P.F.Strawson INDIVIDUALS pp.15-37
Kohei SAWABE
1. The Identification of Particulars
[1]
As he says on p.15, “Part of [his] aim is to exhibit some general
and structural features of the conceptual scheme in terms of which we think
about particular things”.
Philosophically put, his claim is “that our ontology comprises objectiveparticulars”, which, in a
less philosophical language, can be explained as: “We think of theworld as
containing particular things some of which are independent of
ourselves; we think of the world's history as made up of particular
episodes in which we may or may not have a part; and we think of these particular things and events as included in the
topics of our common discourse, as things about which we can talkto each other.” (underlines mine)
A few examples mentioned in the second paragraph are: historical
occurrences, material objects, people, and their shadows.
He will be first concerned with the application of the
phrase ‘identification of
particulars’ in that sense
when the speaker refers to or mentions some particular and the hearer knows (or
sometimes does not know) what particular is talked about. On p.16, he basically
says that the standard function of some of the kinds of expressions we use to
make references to particulars is to enable a hearer to identify the particular
being referred to, and “when a speaker uses such an expression to refer to a particular” then “he makes an identifying reference to a
particular.”(italics
original) But “[it] does not follow of course, from the fact
that a speaker makes an identifying reference to a particular, that his hearer does
in fact identify that particular.” Still, “when a speaker
makes an identifying reference to a particular, and his hearer does, on the
strength of it, identify the particular referred to, then the speaker not only
makes an identifying reference to, but also identifies, that particular.
We have a hearer's as well as speaker's sense of 'identify'.”
And why do we need to care about ‘identification’ ?
“That it should be
possible to identify particulars of a given type seems a necessary condition of
the inclusion of that type in our ontology. For what could we mean by claiming
to acknowledge the existence of a class of particular things and to talk to
each other about members of this class, if we qualified the claim by adding
that it was in principle impossible for any one of us to make any other of us
understand which member, or members, of this class he was at any time talking
about? The qualification would seem to stultify the claim.” (p.16)
About dependence. “Suppose . . . that there is a type of
particulars, β, such
that particulars of type β cannot be identified without
reference to particulars of another type, α, whereas
particulars of type α can be identified without
reference to particulars of type β. . . . in our scheme α-particulars
[are] ontologically prior to β-particulars, . . . more
fundamental or more basic than they.” (p.17)
[2]
Story-relative identification. “[I]dentification only relative to a range of
particulars which is itself
identified only as the range of particulars being talked
about by the speaker.” (p.18)
But he needs more than this. “We need a requirement stringent enough to
eliminate relative identification. The hearer is able to place the particular referred
to within the picture painted by the speaker. This means that in a sense he can
place the particular in his own general picture of the world. For he can place
the speaker, and hence the speaker's picture, in that general picture of his
own. But he cannot place the figures, without the frame, of the speaker's
picture in his own general picture of the world. For this reason the full
requirement for hearer's identification is not satisfied.” (p.18)
So, he explores possibilities. “A sufficient, but not necessary, condition of
the full requirement's being satisfied is that the hearer can pick out by sight
or hearing or touch, or can otherwise sensibly discriminate, the particular
being referred to, knowing that it is that particular.” (liberalize the condition to cover the cases
where though one cannot at the very moment of reference sensibly discriminate
the particular referred to, one could do so a moment before.)
Continuing on to p.19, “this sufficient condition is satisfied only in
the case of particulars which one can perceive now, or at least could perceive
a moment ago.”
More carefully put, “An expression is used which, given the
setting, can properly be taken to apply only to a certain single
member of the range of particulars which the hearer is able, or a moment before
was able, sensibly to discriminate, and to nothing outside that range.” (p.19)
“We shall say that
the hearer is able directly to locate the particular referred to. We may
also speak of these cases as cases of the demonstrative identification
of particulars.”
But this is not always easy. What happens when the
particular is outside the range of the hearer or the speaker or both? “[C]onsider the cases where demonstrative identification
is not possible because the particular to be identified is not within the range
of those sensibly present.” (p.20)
Neither names nor descriptions can help very much.
(second paragraph on p.20) “[H]owever extensive the speaker's knowledge
and however extensive the hearer's, neither can know that the former's
identifying description in fact applies uniquely.” (p.20)
Strawson’s position is that doubts about the possibility of non-demonstrative
identification are unfounded. And he mentions one possible line of argument
which though adequate, is not ideal. “[F]or a speaker to use the words of a
description with a certain reference-whether or not the intended reference and
the understood reference are in fact the same- it is at least required that
each should know of a particular which the description fits. . . . But each
may know of only one such particular; and each may have conclusive reason to
suppose that the other knows of only one such particular, and that the
particular the other knows of is the same as the particular he himself knows
of. Or, even if this condition is not satisfied in full, each may still have
conclusive reasons for thinking that the particular which one is referring
to is the same as the particular which the other takes him to be
referring to.” (p.21)
“The argument
supposes that where the particular to be identified cannot be directly located,
its identification must rest ultimately on description in purely general terms.
But this supposition is false. For even though the particular in question
cannot itself be demonstratively identified, it may be identified by a
description which relates it uniquely to another particular which can be
demonstratively identified.” (p.21)
He concludes on p.22 that the reduplication argument
poses no threat to the possibility of non-demonstrative identification. And to
the question “Is it plausible
to suppose . . . that of every particular we may refer to there is some
description uniquely relating it to the participants in or the immediate
setting of, the conversation in which the reference is made?”, he answers as follows. “For all particulars in space and time, it is
not only plausible to claim, it is necessary to admit, that there is just such
a system: the system of spatial and temporal relations, in which every
particular is uniquely related to every other. The universe might be repetitive
in various ways. But this fact is no obstacle in principle to supplying
descriptions of the kind required. For by demonstrative identification we can
determine a common reference point and common axes of spatial direction.” (p.22) [I underlined the phrase “in principle” to emphasize the fact that “this is a theoretical solution to a
theoretical problem”, according to
what Strawson writes on the first line of the next paragraph.]
[3]
Having given a theoretical solution to a theoretical
question of identity, he now seeks its connexion to the practical requirements
in identification.
“It seems that the
general requirements of hearer-identification could be regarded as fulfilled if
the hearer knew that the particular being referred to was identical with some
particular about which he knew some individuating fact, or facts, other than the
fact that it was the particular being referred to. To know an individuating
fact about a particular is to know that such-and-such a thing is true of that
particular and of no other particular whatever. One who could make all his
knowledge articulate would satisfy this condition for particular-identification
only if he could give a description which applied uniquely to the particular in
question and could non-tautologically add that the particular to which this
description applied was the same as the particular begin currently referred to;
but we need not insist that the ability to make one's knowledge articulate in
just this way is a condition of really knowing who, or what, a speaker is
referring to. This, then, is the general condition for hearer-identification in
the non-demonstrative case; and it is obvious that, if a genuine reference is
being made, the speaker, too, must satisfy a similar condition. To rule out merely
'story-relative' identification, we must add a further requirement: viz. that
the known individuating fact must not be such that its statement essentially involves
identifying the particular in question by reference to someone's discourse
about it, or about any other particular by reference to which it is identified.” (p.23)
He observes that though “we do not often, in practice, explicitly
relate the particulars of which we speak to ourselves or to other items in the
present situation of reference”, but “It is a necessary
truth that any new particular of which we learn is somehow identifyingly
connected with the framework, even if only through the occasion and method of
our learning of it. Even when the identification is 'story-relative', the
connexion with the framework remains, through the identity of the story-teller.” (p.24-25)
He continues. “Of course, nothing in what I say has the consequence that
a man is unable to identify a particular unless he can give precise spatio-temporal
location for it. This is by no means required. Any fact uniquely relating
the particular to other, identified elements in the framework will serve as an
individuating fact. A description, itself in no way locating, may be known to
individuate within a very extensive spatio-temporal range of
particulars; all that is then required is that that range should itself be
located in the framework at large.” (p.25)
But why must the connecting relations should exclusively
be spatio-temporal, he asks. “All that is formally required is a kind of relation such that, given an
already identified object, O, it is possible for us to know that there is, in
fact, only one thing answering to a certain description which is related by
that relation to O.” (p.25)
He answers by claiming that because it has a unique
comprehensiveness and pervasiveness. “Every particular either has its place in this system, or
is of a kind the members of which cannot in general be identified except by
reference to particulars of other kinds which have their place in it; and every
particular which has its place in the system has a unique place there. There is
no other system of relations between particulars of which all this is true.” (p.25-26)
On p.26 he addresses a general doubt about a fact (given
by a description) succeeding in individuating particulars by analyzing the
notion of descriptions. There are three sorts of descriptions. 1) “Descriptions can be framed which begin with phrases
like 'the only . . .' or 'the first . . .' and thus proclaim, as it were, the
uniqueness of their application. Let us call them 'logically individuating
descriptions'.” 2) “[We] can also frame logically individuating
descriptions which are altogether free from such features [i.e. proper names,
dates, etc.]. Let us call these 'pure individuating descriptions'.” 3) “Besides pure individuating descriptions we may recognize
a class of quasi-pure individuating descriptions, which depend on the setting of
their utterance to determine their application only in the sense that their
application is restricted to what existed before or exists at the same time as
the moment of utterance.” (p.25-26)
Then he considers the possibility of (quasi-) purely
logical description. "Now surely, it might be said, we can sometimes know
that a pure or quasi-pure individuating description has application; and
granted that such a phrase has application, its acceptance by both hearer and
speaker is sufficient to guarantee that each understands by it one and the same
particular. Our individuating thought about particulars need not, therefore,
involve incorporating them in the single unified framework of knowledge of
particulars." (p.27)
But he wants to reject this possibility and for that
purpose investigates what that possibility amounts to.
"Suppose a speaker and a hearer claimed to have
identified a certain particular by agreement on a pure or quasi-pure
individuating description; and suppose they accompanied the claim with the
remark that they knew nothing else whatever about the particular in question. That
is to say, they were quite unable to locate the particular concerned within any
definite spatio-temporal region of the common framework, however extensive, or
to connect it in any definite way with any item which they could so locate; they
were quite unable even to relate it to any occasion of discourse which they
could connect with some item in the common spatio-temporal framework. . . . In
general, they disclaimed any ability to connect the particular of which they
claimed to speak with their general unified framework of knowledge of
particulars, and disclaimed any ability to recognize any such connexion, if it
were to be suggested to them, as one which they had been aware of, but had
forgotten." (p.27)
This sort of claim is deemed 'frivolous' by Strawson, and
he goes on to explain why. "[In] general, to elaborate the description
sufficiently to eliminate the one risk, without increasing the other, [It may
be of interest to compare this situation to the Russelian analysis of definite
descriptions where the two factors, that of existence of the entity satisfying
the matrix, and the uniqueness of it, work together to secure the unique
existence: ɩxP(x)=y iff P(y)∧∀z(P(z)⊃z=y),
here, unlike ‘x’ and ‘z’, ‘y’ is not bound, and so the conjunct P(y) is to be
interpreted as claiming the existence of y satisfying P, i.e. it has the
existential import. One could, of course à la Free Logic, employ the existence
predicate ‘E’ and write as in the following as well: ɩxP(x)=y iff (E(y)∧P(y))∧∀z(P(z)⊃z=y) ] would be to draw on our
actual knowledge of stretches of the world and its history; but in so far as we
do this, we can no longer sincerely claim to be unable to connect our
description at any point with items belonging to the unified framework of our
knowledge of particulars. This reply is tantamount to disputing that it is
possible to know an individuating fact about a particular unless something is
known about the relations of that particular to identified items in the
spatio-temporal framework." (p.28)
And he concludes that "So long as our knowledge
of it retained this completely detached character, the particular would
have no part to play in our general scheme of knowledge".
Then he reiterates his aim. "[It] is a single
picture which we build, a unified structure, in which we ourselves have a
place, and in which every element is thought of as directly or indirectly
related to every other; and the framework of the structure, the common,
unifying system of relations is spatio-temporal."(p.29)
He then asks whether it is necessarily so "that any
scheme which provides for particulars capable of being the subject-matter of
discourse in a common language . . . should be a scheme of the kind I have just
described." And responds by remarking that "[c]ertainly, it does not
seem to be a contingent matter about empirical reality that it forms a single
spatio-temporal system." (p.29)
On p.30, he reviews his argument against scepticism in this
section. "[The] belief that however elaborate a description we produce of a
network of spatially and temporally related things and incidents, we can never
be sure of producing an individuating description of a single particular item,
for we can never rule out the possibility of another exactly similar network.
To experience this theoretical anxiety is to overlook the fact that we, the
speakers, the users of the dating and placing systems, have our own place in
that system and know that place; that we ourselves, therefore, and our own
immediate environment, provide a point of reference which individuates the network
and hence helps to individuate the particulars located in the network."
(p.30)
Also, he says that another error is to suppose that
'here' and 'now' and 'this' and all such utterance-centered words "refer
to something private and personal to each individual user of them." Those
sceptics think that "there are as many networks, as many worlds, as there
are persons. Such philosophers deprive themselves of a public point of
reference by making the point of reference private. They are unable to admit
that we are in the system because they think that the system is within us; or
rather, that each has his own system within him... 'here' and 'now' and 'I' and
'you' are words of our common language, which each can use to indicate, or help
to indicate, to another, who is with him, what he is talking about."
(p.30)
2. Reidentification
[4]
He now investigates the notion of reidentification which
he believes is indispensable for the certain unity of the framework. "The
system is unified in this sense. Of things of which it makes sense to inquire
about the spatial position, we think it always significant not only to ask how
any two such things are spatially related at any one time, the same for each,
but also to inquire about the spatial relations of any one thing at any moment
of its history to any other thing at any moment of its history, when the
moments may be different." (p.31)
But how do we do this? "[We] must have criteria or
methods of identifying a particular encountered on one occasion, or described
in respect of one occasion, as the same individual as a particular on another
occasion, or described in respect of another occasion. For the sake of
terminological clarity we may, when necessary, distinguish between referential,
or speaker-hearer, identification on the one hand, and reidentification on the
other." (p.31)
On p.32, he asks (again) "Why are criteria of
reidentification necessary to our operating the scheme of a single unified
spatio-temporal framework for referential identification?"
One way of seeing this is, according to him, the
following. "Evidently we can sometimes referentially identify a member of the
spatio-temporal framework by giving, or being given, its position relative to
others. No less evidently we cannot make the identification of every element in
the system in this way relative to that of other elements. An immediate answer
is that we have no need to, because we can identify some elements by different
location. But this answer, by itself, is insufficient. For we do not use a
different scheme, a different framework, on each occasion. It is the essence of
the matter that we use the same framework on different occasions. We must not
only identify some elements in a non-relative way, we must identify them as
just the elements they are of a single continuously usable system of elements.
For the occasions of reference themselves have different places in the single system
of reference. We cannot attach one occasion to another unless, from occasion to
occasion, we can reidentify elements common to different occasions."
Whatever the level of clarity he achieves in the above
explanation, he goes on next to place an important constraint on our
methods/criteria of reidentification, namely, that "they must allow for
the facts that we cannot at any moment observe the whole of the spatial
framework we use, that there is no part of it that we can observe continuously,
and that we ourselves do not occupy a fixed position within it. . . . there is
no quesiton of continuous and comprehensive attention to . . . Whatever our account may be, it must allow
for discontinuities and limits of our observaton." (p.32-33)
But allowing for the possibility of un-observed change
may seem to be open to a Humean-attack. So he observes that we are in a
dilemma. "But now it might seem that if we do in fact lean thus heavily on
such recurrences, then either we are driven to scepticism about
particular-identity or the whole distinction between qualitative and numerical
identity comes into question, except when it applies to what falls within the
field of an uninterrupted stretch of observation." (p.33) [At this point,
during the presentation, I drew the diagram from p.33 on the white board where
the top left figure and the bottom right one are identical in shape and the top
left one is positioned above a circle and left of a parallelogram. Thus, ‘the top left figure’=‘the bottom right figure’ would express qualitative identity whilst ‘the top left figure’=‘the figure above a circle and left of a parallelogram’ would express numerical identity. ]
So, the critic is charging him for blurring the
numerical-qualitative distinction. But he counterattacks using the diagram on
page33 to illustrate. "[We] have a simple case of using 'the same' to
speak of qualitative identity. Where we say 'the same' of what is not
continuously observed, we think we can as clearly make just this same
distinction. But can we? Since spatio-temporally continuous existence is, by
hypothesis, observed neither in the case where we are inclined to speak
of qualitative identity nor in the case where we are inclined to speak of
numerical identity, by what right do we suppose that there is a fundamental
difference between these cases, or that there is just the difference?
There are differences, certainly; but they are just differences in the
ways in which observation-situations or scenes resemble and differ from one
another; or in the ways in which certain features of observation-situations or
scenes resemble one another and differ from one another. To take a Hume-like
position, we might say: these differences suggest to us an unobserved continuity
in one set of cases and its absence in another set, make us perhaps imagine
this; and thus we are led to confuse these differences with the difference
between numerical and qualitative identity. But really all we have, in the case
of non-continuous observation, is different kinds of qualitative
identity. If we ever mean more than this in talking of identity, in cases of
non-continuous observation, then we cannot be sure of identity; if we can be
sure of identity, then we cannot mean more than this." (p.34)
On p.35, he drives his point by showing how absurd the
sceptic's scenario will turn out. "Now I say that a condition of
our having this conceptual scheme is the unquestioning acceptance of
particular-identity in at least some cases of non-continuous observation. Let
us suppose for a moment that we were never willing to ascribe
particular-identity in such cases. Then we should, as it were, have the idea of
a new, a different, spatial system for each new continuous stretch of
observation. Each new system would be
wholly independent of every other. There would be no question of doubt
about the identity of an item in one system with an item in another. For such a
doubt makes sense only if the two systems are not independent, if they are
parts, in some way related, of a single system which includes them both. But
the condition of having such a system is precisely the condition that there
should be satisfiable and commonly satisfied criteria for the identity of at
least some items in one sub-system with some items in the other. This gives us
a more profound characterization of the sceptic's position. He pretends to
accept a conceptual scheme, but at the same time quietly rejects one of the
conditions of its employment." (p35)
[5]
In this subsection he considers one complication due to
mutual dependence between things and places where they are at. "[On] the
one hand places are defined only by the relations of things; and, on the other,
one of the requirements for the identity of a material thing is that its
existence, as well as being continuous in time, should be continuous in space.
That is to say, for many kinds of thing, it counts against saying that a thing,
x, at one place at one time is the same as a thing, y, at another
place at another time, if we think there is not some continuous set of places
between these two places such that x was at each successive member of
this set of places at sucessive times between these two times and y was
at the same memeber of the set of places at the same time." (P.37)
But he says that such worries are misplaced. "There
is no mystery about this mutual dependence. To exhibit its detail is simply to
describe the criteria by which we criticize, amend and extend our ascription of
identity to things and places." (p.37)
And he explains one such detail. "If some, but not
all, members of such a set have changed their relative positions, then we may
say of some that they are in different places and of some that they are in the
same place. Of which we shall say which, depends on our selection
of certain members of the set as constituting a dominant framework for the set
as a whole. This selection need in no way depend, though it may depend, on our
surreptitiously thinking outside the limits of the set. On the whole, we shall
select those elements of the set, if any, which can be thought of as containing
or supporting the remainder, or on which the set can be thought of as centred.
We do not change these criteria, but merely enlarge their application, when we
consider the place of the set itself, or of things in it, in relation to other
things or sets of things." (P.37)