Properties and Normativity

Properties and Normativity

Matjaž Potrč

An elaborated version of blobjectivism includes properties and normativity, without that it would thereby commit itself to the existence of vague parts.

1. Ontological and semantic theses of blobjectivism

Blobjectivism is a metaphysical position that consists of two theses, the ontological and the semantic one:

Ontological thesis: There exists just one richly complex dynamic material object without any parts.

Semantic thesis: Many affirmations of common sense and of science referring to the putative entities that do not ultimately exist are true, their truth being contextually construed as an indirect and not as a direct kind of correspondence.

The position of blobjectivism is an integral ontological and semantic view, which accommodates common sense and scientific ways of presenting the world with the basic monistic thesis involving only one ultimately existing object.[1]

Basic requirement of monism is an austere ontology including just one material object, the non-vague blobject, without any parts. So theses of blobjectivism prompt us to refine rich dynamics and contextually changeable normativity without recourse to the existence of any parts. The bet is that we can accomplish this by allowing properties into the ontological inventory, and by allowing genuine normativity to support the semantic thesis. The main requirement though is that despite this no parts would be thereby admitted into ontology. An analysis is needed to show how this is possible.

2. The requirement to accommodate variability and normativity into blobjectivist view

Monistic thesis of blobjectivism adopts just one ultimately existing object, the blobject. Adopting rich dynamical variability seems to be opposed to this monistic ontological requirement and in conflict with it. Consider just the following variation in the world: here is a cat and there is a dog. But this seems to involve the existence of at least two different regions of the world: the one where we would usually say that there is a cat, and that another one where we would usually say that there is a dog. But if we have two different regions, the cat-region and the dog-region, then we have something in addition to the one object or blobject in our ontology. And this then means that the monistic view cannot be upheld if the variable richness and dynamics is admitted into the world. Once regions are there, the monistic view is bound to deconstruct itself. The requirement is then to accommodate variability into the monistic view if we wish to uphold such a view.

As far as the semantic thesis of blobjectivism is concerned, the question is about normativity. Construal of truth as indirect correspondence is essential for blobjectivism, for it satisfies the requirement to accommodate common sense and scientific affirmations into an overall plausible monistic view.[2] Construal of truth as indirect correspondence is contextual, and thereby it is dynamical as well.[3] The changeable commodity involves normative parameters that determine truth value of affirmations. According to the low everyday normative requirements it is true that this pavement is flat. Whereas according to the heightened normative requirements, as we inspect the surface of the pavement much closer and into several details, it is not true anymore that this pavement would be flat. So much for contextualism. Truth as direct correspondence concerns the world in its ultimate ontological appearance. Whereas truth as indirect correspondence can be in power for the areas that are not just ultimately ontologically, and that are ontically there, recognized as ex-sisting in the world. The question is now whether such a variable normativity may be an ingredient of the mind and language independent world. The main characteristic of contextual semantics seems to be its allowance for inherent variability. But variability again seems to imply vagueness. And this would go in opposition to the impossibility of vagueness in the mind and language independent world, according to blobjectivism. The existence of ontic entities is vague, and therefore they do not ultimately exist.[4] Blobjectivist should thus demonstrate that if there is normativity in the world, it should be non-vague.

3. Properties and normativity in the blobject should be non-vague

In order to accommodate rich variable dynamics and contextually changing normativity into a monistic blobjectivist perspective, one may decide to introduce properties and normativity, and to allow for their existence besides to the blobject, as integrated into the blobject. But this may plausibly succeed only if properties and normativity are recognized in the world as non-vague. For if they would be vague, they could not be allowed to really and ultimately exist. Properties and normativity are not like cats and dogs which are vague and therefore ultimately do not exist. If they should be admitted into our ontology, they should be non-vague. For mind and language independent world is non-vague or it does not really ultimately exist.

If the blobject is richly variable, then non-vague properties can accommodate this dynamics in the world, as being properties of the blobject, besides to the blobject. Non-vague properties may be allowed to exist besides to the blobject though, provided that no parts such as regions would be forthcoming as supporting them, if we wish to preserve monism. Normativity can then also exist as a property, besides to the blobject and in it, characterizing it, provided that it does not involve the existence of any parts such as regions.[5] If properties and normativity would exist in the manner of a cat, they would be vague and thereby they would not ultimately actually exist. But properties do not need to imply existence of any separate parts; they may be well supported by the one material object that they keep on characterizing.

4. Properties and paraphrase strategy

Question: What is the cool side of properties from the monistic point of view? The answer: that they do not involve the existence of any regions or of any additional vague entities. This should be demonstrated though: the possibility that the presumed vague entities involving world is actually the non-vague properties comprising world. Where there seems to be a cat or a dog as vague entities, actually just the non-vague property of its cat-ish behavior is instantiated by the blobject.

Here is a familiar strategy allowing dismissing the presumed vague entities. We take an affirmation that seems to be committed to an entity, perhaps of a dubious ontological status. We then paraphrase the affirmation in such a way that no grammatical commitment to the presumed entity is in power anymore. Consider the following couple of affirmations:

(a) Smith has a loud laugh.

(b) Smith laughs loudly.

The affirmation (a) displays its commitment to the presumed entity “laugh”. But perhaps we would not like to accept “laugh” as an entity in our ontology, because of its dubious in-worldly status. (Laugh is fairly not as compact as a cat seems to be, even if this last one is vague.) So we paraphrase the affirmation (a) in such a way that no commitment to the entity such as “laugh” is forthcoming anymore. This is accomplished by the adverbial paraphrase in (b), where the commitment to the presumed entity “laugh” gets substituted by the commitment to property of Smith laughing loudly, in a loud manner. In (a) the presumed ontological commitment was to Smith and besides to Smith to the laugh as well. In (b),the ontological commitment is to Smith only as a vague entity, and it is affirmed that Smith is instantiating the property of laughing, in a loud manner. [6]

The paraphrase strategy may be used in order to dispense with ontological commitment to parts such as regions, all in that properties can be left to characterize rich and dynamical behavior of the blobject. Take the following statement:

(c) Mass M is instantiated at the region R.

It may be adverbially paraphrased in the following manner:

(d) Blobject instantiates the property mass M in a R-regionish manner.

The commitment to the region R that was there in (c) was substituted for the ontological commitment to the blobject only, with its instantiation of property mass M in a R-regionish manner. So blobject instantiates a certain property, in a region-ish manner, without the commitment to any entity such as a region.

As properties are really relations, they can be conceived in a n-places manner. The above already discussed property is a one-place predicate. Here is a two-place predicate property or the relation case. Let us start again with the commitment to regions:

(e) Region R1 is denser than region R2.

And here is the paraphrase that gets rid of regions and stays with the two-place property:

(f) Blobject instantiates the relation/property being-denser-than in a region-ish (R1, R2) manner.

The adverbial paraphrase strategy allows us thus to get rid of ontological commitment to such entities as regions that are actually parts, substituting them with the commitment to non-vague properties that are instantiated by the only object, the blobject. Ontological monism is thereby preserved, and the introduced non-vague properties account for its rich dynamical variability.

5. Non-vague intentionality vs. vague content

We have admitted non-vague properties as residing in the world, not multiplying its basic ontological inhabitants, and being able to account for blobject’s rich dynamical variability. Something similar goes on at the semantic side of blobjectivist engagement: there as well we have rich contextual normative variability in construal of truth as indirect correspondence, besides to the construal of truth as direct correspondence. In order to illustrate contextual variability we have used the changing contextual normative assessment needed to evaluate truth of the affirmation that the pavement is flat. We have seen that truth ascription varies with the change of the used contextual parameters.

We may then presume that there is yet another property in the blobject, the normativity. It has to do with how truth gets construed. In order that such a property would get admitted into our monistic ontology, we have again to be attentive at the requirement that buying such a property would not have any strings to the regions or parts attached in a nontransparent manner.

Let us come again to our affirmation that the pavement is flat. What does make here for truth as indirect correspondence, being related to the mentioned affirmation? One part of the correspondence relation consists in how the world is. Here we can adopt the whole world, which is usual in the semantics of possible worlds: the world is then such that it instantiates in a region-ish spatiotemporal manner the property of behaving in the pavement-ish and flat-ish manner. But correspondence is between the mentioned affirmation about pavement being flat and between this manner that the world happens to be in. On the semantic side, the linguistic items, such as words or sentences are the ones that correspond to the world. In fact, the mentioned affirmation (that the pavement is flat) is tied to the judgment that seems to be more fundamental, metaphysically, as its linguistic expression in form of a sentence. Notice that the thought, as well and appropriately so, corresponds to how the world is. Part of this correspondence is encompassed in the word “pavement” referring to the pavement, and in the word “flat” referring to the property of being flat, as it seems. But these are intentional properties, including also the composed intentional reference to the equivalents of states of affairs.

Intentional contents are involved into construal of truth as indirect correspondence, and they found the normativity underlying it. And intentional contents, as we just stated, are more fundamental then their linguistic expressions. But intentional contents are vague. So intentionality risks being a property that would be vague then. But this has to be avoided, for vagueness cannot be there in the language and thought independent world, in which the property of intentionality should take a part in order to stay compatible with ontological monism.

The question is then how it is possible to have non-vague intentional properties with their intentional content that however is almost always vague. In order to answer this question, the ways for intentional content being vague should be mentioned first. Intentional content may be vague in respect to the range of its instantiations, and in respect to its specific instantiation. The question is then how it is possible for intentional content to be non-vague in respect to the range of its instantiations and in respect to its specific instantiations.

Intentional content is vague in respect to a range of instantiations in that it is not determinate to which cases it does apply. So it is vague exactly to which cases of instantiation the intentional content “blue” does apply. But consider that intentional content is non-vague, and thus that it is sharp at each specific instantiation, as we would say, in someone’s thought. For at each occasion as one attributes the property of being blue in one’s thought, this could not have happened without the occurring mental experience being conscious, coming with a specific what-it’s-like quality of thinking about the blue. But then, this means that each instance of blue-thought, because of its phenomenological sharpness, is non-vague. This proves how a vague content may be non-vague in respect to the range of its instantiations.

The remaining question is actually how a specific instantiation of the intentional mental content may be non-vague. A thought concerning blueness would be vague in respect to its physical realization, as we would say, in someone’s brain, namely in the brain of a person entertaining a blueness related thought. But here are preconditions for such an instantiation of a mental thought being non-vague. Let us say that there is a subvenient property P1 and that there is a supervenient property P2 (blueness thought), such that there is not any additional property P3 that would also serve in the subvenient base. This shows that it is possible to have non-vague property instantiations of vague intentional content.

6. Semantic normativity in the blobject

Now, intentional content is involved into normativity guiding the construal of truth as indirect correspondence, and also of the direct correspondence, as for that matter. The above reasoning to the effect that the property of intentionality may be instantiated in a non-vague manner in the blobject shows that property of normativity that it supports may be also instantiated in a non-vague manner in the blobject. According to the blobjectivist ontology, there are no people in the world, as ultimate ontological entities, because people, if they would exist, would be vague. So intentionality and normativity are properties of the blobject, which thereby proves to be the ultimate thinker and supporter of normativity.

7. Properties, normativity and the ontological difference as seen from direct and indirect correspondence angle involving truth

Distinction between the construal of truth as direct and as indirect correspondence involves non-vague instantiations of intentional content properties, as well as non-vague instantiation of the property of normativity in the blobject. It is obvious that these properties will many times be complex; but this is exactly the characterization of the blobject by which we started our small itinerary.

Besides to the terminology involving truth as direct correspondence and truth as indirect correspondence, we have also used distinction between the ontological and the ontic, and thereby the principle that may be called principle of ontological difference. The world is not identical to a cat, but according to what we just said there is certainly the world, and there is the property of the world behaving in a cat-ish manner, region-ishly, where we would say that it is true how there is a cat over there. One can say that the ontic and the indirect correspondence have in common the trait that they do not involve any ultimate ontological entities in the world. But they do involve non-vague properties in the range of which the normativity may be counted, regulating and instantiating the property behavior of the world. Truth as indirect correspondence indicates that the ontic and the ontological are part of a normative endeavor, which is a property of the one world or of the blobject.

7. Austere realism, blobjectivism and non-vagueness

The emphasis in this paper is upon allowing properties and normativity as one specific property into the metaphysical view of blobjectivism, provided that they turn out to be non-vague. This allows a wider zoom at the metaphysical situation. From this perspective of the importance assigned to non-vagueness, also parts may be eventually allowed into a wider conceived version of such a view. But these, notice well, would not be any vague parts and they would rather be non-vague parts. Then, blobjectivism turns out to be just one species of more generic austere realism view that does not allow for any vague parts. Other versions of austere realism (austere because not allowing for many entities, namely not allowing for non-vague entities) would involve non-vague regions and non-vague points to characterize one material world, as their properties. This then means that such regions and points would not be vague and that austerity would be thereby preserved.

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