On Quines Rejection of Intensional Entities

MICHAEL JUBIEN
Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXVIII (2004)
209
I
t would be very difcult to overstate the importance of the work of Willard
Van Orman Quine in contemporary philosophy and logic. His work has had an
especially profound effect on our thinking about fundamental matters at the very
center of philosophy: in metaphysics and epistemology. In this article I am mainly
concerned with Quines metaphysics, specically his ontology.
Quines philosophical work exemplies various important isms. For
example, early in his career Quine was strongly inclined toward nominalism,
1
a point of view that may perhaps be seen as an aspect of his overarching
naturalism. But he later came to accept the existence of classes, a concession
sometimes thought (incorrectly) to be his only ofcial departure from a
strictly nominalist point of view. His motivation for this departure, however,
may be seen as rather nominalistic in spirit, for he appealed to classes partly in
order to be in a sound position to reject what he took to be less respectable
abstracta.
To naturalism and nominalism we may add extensionalism, which will be the
main focus of this article, and also perhaps a species of pragmatism. In a certain
way, Quines early nominalism evolved into extensionalism because he came to
believe that strict nominalism could not survive in the hard environment of sci-
entic explanation. Extensionalism was the next-best thing, allowing for the admis-
sion of classes, but holding rm against intensional entities like attributes and
propositions. To move from strict nominalism to strict extensionalism was, in effect,
to withdraw from an original Maginot line of resistance, to a more liberal and
defensible position that nevertheless retained a certain amount of naturalistic
1. See Steps toward a Constructive Nominalism, with Nelson Goodman, Journal of Sym-
bolic Logic 12 (1947):105122.
210 Michael Jubien
respectability. Quine appears to have thought the shift was small, even slight, but
surely necessary.
In this article I will explore the foundations of Quines extensionalist shift,
and his antipathy toward the intensional. I believe this topic is important because
the last few decades of metaphysics have witnessed a dramatic trend in our general
attitude toward things intensional, a movement from easy rejection toward
perhaps overly easy acceptance, and Quine was certainly the main force behind
the earlier rejection in its mid-twentieth-century manifestation. I believe this is a
good moment to evaluate his very inuential thinking on the topic.
*****
It is undeniable that our ordinary talk appears to be committed to such entities as
mind-independent attributes (or properties) and propositions. Quine was fully
aware of this and never denied it. But, as an advocate of a naturalistic and scien-
tic worldview, he could see such entities neither as natural nor as proper objects
of scientic inquiry, and so he sought an ontology that did not include them. At
the same time, he appreciated fully that such entities seemrequired for a complete
understanding of the workings of our thought and language. A major metaphysi-
cal project of Quines most important philosophical work, Word and Object,
2
was
accordingly to deliver the evident benets of attributes and propositions without
commitment to their existence. So let us begin by exploring the roots of his antipa-
thy toward these intensional entities.
A good place to start is one of Quines most celebrated essays, Two Dogmas
of Empiricism.
3
The rst of the two dogmas is the thesis (famously embraced by
Kant) that there is a . . . fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic,
or grounded in meanings, independently of matters of fact, and truths which are
synthetic, or grounded in fact (20). Quine was intent on undermining this thesis,
and his success was so considerable that the denial of the distinction soon acquired
the status of a dogma in its own right, and one to which many adhere today. Of
course if we reject analyticity, then we should reject the companion notion of syn-
onymy as well, for synonymy is sameness of meaning, and if two terms had the
same meaning, then many sentences in which those terms occurred would be ana-
lytic. (Thus: All bachelors are unmarried men.)
The alleged problem with synonymy and analyticity thus traces to meaning
itself. But what was really bothering Quine about meaning? After all, if our words
actually do have meaningssomething that at rst blush is hard to denythen it
seems obvious that it might be that some pairs of them have the same meanings,
and that if they do, then there really are synonyms and, in their wake, nontrivial
analyticities. Moreover, even if no two linguistic expressions actually had the same
meaning, as long as they did have meanings, the concept of synonymy (and hence
2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960.
3. The paper appeared in the Philosophical Review in 1951 and was reprinted in Quines
well-known collection, From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1953). Page references here are to the latter version.
On Quines Rejection of Intensional Entities 211
analyticity) would make perfectly good senseand also admit of straightforward
analysisdespite a dearth of nontrivial cases. Quine, of course, was not out to deny
the meaningfulness of language. He was instead out to understand it without
appealing to meant entities. He was stalking ontological game:
For the theory of meaning a conspicuous question is the nature of its objects:
what sorts of things are meanings? A felt need for meant entities may derive
from an earlier failure to appreciate that meaning and reference are distinct.
Once the theory of meaning is sharply separated from the theory of refer-
ence, it is a short step to recognizing as the primary business of the theory
of meaning simply the synonymy of linguistic forms and the analyticity of
statements; meanings themselves, as obscure intermediary entities, may well
be abandoned. (22)
In this extremely important paragraph, Quine rst asks a question, then
offers a speculation, next a pronouncement, and nally a conclusion. Everything
concerning analyticity and synonymy that occurs in Two Dogmas after this para-
graph depends on the conclusion that we may safely set aside the hypothesis that
meanings are entities, and that is why the paragraph is so important. So lets give
it an unhurried examination.
The question seems intended to convey puzzlement about the nature of
meanings and to arouse suspicion in the reader. Here Quine is clearly thinking of
the meanings of terms as abstract entities, like attributes. But it doesnt appear that
their abstractness is what is so puzzling about them, for Quine explicitly charac-
terizes numbers as abstract without apparent scruple, and he also makes an overt
appeal to classes. Rather, he is demanding an elucidation of this particular variety
of abstract entity.
But Quine actually knows a great deal about the sorts of things meanings
are supposed to be, and this was already revealed in the rst few paragraphs of
his essay. For example, he noted that the meanings of two terms are capable of dif-
fering even though the terms apply to (exactly) the same thing(s), and he provided
what appear to be straightforward examples (including the meanings of terms that
refer to numbers). Surely this is a substantial piece of information about the sorts
of things meanings are supposed to be. It does leave further possible questions
about their nature unanswered, but so far it is difcult to see, for example, that
numbers or classes are any better off on this score. (For instance, we might wonder
whether numbers are mereologically simple or have proper parts.) Quine does not
explain just what it is that makes his question about the nature of meanings notably
conspicuous. This is indeed disturbing, for he has already supplied us with an
important part of a reasonable answer.
The speculation is a proposed explanation for why a theorist might have
thought that the meaningfulness of terms is best understood by appealing to
meant entities. But it is difcult to give this explanation any credit. Quine is
imagining that the theorist is confused about (or unaware of) the distinction
between meaning and reference. For Quine, the reference of a singular term is
its referent (i.e., the thing that it refers to or names), and the reference of a
212 Michael Jubien
general term is its extension (i.e., the class of things of which the term is true). But
it really isnt plausible that a contemporary proponent of abstract meanings would
think that meaningful singular and general terms actually referred to (or named)
these meanings.
4
Surely the relation between a term and its meaning is something
other than reference.
Oddly enough, what is essentially this response was made by McX in
Quines earlier (and also classic) essay, On What There Is.
5
There he wrote:
Let us grant, [McX] says, this distinction between meaning and naming
of which you make so much. Let us even grant that is red, pegasizes, etc.,
are not names of attributes. Still, you admit they have meanings. But these
meanings, whether they are named or not, are still universals, and I venture
to say that some of them might even be the very things that I call attributes,
or something to much the same purpose in the end. (11)
And immediately following:
For McX, this is an unusually penetrating speech; and the only way I know
to counter it is by refusing to admit meanings. However, I feel no reluctance
toward refusing to admit meanings, for I do not thereby deny that words and
statements are meaningful. (11)
Quine then went on to reserve the right either to regard meaningfulness as an irre-
ducible matter of fact, or else to analyze it behaviorally. (The latter, of course, is
what he attempted to do a decade later in Word and Object.)
Thus having a meaning was never plausibly held to be naming a meaning
and, as a result, Quines speculation about why a theorist might have posited mean-
ings is not something he should have been entertaining in 1951, having already
seen through it in 1948 (and, moreover, admitting at the time to having no proper
response). Nor is it a speculation we should seriously entertain a half-century later.
The positing of meanings, like the positing of entities of any other sort, abstract or
concrete, is basically a matter of theory, and this is a point of view that Quine
embraced explicitly at the time (for example, in On What There Is itself). Mean-
ings are posited not because a simple conceptual error (or confusion) has occurred,
but because they appear to the positing theorist to help explain a variety of phe-
nomena whose occurrence is not in question, at least for the purposes addressed
by the theorizing.
4. For one thing, it would make an immediate mishmash of our ordinary thoughts about
grammar. The Evening Star is bright would either be a concatenation of two terms, each of
which referred to a meaning (if is bright were taken to be a general term) and hence would
express no intuitive proposition at all, or else it would be the predication of the meaning of bright
of the meaning of the Evening Star (if bright were taken to be a general term, with is signal-
ing predication), thus expressing the wrong intuitive proposition. (Here I am assuming, with Quine
I believe, that the meaning of the Evening Star isnt a physical object.)
5. Originally published in the Review of Metaphysics in 1948 and republished, with minor
changes, in From a Logical Point of View. (References are to the latter version.)
On Quines Rejection of Intensional Entities 213
That brings us to the pronouncement. Quine writes as if we are compelled
to separate sharply the theory of meaning from the theory of reference the
very moment we avoid the error of thinking that our terms refer to abstract mean-
ings. But it really doesnt follow. For example, one way of avoiding this particular
error could include taking the meanings of certain singular terms, notably proper
names, to be the (generally) concrete entities we normally take them to denote.
Thus meaning and reference would coincide for this class of terms. What then of
the sharp separation? If the meanings of certain of our terms are in fact their very
referents, then the two theories appear to overlap, or at the very least, the claims
of one theory appear to depend in part on claims of the other, so that no sharp
separation would be possible. Avoiding abstract meanings simply does not settle
the matter of how the theories of reference and meaning are properly related, nor
indeed whether meaning and reference may sometimes coincide. It apparently did
not occur to Quine that such a theory might be entertained since, for whatever
reason, he was thinking at the time of meanings as automatically abstract.
But there is a more important problem with the pronouncement: the claim
about the primary business of the theory of meaning once meant entities are aban-
doned. Quine says this primary business is synonymy and analyticity. But how
could this be correct? For one thing, he makes the claim in the midst of attempt-
ing to undermine these very notions! But let us set this aside. The theory of
meaning, in Quines terminology, is what today would be called natural language
semantics. It is the general goal of this theory to account for and systematize the
meaningfulness of natural language in all of its natural glory. Obviously synonymy
and analyticity (or whatever notions best approximate them should Quine be right
about their ultimate illegitimacy) are involved in only a small fraction of our lin-
guistic behavior, actual and potential. Most of what we say and write is nowhere
near analytic, nor does it involve approximations of nontrivial synonymy. The
theory of meaning has to account for the meaningfulness of all linguistic phe-
nomena, in as systematic and rigorous a way as possible given the empirical data,
regardless of whether it avails itself of meant entities in the effort.
Quines brief conclusionthat meanings may well be abandonedis there-
fore not well supported in this very important paragraph. Despite this, there is a
denite hint of a more substantial criticism in his conclusion, in the characteriza-
tion of meanings as obscure. But only later would he elaborate this thought in
enough detail to be able to respond to the likes of McX with a credible reason for
refusing to admit meanings.
The elaboration occurred in Quines 1957 presidential address to the eastern
division of the American Philosophical Association. The address was entitled,
Speaking of Objects, and it was published in the Proceedings and Addresses of
the association in 1958.
6
Here are the crucial passages:
The positing of attributes is accompanied by no clue as to the circum-
stances under which attributes may be said to be the same or different. This
6. It is reprinted in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1969). Page references are to this printing.
214 Michael Jubien
is perverse, considering that the very use of terms and the very positing of
objects are unrecognizable to begin with except as keyed in with idioms of
sameness and difference. . . . (19)
There is no denying the access of power that accrues to our conceptual
scheme through the positing of abstract objects. Most of what is gained by
positing attributes, however, is gained equally by positing classes. Classes are
on a par with attributes on the score of abstractness or universality, and they
serve the purposes of attributes so far as mathematics and certainly most
of science are concerned; and they enjoy, unlike attributes, a crystal-clear
identity concept. . . . (21)
On the surface, this is a simple complaint: We just do not have a proper iden-
tity concept for attributes (whereas we do for classes). Quine says that some
philosophers have noticed this gap and tried to ll it. Carnap, he says, proposed
that . . . two sentences about x attribute the same attribute to x if and only if the
two sentences are not merely alike in truth value for each choice of x, but neces-
sarily and analytically so, by sameness of meaning.
7
But he immediately rejects
this proposal on the grounds that it depends on the dubious notion of synonymy.
Of course, for the proponent of attributes, synonymy is not at all dubious. But it
is also clear that relying on it in order to supply a condition of the sort Carnap
proposed would be circular.
This raises the important question of exactly what Quine is seeking when he
demands an identity concept for attributes. For the Carnap proposal is a condi-
tion that, if successful, would determine when two linguistic entities (open sen-
tences or, perhaps better, predicates) are linked to the same attribute. In effect,
it would tell us what is required for any two predicates both to express a single
attribute. Thus, taken at face value, it appears to give a necessary and sufcient
condition for the holding of a certain semantic relation in certain special circum-
stances and, far from providing a standard for the identity of attributes, it seems
to presuppose that this concept is already understood.
Quine rejected the specics of the Carnap proposal while evidently accept-
ing its form. But then his own example of a successful identity concept is not at
all along the same linesit has a strikingly different form. For the crystal-clear iden-
tity concept for classes is the familiar principle of extensionality: classes x and y are
identical if (and only if) they have the same members. On its face, this statement
provides a necessary and sufcient condition for the identity of classes x and y. This
is not a condition determining when certain sorts of linguistic entities are linked in
some way with the same class. The statement of extensionality neither mentions
nor quanties over any linguistic entities at all. (Thus extensionality is a worthier
intuitive candidate for the term identity concept than Carnaps proposal, which
seems better described as a potential linguistic-co-expression-relation concept.)
What is the source of this remarkable discrepancy, and how might we resolve
it? In the next few paragraphs, I offer a hypothesis about the source, one that I
7. P. 19. (Quine cites Carnaps Meaning and Necessity [Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1947], p. 23.)
On Quines Rejection of Intensional Entities 215
think points toward a resolution. The resolution, however, is not one that would
likely have appealed to Quine. Despite this, I believe it is the inevitable terminus
of a straightforward application of the central elements of his thinking on this
matter.
In the early paragraphs of Speaking of Objects (and later, in more detail,
in Word and Object), Quine offers a speculative developmental explanation for
how our language came to include terms that appear to refer to attributes. The
details of this explanation are not crucial for present purposes and neither is the
question of its plausibility. The rough idea is that the conditions under which we
learn language favor the assimilation of terms like water and red to terms like
mama as regards individuative role: in brief, they function as if they referred
to something. But, unlike mama, such words do not correspond to well-integrated,
single physical entities, as the child soon becomes aware (but of course while
having no conception of scattered mereological sums as potential referents). Water
and redness are nevertheless soon understood to be simultaneously present in dif-
ferent locations, unlike mama. Thus Quine held that there is early pressure that
leads us, later, to take such terms as referring to well-integrated, single entities that
are abstract rather than concrete, to entities that all along were somehow felt to
be present whenever there were red things or water. Later still, these abstract enti-
ties are taken to be the meanings of such words, meanings that apply ubiquitously
to the various scattered manifestations. With such variously applicable abstract
meanings at hand we have the beginnings of a theory of how our language con-
nects with the world at large, a theory that Quine is at pains to debunk.
Thus I suggest that when he was developing these thoughts about ontology,
Quine was conceiving of attributes as meanings, and hence as theoretical enti-
ties of a sort whose central function is to be borne a certain characteristic rela-
tion by pieces of language.
8
Putting matters in more current terminology, the
characteristic relation is the expression relation, wherein predicates express attri-
butes, which, as a result, are their meanings. Seen this way, the original discrepancy
may not seem so great after all. For classes are also theoretical entities whose
central function is to be borne a certain characteristic relationmembership
albeit by arbitrary things (often including classes themselves). But a new discrep-
ancy now threatens to replace the old. For if an adequate identity concept for
attributes is needed to determine when two predicates express the same attribute,
then the parallel duty for an identity concept for classes should be for it to deter-
mine when two arbitrary entities are members of the same class. And obviously this
is not accomplished by extensionality.
This failure of extensionality to play a parallel role stems, of course, from
the fact that expression is conceived as a many-one relation whereas membership
is one-many. As a result, Quine might maintain that we should not have expected
8. It is important to stress that calling an entity theoretical is not to dilute its status as an
entity. (For Quine, even physical objects are theoretical entities.) It is merely to suggest that we
have no direct access to such entities, that we posit that they exist, for example in order to help
explain the ux of experience. The only non-theoretical entities, if there are any, are those of im-
mediate experience.
216 Michael Jubien
the identity concept for classes to parallel that for attributes in the rst place. But
I believe this is an inadequate response. Had Quine not been so absorbed by the
conception of attributes as meaningsand hence by the theory of meaning as the
theoretical basis for their postulationI believe he would have required an iden-
tity concept for attributes to parallel precisely that for classes, and would not have
seen Carnaps proposal as having the appropriate form.
As soon as we set the role of attributes as meanings aside, it becomes appar-
ent that there is a deeper characteristic relation that attributes are borne, a more
fundamentally ontological relation, one having intimately to do with what attri-
butes are. This relation, which exactly parallels class membership, is of course the
relation of instantiation (or exemplication). Typical proponents of attributes may
indeed wish to invoke them in the theory of meaning. But serving as meanings is
not part of the intuitive essence of attributes. According to proponents, there
would have been attributes even if there had never been tokens of linguistic enti-
ties in search of meanings. What is of the essence of attributes is that they are the
sort of things that can be instantiated, just as it is of the essence of classes that
they are the sort of things that can have members. (This, of course, is not to suggest
that a requirement for being an entity of either variety is actually being borne the
relevant characteristic relation by something.)
It would be absurd to think that Quine was unaware of the importance of
instantiation for attributes. But I suggest that the intensity of his effort to come to
a naturalistically acceptable understanding of language led him to underrate it at
this point, and to focus instead on the role of attributes as meanings of linguistic
entities. In his consideration of the ontological credentials of attributes, I believe
Quine was simply distracted from the true heart of the matter.
To summarize, attributes are rst and foremost the ontological basis for what
it is for things to be the ways that they are, not the basis for the workings of natural
language. They may indeed also provide us with a basis for a theory of language,
but if they do, it is only because they plausibly achieve this prior and language-
independent metaphysical goal. It therefore seems to me that Quine should not
have been thinking of expression as the relation intrinsically and characteristically
bound up with attributes, but rather of instantiation. Like class membership, instan-
tiation is a one-many relation between arbitrary entities and the posits of a strictly
ontological theory having nothing automatic to do with language. Had Quine been
thinking this way, he would never have seen Carnaps proposal as a legitimate can-
didate for the role of identity concept for attributes. He would rather have been
led in the direction of candidates genuinely parallel to extensionality.
So let us briey revisit extensionality. This principle states that classes x and
y are identical if and only if they have the same members, that is, if and only if any
entity z belongs to x if and only if it belongs to y.
9
Thus it has the logical form of
a universally quantied biconditional the left side of whose matrix is the formula
9. Technically, in certain formal versions of the theory, such as rst-order theories with iden-
tity, it is only necessary to assert that sets are identical if they have the same members. That they
are identical only if they have the same members is a direct consequence of the logical axioms
governing the identity symbol.
On Quines Rejection of Intensional Entities 217
x = y and whose right side states a universally quantied condition, in the vocab-
ulary of the theory of classes, in which x and y occur free. The initial universal
quantiers on x and y are understood as restricted to classes. In the context of
a fully general theory of classes, the universal quantier on z on the right side has
a range that includes but is not limited to classes. In pure class theories the range
would include only classes. In certain very restricted impure theories, classes
might be excluded. But both classes and non-classes would be quantied over in
a fully general theory.
Now, it is distinctive of attributes, as Quine explicitly noted, that two may
have precisely the same instances. As a consequence, attributes would not be done
justice by an identity concept that simply mimicked extensionality, with instan-
tiation replacing membership and the ranges of the quantiers appropriately
adjusted to attributes in place of classes. But suppose the attribute theorist instead
proposed that attributes x and y are identical if and only if they instantiate the same
attributes. This statement has the logical form of a universally quantied bicondi-
tional the left side of whose matrix is the formula x = y and whose right side states
a universally quantied condition, in the vocabulary of the theory of attributes,
in which x and y occur free. It is entirely parallel to extensionality in pure
class theories because the universal quantier on the right side ranges only over
attributes.
10
I believe that this formulation faces no difculty that is not paralleled by a
difculty for extensionality, and that it is where Quine should have arrived on his
own principles, taking instantiation to be the characteristic relation bound up with
attributes rather than expression. (I will return to the question of internal dif-
culties in a moment.) At the same time, this principle clearly involves a substan-
tial commitment to a rather abundant realm of attributes, so that attributes
instantiate further attributes, and there are guaranteed to be enough attributes to
ensure that where x and y are distinct, there is some attribute that one instanti-
ates but the other does not. Thus the proposal might be rejected even by some
who favor attributes. Their misgivings would be of a fundamental metaphysical
nature. But our purpose here is not to assess the principle, just to note its avail-
ability. There may be other principles with a similar logical structure.
Thus I believe the original interpretive discrepancy is best resolved by con-
cluding that something along the lines of this principle would have satised
Quines formal demand for an identity concept for attributes. But I also believe
that a fundamental problem would have remained, one that has a counterpart in
taking extensionality to be the identity concept for classes. The problem is that
both principles quantify over the very entities whose identity concepts they are
supposed to be supplying. On Quines explicit principles, we are not in a position
to posit, and hence to quantify over, entities of a given sort until the matter of their
sameness and difference has been settled. But the contemplated principle quanti-
es over attributes, and extensionality quanties over classes (in both pure and
general versions of the theory of classes). I am not questioning the truth of either
10. Though details may be arranged so as to extend the range beyond attributes if desired,
thus allowing for a fully general theory.
218 Michael Jubien
principle; for all I know they are both true. What bothers me is the very idea that
such a principle is neededthat we need an identity concept for entities of the
relevant sort at all. What bothers me is the very idea of, and hence the demand
for, an identity concept for Xs, no matter what sort X might be.
Suppose there are ghosts, or angels, or unicorns, or numbers, or quarks, or
classes. Pick any sort of entity you favor (or disfavor). In order either to postulate
that such entities exist or to deny that they exist, we must have some idea of what
they are (or would be) like. Given such an idea, the postulation (or denial) may
or may not be right. Such entities may or may not exist. Now, if they really do exist,
then how could it be other than automatic that each one of them is identical with
itself, and that no two of them are identical with each other? How could it be that
they get to stand (or fail to stand) in the identity relation as a result of rst
meeting (or failing to meet) some other condition relying on some other concept
(such as membership or instantiation)? And if they really dont exist, is it not nev-
ertheless true that if they had, then each of them would have been identical with
itself (etc.)? How could identity pose a problem for genuinely postulated or gen-
uinely denied entities? Once it is conceded that entities of any sort really have
been postulated (or denied), it seems to me thereby to have been presupposed
that there is no problem about identity for such entities.
Quine certainly writes as if attributes have indeed been postulated, and he
even tells us important things about what they are supposed to be like. Perhaps
he should not have made this concession. Perhaps his underlying instinct was that
attributes are too obscure even to be postulated. Perhaps they are like borogoves,
and no one knows enough about them even to assert (or deny) that they exist. But
this is a very rocky row to hoe. I will not pursue it, except to note that numbers
seem to be no better off, and that many terms enter our language and evidently
refer successfully to things even though early users had very incomplete and often
very inaccurate (perhaps even inconsistent) beliefs about the natures of the enti-
ties involved.
These considerations prompt an obvious and attractive hypothesis. It is that
identity is a concept in no need of analysis, and one that applies in the very same
way regardless of the nature of the entities involved. Mere existence drags iden-
tity along for free, thus providing a more plausible understanding of the Quinean
slogan, No entity without identity. If identity is indeed primitive, then we should
conclude that the search for an identity concept for Xs is misguided at the
outset, regardless of the nature of X.
Closely bound up with this is the issue of whether there is just one concept
of identity, prevailing independently of the nature of the entities in question, or
whether there is a multitude of more restricted identity-like concepts, corre-
sponding to a multitude of relevantly distinct sorts of entities. To look for iden-
tity conditions for Xs appears to presuppose that identity is not perfectly general,
that there is a multitude of identity-like concepts, none of them identity itself:
quark-identity, class-identity, attribute-identity, and so on but, shockingly, no just
plain identity. It is extremely hard to believe that this can be right. It simply does
not seem right that distinct, standardly accepted claims of identity involving dif-
ferent sorts of objects are really covert assertions that different relations are in
On Quines Rejection of Intensional Entities 219
play. If the is in the following sentences is the so called is of identity (a con-
troversial claim for entirely different reasons), then it is hard to believe that it
expresses different relations from one sentence to another: (1) Five is the sum of
two and three; (2) Paris is the capital of France; (3) the null set is the only set with
no members. Perhaps more vividly, it seems that denials of identity between objects
of dramatically different sorts make perfect sense and are of course true. (The
number two is not identical with either Paris or with the set whose members are
the null set and its unit set.) If there is no fully general relation of identity, but
rather just kind-restricted, identity-like relations, then either these claims make no
sense, or else they are covert denials of very surprising kinds. (In saying that two
is not identical with Paris, would we be denying that two is number-identical or
city-identical with Paris?)
I am strongly inclined to stick with our ordinary instincts and to think that
the linguistic evidence that there is just one concept of identity is decisive. Such a
conclusion puts the demand for identity concepts for various sorts of entities
under a heavy veil of suspicion. This suspicion is reinforced by the simple consid-
eration that it really seems that there is no plausible way to analyze fully general
identity. It seems as simple as a relation could be. It just does not invite analysis
in any simpler terms. This is underscored by the fact that Quines paradigm case,
extensionality, if understood as an analysis, would be an analysis of class-identity
in terms of class membership. It is very odd to think that the latter relation is
simpler than the former, and even odder to think that we could understand
the latter without already grasping the former. We cannot intelligibly ask what the
members of a class are until we somehow already have control of the class. If the
analytic project would thus fail in such cases of restricted identity, we should
surely expect it to fail equally for genuine identity-at-large.
*****
In Word and Object Quines primary intensional target is propositions, and the dis-
missal of attributes comes largely as a corollary. The rejection of propositions in
Word and Object mirrors the rejection of attributes in Speaking of Objects, so I
will mention it only briey. The central charge is the same: that there is no stan-
dard of identity. And this charge is again pressed under the assumption that such
a standard would have directly to do with relations between linguistic entities and
the contentious posits:
The question of identity of propositions is the question how two eternal sen-
tences should be related in order that, where p and q stand for them, we
be entitled to say that [q] is the same proposition as [p] rather than another.
(200)
In more contemporary terms, the claim is that we need a standard for
two eternal sentences to express the same proposition. Quine says that a
typical answerreally Carnaps attribute condition, modied to the case of
propositionsis that they do so when they are synonymous, and he proceeds to
220 Michael Jubien
undermine this account by appealing to his familiar criticisms of synonymy
and analyticity. He is therefore considering propositions to have the fundamental
role of serving as meanings of sentences and, as with attributes, is not consider-
ing the possibility of a more fundamental ontological account of the alleged
entities.
In the case of propositions, such an account would very naturally have
nothing at all to do with the linguistic expression relation, but rather with the con-
stituency relation. Propositions are generally conceived by their proponents to be
complex entities having constituents, and the constituents of a proposition stand
to one another in various logical relations therein. Once the constituents and the
logical relations are pinned down, so is the proposition. Without offering a specic
proposal (and not favoring propositions myself),
11
it again seems inevitable that
any plausible proposal would parallel extensionality (and the above principle for
attribute-identity as well), with p = q on the left side (under proposition-
restricted quantication), and with the right side stating a condition on p and
q involving constituency, logical relations, and quantication over whatever enti-
ties are taken as the constituents of propositions. Of course, the proposed con-
stituents would very likely include both attributes and propositions themselves.
A proposal of this sort would therefore appear to satisfy Quines formal
demand for an identity concept for propositions, and if plausible, would be much
superior to the rejected synonymy proposal. But it would replicate the problem
of quantifying over the entities whose identity concept it purports to provide. As
before, we seem led inevitably to the conclusion that propositions need no prior
identity concept any more than do entities of any other variety.
*****
One might accept these recent conclusions and still hold that Quine has raised a
serious problem for the positing of attributes and propositions, but that he has
simply mislabeled it as a problem about identity. But I dont believe this is correct.
I will focus on the case of attributes. Quines basic charge is that we do not know
how to ll in the right side of the following universal biconditional:
(1) For all predicates p and q, and attributes x, p expresses x and q
expresses x, if and only if . . . .p . . . . q . . . . x . . . . .
I suggested above that any proposal conforming to (1) seems to presuppose a clear
and prior concept of identity for attributes, simply by quantifying over them. (This
may be brought into sharper focus by noting, trivially, that for arbitrary entities X,
Y, and Z, and binary relation R, for both X and Y to bear R to Z is simply for X
to bear R to Z and for Y to bear R to some W, where W Z.) Of course, if we
knew in general what it meant for a predicate to express an attribute, then a sat-
isfactory way of lling out (1) would evidently be at hand.
11. For details, see Propositions and the Objects of Thought, Philosophical Studies 104
(2001):4762.
On Quines Rejection of Intensional Entities 221
In other words, if we could ll in the right side of (2) to Quines satisfaction,
a response to his original complaint would follow immediately:
(2) For all predicates p and attributes x, p expresses x if and only if . . . .
p . . . . q . . . . x . . . . .
Thus it seems to me that the root of the trouble is not attribute-identity, nor the
nature of attributes themselves, but rather a supposed semantic relation that is
invoked by theorists who propose to enlist attributes and propositions as mean-
ings. Quine frequently disparages attributes and propositions as obscure, for
example calling them half-entities, inaccessible to identity (Speaking of
Objects, 23). But we have found that these charges are not well supported by the
considerations he actually advanced. At least, these alleged entities seem in them-
selves to be no more obscure nor inaccessible to identity than do other abstract
entities. But if the intuitive basis of his complaint is really that the expression rela-
tion has not been adequately explained, then Quine may be on rmer ground.
Here I believe there is a useful parallel with astrology. Astrologers hold that
the planets inuence human character, behavior, and circumstances. Most of us
nd this view to be obscure. But it isnt obscure because the planets are obscure
entities. Its obscure because their alleged inuence hasnt been adequately
explained. The problem lies with supposed relations between us and the planets,
not with the planets themselves. Astrologys theoretical entities are themselves
beyond reasonable suspicion. Although this perhaps cannot be said with equal con-
dence about the entities of intensional semantics, this appears to me merely to
be a consequence of their abstractness, and not a consequence of any of Quines
more specic complaints.
What the intensional semanticist owes us is therefore an analysis or clear
characterization of the linguistic expression relation, or elsemore likelya per-
suasive case that it is reasonable to take it as a theoretical primitive (like mem-
bership or, perhaps, instantiation). Quine would of course respond that no strictly
naturalistic analysis or characterization is available, and that the entities them-
selves are sufciently obscureeven conspicuously sothat the theoretical edge
that they admittedly provide is outweighed. But we have found the charge of con-
spicuous obscurity to be unpersuasive.
*****
I want to conclude by raising a further question for Quine. Although it is some-
times thought that his only departure from nominalism is his acceptance of classes,
there is another departure of perhaps greater signicance. In Section 8 of Word
and Object, in dening the important notion of stimulus meaning, Quine explicitly
appeals to a certain variety of event forms, which he calls stimulations, but which
intuitively are types of stimulations. The stimulus meaning of an occasion sen-
tence is intended to be an extensional and behavioristically acceptable substitute
for the unacceptable intuitive notion of a (reied) meaning. Its supposed to be
the best that a behavioristically inclined extensionalist can do. Quine writes,
222 Michael Jubien
Yet a stimulation must be conceived for these purposes not as a dated par-
ticular event but as a universal, a repeatable event form . . . [There is] a com-
pelling reason for taking the stimulations as universals; viz., the strong
conditional in the denition of stimulus meaning. For consider again the
afrmative stimulus meaning of a sentence S: the class . . . of all those stim-
ulations that would prompt assent to S. If the stimulations were taken as
events rather than as event forms, then [it] would have to be a class of events
which largely did not and will not happen . . . Certainly it is hopeless non-
sense to talk thus of unrealized particulars and try to assemble them into
classes. Unrealized entities have to be construed as universals. (34)
Stimulus meanings are ordered pairs of (certain) classes of stimulations (in
Quines special sense). The stimulations are supposed to be such as would elicit a
subjects assent or dissent in the presence of interrogative tokens of the occasion
sentences whose subject-relative stimulus meaning is being dened. Examples of
stimulations in this sense include evolving ocular irradiation patterns between
properly timed blindfoldings (34). Thus, and roughly, Quine is taking it that, say,
for him at a given time, there is a certain denite class of ocular irradiation pat-
terns that would elicit his assent when queried Rabbit? and a certain denite
(non-overlapping) class of such patterns that would elicit his dissent. When these
classes are fully enhanced so as to include non-visual stimulations, their ordered
pair is the stimulus meaning of Rabbit for Quine at the relevant time. (I am sup-
pressing the further parameter of modulus.)
As Quine uses the terms, universals are not necessarily intensional entities.
(For example, he regards classes as universals.)
12
But obviously his overall posi-
tion is severely compromised if these universals are intensional. And what assur-
ance have we that they are not?
Quine does not distinguish physical objects and events. They are just the
material contents of regions of spacetime. (See Word and Object, p. 171.) Thus a
temporally extended ocular irradiation is just a four-dimensional physical entity
that includes at least part of (a temporal part of) an eye, undergoing a certain
ongoing and likely varying interaction with light. So why are Quines stimula-
tions not in fact attributes of such four-dimensional spatiotemporal entities? Why
is the event form, being an (appropriate part of an) eye irradiated with such and
such (time- and location-varying) intensity (and frequency, etc.) and in such and
such (time- and location-varying) pattern (etc.), not simply an attribute, whose
instances (if any) are just certain physical objects?
This is a very difcult question for Quine (and his interpreters). It does not
appear to me that he addresses it directly in Word and Object or in his other main
writings. But it is clear that the project of dispensing with intensional entities
cannot succeed unless stimulations are plausibly seen as extensional universals, like
classes. At the same time, it is clear that they cannot be classes, for the very reason
that Quine provided: to be taken as classes they would have to have unrealized
events as members. Quine (to his credit, I would say) is an unreconstructed
12. See Speaking of Objects, p. 21 (quoted above) and also On What There Is, p. 9.
On Quines Rejection of Intensional Entities 223
opponent of the unrealized, and it is unreasonable to attribute to him any
concession whatsoever on this score.
So stimulations are not classes, and Quines ontological scruples do not
permit them to be attributes, for attributes are intensional entities. Thus they must
be some other sort of universal, a sort that does not feature the undesirable inten-
sionality of attributes. The signal defect of attributes, in Quines thinking, is pre-
cisely that more than one of them may have just the same exemplications. Is there
room for the view that stimulations are unlike attributes in this respect?
One philosopher who has posited entities that would ll this bill is George
Bealer.
13
Very briey, Bealer distinguishes qualities from concepts, with qualities
structuring the world, and concepts structuring our thinking about the world. To
pick one of his illustrations, we may think of a certain single worldly manifesta-
tion either as triangular or as trilateral. These are two distinct though necessarily
coextensive shape concepts. But the world itself features only one corresponding
shape quality: a shape that we happen to think of in different ways. Thus, while our
concepts may be distinct though necessarily coextensive, the same is not true of
genuine qualities. Necessarily coextensive qualities are identical. Triangularity and
trilaterality are simply two different ways of thinking about what, in nature, is a
single shape. Bealers qualities, then, do not share the proliferative feature of
attributes that makes them so distasteful to Quine. So something like Bealers
qualities may be Quines best option for construing stimulations (and hence stim-
ulus meanings) in a way that doesnt compromise his effort to provide an exten-
sional and behaviorally based understanding of natural language. But there are
difculties.
If Quine were to take this course, he would be on a slippery slope toward
accepting a single quality for each class of necessarily coextensive attributes that
are normally thought to be exemplied in the world. For there seems to be no
principled way to reify qualities for patterns that are involved in the stimulation
of our sense organs, but to refuse to do so for patterns having nothing to do with
stimulation. The result could prove to be an ontology too rich in universals for
Quines taste. It certainly does not appear that he favors anything like it in Word
and Object.
But there is a deeper difculty beyond the mere prospect of a possibly
unwelcome ontological ination. For (what I will now call) stimulation-qualities
play a role in Quines approach to meaning that appears to give them a dimen-
sion of intensionality which, while perhaps not offending on the score of prolifer-
ation, may be expected to offend just as badly on the score of their modal features.
Quine comes very close to this conclusion in saying that [u]nrealized entities have
to be construed as universals (34).
The shunned unrealized entities that stimulation-qualities are invoked to
avoid are, intuitively, merely possible events which, had they actually occurred,
would have been stimulations of sense organs. Continuing intuitively, such merely
possible events may or may not have actually realized duplicates. Any case in
13. See Quality and Concept (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). Unlike Quine, Bealer has no
general aversion to intensionality.
224 Michael Jubien
which there are no actual duplicate events is captured in Quines treatment by a
complete failure of the relevant stimulation-quality to be exemplied (at any time,
etc.). Consider, then, a specic such unexemplied stimulation-quality S that
belongs to the afrmative stimulus meaning of some occasion sentence (for some
subject, time, etc.). For S to do what Quine needs it to do in his account, it must
be that if S had been exemplied in an appropriate setting (including the right sort
of query, etc.), the subject would have assented. Clearly this strong conditional
cannot reasonably be regarded as vacuously true. (For example, that would
evidently consign S to the negative stimulus meaning as well.) But a typical treat-
ment of such a conditional would require it to be possible for S to be exemplied
in order for it to be non-vacuously true. And even what little Quine himself
says about such conditionals (in Word and Object) appears to have a similar
presupposition.
Quine has a general suspicion of the often erratic strong (i.e., subjunctive)
conditional, but is willing to bend in cases that reect dispositions, which he regards
as . . . built-in, enduring structural traits (223). Thus, to say that a dry piece of
sugar would dissolve if immersed in water is merely to say that it is soluble, and
this is held to be unproblematic because solubility is taken to be a structural trait.
In this vein, Quine pins the vital conditional in the denition of stimulus meaning
on a disposition, . . . albeit unnamed: some subtle neural condition, induced by
language-learning, that disposes the subject to assent or dissent from a certain sen-
tence in response to certain stimulations (223). But it is very hard to believe that
a neural condition induced by language-learning could ground a disposition to
assent to a stimulation unless such a stimulation could occur, that is, unless the cor-
responding stimulation-quality could have been exemplied. More generally, the
very notion of a dispositionhowever it might be analyzedseems to rely for its
coherence on the possibility of its precipitating conditions being realized.
Thus Quines account of stimulus meaning appears to require that any unex-
emplied stimulation-quality might have been exemplied, whether we are think-
ing from the perspective of contemporary approaches to the strong conditional or
from Quines preferred perspective of dispositions. But if so, then this is precisely
the sort of de re modal attribution that Quine rails against in Section 41 of Word
and Object (and elsewhere). He nds such attributions to yield bafing . . . talk
of a difference between necessary and contingent attributes of an object (199)
a distinction that . . . however venerable . . . is surely indefensible . . . (199200).
It thus appears that stimulation-qualities may avoid the unwanted, proliferative
intensionality of attributes only at the cost of a covert appeal to the equally
unwanted notion of essence (which Quine characterized in Two Dogmas as . . .
the forerunner . . . of the modern notion of intension or meaning [22]).
Ironically, this same specter may be seen to haunt even classes. To the con-
temporary ear, the claim that any class has its members of necessity surely has the
ring of truth. Because this claim is clearly de re, it goes well beyond extensional-
ity (and even beyond its necessitation). But for Quine the real issue isnt truth or
falsity, but rather intelligibility. He is deeply committed to the view that we cannot
really make sense of such apparent claims. But the difculty of sustaining this posi-
tion is very stark in the case of classes. To illustrate, it seems to entail that we cannot
On Quines Rejection of Intensional Entities 225
make sense of such a question as whether the class whose only member is the
moon would have existed if the moon had not. Since Quine is a committed oppo-
nent of mere possibilia, one expects that he would be very inclined to deny that
the class would exist if the moon did not. The strong conditional involved here is
certainly no murkier than the one involved in the denition of stimulus meaning,
and clearly Quine would deny that there is a class whose sole member is the Foun-
tain of Youth. But his ofcial rejection of essence seemingly prevents him from
arriving at the same (conditionalized) conclusion for the unit class of the moon.
*****
For the reasons detailed above, I nd Quines criticisms of intensional entities to
be ultimately unpersuasive. At the same time there is no denying that they did per-
suade legions of philosophers over a long stretch of time, and that their inuence
has not yet run its course. What may be more important is that these criticisms
exerted substantial pressure on advocates of intensionality to think very hard
about fundamental questions and make their case in the clearest and most per-
suasive way they could muster. It is a hallmark of all of Quines philosophical work
that it directs us back to very basic issues and compels us to think as carefully
about them as we can.
14
14. I am grateful to Gina Calderone, Geoffrey Georgi, Jeffrey King, and George Wilson for
helpful comments on an earlier draft.