Abstract
Existentialism claims that propositions that directly refer to individuals depend on those individuals for their existence. I argue for two points regarding Existentialism. First, I argue that recent accounts of Existentialism run into difficulties accommodating the possibility of there being a lonely alien electron. This problem is distinct from one of the better-known alien problems—concerning iterated modal properties of aliens—and can’t be solved using a standard response to the iterated case. Second, though the lonely alien electron problem might seem to be reason to reject the sort of Existentialist view at hand, there’s a plausible way to preserve the view: accept the existence of possible worlds that directly refer to individuals that don’t exist in those worlds. Such a solution might seem incompatible with Existentialism, but I show that Existentialists can avoid the incompatibility and should find the resulting view plausible.
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Notes
Here I leave the notion of “x exists in W” as undefined. But no matter how the authors mentioned define it, it still follows that they do not allow for referentially unrestricted worlds. In fact, part of the lesson of this paper is that we need to be careful about how to define such notions.
Stalnaker seems to think that possible worlds don’t directly refer at all. If so, it would follow straightforwardly that there are no referentially unrestricted worlds on his view.
This sort includes Contingentism—the thesis that there are objects that contingently exists—and Serious Actualism—the thesis that objects can’t have properties or bear relations in worlds in which they don’t exist.
The locus classicus for this argument is Plantinga’s (1983).
It’s tempting to state the general principle like this: p is true at W if and only if were W actual, p. But as Speaks points out, this is ungrammatical since the first instance of ‘p’ is in subject position and the second instance is in sentential position. Thus the need for the sort of piecemeal strategy that Speaks makes.
Furthermore, there’s good reason to think it’s true if we agree with both these claims:
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(More Stuff) possibly, there are more electrons than there actually ever are,
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(Loneliness) necessarily, for any electron, it is possibly a lonely electron.
The More Stuff principle is intuitively true. It seems to be a contingent fact that n is the number of electrons that there actually ever are. The Big Bang could have resulted in a vastly different universe, or there could have been a different number of occurrences of pair production, either of which could have resulted in more electrons. As for Loneliness, it also seems that there could have been much less mass and energy in the world than there actually is. Again, this could happen if the Big Bang occurred differently (perhaps a ‘Small Bang’). Even if the universe in fact exists without a beginning, it could have eternally had less matter and energy than it in fact has. Such a world would be contracted from our perspective. But it would be arbitrary to think that it could only be contracted to a certain degree; once we admit that there could be a bit less matter and energy, we should admit that there could have been a world with even less, and then even less, and continuously on until we can contract the world down to a single electron that ever actually exists. It would also be arbitrary to think that the world could only be contracted down to this particular electron or that one. Likewise, it would be arbitrary to think that a world could only be contracted down to an electron that only actually exists. That is, if there were a world that contained electrons, some of which exist in @ and some of which don’t, it would be arbitrary to think that the world could only be contracted down to one of the former electrons. Hence, Loneliness is true since the possibility of loneliness holds for electrons in any world. Finally, we can see that Lonely Alien follows from More Stuff and Loneliness in this way: More Stuff entails that there could have been an alien electron e and Loneliness entails e could possibly be lonely. Furthermore e would still be an alien if it were lonely; since aliens by definition do not, and so could not, exist in @. Therefore, it’s possible that there be an electron that is both lonely and alien.
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This won’t hold, of course, if one doesn’t believe in the existence of such properties. If so, the argument still should work when talk of properties is paraphrased in other plausible terms.
If we conceived of possible worlds differently, we could restate the “there is a possibly true proposition” part of (6) differently. If possible worlds are properties, then restate it as “there is a possibly instantiated property”. If they are states of affairs, then restate it as “there is a possibly obtaining state of affairs”, etc. LEP could similarly be restated.
We might notice a connection here with haecceitism—the thesis that qualitatively indistinguishable worlds can different non-qualitatively. The argument against thinking L1 instantiates LEP arises from the idea that even if there’s a lonely alien world, there should also be a lonely Ed world—hence we are entertaining haecceitism. I think haecceitism is true [see Chisholm (1967) and fn. 6]. But I will simply adopt a more modest attitude: we at least want our modal theory to be compatible with haecceitism. (Those who believe in haecceitism or the more modest attitude include Adams (1981), Skyrms (1981), Fitch (1996), Sider (2002), Fine (2005), Turner (2005) and Stalnaker (2012). And Lewis (1986), Melia (2001) and Brogaard (2006) have a similar attitude with respect to a sort of haecceitism about properties.)
Boyce (2014), however, has argued that Existentialism entails the denial of haecceitism. His argument involves the claim that Existentialists should believe that all possible worlds are necessary existents. This is an odd claim to straddle Existentialism with since Existentialists usually explicitly believe the opposite. But Boyce argues that none of the reasons Existentialists give for it are definitive. I’m skeptical of his arguments that there is no such incompatibility. But let’s suppose that Boyce is right that if Existentialism and the necessary existence of possible worlds are both true then haecceitism is false. In my mind, the lesson to take is not that since possible worlds are necessary existents, haecceitism is false. Rather the lesson seems to be this: since we shouldn’t rule out haecceitism, we shouldn’t assume the necessary existence of possible worlds.
Adams (1981) actually conceives of possible worlds as sets of propositions. I will ignore this complication in the main body. But it should be clear that what I say can be reformulated in terms of sets of propositions (see fn. 10).
Turner (2005) gives an analysis of what he calls “world descriptions” (which are type D propositions) and gives a principle similar to Adams’ \(\hbox {C}_\mathrm{A}\). But like Adams’ account, Turner’s doesn’t tell us how a type D proposition that entails that there’s a lonely electron could rule out Ed as being the electron.
See also footnote 8.
\(P_{1}\) and \(P_{2}\) shouldn’t include properties such as <being identical to \(e_{1}\)>.
Stalnaker (2012: p. 32) does, however, include a logical space composed of points that represent every possible world that does and could exist. In this sense, he could be thought to be agreeing with Swapping Aliens. Nevertheless he uses a ‘factoring out’ method that retains a realist modal semantics (ibid.: 33–5). He also provides a more direct method that doesn’t require the introduction and subsequent factoring out of the artificial representations (ibid.: 139–48).
Alternatively we might say that there’s a type D proposition p that has the property: <being such that, were it true, it would directly refer to an alien electron and would say of it that it’s a lonely electron>. Thus, even though p doesn’t directly refer to any alien or actual electrons (nor is linked by a chain of direct reference to any), the truth of p would nevertheless ensure that <Ed is an electron> would not be true. Thus we have a response to the challenge I posed to thinking that type D propositions don’t instantiate LEP. I agree that if there’s a type D proposition that instantiates <being such that, were it true, it would directly refer to an alien electron and would say of it that it’s a lonely electron>, then we have a successful reply to my challenge. But, for reasons of parity, I don’t think that Existentialists should want to adopt this response. Existentialism tells us that if proposition p directly refers to x, then p couldn’t exist unless x also exists. In other words: propositions can’t lose what they directly refer to. But the current suggestion tells us that there are propositions that can add to what they direct refer to. That is: if \(x_{1}{\ldots }x_{n}\) are all the things proposition p directly refers to, it’s possible that p directly refers to something other than \(x_{1}{\ldots }x_{n}\). And even if it’s formally consistent with Existentialism to hold this suggestion, it seems ad hoc. Why should propositions be unable to lose what they directly refer to, yet be able to add to it? After all, part of the motivation for Existentialism is that, “[the direct reference] relation is surely part of what makes the proposition what it is; it is essential to the proposition.” (Adams 1981: p. 12) So shouldn’t we also think that it’s also essential to the proposition that it only directly refer to those things? [Furthermore, the objection would turn out formally inconsistent with Existentialism if the accessibility relation between possible worlds is symmetric as Turner (2005), Speaks (2012) and Boyce (2014) claim].
This is essentially the same definition Stalnaker (2012: p. 49) discusses.
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Many thanks to Peter van Inwagen and especially Jeff Speaks for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Thanks also to Peter Finocchiaro, Jack Himelright, Daniel Nolan, David Pattillo, Mike Rea, Sarah Schramm and Meghan Sullivan.
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Longenecker, M.TS. Existentialism, aliens and referentially unrestricted worlds. Synthese 196, 3723–3738 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1618-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1618-2