Alston Study Questions:

Yoder's Answers

4a-1: According to White, the translations show that one need not assert the existence of abstract entities such as ‘age’ or ‘possibility’ in an utterance to communicate the same information in a less ambiguous manner.

4a-2: He means translations that supposedly reduce the existential status of things that Carnap calls “abstract entities” out of assertions, and communicate in a clearer fashion. In other words, the existential quantification of an abstract entity is said to be eliminated in translation to a supposedly clearer sentence.

4a-3: Because they (existential reduction translations) are simply changing the form of sentences, not their meanings; “it is a question of what he says, not how he says it. Hence he cannot repudiate his admission by simply changing his words” (50).

4a-4*: Yes, their meanings are equivalent, and they do assert the existence of possibilities. Alston writes that you assert the existence of possibilities whenever you make a statement that includes “it is possible that…” or something that asserts the same meaning (In Alston’s view) such as “ the statement that x will y is not certainly false” (47).

4a-5**: No, it is not possible that one could utter x and carry an implication of being about ultimate reality while the other cannot. Consider the following statement; “there is a possibility that we will go fishing”. The everyday speaker’s utterance of this phrase means something like “fishing might be one of the things we do today”. The philosopher might be asserting “there are things called possibilities in the universe and one of the properties of possibilities is that you can attach actions and things to them in order to suggest what might exist, or come to pass (or has existed, or has come and passed; or exists, or is happening as we speak)”. It seems that the fisherman is asserting the ultimate reality of fishing in a similar fashion as the philosopher is asserting the ultimate reality of possibilities. If fishing is something that is a possible course of action, then the implication is that fishing is a reality, a part of “the furniture of the universe”. I am not sure of the status of existence when it comes to ‘things’ like actions or events. Fishing clearly calls into both categories. Actions and events are not tangible in the same way that a rock is, or any object that can be empirically accounted for. I am not sure if events or actions can be empiricized. It seems that they could be analytically accounted for in the same way that numbers can be analytically accounted for. Events and actions seem fundamentally different than other kinds of abstract entities because they have components in the same way as concrete objects.

Back to the point; it is not the same utterance can contain a claim about ultimate reality when uttered by two different speakers because each is asserting the ultimate reality of some thing, even if it is not the same thing. It seems that it is impossible for anyone to issue a statement without asserting some ultimate reality, unless they are incorrect in their statement or being facetious.

4a-14: “The seductive grammatical likeness of 1”. Basically, this sentence’s problem is that is confusing. One shouldn’t talk about possibilities in the same way one should talk about concrete objects like chairs. He even admits this designation is dangerous, but he still makes it.

4a-16: The problem of translation has less to do with the positing of existence of abstract entities as much as the problem of clarity. Ex-redux translations of a sentence can be just as confusing as the original with the existential quantifier of an ab-ent. There is no ontological taint on 1; it is a mistake to assume so when chairs and possibilities don’t exist in the same way. But when possibility’s existence is asserted in the same way as chair’s existence is asserted, it leads to confusion.

Answers to Carnap's DQs; provided by AJ Davis and Klaus Yoder

3b-1.We take an abstract entity to be what Carnap (and others) calls a universal. This means something that cannot be immediately detected through sense data. Examples of abstract entities would be numbers, relations, and propositions. Carnap writes that they are "properties as designated by predicates and propositions as designated by sentences" (13b).

3b-2. Because empiricists generally try to avoid the usage of abstract entities in their formulations as much as possible. This is due to the fact that abstract entities do not seem to designate any concrete material thing. Nominalists maintain that abstract entities are a product of the human mind and do not really exist in the universe.

3b-3. He means a linguistic framework is the way of describing ("speaking" in his words) a new entity by means of a new set of language rules. You set one up by describing the new entity's existence by introducing a general term for the new entity and then variables where the new entity could be a substitutable value for the variable. An example could be introducing the entity happiness into the system of emotion. Frameworks make systems and languages possible.

3b-4. An internal question of existence would be a question of existence based on empirical data or logical conclusions. To answer an internal question of existence, one must "succeed in incorporating it into the system of things" (14a), on the empirical or logical level. An example would be "is Hercules a human?"

3b-5. An external question of existence is a question concerning the existence of the entire linguistic framework, such as "is there a theoretical argument for the number system?" Carnap would not think that there is a way for someone who accepts the framework F to externally question the existence of g because outside of framework F, there is no way to recognize properties of g. There are no logical or empirical rules to address g's existence with external questions.

3b-6. External questions cannot be solved in a theoretical sense. They can be meaningful in asking questions about the efficiency of a linguistic framework.

3b-7.** It does not seem possible to have a metalanguage about languages/frameworks that turns the external question about existents in a particular framework into real theoretical questions about the reality of those things because all languages, including metalanguages require frameworks that are not theoretically justifiable. These frameworks can only be evaluated on a practical, internal scale. So theoretical questions are only meaningful when internally addressed.

3b-13. A pseudo-question is a question in the form of a theoretical question which is non-theoretical. This suggests that questions of this sort attempt to address the theoretical aspects of systems, but are unable to because of the lack of a coherent framework.

3b-19. The "Fido"-Fido principle is Ryle's critique of the false assumption that just because something is named that it necessarily designates some particular.