Tuesday, November 21, 2006

MM Bennett: "Existential" but Analytic Statements

I would like to post now about (ii). Although Karen Bennett suggests (p. 2) that she would argue against semanticism in general, in effect she seems to argue just against one possible way of implementing one possible semanticist position with respect to one particular debatein particular against the analyticity-involving way of implementing Hirsch 2005’s semanticist position with respect to the composition debate. Even when so restricted, I have some doubts about her argument.

In essence, her claim is that what she calls ‘linking principles’ of the sort of

(*) if there are simples arranged tablewise in R, then there is a table in R that is numerically distinct from the simples arranged tablewise.

cannot be analytic. She offers the following reason for this claim:

Saying that (*) is analytic … amounts to saying that we can define things into existence. But surely an analytic claim cannot be existence entailing in this way; surely the existence of a new object cannot follow by meaning alone. Who knew ontological arguments were so easy? (p. 19)

I find this reasoning puzzling. The relevant sentences involve existence claims, but as consequents in conditionals. And we seem to be familiar enough with existential statements of that form being, sometimes, analytic. The following seems to me to have quite a good claim to be one such:

Whenever something is a proper part of another, there is something that is numerically distinct from them which is part of the latter but not of the former.

(I am having some discussion with Ross Cameron at bleb on this, as it seems to me to be relevant also against his argument that principles of composition need not be necessary.)

2 comments:

marta campdelacreu said...

I agree with Dan.
Think about the relevant conditional for the constitution case:

(*) If there are multiple modal profiles instantiated in R  there are multiple objects in R.

Bennett would say:

Saying that (*) is analytic … amounts to saying that we can define things into existence. But surely an analytic claim cannot be existence entailing in this way; surely the existence of a new object cannot follow by meaning alone. Who knew ontological arguments were so easy? (p. 19)

Think now about Dan’s case. One would say that when one considers the meaning of ‘an object being a proper part of another object’ one comes to see that then there is a third object distinct from the two firsts that is part of the second one and not of the first one.
I do not know what Bennett wants exactly say with ‘The existence of a new object cannot follow by meaning alone’ but I do not find immediately wrong to think that something similar to what one would say happens in Dan’s case, could happen in the constitution conditional case. Perhaps in thinking about the meaning of ‘different modal profiles instantiated in a region’ one finds that it is involved in it that there are different objects (in a sense of ‘object’ to be determined) with different principles of persistence in that region.

I do not know, what do you think about that?

Dan López de Sa said...

Joan also seems to agree, see the discussion here.