Abstract
We shall distinguish between sortal predication and standard predication. The former kind of predication necessarily involves sortal concepts but the latter, as it is customarily viewed, does not. It is generally thought that the only essential occurrence of a concept in a standard predication is the concept being predicated. In this paper, we shall put forward an alternative view. We shall propose to understand standard predication as a cognitive act essentially requiring sortal concepts. We shall call this view conceptual predication sortalism and ground it on the basis of epistemic-semantic reasons. Concepts are understood as intersubjectively realizable capacities or abilities that fulfill particular cognitive roles, such as those of classification, categorization, individuation, and referring.
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Notes
In Sect. 3, we shall consider more in detail the question regarding the defining features of sortal predicates.
For details on this theory, see Lowe (2009).
As it will clear from the paper, we shall here understand concepts as certain kind of cognitive capacities.
In Freund (2004), we have characterized a first-order logic whose formal semantics captures the tenets of predication sortalism. This logic involves a modification of the classical formal semantics and syntax for first-order logic.
See Sect. 1 of this paper for details on the relation between predication and the theory of universals.
For a summary of foundationalist theories of epistemic justification, see Hassan (2016).
We should point out the Quine’s goal has subsequently been pursued in different fields of philosophy. As far as the topic of this paper is concerned, some of the contemporary theories of mind, in particular, the causal theories of mind-content, constitute serious attempts to follow the Quinean path. Among these theories, it is worth mentioning those by J. Fodor. See Fodor (1998).
In the particular case of philosophy, we shall consider those results on the nature of individuation, identity, criteria of identity and sortal predicates. The relevant literature for these results will be provided in this paper.
Modern versions of nominalism also appeal to the class or set membership relation.
Apart from its coherence with the view of predication as a mental act, the conceptualist approach will avoid specific problems related to realist and nominalist approaches. We have already indicated the problem that would face a naturalistic interpretation of properties. As it will be remembered, under that interpretation, artifacts will be excluded from being possible subjects of predications. In the case of nominalism, predication will be restricted to its linguistic manifestations, leaving out of the picture mental categorization or predication in which language is supposed not to be always involved.
Other versions of conceptualism include those formulated by classical empiricist or rationalists philosophers. The work by John Locke and David Hume are good examples of the former and those by Leibniz and Spinoza of the latter. Among medieval authors, Abelard is considered one the most representative conceptualists. For details and discussion on Abelard´s theory, see Spade (1985), Gracia (1988), and Tweedale (1976). The theory in Wiggins (2001) and Cocchiarella (2007) are contemporary versions of conceptualism.
For a discussion of the three approaches, see Margolis and Laurence (2011). Regarding concepts as Fregean-senses, one of the referees has called our attention to the fact that such a view is not Frege's, but rather the view of the Fregean tradition of the XXth century (such as that by Carnap or Church). As the referee has rightly pointed out, for Frege, concepts are functions and, hence, non-cognitive entities. A concept as such is not the sense of a conceptual expression.
This view of concepts can be traced back, at least, to Geach (1971).
Concepts of these sorts can be found in infants and in certain deaf-mute people, who have been shown to develop mathematical concepts without the use of language. For a discussion of the former cases, see for example Xu (2007) and Xu and Carey (1996), and for those of the latter see Pinker (1994), Chapter 3. Incidentally, this language independence, which in conceptualism is partial, is generalized to all universals in the case of realism, as a consequence of the nature of properties (natural or otherwise).
There are linguistic expressions that will not stand for concepts, such as declarative sentences or statements. These expressions will represent judgments (in the psychological sense of the word). In the case of logically simple statements in particular (viz., those not involving propositional operators), they will stand for a mental act, in which there is a joint exercise of two kinds of concepts, viz.: a predicable concept and a referential concept. Predicable concepts are cognitive capacities that allow us to classify, relate or identify objects.
It will be remembered that standard predications might comprise predication of relational concepts. In these cases, several subjects will be involved in a single standard predication.
In the case of a predication of a relational concept, multiple referential mental acts will be involved. These acts will refer to the entities individuated by one or many sortal concepts, and that will constitute the subjects of the predication of the relational concept.
For a discussion of this criterion and an attempt to make it more precise, see Feldman (1973). Lowe (2009) considers the criterion for counting to be a sufficient but not a necessary condition for a predicate to be a sortal. However, he also considers mass terms to be sortal predicates, a view that is highly controversial.
We should make clear that this concept of counting is not the same as the one defined in set-theory. According to the latter sense, a concept or set is countable if and only if the members of the extension of the concept or the set can be put, in principle, in a one-to-one correspondence with the set of natural numbers or with one of its subsets. For this reason, concepts like real number and irrational number are sortals because they can pass the counting test: we can meaningfully ask how many real (or irrational) numbers there are. This will be a question regarding the cardinality of the extension of such concepts.
In this connection, see Geach (1980), Dummett (1981), Wright (1983) and Loewe (1989). We should point that some concepts formed on their basis, like to be an x such that x = x or to be a thing that exists, would not be sortal concepts either. By their means, we would not be able to count, in principle, the entities in a particular room that satisfy the conditions of being identical to itself or of being an existing thing. In this case, we would not know where to start counting. That is, we would not know, from the outset, what would count as one of the things satisfying one of the conditions in question.
For instance, the criterion of identity of the predicate car would provide the principles for deciding whether or not an object seen on the street is the same car as the object seen yesterday in our neighbor's garage. Many sortal predicates are like car in this sense, that is, they convey criteria of identity for two objects that happened to be at different places or times, or both. It is also thought that the criterion of identity of many sortal predicates can provide principles for the identity of individuals in contexts other than those of a temporal and spatial kind, such as those of modal contexts. In this way, the criterion of identity conveyed by an important number of sortal predicates is presumed to include, at least, principles for re-and-crossworld-identification. Clearly, re-identification principles would not be expected from sortal predicates for abstract individuals, like sets or numbers, for instance.
Thus interpreted, a criterion of identity should not be understood as computationally effective. That is, the epistemic criterion of identity should not be necessarily viewed as an algorithm for deciding the identity of two objects to which a sortal predicate applies. For example, the criterion of identity for the sortal concept “painting” is not computationally effective. As far as we know, there is no algorithm for deciding whether two paintings are the same or not. Just consider possible cases where it is being determined whether or not a painting stolen from a museum is identical to a painting later found somewhere else, such as Degas’ painting stolen from a museum in Marseille in 2009 and a painting found years later in a bus depicting the same scenes of the first one. Determining the authenticity of paintings require experts’ opinions, which, as far as we know, have not been computationally captured in an algorithm.
Clearly, the identity of the objects as based on metaphysical principles might be independent of our epistemic framework. We might not be able to know or have epistemic access to the nature of the objects being considered and, by implication, to the principles contained in their criterion of identity. Thus, epistemic and metaphysical criteria of identity as conveyed by a given sortal might not necessarily coincide. This is because, on the one hand, there might not be metaphysical criteria associated with a sortal predicate. That is, the content of a given sortal predicate might not condition the objects to which it applies to be of a certain nature, as is the case of sortals for artifacts. On the other hand, some epistemic principles cannot qualify as metaphysical. Take for instance the use of fingerprints as a principle for the identity of persons. We can identify two individuals as the same person if they have the same fingerprints. Since it is possible for a person not to have fingerprints at all, it cannot be a metaphysical criterion of identity.
This feature explains why sortal predicates have played an important role in several philosophical theories, such as perception sortalism and metaphysical sortalism. For perception sortalism, see the references in footnote 5. For metaphysical sortalism, see for example Lowe (2009). Lowe focuses more on natural kinds. For artifacts, see Heil (2003).
For details on the notion of individuality, see Gracia (1988).
This distinction was originally made in Lowe (2007).
For illustration purposes, consider (extensional) sets. It is claimed that they are determined by their members, in the sense that their individual character depends on their members. Thus, the set of natural numbers, in particular, depends on such numbers to be an individual and the individual it is. In this case, one would say that the set of natural numbers is individuated, in the metaphysical sense, by the natural numbers.
The nexus between the metaphysical and the cognitive interpretation of individuation, as far as sortal predicates are concerned, does not seem to be of a one-to-one character. The criterion of individuation a sortal predicate provides might not necessarily correspond to a metaphysical principle of individuation. This could be the case of sortal predicates like "architect" and "teacher". However, there are cases where they do correspond. For example, it is held by many that the criterion of individuation conveyed by sortal predicates of natural kinds does provide metaphysical principles of individuation.
When a relational concept is being predicated, there might be more than one entity as subjects of the predication.
In this connection, see Xu (1997).
A predication that results from our interaction with the world is always placed in the space of logically possible justifications, of what one can in principle justify or is able to justify. This is what Sellars calls the logical space of reasons. See Sellars (1997).
For details on how this would be possible, see Campbell (2002, 2006), and Raftopoulos and Muller (2006). Authors pretending to sustain this view include those who back the idea, already mentioned above, that there is a sort of individuation that can be carried out by conscious attention and perceptual delineation mechanisms only.
One of the referees has rightly pointed out that the argument in this paragraph assumes that category mistakes are meaningless. As an objection to this presumption, s/he has called our attention to the possibility that the expression “8 is red”, for instance, could be assumed to be false (and so as an expression with meaning) as long as one could hold that the number 8 is an object that cannot have a color. We should first note that the view that category mistakes are meaningless has found support in and arguments for it have been advanced by a diversity of authors. (See, for example, Beall and van Fraassen (2003), Russell (1908), Ryle (1938), Strawson (1952), Chomsky (1957), Routley (1966), Diamond (1981), and Sorensen (2001)). It is thought, by some, that category mistakes are highly anomalous, and assuming their meaningless is the most simple and compelling explanation for their anomaly: they are the only kind of sentence which is syntactically well-formed but nevertheless meaningless. This accounts for the distinctiveness of their anomaly. Other sorts of arguments have been devised on the basis of truth-conditional or conceptual role theories of meaning. For a critical appraisal of these other sorts of arguments, see Magidor (2009). As for the referee’s objection itself: it is true that the number 8 is an object that cannot have a color. Does this imply that “8 is red” is false? Not necessarily. One holds that the number 8 is an object that cannot have a color on a priori grounds. This is because the claim is the result of an inference from onto-semantic rules or principles and never from empirical evidence. Now, these rules or principles are among those determining meaning. Thus, the inferential source of the claim would justify us in taking the expression “8 is red” not as false but rather as meaningless. The expression would be transgressing rules or principles of meaning.
As support for this view, one can mention the linguistic fact that the interpretation of a particular adjective or verb seems to depend on the particular noun that it modifies. Additional empirical support is to be found in studies of developmental psychology, according to which there is conceptual and linguistic priority to name an object’s kind before marking its properties, independently of how salient those properties are. Use of those concepts in categorization is mostly based on the family resemblance of an object with respect to certain prototypes. Generally speaking, natural kind concepts are built around prototypes or most typical instances, and not around properties. Linguistically speaking, this is reflected in the fact that noun learning, at an early age, serves as a gateway for the acquisition of adjectives. For details on these facts, see Baker (2003).
The expression “x is red” clearly resembles many of our everyday predications. However, what marks the difference with the latter ones is the fact that there is no determination of the role played by the reference of “x” in a possible world (actual or otherwise) since x is assumed to be just and no more than an individual. For this reason, such an expression does not project a possible state of affairs or situation. This means that it or its corresponding mental act conveys no proposition. The expression does not project what we have called, on page 31 a quasi-state of affairs because neither space–time coordinates nor non-sortal features other than the ones being predicated are associated to the subject of the predication. Thus, the expression transmits only the form of a possible predication involving the concept red.
One of the referees has called our attention to the possibility of conjoining different non-sortal concepts to the extent that altogether they would convey conditions satisfiable by a unique real object. The intended idea here is to have the cluster of concepts fulfilling the function of sortal concepts in some predications. We do not know whether a cluster of concepts with the features in question is a real possibility. Given our cognitive limitations and the complexity of actual objects, it is unlikely that it is. Also, leaving aside this problem, more importantly, it is the fact that a conjunction of non-sortal concepts cannot render a principle of individuation by itself and will require a sortal concept. For example, consider a conjunction of the concepts water, blue, bitter. What would count as an individual satisfying these concepts? A drop, a glass, or a litter of water? A decision in this direction will necessarily require a sortal concept.
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We are grateful to two anonymous referees as well as to Catarina Dutilh Novaes for their helpful comments and suggestions to an earlier version of this paper.
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Freund, M.A. Predication and sortal concepts. Synthese 198 (Suppl 12), 3085–3106 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02030-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02030-7