Abstract
In a recent paper, Max Deutsch argues that there is no “qua problem” for purely causal theories of reference, according to which the extensions of some expressions are grounded in causal relations to members of their extensions during dubbing acts. The qua problem is the difficulty in specifying the facts in virtue of which the reference of “elephant” is grounded by causal contact with something qua elephant and not qua its other properties. If no such specification can be given, reference remains unacceptably indeterminate. This has led many to abandon purely causal reference grounding.
Deutsch’s argument for the dissolution of the problem goes as follows: we usually agree that an event can cause its effect qua some of its properties and not qua others. For example, a hot acidic solution causes a glass beaker to break due to its heat and not due to its acidity. Given this assumption, we can simply say that an event caused a dubbing act qua the causally relevant property and not qua the causally irrelevant properties, thus grounding the reference of the term; the qua problem has vanished.
I will argue that causal mechanisms, and in particular the facts about causal relevance appealed to by Deutsch, are insufficient to dissolve the qua problem. It is not generally the case that a unique property is causally relevant in purely physical cases of causation; but this is precisely what is required to avoid the referential indeterminacy highlighted by the qua problem. I will demonstrate that if we rely on causal relevance to dissolve the qua problem, there is no way to respect the uniqueness requirement: there are too many properties that are causally relevant to the occurrence of any single dubbing act, including the intentional states of the dubber.
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Notes
Imagining, of course, that this is a novel dubbing act, or perhaps even the original act at which the English word “mammal” was introduced.
The qua problem as it was originally introduced in Sterelny’s, 1983 paper “Natural Kind Terms” is posed at three different points: first, nothing seems to determine whether a dubber is dubbing a property or an individual. Secondly, if the dubbing is of an individual, nothing seems to determine which of the individual-candidates is the referent (this is also known as the problem of the many). Lastly, if the dubbing is of a property, nothing seems to determine which one of the properties causally related to the speaker is the extension of the newly introduced kind-term. However, the variant of the qua problem that is relevant to Deutsch’s discussion is the one that is relative to kinds.
The hybrid solution has been sketched by Devitt and Sterelny in Language and Reality (1999). As mentioned by Deutsch, Amie Thomasson also resorts to a hybrid theory in order to respond to the qua problem (Thomasson, 2007: 38–40). There are other examples of philosophers resorting to hybrid theories for the same reason, such as Stanford’s and Kitcher’s 2000 paper “Refining the Causal Theory of Reference”, and it generally seems as if the qua problem has pushed away many from the initial enthusiasm generated by the idea of purely causal reference grounding.
This example is due to Miller (1992), whose paper inspired Deutsch’s.
It should be noted that while Braun describes counterfactual approaches as the “natural” way of understanding causal relevance (1995: p. 449), he later goes on to criticise them and propose his own, essentialist analysis of causal relevance. His novel proposal is that a property is causally relevant to an effect iff it is an essential property of the cause (p. 453). An essentialist analysis of causal relevance cannot work for Deutsch’s dissolution of the qua problem – there are too many essential properties of any given cause, and if the causally relevant properties are the essential ones, that does not restrict the number of referential candidates to a sufficient degree. Because of this, I believe it is charitable to assume that Deutsch did not have an essentialist analysis of causal relevance in mind when citing Braun. I want to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for this journal, who raised this issue in their comments.
These counterfactuals are not supported in cases of overdetermination, such as those in which two causes acting simultaneously would have independently caused one and the same effect (think of two snipers aiming and shooting at a single target). Since there is not reason to think that dubbing acts are generally overdetermined, and since overdetermination is a rare occurrence, it can be set aside for now.
In this particular example we are assuming that the dubbing act occurred via an utterance. Of course, speech is not generally necessary to dub; a person may dub in written form, for example. However, these contingencies do not impact the overall argument that leads to this problem; there will always be intermediate steps between the cause and the effect in the cases under consideration.
I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for this journal for bringing this issue to my attention.
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Acknowledgements
“I’m grateful to Andrea Bianchi, Max Deutsch, Anandi Hattiangadi, and Elisa Paganini for precious discussions of earlier versions of this paper. I’m also indebted to the participants in the PhD seminars at the University of Milan and Stockholm University; the 15th SIFA conference; and the Warsaw SLR seminar colloquia. Finally, I’d like to thank two anonymous reviewers for Erkenntnis.”
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Papic, S. Why the qua Problem has not Been Dissolved: Reply to Deutsch. Erkenn (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-024-00802-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-024-00802-x