The Logical Alien

1073 Pages·2020·3.758 MB·English

by  Sofia Miguens

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t h e
LOGICA L A LIEN
CONANT AND HIS CRITICS
edited by
SOFIA MIGUENS
cambridge, massachusetts
london, england
2020
Copyright © 2020 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Ameri ca
First printing
Cover design: Graciela Galup
Cover art: Juj Winn / Getty Images
9780674242838 (EPUB)
9780674242845 (MOBI)
9780674242821 (PDF)
James Conant, “The Search for Logically Alien Thought”
in Philosophical Topics 20, 1, Fall 1991, pp. 115–180.
Copyright © University of Arkansas. Reprinted by permission.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Miguens, Sofia, editor.
Title: The logical alien : Conant and his critics / edited by Sofia Miguens.
Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : Harvard University Press, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019009512 | ISBN 9780674335905 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Logic. | Thought and thinking. | Philosophy, Comparative. |
Psy chol ogy and philosophy. | Philosophy, Modern.
Classification: LCC BC71 .L64 2019 | DDC 160— dc23
LC rec ord available at https://l ccn . loc . gov / 2019009512
CONTENTS
PART I— THE BOUNDS OF JUDGMENT
Charles Travis and Sofia Miguens, Introduction to Part I: Basic Necessities
(or: The Shape of Thought) 3
James Conant, The Search for Logically Alien Thought: Descartes, Kant,
Frege, and the Tractatus 27
A. W. Moore, What Descartes Ought to Have Thought about
Modality 101
Matthew Boyle, Kant on Logic and the Laws of the Understanding 117
Arata Hamawaki, Cartesian Skepticism, Kantian Skepticism, and
Two Conceptions of Self- Consciousness 145
Barry Stroud, Logical Aliens and the “Ground” of Logical
Necessity 170
Peter Sullivan, Va ri e ties of Alien Thought 183
Martin Gustafsson, Wittgenstein on Using Language and Playing Chess:
The Breakdown of an Analogy and Its Consequences 202
Charles Travis, Where Words Fail 222
Jocelyn Benoist, Alien Meaning and Alienated Meaning 281
PART II— THE LOGICAL ALIEN REVISITED:
AFTERTHOUGHTS AND RESPONSES
Sofia Miguens, Introduction to Part II: On How History of Philosophy
Can Be Illuminating 295
vi contents
James Conant, Replies
Section I: Who Is the Author of These Afterthoughts and
Responses? 321
Section II: A History of Philosophy That Challenges Cont emporary
Preconceptions 328
Section III: Some Aspects of Conant’s Version of the History 363
Section IV: Theological Sources of Modern Conceptions of Logic 376
Section V: Leibnizian versus Kantian Conceptions of Logic 405
Section VI: A Resolute Reading of Descartes 469
Section VII: Reply to Moore: Descartes on the Relation of the Pos si ble to
the Actual 537
Section VIII: Reply to Boyle: Kant on the Relation of a Rational Capacity
to Its Acts 574
Section IX: Reply to Hamawaki: On the Relation of Cartesian to
Kantian Skepticism and the Relation of Consciousness to
Self- Consciousness 648
Section X: Reply to Hamawaki and Stroud on Transcendental Arguments,
Idealism, and the Kantian Solution of the Probl em of
Philosophy 758
Section XI: Reply to Stroud on Kant and Frege: On the Relation of
Thought to Judgment 783
Section XII: Reply to Sullivan: Frege on the Priority of Logic to
Every thing 830
Section XIII: Reply to Gustafsson: Wittgenstein on the Relation of Sign to
Symbol 863
Section XIV: Reply to Travis: Wittgenstein on the Non- Relation of
Thinking to Being 948
Section XV: Reply to Benoist: Wittgenstein on the Relation of Language to
Life 984
bibliography 1029
index of names 1051
index of subjects 1057
THE LOGICAL ALIEN
In memoriam Barry Stroud: the embodiment of Fiat Lux
[P]hilosophy is one subject and . . . pro gress in one place depends
on the resolution of issues that lie elsewhere. One is led eventually
into almost all other areas and questions. This is certainly true of
the work of the g reat phi loso phers of the past. Against that high
standard, the current professional fixation on distinct “fields” or
areas of academic “specialization” and “competence” looks like
no more than a bad joke.
— barry stroud
PART I
THE BOUNDS OF JUDGMENT
Introduction
Basic Necessities (or: The Shape of Thought)
Charles Travis and Sofia Miguens
This book arose out of a proj ect at the University of Porto, The Bounds
of Judgement, with a somewhat wider scope and a conference within
this proj ect with precisely the pre sent scope.1 The broader idea was to
group together claims of one area of discourse or another that it lies
beyond the (presumed) bounds of eligibility for truth or falsehood. The
point was to see what common features, if any, might be thought to
place a discourse beyond such bounds. Some such claims, for example,
might concern ethical or aesthetic discourse, or specific bits of it. Some
might concern such things as promising or ordering (or marrying).
Some might see bounds to the objectivity of truth which would confine
true-f alse discourse to what is ultimately about the “natur al,” or, perhaps,
1 The proj ect The Bounds of Judgement: Frege, Cognitive Agents and H uman Thinkers
(PTDC / FIL- FIL/109882/2009) was funded by the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a
Tecnologia. The Conference The Logical Alien At 20 took place at the University of Porto
in June 2011. Its title referred to the twenty years since the publication of James Conant’s
1991 Philosophical Topics article “The Search for Logically Alien Thought” (reprinted
after this Introduction). The participants in the conference w ere asked to address the
“philosophy of logic” task of the proj ect, named “Emptiness of Demands on the World.”
The idea, put crudely, would be this: if laws of logic (the most basic laws of being true)
frame the very business of being true (or false), and if they limn the structure within
which such is poss i ble at all, then they cannot at the same time be within that business
themselves. Vario us models have been given in support of a view of this sort. The view itself
is, inter alia, one take on questions of the inexorability, immutability, and uniqueness of
laws of logic.
3
4 the bounds of judgment
“objects of experience,” what ever the relevant claimant might take
such to be. Such bounds might touch philosophy itself, as in Richard
Montague’s dictum, “ There are only two branches of philosophy: set
theory and aesthetics. What ever you can’t do in set theory is just
aesthetics.”
And some concern logic. Not that Frege, the author on whom the
Bounds of Judgement centered, ever thought of laws of logic as anything
other than (eternal) truths. But logic exhibits, or seems to, a sort of in-
exorability which at least compromises the claim of a law of logic to be
either true or false. The idea would be as follows: a thought (that which
is liable to be true or false) is a proprietary way of making truth turn on,
or be hostage to, how things are. It fixes a determinate way for how things
are thus to m atter, whereas the inexorability of logic suggests that its laws
are hostage, or answerable, to nothing; that t here is simply no such t hing
as things being other than as per them. So these laws do not make truth
turn in any way on anything. Which compromises their claim to be in
the business of being true or false.
Here one might go a step further. The laws of logic (Frege’s laws of
truth), one might suppose, simply define what the business of being true
(or false) is, as such. So they cannot be in that business itself. They stand
outside it. They form the framework within which t here may be ques-
tions of being true or false—t he most general conditions for any such
question to have content. They are not themselves such questions: the
framework would not itself be such as to have (such) content. The busi-
ness of the laws of logic is other than that business they define. Such is a
view elaborated by Wittgenstein of the Tractatus (6.34) in terms of a
special case: a system for describing patterns of “fly specks” on a wall.
His unfortunate example was Newtonian mechanics, about which he
wrote this:
Consider a white surface with irregular black spots on it. We may
now say: what ever picture may arise here, I can always come arbi-
trarily close to its description if I cover the picture with a corre-
spondingly fine square network and then for each square say either
that it is white or that it is black. I would thus have brought the
description of the surface into a uniform form. This form is arbi-
trary, for I could have applied a net of a triangular or hexagonal
mesh. . . .
That a picture like that presented above permits of being described
by a net of a given form says nothing about the picture. (For this holds