluations of sentences when they come from us or from someone else, that must mean that we display different aspects of the sentence in each case. And if that's so then it seems that we can't be too liberal about what must be included in the sense of a sentence if both truth conditions for myself and those for others are both supposed to display senses. It can't be required to capture the full cognitive significance of such a sentence, which calls into question Ludlow's program a bit.

Perhaps, though, the truth conditions are supposed to represent just the facts a person knows and just the way they know them. So maybe it is true that I use things like 28a in interpreting what I am saying since I must represent the truth conditions in such a way in order to use them. But that doesn't mean (to anticipate my objections to later chapters) that in representing things in the way 28a does that I am representing some fact over and above the fact that (28b) 'I walk' is true iff Ian Spencer walks - even though I have to represent it like 28a rather than like 28b.


More later.

Notes on Ludlow: Chs. 1-2

**WARNING: Technical Post**

A lot of my dissertation is going to be about the debate between the tensed and tenseless views of time. Roughly, the main idea behind the tensed view is that reality itself is fundamentally tensed - there is an absolute, single present and absolute past and future and any description of reality must fundamentally be tensed as well. The tenseless view, on the other hand, sees talk of past, present and future as reducible to talk about various times merely being earlier or later or simultaneous and views tense as merely linguistic - reality itself is not in any way fundamentally tensed. So perhaps when I say 'We are eating now' at 6pm what makes that true or false is whether we are eating at 6pm - there's no need to talk about anything being present or past or whatever.

So for research I've been reading Peter Ludlow's Semantics, Tense, and Time and I must say that so far I am fairly unimpressed. He seems to just be regurgitating old tensed theorist arguments against tenseless theory. For one thing, many of his characterizations of the tenseless theory (which he calls the 'B-theory'), are controversial or misleading at best. No reasonable tenseless theorist, for instance, would characterize their own view as saying "time is simply a sequence of unchanging and tenseless events" (p1) - tenseless, yes; unchanging, no. Nor would they agree that the opposite view is characterized by thinking that "it is fundamental to the notion of time that events [...] have genuine temporal status" (pp2-3) as if the tenseless theory somehow denied this. I don't remember where he says this, but he also characterizes the distinction between the two theories by saying that, unlike the tensed theory, the tenseless theory denies the reality of "genuine change" - a characterization that no tenseless theorist would accept.

Chapter 1 seemed to be rather confused (and this confusion seems to follow through the rest of the book) in that, while Ludlow maintains that the only real language is our innate biological internal I-language (and that public, E-language does not exist), he persistently - in this chapter and in others - seems to treat I-language as if it were English. But that seems implausible since I-language is supposed to be part of our biological endowment whereas the grammar of English and connections between the world and English words definitely is not. We certainly use English words to express our internal representations of the world but I'm not sure that it follows that my I-language is simply English. Ludlow says he thinks he is following Chomsky here but I don't know enough personally about what he says to tell whether that's true. If I-language is just English, then I would have to disagree with Ludlow about it being our Language of Thought. After all, I think we learn English by using mental representations in the first place and this would be impossible if all representation had to be in English to start with. And if I-language is English after all it's not so clear that all our representations are really linguistic in character rather than also geometric or map-like or imagistic or whatever. After all, if animals don't have I-language then, given the similarities in our brains, it seems likely that, in addition to the linguistic representational capacities our brains have, we would also have more primitive forms of representation in common with more primitively brained organisms.

In chapter 2 Ludlow champions a view of semantics on which the job of semantic theory is to tell us what people know when they know the meanings of sentences. This in itself, I think, tells against the idea that my internal representational system is fundamentally English. After all, assuming Ludlow is correct, I learn English by learning the semantic rules for English which I then represent in my mind. But my representation of the rules, if in English, are themselves in need of interpretation and require that I know and represent some further rules in order to know what they mean. But (since global holism is false) this can't keep going on. So if I must know rules for every representation in English I must have some rules I know that aren't in English. But then we must ask about the semantics of these representations. The bottom line is that I must ultimately have some representations that do not require my knowledge of their semantic rules in order to use them competently. Otherwise, my semantic rules would either be circular or I'd be off on an infinite regress. So while showing what rules people know when they know the meaning of a sentence is useful for semantics, it cannot be the entire semantic story (if it is part of it all, which can be disputed - see some of Scott Soames' work for lots and lots of criticism of this view of semantic theory).

Ludlow thinks that semantic theory should take the form of a system of axioms (maybe with axioms like ' "Ted" refers to Ted', etc.) which can in turn be used to derive a system of sentences which give us the truth-conditions (so, for instance, one such sentence would be '"Snow is white" is true iff snow is white') for all the sentences of the language in question. He then supports the view that the truth-conditions derived in such a theory for various expressions will be such that each of them ' "shows" or "displays" the sense of the expressions' (p42). By this, he seems to say a few pages later, he means that the right hand side of the biconditional (the "iff" statement) will have the sense of the expression referred to on the left hand side. What this amounts to will depend on what the notion of sense amounts to. Sense might include functional, cognitive, or practical role, determination of reference or truth, the form taken, etc. The more sense encompasses, however, the more unclear it is that this sort of semantic theory has all the metaphysical ramifications that Ludlow is going to want out of it. The less it includes, on the other hand, the more unclear it is that it includes everything we would want our semantics to include. But he can't have it both ways, it seems.

More tomorrow.