An exposition of our cognitive situation.

Treatise No 5.
Philosophical considerations and additions.

The concept of useful assumption in scientific realism is a fundamental subject, and it is related to the concept of good explanation, which is criticized in the section “A critique of realism as a good explanation” in Treatise No 4. The concept forms part of the realist argument for the literal truth of scientific statements. Therefore, the section, “The concept of useful assumption in the realism debate” treats the question of what can be put into this concept of useful assumption.

A literal understanding of theories and the concepts that form part of them, can lead to faulty use of them in contexts in which they cannot have literal meaning. A number of examples of such references are gone through in the section “Literal interpretations of scientific theories”.

The section “So called null-elements in grammar” criticizes a literal understanding of existence and absence in grammar. According to this idea, besides being useful or at least convenient within morphology and syntax, the terms of the so-called nul-elements refer to real entities. The criticism is put forward not only to gain a philosophical clarification within these linguistic subjects, but also because the discussion of these terms has a similarity to the philosophic discussion of the theoretical, not-observable entities in natural science.

Some grammarians also use a concept of existence of absence, which they treat as a real entity. What is absent here is certainly observable when it is not absent (i.e. that it is principally observable), but it can be argued that this concept is both superfluous and inconsistent. This will be described in the section “Wrong use of the concept of ellipsis in grammar”.

After that, occurrences of semantically meaningless statements about existence and non-existence are examined. It proves that sentences can be senseless for an even more fundamental reason than their possible proof transcendence, viz. the fact that one or more putative words in a sentence lack semantic sense. Nevertheless, these putative words may borrow an appearance from words that obviously have semantic meaning, but this does not make them semantically meaningful. This applies to certain uses of the sign sequences “external world” and “god”. However, also the extra ideas the realists will put in their understanding of the expressions “not-observable entities” and “material objects”, compared to anti-introductionism, are semantically empty. This is expounded in the section “Semantic senselessness – semantic emptiness”.

Some references concerning philosophical concepts in a Danish lexicon, [Gyldendal 2006] expose an unsuccessful approach to the described concepts. This concerns the mutually related subjects, phenomenalism, the problem of the external world, and solipsism. The critique of this is substantiated concurrently with a discussion of the involved problems. It is put forward in the section “Critique of an account of phenomenalism, the problem of the external world, and solipsism”. The crucial error in the criticized articles is that the anti-realistic aspects of the subjects are explained exclusively from a realistic point of view. This is elucidated further in subsection “The realist’s conception of anti-realism”.

This criticism occasions a substantiation of the idea that philosophy can be practised in a scientific way in the sense that specific demands can be made on philosophical arguments. These are put forward in the section “Philosophy as science”.

The section “The velocity of time” advances some considerations about the absurdity of the concept of the velocity of time. These considerations have contributed to the anti-introductionistic philosophy of time presented in these treatises, and they properly belong to the first presentation of this philosophy.

In the section “Science and reality”, some questions based on Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy of science, the way it is presented in his work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ([Kuhn 70]), are gone through. Certainly, this philosophy mainly deals with scientific work, but it also touches the realism debate. This debate is especially involved in the subsection “The idea of a final scientific truth about the world”. The subsection “Is Newton’s physics a special case of Einstein’s theory of relativity at small velocities?” discusses the relation between the purpose of the scientific theories (i.e. to predict the phenomena) and the contents of the theories. Kuhn nearly literally asserts that scientists work in a different world after a paradigm change, which is discussed in the subsection “Do scientists relate to different worlds before and after a paradigm change?”

This occasions a thoroughgoing clarification of the relation between science and the world. This is undertaken in the subsequent section, “The relation between science and the world, especially the past”.

Finally, it is argued that religious statements are semantic meaningless sign sequences. This result is a by-product of anti-introductionism, though it deals with the basal subject word meaning. The argumentation is put forward, in the section “Semantic critique of religious sequences of signs”. Here it is substantiated that the religious use of the written characters or sounds “belief” and “god” makes the putative sentences that contain them semantically empty. On the one hand, they borrow an appearance of semantic meaning from respectively the not-religious terms “belief”, which is synonymous with “presumption” and “trust”, and “God”, which resembles a name; on the other hand, no self-contained semantic meaning that religious persons can explain to others can be attributed to them.

1. Introduction.

This treatise deals with a number of different questions, between which there are certain connections, however. These connections especially consist in the concept of semantic emptiness of words or rather of sequences of signs. In fact, a number of putative words are semantically empty as no semantic meaning can be attributed to them. Because of this emptiness, the sentences of which the words in question form part become semantically senseless. Therefore, the semantic emptiness of words is a stronger concept than proof transcendence. This concept of semantic emptiness is relevant to several of the treated subjects. Inter alia, this applies to the religious’ putative concept of a so-called god and the realists’ extraordinary concept of an external world.

Obviously, it follows from these dissertations that the arguments that can be put forward against realism have different weights in different areas of debate. They seem to have strongest weight, when they argue that religious sentences are semantically meaningless sequences of signs, next strongest weight against the realists’ idea of an external world, third strongest weight against the idea of literal existence of fields in physics and other kinds of so-called not-observable objects, fourth strongest weight against realism concerning the past and other persons’ consciousness, and fifth strongest weight against verification-transcendent statements about principally observable objects. This will be discussed in detail in a subsequent treatise.

The problem of dualism has often been touched on in these treatises. For that reason, this problem will likewise be clarified anti-introductionistically in a subsequent treatise.

1.2 The philosophical basis of our thought.

Of course, the elaboration of these ideas does not constitute a philosophical construction. On the contrary, as earlier explained, we are dealing with the opposite of this, viz. a description of what we can at most put into a number of statements – even though we usually think that we can put more in these. If we assert more than what we can argue for, we are just speculative, for which reason our results primarily become gratuitous. Thus, inventing so-called systems is not philosophizing. The genuine philosophy is the investigating philosophy that does not exclude specific solutions in advance, and whose concern is questions and points of view that are fundamental to everybody. The fundamental questions are exactly about what we can assert and what we can at most put into our assertions, but also what follows from them. Altogether, the answers of fundamental questions forms a necessary basis of our search for the answers to other questions, among these a number of practical questions. Thus, ethical enquiries presuppose a clarification of these more fundamental questions.

2. The concept of useful assumption in the realism debate.

This section reassumes the criticism of the important concept of useful assumption, which according to some realists can contribute to the obtaining of the literal truth about the world in itself, and thus the final truth about the world. According to realism, the scientific assumptions of existence of not-observable entities are not just about useful assumptions, but really existing entities. Thus, we are dealing with assumptions whose literal truth according to this reasoning are confirmed merely by the scientific usefulness of the assumptions.

The concept of useful assumption in the realism has already been treated in the section “A critique of realism as a good explanation” in Treatise No 4, though in that section the concept was not referred to by means of the term “useful assumption” but the term “good explanation”. However, the concept was referred to by means of the term “useful assumption” in the same treatise in the subsection “Immanuel Kant’s realism” in the section “Subjects in the realism debate”. Here it was argued that we cannot conclude, “things in themselves exist” on the premise that it is a useful to assume that “things in themselves exist”. This argument is developed further in this section.

As already touched on, concluding in this criticized way is to use a kind of inference that belongs to the empiric sciences and not to philosophy. This applies whether we talk about “things in themselves” or about the not-observable entities of natural science. For such an argumentation leads to a conclusion that at the same time introduces a concept of a new entity, viz. the putative concept that it also presupposes as a valid concept, though the argumentation exactly seeks to establish it as valid concept, i.e. as a sequence of signs that possesses a semantic meaning.

Put in other words: A useful assumption in science is a theory that can contribute to prediction of the phenomena. In such a theory, it is true that references to a theoretical entity from a scientific model can form part. However, in order to introduce the literal existence of such an entity (i.e. its existence in other contexts, outside the model) the very concept of it must already have meaning and use. For that reason, it is circular to introduce the concept of it in the argumentation for the literal existence of the entity.

Put in a third way: The assertion that an assumption about not-observable entities is a good or useful assumption and that this usefulness indicates the truth of the assumption, presupposes that talk about this assumption has a clear semantic meaning. Asserting that a statement is true presupposes that it has semantic meaning, but what is to be substantiated in this philosophical dispute about the meaning of statements is exactly that the assumption has semantic meaning. It is of no use either to improve the criticized argument by saying that not only the truth of the assumption has been proved by the discussed argument but also the meaning of it. For in this way the same error is committed, as the argument does not explain the meaning of the assumption as on the contrary it presupposes this meaning without any explanation. It can at most be the case that science constructs a usable way of speaking in science. However,

contrary to what applies to scientists, philosophers cannot postulate what they want.

It is remarkable that, when used in the realism debate, the term “a useful assumption” does not relate to the term “an assumption” in the same way as for instance the term “a useful kitchen utensil” relates to the term “a kitchen utensil”. For the term, “a kitchen utensil” denotes a kitchen utensil that has the extra attribute of being useful. A kitchen utensil that can be called “useful” is still completely a kitchen utensil. Contrary to this, the attributive “useful” in the expression “a useful assumption” reduces the meaning of the very head of the phrase, i.e. “assumption”, to the effect that it only denotes an assumption in a reduced sense[1]. Cf. the fact that the term “meaning” can have a number of senses, while the attributive points out one of them in the expression “semantic meaning. To this, the following can be added.

When the term “assumption” without qualifications is used about immediately observable states in our daily life, it denotes an assumption about something about which we know that it can be true, as we know what shall be present in order to ascertain that it is true. If we e.g. hear a sound that reminds of a ball that rolls across the floor, we assume that we can find a ball on the floor. Certainly, we can assert that this assumption is useful because by means of that assumption we have delimited what we search for, but we are rather dealing with an assumption for which we have certain reasons, i.e. a justified hypothesis, which we readily exchange: we are dealing with an assumption of a kind we can call “a preliminary assumption”. (This line of thought, however, must not be mistaken for the fact that the very ground for usefulness of the assumption can also be a ground for the truth of the assumption.) It is not in this sense, however, that realists talk about useful assumptions in this debate, when they let the idea form part of an argument for the truth of certain statements, as they put something more in this concept than the anti-introductionism do.

However, the following must be emphasized:

An assumption without the modification “useful” is always an assumption that there is something that is actually in accordance with the contents of the assumption.

Otherwise, the assumption would be self-contradictory. Thus, the adverb “actually” is redundant here – just as the adjective “true” is in other connections. Cf. the section, “The correspondence theory of truth” in Treatise No 4. This also applies to moderated assumptions. For the act of assuming that something may be true is the same as assuming that it is actually the case that it may be true.

From the above example with the sound reminiscent of a rolling ball, it follows that we do not talk about useful assumptions as a characteristic of the assumption itself in the cases where there is a possibility of ascertaining that the assumption is true, i.e. if it can be verified. For in that case we are dealing with more than only a useful assumption. We can in fact point out the following:

We talk about useful assumptions just when it is not possible to verify the assumption in a way that is in conformity with the way it is expressed.

An example of this is the statement “It is a useful assumption that an electrical charge exists”. The assumption “An electrical charge exists” does not have an immediately understandable semantic meaning in the same way as statements about our everyday life, such as the statement “There is a stone in my left shoe”. This is because it does not have meaning to talk about the possibility of sensing the charge directly, as its existence can only be verified by a measurement, in which case the verification is understood in relation to a theory. It is just the observed result, which we are confronted to. For that reason, it does not have any sense either to talk about whether the charge exists or not in itself, i.e. detached from the measuring and the conclusions theoretically based on that. It is true that the usability of the theory and its concepts is a fact, but this is exactly only a statement about the usability of the theory, and not about the literal existence of electrons.

From the above, it can be summarized:

The expression “a useful assumption” is a weaker expression than the expression “an assumption”: a useful assumption is an only useful assumption. This is why the head in the expression “useful assumption” only have a reduced sense.

However, also a useful assumption is of course an assumption that something is in fact in a certain way. It is so for the same reason as above, viz. that the opposite would be contradictory. That is, though a useful assumption is an only useful assumption, it is still an assumption and thus an assumption that something is in fact in a certain way. It is likewise the case that if we imagine that something is in a definite way, we also imagine that this is in fact in the way in question. For it would lead to a contradiction to assert that we imagine that it is not in fact in the definite way, but that we only imagine that it possibly is in that way.

An assumption can even be made in clear contradiction to facts if this is useful. Thus, the assumption that the mass of a body is situated in the centre of gravity of the body in question is a useful assumption about the mass of a body being in fact situated in this centre. However, this factual aspect becomes rather subordinate in this example: the double-dealing is obvious, as we know that each part of a body has its own centre of gravity. Fortunately, it has this, for if the mass of a body were situated in the centre of gravity of the body in question, we would not be able to bike. This means that

just as we are not ontologically committed by our usage, we are not ontologically committed by our useful assumptions.

Scientific realists may object that if scientific practice shows that it is a useful assumption that elementary particles exist, this implies that these particles do in fact exist though they cannot be demonstrated directly. However, this too would just be a useful assumption, viz. a repetition of the original useful assumption, for a useful assumption that elementary particles exist is already a useful assumption that elementary particles in fact exist. Put in another way: the usefulness of the assumption cannot imply that the particle does in fact exist, only that it useful to assume that the particle in fact exists. For that reason, the very fact that an assumption is a useful assumption does not imply that the assumption is true.

This is just an illustration of the stated argumentation that the term “useful assumption” denotes an only useful assumption. To this must be added the already advanced arguments concerning the lack of semantic meaning of statements about the literal existence of not-observable entities.

Drawing a more far-reaching consequence concerning the truth of the assumption presupposes that the discussed assumption can be verified. For, as already argued for, there is a decisive difference between:

1) proving that what is present is something already known and thus something whose possibility of existing can be presupposed, e.g. a rolling ball, and

2) proving the existence of something whose nature is fundamentally new, i.e. unclarified, in contrast to e.g. a new species of animal.

Point 1 is about something new and particular, while point 2 is only seemingly about something particular. For point 2 is primarily about a new concept of a certain type of entity whose semantic meaning has to be explained before it can be used (which has been justified in different ways in these treatises).

The very fact that some theories are in accordance with each other and so to say “confirm each other”, support each other’s useful assumptions or just use the same useful assumptions cannot make up an example of the demonstration of something fundamentally new. For in that case, these theories taken together just make up the basis of the only useful assumption.

The theories in question must simply lead to a presentation of the asserted reality in order to be evidences of the asserted existence (just as when a new species of animal can be presented). However, this demands a justified semantic clarification of what is presented.

3. Literal interpretations of scientific theories.

Misinterpretations of scientific theories are often due to an unreflective literal understanding of these theories. This is exemplified in the following three subsections. However, the misinterpretations can also be caused by confusion of ideas or category errors. Examples of this are grotesque statements like “The human brain needs religion”[2]. What can at best be asserted instead of the mentioned statement is that the brain needs suitable physical conditions in order to function. On materialistic premises, the statement could perhaps be understood as “The brain needs exactly those specific internal constellations of neural connections that occur in religious persons’ brains”, but also this is strongly problematic as regards its interpretation and justification, and hardly what is meant. Thus, it is a question exactly which constellations this should be about. If it is possible to state any, these have first to be specified, and then the statement has to be documented.

As regards the literal understanding of theoretic terms, some of them can refer both to observable entities and in other cases to theoretic entities. For a term being theoretic just means that it is used in a theory, possibly in a specified way. Some of these concepts can thus have a counterpart in our ordinary talk about the phenomena. Thus, the term “yellow” can both denote a specified yellow colour in a science, and be used in a different sense in our normal language. However, putting the other concepts, i.e. the only constructed concepts, on an equal footing with the concept we use in our talk about the phenomena, is to understand these scientific concepts literally.

3.1 Wrong use of terms of so-called not-observable entities.

A related example of misunderstood use of terms of so-called not-observable entities is made up by certain references to the right and left cerebral hemisphere.

This example can be elucidated by a comparison with our referring to a person’s left versus right food. This talk about feet has a quite clear sense. A person may assert, “I will now put my right food forward”, and then carry out the mentioned action. As this act is observable, his assertion has a clear semantic meaning. However, it has no corresponding meaning to say, “I will now use my left hemisphere”, as we cannot observe any activation of the left hemisphere in everyday situations. This does not even have meaning if the person in question amends the statement and says, “Now, I will do some of the activities that according to science especially activate left hemisphere”. For such a talk does not refer to the speaker’s left hemisphere, but to the activity in question and its relation to the theory in question, whereas the talk of his left foot actually does refer to his left foot as such.

Unless this decision is followed by measurements of the states of the brain, e.g. in connection with an experiment, we cannot talk of any specific connection between 1) a person performing the activity in question, and 2) something taking place in this person’s brain, but only about theories about that. Thus, referring to the cerebral hemisphere has no sense in the everyday situation in question. Moreover, it cannot be so that the person in question experiences these brain activities as such – which is the crux of the matter. It can at most be the case that scientists have experienced a correspondence between their theories about that and the phenomena. This talk about our activation of parts of the brain presupposes concepts of so-called not-observable entities that are accepted by scientists at present. However, our talk about these is conditioned by a scientific theory that at most makes up a usable theoretic construction that can be related to other constructions and in the end to the phenomena. For it is these we relate to.

It may be objected against this that the discussed statement has semantic sense if the person in question himself possesses a scientifically based understanding of a number of activities that can be measured in the left hemisphere and a number of activities that can be measured in the right hemisphere. In that case, what this person does is still not to activate his left hemisphere in a literal sense, but only to perform certain actions that according to his knowledge of the scientific theories in question activate the left hemisphere. Thus, the theoretic result of the person’s actions cannot be understood by literal analogy with observable actions, such as moving a foot or grasping a thing.

3.2 Why pointillism rests on a misunderstanding.

The pointillist idea is based on a literal understanding of some scientific statements or theories.

In a certain way, something similar applies to the related idea that we do not primarily see a picture as a whole, but construct it on the basis of something we see, memory impressions of something seen, and our knowledge. The idea of this is simpler and is therefore criticized first.

For the simple reason that we do not experience such a construction, this idea cannot be literally true, i.e. the description of it cannot belong to the top-level of the explanation structure. In fact, we experience our sensation as a sensation of wholes, and therefore, the criticized idea of this construction can only be defended as a scientific construction or theory that belongs further down in the explanation structure, below the first references to the picture-wholes in question. Put in a different way: The situation for us is sensation of pictures as wholes, whereas the criticized idea only deals with scientific constructions. These constructions are exactly derived from something primary, viz. the impressions of picture-wholes scientists have had during their scientific practice, and possibly of something else derived, such as other scientific theories.

With the same reasons, we can refute similar theories, or postulates, to the effect that our preference for the colours blue, red, and green is caused by the fact that precisely these colours are perceived by the light perceiving cells in the retina. For we do exactly not experience pictures as compounded of primary colours, and we do not perform a compounding of the experienced colours based on primary colours. The idea that we prefer these colours for that reason is thus a form of mysticism or extravagance.

The theories pointillism is based on are not necessarily faulty in the sense that they are not useful to science, but the literal idea of them is a misunderstanding. Put in a different way:

The picture-wholes we see are not constructions based on sense impressions and brain activities; on the contrary, it is a scientific construction that the picture-wholes we perceive are constructed by the sensing individual by means of sense impressions and brain activities. This scientific construction itself is precisely based on picture-wholes and conclusions, and thus, it depends on these components.

As regards all three ideas, 1) pointillism, 2) the idea that picture-wholes are constructed by us or our brains, before we perceive these pictures as wholes, and 3) the cause of our colour preferences, it is a decisive fact that our impressions are impressions of wholes. With other words: our impressions are wholes to us. These impressions are that which are present to us as our empirical basis, for which reason the description of them belongs to the top-level in the explanation structure. This means that the discussed theories are derived from them. The scientists use exactly the picture-wholes in their construction of theories of what we may call “the mode of operation of our sensory apparatus”, which is thus just a theoretic construction and not a chain of cause and effect in a literal sense.

Thus, when we sense something, we do not construct pictures from coloured spots, but perceive wholes. Certainly, we perceive wholes that can be theoretically related to different parts of our body that can be seen in a microscope, such as cells in the retina. Nevertheless, reality for us is the picture wholes from which the three criticized ideas are derived. The criticised ideas are not about the primary starting points of our explanations: these are made up by the phenomena, as our theories about the faculty of vision depend on our analysis of the wholes that are present to us. Instead, they are theoretic derivations the realists raise to material reality in conformity with the bottom up model. This is why pointillism or divisionism rests on a misunderstanding of what it is that appears to us.

The following is even the case:

When pointillism pictures the world or our visual sensations as composed by coloured spot, then on its own terms, it introduces a doubleness or repetition. For according to the pointillist understanding itself, also the spots the painter has placed on his canvas are first perceived by the brain as smaller spots, after which they are put together by the brain to picture the spots on the canvas. Not until then does the brain change all its constructed spots into impressions of spaces, according to the line of thought.

Against this, some may adduce the following objection: “On a distance we also see TV tube pictures as consisting of spaces and not as collections of small spots, each occurring in one of three possible colours, though these pictures in fact consist of such monochrome spots. Therefore the truth may be that what we usually see is accumulations of spots that are united to impressions of spaces, i.e. in accordance with what the pointillism presupposes.”

Firstly, the essential error of this counterargument is that it just leads us back to the starting point of this discussion. For the story about light beams emitted from particles in the body we are said to see, which via a number of connecting links, including the retina, affect specific parts of the brain, and eventually cause visual sensations, is only pieced together of useful assumptions. This piecing together is just a useful scientific construction based on our sensation of wholes and on reasoning.

Secondly, there is a difference between the two examples. For it is true that we can see spots on the TV tube picture when we are close to it, but we do not correspondingly perceive any kinds of spots in our eyes. Science only has concepts of something that corresponds to that in its theories about the faculty of vision. Thus, the critique of the idea of pointillism concerns the literal interpretation of scientific theories about how, expressed in realist terms, our visual picture is “created”. Correspondingly, the example with the television picture in the counterexample only deals with our perception of objects nearby versus from a distance. However, at a distance, we really see television pictures as spaces, and this is true understood as a description of what we perceive, or rather:

The statement “I see a space coloured with gradual changes of shades of colour” can easily be true about my visual impression, though this impression may change when I come nearer to the picture. However, seeing objects in a microscope is not to get closer to the object than when it is seen without a microscope. It is just to see in a microscope under whose lens the object in question has been placed. For instance, this applies to the microscopic parts of the eye referred to in the theory about the faculty of seeing, which pointillism is faultily based on.

In short, the misunderstanding that the pointillism rests on is this: The pointillists transfer a literal understanding of scientific theories about our faculty of vision to the outer world, as they – literally and metaphorically – depict it there.

3.3 Documentation of not-observable entities.

From the previous treatises, it follows that the theories and models of science have been developed by means of mathematical formulae, theoretic entities and graphic pictures, such that they can predict the phenomena. As this usefulness in itself cannot imply physical existence of a supposed counterpart to the theoretic, not-observable entities of the models, not even semantic meaning of statements about such a physical existence, then it cannot be argued that the term “molecule can denote any other existence being a theoretic entity in a scientific model.

Someone may argue in favour of the literal reality of not-observable entities that a photo representing a molecule can be shown. The opponent may add that his photo is of exactly the same kind as his latest holiday pictures from Rome including a photo of St Peter's Basilica, and that at any rate that existed when he photographed it. (In order to avoid misunderstandings, we can here take us the liberty of using the noun “photo” as a term for printed picture instead of the noun “picture”, as “picture” can also denominate imaginations, for instance of a molecule.)

To this, we can of course say that such a photo is only a piece of paper with various layers of printing ink laid on. However, the decisive error in the opponent’s analogy is that the two examples cannot be compared in this way. We certainly know of photos that resemble known objects, e.g. photos of St Peter's Basilica and, if not, we can recognize St Peter's Basilica from photos when we come close enough to the Basilica. However, we do not in advance know of any physical objects that are molecules and which we can relate to the presented photo. All together, our relation to the concept of “something being a picture of something” is very ingrained as regards observable objects of our daily life in the sense that it is more based on habituation than on understanding; put in other words: We are used to seeing pictures of almost everything. Add to this, drawn and three-dimensional models. Therefore, we are easily tempted to transfer this concept to other situations where it cannot necessarily be used. It is not so that if we have a picture of something we imagine, then it exists.

Thus, concerning the picture of the putative molecule, we cannot simply conclude in the same way as we can as to objects from our normal day. On the contrary, we neither know of any particular object of the presented photo, which according to the premise of the argumentation represents a specific molecule, nor of already depicted molecules, whose resemblance to the photo have been confirmed. The photo of the putative molecule is simply not made in the same way as the photo of St Peter's Basilica or other known objects but is made by means of an experimental setup based on theories that cannot in general be literally understood. Thus, the interpretation of the result cannot build on our knowledge of depiction of already known objects. The only things that can be present to us in this regard are a number of well-known kinds of observable objects that form part of the experimental setup. Thus, the so-called “photo of a molecule” can be related only to a test setup, and solely by specification of the theoretical relations of this photo to the experiment do statements about it gain their semantic meaning. For that reason, the photo cannot be related to any molecule in itself, and eo ipso the term “a photo of a molecule” cannot gain semantic meaning by means of a concept of a molecule in itself.

Letting the photo be evidence and letting experiments be evidence of the literal existence of the molecule are based on the same scientific theories. For that reason, letting the one of these evidences support the other would be circular. The theoretic concept of molecule is only a useful concept, but the theories that have constituted the concept have also contributed to the creation of the putative picture of a molecule. In this sense, the picture does in fact correspond to something, viz. this useful theory.

According to Ian Hackings line of thought in “The argument of the Grid” ([Churchland 85], p. 146/7), which has been discussed in section “A critique of realism as a good explanation” in Treatise No 5, it is true that in a microscope we can recognize a grid from the result of the experiment with a different setup, during which the grid has been created. However, this does not imply literal existence either. Firstly, this only means that the used theory can survive without paradoxes, which may be one of the reasons to its not being rejected yet. Secondly, all the referred realist conclusions are about good or useful assumptions, which can only be used in science, where they thus are valid, but not in the semantic philosophy, which cannot attribute to them any other semantic meaning than this usefulness. Cf. the section “The concept of useful assumption in the realism debate”. By contrast, they can be objects of the semantic philosophy.

4. So-called null-elements in grammar.

Especially clear examples of the fact that we are not ontologically committed by our usage, and how our usage easily can induce us into assuming more entities than necessary, are made up by the some grammatical cases. These examples represent linguistic counterparts of one of the important conclusions of the philosophy of science in these treatises, viz. that without reservation we cannot use the scientific terms of so-called not-observable entities in our not-scientific talk about the phenomena or outside the science in question. The reason for this is that the terms in question are solely created for use in theories that need them to describe or predict the phenomena. Contrary to that, the use of theoretic terms without the science whereto it belongs simply results in grotesque statements, whether we talk of adrenaline, as already shown, or about so-called null-morphs.

4.1 Null-elements in morphology.

We can list a number of DanishI substantives in singular and plural, and from those substantives that are just added a plural morph or not changed for plural use, we can subtract or remove the stem from the plural form and thus find possible plural morphs. This obviously leads to existential interpretation problems in connection with substantives that are unbent in number, which is discussed in this section.

4.1.1 A computer-scientific and morphologic example.

In computer science we can let X, Y, and Z be strings consisting of zero, one or more signs, e.g. <>, <dbxyl>, <city> or <bicycle>, as we let character strings used in computer-science be delimited by the signs “<” and “>”. A character string with zero signs is the empty string <>, which is also called “NULL”. We can then define X + Y as the string X followed by the string Y, and Z – X as the string Y that has the property that Z = X + Y, if this quotation has a solution, i.e. if Z starts with the string X from left. Thus, the subtraction takes place from left.

In morphology, we can let S represent the singular form and P the plural form of a substantive. We can hereafter take inspiration from the symbolism above and define the difference D by the equation P = S + D. If this equation has no solution, S is irregularly conjugated. Otherwise D = P – S. If D = <>, S is uninflected; otherwise S has the plural morph M = D.

We can let a programme find the plural form of a substantive in accordance to these rules.

ExamplesII:

S = <hus>, P = <huse>, D = <e>.

S = <tanke>, P = <tanker>, D = <r>.

S = <by>, P = <byer>, D = <er>.

S = <fisk>, P = <fisk>, D = <>.

S = <cykel>, P = <cykler>, D is undefined.

This gives the computer scientific results D = <e>, <r>, <er>, or <>. It may then be convenient to express this result by saying that regularly inflected substantives (in the examined cases) have one of the plural morphs, “e”, “r”, “er” or NULL. For that reason, asserting that the Danish substantive “fisk” has the plural morph NULL is just the same as asserting that the substantive “fisk” has no plural morph, and is not a statement about an existing entity of any kind. This obviously calls for a justification. Here, it must be noticed, that the term “NULL” only belongs to our talk about to the use of the aiding programme, where it refers to an entity on the technical, or computer scientific level. At this level, the result NULL in the example can at most be interpreted as the difference between two equal character strings according to the definition above. In order to use the technical result at the linguistic level, it first has to be interpreted at the latter level. The use of the expression “null-morph” as a term for an empty sign sequence in morphology, is simply and literally to mix the terms and concepts of two different levels. This is developed further below.

In this way, some may be additionally induced by our talk about the results of the technical aiding equipment. For they may be induced into thinking that regularly inflected substantives always have a plural morph, but that sometimes this morph is only NULL, understood such that NULL is conceived as a morph on a par with the morphs “e”, “r” and “er”, and can be called ”null-morf”. However, such a literal understanding of this convenient usage does not contribute with anything that is necessary to morphology. Instead, it is enough to assert that a regularly inflected substantive has either one of the three plural morph “e”, “r”, and “er” or none, i.e. that it is uninflected. In this way, this talk of such null-morphs is unnecessary in linguistics, and misleading. As these putative null-morphs at the linguistic level, in the nature of the case, can be neither enunciated and heard nor written and read, it has no sense to attribute to the null-morphs an existence on an equal footing with our phenomenal reality. Thus, by definition, these so-called null-morphs have no literal existence, and the concept of them is only a construction that can at most have use to linguists as a convenient appellation of the computer scientific result. In other words, the concept of null-morph has no sense at the actual scientific level, which here is the morphological, but only at the technical level, which here is the computer scientific level, where we are not dealing with morphs as such, but only with differences between sign sequences that are accidentally word forms:

At the computer scientific level, we can talk about output being null, and at the linguistic level about some substantives having no plural morph, i.e. being uninflected.

It must here be remarked that this so-called computer scientific level of course can be made up by corresponding a preliminary manual or intellectual activity.

The concept of null-morph is not only unnecessary, but also misleading, as it leads to a false simplification by describing two different cases in the same way. Instead, it is a fact that some substantives are characterized by a plural morpheme that “manifests” itself as one of the morphs “e”, “r”, or “er”, while other substantives do not have a plural morph. It must here be noticed that this talk about manifestation has a realistic flavour as it suggests that that the morphemes have a reality of their own, for the talk about something that manifests itself as something or by something, called M, presuppose that this something exists and have this effect, M.

Expressed in a less realistically value-laden way, we can say that some substantives have different forms depending on whether they refer to one or to two or more entities, while other substantives have the same form when they refer to one entity, and when they refer to two or more entities.

Cf. later remarks about the case nothing in the subsection “The absurdity of the concept of null-morph”.

4.1.2 The absurdity of the concept of null-morph.

As an introduction to yet a clarification of the erroneousness of null-morphs, we can look at the following reasoning, whose premise will be made good subsequently:

If the statement that the plural morph of a specific noun is null means that the substantive in question does not have a plural morph, the meaning of the statement

“All substantives have a plural morph, but the plural morph of some substantives is NULL”

is the same as that of the following statement

“All substantives have a plural morph, but some substantives do not have a plural morph”.

Obviously, this statement contains a contradiction. On the same condition, this also applies to the first version, as it has the same sense.

Of course, this objection to the idea of null-morphs is invalid if it is actually true that the statement “The substantive S has the plural morph NULL” does not mean, “The substantive S does not have a plural morph”, but means that the substantive S really has an existing plural morph, which is just equal to the empty sign sequence. However, for that to be true it must be provable that the statement to that effect has semantic sense, i.e. that it makes a difference compared with the opposite statement, such that it shows its usability or function.

Above, it has been argued that in our linguistic practice we have to distinguish between the technical level and the linguistic level, as there is the mentioned difference in using the concept of NULL in our talk about the output of a computer programme and using the same concept as a linguistic concept. To this, some may object that the concept of null morph can also be used independently of the programmatic helping aids included in this exposition. However, the example with the list of computer results has been worked out just to meet the opponent and find a reason for using the concept of NULL at all, viz. by mentioning this output. In pure linguistic connections, however, this reason lapses, such as it substantiated.

After these remarks, we can return to the question of whether the statement “The substantive S has the plural morph NULL” means something different from the statements “The substantive S has no plural morph” and “The substantive S is uninflected”. Here the usage indicates that we talk about linguistic phenomena and not about the output of a helping programme. As mentioned, a certain uniformity can clearly be established by talking about a plural morph that is equal to “”, which we may also call “NULL” by analogy with the plural morphs “e”, “r” and “er”. Here, however, this uniformity does not reflect reality but is a false uniformity, as we cannot point at something that takes no room up or has no extent. Thus, it is not possible to point out any plural morph that is NULL, which is the main objection against this literal understanding of the concept of null-morph.

Moreover, such false simplifications ought to be avoided, for as touched on above, the following circumstance is important.

Generally, the case nothing has to be treated fundamentally different from the case something.

In spite of the criticized efforts to make the discussed case of nothing into something, the case of nothing demands no treatment. As the case in this connection simply deals with the absence of plural inflection of certain substantives, neither a special pronunciation nor special written characters are called for. Other examples can be enumerated: If one is not married does one then have a non-spouse, and if so, whom? If one does not have birthday to day, does one then have a non-birthday? (With due reference to Lewis Carroll.) Making the case of nothing into something complicates our understanding of reality and thus our treatment of it.

It will likewise be absurd to say that a NULL has to be added to the singular form of the substantive, e.g. of the substantive “fish”, to form its plural form, as nothing needs to be added. Of course, no observable difference is generated at all by suffixing a NULL to a word. Perhaps this fact most clearly shows the absurdity of asserting that all regularly inflected substantives have a plural morph. Thus, no mentally healthy teacher would say to a pupil who has correctly written a plural form of a noun, which is uninflected in number, “You have forgotten the plural morph NULL”. Not even according to the criticized line of thought, it can be decided whether such a putative plural morph is included, or how many there are added.

The decisive thing in the previous clarification is of cause the pointing out that the discussed mistake builds on a change of usage, namely from using a convenient short form (what may be practically justified in certain connections, such as in the talk about the output of an aiding programme in the statement “The result is NULL”) to advancing a senseless ontological statement. In addition, it makes the world more complex.

It has thus been made clear that the statement that a substantive contains the plural morph NULL cannot mean that the noun in question has a really, existing plural morph, which just happens to be equal to the empty sequence of signs, but means that the noun in question simply does not have any plural morph. This also means that it uninflected in number. For it has been substantiated that the statement to that effect possesses no meaning, as it does not express any difference in relation to the opposite. Thus, it is not possible to point out any possible use or function of the concept, only unusable non-sense.

With this, it has finally been substantiated that the discussed statement “All substantives have a plural morph, but the plural morph of some substantives is NULL” implies the contradiction: “All substantives have a plural morph, but some substantives do not have a plural morph”.

4.1.3 Lacking literal meaning versus contra-intuitivity.

Some may object, “This argument and especially the examples used are simply based on the concept of null morph being contra-intuitive; but some of your own philosophic conclusions are also contra-intuitive without your dismissing them for that reason”.

Against this, it can be adduced that the counterargument against understanding the concept of null morph literally, i.e. as something existing on an equal footing with real morphs with extent, was not based on this view being contra-intuitive. Thus, the core of the argument was not that using the term “null morph” as if it has a sense outside the talk about the programme for which it is coined, has the exemplified absurd consequences. They are only unlucky by-products of the attempt of creating a false homogeneity.

Contrary to that, the decisive thing is that the idea of a null-morph is semantically meaningless, as it cannot contribute with anything useful. For the concept of null-morph does not have a literal meaning, as null-morphs cannot be pointed out, and as statements about the existence of a null morph cannot express any difference from statements about its absence at all. Thus, the concept of null morph was revealed as a hybrid of a technical concept (the morpheme “null”) and a concept from linguistics (the morpheme “morph”).

4.2 Null-elements in syntax.

Statements analogous to the above stated absurd statements no one would hardly put forward about the case nothing, however, are in fact found in grammar textbooks. This can be illustrated with a few examples from a textbook in English grammar, A Contrastive Grammar of English for Danish Students. The examples deal with statements about determiners in English. (The book uses the abbreviation “NP” for “noun phrase”, while “head” denotes the core of the noun phrase.)

The following remark about determiners causes the readers first surprise:

“Note that if the head is a noun, there is an obligatory determiner in front of the noun, and any premodification will appear between the determiner and the noun head (...).” ([Hjulmand 98] p. 16)

The surprising thing is that in the way we generally use the grammar terms, we would simply not say that a determiner is always demanded before a noun in English. The authors’ explanation above implies that the concept of determinator can be extended beyond its barriers. In fact, it is the concept of existence that in the quotation is clearly extended beyond its barriers, viz. to denoting existence of absence, i.e. existence of not-existence. This mistake is caused by the authors’ literal understanding of a linguistic convenience, just as some persons may be tempted to understand the concept of null morphs as standing for something literally existing. This will be substantiated below.

In a similar way, the authors of this grammar textbook, which is used at university level, simply state the following amazing assertion, which implies an idea that has far-reaching ontological consequences.

“1.4.1.3.4 (...) note that an NP which is a noun always has a determiner (which may also be zero, i.e. implicit – as for instance (...): Houses).” ([Hjulmand 98] p. 19)

Notice the use of the word “implicit”, which usually denotes something that in fact could be mentioned without changing the meaning of what is expressed, but which is just not mentioned in the actual case. Here it obviously denotes something that is never expressed in a number of definable cases and which cannot be presented, which is here two sides of the same coin.

According to this quotation, obviously the noun phrase “Houses” has a determiner that is zero. Here, the concept of zero is analogous to the concept of NULL morph in the morphologic example. Clearly, this conclusion about the authors’ statements cannot be due to any misunderstanding, as the text lists some “typical determiners: a an the zero this (...)”. ([Hjulmand 98] p. 19, my underlining.) Remark that it contrary to the real determiners in the enumeration is not stated by its written form, which is “” according to the criticized line of thought, but is referred to by a name. However it is unclear whether this name denotes the empty sign sequence “”, or whether it is a name of this putative determinator. Below the former will be called “zero” and the latter, the determinator as such, will be called “zero-determiner”.

Naturally, the rather categorical presentation in the textbook explains what makes the authors talk about “an obligatory determiner”. The idea implies that it has semantic sense to talk about a determiner that is present by virtue of its absence. It must especially be noticed that the latter quote makes the above use of the term “obligatory” superfluous, unless it is possible to demonstrate a difference between the existence of such a determinator and the absence of it. Otherwise, the demand made in this textbook will always be fulfilled. Put in another way: in that case, this grammatical rule cannot be violated.

The concept of such a determiner and the corresponding line of thought are possibly widespread among linguists, just as common sense realism is among persons generally. However, to this the following can be adduced.

The realism debate in the philosophy of science cannot be decided by interviewing scientists about their view of the reference of their terms, but by semantic arguments concerning what we can at most put into sentences that contain the terms in question. This applies both to the discussion of the ontological status of elementary particles and fields in natural science as well and to this critique of the concept of zero determiner, which is thus not about the ideas the linguists may have. On the other hand, this part of the realism debate is also of interest to scientists.

In analogy to the example with the plural morph NULL and computational search for morphs, we can imagine a programme that search for determiners. The computer programme can be constructed such that if it does not find any signs between 1) the head of the examined noun phrase plus possible premodifiers and 2) the preceding phrase, it delivers an empty character string, <>, as output. In that case, this result is not a part of the text as text, but belongs to the analysis made by the very aiding programme and its theoretic concepts.

Even on the terms of the criticized line of thought, it is misleading to put the concept of such a zero determiner on an equal footing with what we in fact write or say, such as it is done here. While there can be an “a” or a “this” in a text, there cannot be a zero in the text, as nothing can represent it in the text. The criticized grammar implies that the distinction between presence and absence does not exist as to this zero-determiner.

According to the textbook, “the zero article” is “sometimes written Ø”. ([Hjulmand 98] p. 87) However, this does not change anything. Also this symbol can at most be used in a grammatical description of a sentence, just as “noun” and “subject” can be used in our talk about a text. It cannot be written as a sequence of signs in the very text that is discussed linguistically, and thus, it does not become a part of the reality described.

If the extension of the semantic sense of the concept of determiner in this grammar had sense, it would have the following absurd consequence. If a determinator were different from zero, it would be impossible to distinguish between 1) the error of forgetting the determiner in question, and 2) the error of using a zero instead of the determiner in question. Cf. the commentaries above to the concept of obligatory.

Just as it is misleading to talk about zero determiners instead of absent determiners, it is misleading to talk about attributives that are zero, instead of talking about absent attributives. Of course, there could be many of such assumed zero-entities. In front of a head, in principle several attributives that have extension could be placed. However, if there are none physical attributives, is there then always a zero-attributive in front of a head? I shall not inflict further examples on the reader.

We are here again dealing with a misleading simplification by means of an introduction of false uniformity, just as it is the case with the null morphs in the section above. Also in this grammatical example, the error of transferring a version of formalism beyond its limits is committed, as it can only used to describe the output of a possible aiding programme, but not to describe the grammatical features investigated. It only tells something meaningful about these after a suitable interpretation.

4.3 Related problems.

Statements containing terms of null morphs are examples of statements that possess no meaning when they are disconnected from their provisional practical function in a helping programme, whether this is a computer programme or a scientific theory, and used in the field on which they are meant to help, which in this case is morphology.

4.3.1 Analogous examples.

1) At making up a person’s account, it is possible to calculate an outstanding debt and get the result zero pounds. However, we will not therefore assert that the person in question has a debt of zero pounds, but on the contrary, that he has no debt. In this example, we are going from the mathematical universe to the economic.

2) Among the other nominals, pronouns can correspondingly be said to have a casus in contradiction to the substantives. For a similar reason, we will neither here say that all nominals have an accusative morph that just happens to be null.[3]

3) With the same poor justification, we could introduce a concept of null-preposition with the argument that indirect objects are in fact complements in a prepositional phrase that has a null-preposition.

These tedious examples demonstrate that in other fields too an analogous idea of aiding concepts has a bad influence on our usage, which is to be avoided if we are interested in using language reasonably, such that our possibilities of expressing ourselves are maintained.

A transfer of the criticized use of null-morphs and zero-determiners to other fields can make language be full of other putative entities than NULL and zero. These can influence analyses by giving them an erroneous basis for development.

4.3.2 The relationship to natural science.

As earlier touched on, the examples with the null elements are considered here, inter alia because to some extent they are analogous to the discussion of theoretical entities in physics. Both discussions deal with the reality of introduced entities and the use of the terms of them without the programme to which they belong. Cf. the example with statements about genes and adrenaline. Thus, the linguistic examples can shed light on the philosophic discussion of the theoretic entities of physics.

For this purpose, we can take as a starting point the fact that statements about a plural morph being NULL can be put forward either for convenience or to express the result of a computation at the technical aiding level. Thus, as done above, a possible plural morph of a Danish noun, e.g. “fisk”, can be found by first computing:

D = P - S = <fisk> - <fisk> = <>, where P denotes the plural form and S the stem.

According to the conclusions above, the result of this computation only means that the Danish substantive “fisk” has no plural morph. It is true that the concept of NULL can have a reasonable practical use when we talk about the results of different aids, such as mathematics or a computer programme that can deliver useful intermediate results. However, it has been made clear that in the field where this result is to be used, the morphological, the result NULL only means that nothing has to be added to the singular form to gain the plural form, or rather, that the substantive in question is not inflected in number. Thus, it has been shown, that taking the corresponding concept of a null-morph literally results in odd statements.

The following conclusions can be drawn and clarified. 1) In morphology, we can regard computer science or just our manipulation with sequences of signs as an aiding programme.2) In daily life, we can regard science as an aiding programme. However, in both cases a wrong understanding of the terms of the aiding programmes leads to problems:

Re 1: In morphology, a literal understanding of this computer scientific concept of emptiness leads to absurd statements when it is used in morphologic theories as it is only intended as a result of the subtraction of the stem carried out in order to determine the plural morph. Such absurdities are inexpedient, of course.

Re 2: In daily life, a literal understanding of scientific terms of not-observable objects leads to absurd statements when they are used about experiences in daily life, as they are only intended for use at the very prediction of the phenomena. As an unlucky effect, these absurd statements about everyday phenomena may lead to a materialistic view or a reification of the human being.

However, the analogy has the lack that the same misunderstanding can also be harmful within the very aiding-programme natural science. For a literal understanding of the concept of not-observable entities can lead to lacking flexibility of thought, as mentioned, i.e. to a limitation of fantasy and new thinking. A literal understanding of the scientific concept of field can even be assumed with the purpose of maintaining the demand of proximity, which is not scientifically necessary.

At our everyday use of theoretic terms, an error is committed by for instance the already criticized talk about “feeling the adrenaline in one’s body” or “having genes” for something that cannot be explained by reference to genes. Something similar applies to pains. Thus, we can feel a pain in a knee, and know which accident has caused the pain, but it is not possible to feel the theoretical cause of a pain in a knee, if this is to be understood as “processes going on in the knee, the nervous system, and the brain”. The reason is that these only belong to a theoretical model created by experiments, measurements, and conclusions because of their scientific utility. This seems obvious; however, exactly such an error is committed by talking about “feeling the adrenaline in one’s body”.

Let us assume that there is a simple connection between certain feelings or states, e.g. headache, and certain results of certain measurements, which we can call A-values. Then, when the kind of headache in question occurs, we can sat, “My A-values are in the bad interval just now”. However, it is not possible to have a feeling that the contents this sentence expresses; it only refers to possible measurement results. It is just the theory about these phenomena that has established this probable theoretic connection. Unless this statement is going to be checked, it does not say more than “I have a certain kind of headache just now”.

The use of the theoretic terms of a theoretic science has no sense outside the science in question. For that would be an unjustified transfer of the use of concepts that only belong to the scientific talk about a theoretical model, to a part of the world that this talk is certainly intended to describe, but only as a kind of intermediate result that has to be interpreted.

Moreover, a literal understanding of them ads nothing to the theory that uses them, which has been seen above as far as morphology and syntax is concerned.

5. Wrong use of the concept of ellipsis in grammar.

Some grammarians talk about something lacking in sentences where in fact nothing lacks; for the grammarians in question just refers to the possibility of completing the sentence with what lacks according to them, viz. a specific sequence of words, inserted at a specific place in the sentence. While the examples above were about a superfluous assumption about existence of nothing, this deals with a superfluous assumption about lack or absence of something that could have been placed at the place in question, and is thus understood, according to the line of thought.

As it appears, we are here dealing with a strongly exaggerated use of the concept ellipsis in grammar, a use that is inconsistent with the meaning of this concept. This can be exemplified with sentences that are notoriously grammatically correct and eo ipso without any grammatical non-existence, but in which cases an ellipsis is said to be present. (We can here assume that a sentence is correct if it follows or fall within a specifiable grammatical rule.)

In the sentence, “Niels writes more often than Peter” the verbal phrase “writes” can be said to be omitted at the end of the sentence, such that the complete version is “Niels writes more often than Peter writes”. It is certainly true that the meaning of the sentence can be expressed in this way; however, it is also expressed correctly by the first, short version, in which the verbal phrase only occurs once. Therefore, the former sentence is a valid, correct sentence on equal footing with the latter, perhaps even more recommendable, and thus, it must be explained by its own rule. It is therefore not necessary to talk about any omission or ellipsis in this case. The grammatical correctness of the sentence can e.g. be explained by the verb’s being reused such that it applies to both terms of the comparison, but the specific answer to this question is not a philosophic subject.

There is no reason either to assert that the sentence “Niels and Peter worked” is an elliptical version of “Niels worked and Peter worked”, for we can just as well say that the subject is “Niels and Peter”. It can certainly be adduced that it is a rule that in a conjunction of two sentences consisting of subject + verbum the first verb may by omitted if it is equal to the last verb. However, this is a more complicated explanation than asserting that the subject consists of a conjunction of two substantival expressions. In none of the sentences of this type are we dealing with omissions but with grammatically regular and complete sentences. We can at most talk about a possibility of amplification that have not been used in the cases in question.

However, it is misleading to call a not-used possibility of amplification “an omission”; for there is so much we do not do, though it does not necessarily have meaning to say that it is omitted. Cf. the following examples: “To day I have omitted to have breakfast, to go to my bank, to buy a ticket to Bangkok, to enrol a dancing course...”

The omission, in which an ellipsis consists, must be an omission relative to a whole that can be accounted for, i.e. an omission of something definable. If so, the question is what this can be. It cannot be an omission relative to what we maximally can include in a sentence, as that explanation will lead to absurdities as those exemplified above. For we can often add something to a sentence without changing its meaning, such as superfluous specifications or empty words, e.g. “at the same time”, “the whole time”, “then”, “at that time”, “just now”, “at that place”, “there”, “in contradiction to...”, but it is not an omission not to add these parts.

We can tentatively assume that an ellipsis is an omission of something that has to be included in the sentence according to the rules of grammar. However, this would mean that the occurrence of an ellipsis would be a breach of a rule. According to this hypothesis, in the description of a rule it would be self-contradictory to refer to elliptical elements as something acceptable. The following can be concluded:

If an ellipsis is a breach of a rule, the account of a rule cannot be based on the concept of ellipsis, understood as something acceptable.

For instance, we cannot sensibly assert that the sentence “Niels writes more often than Peter” is a correct sentence, if we think that it is elliptic, such as it is done above,. If it is nevertheless attempted, the result will be a rule of the following kind (but perhaps more precise): “The comparative conjunction ‘than’ has to be followed by a subordinate sentence, but it is allowed to breach this rule by omitting the verb of the subsequent subordinate sentence, or more generally its predicate.” According to this, we can follow a rule by breaching another one. Of course, we can avoid this by talking about specifiable exceptions instead of a breach of a rule. Then we would certainly not talk about ellipses any longer, but we would still distinguish between sentences that follow a basic rule, and the exceptions. This is a misleading explanation, since all types of sentences exist in their own right, without it being necessary to excuse them, as it were.

Since the concept of ellipsis cannot form part of the description of the grammar of a language in a reasonable way, the use of sentences with real ellipses cannot be regular usage, but must imply something that at least resembles an error.

5.1 Examples.

Here two further examples are presented showing that the concept of ellipses in grammar is a faulty raising of the concept of absence not just to reality, but to existence.

Example 1: The sentence “He got up and went to the door” contains a conjunction of two predicates, viz. 1) “got up” and 2) “went to the door”. It is unnecessary to characterise the sentence as an elliptic version of the sentence “He got up, and he went to the door” as we have the concept of conjunction, which is here used on the two predicates. In this way, the use of the concept of ellipsis is an obstacle to a close analysis of the sentence structure, as it makes possible a quick and too comfortable answer. Finally, it must be noticed that the second version of the sentence does not tall the quite same story as the first one.

Example 2: The sentence “He never cleans or offers to wash the dishes” can be said to “contain” two ellipses (as it presumably must be worded).[4] According to the criticized line of thought, it can be adduced that both the pronoun “he” and the adverb “never” are omitted, and that thus the speaker or writer has “made an ellipsis” of these two expressions. However, this poses a problem as the result of the “removal” of the two postulated ellipses (the filling in of them) leads to the following “complete” sentence (as if the original one was defective): *“He never cleans, or he never offers to wash the dishes”. This sentence does of course not express the same as the original version, and is practically incomprehensible.

For after the two additions to the sentence (or “removal” of the two alleged ellipses), the conjunction “or” has to be replaced by the conjunction “and” to retain the meaning. The reason is that the negation has now been carried through, just as it is in the paraphrase of the logical expression “¬(p Ú q)” to the equivalent expression “(¬p Ù ¬q)”. Thus, the adverb “never” is attributed to both grammatical predicates at the same time, just as it does in the conjugated predicates in “He never [cleans] or [offers to wash the dishes]”. (The square brackets are just added to make clear the sentence structure.) After the filling out of the ellipses, the sentence has to be rewritten as “He never [cleans] and he never [offers to wash the dishes]”. It is here a question whether the fact that the easy solutions by introduction of ingenious aiding concepts can block the free, fresh thinking, also applies in other fields.

6. Semantic senselessness – semantic emptiness.

In accordance with what has already been argued for in Treatise No 4, “The correspondence principle of truth”, we can conclude that the statement 1) “Statements that assert the existence of the putative entity E has no semantic meaning” is stronger than the statement 2) “The entity E does not exist”. For the latter statement (2) presupposes that it is semantically meaningful to talk about the supposed entity, whereas the first statement (1) implies that neither its putative existence nor not-existence is a part of the world at all. This result was based on the concept of proof transcendence. However, sentences can be meaningless not only because of their being proof transcendent, but also for a more fundamental reason, though this fact do not deprive the concept of proof transcendence of its importance.

For it appears that a number of words, or rather sequences of sounds or written characters, cannot be construed or expounded. This means that if a sentence contains such a sequence of signs it cannot itself be interpreted or explained either, i.e. that the also sentence in question will lack semantic meaning. Nevertheless, we can be tempted to use these sounds or characters, because they resemble words that have a clear semantic meaning, such that the sentences of which the discussed sequences form parts will resemble semantically meaningful sentences. This kind of semantic meaninglessness can here be called “semantic emptiness”. Such sentences cannot even be called “proof transcendent” as, according to the mature of the case, they do not express anything at all and eo ipso do not express anything that can be proved or disproved – they are just semantically senseless.

Examples of the use of these semantically empty sign sequences are the religious sentence “There exists a god”, which at most has a vaguely imagined sense because of the sign sequence “god”, and the metaphysical sentence “There is an external world” because of the sign sequence “external world”, which has an unclarified sense. Statements that contain terms of so-called not-observable entities, such as “quarks” certainly have a useful employment in science, but the use of these sentences in a literal sense has nevertheless a certain semantic affinity to these fundamentally meaningless sentences.

Summary: In the examples above, as mentioned, we are dealing with lack of word meaning, i.e. occurrence of certain putative words that cannot be attributed semantic meaning in the context in question. These sign sequences only borrow an apparent semantic meaning from a semantic meaning they can in fact have, but does not have in the context in question. Thus, the sign sequence “religious belief” borrows a semantic meaning from the real word “belief” in the sense supposition or trust. In the problem of the external world in metaphysics, the word “external world” similarly borrows a semantic meaning from the concept of a physical external world, understood as the things around us, but is attributed some putative extraordinary sense.

Below a number of examples of these traits are looked at shortly. These examples will be further clarified later.

6.1 The external world.

To the philosophical question if there is “an external world”, the semantic philosophic answer must be that of course there is an external world, and that the question is just what of meaning we can put into the statement “There is an external world”.

In the ordinary meaning of the words, the sentence “There is an external world” has a clear meaning; however, it obviously does not have that in certain philosophical discussions. In the first mentioned, ordinary sense of the sentence, it has the same sense as the sentence “There are objects around us”. What is unclear is only whether we have to include our own bodies in the concept of an external world, in which case the statement simply has the meaning, “There are physical objects”. The philosophical question, then, is what it means that objects exist. The realists regard it as a question whether there is only phenomena, or there is also “something behind” the phenomena, in some sense, which they want to prove.

However, which meaning can be attributed to the realist view that the phenomena are somehow related to something extra, which we could call “an external world”, e.g. caused by it? As just touched on, this metaphysical use of the sign sequence “external world” only borrows an appearance of semantic meaning from the term “external world” in the sense objects around us; we are here dealing with a use to which no semantic meaning can be ascribed in the above attempted or suggested way. For that reason, the sequence of signs “external world” in other senses than the objects in the world is semantically empty. Thus means that the discussed sentence becomes semantically empty, too. This subject is discussed in the subsection “The external world”.

6.2 The religious’ putative entities.

In order to discuss the religious statement “There exists a god” we have to come fresh to the case and disregard our possible religious upbringing, in a broad sense of this word. In this religious statement, the putative word “god” lacks a semantically clarified meaning. The mere fact that a number of persons use the same string of signs is not sufficient to give it a semantic meaning. Religious persons must give this putative word a semantic meaning by means of already known concepts and experiences, i.e. without presupposing that their religious putative concepts already have semantic meaning. Given these premises, however, the explanation becomes rational or empiric. This means that it can be discussed and criticised, and thus that the religious persons have to defend and substantiate it.

Alternatively, i.e. if no such a rational or empiric account can be given, there is nothing to prove or disprove, because in that case, the religious statements are semantically empty. Therefore, they cannot be subject to a discussion whether they are proof transcendent or not. This critique is developed in the section, “Semantic critique of religious sequences of signs”.

6.3 Not-observable entities in science.

The semantic critique of statements about literal existence of not-observable entities of science, e.g. elementary particles and fields, resembles the critique above. As a provisional definition of literal existence, the following can be put forward:

Literal existence can be understood as putative existence comparable with the existence of observable physical objects, such that we are dealing with an existence that is real in the same way as these objects, unlike constructed entities such as entities in a mathematical model.

Thus, according to the argumentations in these treatises, thus, we cannot attribute literal meaning to the sign sequence “electron” on an equal footing with terms of known objects. (Cf. the subsection “Documentation of not-observable entities” above.) Below, the two above-mentioned examples are discussed.

6.3.1 Gravitational fields.

A gravitational field can loosely be defined as an area around a physical body where at every point a force has an effect on a mass that might be located at that point. This force can be described as a vector function of the place of the body. Although this description certainly only holds good according to classical physics, it is sufficient in this context. Some regard a gravitational field as a physical state that exist in itself in space; others define it as a model that describe the behaviour of physical objects. Here, the talk of a state indicates realism, while the use of a model only needs to be useful.

The question is thus whether it has sense to talk about whether there are forces in space, and, if so, in what sense, including whether they exist “in themselves” and whether this expression has sense. Whether the forces exist independently of the very measurements of them can obviously not be decided by an experiment, as this exactly involves a measurement. certainly we can assert that a measured force on a body is a property of the place of the body, the experimental setup, and the experiment, but we still lack an answer to the question of what kind of property or entity a force is: whether it is something in space, whether it is something different from the very experiment and the observed result, and first of all, whether it has sense to talk about whether there exist something different from the very experiment and its result at all. Of course, this question cannot be decided by an experiment either. We must leave it at what we can assert concerning this question, viz. that science has observed and described a regular phenomenon in detail: A body that is located at a definite place and has a known mass will behave in a definite predictable way. Nothing decisive is missing in this result - except that we know that at change of the theories or scientific revolutions, scientists have shown to be able to predict the phenomena differently or better than before. (Cf. the discussion of Thomas Kuhn’s commentaries on this in the section “Science and reality” below.)

Thus, a concept of a gravitational field that exists in itself science cannot use for anything. It cannot contribute with anything extra that is indispensable to a scientific statement. No meaning can be attributed to such a concept as we cannot state any criteria for what is to be decided to substantiate this extra, i.e. describe in what the existence in itself of the gravitational field should consist. Such criteria presuppose a description of the very entity whose existence has to be pointed out; for we cannot talk about existence of an entity until the semantic sense of this talk is established. It is not enough that we in our fantasy can relate this entity to something we can measure or point at. Therefore, this is again an example of semantic emptiness.

It is of no use here either to advance that it is a useful assumption that there exists a gravitational field in itself:

1) As it has appeared, there is nothing extra this assumption can contribute, as the scientific theories in which the concept forms part can be used to prediction of experimental results without this assumption. Thus, beside it being difficult to explain the semantic meaning of the assumption, the use of it is not profitable either.

2) Even though we had in fact been dealing with a useful assumption, this would not have proven anything, as useful assumptions cannot be raised above the level of just useful assumptions. We have earlier looked at attempts of arguing in favour of this; these attempts were criticised in the section “The concept of useful assumption in the realism debate”. Moreover, these attempts use a form of argumentation that belongs to science – where in principle the result can be changed later – but not to philosophy where we seek the fundamental truths by reasoning. Not least, we lack a semantic clarification concerning in what the assumption should consist, as mentioned.

We can look at the following realist definition: “A gravitational field is a part of space where there at every point is a gravitation that has both a definite magnitude and a definite direction that depend on the point in question. This gravitation affects the mass that may be located at the point.” Two questions emerge: A) What should the gravitation consist in when it is not actualized? B) What does it mean that it “is there”? We are dealing with an unclear assumption whose truth according to realism should be a good assumption, as it can explain the movement of bodies. According to this line of thought, we should not just be able to infer the existence of an entity and the truth of an assumption, but also the semantic meaning of the concept of this entity. For this meaning must be presupposed in order to talk about the concept. However, this is exactly what has to be explained. Put in another way, and as mentioned above: the semantic meaning of a concept has to be clarified before it can be used in an argumentation for its validity. Otherwise, the argument is circular. This critique has been advanced both above earlier in these articles.[5] Moreover, the assumption is not useful, as mentioned, but superfluous, whatever it accurately consists in.

The most essential thing in this philosophic question about gravitational fields is not the question about (A) the possibility of the existence, but (B) the nature of the existence, as we cannot prove that there are more than the phenomena. For what has to be proved is a fundamental possibility of existence, not the existence of something whose existence possibility is already established, as this precondition is just not established.

6.3.2 Elementary particles.

A similar criticism applies to a literal understanding of elementary particles.

The following statement can be put forward ½by both anti-realists and realists: “An electron is an elementary particle mass and with negative charge”. Scientific realists will perhaps assert that we are thus dealing with a real entity. However as already argued for, we are dealing with a theoretical construction made in the same way as Berkeley erroneously thought that we construct the concept of a physical thing. This takes place according to the following schema:

Science finds regularity in nature, gives it a name, as if it were an object, and can thus talk about having found a matter or something else, such as “dark matter” or “black holes”. By this, the regularity is materialized, and according to this line of thought, what has been named can be said to be the cause of the very regularity.

What lead to the construction is surely something real, viz. phenomena and scientific theories. However, those who assert that what is constructed exists as something real besides being a construction, i.e. being a part of a scientific model, must explain how. For that purpose, it is not sufficient to talk about the qualities charge and mass.

6.4 Material objects.

Even as regards physical objects including other persons, it is difficult to ascribe meaning to certain constructions of statements about their literal existence.

According to scientific realism, a table in the room next door should literally exist without colour and other sense qualities, only with a potential of causing such sense impressions. However, how should we attribute any meaning to the sentence “There is a table in the room next door” that is not based on its verification conditions, or which does not end by coinciding with a description of these? What is it that is supposed to exist in the room next door, and how shall we imagine it – how shall it in fact exist?

The problem has nothing to do with proof transcendence, as the statement can be confirmed (or disconfirmed) by opening the door to the other room and see if there is a table in there. By contrast, the following two statements are proof transcendent: “Alexander the Great had headache on his ninth birthday”, and “The last dinosaur reached 3 years and 117 days”.[6] We know what these, or at least similar, statements mean, but they can neither be proved nor disproved.

Though the realists agree with the anti-realists that the statement about the table can be decided, the realists nevertheless want to put something more into the statement. To the realists, the point at issue is not verification, but their conviction that the table in some way or other is unconditionally in there, if it is in there. This means that when the truth of this statement is possibly established, the realist will say that the table also was there, before this was established - and thus that it has sense to assert that. However, the anti-realist will also assert this, as they can refer to the regularities we can attribute to nature. Moreover, the realists cannot use their idea that the world is unconditionally as it is, to anything, as they cannot point out any difference it might do. The anti-realists can again assert that what the realists are talking about is not a part of our world, as their statements about it have no semantic meaning. The analogous applies if the statement is disconfirmed, which, however, the readers are not to be wearied by further comments on.

However, what is it that has to be the case if these statements shall be true in a way the realists will accept, i.e. as something else than what is provable? Is it something “in itself”, “on its own terms”, or “completely on its own”? The latter expression is due to the Danish professor of philosophy David Favrholdt. Thus, in his Danish work Filosofisk Codex (“Philosophical Codex”) Favrholdt advances:

“While I am writing this, I know that there is a bottle of red wine on the table out in the kitchen. What do I mean by this? That there is a bottle out there that so to say exists completely on its own as a material thing being at a definite place in time and space?” ([Favrholdt 99] p. 61, my translation, and underlining)

The expression “completely on its own” clearly discloses the semantic emptiness of the last quoted sentence. It is simply unclear, what we shall put into expressions like “in itself”, “on its own terms”, and “completely on its own”. By means of the adverbial “completely on its own”, Favrholdt tries to express the extra thing the realist wants to put into statements about existence of material objects. This need of metaphors shows how vague the realist point of view is, for metaphors are typically borrowed from our talk about the material and spatial world for use in our talk about abstract entities, where they are indispensable. Contrary to this, Favrholdt makes the communication more difficult by reusing a metaphor for the social situation of being completely on one’s own. This results in a usage that is simply not sufficiently clear in order to obtain a philosophic clarification. Moreover, this realism debate is about the material and spatial world itself. This means that the realist point of view can only have substance, if by means of well-defined terms of material objects and of our handling them, the realists can express that extra thing they want to put into existence statements.

6.4.1.Conclusion.

As touched on above, the realists will not accept that the concepts of verification and proof transcendence can be used for expressing the substance of the realism debate. According to the realists, the statement “There is a white table in the other room” is not true or false because one of the two possibilities can be decided. According to the realists, the table is simply in the other room independently of the demonstrability of that, as it is in there in a definite way, if it is there, just as the room is in a definite way without the white table. To this the following, which has been touched on above, must be remarked:

Attributing meaning to the sentence “There is a table in the room next door” consists in describing what it means that it is true, and thus it will coincide with a description of its verification conditions.

The conclusion is that if the realists want to attribute meaning to their own view, it is not enough to appeal to persons’ understanding, for instance by means of misplaced metaphors. They ought to express their point of view in a more precise way that can be settled, before there can be anything to discuss, so that they can be in a position to carry their point at all. Otherwise, their appealing will remain an insisting knocking in the table. Thus, we are again presented for an unclarified semantic meaning, not just of a definite concept, but of an only suggested concept.

7. Critique of an account of phenomenalism, the problem of the external world, and solipsism.

This section criticizes an unsuccessful encyclopaedic exposition of the mutually related philosophical concepts, phenomenalism, the problem of the external world, and solipsism. This involves a discussion of some problems connected to these concepts. The criticised expositions are found in Gyldendals DVD-leksikon (“Gyldendal’s DVD lexicon”) [Gyldendal 2006].[7]

The problem with these articles is that the philosophical subjects they aim at elucidating are expounded in an unscientific way. This is mainly due to their only being elucidated from a specific viewpoint. Generally, such informative articles should give a neutral account of the most important views of the different parties, including how they are opposed to each other. Thus, concerning the three subjects, phenomenalism, the problem of the external world, and solipsism, there are two important opposite parties, the realist and the anti-realist. Their respective views should be neutrally expounded. Unfortunately, all three subjects in this lexicon are described from one viewpoint, the realist. Thus, they are far from neutrally described and little clarifying.

Of course, this section is not primarily to be a “review” of the lexicon articles. Instead, it is intended as a criticism and discussion of the philosophical contents of the articles in relation to their subjects. However, this includes the implications this inevitably has to a criticism of the quality of the articles regarded as lexicon articles.

7.1 Phenomenalism.

According to the article in this lexicon about phenomenalism, phenomenalism is

a “philosophical theory that asserts that everything can be reduced to phenomena of consciousness. Phenomenalism denies (contrary to realism) the existence of an external world that is independent of consciousness.”^[8]

This quote may sound harmless, but firstly, in a definition it is problematic to refer to another disputed concept as it is done her, namely to that about consciousness. (Cf. above discussions of this concept in these treatises.) Secondly, as already advanced, it is not a phenomenalist viewpoint that reality is dependent on consciousness or that this viewpoint should have anything to do with the case, such as it is suggested here. Instead, the phenomenalists advance an idea of what we can put into the concept of a thing. Cf. the description in Treatise No 1 “Minimal assumptions”, which contains quotations from ([Berkeley 88], § 1, p. 53, and § 29, p. 63).

What is worse, the following part of the article represents an utmost misleading characteristic of phenomenalism:

“The starting point is the assumption that our own experiences are the only thing to which we have an immediate access. If this is true, we can never know for a fact whether they correspond to something outside consciousness.”⁷

This is a typical example of a prejudiced understanding of the phenomenalism, as it is simply based on a realist point of view, which is expounded below. Because of this, the phenomenalist point of view will come to look odd. For, if a not-realism such as phenomenalism is represented in a realist context, of course this mix will appear to be full of contradictions and thus unacceptable – contrary to the pure realism, which will remain standing as the only sensible view. The following six critical points can be advanced:

1) It is misleading to describe phenomenalism as the philosophy that everything can be reduced to phenomena of consciousness, for it can just as well be maintained that the realists make unnecessary introductions.

2) The talk about “the existence of an external world that is independent on consciousness”⁷ is problematic. For as mentioned, the idea of this is not necessarily a part of the phenomenalism. This is explained in the subsection “The problem of the external world”.

3) The statement that “the starting point” of phenomenalism is “the assumption that our own experiences are the only thing to which we have an immediate access”⁷ involves some discussable presuppositions. Moreover, it must be remarked that the meaning of the very expression “immediate access” is unclear, which is clarified below.

The exposition in the lexicon obviously presupposes that it has sense to talk about the existence of something to which we (according to phenomenalism) do not “have an immediate access”. The author apparently forgets that what is to be described is phenomenalism, which must be done on its own terms:

According to phenomenalism, only the phenomena and their regularities exist. Thus, the idea of something to which we do not “have an immediate access” becomes irrelevant in this context.

The article thus quite clearly takes realism for granted and thus places phenomenalism in a realist frame, so to say. A more appropriate approach would be first to describe phenomenalism loyally and then to criticise it on this basis.

Moreover, this talk about our having immediate access to our experiences presupposes that our experiences exist at a place where we have to find them, before we can have them. This account cannot be adequate, as we do not have access to our experiences: we simply have experiences or experience something. Besides, how should we have “an immediate access” to our experience – by experiencing our experiences, perhaps? It is altogether unclear what is meant by the term “access” in this context. Moreover, this account suggests, as just mentioned, that there may be things to which we have access though not “immediate” access. However, it is not clarified what that could be either.

4 a) In addition, it is strongly misleading to say, as it is done in the text, that according to phenomenalism we cannot with certainty know, whether our experiences “correspond to something outside consciousness”⁷, as this is not a problem to the phenomenalists to whom the concept of this does not form part, but only to the realists. In general, scepticism is a speciality for realists. However, according to phenomenalism, our concept of a thing is constituted by our sense impressions and the observed regularity of nature.

The article asserts that phenomenalism implies that the assumption that our experiences “correspond to something outside consciousness” is “strictly speaking meaningless, as it can never be empirically verified”⁷. This account is likewise misleading, as this assumption is not only “strictly speaking” meaningless according to phenomenalism, but simply meaningless, as the phenomenalist point of view is that it has no sense to talk about things in themselves, and therefore, the talk of verifying such an existence has no sense either, but presupposes realism. With that, the reverse is the case: Because the allegation is meaningless, there is nothing to verify, or anything to prove at all. Such an enterprise science does sensibly not embark on.

Generally, philosophical statements cannot be empirically verified as they do not concern anything empiric, but simply concern the semantic meaning of statements. Also for this reason, phenomenalism cannot be attributed the above-discussed viewpoint that the idea of the existence of “something outside consciousness” is “strictly speaking meaningless”.⁷ Instead, the discussion of the validity of assumptions, or rather their usefulness belongs to science.

4 b) Finally, the imprecise concept of “something outside consciousness” must be scrutinized. Probably, it is supposed to mean “something that is not a part of consciousness”, but in this case, the preposition “outside” relates something spatial to something not spatial. For that reason, the use of it is rather a category error than a metaphor. Thus, this concept of “something outside consciousness” calls for an explanation in order that we can talk sensibly about it.[9]

5) According to the article, phenomenalism has “difficulty in explaining the existence of things that cannot be experienced”⁷, but also this is only a problem from a realist point of view. As an example of “things that cannot be experienced”, the interior of the earth is mentioned. However, what do we need besides the phenomena and computations we can attribute to the concept of the interior of the earth⁷ in order to use this concept? We do not need a concept of the interior of the earth that originates in any more than our understanding of these phenomena and computations. The concept results from them, and not from the only imagined concept of an interior earth in itself, which the realists obviously want to introduce.

Again, there is no problem that has to be solved, and nothing “to explain” concerning “the existence of things that cannot be experienced”⁷, as the lexicon article states. For the phenomenalists have no problem concerning that realist concept, except explaining this to the realists, as a concept of the regularity of the sense impression is sufficient to themselves. In addition, without being realists, we can make imaginations based on extrapolation from what we know. Thus, we can likewise bore 100 m down into the earth and fetch some of the subsoil, and based on this, we can imagine that in the same way we can bore 10 km or farther down and fetch some material.

6) The statement that phenomenalism easily leads to solipsism has to be substantiated. Moreover, it is important to explain who has argued for that statement. This alleged connection between phenomenalism and solipsism will be refuted in the subsection “Solipsism”.

In order to talk about things it is not necessary to assume that there are more than the impressions we receive and their regularity. In this sense, there are the things and the space we perceive. As our talk about things functions, we do not need a concept of things that exists “per se” or “in itself” somehow, whether this concept is understood in a Kantian way or not.

A description of phenomenalism could be introduced in a more neutral way with these words:

“Phenomenalism is a philosophical direction, according to which we talk about things when we can relate a number of sensations to each other. Thus, phenomenalism does not need a concept of a thing in itself that causes these sense impressions.”

Based on such an introduction a possible criticism can then set in.

7.2 The problem of the external world.

According to [Gyldendal 2006], the problem of the external world is

“a philosophical problem that deals with the possibility of proving or substantiating the existence of [1] the physical external world, i.e. of [2] a world independent of consciousness.[10] [My numbering and underlining.]

Already here, it must be remarked that the mere definite form of the term “the physical external world” indicates that its reference is taken for granted in spite of the fact that a clarification of the corresponding concept is exactly a part of the problem.

Some of the following critique may be regarded as provokingly naïve. To make assurance doubly sure, the following is put forward:

A) According to my understanding, the problem of the external world is identical to the semantic question of what we can put into the concept of the external world.

B) According to my understanding of the text, the semantic question is not-existing to the author of the lexicon article who regards it as a challenge to prove that what we perceive as things around us are more than just sense impressions, such that there exists more that can cause these sense impressions, i.e. that “the physical external world” exists. Obviously, it is taken for granted that we have a problem we must remove, viz. the doubt concerning the existence of this external world. This may be due to the following line of thought: i) Either there is an external world or there is not an external world. ii) We assume that there is an external world. iii) For that reason, it is a challenge to prove that there is one.

C) According to what I want to argue for, of course there is an external world; the question is just what we can put into that concept. Therefore, the premise (i) is simplified.

7.2.1 A critique of the concepts and the account.

Overall, it must be stated that the lexicon article is worded as if the underlying line of thought should be immediately understandable and clarified, which it is not at all, however. For this reason, the exposition is not pedagogically successful. However, this just reflects the fact that philosophy is about not regarding anything as being granted and quite unproblematic.

Thus, it cannot be expected that those who are not familiar with the problem of the external world can understand what is aimed at with the term “the external world”. Moreover, it is indicative of realism to talk about an entity whose existence we can “possibly of prove or substantiate”. Not least, this line of thought resembles scientific research, as if the problem were to find an external world, in the same sense as when science finds a new planet, and not of a semantic clarification.

In the subsection “The realist’s idea of anti-realism”, presents an attempt to construe what may be the line of thought behind this attitude towards phenomenalism. Here, however, it will first be looked at the text at it is expressed, and next the question is examined more generally.

A pedagogic evaluation can be professionally interesting as by way of this it is possible to start a fresh reading or thought, as it were. The question, then, is what can most probably be expected from the interested reader. According to a pre-philosophical understanding, our external world can be viewed as “what is round our body”, or simply as “all what is physical, including our body”. (Cf. the subsection “The external world” in the section “Semantic senselessness – semantic emptiness”.)

The reader who is not philosophically informed will therefore immediately think that there is nothing to prove concerning this existence, contrary to the way it is turned into a problem in point [1] in the quotation. He will think that of course there is a physical external world, since there are objects. Likewise he will think that the behaviour and states of these objects are independent of our contents of consciousness and not see a problem in this, the way it is phrased in point [2], as our contents of consciousness alone naturally cannot control the physical objects. Thus, to the philosophically innocent reader it remains unsolved what problem the author tries to express. Moreover, it is not immediately obvious that the former construction [1] of the problem of the external world can be clarified or explained by the latter construction [2], as suggested by the abbreviation “i.e.”.

In some sense, the naïve reader’s view, described above, is right as it is. However, it can be extended with a philosophical understanding by being opposed to both the realist turning the existence of an external world into a problem (in the realists terms) and the anti-realist’s semantic exposition of the concept of an external world. The problem is that the article only seeks to describe the point of view that is supported by the one part of the realism debate, the realist, as if it covers the whole debate. At the same time, it has problems with expressing this realist point of view that apparently there is a physical external world in some sense that involves more than what is usually expressed by the term “external world” in our ordinary language, viz. things in the world. A specific sense must be attributed to the term “external world” in order that the account of the problem can be understandable, for else there is no problem to discuss. To this purpose, it is not sufficient to state the alternative description, “a world independent of consciousness”. The reason is, as mentioned, that the world we know and usually speak about is not dependent on our consciousness directly since by means of our contents of consciousness alone we cannot change our external world, at least not the things around us.

(Perhaps some will put forward that by changing our contents of consciousness, at any rate we changes parts of the structure of our brains, and thus a part of our external world. However, the scientific problem connected to this can be kept out of this discussion, as what the realists assert is the opposite: that there exists a world that as a whole is not dependent on consciousness.)

The realists problem of the external world seems altogether be a self-created problem.

7.2.2 A fundamental critique of the approach.

The talk about proving the existence of the physical external world indicates a misunderstanding, which manifests itself quite clearly at the end of the article. There, the problem is described as if it were a scientific and not a philosophic one.

“Today, the most prevailing attitude to the problem is that the existence of the external world cannot be proved definitively, but that it is a well-founded hypothesis that inter alia contributes to explaining the regularity of our experiences and the success of science (…)”¹⁰ [My underlining.]

1) In brief, the pedagogic objection is that the readers cannot use this text to anything, as the article says nothing about whom or why.

1.1) It would be useful to the reader to know who means this, such that he can seek further information. (The reader is not told how the referred statistic is obtained. However, it would be sad if such an unphilosophical line of thought should be widespread among philosophers.)

1.2) It is also important to know why the philosophers in question hold this, i.e. which arguments they have, especially as we are not told who they are. Philosophy is about arguments, but these remain hidden in this account.

2) The philosophical objection is that the question if there is an external world cannot be about proving anything at all, as mentioned. The wording erroneously suggests that this question is analogous to the question if there is water on the moon:

We know what it means that there is water on the moon. We know what it means to search for water on the moon, for we know what we shall search for, and when we have found it. Moreover, we know something about how we shall search for it. Briefly: we understand the sentence “There is water on the moon”. That means that we know the verification or assertion conditions of the statement, and thus its meaning.

This can be compared with an understanding of the statement “There is an external world”. If this is to be understood by analogy with the statement “There is water on the moon”, this understanding must involve an answer to these questions: What does it mean that there is an external world? What shall we search for to find an external world? When have we found an external world? What shall we do to find en external world?

If none of these questions can be answered satisfactorily, we do not know the assertion conditions of the statement “There is an external world”. The questions clearly show that an understanding of the question by analogy with scientific questions cannot make up the meaning of the statement. For none of these questions can be answered positively: The first question has certainly sense, but it cannot be answered, which is clarified later. Therefore, the last three questions make no sense, wherefore they cannot lead us to conclude, “Look, here is an external world”. Certainly, we can point at what we in a usual sense call “external world”, but what is problematized with the question is not the existence of an external world in this sense.

When we talk about physical objects in our external world, including our body, of course, in principle, this talk always functions. We can substantiate the statement “There is a table in the next room”, if we have seen a table in the next room or have other evidences, and the statement “there is water on the moon” if we know what water is and have seen water on the moon or have other evidences. Such statements have a well-defined meaning. That whose existence the realists will discuss cannot be physical objects or an external world in the sense used here. Therefore, it becomes problematic what makes up that extra whose existence the realist will assert.

With this, two arguments have been advanced against how the article interprets the problem of the external world:

1) The problem of the external world cannot be solved in the same way as scientific problems, such as the article suggests.

2) The interpretation makes a problem of the idea of an existence of something extra in the world besides what we usually understand as our external world, as it questions whether it exists or not. On the other hand, the account does not even problematize what this extra should be and what difference it could make. However, this is certainly a senseless question:

We can express the same things about the world independently of or without referring to that indeterminate extra the realist wants to introduce in his discussion of “the problem of the external world” but does not describe precisely. However, what is most open to criticism of the realist point of view is not the fact that it has no importance whether this external world exists or not, but that we cannot attribute any other semantic meaning to the term “external world” than the one it has when we talk about the things around us.

We can form statements that are about things, and which have a semantic meaning, such as the statement “There is a writing desk in front of me”, and we can explain this meaning. However, we cannot attribute any semantic meaning to the statement “There exists an external world that is independent of our consciousness”. The corresponding statement “The desk in front of me exists as a part of my external world and it is independent of my consciousness” is simply true whatever the result of this realism debate. Cf. the above subsection about phenomenalism. So what more do the realists want to say about the desk and its existence? Do they think that the statement must be true in a different way, too?

As the realists’ idea of external world is not about the things about us, understood in the way we talk about them, it may perhaps be dealing with a concept about things in themselves, somehow. However, from what should an attribution of meaning to this concept start if it were possible at all? Such an idea would have to be to the effect that things do not only exist the way we perceive them, but also as something extra besides our sense impressions and their regularity. They would then have to ascribe meaning to this idea.

However, the extra thing the realists want to put into statements about our external world cannot be justified as “Something must exist out there that causes our sensations”. For also this statement has a well-defined meaning already, that is not in contradiction to the opponent’s view, anti-realism. In general, we cannot put anything else in the statement that something is caused by something else than a reference to a demonstrated regularity in nature.

The text is worded for the philosophically initiated. Those readers who do not know the problem will not be able to understand it. Probably they will only understand it literally. But how is the subject to be described, then?

A tentative version could be:

The problem of the external world is about what we shall understand the concept of an external world and its physical objects. The realists assert that things exist in themselves, possibly as a material basis of our sensations. On the contrary, according to phenomenalism we construe the concept of a thing based on our sense impressions and their regularity, while according to anti-realism it only has sense to put forward statements that can be substantiated or verified.

A very short version is:

“The problem of the external world deals with how we shall understand statements about our external world. Two opposite points of view are represented today by realism and anti-realism. A position between is constituted by phenomenalism.”

This latter version takes as a starting point the present status of the debate and cannot be criticised in the same way as the version of the lexicon. It can be further developed with the realists’ description of realism and the anti-realists’ description of anti-realism and with the phenomenalists’ description of phenomenalism. Such a description of the different parts’ points of view of their own terms is exactly what is neglected in the lexicon. On this basis, however, they can be fairly discussed.

From the preceding arguments, it appears that the realists must argue for 1) why our unproblematic talk about an external world does not imply that what we talk about actually makes up an external world understood as an inevitable regularity, and 2) what more is demanded for something to be an external world. The realists will perhaps assert that the reverse is the case: that the anti-realists speak with two voices because they assert that what we call “an external world” is not real in the sense the realists defend, at the same time as they think that they can say the same things as the realists can about things we handle in the space around us. On the contrary, however, this is the very reason why the realists have to answer the two questions. They must make good that there is the asserted discrepancy in the anti-realists’ talk. First, though, they must explain how the statement “An external world exists” can be understood different from “There are things in space”, and how. At the same time, they must take a position on the following arguments.

7.2.3 Objects.

As regards things, we are dealing with regularity in our external world. It is because of this regularity that we are justified in talking about things – not the other way about. The reason for this is that we cannot infer 1) that things in themselves exist as something fundamental to our knowledge and 2) that (through a number of connecting links) these things cause the regularity of our observations, for that would presuppose that we know these things in themselves in advance:

It is not so that we have knowledge of something we can call “things in themselves” and from this knowledge get an idea of things. For we do not relate to such an entity, but to our sense impressions.

We receive impressions of wholes, and it is because of their systematic connection that we can use the concept of things at all. This is the logical order of the basis of our cognition concerning objects.

This wording certainly resembles Berkeley’s idea of a thing ([Berkeley 88], § 1, p. 53), however where Berkeley talks about what constitutes the concept of a thing, the above wording deals with assertion conditions. As earlier discussed, thus, we do not use conclusions to establish the existence of a definite thing, such as Berkeley asserts, unless the circumstances are so unfavourable that it calls for scrutiny to orientate oneself. This perception of wholes is the first given. Of course, this does not mean that we cannot sense details, such as colours, as something subordinate. However, without the systematic connection of our impressions of wholes, we would not have been able to talk about things.

Perhaps, some realists will object that atoms and electrons exist as a material basis of our sensations, i.e. as our external world. However, the postulated existence of these particles is only to consider as useful assumptions that can be used for description and prediction of the phenomena, and therefore they neither contradict anti-realism nor confirm realism. Moreover, these assumptions are just based on our observations of things in the shape of wholes.

7.3 Solipsism.

According to [Gyldendal 2006], solipsism is

“the consequence of an extreme epistemological idealism that deprives reality, including other persons, of any existence except as the contents of consciousness of the ego” [11]

This is simply not a correct definition, as there is no necessary connection between idealism and solipsism. For it is possible to be a solipsist without being an idealist. Thus, it is possible to describe and defend solipsism without referring to idealism. Not least, it is also possible to defend idealism without defending solipsism.

It is not stated in the text to which specific idealism the expression “an extreme epistemological idealism” refers. Certainly, it would also be interesting to know when or how a version of idealism can be extreme. As the expression is in indefinite form, it does not necessarily refer to a particular idealism. If the expression is not intended to refer to a particular idealism, it must denote some “epistemological idealism”, X, or other with some characteristics that have some consequence, Y, or other, which, true enough, is not described in the text, but is called “solipsism”. Because of these obscurities, the text is very little informative.

What this unknown consequence, Y, “solipsism”, consists in remains unclearified in the article. Perhaps what author means, but does not say directly, is that any idealism that has the stated qualities is extreme and results in solipsism. In that case, however, the reader still lacks an explanation of what solipsism is. Perhaps the author means that solipsism consists in the very possession of the stated qualities, i.e. the result of the mentioned deprivations; but in that case, we are not dealing with a consequence in the usual sense of that word. For then, the meaning of the description would be that solipsism is the consequence of the traits that characterize solipsism.

It is not clear whether such kind of idealism exists; as mentioned, however, the decisive thing is that solipsism is not contingent on idealism. Furthermore, solipsism is not implied by every kind of idealism. This is developed further below in this subsection. The stated characteristic of the “extreme epistemological idealism”, however, corresponds to the meaning of the word “solipsism”, so we can base the discussion on this sense.

I regret these prolix comments. However, it appears as if the short article has been “deformed”, so to say, possibly with the purpose of putting in the characteristic “extreme”. (The mere talk of an extreme idealism suggests that idealism has the possibility of getting extreme, that it has the root of it, just as when persons talk about extreme left-wingers.) In fact, a clearer version of this text would simply say that solipsism is

a philosophy “that deprives reality, including other persons, of any existence except as the contents of consciousness of the ego." (I.e. as in the article¹¹, only with a new introduction.)

In this way, we also avoid the secondary idea that solipsism presupposes idealism. Hereafter the author can add that some philosophers assert that idealism can be “so extreme that it results in solipsism”.

As mentioned, however, idealism does not necessarily imply solipsism: Idealists an anti-realist can thus without problems talk of other persons and their behaviour, including their manifestations of life and statements. This can be substantiated analogously to the argument for our ability to talk about things. (Cf. the subsection “Things” in the subsection “The problem of the external world”.) In our contact to other human beings, we simply relate to the behaviour of the persons in question, and not to another person’s consciousness. In a similar way, the regularity of this behaviour, and its at times surprising lack of regularity, give us a basis of having a concept of other persons’ contents of consciousness, i.e. to put forward statements about other persons’ sense impressions, thoughts, memories, etc. – not reversely. Here, especially lacking regularity of other persons behaviour, viz. the frequent surprises and their unexpected newness, constitutes the decisive basis of our talk about other persons’ consciousness understood as something individual and independent, i.e. the basis of our use of terms such as “your consciousness” and “his consciousness”. We can even make us this concept without use of analogy.

Certainly, we can imagine that other persons have an inner life by analogy with our own. In that case, however, we are just dealing with an imagination only, and the question is whether this basis of comparison is necessary and fruitful. Just as our talk about things was made possible by the regularity of our sense impressions alone, by which the concept of a thing in itself is rendered superfluous, in the same way we do not need a concept of consciousness in itself. We have already seen how the concept of our own consciousness is redundant.[12]

7.3.1 The concept of other persons’ consciousness.

Correspondingly, the clarification of the concept of other persons’ consciousness deals with which semantic meaning it has to attribute sense impressions, feelings, thoughts, and memories to other persons. The problem resembles the fact that we cannot attribute a literal reality to the past, not only because such a reality cannot be experienced, but also because we are dealing with the introduction of a completely new, conceptually unclarified entity. In these treatises, it has been argued against the semantic possibility of such introductions in several contexts. (Cf. also the section “The concept of useful assumption in the realism debate”.) As we notoriously do not experience other persons’ sense-impressions and never can do it, the idea about them can only be a construction or just an imagination, whether we like it or not. Contrary to this, we can experience other persons’ attitude and experiences in other ways. This has been discussed above. (Cf. also the subsection “Further clarification of the problem of solipsism” in Treatise No 2.)

When we hear our interlocutor talk about things, and their appearance and behaviour, it is not necessary to conclude that the mentioned sense impressions are manifestations of things in themselves - not even to form ideas of it. In the same way, we do not either need to imagine that the expressions and ideas a person talks about originate in a consciousness in itself. Below, it will be discussed whether this is expedient at all. We can think that a specific surface is pale green, while the interlocutor may assert that it is turquoise blue. This we can discuss in different ways without being in need of imagining that our interlocutor has colour perception and how it is. On the contrary, such imaginations would be disturbing, as what we have to be describe to the other person are our own understanding, our own comparisons of different colours, our other arguments, and comparisons with the interlocutor’s statements about it. The corresponding reasoning can be put forward concerning an interlocutor’s aesthetic statement that he thinks that the surface in question has a beautiful colour.

As to the interlocutor’s statements about his feelings, we cannot literally observe his feelings as such, as far as this concept has sense at all, only 1) listen to his statements about the cause of his feelings, 2) experience his possible passion and perhaps 3) observe the cause of his feelings. We may ourselves have experienced something similar, if not the situation in its entirety, then perhaps some of the details separately. Moreover, we can also ourselves have feelings in the same connection about which we can talk with the interlocutor.

In the cases where we know that another person is in a certain situation, e.g. in danger, we can try to familiarize ourselves with the situation. This corresponds to the fact that we can imagine a celestial body being at a specific place in a specific orbit where we have no possibility of seeing it, though we can decide its position theoretically. In both cases, we can later get our ideas confirmed, but only as ideas and only as theoretic constructions, respectively, as this is what they are. As to human feelings, our ideas concerning persons about whom we know that they are in danger can similarly be confirmed, if the persons in question tell us about it when the crisis is over.

Here, then, it may be objected that a person in danger has definite feelings at any time, whether we can confirm this or not. However, whether this example has semantic meaning or not we cannot be dealing with available facts that we can relate to as such. For we have nothing else to relate to than the fictions we make about this person’s situation. This corresponds to the fact that we can only deal with fictions about the future, but not with a real future, as it has no sense to talk about en reel future. For we can at most be dealing with ideas of something inaccessible in both cases: 1) experiences we cannot have, as it does not have meaning to talk about experiencing other persons’ feelings directly, and 2) a future we cannot be in, as this is contained in the concept of future.

Moreover, logically enough, we are hindered in understanding other persons as substantially different from ourselves by our ideas that they are quite like ourselves in principle, just with a slightly different proportioning of the same attributes. The reason is that without such a basic view of other persons, we can be more open towards what other persons express. For this purpose, it would not help just to attribute a kernel of consciousness that exists in itself to other persons, as we would have no basis of characterizing it – except by means of what the persons in question express. Thus, the concept of such a kernel of consciousness is without use as it can at most be an idea. However, we do not need to relate to a mere idea, but to what we are confronted with.

Here, a question appears that reminds of the one that appeared in connection to the problem of the external world: From what shall such an attribution of meaning to the concept of another person’s contents of consciousness start? Certainly, we can conclude by analogy with our own contents of consciousness, but that would only provide a basis for an imagination, which, as already described, would be fatal to understanding and immediacy. Expressed with a certain realistic flavour, it cannot either be a question of comparing the two experiences, that of somebody else and mine, as we only know one of them.

We can see other persons and their actions, and as in principle we have a possibility of meeting other persons we do not see now, it also has sense to talk about other persons we do not see, and their behaviour. However, as far as it is known, we can never have a chance to observie other persons’ contents of consciousness, i.e. share their memory, thoughts, and sense impressions with them in a literal sense. Thus, it has no sense to talk about relating to this contents of consciousness in a literal sense in the same way as to that of one’s own. It only has sense to talk about other persons’ contents of consciousness in the sense that we can thereby have a communication that works.

Terms that can be used to describe our own contents of consciousness are only an aid in communication with other persons. As mentioned, used as aid for sympathetic insight in other persons’ consciousness or feeling, it is limiting and misleading. Thus, it is difficult to understand a person that has devoted his life to get a firm going, though he has failed in this attempt before, at least for the author of this article to whom life has other values. However, in order to discuss with him what the good life is, it is no good trying to identify oneself with his contents of consciousness. For that would be a question of finding out how one would be oneself in his place – completely without any basis of grasping this somewhat self-contradictory project. Instead, it is a question of utterances and challenges.

7.3.2 Summary.

The idea of an external world that somehow consists of things in themselves showed no grasp of the subject, because no semantic meaning can be attributed to this idea. In a similar way, we have seen that the idea of a consciousness in itself versus the scenario of solipsism the realists want to set out falls to the ground too. Thus, it is made clear that the idea of solipsism dissolves itself. On the other hand, if did were not, it would be necessary to accept solipsism. For idiosyncrasies or antipathy towards points of view are of course not in themselves arguments for or against anything.

Here, the following conclusions have been drawn. It only has sense to talk about 1) what we are confronted with, including sense impressions and their regularity, and 2) our thinking and what we can infer by it, such as scientific constructions understood as theoretical models. However, we are not confronted with anything we can call other persons’ consciousness in a literal sense, only with statements and behaviour. Moreover, it has been argued that it is unnecessary and misleading to say that these originate from a literally existing kernel of consciousness, as this cannot have any literal sense. As mentioned, we have memory impressions about having fetched things that are behind other things, and for that reason, we can make fictions about how we can do that again, but we have no memory impressions about having observed other persons’ consciousness. On the other hand, we can talk with other persons about their visual impressions and feelings in a way that works, without it being necessary to understand this talk literally. In these cases, we are at most using words that work without any literal reference.

When we are dealing with other persons, as mentioned it only has a limited effect just to imagine a modified copy of our own consciousness, it may even be misleading. For in this way, we only imagine a variant of something we know, an imagination with a misleading label, “other persons’ consciousness”. We do not always imagine what we believe that we imagine; and in this case, we imagine something we cannot attribute a substantiated semantic meaning to, i.e. describe in a semantically meaningful way. The decisive point in this discussion is that our talk about other persons’ consciousness is analogous to our talk of our own consciousness, as both are only something we call ”consciousnesses”, each in his own way.

It can be concluded that to the anti-introductionism the solipsism debate is not about attributing versus not attributing of existence to anything, neither of something we can call other persons’ consciousness. Put in other words, the world is so furnished that it does not have meaning to talk about a number of discussed entities, e.g. consciousness in a literal sense.

7.4 The realist’s conception of anti-realism.

The following is an attempt to describe how the realists may understand anti-realism, based on their arguments and their expressed dislike.

The thought occurs that some of the realists’ arguments against anti-realism are only reactions against their own misunderstood conception of both idealism and a linguistic understanding of our existence statements. For why else should anti-realism repel the realists so much as the article in the lexicon suggests with its realist presuppositions and its unwillingness?

What underlies this unjustified dissociation from anti-realism may be the assumption that phenomenalism implies that reality is like a vivid dream, or as a sort of “virtual reality”, i.e. that it is a delusion, or that it lacks something it ought to have to be quite real. However, this view of phenomenalism is again to see this philosophy in a realist context, i.e. assuming that realism is the right point of view. For according to this picture of phenomenalism, worded with a realistic touch, the world is completely in accordance with a realist view, except that the real existing physical objects are “missing”, though we receive the usual sensations. However, nothing is missing according to phenomenalism and anti-realism. We do not need any basis of our sense impressions as they and their regularity are the primary qualities of reality, and we cannot attribute meaning to this unclear concept of “things in themselves” or “things per se” that realism presupposes. Instead, the regularity of our impressions of wholes is enough to us, and we have no reasons to introduce more than that either. If what is called “virtual reality” is the only thing that exists, this alleged “virtual reality” is not an appearance, but the only reality, and thus not virtual reality.

These articles have earlier cleared up the faulty criticism of phenomenalism that Friedrich Nietzsche advances in Jenseits von Gut und Böse and the one that Henri Bergson advances in Matière et mémoire[13]. These examples show how some realists chose their own realism as their starting point in their conception of anti-realism. Obviously, these realists imagine that the anti-realist thinks that the world is “the way it really is”, i.e. the way it is according to realism, only with an essential modification, viz. an absence. They argue as if the anti-realists think that the space round about us is empty or absent, since only sense impressions exist, “as if there were things in a space around us”. However, this is not necessarily an idea shared by all anti-realists. Thus, anti-introductionism has substantiated quite another view.

The realists’ own view must necessarily presuppose a concept of “things in themselves” or something like that. For without the supposition about the existence of something extra, realism concerning objects does not imply anything different from what anti-realism does, since the anti-realists can talk about the things around us, just as the realists can, at least in our everyday life. In these treatises, it has thus been argued that we are not necessarily ontologically committed by our usage [14]. Since the anti-realist’s usage works, there is no contradiction between his philosophy and his usage. Thus, nothing in his usage commits him to putting forward unnecessary assertions about “things in themselves” or “things per se”. Nevertheless, the realist obviously wishes to include more in his description of the furniture of the world than what is necessary according to anti-realism.

It must here be acknowledged that the anti-introductionist argument, often referred to, for rightly considered our not being ontologically committed by our usage is superfluous and even misleading, though it is correct. For the very presentation of this argument suggests the existence of a problem in this connection - like the factual problem described in the counterexample with our talk about screen pictures behind other screen pictures on a PC screen. This talk about pictures on a pc-screen works despite of its being in contradiction to facts. However, there is no contradiction in the anti-realists’ and in the phenomenalists’ talk about things. If the phenomenalist says that there is a bunch of fresh flowers on the table in the room next door, then the listeners of course know what is meant: the statement can be clarified and substantiated. The same applies to the details of these explanations.

In spite of such an apparently lacking significance or difference, a philosophy can be important to our world scheme and have consequences in other connections. Thus, anti-introductionism can escape a reification of the human being. Moreover, compare what is advanced about impressions of wholes in the section “Literal interpretations of scientific theories” above.

From the realists’ point of view, the problem of the external world is about the statement “There is an external world” which the realists approve and seek to prove. However, this view of the problem of the external world is mainly an internal question to realists, as it does not comprise the question of semantic meaning. For that reason, the realists’ endeavours do not lead to a clarification of this part of the debate between realists and anti-realists. However, the realists of course have to be able to explain the meaning of their statements, i.e. expound what the realism debate is about, in a way that does not presuppose realism. Contrary to that, this question is not the same kind of problem to the realists’ opposite party, the anti-realists, for to them this part of the realism debate clearly deals with the semantic meaning of our statements about material objects as a central subject.

7.4.1 Conclusion.

Concerning the relation between the problem of the external world and realism concerning material objects, it has been made clear that the problem of the external world is only a problem to adherents of realism concerning material objects. Therefore, if we think that the problem of the external world is in fact a problem we are realists concerning material objects. It is also so that if we are realists then we have the problem of the external world. For to a realist there would be a difference between being able to prove that something exists and the very existence of this; and for this reason, he would at least accept the idea of an external world existing in a material sense independently of any available substantiation of the existence of this external world.

However, as mentioned also the anti-realists can assert that there is an external world in a material sense, viz. a world with things, anti-realistically construed. However, the realists will accept neither the phenomenalist nor the anti-realist construction of the concept of an external world. They regard them as far-fetched with the argument that they do not correspond to a real, external world. On the other hand, as mentioned, the anti-realists can argue for the claim that the realists cannot attribute meaning to their point of view in another way than the half-metaphoric way criticised above.

Here, the realism debate are again dealing with word-meaning, as this realist viewpoint is an example of use of words that certainly have a definite meaning in many connections, viz. the substantival term “external world” used about the things we deal with, but which the realists also want to use in some extra sense they cannot expound. With this, we are dealing with a sequences of signs, “external world” to which a sense must be attributed before it can be used in a sentence in any extra sense.

The realists’ view of anti-realism can be compared with the view that some meat-eaters (and some vegetarians) have on a vegetarian meal. When they see a plate with vegetable food, they will have the idea that some of the vegetables must be supposed to replace the meat. They are not able to disregard their basic view of a real meal as consisting of meat plus accompaniments and to understand a vegetarian meal as consisting of approximately equal components. For that reason, they cannot understand that vegetarians do not need a concept of meat or a replacement of it in their cooking.

In a similar way, anti-realists do not need a concept of thing in itself in their philosophy. The fact that all comparisons are limited, however, shows itself in that the idea of a thing in itself is not just something that can be chosen just as the components of a meal can, but has to be substantiated.

8.Philosophy as science.

Philosophy is neither poetry nor wishful thinking. Done in the right way, philosophy is a science.

As argued for above and in earlier treatises, the specific methods of natural science cannot be used in philosophy, as science creates theoretical models for prediction of the phenomena, while philosophy always involves the question of what we can at most put into our existence statements. However, if there is scientific spirit in philosophy, it must be by satisfying the following demands that this scientific spirit manifests itself:

The answer to a philosophical question, e.g. concerning the problem of the external world and solipsism, must not be influenced by a definite wish for the outcome, e.g. that this must not be contra-intuitive or lead to other problems. The answer must neither be based on idiosyncratic wishes, i.e. demands that cannot be based on the case itself.

If the answer to a question is unavoidable, possible implicated problems ought not to result in a rejection of the answer. On the contrary, such problems ought to result in further philosophic clarification.

If someone seeks comfortable solutions, of course this may imply that he reaches a wrong solution, or rather, that he thus chooses it, as he wants to satisfy himself with the first comfortable solution that presents itself. However, there are no reasons that the right solutions should be comfortable. Therefore, neither idiosyncrasies nor assertions that something is contra-intuitive can make up arguments against anything, and assertions that something seems attractive are not arguments for anything. Only empiric and rational arguments can make up that. Thus, it is necessary to defy one’s idiosyncrasies and not with all means struggle against the object of one’s unfounded dislike. Instead, it is necessary to reach results by reasoning, and do it definitively.

Thus it does not express philosophical thinking just to assert “This is my X-philosophy” and then present some invented ideas and explain that they have these and these advantages and can solve these and these problems. On the contrary, the true philosophical activity forces the philosophising problem to draw inevitable conclusions from basal facts, as philosophy is about understanding and justification, and as this of course demands an investigation of the semantic meaning of the discussed statements.

Without this scientific spirit, no endeavour to develop philosophy is obtained, only a production of dissertations whose most essential contents is unphilosophical. This fact will of course not be better just because the products are accepted by persons who have the same attitude towards philosophy, which can be the risk.

If philosophy is just done as a countermeasure, the philosophic science will not be developed.

Yielding to idiosyncrasies makes it difficult to contribute to the progress of philosophy, as it blocks both the possibility of finding the right solutions and inspiration to subsequent clarification.

Possibly this clarification cannot make the found solutions appear less contra-intuitive, but the obtaining of a contra-intuitive result must not be the crucial criterium. The very obtaining of contra-intuitive solutions is of course not a quality in itself. On the other hand, such results ought not to be deterrent.

Instead of advancing philosophic poetry and wishful thinking, it is better to concentrate upon what little that can be attained. In this way, the result of one’s philosophy can be a premise of the argument for other thoughts, or in other ways lead to new philosophical reasoning.

If this recommendation is not followed, we risk getting a rank of philosophical high priests that certainly does not defend their own insight, but on the contrary – in the name of philosophy – defend their own lacking insight and understanding, which must not be disturbed but be readily propagated. The reason is that if a philosopher’s ideas are only created by dreaming, and thus not supported by arguments but just inspired by his idiosyncrasies, he will have no arguments against criticism of them. This means that he will only possess sinister pictures of the objects of his idiosyncrasies, evoked by his own misunderstood and unreflected idea of his adversary’s view.

The lacking philosophical insight may for instance consist in the already criticized assumption that idealism and other forms of anti-realism can be understood and discusses in a realist context, which is not the same as making them the objects of a realist criticism. Among the cheap ideas can be the earlier criticised idea that it is philosophically acceptable to assert that our linguistic understanding is simply stored in our brain, without clarifying which semantic meaning that idea has, and so much the less substantiating this idea.

The view, for instance, that the anti-introductionistic concept of time is contra-intuitive because it is against common sense ideas, does not make it faulty; on the contrary, we are here dealing with a pointing out superfluous introductions. And this is exactly why this concept of time can inspire us to further considerations, e.g. concerning what the diachronic sciences deal with. As regards both the concept of null morph and the anti-introductionistic concept of time, not common sense is the judge, but logic and arguments.

9. The velocity of time.

Time seems to have a velocity. However, this supposition presupposes that the statement “Time has a velocity” has a semantic meaning; and that is certainly dubious:

We know what the velocity of a car is. The velocity of a running car at a certain moment is the distance Ds covered by the car in a short period at that moment divided by the duration of the period Dt, that is, unit of length per unit of time. If we try to understand the expression “the velocity of time” analogous to “the velocity of the car”, we first get the problem that we cannot say “the time moves” relative to something else in any way and certainly not in the same way as a car moves relative to e.g. a milestone on a road. However, we cannot either talk about the velocity of the moment, as a moment is fixed on the time-axis. Instead, let us assume that we can talk about the velocity of the now, for instance relatively to a point on an abstract time axis, i.e. at a specific time. In this sense, the velocity of time must be the distance covered by the now during a short period Dt divided by the length of the period Dt. According t this, the velocity of time is Dt/Dt. Thus, the velocity of time is always equal to the integer 1. As expected, this tells us nothing about what it should mean that time has a velocity.

Moreover, we must ask the question, “What is moving?” If we try to understand the expression “the velocity of time” as the amount of experiences in relation to some standard amount of experiences during the same lapse of time, time is passing fast if we experience more that this amount per time unit. This is certainly in accordance with the fact that time seems to pass slowly if nothing happens. On the other hand, it seems to be inconsistent with the fact that a week's holiday with many new experiences, when we look back upon it, may appear longer than an ordinary week. For according to the assumption, on the contrary it is supposed to go faster. The same applies to the first week at a new job, the first week at a new study, etc. Later, however, we may experience the same during a week, but time may nevertheless seem to have another velocity. We have thus memories of periods of time when time passed especially quickly or seemed to stand still that are contrary to the above definition. Under all circumstances, the definition of “the velocity of time” as the amount of experiences per time unit has nothing to do with the concept of velocity such as the velocity of an object is defined in other connections. Instead, it simply just expresses the amount of experiences per unit of time, i.e. the velocity or flow of our experiences.

However, the remarkable thing is the very fact that in the same kinds of situations, especially in everyday situations, time at all seems to have the definite velocity it appears to have in the situation in question, and not a different velocity, e.g. such as it appears to me now when I reflect on this question. However, this fact we must attribute to our lack of understanding of time; for this uniform impression is not caused by time passing in a uniform way. The reason is simply that what we experiences is not something we can call “movement of the now”, “the passing of time” or “the velocity of time”, at all; instead it is the very now we experience. In this way, it has no literal meaning to talk about the passage of time. Thus, the now cannot be interpreted as a point on a time-axis or as a piece of a time-axis, except when we refer to the construction that the time axis makes up.

10. Science and reality.

In his work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ([Kuhn 70]), Thomas Samuel Kuhn does not relate to the scientific realism debate in a philosophically broad way. Instead, he is mainly occupied with the activities of science with the intention of working out a theory about scientific revolutions. Thus, the mentioned work mainly deals with theory of science, with an element of philosophy of science. Contrary to this, anti-introductionism is mainly occupied with the semantic meaning of our statements, including scientific theories.

Nevertheless, Kuhn discusses three questions that also concern the realism debate. These questions are 1) whether there is a finite scientific truth of the world, 2) whether Newton’s physics is a special case of Einstein’s relativity theory, and 3) whether scientists have to do with different worlds before and after a paradigm shift.

It must be emphasized that discussing the methods of science is not a part of the fundamental task of this treatise. Instead, the treatise deals with the question of which semantic meaning can be attributed to the scientific theories. Thus, the main aim of these commentaries to Kuhn’s just mentioned touch with the realism debate in his work is not to criticize Kuhn’s introduction of the concept of paradigm changes understood as ideas of science as such, but exactly to relate these ideas to the realism debate.

10.1 The idea of a final scientific truth about the world.

Concerning the realist idea about the final scientific truth about the world, Kuhn advances that though the development of science can be described as a process that stepwise gives us a more end more detailed and refined understanding of nature we are not dealing with a development towards something definite. ([Kuhn], p. 170) However, this point of view is not directly decisive to the realism debate for though it is not in contradict anti-realism, it is neither in contradiction to the realist point of view that the world is in a definite way, whether we can decide which way, or not, and whether it has semantic sense to talk about this at all.

In his amplification in “Postscript” in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn advances that assertions that theories come nearer to the truth are not about theoretic predictions but about the correspondence between ‘the entities with which the theory populates nature and what is “really there.”’. ([Kuhn], p. 206) Kuhn rejects the referred concept of truth with the justification that it is not possible to talk about what is “really there”, independently of a theory, as he regards the idea of a correspondence between what her calls ‘the ontology of a theory and its “real” counterpart in nature’ as “illusive”. ([Kuhn], p. 206)

An obvious comment on this view is that if what we describe as “what is really there” depends on a theory, of course it cannot “really be there” in the sense of realism. Nevertheless, this comment does not contradict the realist point of view that the world is in a definite way in all its details. For the realist can assert that his point of view is not in contradiction to the view that science just cannot discover these details, which according to the realist are really there. With his answer, Kuhn does thus not thoroughly deal with this realist point of view and thus neither with the question of whether the description of the point of view can have semantic sense, and if so, which sense and how it can be substantiated.

Kuhn admits that there possibly may be a way in which theories can be regarded as true, but that this cannot consist in the scientific development creating a sequence of theories that converges towards the truth. ([Kuhn], p. 206) Kuhn’s reasons are that this idea is not in accordance to the history of science, as the replacement of theories does not suggest a certain direction as to their ontological assertion. ([Kuhn], p. 206/7)

It must here be remarked that there is a decisive difference between the following two views on possible existence:

a) Just considering whether a supposed entity is in fact real or not, without involving the question whether it has any semantic meaning to assert its existence. Cf. the atheist who neither has rejected that the sign sequence “god” should have a semantic meaning nor in principle excludes that this sequence of signs could have reference, but suppose to have refuted assertions about the existence of such a (putative) entity.

b) Regarding it as the most important point to consider whether the statements about the putative entity discussed in principle can have semantic meaning at all. Cf. the not-religious person who thinks that he can make good that religious sign sequences cannot have any semantic meaning.

A special case of a) consists in considering whether a definite entity can be real under any circumstances, but still without involving the question whether these considerations have semantic meaning. Obviously, this group of considerations includes Kuhn’s philosophical considerations as to the idea of correspondence between a theory and a definite reality (in so far that concept has meaning).

The facts of the history of science on which Kuhn’s philosophy of science is based are in principle accidental. Of course, it is possible to be philosophically inspired by specific scientific experiences, but if the philosophic result has to have substance, it must consist in philosophic statements that are independent of accidental experiences. Treatise No 4 of these treatises about our cognitive situation contains an example of philosophy that starts from the experience that the description of a synchronic grammar of a language can apparently be improved continually, but of which the philosophic result is exactly independent of these experiences. For it is possible to draw the inevitable conclusion that it has no sense to talk about a final, completed grammar.[15] As mentioned, this result is not due to a deficiency of our faculties of knowledge, but due to an attribute of our relation to language and grammar. Put in another way, this fact is an attribute of our cognitive situation.

Thus, it can be concluded that the very fact that we within a certain field of experience can predict more and more phenomena with still finer details and at the same time include new areas, does not mean that we approach a final truth within the field of experience in question. For we are not in general justified in asserting that there is a final truth, as there can be stated at least one counter example of the assertion about such a truth. This is constituted by the just mentioned fact that even within grammar the concept of a final truth has no sense. The grammatical example is described in detail below.

10.1.1 The concept of a final grammar.

It will here be presupposed that grammatical rules concern competent language users’ usage. Most persons have experienced that a text can contain a sentence they regard as grammatically wrong, but that they only subsequently and in the light of this experience were able to phrase a grammatical rule that applies to the case in question. The problem is that we cannot in advance phrase all the grammatical rules of a language in such a way that we will never experience such grammatical surprises again. Moreover, it is here of no use to have come across however many cases of such grammatical examples. This is in itself paradoxical, for how can we be in possession of all these rules?

Let us now assume that we can pose a grammatical rule for a certain type of sentences. We can then formulate this rule in a way that does not refer to any linguistic feeling, such that it can be expressed to other persons, i.e. logically exact. This can be put into practice by formulating the rules by means of predicate logic. Next, we can try to parse sentences by means of this predicate logical result If the trial can be carried through but rejects correct sentences or accepts wrong ones, the rule is neither sufficiently comprehensive nor precise. We will often experience that. It must be pointed out that we are here occupied with grammatical rules at the synchronic level of language, for which reason this difficulty with the completion cannot be due to linguistic changes.

It can be adduced as concerning the testing material that firstly, it is necessary to define the concept of “a certain type of sentences” and not least, to describe each type. Secondly, these descriptions also call for trials. However, these tasks resemble so much the problems with respectively the descriptions of the grammar rules and the trial of them that they constitute yet an example of the potentially infinite depth of the explanation structure. Certainly, this fact becomes inferior, “bracketed”, if we (imagine that we) work out a grammar for the whole language and test it on a corpus; this means that now we cannot blame the grammar-testing problem on the difficulties with the definitions of the sentence types. However, the problem with the grammatical tests will remain.

10.1.2 Conclusion about grammar and natural science.

The conclusion is that at no time or stage of the development of a grammar, will we be able to prove that we have now reached the bottom of the description of a logically formulated grammar. For we cannot rebut that there still may arise a need of adding more details to the already composed rules. Thus, we cannot make out whether we have described all the rules or whether we have tested the sentences thoroughly enough, even at the synchronic level.

The similar thing applies to the laws of nature. As to natural sciences, we cannot prove either that it is in principle possible to finish a theoretic description of what we call “the laws of nature”, i.e. to give a complete and final description of these. For that reason, it has no sense to talk about the existence of a final scientific truth about the world, and eo ipso, it does not have sense either to assert that we can find a definite finished description of the world. Put in another way, we can never obtain reasons to assert that there are a finite number of types of phenomena and that we have observed all these types, and described them completely.

Without it being necessary to this very argumentation at all, it must be realized that these results are not quite surprising as regards natural scientific theories. For these will constantly call for further amplification of the established causes. Contrary to that, it may seem contra-intuitive, and thus yet more interesting that also the grammatical structure is potentially infinitely deep. As mentioned, we cannot disprove that we can constantly find new details in our so-called grammatical rules or new unknown instances for which we can find rules. The crux of this is that

even if we can realize which changes we must make in the so far developed grammar when we have realized that it cannot accept a statement we regard as correct, or cannot reject a statement we regard as wrong, we cannot describe these rules in advance.

This poses a problem to those who want to advance that our language can exist encoded or in another way in the brain, in addition as a hidden knowledge.

Example: The idea that at some time or other it will be possible to read another person’s thoughts by means of a sort of scanning, presupposes an exposition of the read signs. This involves a working out of a logical, detailed description of the scanned pattern of signs (the details of the neural structure) and of the language to which they are meant to be translated. The whole project is compounded by the fact that each person has his own grammar and, according to the line of thought, his own implementation of this in his brain. Moreover, this demands knowledge of the system of concepts of the person in question and of his knowledge.

The mere considerations above about the potentially infinite depth of grammar show that we will never be able to asset that such a research has been finished. Of course, something similar also applies to the translation rules, supported by arguments like those that were put forward in favour of the potentially infinite depth of grammar even on the synchronic plane.

Thus, it has been argued that it has no meaning to say that the world is in a definite way, as in no stage of the development of grammar or natural science we can know whether the explanations are finished, i.e. whether there are more details to be explained. As earlier touched on, it is worth noting that this is not due to fact that we have limited cognitive capabilities but that there is potentially infinite much to know.

We know what it means that something is final, that we can reach the end of a corridor. We are here dealing with concepts that can be used in our daily day. However, the above-criticized idea of a final truth about the world presupposes that words from our talk about our everyday experiences can be applied beyond their barriers as designation of this unclarified and undefined topic “the final scientific truth about the world”. For in this way, these applications only borrow an apparent semantic meaning from our talk about our everyday experiences.

Moreover, it is a problem what kind of truth the final scientific truth should consist in. It can only be a knowledge about which we must be able to justify that it does not have to be changed. It must have to consist of a finite number of components in order to be obtainable. However, the realistic idea that our situation can be completely described by referring to a finite number of components but in which we nevertheless can make self-dependent not-determined thoughts is problematic.

10.2 Is Newton’s physics a special case of Einstein’s theory of relativity at small velocities?

The following statement will be substantiated below. Given the substantiated premise that scientific theories are to be estimated based on their ability to predict the phenomena, we can answer in the affirmative at question two whether Newton’s physics is a special case of Einstein’s theory of relativity. The reason is that though the latter theory is the most far-reaching as regards the ability to predict the phenomena, the two theories can predict the same phenomena at small velocities.

What the theories can say about their own theoretic system of concepts has nothing to do with this question, however. Apparently, these can form the basis of different pictures of the world, but in reality, these world pictures are only pictures of the theoretical models themselves, not of the real world, i.e. the phenomena. The reason is that the theoretic entities are only introduced to make theories that can predict the phenomena. The way that the theories and the theoretic terms are used to make these predictions constitutes their semantic content. What the theories can say about the theoretic entities, however, only deals with their consistency, not with the very phenomena they are designed to predict, i.e. the world without the models.

According to the central thesis of Bas van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism, the purpose of science is to put forward theories that can predict the phenomena.[16] van Fraassen’s philosophy of science was discussed in Treatise No 4. It was here made good that this thesis is in accordance with anti-introductionism and its idea of the top down explanation structure. (However it is different with van Fraassen’s agnosticism.) Assuming this part of constructive empiricism, Isaac Newton’s physics, and Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity can predict the same phenomena at small velocities. (This can be done by means of the theories such as they are or by leaving out of account certain expressions in Einstein’s theory of relativity that become insignificant at small velocities. Kuhn’s own ideas about this are discussed below in this subsection.)

This means that the contents of these theories express the same at small velocities. For as long as measurable differences of the results of the two theories cannot be documented, it is superfluous to use the theory of relativity instead of Newton’s physics at small velocities. With other words, the decisive point is exactly that it can be made good that the same phenomena can be predicted by use of the two theories. It must thus be concluded that

if we regard scientific theories just as instruments to predict the phenomena, at small velocities Einstein’s theory of relativity has Newton’s physics as a special case.

On the other hand, the two theories form the bases of different pictures of the world, which is what Kuhn focuses on. This will be elaborated on later. The different pictures of the physical world are caused by a literal understanding of their different contents including their system of concepts and the different senses of these. However, the use of the theories does not require a literal understanding of the statements that contain terms of so-called not-observable entities. These terms only belong to a model, which lets us give free rein to our imagination about elementary particles colliding with other kinds of elementary particle with velocities near that of the light such that the theory of relativity comes into use, or about something even more imaginative, such as the spin of elementary particles. Scientists are at liberty to decide whether they want to understand their theories literally or not, if only the models can be used to predict the phenomena. However, as mentioned several times, the literal understanding of the scientific theories can have a limiting effect on scientific creativity. The reason is that this literal understanding is based on our everyday concepts.

10.2.1 Criticism of Kuhn’s answer.

In the section “The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions” Kuhn argues that Newton’s dynamics and that of Einstein are incompatible, such that it is impossible to accept Einstein’s dynamics without advocating that that of Newton is wrong. For this point of view Kuhn advances an argument that according to him shows the nature of scientific revolutions: If we 1) add the condition “(v/c)² << 1” to all of Einstein’ laws and 2) correct them in conformity with this, apparently they become identical to Newton’s laws at the velocities in question. (Here c denotes the velocity of light, while v denotes the velocity of the discussed object, in the actual inertial system.) According to Kuhn, however, the concepts of space, time, and mass in these laws still represent Einstein’s concepts of these, and not those of Newton. Thus, for instance the mass is constant according to Newton’s laws, but can be converted to energy according to those of Einstein. For that reason, the corrected versions of Einstein’s laws are not Newton’s laws, unless Newton’s laws are supplied with Einstein’s interpretations, Kuhn asserts. ([Kuhn], p. 101-2) (I.e. the corrected or reduced versions of Einstein’s laws become identical to the extended versions of Newton’s laws, according to Kuhn.)

Put more simply, so far, it is true enough that if the corrected versions of Einstein’s laws are still supplied with Einstein’s interpretations, not all their concepts are part of Newton‘s laws. However, Einstein’s concept of duration and its relativity to the frame of reference do not exist independently of Einstein’s laws, but are due to these as they are expressed in its theoretic formulas. This means that when Einstein’s concepts do not follow from the reduced versions of Einstein’s formulas, after the described reduction of Einstein’s laws, they are not relevant in these formulas. As footnotes detached from their context they do not have any sense, for without justification they are only fantasy. By his argumentation, Kuhn attempts to make the concepts of the theories to something special beside their usability for prediction in order to give them an independent metaphysical content, viz. a semantic meaning independent of their usability, which is self-contradictory. By this, Kuhn presupposes that these concepts have a validity independently of the formulae that express the theories, and that this validity is preserved in the special cases where (v/c)² << 1.

Kuhn’s argumentation simply has the structure: On the condition that the conceptual contents of Einstein’s laws has a meaning that is independent of these laws (which Kuhn presupposes), then the conceptual contents of these laws exists after the reduction. This is a tautology, for if this conceptual content is independent of the used laws, it is preserved at any change of them – for this is what lies in the premise - and thus it is preserved at the reduction to Newton’s laws. However, this premise is wrong, as it is exactly the theories that give the applied concepts their meaning. For instance, it is these theories that express how the mass is converted to energy.

Kuhn concludes that when we reduced Einstein’s formulae we “have had to alter the fundamental structural elements of which the universe to which they apply is composed”. ([Kuhn], p. 101/2, my underlining) No, as just explained, this happens because of the reduction itself.

Certainly, Kuhn is right in saying that Newton’s theory is wrong. However, it is only wrong because it is unable to predict the same phenomena as Einstein’s theory can predict, but not because it does not have the conceptual contents that Einstein’s theory implies. For, as explained, this difference simply follows from the fact that the formulae of the theories are different.

In fact, the latter conclusion is consistent with what Kuhn himself says about “the ontology of a theory”, as Kuhn rejects a correspondence between the theoretical entities and what there is in the world. ([Kuhn], p. 206). This is referred to above in the subsection “The idea of a final scientific truth about the world”.

In the preceding chapter “The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions”, Kuhn has adduced that Einstein’s and Newton’s theories are incompatible:

“From the viewpoint of this essay these two theories are fundamentally incompatible in the sense illustrated by the relation of Copernican to Ptolemaic astronomy: Einstein's theory can be accepted only with the recognition that Newton's was wrong.” ([Kuhn], P. 98)

However, it follows from the above discussion that Kuhn’s ideas of the incompatibility of theories are misleading as to Newton and Einstein’s theories. For as mentioned, the theories can make the same predictions at small velocities, which is the decisive criterion of their capability, while the conceptual interpretations are only a by-product of the formula of the theory and a characteristic of these. Contrary to that, the differences between the two mentioned cosmological theories are important in a way that makes them clearly incompatible. This is clarified in the next subsection.

10.3 Do scientists relate to different worlds before and after a paradigm change?

At the end of the chapter “The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions”, Kuhn advances that paradigms are “constitutive of science” and that he will even display “a sense in which they are constitutive of nature as well”. ([Kuhn], p. 110, my underlinings) However, Kuhn immediately moderates this at the beginning of the next chapter “Revolutions as Changes of World View”, where he just expresses that it can be tempting to say, “when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them”. Here on the one hand, Kuhn asserts that scientists see the world in a different light after a paradigm change, and on the other hand, that of course the world does not literally change at a paradigm change. ([Kuhn], p. 111, my underlining.) Kuhn finishes his considerations with the following cryptic compromise:

“(...) paradigm changes do cause scientists to see the world of their research-engagement differently. In so far as their only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution, scientists are responding to a different world.” ([Kuhn], p. 111, my underlinings.)

The quote is cryptic because Kuhn assumes a realistic view without mentioning this at all, let alone making it plain. For in order for Kuhn’s premise to lead to the conclusion, Kuhn must firstly refer to the physical world, and secondly presuppose that the referred world exists in itself somehow without being cognizable as it is in itself but only through what the scientists see and do. This must be understood such that the unknown qualities of this in itself existing world somehow influence the scientists sensations, and that the scientists can indirectly change these unknown qualities, which then can influence the scientists sensations, whereby the scientists, according to the line of thought, can know that they have changed certain qualities of this unknown world. This must in turn mean that the expression “the world of their research-engagement” has to be understood as referring to the putative world in itself. However, as already touched on, of course it has no sense to talk about such a world in itself, as it makes no difference. (Cf. the discussion of Kant’s concept of das Ding an sich in the subsection “Realism” in Treatise No 4.) Thus, it can be concluded:

The object of the scientists’ research is the phenomena. With their detailed behaviour, the scientists are confronted. Of these, the scientists have a new understanding after a scientific revolution.

The theoretical entities that form part of this research can e.g. be those of mechanics: forces, energy, torque, and those of nuclear physics, elementary particles and their qualities such as electric charge and spin. All these concepts have their origin in the phenomena, without which the concepts would just be incidental and useless.

First a literal interpretation will be discussed, under the assumption that Kuhn refers to the physical world, then a metaphorical, where Kuhn refers to the scientist’ research world.

10.3.1 A criticism of a literal interpretation.

Some may object, “Do you seriously think that it is sensible sense at all to discuss whether incidents in nature will pass off differently tomorrow just because some nuclear physicist has made some new scientific discoveries yesterday?” To this, it must be remarked that either paradigms are “constitutive of nature” or they are not, so when Kuhn uses the moderating phrase “a sense in which” the statement referred to can hardly have a literal sense. Thus, this clearly literal reading of Kuhn’s statement is not the primary subject of this discussion.

Nevertheless, there is a certain sense in examining the statement, as we must at least make clear what we can say about Kuhn’s statements, when now they have been put forward, irrespective of what Kuhn actually holds. Moreover, for principal, philosophical reasons, i.e. detached from this context, Kuhn’s theory of science, it is necessary to clarify what can be put into the sentence “Scientists relate to different worlds before and after a paradigm change” when now it has been stated. The principal reasons are these two: 1. Because the question has been raised at all. 2. Because it is a basic quality of philosophically activity that no question is too unworthy to be scrutinized, partly because no statement can be rejected or accepted without reason even when we have immediate view of it, partly because we cannot know what will appear on the way.

However, I must now for the first time make a personal remark and admit that in connection to this subject I have considered the possibility of being “caught in” common sense and the akin dislike for contra-intuitive results. Luckily, Hume’s elucidation of the problem of induction has shown that apparently contra-intuitive philosophical results can in fact be irrefutable.[17] Of course, it is purposeless to let oneself be influenced by common sense: since one of the purposes of philosophy is to search for a clarification of meaning, philosophy has to be neutral in face of contra-intuitive results and as mentioned above not exclude fundamental investigations.

Before the decisive argumentation is done, the following must be advanced.

As touched on above, Kuhn’s discussion necessarily concerns the phenomena, since the only thing that can meaningfully be said to be present to us, as regards nature, are the phenomena and their observable regularity. Based on our knowledge these, we make fictions about the physical world and its behaviour. At the same time, however, we assume that no changes concerning the regularity of the phenomena, e.g. the law of falling bodies, can occur, as we do not have any memory impressions of such fundamental changes.[18] This is elaborated on below.

As regards changes of our scientific picture of the world and its regularities, it must be remembered that according to these treatises, in the end also theories referring to the so-called not-observable entities are based on the phenomena. The objects handled by the scientists are observable, their qualities are observable, and the consequences of this handling are observable. Since not-observable entities are only abstract entities in theoretical models, introduced by scientists in order to predict the phenomena, it would be misleading to question whether the regularity of not-observable entities change or not in the theoretic models concerned. In principle, they can just be replaced together with the theories some day or other. It can at most have semantic meaning to assert that the regularity of the phenomena changes in such a way that the theories expressed by means of terms for the theoretic entities must be changed. Thus, the discussion the regularity of not-observable entities falls under the discussion concerning the phenomena.

For these fundamental reasons, we cannot be dealing with incompatibility at such replacements. This is quite analogous to the result of the comparison of with Newton’s and Einstein’s theories inclusive their theoretic values, which is discussed in the subsection “Is Newton’s physics a special case of Einstein’s theory of relativity at small velocities?”.

Therefore, we must conclude:

We do not have any empirical basis for forming bounded future-fictions that contain such changes of nature or of the regularity of the phenomena. For that reason, we regard this regularity as inevitable.

(The concept of fictions “bound by evidences” was discussed in Treatise No 4, “Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism”.)

In fact, we are disinclined to accept other changes than seeming changes of the experienced regularity. For we imagine that impressions that indicate changes of the very regularity can be attributed to a superior regularity is such a way, that the entire system of rules can be regarded as inevitable.

Thus, we have a realistically influenced inclination to think that the world is an inhomogeneous physical mass whose different components do not change their nature. It ought to be examined what can be put into this view of reality...

It cannot be so that scientific revolutions change any world in itself, as it has no semantic meaning to talk about such a world. It can at most be put forward that the regularity of the phenomena are changed at such revolutions. However, this possibility can be rejected.

The decisive counterargument against a literal understanding of the discussed statement is as follows.

It is true that after a scientific revolution the scientist sees the phenomena in a new way, namely in the sense that he puts something different in it, but his experience of the phenomena as such has not changed. For we can compare what a person educated in classical physics see with what the not yet educated person see. Certainly, there is the difference that the former will relate what he see to the theory of classical physics and eo ipso experience something different and more than the later will do. However, this difference only concerns his extra knowledge, for we can imagine that the latter person stepwise tells the scientist what he sees (if he has a good memory or perhaps refers to a film recoding of it). Then the scientist will be able to conclude the same as if he saw it himself. Thus, it is evident that nothing lacks in the layman’s sense impressions, and there are no deviations either compared with the scientist’s sense impressions. The functions of balances and measuring tapes do not change either. From this, it can be concluded:

The very phenomena do not change at a paradigm shift. Thus, we are only dealing with new intellectual experiences or evaluations, understood as something present besides the very sensations.

Expressed in other terms, this is the same as asserting that no physical change occurs at paradigm shifts.

10.3.2 A metaphoric interpretation.

By “the world of [the scientists’] research-engagement”, Kuhn apparently understands the physical world, but the following alternative could be imagined, especially if one does not understand realism, as Kuhn obviously does:

If by a scientist’s scientific world, we simply understand what the scientist relates to within his sphere, viz. theories, concepts, objects and experiments, it is just a tedious tautology to assert that scientists relate to a different scientific world before and after a paradigm change, for then they are replaced.

As to cosmology, paradigm shifts has caused persons changing from seeing the world outside the earth as a painted back scene to seeing it as a three dimensional space in which we can send satellites and get back again. This example of a paradigm shift thus shows that scientific revolutions increase man’s possibilities of acting. With other words: the scientific revolutions change what we can do to nature by means of nature. Thus, the paradigms can in fact be compared on the basis of how they can do this i.e. influence on the phenomena.

For that reason, it is not trite to say that the world changes after a scientific paradigm change, in the sense that the new paradigm becomes a new part of the world. This certainly does not change the regularity of the physical world, but as mentioned above, new possibilities enter into the world by virtue of a paradigm shift.

10.3.3 Conclusion.

In the same way, the world changes at any other new discovery. It is at most a question of difference in degree between these paradigm changes and those Kuhn discusses. Thus, the world became another world to mathematicians and scientist after the invention of the differential and integral calculus. This means that we are dealing with a general quality of discoveries and inventions.

Among other examples of paradigm change can be mentioned the concept of phoneme within phonology. Within philosophy can be mentioned the idea of using the concept of semantic meaning in preference to just talking of existence versus not-existence. As earlier mentioned, among others George Berkeley included this concept in his argumentation. Subsequently it has been focused on the concept of semantic meaning more directly, for instance by Michael Dummett. However, we are dealing with a prolonged process, as there are realists that do not include the concept of semantic meaning in their arguments, but still only talk about existence and not-existence. To them no paradigm change has taken place in this respect. However, also to the single individual that hears about a new concept or theory, the news of the concept or theory in question can have the same effect as a paradigm change to his personal conception of the field in question.

In these treatises it has have already concluded that the world is “the world as it is to us”. From the above discussion, the following can be concluded:

After revolutionary new insight, whether it involves paradigm change in different sciences or in the personal experience, the world becomes a different “world as it is to us”. This is practically the same as a de facto changed regularity in the world, at least “to us”. This comprises what we can do to the world.

Of course, this is not relativism as we are just talking about the occurrence of different states in different situations or at different moments. More precisely, we are dealing with persons’ different degree of insight at different times and under different circumstances.

It must finally be remarked, that before the time when the idea of laser light was in fact conceived, sentences that contained the sign sequence “laser” had no sense, for that would just be an incidental sequence of signs like the sign sequence “pradil” is it now. The reason is that it is communication and the usefulness of words that give meaning to words, e.g. science gives meaning to new words and statements. Thus, past-fictions that refer to the use of present sign sequences cannot be substantiated, for what should they be about? On the other hand, the following applies:

It of cause has sense now to talk of a substantiated past-fiction about planets and their moons and about their states, as they were according to this fiction before the time when ideas of them were conceived.

11. The relation between science and the world, especially the past.

In this section, both the scientific view and our daily life view on the world are investigated.

In continuation of the above semantic examination of the concept of the world and the theories about it before and after a paradigm change, it is natural to examine what are compared. This involves a clarification of the semantic meaning of the statement “The scientific laws apply before they are discovered”. This statement expresses what we usually assume. However, as these scientific laws are just theories that can be changed in principle, we should rather consider the statement “Nature behaved in accordance with the present scientific theories before these theories were assumed”. This subject involves the concepts of scientific theory, the world, and change.

Before discussing this question, we must closely clarify what can be put into the concept of the physical world. As a possible answer to this question, as touched on above, we could state 1) that the physical world is identical to our body and the objects that surround it. Another answer could be 2) that

the physical world is identical to the phenomena and their observable regularity – or at least the behaviour they have according to our experience experienced and which we understand as their regularity.

Certainly, the former answer is not wrong, but not philosophically in-depth, as it presupposes an explanation that must comprise the basal concepts that form part of the latter answer. Thus, this answer must be preferred as the most basic. The subject is treated in the subsection “Theories and matter”.

The concept of change and the above statement about scientific theories causes an inquiry into concept of before versus now. This involves a clarification of what we can at most put into the concept of time in the scientific theories. This inquiry is carried out in the subsection “Theories and the past”. These two subjects are connected in the subsection “Theories and matter”.

It must here be noticed that matter and the past are only secondary realities in contrast to respectively 1) the phenomena and 2) our memories and observations, which are primary realities; for the latter realities are described at the top of the explanation structure while the former are described lower down the explanation structure. In our daily life, however, we relate to matter and to the past as if they were real, basic entities. Especially the focus will be on the concept of matter the way we usually regard it, rather than the concept of phenomena.

11.1 Theories and matter.

In this subsection is looked at our relation to the concept of matter and the different forms of matter with which the scientific theories deals. Moreover, it treats how the theories influence our understanding of the world.

The concept of matter is obviously a useful and unproblematic concept when we talk about our sensory impressions of wholes and in other ways about the phenomena, whereas we rarely talk about these as such. Also because of this contrast between the concepts of matter and phenomenon, the concept of matter is included in this discussion. We are here dealing with an apparent incompatibility between the concept of matter and the concept of the phenomena in anti-realism. Therefore, this relation is clarified in a later treatise. Provisionally, however, it is sufficient to refer to the fact this apparent incompatibility can be accepted, as we are not ontologically committed by our usage.¹⁴ Thus, we can talk about matter without being realists.

As to the question of what matter is, it must be observed that our idea of the regularity of the different sorts of matter have their own importance to our understanding of matter as something physical.

Moreover, the kind of some matter is defined by means of its known behaviour. Based on this, for instance, we attribute a different regularity to lime than to iron. The following relation between matter and scientific theory must be remarked:

The definition of any kind of matter is based on its regularity. Therefore, it would be circular to say that lime has its special regularity because it is lime, i.e. because it has some qualities in itself. It is no way out either to say that lime has its special regularity because of its special structure of elementary particles. For this structure is only a structure in a theoretic, scientific a model that is construed just to describe and predict this regularity and, what is more, constructed on the basis based of this very regularity and the theories in question.

In defence of the generality of the concept of matter, some may be put forward 1) that matter is just what we can knock our foot against or sense with our fingers, and that the specific impact of matter on us is subordinate concerning whether we can conceive it as matter or not. It can also be advanced 2.1) that elementary particle physics tell us that matter consists of variants of the same few sorts of elements. This can be supplemented with the argument 2.2) that the reason to our differentiation between different sorts of matter is that they consist of different constellations of these few sorts of elements, and that these constellations results in different qualities.

However, concerning argument 1, usually it only has insufficient semantic meaning to say that there is some matter here, independently of whether it is hard, fragile, liquid or gaseous. The reason is that in our everyday dealing with different substances or matters, we can regard these as being of quite different types. Thus, we cannot in advance assume that the concept of matter is in itself an unambiguous concept that can comprise the concepts of these different kinds of matter.[19] This is apparently a paradox, as we are dealing with hyponyms of the concept of matter. This can be explained in the following way:

Contrary to our concept of different kinds of matter (such vapour, gas, liquid, powder, earth, granite, etc.) which are immediate realities to us, the concept of matter as such, i.e. as a hypernym, is a linguistic construction, i.e. it is not basic, because its use or establishment demands some consideration.

The reason is that the idea of subordinating the different kinds of matter to the same hypernym is not immediately based on our sensations. Thus, we have some sensations we do not relate to matter immediately but only by means of science. This applies for instance to the sensations that occasions us to use the terms “fire” and “air”, and which we also subordinate under the term “matter”. For these reasons it is problematic to define matter just by saying that matter is that which have volume.

The fact that according to scientific theories there can be similarities between these arts, as stated in argument 2.1, is secondary exactly because we are only dealing with similarities belonging to a scientific model. The description of these similarities belong beneath the top level in the explanation structure, for the reason that they are described by means of both observations and conclusions. This and the following have been touched on in connection to the remarks about definition and identification of type of matter above exemplified with the matter lime. As to argument 2.2, thus, the reverse conclusion of that in 2.2 can be drawn: As also touched on in the example with lime% above, scientists have constructed the theoretical models on the basis of the phenomena and in such a way that these can be predicted. Thus, the same argumentation can be used against argument 2.1 and argument 2.2.

In this way, the descriptions of how the different forms of matter influence on us belong to the top-level in the explanation structure, i.e. they a have a primary status in this structure, because they form the basis of the working out of the theories. This too shows that the understanding of the concept of matter as a hypernym of the different types of matter is a construction that belongs lower down in the explanation structure. Only if we wish to say that here is some matter, in contradiction to the situation where it cannot be demonstrated that there is some matter at the place in question at all, can we assert that the specific influence of matter is secondary. Thus, such a visual angle is only an arbitrary chosen angle, as it is not based on the phenomena as they immediately appear to us. This means:

The specific nature and behaviour of matter at the sensual, so-called macroscopic level, i.e. their phenomena and their regularity, is so fundamental to us that to assert that here is some matter is a simplified description of our experiences.

In other words: Without our scientific ballast, we would perhaps understand the mentions types of matter as fundamentally different entity types, as this is in fact what they are at the phenomenal level, i.e. to us. However, when we do not regard our scientific ballast just as pictures of theoretical models or as literal ideas of them, but as theories that tell us something about the behaviour of the kinds of matter, then new theories change our view of the different kinds of matter and thus, as mentioned, give us new possibilities of action. In this way, the problem is two-sided.

Also in the light of such recently acquired experiences, the world becomes another world, but only in the simple and literal sense that we can use this knowledge to make new kinds of matter and phenomena. This demonstrating, however, rather deals with sociology and inventions than with philosophy. For in these cases we are certainly producing new variants of matter or phenomena, but only some that are related to already known phenomena. Among these phenomena, we find e.g. those that are related to in the explanation of laser beams and of the theoretical entity electric charge.

From this, it also appears how on the one hand we live in a world in which the phenomena are fundamental, the point of departure and objects of science, while on the other hand we are influenced by the theoretic results and models of science, also in the way they are worded.

11.2 Theories and the past.

This subsection is occupied with what we can at most say about the concept of time, and especially the past in relation to cosmological theories as such. Moreover is focused on changes of scientific theories.

Here it is worth mentioning that perhaps it is somewhat otherwise with the problem of induction than what Hume assumed¹⁸: We simply presume that regularity is prevalent, and for that reason, we seek scientific results in order to make fictions about past and future, based on this presumed regularity. (Cf. the subsection “A criticism of a literal interpretation” above.) Just as we assume that the regularities we now know will also apply tomorrow, we assume that the regularities science discovers today were also true yesterday. For that reason, we presume this when we structure the past.

The following point has already been suggested in the just mentioned subsection “A criticism of a literal interpretation”: In fact, it is not in contradiction to realism to assert that the known scientific theories containing terms of not-observable entities may change. That only demands that the change can be subordinated under a new, more comprehensive rule, i.e. a rule that can describe and comprise these changed rules. If so, we are not dealing with change of natural laws, but with different subordinate cases of this general or more superior law.

In fact, it is so that when we assume that the regularities were in force in the remote past, this assumption is only true in the sense that we have now decided to use the regularities in our structuring of the past, provided that we can do this without encountering any contradiction. To say that statements about the past are true can at most mean that they can be applied to the present construction we have chosen to give the name “the past”. Thus the past and present time are not of the same kind, as we can at most regard the past as this present fiction, while the present time is really existing. (Cf. Treatise No 1, the section “Time”.) For this reason, there is a difference between 1) asserting that certain regularities were true one thousand million years ago in a literal sense and 2) asserting that we here and now can refer to certain regularities in our statements about this past understood as a construction. The former statement (1) does not have semantic meaning, as it does not refer to any reality we know, while the latter (2) refers to a present construction.

What we assert about the past, i.e. now, is a statement about this present, constructed entity in the following way:

The statement “The rule R was valid at time t in the past” can at most mean that in our structuring of the past, the rule R is hic et nunc attached to point t with our placing of events and states to the time-axis. Thus, the verb “to apply” does not have the same semantic meaning, when we assert that a rule applies now as when we assert that something applied in the past. For then we talk respectively about what can happen now, and about the contents of the present fiction or construction that makes up what we call “the past”.

As to the present theories about the cosmological development since the hypothetical Big Bang, these can at most deal with which events and states science can attribute to an abstract time-axis by means of present scientific theories. This time-axis can contain negative values of billions of years or start in an imaginary absolute zero-point on the time-axis and reach values of billions of years. Thus, the statement “The evolution of the world started with the event BB” means that on the assumption of the present scientific theories and the imagined event, BB, on the time-axis, physicists can advance a model for which we can compute or otherwise infer successive values belonging to a parameter t. These computations can preliminarily finish with, or pass via, a computation of the theoretical state at the time now, which as a test-criterion must be in accordance with computations of actual, present states of the world, while values of the parameter t can be called “moments”.

As mentioned, these computations can at most be said to be true of the consequences of the model, and they can at most be understood as true of the past understood as a construction and as true of the time now regarded as present (i.e. without the model). As this construction of the past consists in the very model, there is no difference between model and interpretation as regards the past. By contrast, at the time now the computations of the model values have to agree with the present time without the construction, as this is real. (The addition “without the construction” is necessary as the construction can be said to be a part of the present time.) Put in other words:

The model of the past is real now, but it does not make up a reality that is independent of the model, but only the result of present theories, facts and computations.

(Perhaps sophists may advance that the idea of the past as a present construction makes the compound construction a part of the present time. From this, they wills conclude that this construction contains itself and thus that it also contains this version, which also contains itself, etc., and thus that the view is self-refuting. The short answer is that the discussed construction as a human product has a concrete, delimited content. For it just depicts our understanding of our history the way as it is worked out, and of course we can let this understanding of history comprise the understanding of history in former times, etc., without getting into destructive regressions for that reason. The reason is that we can only refer to them when they are presented, and thus only refer to finitely many of them.)

However, what is the meaning of statements that something applied to the time t₀ < t, t being the time of the assertion, i.e. now? Such statements are bounded fictions about the past, in which we attach events and states to the time t₀. As already suggested, the theories that come into use in the computation of or the conclusions concerning the development of cosmos must also be attributed to (assumed to be usable at) the points on the time-axis to which we attribute that to which they are applied. Thus, these theories are a part of the total state we attribute to among other this point of the time-axis.

Certainly, it cannot have meaning to talk about something being literally true at a time t₀ in the past, as it does not have sense to talk about a literally existing past at all. (Cf. Treatise No 1, the subsection “Time”.) On the other hand, it is true now that we can attribute events and states to a point t₀ on the time axis. These attachments are only attachments according to given premises, such as evidences, theories, and arguments. It is in this way we are dealing with bounded fictions, and we can at most to such fictions when we talk about persons and reality in the past:

In our situation hic-et-nunc at the time t, as mentioned, we venture to assume that the regularity of the physical reality at the time t₀ < t was (i.e. can be attributed) the same regularity as the present regularity, in the sense that we describe the reality of that time on the basis of our present theories. Likewise, the ideas of the physical reality we can attribute to persons in our past-fiction at the time t₀ are dependent on the knowledge we are justified in ascribing to them in accordance to our fictions about the past. What can change are only our fictions about these fictions, as only these have literal reality.

Some may characterize the above talk of a time-axis as reductionism. However, this is not the intention of these account, and neither its point. The case also here deals with what we can at most assert, as everything else is semantically meaningless introductions. The considerations deal with the consequences of the established fact (cf. Treatise No 1, in the subsection “Time”) that it has no semantic meaning to talk about a real existing past or about the past as former present time. This means that we must accept the result, whatever it is.

(To this, it may be advanced that these ideas are inconsistent with the grammatical distinction between past tense and present tense. However, apart from this objection being empiric, it is true that we must be able to justify our grammatical rules, at least as we discover or realize them. As a grammatical explanation of this distinction, it can simply be stated that when we refer to our fictions about the past, we use verbs in the past tense. An analogical remark applies to our talk of future fictions.)

If we should talk about that the basal empiric laws have changed (in our constructed, distant past) this should consist in the occurrence of an extrapolation of the attributed states that could correspond better with facts if we change in a law, e.g. one of its constants, and use this in a specific period o the time axis. However, even if this change would agree with present data, this would just make up an ad hoc description. The decisive point here is that we are not dealing with predictions of the phenomena, but with extrapolations in a fiction about the past. In fact, these extrapolations of states can at most deal with the creation of a coherent scientific fiction.

It does not have any semantic sense to assert that a new paradigm was literally true before it was created, because this question concerns the past fiction. By contrast, nothing in itself hinders that a new paradigm can be applied to descriptions of events attached to the time axis.

The decisive thing, however, is the above-mentioned fact (in the introduction of the section “Do scientists relate to different worlds before and after a paradigm change?”) that this talk about change of nature is misleading, as we are only dealing with a present construction. Thus, the question can only be about change of rules for extrapolations of states based on present theories.

11.3 Theories and the world.

From the above it follows that we do not relate to a world understood as a fixed entity, but to what we know of the world, or rather, to what we know of our impressions, reflections, and conclusions up to now. As earlier discussed, we do not relate to an actually existing past, as we do not experience it, but only to our memory impressions and fictions about the past. There is simply nothing else to relate to. Here, it is an uninteresting objection to assert that everything “is in favour of” the existence of a world understood as a fixed entity or to a literally existing past, and that such assumptions are thus “useful assumptions”. The reason is that from the discussion of the concept of “useful assumption” above it follows that this cannot be used in an argument for the literal truth of the assumption. Put in another way: What we relate to and have to do with are what we have experienced, what we have studied and what we can justify. Therefore, the following is important:

The world understood as something different from what exists to us has no semantic meaning, for such a difference between what exists to us and something that are imagined to exist in itself, does not make any difference us. Statements about the opposite would be incidental. We are here dealing with a central argumentation in the anti-introductionism.

Some may object that this is to close one’s eyes to reality and support this by the following reasoning: “It is theoretically possible that an earthquake, a tornado, or an epidemic has just started developing. Thus, it is more than naïve of you to believe that what is now becoming an accident to you and other people tomorrow does not exist.” However, we all know this kind of possibilities just as well as the opponent does. For we know for example that we can take our precautions, try to be on the safe side, be prepared, but still overlook something. This forms part of our experiences. The conclusion is:

The world understood as what is to us, is a world we can extend and clarify. - In fact, we need to do this if we want to avoid being narrow-minded.

It may be objected that this is relativism as it means that everyone has his own truth that are somehow true to him independently of what other persons can put forward. Firstly, to this can be said that certainly everyone is in his own right to assume the viewpoints he takes pleasure in, but if a person does not want to justify his viewpoints, he has excluded himself from the debate.[20] For the matter is which points of views we can justify and which we cannot justify, and what the justification possibly consists in. As two different points of view about precisely the same subject cannot both be true, or rather be accepted[21], this excludes relativism. Secondly, it is not to be relativist to say that each person is at his individual physical place, that he has his personal past and other personal conditions, etc. For these statements are about different subjects. With this, the question of whether statements about taste can be a justification has indirectly been treated. Such statements can be valid within certain limitations, namely concerning personal conditions, such as the just mentioned. In all other respects, argumentation for any statement in a debate is a necessary condition for serious participation in the debate in question, i.e. such that the debate can contribute to a clarification of what can be asserted.

12. Semantic critique of religious sequences of signs.

The semantic criticism of so-called religious statements does not involve a discussion of religion on the premises of any religion. It is neither based on religious statements being culturally dependent, their being unscientific, nor their being unreasonable in other ways, but on their being semantically meaningless. In fact, they are meaningless to such an extent and in such a way, that in fact they cannot be called “statements”, but at most “sentences”. This critique thus comes under a general discussion of which statements or sentences have meaning.

Firstly, this semantic discussion is independent of the assumed contents of the religious sentences. Secondly, these putative sentences do not have any contents at all, and thus they cannot express any premises that can be debated, either. Therefore, the task of the semantic critique is just to make clear the falseness of the idea that religious sentences have semantic content. Thus, the semantic discussion of religion is not based on anything that can be called “religious premises”. On the contrary, it reveals the lacking semantic meaning of sentences containing putative references to so-called gods, godlike existences and other putative existences of which religious persons try to establish an idea.

The moral statements of the religions can be kept out of this discussion. For these statements are only free additions to the discussed religious sequences of signs. Moreover, their truth-values depend of the result of the semantic discussion of these religious sign sequences. Firstly, however, moral statements can be advanced independently of putative references of the above sort, as they can be decided from the matter itself[22]. In fact, they have to be decided in accordance with the matter itself.

As to physical objects, semantic philosophy inter alia deals with the meaning of statements that contain terms that according to realists are supposed to refer to various forms of putative, so-called not-observable entities. The literal understanding of these presupposes a semantically meaningful concept of things that exist in themselves somehow. According to semantic anti-realism, however, no literal existence can be attributed to these putative existences in any meaningful or usable way. Cf. earlier arguments in these treatises. However, the mentioned terms can be used about entities in scientific models as such. As to the religious terms of putative godlike existences, however, it proves that they cannot be attributed a sense of a similar kind and at the same time remain religious.

As touched on in the introduction of this section, statements about the putative concepts of gods and godlike existences cannot be called wrong with the justification that they appear strange and unlikely or that they cannot be substantiated in a reasonable or scientific way. They are not wrong because they cannot be proved, for such a talk has no semantic sense; instead, they are faulty because they are semantically meaningless. With other words:

Religious sentences simply do not qualify themselves for being objects of a logical or scientific examination.

As sentences referring to putative gods or other religiously assumed beings do not have any semantic meaning, there is nothing to prove, neither rationally nor empirically. The only thing that is to do in this connection is to explain why such sentences lack semantic meaning. From this can be concluded:

Magnifying religious sentences into something unique with the reason that they are outside the scope of science is turning the situation upside down.

Here it emerges that we must leave the concept of evidence transcendence as the central thing in the realism debate concerning this subject - and instead involve the concept of word meaning.

12.1 Sociological versus semantic critique of religion.

Confronted with the sociological characterization of religions as being just culturally founded, the religious person can say that he fully understand what is meant. Perhaps, he will even agree in the critique as far as it concerns other religions than his own and perhaps other adherents of his religion. However, he can nevertheless avow that at any rate his personal religion is not only not culturally determined but on the contrary arises from a “genuine religious, divine knowledge” he himself had. Thus, the sociological argument cannot affect this religious attempt to argue in favour of religious truth.

On the other hand, the religious cannot meet the semantic critique in a similar way, as it is fundamentally impossible to explain anything by means semantically meaningless sentences, and as it can be documented that we are dealing with that. In this way, the semantic critique is superior to the criticism of the plausibility and scientific character of the so-called belief in gods, which presupposes that the criticised entities have semantic word meaning. The reason to this classification is thus not that the semantic criticism rejects some present semantic content, but that it demonstrates that the religious sequences of signs do not have any contents at all. In short:

It has no sense to discuss meaningless statements at all, besides demonstrating their meaninglessness.

12.2 Exactness and prolixity.

As it has emerged, semantic philosophy, especially the semantic critique of religious sentences, leads to prolix wordings. The author needs these in order to avoid erroneously suggesting that what is criticized or discussed is sensible, if he thinks that this is not the case. The fact that these wordings are necessary shows that prolixity is not criticisable in itself. Thus, prolixity is necessary when the use of a word outside quoted speech presupposes that the word has a meaning. If for instance a person NN asserts, “The scientist X is just an arbiter of taste”, this presupposes that NN thinks that the sequence of signs “arbiter of taste” is a valid metaphoric concept, while the author of this text, who has surrounded the sequence by quotation marks, does not necessarily think that or want to embrace the concept. If NN asserts, “X believes in a god”, this presupposes that NN thinks that the sign sequences “believe” and “god” have a semantic meaning in the context in question, whereas the author of this text, who has written the sign sequences within quotation marks, does not have to think that, and in fact will argue against it below. It must be noticed that NN’s presuppositions do not change if he instead says, “X asserts that he believes in a god”. However, NN does not presuppose anything religious if he asserts, “X has put forward the sentence ‘I believe in a god’”.

It is true that in these texts it has been argued that we are not ontologically committed by our usage, but this argumentation was put forward against arguments of this kind: “If you are really a phenomenalist, you have to express yourself in a phenomenalist language”. However, it is in fact necessary to use a prolix usage when we come nearer to the core of a philosophical subject, so to say. In this connection, quotation marks are necessary to express ourselves correctly and precisely; and when e.g. phenomenalists present their idea of what constitutes the concept of a thing, they have to do that by referring to each impression. However, after that, they can talk about things the way they want. Likewise, a computer expert can give a computer-scientific explanation of how screen pictures are shown, and then nevertheless talk about pictures behind other pictures, etc. Therefore, precision requires that we talk about sign sequences instead of words and use prolix expressions such as “a putative term for a putative religious entity”.

We can for instance not define religiosity by means of the sequence of signs, “Being religious is to believe in a god or a godlike being”, as it erroneously presupposes that the sign sequence has semantic meaning, but must do it in a somewhat more prolix way. A proposal could be “Being religious is to put forward sign sequences of this kind ‘I believe in a god’ or ‘I believe in godlike being.” However, we can define religiousness in this more general way:

Being religious is to have a preference for advancing and approving certain sequences of signs to which no semantic meaning can be attributed.

Thus, the sign sequence “There is a tobur in the kalymn” is clearly meaningless, as no one knows what “tobur” means and what a “kalymn” is, since “tobur” and “kalymn” are casual sign sequences whose occurrence in this text is invented for this purpose by its author. Therefore, we will not immediately connect any semantic meaning with these sign sequences, though they may resemble sign sequences that in fact have a semantic meaning (such as “There is a table in the room”). We can thus only with some kindness call such sign sequences “sentences”. It follows from the definition above that if a person has a predilection for advancing and approving the above sign sequences then he is religious. This naturally implies that the person in question thinks that he expresses something with them.

Since the religious think that they can attribute meaning to a number of putative terms for putative existences, they put forward sentences that contain semantic meaningless sign sequences. This applies for example to the sentence, “There is a god in heaven”, that contains the sequences of signs “god” and “heaven”. For that reason, this sentence has no more semantic meaning than the above sentence.

Possibly, examples showing that the above definition is too broad can be found. In practise, however, it is difficult to find such examples, so proposals are welcome. So far, thus, it is unnecessary to make the definition more specific, e.g. by adding the demand that these sign sequences have an appearance of word meaning or contain certain sign sequences. Probably, however, such features make the religious person approve them.

Certainly, it is only with some good will that the recommended precise usage can be dispensed with in this account. Nevertheless, at some places in this text, its author has been under the necessity of having a relaxed attitude to these formulation problems.

12.3 The sign sequence “god” versus statements about realities.

As mentioned, certain sequences of signs borrow an appearance of semantic meaning or word meaning from their likeness to actual words or from their use in a context in which they actually have a semantic meaning, and thus are words.

This is the case with the sentence, “There is a god in heaven”, as it has the same form as the statements “There is water on the moon” and “There is a table in the room”. This superficial likeness may be the reason why some persons are tempted to assume that the first sentence has a semantic meaning just as obviously as the last two sentences. However, it must be noticed that even debaters that strongly criticize religion allow themselves to be induced to use the sequence of signs “to believe” as if it quite obviously has a semantic meaning.

However, it is not the purpose of this treatise to clarify, whether there really is an influence from the acceptance of such semantically meaningful sentences to the acceptance of religious sentences. For this question is not a philosophical but a purely psychological question. Here it is just the intention to clarify that sentences referring to putative gods, e.g. by containing the sign sequence “god”, are in fact not semantically meaningful though they resemble semantically meaningful statements. Moreover, it is explained in which way sentences referring to these putative gods or godlike entities are meaningless.

The likeness with semantically meaningful statements consists in the fact that the sign sequence “Peter believes in a god” only differs from the obviously semantically senseless sign sequence “Peter sturs in a jos” for these two reasons:

1) The verb “to believe” has a sense in other contexts, e.g. in the sentences “I believe it will rain and “I believe in Henry””, namely respectively “I suppose that it will rain” and “I thrust in Henry”.

2) The sign sequence “god” resembles a designation of species that only belongs to fictions, but which can be imagined to exist, e.g. “unicorn”.

Thus, the first mentioned sentence, which refers to putative gods, “Peter believe in a god” in both respects bears a specious resemblance to obviously meaningful sentences without anything meaningful being expressed for that reason alone by those who advance it. This means:

Those who want to account for a meaning of the sentence “Peter believe in a god” are left just as stranded as those who want to account for a meaning of “Peter sturs in a jos”.

The reason is that the likeness to known words cannot be used for that purpose, but on the contrary obscures this problem. For on the one hand, to the religiously intended sentence “Peter believes in a god” it is possible to ascribe a meaning that is not religious, and hardly intended, which is described below. On the other hand, a religious meaning cannot immediately be attributed to this sentence”, as no such clarified meaning is present. At least, the attribution of a religious meaning to this sentence is a task that is incumbent on those who state it. This is also clarified below.

As mentioned in point one above, in two ways the verb “to believe” can be attributed a not-religious meaning. According to the first one, the sentence “Peter believes in a god” is synonymous to “Peter supposes that a god exists”, just as the sentence “Peter is strongly believing” is synonymous to “Peter is strongly supposing”. It must here be noticed that the verb “to suppose” in its ordinary sense has an empiric and rational substantiated object, so if the sign sequence “to believe” means to suppose, it must be possible to present and discuss a substantiation of what is supposed. However, it is hardly the intention of the religious to attribute this sense to the sign sequence.

According to the second possibility, the religious person means the same with the sentence “Peter believes in a god” as when he says means, “Peter trusts in a god”. As touched on in point two above, in that case, the problem rests whether we can attribute a semantically meaningful sense to the term “a god”, such that it can denote an entity, X, whose existence must be presupposed since it is said that somebody trusts it. For it must be clarified what this entity, X, is, in order that we can talk about its existence, and possibly prove it. This means that the religious person must be able to explain, what X is, and to explain how he has gained knowledge of X. With this, it is also a problem of what religious knowledge should consist in at all.

If the religious want to maintain that their sentences are not just a part of a play that only belongs in a closed sphere, they must be supposed to assume that they state something semantically meaningful by virtue of their talk about putative gods. For that reason, they must meet the general social obligation to make clear one’s points of view and to substantiate them. Here it must be remembered that the superficial likeness of statements to semantically meaningful statements cannot be a starting point of an expounding of a possible semantic meaning.

The very fact that a so-called religious person thinks that he has reasons to state the sequence of signs “I have my faith” or “I have my stu” certainly may comfort him or fill a void such that he will say that his religion “has meaning to him” in this way. It is certainly true that many things can comfort persons or fill their void. However, it must be emphasized that neither psychological states nor meaning understood as purpose has anything to do with the present discussion, since it deals with the question whether religious sign sequences have semantic meaning.

As mentioned, religious sentences also resemble sentences that are devoid of semantic meaning. Thus, the religious sign sequence “Peter believe in God” resembles the sign sequence “Peter sturs in Jos”. No linguistic meaning can be attributed to any of these two sign sequences with the reason that they bear a superficial likeness to semantically meaningful statements. The fact that the couple of religious sequences of signs “believe” and “god” may seem to function as verb and substantive, respectively, helps to give them an appearance of semantic meaning. However, the same applies to the couple of clearly semantic senseless sign sequences “stur” and “jos”. Thus, the religious sentence “Peter believes in God” has both 1) a seeming likeness to semantically meaningful sentences and 2) a likeness to obviously semantically meaningless sentences, or at least to sentences that are waiting for an interpretation. The former likeness is only superficial, while the likeness to the meaningless sentences is fundamental.

As also mentioned, the religious must be able to explain to outsiders how religious sentences differ from meaningless sentences, if they think that this is the case. That involves the following difficulty:

If new sequences of signs are to be given a meaning that can be expressed to others besides those that use them, this must be done by statements that consist of meaningful wholes that in turn consist of already known concepts. However, such meaningfulness would make it possible to discuss these statements and thus to argue both for and against them. In this way, the explanation will be rational, perhaps with empiric premises.

If it is asserted, for instance, that the sequence of signs “god” denotes love, we only have a new name for this love, a synonym, simply. If someone is asserts that the sequence of signs “god” denotes the first beginning, inasmuch as this concept has meaning, then he has only invented a new name for this beginning. If someone asserts that the sequence of signs “god” denotes the creator of the world, there are two possibilities. Either the sentence “God is the creator of the world” just refers to a new putative entity by which nothing is explained concerning who or what this unknown X called “god” is, or it expresses the same as the sentence “God has created the world”, which presupposes that the sign sequence “god” denote an existing X. However, what has to be explained is just what this X is.

12.4 Religious explanations.

Someone may assert to have evidence of the truth of the sentence “God exists” and express this evidence with the sentence “I have felt God’s nearness”. In that case, however, the only thing that can be said to be present or have been present is a feeling of a certain sort, viz. the very feeling referred to however it might have been, but not an existence of anything else. For that reason, the sentence cannot be an apt description of the feeling in question. The experience referred to cannot give meaning to a new concept of a god either, as the discussed sentence presupposes that the meaning of this putative concept has been clarified, i.e. to which kind of entity the sign sequence “god” possibly might refer. The semantic meaning of a sentence simply must be clarified in order to express anything.

I owe to mention that A. J. Ayer has advanced a cognate example. In his work Language, Truth and Logic Ayer discusses the allegation that the regularity of nature is evidence of the existence of a god, and he concludes:

“But if the sentence 'God exists' entails no more than that certain types of phenomena occur in certain sequences, then to assert the existence of a god will be simply equivalent to asserting that there is the requisite regularity in nature; (...)” ([Ayer 74], p. 152)

To this can be added the critique advanced in these treatises against arguments for literal existence of so-called not-observable entities, among which are the concepts of electrons in nuclear physics and the concept of subconsciousness in psychoanalysis.⁵ This critique also implies that an analogously founded concept of a godlike existence can at most be a concept of an entity belonging to a theoretical model, which is in principle only usable for the time being. And just as it was the case with Ayer’s example above, the religious would hardly be content with such a concept of a putative existence called “god” in which cannot be put more than the phenomena and theories that have been instrumental in scientists’ introduction of it. (Moreover, to get so far, further arguments are called for, and documentation.)

Ayer expresses something similar about his argument above,:

“and no religious man would admit that this was all he intended to assert in asserting the existence of a god.” ([Ayer 74], p. 152)

If the religious users of religious sequences of signs cannot explain the semantic meaning of the sentences containing these sign sequences a in a way other persons can understand, these users must either 1) admit that they only advance non-sense or 2) openly confess that they think that they themselves possess a special cognition outsiders cannot understand.

In the latter case, this special cognition must even be of a fundamentally other kind than those the not-religious have. The case cannot just be analogous to the fact that the hearing person has an ability of a quite other kind than the abilities the born deaf has. For a person that possesses the ability of hearing can explain himself to the born deaf, at least to some extent. By means of signs of some sort or another, he can give the born deaf person a certain understanding of what it means to hear, as he can describe a comparison of the hearing with other sensations. Moreover, sound sensations can be related to other phenomena that can manifest themselves in other ways than by being heard. Thus, we can make theories about sounds and the vibrations of the air, which not-hearing persons can understand and possibly verify.

Let us next assume that the religious person really will assert that the difference between being religious and not being religious is in fact greater than the difference between being hearing and being born deaf, on the grounds that the religious have cognition of a kind quite different from those the not-religious have. In that case, the religious person must at least be able to display the usefulness or a result of the postulated truth of his religion or its agreement with reality - which is something different from the very fact that he is religious. He must be able to substantiate that the result originates from this alleged inexplicable truth.

Moreover, he must substantiate that the asserted utility or result in fact originates in the asserted object of his religion and not just from his state. The latter would e.g. be the case if he copes better with illness because his religion makes him less stressed than most persons. The reason to this is the following. Even though it is due to a fallacy originating in the borrowed appearance of semantic meaning of the religious sign sequences when a person states the semantically meaningless sentence “I believe in God”, this sentence expresses a difference from what would be the case if the person in question were not religious. For in that case, the statement is an expression of his being in a state in which he assumes that a number of semantically meaningless statements or sign sequences are semantically meaningful.

As mentioned, the religious are committed to expounding their own talk in a semantically meaningful way if they will participate in the philosophical debate, that is, live as citizens.[23] For semantically senseless statements cannot be discussed; we can just explain why they lack semantic meaning. Certainly, the religious’ collection of sign sequences or vocabulary concerning putative godlike beings is not historically new, but this does not mean that these sign sequences or terms are meaningful and can be presupposed as such when they are to be expounded to other persons. On the contrary, at the beginning of complete expounding, the terms must be regarded as new. Thus, the religious cannot just put forward the sequences of signs “Our faith cannot be subjected to a criticism by semantic philosophy”. For this would presuppose that the sign sequence “faith” denotes a special cognition that is granted certain religious persons only, and that these persons thus should be superior to all the above-mentioned demands and that they even do not have to substantiate this. As already argued for, the religious have to explain this idea in a way that fulfils the stated demands.

12.5 Consequences of the semantic critique.

As philosophical statements express something definite, they can be contradicted and discussed in contrast to the religious’ sequences of signs. However, religiousness can also be discussed as object, but those who declare themselves religious can only defend their religiousness to not-religious persons if they can make plain the semantic meaning of their religious sentences. This is only possible if the religious can substantiate one of these two points:

1) That it is possible to talk about their religious, supposed objects in the same way as we can speak about things, about other persons, about toothache, etc.

2) That we can talk about these objects in the same way as we speak about so-called not-observable entities.

The first alternative deals with empirical and rational explanations. These demand evidence. However, according to the latter alternative too, in the end we can only talk about the religious’ putative entities by virtue of the phenomena. For that reason, they only belong to a theoretic model.

As earlier touched on, however, the religious will hardly be satisfied with defining their sound or sign sequence “god” as a term for a theoretical entity that is useful for the present, just as the elementary particles of physics – and thus is facing an uncertain future. A putative conceptual universe that cannot be explained in any of these two ways can perhaps be used by its adherents in their talk among themselves, delimited like a board game. However, as it is not possible to attribute any semantic meaning to these sequences of signs, they have no use in ethical and political debates in the rest of society. Thus, from such sentences cannot be inferred cogent consequences, neither ethical nor political ones.

The discussion of whether religious statements, such as “There is a god” and “Peter believe in god”, can possess a meaning at all reminds of the discussion of the problem of the external world, i.e. the realists’ metaphysical statements about a physical external world. In the section “Critique of an account of phenomenalism, the problem of the external world, and solipsism”, it has been concluded that when we ask the question of what the statement “there is an external world” means, we get no answer, only other questions. Figuratively speaking, the situation is like looking out in an empty space:

1) The realists cannot present anything to which their realistic sentences can correspondence.

2) The religious cannot present anything to which their religious sentences can correspondence.

However, the question arises of how some persons can “acquire” sentences about the existence of putative gods, when such specious sentences are notoriously semantically meaningless. The mere fact that the semantic meaning of these sign sequences can be discussed at all, gives rise to the question of how religious persons can adopt them without clarifying this question in advance, or without discussing it at least. As mentioned, the reason may be that the persons in question are deceived by the appearance of semantic meaning religious sentences borrow from sentences that in fact possess semantic meaning. Religious sentences are certainly not fragments of syllables, but they are semantic fragments, to which the religious relate as if these fragments have full semantic meaning. However, the fact is that the sequences of sign “god” and “belief” are without semantic meaning when they do not respectively refer to fictive beings and to the state of supposing or trusting. For that reason, it is misleading to talk about these sequences of signs in their “religious sense” as there is not such sense, only references to other just as semantically senseless sequences of signs.

The not-religious words that these religious sequences of signs resemble have both a form and a sense. This is why they are words. Contrary to that, the sequences of signs “god” and “belief”, which the religious use, do not deserve to be called words, as these sound sequences lack a semantic component, just as well as the sign sequences “jos” and “stu” do.

The only religiously related statements about which it has semantic meaning to assert that the religious believe them, is sentences of the kind “The sequence of signs ‘God exists’ has semantic meaning”. However, above it is argued that the sequence of signs “God exists” is in fact semantically non-sense.

Literature.

[Aristotle 68] Aristotle: The Metaphysics,
English translation by Hugh Tredennick,
Harvard Univ. Press, William Heinemann Ltd. (Great Britain 1968)

[Ayer 74] A. J. Ayer: Language, Truth and Logic
Penguin Books Ltd (Harmondsworth, 1974).

[Berkeley 88] George Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge
Penguin Books (London 1988)

[Bundgård 94] Anders Bundgård, Thorkild Schmidt:
Gads Grammatik Dansk
G•E•C Gads Forlag (København 1994).

[Churchland 85] P.M.Churchland & C.A.Hooker (eds.): Images of
Science, Essays on Realism and Empiricism with a Reply from Bas C. van Fraassen,
The University of Chicago Press
(Chicago/London 1985)

[Favrholdt 95] David Favrholdt: Filosofisk Codex
Odense Universitetsforlag (Denmark 1995)

[Favrholdt 99] David Favrholdt: Filosofisk Codex
Gyldendal (Denmark 1999)

[Flip 08] Flip (anonym): The Flip Side, Flip's thoughts and ramblings
http://flip1.blogspot.com/2005/05/do-our-brains-need-god.html
Senest ændret 1. oktober 2008.

[Fraassen 80] Bas C. van Fraassen: The Scientific Image
Oxford University Press (Oxford 1980)

[Hegel 88] G.W.F. Hegel: Phänomenologie des Geistes
Felix Meiner Verlag GmbH (Hamburg 1988).

[Hjulmand 98] Liselotte Hjulmand & Helge Schwarz:
A Contrastive Grammar of English for Danish Students
Samfundslitteratur (Copenhagen 1998).

[Honderich 95] Ted Honderich, ed.:
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy,
Oxford University Press (Oxford 1995).

[Hume 90] David Hume: Enquiries
Clarendon Press (Oxford 1990).

[Kuhn 70] Thomas S. Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Second Edition, Enlarged
The University of Chicago Press
(Chicago 1970).

[Wittgenstein 84] Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophische Untersuchungen.
Werkausgabe band 1. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1984.

^{^[1]} For safety’s sake, it must be noticed that the point is of course not that the composite expression with attribute has a less extension (namely all assumptions minus the useless ones and minus the semantically meaningless ones) than it has without attributive, but that the very head of the expression has a reduced meaning.

[2] This is more than just a thought example. As a reference, however, I cannot just sta sufficient. Instead, though, on the internet it is possible to find similar examples concerning “religion”, “faith”, or “god”. For instance:

“Do our brains need God?

Is my starvation for spirituality merely a psychological need in my brain (...)?” [Flip 08]

I As the English language uses only little morphology, especially in written text, equivalent English examples cannot be worked out. For that reason, examples of Danish morphology are used.

II Translations of singular forms used in the example: hus: house; tanke: thought; by: town, city; fisk: fish; cykel: bicycle.

^{^[3]} Some of this criticized line of thought, however, is retained in this description of a Danish grammar:

“The verbs in the finite forms are conjugated in tense. These are characterized by person and number.” ([Bundgård 94], p. 46, my translation)

However, the latter statement is wrong in contemporary Danish. To boot, the text states the present forms of the verb “at vente” (“to wait”) in the first, second, and third person in both singular and plural forms, which results in a repetition of the same form six times. What is more, we are not just dealing with a listing of six forms that are accidentally identical. As if this was not enough, this list is presented side by side with the preterite forms, just to make the error more clear.

^{^[4]} The example is due to [Hjulmand 98], who adduces:

“- Sonia never cleans or even offers to wash the dishes.

Ellipsis of she (Sonia) = S [subject] and never = A [adverbial].” ([Hjulmand 98] p. 335, my square brackets)

[5] Cf. the criticism of the principle of inference to the best explanation as regards introduction of new types of entities, or the so-called ”abduction”, advanced in ”A. Realism”, in “Three different views of the concept of physical object” in Treatise No 2.

[6] I owe the idea of the firstl example to [Lübcke 93], p.297.

^{^[7]} The articles about phenomenalism and the problem of the external world have the signature “SHaK”, which refers to Søren Harnow Klausen, while the article about solipsism has not been added a signature.

The quotations from the articles are translated by the author of this treatise.

[8] [Gyldendal 2006], reference: “fænomenalisme” (English: phenomenalism).

^{^[9]} Here it must be remarked that the encyclopaedia, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, states nearly the same point concerning the term “external world”, viz. that this subject cannot be about anything “outside consciousness”, as the expression cannot denote a literal difference in such a way that we can be dealing with something internal in contrast to something external. In addition, it rejects that the expression should denote something spatial, as it is impossible to state the usual spatial possibilities of placing. [Honderich 95, reference: “external world”]

^{^[10]} [Gyldendal 2006], entry: “omverdensproblemet” (English: “the problem of the external world”).

^{^[11]} [Gyldendal 2006], entry: “solipsisme” (English “solipsism”).

[12] Cf. the argumentation in the section "Our own statements and their meaning" in Treatise No 3.

^{^[13]} Cf. the section “The importance of the top down line of thought” in Treatise No 4.

^{^[14]} Cf. “Usage and existence” in Treatise No 3.

^{^[15]} Cf. the last subsection “Anti-realism” of the section “Dummett’s anti-realism” in Treatise No 4.

[16] Cf. [Fraassen 80], p. 12.

[17] This concept of being “caught” “in” a philosophic idea I owe to the Danish Professor David Favrholdt. In his work Fysik, bevidsthed, liv (Physics, consciousness, and life) David Favrholdt asserts that “if we are caught in idealism, we would also be caught in the problem of the external world and be unable to prove the existence of the outer world” ([Favrholdt 95] p. 136, my translation). Favrholdt’s commentary raises a number of questions that have already been treated in the section “Critique of an account of phenomenalism, the problem of the external world, and solipsism”. Moreover, this naturally raises the question whether “realists cannot be caught in realism”, just as “idealists are caught in idealism”.

Concerning Hume’s scepticism, Favrholdt asserts in his work Filosofisk Codex (Philosophical Codex)

“(...) if Hume had accepted the tenet about the conservation of the impulse (...) he would have to say that doubt concerning whether a billiard ball would move when hit by another one (...) was not warranted.” ([Favrholdt 99] p. 123, my translation)

However, whether we talk about cause and effect, movement equations, or conservation laws, Hume’s scepticism can of course be maintained, just in a slightly different form: We have neither empiric nor rational reasons to assert that the law of cause and effect, the movement equations, or the laws of conservation are valid tomorrow.

[18] David Hume’s view of this is discussed in these treatises in the subsection “The problem of induction in the light of a hic et nunc viewpoint” in Treatise No 3, which refer to [Hume 90], §§24–25 and §36.

[19] The linguistic resemblance between “matter” and “kind of mater” we can here leave out of account, as the use of the term “kind of matter” is not in contradiction the comment above, though the word “matter” forms part of both terms. For we must contents ourselves with the language we have, though it is based on a realist world-view.

[20] It must here be admitted that this statement reminds of Aristotle’s arguments for his principle of contradiction. ([Aristotle] 1006a) According to these, a person who wants to say something that has importance to himself and his audience cannot deny this principle of not contradicting oneself.

[21] This statement not only reminds of Aristotle’s arguments for his principle of contradiction, but is based on it. ([Aristotle] 1006a)

^{^[22]} It is not possible to advance any moral statement that cannot be justified independently of religion. The reason is that religion cannot contribute with anything sensible that cannot be justified without reference to religion. This follows from both the fact 1) that moral statements referring to putative, godlike existences are semantically empty and thus meaningless, and the fact 2) that statements, including the moral ones, can only be justified from the matter itself. Acting on the basis of mere commands is thus acting immorally, viz. without any understanding of the act.

I will elaborate on this in a later article and explain how all moral statements can be justified – at least from a few philosophically justified premises.

^{^[23]} According to G.W.F. Hegel it is anti-humanistic only to express one‘s feeling without wanting to express oneself to those who do not agree. Hegel expresses this in ”Vorrede” of Phänomenologie des Geistes, where he talks about what he calls “der Gesunde Menschenverstand” (“the sound common sense”), and advances:

”Indem jener sich auf das Gefühl, sein inwendiges Orakel, beruft, ist er gegen den, der nicht übereinstimmt, fertig; er muß erklaren, daß er dem weiter nichts zu sagen habe, der nicht dasselbe in sich finde und fühle; - mit andern Worten, er tritt die Wurzel der Humanität mit Füßen. Denn die Natur dieser ist, auf die Übereinkunft mit andern zu dringen, und ihre Existenz nur in der zu Stande gebrachten Gemeinsamkeit der Bewußtsein. Das Widermenschliche, das Tierische besteht darin, im Gefühle stehen zu bleiben und nur durch dieses sich mitteilen zu können.” ([Hegel 88], p. 51)

This can be substantiated by the fact that without communicating we will be isolated beings. Lack of interest in expressing oneself is also lack of interest in clarifying one’s own views, in thinking them through once more. History, including the newest part of it, has documented that such an attitude is simply dangerous to humanity, viz. if one wants to spread ones views without argumentation.

Friday, January 4, 2013

Anti-introductionism. Treatise no 5.

Treatise No 5. Philosophical considerations and additions.

7.3.2 Summary.

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Treatise No 5.
Philosophical considerations and additions.