Metaphysics: Artifacts and necessity

Unfortunately, discussing metaphysical essences in Naming and Necessity Kripke mostly spoke about ontologically independent natural objects and kinds. As we’ve seen in the previous section, artifacts constitute a specific class of ontologically dependent objects: intention-dependent objects. If Kripke had talked more about ontologically dependent objects, we might have more leads as to how to proceed with his line of thought concerning artifacts.

Kripke was not very systematic in these matters, but I think we can distinguish three forms of essentialism concerning natural objects in Naming and Necessity, or three classes of essential properties:³¹

1. Origin essentialism 2. Sortal essentialism 3. Structural essentialism

Talking about chemical compounds Kripke said things like „water is necessarily H2O” and „gold necessarily has the atomic number 79”. Belonging to a kind in-volves some necessary inner structure. Obviously, there are no individual pieces of water, so origin does not figure in the picture.

And what did he say about artifacts? Unfortunately again, not much. Footnote 57 provides the most information, here he gives a rather different account for them as for natural objects.³² The main difference is that according to these texts material constitution is essential to artifacts. Material constitution does not fit into his ac-count about natural objects, since that can not be essential to natural objects. It is very well possible for Barack Obama to be constituted of other stuff, than he actu-ally is: if he would have eaten different foods in his whole life, he would be consti-tuted of different stuff. Are there any sorts of things in the Kripkean theory that have material constitution essentially? Yes, basic chemical compounds and

31 Kripke 1980, pp. 110–115, pp. 125–126, pp. 128–134.

32 Kripke 1980, p. 115.

als have it essentially, in a way. Water is essentially constituted of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, and such molecules are intrinsically indistin-guishable. So, in a way, all water is made up of the same stuff. It seems like Kripke wanted to treat artifacts as raw particulars, like water and gold and things like these. I think that is a mistaken course of thought, and rather unintuitive.

When Kripke said that when we imagine this table (pick any table in your vicin-ity) being made of ice instead of wood, we really do not imagine this table; we imagine some epistemic counterpart of our table, some other table that looks like just our table, but is made of some other stuff. I think Kripke might be wrong on this one; maybe a different example and a less radical one could shed some light on our intuitions. A table is a very impersonal artifact (especially a strange table), let’s pick something else. Let’s presume that the Golden Gate Bridge could have been made of some other stuff, than it actually was. Not out of ice, but other parts of iron. Let’s imagine that in a possible world the mine where they mined the ore for the bridge caved in, so they had to use iron from some other mine. The bridge is exactly the same in every other aspect down to the last bolt; same people built it, on the exact same location, at the same time, according to exactly the same plans.

Now I have a strong intuition (maybe I’m wrong) that this bridge is still the Golden Gate, they just had to use some other beams to build it. Actually, in everyday dis-course we often say things like this when we construct something, and some mate-rial runs out: „Oh, no problem, we’ll build it from something else” („it” referring to the artifact being built). Or we can imagine a reporter asking the designer of the Golden Gate Bridge what would have happened if the beams ran out (if we do not want to talk about future objects). And the designer would probably answer some-thing like „Oh, we would have built it from other beams”. It is the same with Krip-ke’s table: If we would ask the carpenter, who built that table whether he could have made it from some other piece of wood, he would probably say yes. It seems these examples show that in most cases we do not regard material constitution as an essential feature of artifacts.

Besides material constitution, Kripke lists origin and being of some kind (a table is necessarily a table) as essential properties. In section 7 I have already ar-gued for the notion of artifacts being artifacts (and certain kinds of artifacts). The question remains how we can interpret origin in the case of artifacts, and whether we can (or have to) say other things about essences of artifacts.

First of all, origin might not be the best expression for the origin of artifacts.

We’ve already established that artifacts are specific sorts of ontologically depend-ent objects: they are intdepend-ention-dependdepend-ent. Origin may suggest that they just come into being, like intention-independent things. However, artifacts do not come into being; they are created. I think therefore it would be a better choice of words to say that not origin, but creation is essential to artifacts. The characteristic features of creation differ from those of origin. I’m not sure what they are, but I think they probably might include the intentional being doing the creation (the creator) and

the purpose of the creation. Moreover, characteristic features of creation may differ from artifact to artifact (and between individual artifacts and types of artifacts), just as characteristic features of origin may differ between, say, trees, humans, the hu-man race and planets.

I have to admit (not necessarily a weakness of my account) that „purpose” is a very wide and vague concept. Creational purpose may differ from artifact to arti-fact, even among artifacts of the same kind. Let’s suppose I build a model bridge to test the strength of some structural solution. I intend it to be a bridge between two points, A and B, but it does not matter what those two points are. The points are so to say unbound variables. So I can build my model bridge anywhere I like, between two arbitrary points, and it still will be the same bridge. However, if I intend to build a bridge between San Francisco and Marin County, then I have the intuition that bridge will necessarily connect San Francisco and Marin County. Thus, it is not possible for the Golden Gate Bridge to have been built in New York, for exam-ple, since it was created to connect San Francisco and Marin County. (It may of course be moved to New York.)

Earlier on I said in agreement with Kripke that Dartmouth is not necessarily located at the mouth of the Dart. Now I’m not so sure about that. If the city was built with the intent (surely an oversimplification about a city, but let’s not concern us about that right now) to be a city at the mouth of the Dart, then it is necessarily a city at the mouth of the Dart. But, if we imagine some citizen of Dartmouth, who sailed to America in the 1700’s with the intention of founding a new city there somewhere called New Dartmouth, then the location of New Dartmouth would be contingent. New Dartmouth could be somewhere else, whereas Dartmouth is nec-essarily at the mouth of the Dart.

This might seem a bit confusing. I’m not sure of our precise intuitions about these matters, so my conclusions are a bit speculative. What I’m pretty sure about is that creational intentions determining purpose are essential to artifacts. It all fits better into place, if we do not examine purpose so fine grained. We’ve already established that artifacts are necessarily artifacts, and necessarily those kinds of artifacts which they actually are. This can be viewed as a result of the necessity of their creation. They were created to be artifacts and more than that, certain kinds of artifacts.

There is one last problem I would like to touch on. I said that creation is essen-tial to artifacts, creation including the intentional being doing the creation. There are some clear-cut cases where the creator of an artifact seems (at least to me) truly essential to the artifact. Such are for example works of art. The Mona Lisa was painted by da Vinci. I believe it is essential for the Mona Lisa to have been painted by da Vinci; if anyone else would have painted some painting exactly like the Mo-na Lisa, it still wouldn’t be the same painting. But what about the Golden Gate Bridge? It had three designers, and hundreds (if not thousands) of workers building it. Who are its necessary creators? And what about artifactual kinds? Do kinds have

their creator also necessarily? I’m inclined to believe that the bicycle could have been invented by someone else (although I think that my particular bicycle couldn’t have been built by someone else).³³

Again, I believe that a complete externalist semantics for artifactual names should be able to answer these questions. Such a theory should take into account that artifacts are intention-dependent; that they have creation, not origin; and, what’s maybe more important, that they are maintained by human intentions, they persist in virtue of intentions, and as such, they are subject to change by intentions.

Putnam’s externalism would be a good candidate for such a theory, especially his notions about the division of linguistic labor.³⁴ According to Putnam the deno-tation of names (and other referring expressions) is determined by certain experts in the linguistic community and other members rely on them in their usage. For example the reference of the term water is determined by chemists, and chemists are the experts who determine the identity conditions of water, who are able to tell what lies in the extension of the term and what does not. I do not have to know exactly what water is, and I do not have to be able to tell it apart from other sub-stances; I can use the word with a certain degree of ignorance, since there are ex-perts in my linguistic community who do the job for me. This picture can easily be applied to artifacts, since artifacts are intention-dependent objects, created and maintained by human intentions. If we accept Putnam’s division of linguistic labor, we might very well imagine that there are certain experts who not only create, study and maintain artifacts, but are able to determine the reference of their names and the identity conditions of artifacts (for instance that what counts as a bicycle and what does not). We have a strong intuition, I believe, that nature is something that is given, something that needs to be explored, whereas artifacts are designed, created to serve some purpose. So it is up to us to name them, to assign them to kinds, to determine their necessary and contingent properties, even more markedly than with objects of nature.

10. Summary

All things said, I think we have strong reasons to regard names of artifacts and artifactual kinds as semantically very similar to names of natural objects and kinds.

Any one of Saul Kripke’s considerations that apply to names of the latter kind can be extended to names of the former kind. Just as natural names, artifactual names are non-descriptional and rigid designators. And just as identity statements contain-ing scontain-ingular and general terms referrcontain-ing to natural entities are necessary and a

33 In parallel with that, I believe the human race, for example, as a natural kind could have some other origin other than that it actually has. The human race could have evolved from homo erectus, could have been created by God or dropped down to Earth by Daeniken’s aliens, it would still be the same race. At the same time Barack Obama, the particular human has his origin necessarily. So the case seems complicated, even considering natural things.

34 Putnam 2001, pp. 22–26.

teriori, so are identity statements containing artifactual names (since artifactual names are non-descriptional and rigid designators).

Kripke held that our metaphysical intuitions about the essential properties of natural objects and kinds do not apply to artifactual objects and kinds, that we have different intuitions. I think Kripke is mistaken about this; I think our Kripkean intu-itions about natural things may very well apply to artifactual things, although not in an unrestricted way. Artifacts are intention-dependent (they need humans, or other beings with intentions to exist) whereas natural objects are not (although some natural objects show other forms of ontological dependence). Artifacts have crea-tion rather than origin, and their creacrea-tion is essential to them, just as origin is essen-tial to natural objects.

But creation is not a simple matter (and neither is origin). What features charac-terize the creation of an artifact or an artifactual kind? Is the intentional being per-forming the creation a characteristic feature of creation? Or the time and place?

The purpose of the creation? How do artifacts persist through intention? Can arti-facts be changed through intention? Can artiarti-facts be changed into other artiarti-facts through intention? Is it possible that creations of different artifacts have different characteristic features? All these questions still need to be answered. In this paper I tried to point out some of the directions the answers might go. I believe a complete externalist semantics for artifactual terms should be able to give an answer to most of these questions. I also believe that a theory based upon Putnam’s semantic ex-ternalism and division of linguistic labor would be a good starting point.

Bibliography

Baker, Lynne Rudder 2008. The shrinking difference between artifacts and natural objects.

American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers 2008.

pp. 1–8.

Burge, Tyler 1979. Individualism and the mental. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4. pp. 73–121.

Hilpinen, Risto 2011. Artifact. In: Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/

artifact/

Kornblith, Hilary 1980. Referring to artifacts. The Philosophical Review 89. pp. 109–114.

Kripke, Saul 1980. Naming and Necessity. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Putnam, Hilary 1975. The meaning of „meaning”. In: Putnam, Hilary, Mind, Language and Reality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. pp. 215–272.

Putnam, Hilary 2001. Representation and Reality. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Salmon, Nathan 2005. Are general terms rigid? Linguistics and Philosophy 28. pp. 117–134.

Schwartz, Stephen P. 1978. Putnam on artifacts. The Philosophical Review 87. pp. 566–574.

Soames, Scott 2002. Beyond Rigidity. The unfinished semantic agenda of „Naming and Necessity”. Oxford University Press, New York.

SUCH DÁVID

Bevezetés

Természetesnek tűnik, hogy azt gondoljuk, hogy az „Esik az eső” mondat jelentés-sel bír, akár mint egy konkrét megnyilatkozás alkalmával kimondott hangsorként tekintjük, azaz mint mondatpéldányt, akár mint a magyar nyelv egy lehetséges mondatát, vagyis mint mondattípust. Az is nyilvánvalónak tűnik, hogy ugyanilyen módokon jelentéssel bírnak a mondatok olyan építőelemei is mint a „labda” vagy a

„dob”, míg – legalábbis a magyar nyelvű beszélők számára – a „lashfdkldhsf” nem bír ugyanezen a módon jelentéssel. Aki pedig nem ismeri az angol nyelvet, annak számára a „squirrel” szó is éppen annyira jelentés nélküli, mint a „lashfdhsf”. Azt is elképzelhetőnek tartjuk, hogy valaki elfelejtse egy-egy szó jelentését, vagy akár egy egész nyelvet.

Egészen valószínűnek tűnik tehát, hogy bizonyos hangsorok és ábrák azért bír-nak jelentéssel, mert egy adott nyelvhez tartozbír-nak, egy adott nyelv szavaiként és mondataiként tekinthetünk rájuk, önmagukban azonban csak zörejek, tintafoltok a papíron, és különböző színű képpontok egy képernyőn.

Továbbá a természetes nyelvek beszélők bizonyos csoportjaihoz tartoznak, akikről feltételezzük, hogy egyfajta közös tudás birtokában vannak, ami az egy-mással való kommunikációra képessé teszi őket. Ez a közös tudás ama rendszer ismerete kell legyen, ami az adott nyelvet beszélők számára jelentéssel ruházza fel nyelvük szavait. Mivel egy közösség egy bizonyos nyelv helyett éppúgy használ-hatna egy másik nyelvet, kijelenthetjük, hogy az, hogy végső soron melyik nyelven kommunikálnak, konvenció kérdése.

Eszerint azt az előzetes megállapítást tehetjük, hogy bizonyos szempontból egyes szavaink és mondataink jelentése konvención alapul.

Ám nem mindig esik egybe az, amit valaki egy adott kifejezésen egy adott alka-lommal ért, azzal, amit ez a kifejezés abban a nyelvhasználó közösségben, ame-lyikhez tartozik, konvencionálisan jelent. Az „Oda vagyok a csokoládéért!” mon-datot – amelynek konvencionális jelentése a beszélő csokoládéhoz fűződő viszo-nyáról szól – bizonyos szituációban használhatom válaszként arra a kérdésre, hogy

„Kérsz egy kis csokoládét?”, és ekképpen elfogadjam udvarias vendéglátóm ajánla-tát. Tehát mindenképpen számolnunk kell azzal is, hogy egy adott alkalommal kimondott mondat jelentése nem csupán a konvenció által meghatározott.

Ilyen és ehhez hasonló megfontolásokra alapozva Paul Grice úgy vélte, hogy a jelentés alapvető fogalmát tágabban kell értelmezni, amelynek csupán egy részas-pektusát képezi a konvencionális jelentés. A legtágabb értelemben vett jelentést Grice szerint beszélői szándékaink határozzák meg, azaz, hogy milyen hatást sze-retnénk kiváltani a hallgatóból megnyilatkozásunk által.

Dolgozatomban először Grice átfogó jelentéselméleti célkitűzéseit és javaslatait fogom felvázolni, a későbbiekben pedig a konvencionális jelentés helyét és e rend-szerben betöltött funkcióját szeretném bemutatni.

Mindemellett egy külső szempontból is elemezni fogom Grice elméletét, neve-zetesen hogy miként viszonyul e szándékalapú jelentéselmélet a szemantikához.

Grice és a jelentés problémája

Paul Grice szerint legáltalánosabb értelemben a jelentés két fogalmát érdemes megkülönböztetni, amelyeket ő természetes és nem-természetes jelentésnek nevez.¹ A természetes jelentés paradigmatikus eseteinek számítanak, amikor valamilyen tényállás ismeretéből egy másikra következtetünk és ezt úgy fejezzük ki, hogy az előbbi az utóbbira „utal”, illetve „jelenti”. „Azok a sötét felhők az égen azt jelen-tik/arra utalnak, hogy esőt kapunk.” A nem-természetes jelentés esetei állnak azon-ban közelebb ahhoz, amit általáazon-ban véve tartalom vagy gondolat kifejezésének tekintünk, például „Ludwig integetése azt jelenti, hogy indulhatunk”.

Az egyik legfontosabb különbség a természetes és nem-természetes jelentés között, hogy az előbbi mindig faktív. Azaz, amennyiben igaz az az állítás, hogy „x azt jelentette, hogy p” abból következik, hogy p. Ha a „kiütések kanyarót jelente-nek”, akkor nem tehetjük hozzá, hogy „de valójában nincs kanyarója”. A nem-természetes jelentés esetében viszont nincs ilyen következtetés. „Pisti kézmozdula-ta azt jelentette/arra ukézmozdula-talt, hogy bent van az igazgató” lehet igaz, miközben valójá-ban nincs bent az igazgató.

Ez összefügg azzal is, hogy a jelentésNT esetében van valamilyen tartalom, amit x jelent, és amit például idézőjelek közé téve különíthetünk el. A természetes jelen-tés esetei viszont nem ragadhatók meg ebben a formában, például nem mondhat-juk, hogy „azok a sötét felhők az égen azt jelentik, hogy »esőt kapunk«”, míg a nem-természetes jelentés eseteiben kézenfekvő ezt megtenni: „Pisti kézmozdulata azt jelentette »bent van az igazgató«”.

Grice szerint az is intuitív, hogy a nem-természetes jelentés eseteinél van valaki, aki ki akarta fejezni az adott jelentést.²

A következőkben jelentést említve immár mindig a nem-természetes jelentésről fogok beszélni. A későbbiek szempontjából érdemes hangsúlyozni, hogy a nem-természetes jelentés, amit Grice később beszélői jelentésnek hív, fogalmilag egyál-talán nem esik egybe a konvencionális jelentéssel.

Lehet, hogy Pisti korábban említett kézmozdulata semmilyen megszokott konven-cióval nem áll kapcsolatban, mégis elérhető általa a szándékolt jelentés kifejezése.

Lehet, hogy Pisti korábban említett kézmozdulata semmilyen megszokott konven-cióval nem áll kapcsolatban, mégis elérhető általa a szándékolt jelentés kifejezése.