Modality Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy

Sanford Shieh Department of Philosophy Wesleyan University Middletown, CT 06459 <Sanford.Shieh@wesleyan.edu>

Modal concepts, especially the Leibnizian notion of possible worlds, are central in contemporary analytic philosophy. Quite the opposite was the case earlier. Until the 1970s, the default attitude towards modality among analytic philosophers was some degree of suspicion. My aim in this chapter is to provide an overview of the grounds and consequences of this distrust, and the ways in which it faded from the mainstream. The period of analytic philosophy closest to us contains the heyday of logical positivism and its decline. Since many contemporary analytic philosophical preoccupations arose in reaction to positivism, we have an understandable, and not altogether unjustifiable, tendency to think of positivism as an amalgam of easily identifiable philosophical mistakes, and to project these mistakes onto all of our predecessors.1 Thus, we take suspicion of modality to have been based on the now discredited antimetaphysical empiricist criterion of significance: there are no sensory or observational grounds for modal sentences, so the only respectable species of necessity consists of a priori analytic truths that are a product of the meanings conventionally attached to linguistic expressions. With the demise of the criterion of significance, opposition to modality collapsed.2 The analytic tradition is a complex interweaving of many strands of thought, so this picture is not entirely false, even of positivism. But there is no doubt that it does not fit the founders of analytic philosophy, Gottlob Frege, G. E. Moore, and Bertrand Russell, all of whom opposed empiricism and held no brief against metaphysics. For them lack of empirical grounds is no basis for denial of mindindependent objectivity. So while they took necessity and possibility to be reducible to more fundamental logical notions, logic for these thinkers consists of truths about a mind and language independent reality that extend beyond empirical reality. In addition, their conceptions of the relations among the notions of necessity, analyticity and apriority differ significantly from the positivists views. Thus there were, in the history of the analytic tradition, at least two main forms of reductionism or deflationism about modality. Correspondingly, there were two major phases in the passing of antimodalist stances. First, it was argued that modal notions are not reducible to logical ones because logic

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A paradigm of this tendency is Soames (2003), chapters 12 and 13. See Rosen (2001) for a clear account of this view.

itself requires modal notions. Second, it was argued that modal properties are mind- and languageindependent feature of the world. I begin with a brief account of Frege, Moore, and Russell. I turn then to two critiques of Russells conception of logic that constitute the first phase: C. I. Lewiss rejection of Russells material implication, and Ludwig Wittgensteins rejection, in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922 [1921]), of Russells view of the nature of logic. Next I outline Rudolf Carnaps pragmatically motivated account of modal terms as expressing pseudo-object properties, which appear to be properties of objects but can in fact be construed as properties of their designations. Quines sharpening and critique of Lewiss and Carnaps account of necessity as analyticity is a pivotal moment in the history recounted here, since the second phase arose in response to Quines critique. Two central planks of Quines critiquethe difficulties of quantifying into modal contexts, and the need to resort to essentialism to overcome these difficultiesoriginate in Carnaps notion of pseudo-object property. Opposition to Quines modal skepticism appeared as soon as Quine published his arguments in 1943, but it wasnt until the 1960s that there was a sustained movement away from Quines views. Among the main works opposing Quine in this period are Ruth Barcan Marcus (1961), Dagfinn Fllesdal (1961; 1965), Jaakko Hintikka (1963; 1969), A. N. Prior (1963), N. L. Wilson (1965), Bede Rundle (1965), Richard Cartwright (1968), Leonard Linsky (1969), Alvin Plantinga (1969;1970), and Saul Kripke (1971; 1972). Naturally its not possible to provide adequate analyses of all these texts here. Rather than setting out a progression of capsule summaries, I focus on two closely related but distinct responses to Quines arguments from the beginning and the end of this period: Marcuss revival of a Russellian argument using a conception of proper names as directly referential and Kripkes use of our intuitive understanding of modal sentences containing proper names to support a metaphysical notion of necessity.3 In general I have chosen, at the expense of completeness of coverage, to isolate a few central lines of development, focusing on philosophically significant views and arguments. I devote more space to the period up to the 1960s, since it is nowadays comparatively less familiar. Limitations of space force me to forgo consideration of a number of salient philosophical developments. Apart from the works already mentioned, I particularly regret not covering the role of modality in motivating Jan ukasiewiczs work in many-valued logic,4 work on modal expressions in the ordinary language philosophy tradition,5 and Wilfrid Sellarss (1980) view of laws. Finally, I dont discuss any of the connected developments in modal logic.

More details on the works I do not treat can be found in Neale (1999). I am very much indebted to the historical discussion of this paper; in many case it oriented my thinking, even where I disagree with Neales emphases and conclusions.
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The classic statement is ukasiewicz (1930). For instance, Austin (1979).

1. Reductionism about Modality: Frege, Moore, and Russell As noted above, modal notions are neither central nor foundational in the philosophical projects that inaugurated analytic philosophy: Freges use of higher-order quantificational logic in logicism, and Moores and Russells collaborative rejection of British Idealism. These philosophers treated modal notions reductively, explaining them away in terms of logical notions. One of Freges concerns in the early sections of Begriffsschrift (1970 [1879]) is to set out his notions of judgment, proposition, and conceptual content in contrast to the corresponding notions in traditional logic. In 4 Frege asserts that his conceptual content does not distinguish between the traditional notions of apodictic and assertoric judgments. From Freges perspective, a judgment in apodictic form merely suggests the existence of universal judgments from which [it] can be inferred, so in characterizing a proposition as necessary one merely gives a hint about the grounds for ones judgment (ibid., 13). Similarly, in characterizing a proposition as possible: either the speaker is suspending judgment by suggesting that he knows no laws from which the negation of the proposition would follow or he says that the generalization of this negation is false (ibid.) Thus for Frege modal predicates do not contribute to the conceptual contents of judgments in whose expressions they occur, but merely hint at, or suggest the existence of deductive relations between those contents and laws or generalizations, and so perhaps contributes to coloring and shading.6 To the extent that such hints are objective features of assertions, they might be eliminated by explicitly stating these deductive relations.7 In Foundations of Arithmetic (1980 [1884], 3), Frege provides accounts of the analytic/synthetic and a priori/a posteriori distinctions in terms of kinds of deductive justification. A truth is analytic if its proof rests ultimately only on general logical laws and on definitions, synthetic if its proof also depends on truths which are not of a general logical nature, but belong to the sphere of some special science (ibid., 3) The notion of analyticity here is recognizable as an ancestor of semantic accounts of analyticity; but it differs from such accounts since for Frege definitions are supposed to reflect analyses of concepts, and so are not arbitrarily adopted but have to be justified.8 A truth is a posteriori if its proof requires appeal to truths which cannot be proved and are not general, since they contain assertions about particular objects, a priori if its proof can be derived exclusively from general laws.9 These accounts obviously do not rule out truths whose justification depend on general but non-logical laws, and
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Frege (1984 [1892], 161).

If Freges notions of universal judgment and of law have irreducibly modal components, then, of course, these accounts would not succeed in eliminating modal notions. But the consensus is that for Frege universal judgments and laws are simply universal quantificational generalizations understood purely extensionally. Danielle Macbeth argues against this consensus in Freges Logic (2005); for critical discussion of her arguments see Shieh (2005).
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Frege apparently changed his mind on the arbitrariness of definitions. See Shieh (2008). Frege (1980, 3, 3).

Frege explicitly agrees with Kant in holding that the truths of geometry [are] synthetic and a priori (ibid., 88, 101). Moreover, the distinction between a priori and a posteriori turns simply on the generality or particularity of grounds, and so does not, without additional premises, imply anything about whether sensory experience or observation is required. Finally, its not obvious that Freges views rule out necessary propositions that are a posteriori. The suggestion that a judgment can be inferred from general laws entails neither that its ultimate grounds in fact contain general laws, nor, even if they do, that they do not also contain particular truths. In Necessity (1900), Moore claims that no proposition is necessary in itself, but only in virtue of being connected in a certain way with other propositions (302). The connection in question Moore calls logical priority, and, in typical Moorean fashion, elucidates by pointing to examples: when we say: Here are two chairs, and there are two chairs, and therefore, in all, there are four chairs; it would commonly be admitted that we presuppose in our conclusion that 2 + 2 = 4 (ibid., 301). This last presupposed arithmetical truth is logically prior to the particular inference. Strictly for Moore no proposition is necessary simpliciter, but one proposition is more necessary than another if it is logically prior to the other but not vice versa. In The Principles of Mathematics (1903) 430, Russell articulates a radically anti-modal view. He claims, first, that every proposition is a mere fact, and so not necessary (ibid., 454). Second, there seems to be no true proposition of which there is any sense in saying that it might have been false. What is true, is true; what is false, is false; and concerning fundamentals, there is nothing more to be said (ibid.) But although, fundamentally, no proposition is either necessary or possible absolutely, Russell here follows Moore in adopting an account of relative necessity: [a] proposition is more or less necessary according as the class of propositions for which it is a premiss is greater or smaller (ibid.) As Russell makes explicit in a later unpublished paper, Necessity and Possibility (1994 [1905]), he interprets Moores logical priority in terms of the relation of implication: p is logically prior to q if q implies p but p does not imply q (513).10 Russells view of modality in this paper is more nuanced than in Principles. He observes that if implication is construed materially, Moores account has the consequence that all true propositions have the same degree of necessity. So Russell proposes four other accounts for capturing ordinary conceptions of necessity, the first two of which analyze necessity respectively as apriority and as analyticity. The a priori/empirical distinction is, approximately, between propositions not predicating existence at particular times and propositions predicating existence at particular times (ibid., 510). Russell notes that the class of propositions thus demarcated has, obviously, no specially notable logical
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Russells use of letters p, q, etc. in formulas, and of quotation marks is, of course, an especially controversial matter in view of Quines accusation that he and Whitehead confused use and mention. I wont attempt a defensible Russellian usage, but my general policy is to use double quotes to reproduce Russells text, and no quotes when using Russells formulas in discussing his views, taking these formulas to be intended as expressing generalizations about non-linguistic propositional entities.

characteristic (ibid.) Analyticity is explained in terms of a relation that Russell calls deducibility: q is deducible from p if it can be shown by means of the [axioms of logic] that p implies q, (ibid., 515), i.e. if p implies q is derivable from logical axioms. Analytic propositions are then taken to be just those deducible from the axioms of logic. Given this account, Russell says, [i]t is now open to us, if we choose, to say that a necessary proposition is an analytic proposition, and a possible proposition is one of which the contradictory is not analytic (ibid., 515-7). Well come back to Russells account of deducibility below; for now note that Russells conception of analyticity makes no mention of meaning or synonymy. The remaining two analyses of necessity are as follows. First, a proposition is felt to be necessary when it is proved to be true; unfortunately, on Russells view of proof this makes every true proposition necessary. The other in essence explains necessity in terms of quantificational generality: a propositional function x has the property is necessary if it holds of everything Russell (1994, 518; second emphasis mine). A proposition is, again, not necessary simpliciter, but necessary with respect to one of its constituents just in case there is a necessary propositional function obtainable from that proposition by replacing some or all occurrences of that constituent by variables. Russells overall conclusion from these accounts of necessity in terms of logical notions does not change substantially from the position of Principles: there is no one fundamental logical notion of necessity, [hence] the subject of modality ought to be banished from logic, since propositions are simply true or false, and there is no such comparative and superlative of truth as is implied by the notions of contingency and necessity (ibid., 520).11 2. C. I. Lewis against Russell Modern modal logic began with C. I. Lewiss criticisms of the propositional logic of Whiteheads and Russells Principia Mathematica (1910).12 Lewiss critique is the first significant reversal of the attitude, just canvassed, that modal notions are to be explained away rather than used in philosophical
Dejnoka (1999) argues that Russells analyses of modality lead to definitions of modal notions implying formal modal logics which, in turn, analyze Russells casual talk of possible worlds. Dejnoka fails to take sufficiently seriously Russells explicit statements, such as the ones quoted in the text, against the foundational status of modality, and so he misses the fact that Russells aim is not to uncover logical principles governing imprecise and intuitive modal concepts but to find various ways to eliminate them. Nicholas Griffins fine account (1980) of Russells views of the nature of logic is marred by a similar misreading. Griffin takes Russell to adopt the final analysis of the necessity of propositional functions in Necessity and Possibility in order to bolster the view that his logical axioms are necessary. Since this analysis does not apply directly to propositions, there are, unsurprisingly, difficulties for certifying the logic of Principles as necessary. Its surely easier to take Russell at his word in Principles and Necessity and Possibility, and accept that, in this period at least, Russell did not take necessity to be a part of the nature of logic. Lewis is not alone in adopting modal notions in logic as a reaction to Principia; Jan ukasiewicz is another, see ukasiewicz (1930). In a series of papers leading up to (1906), Hugh MacColl also formulated logical systems with modal implication connectives. See Russells review (1906) of MacColl (1906), MacColls criticism of Russell (1903) in (1908), and Russells reply (1908).
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explanations. I begin my account of Lewis with a sketch of the key background of his critique, some aspects of Russells conception of propositional logic in the period from Principles to Principia.13 Russell held that logic is essentially concerned with inference in general, and is distinguished from various special branches of mathematics mainly by its generality. What symbolic logic does investigate is the general rules by which inferences are made .(1903, 11). The generality of logic consists in the applicability of its principles of inference to all subject mattersthey are universally applicable norms of inference.14 Lets call this feature of logic maximal generality of application. The part of logic that is the propositional calculus studies the relation of implication between propositions. (ibid., 14). To appreciate what this claim amounts to, we have to see that in the period of Principles, Russell holds a theory of propositions first propounded by G. E. Moore.15 Propositions are composed of the very entities that they are about.16 Their truth and falsity are not constituted by correspondence to entities in the world; rather, truth and falsity are unanalyzable properties of propositions. Propositions are themselves entities, and one of the relations in which these entities can stand is the relation of implication.17 The relation of implication is just as indefinable as the properties of truth and falsity (ibid., 16), and is the basis of valid inference: It is plain that where we validly infer one proposition from another, we do so in virtue of a relation which holds between the two propositions whether we perceive it or not . The relation in virtue of which it is possible for us validly to infer is what I call material implication (ibid., 33). A rule of inference is thus a proposition about propositions standing in the relation of implication. Being a proposition, it is, of course, objectively true or false. When it is in fact true, inferences we draw in accordance with it are correct. Since logic is maximally general in application, it comprises those rules of inference that describe of how propositions are related

Russell of course is famous for his many changes of mind, and so strictly speaking he did not hold a single view of logic even in this fairly limited period of philosophical development. I simplify in order to focus on what Lewis might have taken to be Russells conception of logic, in order to investigate the motivations for strict implication. Of course this doesnt mean that according to my story Russells views didnt change at all in this period; two significant changes will come up below. On the reading Ive been sketching, Russells conception of the generality of logic is similar to the normative sense in which Frege takes logic to be maximally general; see MacFarlane (2002, 35-7). Consider, e.g., Freges claim that logical laws are the most general laws because they prescribe universally the way in which one ought to think if one is to think at all Frege (1964, xv). If we gloss the phrase, if one is to think at all, as no matter what one is thinking about, then we have in essence Russells view. See Moore (1899). Russell writes in the Preface of Principles: On fundamental questions of philosophy, my position, in all its chief features, is derived from Mr. G. E. Moore. I have accepted from him the non-existential nature of propositions and their independence of any knowing mind Russell (1903, xviii). The following account of Russells view of logic owes much to Hylton (1990), especially. Part II, Chapter 4, and Griffin (1980). A significant qualification on this point is Russells theory of denoting concepts, which are constituents of propositions which are not about those concepts but what they denote. See Hylton (1990) and Griffin (1980). Indeed, Russell in Principles holds that only propositions can stand in this relation; see Russell (1903), 16, 15, and 18, axioms (2) and (3).
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by implication, in virtue of being propositions, simpliciter, not in virtue of being about this or that subject matter.18 Note that implication is not the only relation among propositions figuring in logic. The propositions related by implication have themselves certain structures given by occurrences of logical constants. For example, axiom (5) of Principles 18, p.qp, states that every proposition is borne the relation of implication by all those propositions in which it stands in the relation of conjunction to some proposition (ibid., 18, 6). A consequence of this view of logic is that, since the principles of logic are themselves propositions, they can also stand in the relation of implication. Because logic is maximally general in application, i.e., because the principles of logic describe how propositions, purely in virtue of being propositions, are related by implication, they must describe the facts about how the propositions that are logical rules of inference are related by implication to other propositions. That is to say, the rules of inference that comprise logic have to be applicable to those very rules, have to govern reasoning about those very rules. Between Principles and Principia, Russells conception of logic changed in (at least) three main ways. First, Principia incorporates the ramified theory of types. Second, he adopted the multiple-relation theory of judgment, on which propositions, like classes, are analyzed away. Finally, Russell no longer took the relation of implication to be indefinable, but p implies q is to be defined to mean: Either p is false or q is true (Whitehead and Russell 1910, 94). In spite of these changes, Russell continues to maintain the generality of logic; he describes Part I, the very beginning of Principia, as dealing with such topics as belong traditionally to symbolic logic in virtue of their generality (ibid., 87). Moreover, Russell continues to take valid inference to track implication. The Theory of Deduction, which begins Part I of Principia, is the theory of how one proposition can be inferred from another, and Russell tells us that in order that one proposition may be inferred from another, it is necessary that the two should have that relation which makes the one a consequence of the other. When a proposition q is a consequence of a proposition p, we say that p implies q. Thus deduction depends upon the relation of implication (ibid., 90).19
I would like to situate my account with respect to a recent controversy over whether Frege or Russell held universalist conceptions of logic which preclude semantic theorizing about logic: Van Heijenoort (1967), Ricketts (1986), Stanley (1996), Tappenden (1997), and Proops (2007). It should be obvious that Im not claiming that in order to be a principle of logic for Russell, a proposition must quantify over all items whatsoever in his ontology. It is clear that Russell takes some pains in Principles to formulate some principles of deduction as generalizations in which the variables have an absolutely unrestricted field: any conceivable entity may be substituted for any one of our variables (1903, 7). However, it is not this feature of those generalizations, but rather the fact that they range over all propositions, that is necessary for them to be principles of logic. The only sense in which Russells logic is maximally general on my account is maximal generality of application as norms of inference. Whitehead and Russell (1910, 90). It is not clear that the multiple-relations theory of judgment mentioned in Principia is compatible with this talk of implication as a relation among propositions. But of course it is a vexed question whether the multiple-relations theory is consistent with the ineliminable quantification over propositions and propositional functions required by the logic of Principia. For contrasting views see, e.g., Ricketts (2001, 10119 18

Of the changes from Principles only the last is directly relevant to our concerns. Why does Russell take implication to be definable in Principia? He acknowledges that there are other legitimate meanings of implication, but claims that his definition yields a more convenient meaning. The argument goes as follows. Russells definition captures [t]he essential property that we require of implication, namely, true propositions do not imply false ones. This property is essential to implication because it is in virtue of this property that implication yields proofs. What Russell has in mind here depends on his conception of proof, which consists of establishing truths by inferring them from true premises20 by modus ponens: if p implies q and p is true, then, provided that true propositions do not imply false ones, q must be true. It follows that any relation R between propositions such that for any propositions p and q if p is true and q is false (1)

then p does not stand in R to q yields proofs. It should be clear that there are many (extensionally) distinct relations that satisfy these requirements, differing on which of the propositions p and q that fail condition (1) count as standing in that relation. Russells definition of implication in essence picks out from among these relations the one which holds of the most propositions: whenever any propositions p and q fail to satisfy (1), p materially implies q. This is why Russell takes his definition to give the most general meaning compatible with the preservation of the essential characteristic of implication. The definition is convenient because it does not require distinguishing among ordered pairs of propositions that fail (1).21 But Russells justification of his definition of implication raises a question. How are the logical axioms of Principia selected? These axioms are supposed to describe which implications hold and so license deductions. Since in Principia Russell adopts material implication, one might expect that Russells reason for thinking that, e.g. qqp, is an axiom is that, of any two propositions, q and qp, either the first is false or the second is true. But if so, why does Russell not set forth these reasons when he presents the logical axioms? Why does Russell, in contrast to Frege, never give elucidatory arguments for accepting his axioms?22 We will come back to this question below. I turn now to Lewis. In his early writings on logic, Lewis was in many ways a faithful Russellian.

21) and Klement (2004). Thus, arguments by reductio are strictly speaking not proofs; but Russell thinks that all such arguments can be converted into genuine proofs. Is there an explanation of how Russell came to accept these reasons for the definability of implication? I argue in The Origins of Strict Implication that in fact there is less change in Russells views than meets the eye. What I mean by elucidatory argument is a line of reasoning by going through which one comes simultaneously to grasp a thought and to see that it is true. I follow Burge (2005), in holding that the arguments Frege sets out in discussing his basic laws are precisely such arguments.
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Like Russell, Lewis takes the propositions of logic to be descriptive generalizations which state, i.e. describe, implication relations between premises and the desired conclusion (1913, 428). Moreover, Lewis holds that while other branches [of knowledge] find their organon of proof in logic, this discipline supplies its own (ibid., 429). That is, logic is the instrument of proof in all disciplines, including itself, which is to say that it is maximally general in application. An instrument of proof provides standards for distinguishing between ways of reasoning that are correct or valid, as opposed to other ways which are incorrect or invalid (Lewis 1918, 324). This distinction rests on the relation of implication: The word [implies] denotes that relation which is present when we validly pass from one assertion, or set of assertions, to another assertion (ibid.) Hence [i]t is impossible to escape the assumption that there is some definite and proper meaning of implies (ibid.) Since logic is the universal instrument of proof, a system of symbolic logic cannot be a criterion of valid inference unless the meaning of implies which it involves are proper (ibid.; Lewiss emphases). In Implication and the Algebra of Logic (1912), Lewis presents his most well-known disagreement with Russell, the paradoxes of material implication, ~p(pq) (*2.21) and q(pq) (*2.02) which Russell himself in Principles read as false propositions imply all propositions, and true propositions are implied by all propositions (1903, 15). Lewiss point is that, since we dont ordinarily accept that every statement is a logical consequence of any false statement, or that any true statement is deducible from every statement, these theorems of Principia show that the meaning of implication in Principia is not proper. Its unclear how much force this criticism has against Russell. Russells logicist project is to prove the truths of mathematics from the truths of logic, and for Russell, as we saw above, all genuine proof rests on truths. So, Russell is constrained not to use, in Principia, any of the implications from falsehoods that he accepts as perfectly valid. For the purposes of Russellian logicism, an implication relation need only be truth-preserving, and not reflect other aspects of our deductive practice. But the paradoxes are not the only basis for Lewiss criticism. A less well-known argument against material implication is that it is not useful in inference. A material conditional can be established on the basis that its antecedent is false, but then one would not be able to use it in inferring the consequent by modus ponens. Alternatively, it can be established on the basis that its consequent is true, but then there would be no point in inferring the consequent by modus ponens.23 Russell himself explicitly addresses this argument:
In fact, inference only arises when not-p or q can be known without our knowing already which of the two alternatives it is that makes the disjunction true. Now, the circumstances under which this occurs are those in which certain relations of form exist between p and q. For example, we know that if r implies the negation of s, then s implies the negation of r. Between r implies not-s and s implies not-r there is a formal relation which enables us to know that the first implies the

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This argument is discussed in one of the best accounts of Lewiss strict implication, Curley (1975), at 521-2.

second, without having first to know that the first is false or to know that the second is true. It is under such circumstances that the relation of implication is practically useful for drawing inferences. But this formal relation is only required in order that we may be able to know that either the premiss is false or the conclusion is true. It is the truth of not-p or q that is required for the validity of the inference; what is required further is only required for the practical feasibility of the inference. (Russell 1919, 153; emphases mine).

The relations of form are captured precisely by the axioms of Principia, which Russell here calls formal principles of deduction (ibid., 149); Russells reply is that implications are practically useful when they are deduced from the axioms of logic, in the sense of deducibility we considered in the previous section. Lets say that a material implication which can be known to be true but not on the basis of first knowing the truth-values of the hypothesis or the consequent has the desired epistemic status. Lewiss counter-argument to this Russellian reply takes us to the heart of his objection to material implication.24 Lewis asks, how do we know that the axioms of Principia have the desired epistemic status? Consider one way in which we can explain the truth of Russells fifth axiom, (qr) ((pq) (pr)), by giving the following argument. qr is either true or false. If qr is false, then by definition the implication (qr)((pq)(pr)) is true. So suppose that it is true. Then either q is false or r is true. We have now to show that the consequent (pq)(pr) is true. If r is true, then pr has to be true, so (pq)(pr) is true. So now lets suppose that q is false. It follows that pq is true if p is true, false if p is false. If pq is false, then (pq)(pr) is true. So suppose that p is true. Then pr is true, so again (pq)(pr) is true. In this argument there are three steps in which we move from a supposition that some proposition is false to another claim. If these three steps are all inferences, and if our inferences are to be governed by facts about material implication, then, since a false proposition materially implies any proposition, each of the conclusions in these transitions can legitimately be the negation of the one actually stated. For example, an equally legitimate alternative inference to the first step of the argument would be: if qr is false, then (qr)((pq)(pr)) is also false. But then, the truth of the fifth axiom is not established on this supposition. Nor can we argue that since it follows by material implication from the falsity of qr that (qr)((pq)(pr)) is both true and false, we can, by reductio, conclude that qr is true. For, if we allow this form of argument, then we can establish the truth of every implication from the assumption of its falsity. So, if we reason in according to material implication, then its not clear that we can see that, or explain how, all of the axioms of Principia are true. That is to say, the inferential resources required to demonstrate that the propositional axioms of Principia are true on the basis of Russells definition of implication are in conflict with the principles of deduction that can be derived from these axioms. This

The following argument is based on a reading of Lewiss (1917) response to Norbert Wieners (1916) criticism of Lewiss rejection of the logic of Principia. I give a full account of this argument and its textual bases in The Origins of Strict Implication.

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incoherence internal to the logic of the Principia is the deepest source of Lewiss criticism of material implication. This is why Lewis says that one cannot demonstrate the logical connections articulated in the postulates of Principia without calling on principles outside the system (1917, 356). But this then puts in question whether Russells axioms and theorems can count as logic. Since logic is maximally general in application, it must be its own instrument of proof, and so it must supply any principles which are needed to establish or explain the correctness of its basic axioms. Thus Russells system of material implication fails to be logic, and moreover, fails according to an aspect of his own conception of logic. It is in response to this incoherence in Russells logic that Lewis introduces modal notions, especially the notion of strict implication, into logic. Lets go back to our explanatory argument for the truth of Russells fifth axiom of the propositional calculus. The problem this argument poses for material implication is that one notorious rule of inference based on that implication allows too much to be inferred from assumptions of the falsity of some proposition. So, what we need, in order to describe the inferential standards that are implicit in this argument, are principles of implication that limit what may be inferred from such assumptions of falsity. Lewis tried out several ways of doing this, settling eventually on the notion of impossibility.25 That is, he construes, e.g., the first step in the argument as based on this fact: given the definition of material implication, it is impossible for qr to be false and (qr)((pq)(pr)) not to be true. That is to say, the falsity of qr strictly implies the truth of (qr)((pq)(pr)). This impossibility precludes the correctness of inferring, from the falsity of qr, anything incompatible with the truth of (qr)((pq)(pr)). In developing the systems of strict implication, Lewis did not provide much explanation of these modal notions. After A Survey of Symbolic Logic (1918), Lewis embraced a version of pragmatism, and developed a view of the a priori as based on meaning (see in particular (1923; 1929)). He then took necessity to be based ultimately on the meanings that we associate with our inferential vocabulary. I here pass over the details of Lewiss views, noting only that it was assimilated, mainly by Quine, to the positivists account of necessity in terms of analyticity, which will be treated below. 3. Wittgensteins Tractatus Wittgensteins Tractatus is one of the most enigmatic philosophical texts of the twentieth century, and there is controversy over just about every aspect of it. Perhaps the deepest enigma and most fundamental controversy relates to Wittgensteins apparent characterization of the propositions of his text as nonsense. In addition there are disputes over the targets of Wittgensteins criticisms and the structure of his arguments. I do not intend to take a stance on any of these debates. I begin from the relatively uncontroversial fact that the Tractatus seems to present, inter alia, a metaphysical account of the world as
Lewis starts with intensional disjunction in Lewis (1912), goes to strict implication in Lewis (1913), and reaches impossibility in Lewis (1914); he stays with impossibility in Lewis (1918), and makes the slight change to possibility in Lewis and Langford (1932).
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consisting of facts, a theory of representation centering on the notion of picturing, and, on their basis, an account of the propositions of logic as tautologies which say nothing, an account sharply at odds with Russells view of logic set out above. Moreover, it is well-documented that preoccupation with Russells views of the nature of logic played a central role in Wittgensteins thinking leading up to the Tractatus, and in that text we find a number of criticisms of these Russellian views.26 I will thus sketch an account of the tautologousness of the propositions of logic as motivated by dissatisfaction with Russells view of logic, and so in this respect parallel to the impetus for Lewiss strict implication. The connection with Lewis goes further. Lewis argued that reasoning involving modal notions is required for us to recognize the correctness of Russells logical axioms. As we will see, the notions of possibility and essence play a central role in the notion of tautology. It goes without saying that I do not take my account to do anything like full justice to the subtleties of the Tractatus. In particular, although I will touch on the contrast between saying and showing which Carnap transforms into a tool for overcoming traditional philosophy, I will not analyze it. To begin with, recall that Russell in Principles and Principia took the axioms of logic to be descriptive generalizations. They describe which propositions stand in the relation of implication to which propositions. More specifically, the propositions related by implication are themselves described as having logical properties such as falsity and standing in logical relations such as conjunction and disjunction. Now, one of the first propositions derived in Principia (*2.08) is the generalization that every proposition implies itself. Given the definition of implication, an immediate corollary is the generalization that every proposition disjoined with its negation is true (*2.11). Russell takes the negation of a proposition p to be a proposition which ascribes falsity to p. So he reads this proposition of logic as the general truth that every proposition has one of two properties, truth or falsehood. It is plausible that Tractatus 6.111 expresses a criticism of precisely this Russellian view:
Theories which make a proposition of logic appear substantial are always false. One could e.g. believe that the words true and false signify two properties among other properties, and then it would appear as a remarkable fact that every proposition possesses one of these properties. This now by no means appears self-evident, no more so than the proposition All roses are either yellow or red would sound even if it were true. (Russell 1904, 523-4)

This attribution is supported by the fact Russell writes, shortly after Principles, that some propositions are true and some false just as some roses are red and some white . What is truth and what falsehood, we must merely apprehend, for both seem incapable of analysis (1904, 523-4). Lets focus on the contrast in this passage between remarkable and self-evident fact. If truth and falsity are unanalyzable properties, then the fact described by Russells logical truth, that every proposition has exactly one of these properties, would supposedly be remarkable rather than appear

This might be as uncontroversial as claims about the Tractatus can be; see Griffin (1980), Ricketts (1996), Ricketts (2002), and Proops (2002).

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self-evident. What does Wittgenstein have in mind here? Suppose someone were to say, Isnt it remarkable that all roses have just one of two colors? This is an unexceptional thing to say, and one way of understanding why is that we see no reason why roses couldnt also be, say, green or black. If this is right, then Wittgenstein is suggesting that we have reason for thinking that propositions could not be anything other than either true or false. Why should we accept this? Why should Russell accept this? Here are two (somewhat speculative) answers to the second question. First, in Principles 17 Russell rejects the idea of establishing the independence of a logical axiom by supposing it false and deducing consequences from that supposition, [f]or all our axioms are principles of deduction; and if they are true, the consequences which appear to follow from the employment of an opposite principle will not really follow, so that arguments from the supposition of the falsity of an axiom are here subject to special fallacies (1903, 15). Russell clearly thinks that some difficulty stand in the way of supposing, i.e., conceiving, a logical law to be false, that doesnt apply to conceiving of the falsity of even an axiom of Euclidean geometry. If in this sense we cant conceive of the falsity of a logical law, then we have a reason for thinking that logical laws couldnt fail to hold. Second, as we saw above, one of Russells proposals for explicating modality is that a proposition is necessary if it is deducible from the laws of logic, possible if its negation is not deducible and so impossible if its negation is deducible, where p is deducible from q just in case the conditional qp is derivable from the axioms of logic. By Principia *2.08, every axiom is deducible from itself, so every law of logic is deducible from the laws of logic. By Principia *2.12, that every proposition implies its double negations is derivable. Hence the negation of the negation of any axiom is deducible, and so the negation of any axiom of logic is impossible. If these two pieces of speculation are right, then we can take Wittgenstein to be pointing to a tension between Russells view of logical propositions as descriptive generalizations and his rather inchoate sense that they differ in kind from other types of generalizations. Moreover, I take it that in suggesting that it should be self-evident that propositions are either true or false, Wittgenstein means that it should be inconceivable or impossible for propositions to fail to be true or false. That is to say, what is distinctive about this proposition of logic is its modal status. Indeed this modal status distinguishes all of logic from any non-logical truths, however general. The picture theory of propositions may be taken to explain this inconceivability.27 Propositions are pictures of facts, and what it is to be a picture is to agree or disagree with the facts. That is, the nature of picturing, or the essence of a picture, is to agree or disagree with the facts. Since truth is agreement with the facts and falsity disagreement, it is essential to a proposition that it is either true or false, and so inconceivable that it could fail to be either.
The following sketch owes much to Warren Goldfarbs (amazingly still) unpublished paper, Objects, Names, and Realism in the Tractatus. Note that on Goldfarbs view, the account is eventually undermined in the Tractatus.
27

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The notion of fact is a central aspect of the metaphysics of the world set out in the initial sections of the Tractatus. The substance of the world consists of objects, which are eternal, necessarily existing, and simple in the sense of not having parts. It is essential to objects that it is possible for each to combine or fail to combine with others in determinate configurations. A determinate configuration of objects is an atomic fact. The obtaining of any atomic fact is independent of the obtaining of all other atomic facts; whether or not any one holds has no bearing on whether or not any other holds. (Non-atomic) facts consist of combinations of the obtaining of atomic facts, and the world is the totality of facts (2, 1.1). Language pictures reality. Only facts can picture facts. In a picture there is a combination of pictorial elements, and it is the obtaining of this fact composed of pictorial elements that enables the picture to represent. The picturing of language has two components. At the bottom level of language there are names, capable of combining into facts that are elementary propositions. The fact that names are arranged in a determinate way in an elementary proposition represents that objects are arranged in the same way in a possible atomic fact. This same way is the common logical form shared by the propositional picture and the possible atomic fact. By combining into a picture of a possible atomic fact, names in an elementary proposition are representatives of objects that can be combined in that possible atomic fact. The sense of an elementary proposition is what it represents, a possible atomic fact. If the possible atomic fact represented obtains, then the representing elementary proposition is true, otherwise false (4.25); thus an elementary proposition is essentially either true or false. Since the world is the totality of atomic facts that obtain, the world can be completely described by specifying which elementary propositions are true and which false (4.26). So, what any non-elementary proposition pictures cannot go beyond what the totality of elementary propositions represent. Hence every proposition represents in virtue of the representation of some set of elementary propositions. Specifically, given a finite set of n elementary propositions, there are 2n possible ways for the n possible atomic facts represented to hold or fail to hold (4.27), and, correspondingly, 2n ways for the n atomic propositions to be true or false (4.28). Each way for the n atomic propositions to be true or false is a truth-possibility of those atomic propositions. A proposition that is analyzed into these elementary propositions then represents the facts by expressing agreement and disagreement with each of these 2n truth-possibilities. That proposition is true if any of the truth-possibilities with which it agrees obtains, false otherwise. The sense of that proposition consists of these agreements and disagreements with atomic propositions. In this way a proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. But one and the same truth function of elementary propositions can be expressed in different ways, in which different logical constant signs occur. So the logical signs are not representatives of any objects; no objects play any role in how propositions represent (4.0312). A proposition corresponds to a class of truth-possibilities, those with which it agrees; these are the propositions truth-conditions (4.41). Since there are 2n truth-possibilities for n elementary propositions, and each proposition analyzable into these elementary ones either agrees or disagrees with each of these 14

truth-possibilities (4.42), there 22 possible distinct propositions analyzable into these elementary ones, and, most importantly, one of these agrees with every truth-possibility and another disagrees with every truth-possibility. These propositions are, respectively, a tautology and a contradiction (4.46). A tautology is true no matter which elementary propositions are true; that is, it is true no matter what atomic facts obtain, no matter how the world is. Its truth is thus independent of how the world is; it is not made true by correctly picturing the world. The same holds for contradictions with falsity in place of truth. For such reasons tautologies and contradictions say nothing, have no truth-conditions, lack sense (4.461), are not pictures of reality, and do not represent any possible situations (4.462). Nevertheless it is inconceivable for a tautology to be false (or a contradiction true), for two reasons: to be a proposition is to agree or disagree with truth-possibilities of elementary propositions, and it has to be possible to agree (and to disagree) with all truth possibilities. On this account, the essence of propositional representation and of combination is prior to and determines the necessity of the propositions of logic. There is a sense in which Wittgensteins account of modality is a minimal departure from Russell. Russell had attempted to reduce all modal concepts to logical ones; Wittgenstein, in contrast, takes what is distinctive about logic to be its modal status, which in turn rests on the nature of representation. But Wittgenstein takes the necessity of logic to be the only kind of necessity (6.37). I turn now to comment briefly on the relationships among necessity, apriority, and analyticity in the Tractatus. In 6.3211, Wittgenstein writes, as always, what is certain a priori proves to be something purely logical, suggesting an identification of the two. I take it that this identification is a consequence of taking a priori truth to be explained in terms of logical truth. Thus, if a proposition is knowable a priori, then its truth depends on no state of affairs in the world. So if knowledge of the truth of a proposition requires access to facts of any sort, no matter whether this access is through sensory experience or rational intuition, it would not count as a priori knowledge. From Wittgensteins perspective, Russells view of knowledge of the laws of logic as based on non-sensory experience of abstract non-sensible entities is not a view of a priori knowledge. It might be thought that since what makes Wittgensteins tautologies true is not the world, it must be their meanings. That is, tautologies are analytic truths. It seems to me that there is a sense in which this claim might be true, but its a bit delicate to make out. To begin with, how are tautologies true in virtue of meaning? There is, of course, the view that logical truths are true in virtue of the meanings of the logical constants. But as we saw for Wittgenstein the logical constants are not representatives. He also claims that they have no sense. So its unclear that they have any meaning in virtue of which logical propositions are true. Now Wittgenstein does say that It is the peculiar mark of logical propositions that one can recognize that they are true from the symbol alone (6.113). What he has in mind here might be this. While logical

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constants have neither reference nor sense, they do express operations.28 These operations map patterns of agreements with truth-possibilities to a pattern of agreement with truth-possibilities. And it is on the basis of such operations expressed by signs in the symbol for a proposition that that proposition agrees with all truth-possibilities, i.e., is a tautology. Thus we might think that what underlies our capacity to recognize a logical proposition as true from its symbol alone is our grasp of the operations expressed by logical constants. In this sense we can take these operations to constitute the meanings of the logical constants. On this proposal, the propositions of logic are analytic because we recognize that they are true in virtue of grasping the meanings (in this sense of meaning) of the logical constants. But this proposal doesnt show that tautologies themselves are in some sense true in virtue of the truth-operations. A tautology is true in virtue of the essence of propositional representation: agreement or disagreement with truth-possibilities of elementary propositions. So it is unthinkable that there is no proposition that agrees with all the truth-possibilities of a set of elementary propositions. This is the basis for the truth of tautologies, and in this account truth-operations play no role. Their role is to enable us to recognize various symbols as expressing tautologies (6.1262). There is another conception of analyticity on the basis of which we can take Wittgensteinian tautologies to be analytic: the Leibnizian-Kantian one of conceptual containment, where the concept of the predicate is a part of the concept of the subject. Once this containment is made explicit, the analytic judgment can be seen as akin to stuttering: to judge that all bachelors are unmarried is in fact to judge that all unmarried males are unmarried, which is perilously close to repeating one self by judging that all unmarried are unmarried.29 Wittgensteins notion of tautology is ultimately modeled on this notion of conceptual containment. What I have in mind is Wittgensteins account of logical consequence: If p follows from q, the sense of p is contained in the sense of q (5.122). If we express this consequence by the conditional if q then p, then we have expressed a tautology, in which the consequent is merely repeating a part of what is expressed by the antecedent. Wittgenstein puts this point thus; If a god creates a world in which certain propositions are true, then by that very act he also creates a world in which all the propositions that follow from them come true (5.123). None of the preceding points, however, can be taken at face value, because of Wittgensteins say/show distinction. Two of the key terms that occur in the Tractatus, which I have used in discussing picturing and logic, are fact and object. Wittgenstein tells us that these terms (among others) signify formal concepts (4.1272). Formal concepts are pseudo-concepts, and wherever words for such pseudo-concepts are used as proper concept word[s], there arise nonsensical pseudo-propositions (ibid.) Specifically, nonsense results by trying to express that something falls under a formal concept in a proposition. What such a pseudo-proposition tries to express is rather shown in the symbol for that which
28 29

See Hylton (1997) See Dreben and Floyd (1991)

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falls under the formal concept (4.126). Alongside formal concepts there are formal properties, which also lead to nonsensical propositions. A crucial example consists of internal propertiesproperties of the structure of facts (4.122). According to Wittgenstein, [a] property is internal if it is unthinkable that its object does not possess it (4.123). Now, as we have outlined the Tractatuss views, the basis of the necessity of logic is that it is inconceivable that an atomic fact can neither hold nor fail to hold, or that an elementary proposition can fail to be either true or false. So in our exposition we seem to have ascribed formal properties to atomic facts and to elementary propositions. But, according to 4.124, [t]he existence of an internal property of a possible state of affairs is not expressed by a proposition, but it expresses itself in the proposition which presents that state of affairs, by an internal property of this proposition. However, [i]t would be as nonsensical to ascribe a formal property to a proposition as to deny it the formal property (ibid.) Rather, [t]he expression of a formal property is a feature of certain symbols (4.126). So according to the Tractatus, the words occurring in it, on which we relied in our exposition, are nonsense, just like our exposition itself. This takes us to a final point about apriority. Perhaps the core of the notion of an a priori truth is the irrelevance of worldly facts to its justification. Now since its the essence of propositional picturing, rather than any fact pictured, that makes a tautology true, one might conclude that tautologies must be a priori, since not justified by worldly facts. One might then move on to the further conclusion that what justify tautologous propositions must be facts about the mechanism of linguistic representation. What we have just gathered from the show/say distinction, however, is that there are no such facts; the sentences using which we have attempted to describe this mechanism, according to the Tractatus, are nonsense. The conclusion seems to be that there are no facts that justify the propositions of logic; perhaps the notion of justification simply doesnt apply to them, and so they are neither knowable a priori nor knowable a posteriori. 4. The Vienna Circle and Carnaps Logical Syntax of Language There are, we now know, significant synchronic and diachronic differences among the doctrines held by members of the Vienna Circle.30 Here my focus will be on the Tractatuss influence on the Vienna Circles, and in particular on Carnaps, views of modality.31 Through the influence of A. J. Ayers Language, Truth, and Logic (1936), logical positivism is nowadays frequently taken to be an updating of Humean empiricism with the techniques of modern mathematical logic. A notorious component of this position is the verifiability criterion of cognitive significance: a sentence can be meaningful only if it is associated with a method of verification ultimately
See, inter alia, Coffa (1991), Friedman (1999), Creath (1999), Richardson (2004), Goldfarb and Ricketts (1992), Awodey and Carus (2007), and Carus (2007). For a balanced and informative account of how the Vienna Circle received Wittgensteins Tractatus, see Uebel (2006).
31 30

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based on sensory experience. On the basis of this criterion the Circle rejected metaphysical sentences as, not false, but meaningless nonsense. The verification principle comes from the empiricist view that sense experience is the only source of genuine knowledge about the world. The main problem that the Circle saw for empiricism is how to account for knowledge of logic and mathematics, both indispensable to modern science. Experience might always be different from the way it is, so any truth based on experience is contingent. In contrast, we have no clear conception of how logical and mathematical truths might be false. Thus, logico-mathematical knowledge seems a priori, and so to require some faculty of rational intuition, paving the way to metaphysics. Indeed, logic and mathematics seem no better able to pass the verifiability test than metaphysics. The Circle saw, in the Tractarian view of logic as tautology, the key to a consistent empiricism. Since tautologies owe their truth, not to correct depiction of the world, but to the nature of linguistic representation, our knowledge of logic does not rest on the sensory sources of genuine knowledge of worldly facts. Rather, it rests on knowledge of how we represent the world in language, of the rules or conventions (that we tacitly accept as) governing the use of language. The apparent apriority and necessity of logic can now be taken to have a linguistic, rather than factual, origin. Of course the sentences of metaphysics also have no empirical content. So the rejection of metaphysics depends on a distinction between kinds of contentlessness based on the Tractarian distinction between the senseless and the nonsensical. The nonsense of metaphysics results from violations of the rules of language, while the senselessness of tautologies is a byproduct of rules of the language.32 The view just outlinedcall it classical positivismwas indeed briefly espoused by the Circle. But the positivists themselves were aware of an array of difficulties with these classical doctrines, and soon moved away in a number of diverging directions. For our purposes, the most salient problem of classical positivism is to show that mathematics, like logic, is tautologous,33 that is, to carry out a type of logicist reduction of mathematics, to tautologies rather than Freges or Russells formulations of logic. Carnap attempted such a reduction, using David Hilberts idea of meta-mathematics. Technical difficulties eventually led Carnap to abandon many details of the Tractarian framework.34 Language becomes conceived as a system of rules (Carnap 1937, 4) not explained in more fundamental terms of picturing extra-linguistic facts. The study of language thus conceived is logical syntax. The notion of tautology, sentences true in virtue of the mechanism of representation, is replaced by a syntactic notion of analyticity, sentences formally derivable from the rules of language alone. Logico-mathematical sentences are analytic, mere auxiliaries for the confirmation of theoretical empirical sentences.
32 33

See in particular Carnap (1931).

This goes against the Tractatus. See Floyd (2005) for arguments against taking the Tractatus to espouse any form of logicism.
34

For details see especially Awodey and Carus (2007) and Carus (2007).

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At first these changes still subserve the project of a consistent empiricism. By Syntax, Carnap has (mostly) abandoned classical positivism.35 For our story, I focus on a form of criticism of traditional philosophy distinct from the classical charge of nonsensical violations of rules of language. It is directed, not only at metaphysics, but at controversies, especially over the foundations of mathematics, among philosophers of an anti-metaphysical orientation, such as members of the Vienna Circle. Carnap found these debates inconclusive and fruitless, with the parties involved making unclear claims apparently at cross-purposes. They seem, in fact, just as intractable and confused as disputes over traditional metaphysical problems. 36 Carnaps diagnosis of the sterility of such debates seems to be that they stem from a kind of illusion over the subject matter of philosophical sentences. These sentences seem to concern objects, such as the structure of space and time, the relation between cause and effect, the necessity, contingency, possibility or impossibility of conditions, and the like (Carnap 1935, 59-60). But this is a deceptive appearance; they really concern linguistic forms (ibid., 60).37 One source of this diagnosis is the Tractarian notion of a formal property. Recall that, according to Wittgenstein, the ascription of formal properties in a sentence results in nonsense (4.124), and that [t]he expression of a formal property is a feature of certain symbols (4.126). Now, Carnap rejects Wittgensteins say/show distinction and takes what is shown in language to be features of expressions that can be described in a meta-language. So formal properties become syntactical properties of expressions that, somehow, appear to be properties of objects. So formal properties become syntactical properties of expressions that, somehow, appear to be properties of objects. Slightly more precisely, these are properties of objects correlated with syntactic properties of expressions in such a way that they hold of an object just in case the correlated syntactic property holds of a designation of that object. Carnap calls them pseudo-object or quasi-syntactical properties. Sentences ascribing pseudo-object properties are pseudo-object-sentences of the material mode of speech. They are like object-sentences as to their form, but like syntactical sentences as to their contents (ibid.) In the case of debates in the foundations of mathematics, for instance, in the material mode we speak about numbers instead of numerical expressions, and this tempts us to raise questions as to the real essence of numbers (ibid., 78-9). Once such questions arise, so does the possibility of such irresoluble disputes as that between logicists and formalists. The way out of such impasses is to translate pseudoobject-sentences into their syntactic correlates, sentences in the formal mode of speech. The dispute just mentioned is then dissolved by transformation into two mutually compatible claims about numerical expressions in distinct formal languages.
35 36 37

See Carus (2007) for a detailed examination of tensions in Syntax. See Carnap (1963, 45ff; 1937, xiv-xv).

Compare P. M. S. Hackers account of the central aspect of the Wittgensteins later views, epitomized in the title of chapter VII of Hacker (1972): Metaphysics as the Shadow of Grammar.

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Modal sentences are also veiled syntactical sentences (ibid., 73). We usually apply modalities to conditions, states, events, and such like (ibid.), using sentences like, That A is older than B, and B is older than A, is an impossible state. The formal mode translation of this sentence is: The sentence A is older than B, and B is older than A is contradictory. More generally, [i]mpossibility is a quality to which there is a parallel syntactical quality, namely contradictoriness, because always and only when a state is impossible, is the sentence which describes this state contradictory; hence it is a pseudo-object property. The translations of other modal expressions into syntactical terms are straightforward: As possibility is the opposite of impossibility, obviously the parallel syntactical term to logically possible is non-contradictory . Analogously, we translate logically necessary into analytic (ibid., 77). So far Carnaps diagnosis of philosophical illusion seems to presuppose that the material mode suggests something false and the formal mode tells the unvarnished truth (Coffa 1991, 325; emphases mine). In particular, the claim that modal predicates are quasi-syntactical seems to tell us that necessity, for instance, really is analyticity, and thats precisely what, according to popular wisdom, positivism holds. But this view of Carnaps criticisms is problematic. Carnap uses phrases such as really about and object to formulate his criticism, but these are the very words that generate paradigmatic pseudo-object sentences.38 So these criticisms are, by Carnaps own standards, themselves in the material mode of speech, i.e., they contain pseudo-object sentences. Carnap takes no pains to hide this; he explicitly notes in Part V of Syntax that [e]ven in this book, and especially in this Part, the material mode of speech has often been employed (1937, 81, 312). Carnap specifically characterizes his remarks about what pseudo-object properties really apply to and about philosophical illusion as informal, in contrast to the formal syntactic definition of quasi-syntacticality (1937, 63). Thus when Carnap says that philosophical sentences are really about language, he recognizes that this is no less potentially misleading than those very philosophical sentences. What then is Carnaps ground for preferring the formal mode? Note to begin with that according to Carnap the material mode of speech is not in itself erroneous; it only readily lends itself to wrong use (1937, 312). Indeed, if suitable definitions and rules for the material mode of speech are laid down and systematically applied, no obscurities or contradictions arise (ibid.; my emphasis). The reason why questions generated by material-mode talk lead to apparently irresoluble disputes is that they are posed in natural languages, which are too irregular and too complicated to be actually comprehended in a system of rules (ibid., 312). This points to Carnaps view of controversies in traditional metaphysics: there seemed hardly any
On about see Carnap (1937, 290), example 12a; object is a universal word which, used in the material mode of speech, produces pseudo-object sentence, see Carnap (1937, 293-5).
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chance of mutual understanding, let alone of agreement, because there was not even a common criterion for deciding the controversy (1963, 44-5). If indeed there are no common criteria for deciding metaphysical controversies, then it would be pointless, irrational, to continue these disputes in the form of trying to find out who is right. A question of right or wrong must always refer to a system of rules (1939: 4, 7), and logical syntax is the construction of languages as systems of rules. Thus the aim of syntax is to set out criteria that would rationalize pointless philosophical debates. Specifically, Carnap offers the parties to philosophical disputes the possibilities of adopting a common set of rules for adjudicating their disagreement, or of reconceiving their opposition, not as a disagreement over the truth of a doctrine, but as different recommendations about what language, what system of rules, to adopt. Either way, the dispute would acquire a clear point. This is the reason for preferring the formal mode. Now it is natural, at this point, to ask: what is the basis of Carnaps view of the rationality of disputes? Its a short step from such a question to intractable philosophical debates over the true nature of rationality. Thus, Carnaps conception of rationality is also not a theoretical claim but a practical proposal. We can take Carnap to ask his audience to compare the state of their philosophical debates with that of his precise syntactical investigations, and to offer philosophers a way out of the fruitless debates in which they are stuck. He in effect says to philosophers: you dont have to take yourself to be advancing a substantive thesis about reality against other such substantive theses, because I can offer you a way of looking at what you want, in which it will no longer be unclear what exactly getting it involves, because youll be doing something other than what you took yourself to be doing. In the words of another philosopher, Carnaps aim is [t]o shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.39 Thus, Carnap is not engaged in the same enterprise as traditional philosophy at all; rather, he proposes an activity, syntactical investigation, to replace traditional philosophizing; he urges philosophers to change the subject (Rorty 1982, xiv).40,41
39 40

Wittgenstein (2001 [1953], 309).

This reference to Richard Rorty is not intended to be frivolous. In (1986), Rorty argued that skepticism arises from assuming that an explanation of the objective truth of language and thoughts requires some third thing independent of the meanings of words and the way the world is (at 344). So skepticism is defeated when we realize that the tertia which have made us have skeptical doubts about whether most of our beliefs are true are just not there (ibid.; emphases mine). That is to say, at this point Rorty took skepticism to be the product of a philosophical illusion, about the existence of tertia, and the refutation of skepticism to follow from the fact that these entities dont exist. Later however, Rorty corrected himself: I should not speak, as I sometimes have, of pseudo-problems, but rather of problematics and vocabularies which might have proven to be of value but in fact did not. I should not have spoken of unreal or confused philosophical distinctions, but rather of distinctions whose employment has proved to lead nowhere, proved to be more trouble than they were worth. For pragmatists, the question should always be What use is it? rather than Is it real? Criticism of other philosophers distinctions and problematics should charge relative inutility rather than meaninglessness or illusion or incoherence Rorty (1998, 45, emphases mine ). Note how Carnaps pragmatic attitude towards traditional philosophy is of a piece with his Principle of Tolerance (1937, 17, 52).
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The upshot of this radical pragmatism for Carnaps theory of modality is that any claim to the effect that, e.g., for Carnap the property of necessity is really analyticity is in the material mode and misleading. The significance of Carnaps theory consists in the philosophical perplexities displaced by the syntactic explication of necessity as analyticity. Lets look at two philosophical tangles that Carnap proposes to treat with his theory of modality in Syntax. First, Carnap sees the dispute between Russell and Lewis on the nature of implication as similar to debates over the foundations of mathematics. He characterizes Russells opinion that implication is a relation between propositions as a material mode claim that is correct if proposition is understood as that which is designated by a sentence (Carnap 1937, 253). Once we think of implication in such a way, we are tempted to ask, what exactly is this relation? Since, to imply in the English language mean the same as to contain or to involve, we are tempted to take it to be the consequence-relation (ibid., 255). Succumbing to this temptation, Lewis and Russellthey are agreed on this pointlook upon the consequence-relation as on the same footing as sentential connectives (ibid., 254). This leads to wrangles about which propositions containing the implication symbol correctly describe the logical consequence relation, i.e., which logical system is correct. The dissolution of this dispute rests on Carnaps explications of ordinary imprecise conceptions of logical consequence in precise syntactical metalinguistic terms. From the perspective of such explications, Carnap takes Lewis to be right in the following sense. If the consequence relation is to be expressed by a sentential connective, say <, so that A < B is demonstrable if B is a consequence of A, then neither Russells implication nor any of the so-called truth-functions can express the consequence-relation at all (ibid.) Thus, Lewis believed himself compelled to introduce intensional sentential connectives, namely, those of strict implication and of the modality-terms (ibid.) But, given Carnaps explications of consequence, one sees that Lewiss move is not compulsory. One can, instead, distinguish the consequence-relation [as] a relation between sentences from implication [which] is not a relation between sentences; in the formal mode, consequence [is] a predicate of the syntaxlanguage, while is a symbol of the object-language (ibid., 253-4; emphases in the text). Thus, pace Lewis, we are not forced to think that the symbol of implication ought really to express the consequence-relation, and count it as a failure on the part of this symbol that it does not do so (ibid., 255). The language of Principia is perfectly adequate for the construction both of logic and of mathematics, and in it necessarily valid sentences can be proved and a sentence which follows from another can be derived from the former (ibid., 253). While there is nothing objectionable in the requirement that a language be capable of expressing necessity, possibility, the consequence-relation, etc., we do not, in the case of Principia, have to insist that to satisfy this requirement we need anything supplementary to [it], because we can simply formulat[e its] syntax (ibid., 253-4).42
42

Carnaps view here bears comparison with Robert Brandoms (1994; 2000) view that logical vocabulary

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Given this context for Carnaps theory of modality in Syntax, we can see that Carnap is not claiming that necessity is a syntactic property, but rather proposing the use of the meta-linguistic predicate analytic in the place of the object language predicate necessary, in order to explicate our imprecise ideas of logical consequence. The point of the proposal is to allow Russellian extensional logicians and Lewisian modal logicians to see that there is no need to argue over whose logic is the right one.43 Second, Carnap addresses a problem deriving from what he takes to be Wittgensteins notions of essential or internal properties. These are defined in the material modes as follows: a property of an object c is called an essential property of c, if it is inconceivable that c should not possess it (or: if c necessarily possesses it) (Carnap 1937, 304). This problem is particularly significant in the subsequent history of modality:
Let us take as the object c the father of Charles. [B]eing related to Charles is an essential property of c, since it is inconceivable that the father of Charles should not be related to Charles. But being a landowner is not an essential property of the father of Charles. For, even if he is a landowner, it is conceivable that he might not be one. On the other hand, being a landowner is an essential property of the owner of this piece of land. For it is inconceivable that the owner of this piece of land should not be a landowner. Now, however, it happens to be the father of Charles who is the owner of this piece of land. [Thus] it is both an essential and not an essential property of this man to be a landowner. (Ibid.)

Carnap proposes to dissolve this apparent contradiction by translation of the second-order pseudo-object property of being an essential property to the syntactical property of relative analyticity: a predicate is analytic relative to a sequence of object designations just in case the sentence resulting from filling the place-holders of the predicate with these terms is analytic. Applying this translation scheme to the problematic essential properties of the example, the contradiction disappears because landowner is an analytic predicate in relation to the object-designation the owner of this piece of land, but it is not an analytic predicate in relation to the object-designation the father of Charles (ibid.) We now see that the fault of the material mode definition of essential property lies in the fact that it is referred to the one object instead of to the object-designations, which may be different even when the object is the same (ibid.) 5. Quine, I: the Carnapian Background The roots of Quines critiques of modality go back to the phase of his philosophical development when he was very much [Carnaps] disciple (1976a, 41). Specifically, in lectures in 1934 expounding

play primarily an expressive role in making inferential proprieties explicit. The syntactic correlate of Lewiss strict implication connective is the consequence predicate of the syntax language, and we have already seen what syntax language predicates are the correlates of Lewiss other modal connectives: the impossibility connective is correlated with contradictory, the possibility connective with non-contradictory, and the necessity connective with analytic Carnap (1935, 73-4, 77; 1937, 69, 250-1).
43

I am very much indebted to Gary Ebbs for the formulation of this point.

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Carnaps Syntax views,44 Quine characterizes modal expressions as a quasi-syntactic, material idiom whose use leads us to lose
sight of what we are talking about; we appear to be talking about certain nonlinguistic objects, when all we need be talking about is the sign or signs themselves which are used for denoting those objects. [T]he expressions of modality are for all the world properties not of names, or sentences, but of things or situations. These modality-properties or pseudo-properties then involve us in difficulties from which we turn to metaphysics for extrication. (1990 [1934], 98)

In particular, use of modal expressions lead us to talk of a realm of possibility as distinct from the realm of actuality, and this raises problems as to how fragments of the possible are actualized, and what it means for a possibility to be actualized, and why certain possibilities are actualized rather than others (ibid., 94-5). The remedy, naturally, is syntax; when the syntactic formulation is used, so that whatever in effect concerns language is made explicitly to concern language, these difficulties vanish (ibid., 98, emphases mine). As we will see, Quines rejection of modality is decisively shaped by this Carnapian view that modal properties are pseudo-object properties, and by Carnaps replacement of necessity by (syntactic) analyticity. The idea of losing sight of what we are talking about suggests that the problem is forming a false view of what were talking about. This suggestion seems confirmed by Quines going on to say, in the quasi-syntactic idiom we appear to be talking about certain nonlinguistic objects. At this point one expects Quine to go on to tell us what we are really talking about. But thats not what Quine tells us. Instead, he says that we dont have to be talking about what we might think were talking about. That is to say, there is an alternative to our conception of the subject matter of our modal discourse. Moreover, Quine urges that this alternative conception is better, because it does not lead to metaphysical difficulties. In other words, this alternative is better, not because it is correct, identifies the true subject of our talk, but because it keeps us out of trouble. This is confirmed by what Quine says at the end of the passage, that in syntactic formulation whatever in effect concerns language is made explicitly to concern language. Quine does not say that the quasi-syntactical idiom in fact concerns language, but only in effect. That is, Quine suggests that we dont actually know what quasi-syntactical sentences are about, but also that, given a syntactic translation, we can take them in effect to be about language. Thus, Quines standard for favoring the syntactic over the quasi-syntactic alternative is a pragmatic one, just as Carnaps is. But Quines pragmatism is not quite the same as Carnaps. Carnapian pragmatism, as we saw, operates at the level of a choice between pursuing traditional philosophical problems and constructing linguistic frameworks. The choice is: do we change the subject or not? The relation of the successor subject to the predecessor can be one of explication, but neednt be. Quinean pragmatism, in contrast,

The significance of these lectures was brought to my attention by Hylton (2001). Those familiar with Hyltons essay will see that my reading of this text differs in a number of respects from his.

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applies to the choice between competing scientific hypotheses. One hypothesis is that our talk of possibility and impossibility commits us to positing a realm of possibilia and impossibilia alongside actual things. The other hypothesis is that this talk only commits us to actual concrete and abstract entities, including the objects of syntactic claims. The first hypothesis not only multiplies entities, and so runs afoul of Occams Razor, but involves us in intractable issues about, inter alia, the properties and individuation of these entities. The second has neither the additional ontological commitments nor the burden of answering these additional questions. Thus, our best scientific methodology dictates that we adopt the second hypothesis over the first.45 One of the metaphysical problems of modality Quine mentions is: what does it mean for a possibility to be actualized? Much of Quines critique of modality stems from this problem. Quines objection, at bottom, is that he doesnt see any clear meaning in claims about what is possible or necessary. Quine divides such claims into two types, and his criticisms fall correspondingly into two groups. The first type consists of claims ascribing necessity or possibility to statements, in traditional terminology, ascriptions of necessity de dicto, for example, It is necessary that 9 > 7 It is possible that the number of planets is less than 7 The second type consists of claims ascribing modal properties to individuals, traditionally termed claims of necessity de re, such as 9 is necessarily greater than 7 and generalizations involving modal properties, such as Something is possibly less than 7 As I mentioned, the target of Quines critique rests on an account of necessity in terms of analyticity, an account original with Lewis, sharpened in formulation by Carnap (1960, 195). The principal thesis of the account is that the result of applying necessarily to a statement is true if, and only if, the original statement is analytic (Quine 1943, 121). Analyticity here is not Carnaps syntactic conception but Quines well-known account: a statement is analytic if by putting synonyms for synonyms it can be turned into a logical truth, where a logical truth is deducible by the logic of truth functions and quantification from true statements containing only logical signs (1947, 44, 43).46 In addition, note that
In one sense, this is also a charge of illusion. But if it is a case of illusion here, it is of the same kind as the illusion we were under when we thought that the existence of aether explains some electromagnetic phenomena, or the existence of four humors explains some physiological phenomena. The upshot of this is that from Quines perspective the danger of the material mode is that it may lead us to commitments that are to be rejected as false on our best theory of the world. This is the perspective from which to grasp Quines rejection of modality. What are rejected are the apparent commitments of modal talk in the material mode, and so with it that material mode talk itself. Note that for Quine here deducibility can be expanded into purely syntactical terms by an enumeration of the familiar rules, which are known to be complete; and the reference to logical signs can likewise be expanded by enumeration of the familiar primitives (1947, 43). Note in addition that Quine later gave what he takes to be a
46 45

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although Quine rarely explicitly mentions it, there is a link between this notion of analyticity and a conception of apriority.47 This goes through a view of the relation between synonymy and understanding: [t]o determine the synonymity of two names or other expressions it should be sufficient to understand the expressions; but to determine that two names designate the same object, it is commonly necessary to investigate the world (Quine 1943, 119). Lets call this view the synonymy thesis. Given this thesis and the account of analyticity, it follows that an analytic statement can be determined as true without investigating the world. Given this background, Quine argues, against de dicto modal claims, that there is no clear distinction between necessary truth and plain truth, because there is no clear distinction between analytic truth and plain truth. I will not discuss these Quinean criticisms, since they rest entirely on Quines rejection of a clear analytic/synthetic distinction, a topic with no specific connection with modality. The problem with de re modal claims is that if one tried to make sense of them in terms of the analyticity conception of necessity, then they either do not describe concrete material objects, or do not have determinate truth conditions. Moreover, to make sense of such claims one must abandon the analyticity conception of necessity, and adopt questionable non-trivial forms of essentialism, what Quine calls Aristotelian essentialism. 6. Quine II: The Substitution and Quantification Arguments As first presented in Notes on Existence and Necessity, (1943)48 Quines critique seems to be a two-part argument. The first part is based on two things. One is the logical law of the indiscernibility of identicals (ibid., 113; emphases in text). The other is the notion of purely designative occurrences of a singular term, or name in Quines terminology in this paper. He writes, The relation of name to the object whose name it is, is called designation . An occurrence of the name in which the name refers simply to the object designated, I shall call purely designative (ibid., 114). If a name occurs purely designatively in a statement, then that statement says something, truly or falsely, of the object designated by that name. Moreover, if an object is designated by two names, then whatever can be said about it by a statement in which one of its names occur purely designatively is exactly the same as what is said about it by any statement that results from replacing that name by the other name. So if one of these statements says something truly of the object, what the other statement says should be equally true of the object (ibid.)49 Quine assumes that if a statement of identity is true, then the names occurring in it designate the

more general characterization of logical truth in terms of substitution and grammar (1986, Chapter 4).
47 48

So far as I can tell, the term a priori appears only once in Quines writings on modality, in (1976b, 159).

This is Quines first presentation of his critique in English; it was first put forward in Portuguese, but published later than the English translation, in Quine (1944). In addition, a very compressed version of part of the argument appears in footnote 22 of Quine (1941, at 16).
49

On this construal the indiscernibility of identicals is used twice: first to show that the same thing is said by

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same object. The conclusion of this line of reasoning is the principle of substitutivity: given a true statement of identity, one of its two terms may be substituted for the other in any true statement [in which they occur purely designatively] and the result will be true (ibid., 113; emphases in text). On the basis of the substitutivity principle, Quine argues that whenever substitution of names which occur in a true identity for one another in a statement fails to preserve truth-valuewhenever, as I shall put it, there is a substitution failurethe occurrence to be supplanted is not purely designative, and the statement depends not only upon the object but on the form of the name. For it is clear that whatever can be affirmed about the object remains true when we refer to the object by any other name (ibid., 114). So far Quines argument yields a general thesis about singular terms: they do not occur purely designatively in statements involved in a substitution failure. In order to apply this conclusion to modality, Quine argues for a, by-now famous, case of modal substitution failure.
The identity: The number of planets = 9
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(2)

is a truth (so far as we know at the moment) of astronomy. The names the number of planets and 9 are not synonymous; they do not have the same meaning. This fact is emphasized by the possibility, ever present, that (2) be refuted by the discovery of another planet. (Ibid., 119) The statement: 9 is necessarily greater than 7 is equivalent to 9 > 7 is analytic and is therefore true (if we recognize the reducibility of arithmetic to logic). On the other hand the statement : The number of planets is necessarily greater than 7, [is] false, since The number of planets is greater than 7 [is] true only because of circumstances outside logic. (Ibid., 121) (4) (3)

The conclusion, as expected, is that the occurrence of the name 9 in (3) is not purely designative (ibid., 123). Lets call this first part of Quines critique the substitution argument. The second part of Quines argument also begins at a general level. He starts by arguing that existential generalization is justified only from purely designative occurrences of names: [t]he idea behind such inference is that whatever is true of the object designated by a given substantive is true of something; and clearly the inference loses its justification when the substantive in question does not

the two statements, and again to show that the single item that is said is true. Note also that here it is the (onto)logical law governing properties of identity that underlies the principle governing substitution inferences. This identity of course came to express a falsehood on August 24, 2006, when the XXVIth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union passed the final resolution on the definition of a planet.
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happen to designate (ibid., 116) It follows that whenever there is substitution failure, existential generalization is not warranted. At this point it seems that Quine can simply apply this general claim to the substitution failures in modal statements that he had already established, to conclude that that existential generalization from singular terms in modal contexts is unwarranted. But this is not how Quine proceeds. Instead, he propounds a problem with specifying the object that makes an existential generalization into a modal context true:
[T]he expression: ~ (x) ~ x is necessarily greater than 7, that is, There is something which is necessarily greater than 7, is meaningless. For, would 9, that is, the number of planets, be one of the numbers necessarily greater than 7? But such an affirmation would be at once true in the form (3) and false in the form (4). (Ibid., 123)

Its not immediately clear what role this problem plays in Quines criticism, and so not clear how exactly the second part of the criticism works. Lets call the second part, however it works, the quantification argument. Eventually Quine will make more explicit that these apparently extra considerations are not superfluous, and that his objection to quantifying into modal contexts is not a straightforward application of the conclusion of the substitution argument. But before getting to that, lets turn to the first objections raised against Quines critique, which can be broadly divided into Fregean and Russellian responses. 7. Fregean Replies to Quine Alonzo Church, in a review (1943) of Notes, in effect agrees with Quine that if a=b is a true identity statement, and if when a and b are substituted for one another the occurrences of these two terms in the statements that result are all purely designative, then there can be no substitution failure. From this conditional one can infer that if there is substitution failure, then either a=b is not a true identity, or these occurrences of a and b do not designate a single object. Church sees Quine as assuming that if the terms figure in a true identity, they must designate the same object in all their occurrences if they designate anything at all, and thereby concluding that in cases of substitution failure they do not designate at all when they occur in the statements involved in that failure. But the assumption is not mandatory. Church draws on Freges distinction between the ordinary (gewhnlich) and the oblique (ungerade) use of a name to provide an alternative (1943, 45). When names occur in oblique contexts such as those induced by modal operators, one can take them to designate, not their ordinary denotations, but their ordinary senses. In the present case if a and b have different senses, then in a modal context they do designate, but distinct entities; moreover, these entities are both distinct from the single object both terms designate when occurring in the true identity. Since the designations of singular terms in true identities differ from their designations in oblique contexts, the indiscernibility of identicals no longer justifies the principle of substitutivity. Moreover, quantification into oblique contexts is legitimated by taking the variable of quantification to range over intensional entities such as senses and attributes.

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Carnap advances what seems to be a similar reply in Meaning and Necessity (1947) in terms of his method of extension and intension. One way of understanding this method is as a semantic theory that associates two entities with each expression of a language-system, its extension and its intension. The semantical rules then licenses intersubstitution of singular terms in an oblique context only when they have the same intension. Moreover, variables of quantification range over both extensions and intensions. A quantification into an oblique context is determined as true or false by intensions in the range of the variable of quantification, while quantification into extensional contexts is determined by the extensions in the range of the variable.51 8. Russellian Replies to Quine, I: the Theory of Descriptions Church (1942) advances another objection based on Russells theory of descriptions. Church points out that Quines case of substitution failure in the footnote 22 of Whitehead and the Rise of Modern Logic (Quine 1941) involves statements in which a definite description occurs. Hence, if one applies Russells theory to eliminate these descriptions, the inference Quine presents would no longer have the logical form of substituting one singular term for another. This objection is developed most fully by Smullyan in (1948), who points out that, according to Russells theory of descriptions, in the conclusion of Quines example of substitution failure, The number of planets is necessarily greater than 7 (4) there are two possible scopes for the description the number of planets. So the description can be eliminated in two ways. If we use N for numbers the planets, and take the description to have wide scope with respect to the modal expression, the result of eliminating the description according to Russells theory is (x)(y)((Ny y=x) & (x>7)) That is, The number x that uniquely numbers the planets is such that necessarily x is greater than 7. If we take the description to have narrow scope, the result of eliminating it is [(x)(y)((Ny y=x) & (x>7))] That is, It is necessary what whatever number uniquely numbers the planets is greater than 7. (6) (5)

One might indulge in a slight anachronism and take Church and Carnap both to hold that singular terms have two semantic values in the sense of Dummett (1978, 120-22), one which contributes to determining the truth values of statements in which the terms occur in extensional contexts, and another for occurrences in intensional contexts. Carnap goes to some trouble to argue that the method of extension and intension can be stated in a neutral metalanguage in which there do not occur two classes of singular terms, one for extensions and the other for intensions (1947, 34-8). In such a neutral meta-language the semantics of singular terms is not stated in terms of two types of semantic values.

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The first premise of the supposed substitution failure is The number of planets = 9 Eliminating the description, we obtain (x)(y)((Ny y=x) & x=9) That is, The number that uniquely numbers the planets is identical to 9. The second premise is 9 is necessarily greater than 7 i.e. (9>7) From these premises it clearly follows that The number that uniquely numbers the planets is necessarily greater than 7. But this is just the wide scope interpretation of the conclusion. Indeed, in the logic of Principica one can derive (5) from (7) and (8). Interpreted in this way, Quines example not only does not consist in a substitution inference, but is also not an invalid argument. Invalidity results only if in the conclusion the description is taken to have narrow scope; i.e., (6) does not follow from (7) and (8). 9. Quine II: Quines Replies, the Purification Argument, and an Apparent Standoff Quines response, in Reference and Modality, to the introduction of intensional entities is to argue that this maneuver results in an ontology which purifie[s the] universe of material objects and leaves only intensional objects in their place.52 I will present a version of Quines argument that extrapolates from what he writes in this essay; call it the purification argument. The problem arises from statements in which quantifiers bind variables both inside and outside modal contexts. Quantified modal logic, as it was first formulated by Marcus,53 is committed to such statements. For Marcus derives, in her version of quantified S4 with identity, a theorem that has come to be known as the thesis of the necessity of identity:54 (x)(y)(x=y (x=y)) (9) (8) (3) (7) (2)

This essay appears in three different versions, Quine (1953;1961a;1980); the quoted phrase appears at 150 in all versions. In Barcan (1946a;1946b;1947). Marcus provides extensions of two of the Lewis systems with quantificational axioms and an axiom governing quantifiers and modal operators now known as the Barcan formula. Three months after the first two of Marcuss papers Carnap (1946) sets out a quite different account of quantification and modality, based on a semantic construction whose relation to the Lewis axioms systems is not obvious. Theorem 2.33 and an immediate corollary of it, in Barcan (1947), assert that material identity is strictly equivalent to both strict identity and the necessity of strict identity.
54 53

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Quine asks, can the values of the variables in this quantification include concrete material objects? If so, then consider one such object, the planet Venus as a material object (1953, 151). Two names for this planet are Morning Star and Evening Star. So by universal instantiation from (9) we obtain Morning Star = Evening Star (Morning Star = Evening Star) (10)

The antecedent of (10) is a statement of identity in which these names occur in an extensional context. Since these expressions both name Venus, that planet is their ordinary denotation or extension. Since they thus have the same ordinary denotation or extension, it follows that the identity statement that is the antecedent of (10) is true. These names occur in an intensional context in the consequent of (10), and so to evaluate its truth-value, one has to consider the oblique denotations or intension of the names. Now Quine assumes that Morning Star and Evening Star are heteronymous names (ibid.); i.e., they differ in meaning. Hence its plausible that they differ in oblique denotation or intension. It follows that the consequent of (10) is false. The upshot is that in order for (9) to be true, the entities in the range of its quantifiers have to satisfy the condition that any two names referring to any such entity are synonymous. This condition is not, however, satisfied by concrete material objects. Such objects, in general, may have distinct designations such that it takes empirical investigation for us to know that they refer to a single object. Hence, by the synonymy thesis, these terms are not synonymous. If we look at Marcuss formal proof, we can see that the line of reasoning underlying it is the following. First, suppose that being necessarily identical to a particular object is a property. Then, the indiscernibility of identity implies that, for any objects x and y, if x is identical to y, then x has the property of being necessarily identical to x just in case y also has this property. But it is surely impossible for anything to be different from itself. So, x is necessarily identical to x. Hence y also is necessarily identical to x. Thus, from Quines perspective the purification argument can also be taken to show that if there are any objects with distinct non-synonymous names then necessary identity to an object is not a property of objects. Quines initial replies to Smullyan are undermined by mistakes about the theory of descriptions in Principia. Specifically, Quine claimed that Smullyans solution requires an alteration in the treatment of descriptions in Principia, because in Principia all wide and narrow scope eliminations of descriptions are provably equivalent (1953, 155; 1961b, 154). But in fact in Principia the equivalence is established only for extensional contexts; Quines claim is removed from the third (1980) version of the paper.55 Eventually Quine settled on the following response:
[I]f we are to bring out Russells distinction of scopes we must make two contrasting applications of Russells contextual definition of description. But when the description is in a non-substitutive position, one of the two contrasting applications of the contextual definition is going to require quantifying into a non-substitutive position. So the appeal to scopes of descriptions does not justify such quantification, it just begs the question. (1969, 338)
55

For more details see Marcus (1990) and Neale (1999).

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Quines point is that, in order to claim that Quines purported case of substitution failure can be taken instead to be a valid argument, Smullyan analyzes the conclusion as (x)(y)((Ny y=x) & (x>7)) But (5) existentially quantifies into a modal context. So, Smullyan must presuppose that such quantifications are meaningful. But this assumption begs the question against Quines overall conclusion that such quantifications are meaningless. But Quines presentation of his case, which we have followed so far, suggests that this overall conclusion is supported by the thesis that singular terms occurring in modal contexts are not purely designative. Moreover, the ground of that thesis is substitution failures in modal contexts. So, from Smullyans perspective, it is Quine who has begged the question. For Smullyan can take his argument to show that if modal quantifications are meaningful, then Quines examples are not genuine cases of substitution failure. So, in order to take his examples as genuine substitution failures, Quine must already reject the meaningfulness of modal quantifications. Neither side, it seems, has provided an argument that is compelling for the other. But this standoff itself presupposes that Quines only ground against quantifying in is substitution failure, and that Smullyans only ground against substitution failure requires Russells theory of descriptions. As we will now see, neither of these presuppositions is true. 10. Quine III: The Quantification Argument Revisited Lets come back to the question we left hanging at the end of section 6: how exactly does substitution failure bear on the meaninglessness of quantification? A moment of reflection suggests a problem. Suppose we accept that if both 9 and the number of planets occur designatively in 9 is necessarily greater than 7 and The number of planets is necessarily greater than 7 (4) (3) (5)

then these sentences do not differ in truth-value. Now, given that they do differ in truth-value, we can conclude that not both 9 and the number of planets occur designatively, i.e., that at least one does not. However, it is compatible with this conclusion that one of these two terms does occur designatively. If thats the case, then the truth-value of one of the two affirmations of the predicate necessarily greater than 7, i.e., one of (3) and (4), is determined only by the object designated. Thus it doesnt follow that whether this predicate is truly affirmed of an entity is invariably determined by the terms used to single out those entities, and so it doesnt follow that there is no account of the truth conditions of existential generalizations from (3) or (4).56
56

The problem just sketched is a simplified version of an objection due to David Kaplan in (1986), section III.

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Moreover, why should we infer, from the fact that one occurrence of a singular term in a context is not purely designative, to the conclusion that variables occurring in this context would also not be purely designative? On a widespread view of Tarskis account of quantification, the role of variables of quantification in specifying the truth conditions of quantified sentences is exhausted by assignments of objects to variables.57 Thus, so long as there is a coherent account of what it is for an open sentence to be true under an assignment of an object to a variable, there is also a coherent account of quantification. Whether or not singular terms in the positions occupied by variables are purely designative seems quite irrelevant.58 Recall now that in Notes Quine does not explicitly base the quantification argument on the substitution argument, and that he raises, with respect to statements existentially quantifying into modal contexts, a problem of specifying the objects that satisfy the matrices of the quantifications. In this section I show that, beginning with some exchanges with Carnap, Quine thought of these questions as forming a quantification argument separate from the substitution argument. Moreover, I will suggest a way of making sense of this argument in terms of Carnaps notion of pseudo-object property. In a letter to Carnap Quine says, Im going to try to make the essential theoretical point of my article [Notes] without use either of the term designation or of the formal theory of identity (Carnap and Quine 1990, 325). He does this with the following argument:
Let us agree, for purpose of the example, to regard the following statement as true: It is impossible that the capital city of Venezuela be outside Venezuela From this it would seem natural, by existential generalization, to infer the following: x it is impossible that x be outside Venezuela (12) Now just what is the object x that is considered, in inferring (12) from (11), to be incapable of being outside Venezuela? . It is a certain mass of adobe et al., viz, the capital city itself. And it is this mass of adobe that is (apparently) affirmed, in (11), to be incapable of being outside Venezuela. Hence the apparent justice, intuitively, of the inference of (12) from (11). However, that same mass of adobe et al. is affirmed in the following true statement (apparently) to be capable of being outside Venezuela: It is possible that the native city of Bolivar be outside Venezuela (13) Justification of (12) by (11) is thwarted by (13), for (13) has just as much right to consideration as (11) so far as the mass of adobe in question is concerned. (Carnap and Quine 1990, 325; emphases mine). (11)

Lets begin with Quines claim that in sentence (11), it is a city, a mass of adobe, etc., that is apparently affirmed to have a certain modal property. That is to say, Quines claim is that (11) seems to be an ascription of a property to a city. Moreover, if (11) is indeed such an ascription, then it does warrant the conclusion that something has that property, since that property appears to be a property
57 58

As Kaplan puts it, variables are prototypical devices of direct reference. See Kazmi (1987, 97, 99).

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which cities have. But is (11) in fact the ascription of a property of cities to a city? If it is, then the correctness of this ascription should not be sensitive to the form of the name of that object. However, if (11) ascribes a property to a city, is there any reason to think that (13) does not? If not, then (13) has as much a claim as (11) to being an ascription of the very same property that is ascribed in (11) to the very same city mentioned by (13). But (13) has a different truth-value from (11). Since a single city is designated in these two sentences, this difference in truth-values cannot be accounted for if the truth conditions of the sentences consists in a single predicates being true of that city. Some other features of the two singular terms must play a role; equivalently, the applicability of the predicate must be sensitive to those other features. The obvious feature in which these terms differ is their syntactic form. Hence I take Quine to reason that, in the absence of a different account, we have to think that whether the predicate is true of an object is fixed by the syntactic form of designations of those objects. So the property ascribed in (11) is not a genuine property of cities after all.59 Now, all this talk of what property seems to be ascribed, and what property is in fact ascribed should remind you of the notion of pseudo-object property, which seems to be a property of objects, but is in fact a property of linguistic expressions. Lets recall, furthermore, that according to Carnap what makes a property pseudo-object is that whether holds of an object is determined by whether a syntactical property correlated with holds of that objects designations, that is, it is determined by the syntactical forms of those designations. Thus, the difference in truth-value between (11) and (13), in spite of the identity of the object mentioned in these sentences, shows that they are ascriptions of a pseudo-object property. Quines argument, up to this point, shows that the modal property of being necessarily greater than 7 is a pseudo-object property. So what then is the problem with quantifying into modal contexts? The problem is an instance of a general problem of generalizing over pseudo-object properties. Affirmations of pseudo-object properties of specific objects are unproblematic; they can be eliminated in favor of their translations into formal mode sentences.60 But with (objectual) quantification the situation is different. The truth-value of a quantification something is is determined by whether the predicate is truly affirmed of each member of the universe of discourse, independently of what terms, if any, designate that member. But, whether an object has a pseudo-object property can vary depending on how that object is designated, and there is no account of how to determine whether a designation-less object has that property. So quantificational generalizations about pseudo-object properties have no determinate truth conditions.
59

Plantinga (1974, Appendix) presents a closely related account of why, according to Quine, modalized predicates do not express genuine properties. Note that around the time that Quine formulated these arguments Carnap came to adopt semantics, and so to give up the notions of pseudo-object and quasi-syntactical property. Nevertheless Carnap continued to work with a successor notion, that of a quasi-logical property. A reformulation of Quines arguments in terms of quasi-logical properties introduces a number of complications that I cant go into here.
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The present quantification argument clearly is not independent of substitution failures. But it is not based on the conclusion of the substitution argument, namely, that the singular terms involved in a substitution failure are not purely referential. One might put the point in this way. According to the present argument, substitution failure shows, not that there is something non-standard about the functioning of the singular terms in question, but that there is something non-standard about the functioning of the predicate in question. That is, the problem lies in the very idea of an open sentence formed from a pseudo-object context being satisfied by an object. So the argument is not affected by the view that variables are directly referential. Suppose we grant that variables are devices of direct reference, so all they contribute to the truth conditions of open sentences in which they occur are the objects assigned to them. On this construal of variables, they are, as it were, formless singular terms. But then variables lack precisely those features demanded by pseudo-object contexts for determining whether those contexts are true of the objects assigned to the variables. So direct referentiality does not make objectual quantifying into a pseudo-object context coherent.61 However, since the argument is still based on substitution failures, it is open to Churchs and Smullyans Russellian objections. In particular, since in Quines example sentences (11) and (13) the singular terms are descriptions, one might hold that neither of these sentences is an ascription of a property to a city. Hence the difference in their truth-values has no implications for the nature of the property expressed by the predicate occurring in these sentences. I take it that it is to answer such objections that Quine writes, in Reference and Modality,
Whatever is greater than 7 is a number, and any given number x greater than 7 can be uniquely determined by any of various conditions, some of which have x > 7 as a necessary consequence and some of which do not. One and the same number x is uniquely determined by the condition:
x x x x x

(14)

and by the condition: There are exactly x planets, (15) but (14) has x > 7 as a necessary consequence while (15) does not. Necessary greaterness than 7 makes no sense as applied to a number x; necessity attaches only to the connection between x > 7 and the particular method (14), as opposed to (15), of specifying x. (1953, 149)

This is yet another version of the quantification argument. The conclusion, again, is that since whether an
In (1987), Mark Richard argues that an objectual account of quantification is consistent with failures of substitution. The principal idea underlying this argument is that in a Tarskian account of quantification the notion of satisfaction by sequences requires variables to be indexed by a set of the same ordinal type as those sequences of maximal ordinal type, and nothing in the idea of objectual quantification rules out variant accounts of satisfaction that depend on conditions involving the index set. From our perspective, this idea simply makes variables into names with form, and so Quine would not accept such variant accounts of quantification as purely objectual. (Quine would point to the failure of the relettering law on Richards account as confirmation of this.) Richard argues that in the case of open sentences in which variables occur within the scope of propositional attitude verbs, such variant accounts of satisfaction have theoretical advantages over Quines theory of de re ascriptions of belief, which tacitly employs the orthodox account. Quine, in my view, can respond by arguing that the advantages can also be captured by his de dicto account of belief ascription; but that is a topic for another day.
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object has the property of being necessarily greater than 7 depends on which open sentence it satisfies, this property is pseudo-object. Lets look at the quantification argument in a slightly different way. As we saw, Quine began by accepting Carnaps explication of necessity, considered as a pseudo-object property of states of affairs, in terms of metalinguistic predicates of sentences describing these states of affairs. Modulo doubts about analyticity, Quine never rejects this explication. His critique of modality relates to Carnaps explication of necessary properties of objects in terms of relative analyticity. As we saw above, Carnap explicates the claim that something has a necessary property by the (metalinguistic) claim that a sentence formed by putting a designation of the object in the placeholder of a predicate expressing the corresponding nonmodal property is analytic. Since different designations or specifications lead to different verdicts about the analyticity of the resulting sentences, and so different verdicts about whether the necessary property holds of the object, it follows from this Carnapian account that modal properties are pseudo-object as well. This is hardly a surprising conclusion to reach from the view that necessity is a pseudo-object property of states of affairs. Quine, however, goes on from this conclusion to argue that (objectual) quantificational generalizations over pseudo-object properties have no determinate truth conditions. But then there is no meaningful explication of modal properties of objects.62 11. Quine IV: Anti-Essentialism In face of the revised quantification arguments, how could one confer determinate truth conditions on a generalization involving a modal predicate, when different verdicts on whether this predicate is true or false of an object result from different specifications of that object? One way to accomplish this is, for each object, to retain all the positive verdicts and throw out all the negative ones, or vice versa. This is what Quine means by adopting an invidious attitude toward certain ways of uniquely specifying [the object], and favoring other ways (1961a, 155). But, Quine asks, what basis is available for rejecting some specifications and retaining others? All these conditions are, after all, ex hypothesi satisfied by the object. It is at this point that Quine brings in Aristotelian essentialism: the favored specifications are those somehow better revealing the essence of the object (ibid.) What Quine has in mind is a feature of a traditional conception of essential properties: if an object loses an essential property then it ceases to exist.63 Lets illustrate Quines line of thinking with an

Burgess (1997) and Neale (1999) also argue that Quines argument against quantifying in is independent of substitution failures. They do not discuss its connection to Carnaps notion of relative analyticity in Syntax. Many are skeptical of the Aristotelian pedigree of Quines essentialism. But Aristotle would surely accept that, in order to be an essential property of something, that thing couldnt exist without having the property. Of course, on Aristotles conception, this modal feature is not sufficient for the property to be essential, because he requires essential properties to have explanatory priority with respect to other properties having this feature. (See Shields (2007, 99-105) or a fuller account of Aristotle on essence.) It follows that all Aristotelian essential properties are Quinean ones, but perhaps not vice versa.
63

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example. Suppose the specification of 8 as the successor of 7 expresses an essential property of 8, and suppose that being even follows analytically from being the successor of 7. Consider now the claim that 8 is not even. Since being even follows analytically from being the successor of 7, it follows from this claim that 8 is not the successor of 7. But since being the successor of 7 is essential to 8, anything distinct from the successor of 7 is not 8. So we reach the logical contradiction that 8 is not 8. Thus the claim that 8 is not even is contradictory; hence being even is a necessary property of 8. Consider now, in contrast, the non-essential property of 8 of numbering the planets. Being a non-essential property of 8, failure to number the planets is not sufficient for diversity from 8, and so the claim that 8 does not number the planets fails to lead to any contradiction. Strictly this line of reasoning does not show that the notion of essential property is required to confer determinate truth conditions on quantificational generalizations over modal properties; essence merely suffices for determinate truth conditions. Quines conclusion should then be a challenge to explain objectual quantification over modal properties without invoking the notion of essential property. Of course the force of this challenge depends on whether there is anything wrong with essentialism. Quines most well-known objection to essentialism is based on a version of the example motivating Carnaps explication of the notion of essential property:
Mathematicians may conceivably be said to be necessarily rational and not necessarily twolegged; and cyclists necessarily two-legged and not necessarily rational. But what of an individual who counts among his eccentricities both mathematics and cycling? Is this concrete individual necessarily rational and contingently two-legged or vice versa? Just insofar as we are talking referentially of the object, with no special bias toward a background grouping of mathematicians as against cyclists or vice versa, there is no semblance of sense in rating some of his attributes as necessary and others as contingent. Some of his attributes count as important, and others as unimportant, yes; some as enduring and others as fleeting; but none as necessary or contingent. (Quine 1960, 199)

The Carnapian background is key to understanding Quines argument. Recall that Carnap took the case of the landowning father, c, to lead to an apparent contradiction via the Tractarian account of essential property: c is both essentially a landowner and not essentially a landowner. Carnap resolves this contradiction by appeal to relative analyticity, so that c is essentially a landowner relative to one description but not relative to another. But essentialism abjures appeal to descriptions or conditions satisfied by objects for determining whether they possess essential properties. So the Carnapian method of resolving such apparent contradictions is no longer available. In terms of Quines example, if, in accordance with essentialism, we are barred from appealing to the conditions of being a mathematician and being a cyclist, i.e., to a background grouping of mathematicians as against cyclists or vice versa, nothing stands in the way of inferring that mathematical cyclists are both necessarily rational and not necessarily rational, which is why there is no semblance of sense in the characterization of objects attributes as necessary and others as contingent according to essentialism. This line of argument is hardly conclusive. An obvious essentialist response is that the supposed

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contradiction arises only because Quines basis for claiming that a mathematical cyclist is necessarily rational is a conditionbeing a mathematicianthat she satisfies only contingently.64 So in fact essentialism has the resources for resisting the supposed contradiction, by claiming that mathematical cyclists are not necessarily rational, because not essentially mathematicians. But from Quines perspective this response takes us to another question: what justifies, without any appeal to conditions that someone satisfies, the claim that she is not essentially a mathematician? This question has particular weight for Carnap. It is not that Carnap rejects essentialist metaphysics out of hand; he would have no objection to the notion of essence so long as it is explicated in precise terms. But Carnaps explication of essence is precisely that which essentialism rejects. So, for Carnap, unless there is some way other than essentialism for providing quantifications into modal contexts with determinate truth conditions, its unclear why the use of modal expressions should not simply be rejected altogether. Quines argument plausibly has force not only against Carnap. If one rejects Carnaps relative analyticity as the basis for predicating essential and contingent properties, what should be put in its place? Thus, at bottom, Quine is not claiming that essentialism is objectionable because it leads to contradictions. Quine is, rather, posing a challenge to essentialism: what coherent and non-arbitrary standards are there for determining the correctness of ascriptions of essential properties, and for doing so without appeal to conditions satisfied by the objects of the ascriptions? 12. Russellian Responses, II: Smullyan and Marcus As mentioned in section 8 above, Smullyan has another objection to Quines substitution arguments. This is based on the claim that if Evening Star and Morning Star proper-name the same individual they are synonymous (Smullyan 1947, 140). This conception of proper names is arguably held by Mill, so nowadays it would be called a Millian view. On this view we can substitute either of Evening Star and Morning Star for the other in the statement Evening Star = Morning Star to obtain synonymous statements Evening Star = Evening Star and Morning Star = Morning Star. By Quines lights both of these latter statements are logical truths. Hence by Quines account of analyticity Evening Star = Morning Star is analytic and so by the analyticity account of necessity (Evening Star = Morning Star) is true. Smullyans Millian view of proper name is a flat rejection of Quines assumption that these two names of the concrete material object (the planet) Venus are heteronymous. Given this rejection, it is possible to take the necessity of identity to hold at least of the material object that is Venus, provided that we refer to it by the synonymous names Evening Star and Morning Star. Both Quine and a Fregean like Church would reject such Millianism about proper names, for the same reason. As Church puts it in a review of F. B. Fitchs (1949),
Fitch holds (with Smullyan) that two proper names of the same individual must be
64

See in particular Marcus (1961, 317-319).

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synonymous. It would seem to the reviewer that, as ordinarily used, the Morning Star and the Evening Star cannot be taken to be proper names in this sense; for it is possible to understand the meaning of both phrases without knowing that the Morning Star and the Evening Star are the same planet. Indeed, for like reasons, it is hard to find any clear example of a proper name in this sense. (Church 1950, 63)65

What underlies this objection is clearly the synonymy thesis. An obvious move for Smullyan and Fitch to make in response would be to question this connection, and defend the view that understanding need not be sufficient for knowledge of synonymy. But neither, so far as I know, pursues this line of response to Church-Quine objection, or, for that matter, explains fully their Millian conception of proper names. As a result, this early objection to Quine had little immediate influence.66 By invoking synonymy, Smullyan and Fitch suggest that they think true identities are necessary because reducible via non-empirical facts about meaning to non-empirical logical truths. Their unappreciated contribution is to point to an unquestioned assumptionthat understanding two expressions is always sufficient for knowing whether they are synonymousunderlying an apparently decisive stumbling block for proceeding along this route. But their opposition to Quine does not put into question the conception of necessity as analyticity that is the target of Quines critique. Marcuss paper, Modalities and Intensional Languages (1961), marks the beginnings of a seachange in our philosophical conception of modality. The principal aim of the part of the paper on which I focus is to defend her theorem of the necessity of identity against Quines purification argument. Marcuss defense begins with a version of an argument advanced by Russell in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918, 212). Marcus writes,
Consider the claim that aIb (16) is a true identity. Now if (16) is such a true identity, then a and b are the same thing. [(16)] doesnt say that a and b are two things which happen, through some accident, to be one. If, then, (16) is true, it must say the same thing as aIa. (17) But (17) is surely a tautology, and so (16) must surely be a tautology as well. This is precisely the import of my theorem [of the necessity of identity]. (1961, 308)

We can divide this argument into five steps. First, if a statement of identity, with distinct expressions a and b flanking the identity symbol I, is true, then a and b denote a single thing. Second, since a and b denote a single thing, this identity statement says the same thing as the true identity aIa . Third, if two statements say the same thing, then if either is a tautology so is the other. Fourth, since aIa is a tautology, it follows by the last two steps that the true identity aIb is also a tautology. Finally, since
65

In fact Fitch in the article Church reviews here says nothing about synonymy; he merely cites Smullyan as showing that on the assumption that the terms occurring in Quines examples are proper names ~(Morning Star = Evening Star would clearly be false Fitch (1949, 138).
66

Marcuss review of Smullyan (1947, 140) is a notable exception.

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aIb is a tautology, it is necessarily true. This way of parsing the argument highlights three questions. First, what is an identity statement? That is, what kinds of expression do a and b have to be in order for aIb to be an identity statement? Second, what is it for two sentences or statements to say the same thing? Perhaps more generally, what does a statement say? Third, what is a tautology for Marcus? Lets take up the second question first. The second step of the argument suggests that what is said by an identity statement is (at least partly) individuated by the entities denoted by the expressions flanking the symbol of identity. It is because, by the first step of the argument, all occurrences of expressions flanking the identity symbol in the statements (16) and (17) denote a single entity that these statements say the same thing. This suggests that these identity statements say the same thing because they are about the same entity, and asserts the same thing of that entity, namely, that it is self-identical. If so, then this suggest that, in general, what a statement says, to put it using Tractarian terms, is something like the state of affairs that it depicts. Lets turn now to Marcuss notion of tautology. The final step of the argument obviously suggests the Tractarian-positivist account of necessity in terms of tautology. This raises the question whether her conception of tautology the same as the Tractarian one. A closely related question is raised by her description of the conclusion of her argument as to say of an identity (in the strongest sense of the word) that it is true, it must be tautologically true or analytically true (ibid., 309-10). Here Marcus seems to equate tautology with analyticity, and so, in light of the last step of her argument, we might ask, is her conception of necessity the same as the positivist analyticity view of necessity? Given our contemporary tendency to identify all conceptions of modality in the analytic tradition with the positivist conception, we are likely to be satisfied with a superficial reading of Marcuss text and conclude that the answer to both question is yes. But some attention to what she actually writes puts this answer in question. To begin with, Tractarian tautologies, as we have seen, say nothing. By contrast, as we have just argued, for Marcus true identity statements that are tautologies depict states of affairs. Now it might be objected that this consideration is not decisive because, if tautologies say nothing, then in a vacuous sense they all say the same thing,67 and isnt this thesis precisely that which underlies the third step of Marcuss argument? But the argument just presented starts from the claim that tautologies say nothing, to reach the conclusion that they all (vacuously) say the same thing. The role of the third step in Marcuss argument, however, is to allow a transition from the identification of a single thing said by two statements in the
We can make this idea more precise in the following way. Suppose we represent the logical form of claims to the effect that a statement says something as the existence of something to which the statement stand in the relation of saying. Then, using S to express the relation of saying, the claim that t1 says nothing is ~(x)(St1x) . So if t2 also says nothing, then it follows that (x)(St1x St2x). We can take this last claim to represent the vacuous sense in which t1 and t2 say the same thing. Obviously there is another way of construing the logical form of claiming that two statements p and q say the same thing (x)(Spx & Sqx) which is incompatible with the claim that t1 and t2 both say nothing.
67

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second step to the conclusion that both of these statements are tautologies. This inferential move presupposes that there is something said by these statements which wind up being classified as tautologies. So Marcuss reasoning is incompatible with the view that tautologous statements say nothing. Lets now consider whether the analyticity conception of necessity plays any role in Marcuss argument. In doing this we will answer the first question raised above about that argument. Lets observe, to start with, that the Russellian argument that we have been discussing is not, by itself, Marcuss full defense of the necessity of identity. The reason is that the Russellian argument operates under the assumption that aIb is a true identity statement, and part of Marcuss objection to Quine is that in his purification argument he assumes, uncritically, that the sentence Morning Star is identical to Evening Star is a genuine identity statement. Marcus claims, against Quine, that in order for a statement of the form aIb to be a genuine identity statement, the singular terms occurring in it have to function in a particular way. It is in order to make this functioning explicit that Marcus introduces the notion of tags. In her view, singular terms in natural languages function in many complex ways that are not easily distinguished. Tags, in contrast, are artificial expressions stipulated to function in just one way, and so provide an idealized model of one aspect of the working of ordinary singular terms. Marcuss claim is that statements with tags flanking the identity symbol are the genuine identity statements to which her Russellian argument applies. Tagging is the result of putting some (finite) set of randomly generated natural numbers in a one-to one correspondence with all the entities countenanced as things by some particular culture through its own language (Marcus 1961, 310).68 Each of these numbers is then an identifying tag [that] is a proper name of the thing to which it is correlated. The crucial feature of tags is that they have no meaning (ibid., 309). Since tags have no meanings, the concept of synonymy applies at best only vacuously to them.69 Now none of the foregoing considerations tells us yet what are Marcuss conceptions of tautology and of necessity. I suggest that Marcus uses tautology in something like the way that Russell does when Russell tells us that being a tautology is a peculiar quality [that] belongs to logical propositions and not
If we take Marcus at her word here, we have to take tagging to be, strictly in the first place a syntactic correlation of the singular or descriptive referring expressions of the language of a culture with a set of numbers. If one is determined to insist that Marcus subscribes to the positivists analyticity conception of necessity, one might seize on the fact that meaningless tags can be vacuously synonymous to claim that her argument for the necessity of true identities between tags must after all depend on considerations of synonymy, as Smullyans and Fitchs objections to Quine do. But this line of interpretation fails because, if synonymy among tags rests on their lack of meaning, then all tags are synonymous. It follows that all identity statements between tags can be transformed into an instance of the law of identity by substitution of synonyms and so are, not just true, but necessarily so. This of course yields the unacceptable conclusion that necessarily there are no distinct tagged entities. The reasonable conclusion to draw at this point is that synonymy plays no role in Marcuss argument for the necessity of true identities, and that she is not operating with the positivists analyticity conception of necessity.
69 68

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to others, which he doesnt know how to define (1918, 205). That is to say, for Marcus to be a tautology is to be logically true.70 We also know that if two statements depict the same state of affairs, then one of them is a tautology just in case the other is. This suggests that a statement is a tautology just in case what it depicts holds as a matter of logic. In particular, the state of affairs depicted by a true identity statement is the self-identity of some object; since it is a logical law that every object is selfidentical, this state of affairs holds as a matter of logic. All this indicates how far Marcuss view is from the Tractarian and positivist conceptions of logical truths as saying nothing about the world. For Marcus statements concerning ordinary material objects can be logically true, in virtue of describing facts involving such objects that hold as a matter of logic. Since for Marcus the necessity of genuine identities does not rest on analyticity, she does not face the question why knowledge of certain identities requires empirical investigation, rather than mere knowledge of meaning or linguistic reflection. But if for her true identities between tags are necessary because logically true, she faces a variant of this question. Quine puts it, in (1961b), as follows:
We may tag the planet Venus, some fine evening, with the proper name Hesperus. We may tag the same planet again, some day before sunrise, with the proper name Phosphorus. When at last we discover that we have tagged the same planet twice, our discovery is empirical. And not because the proper names were descriptions. (327)

If this identity between two tags can be established only by empirical investigation, how could it be logically true? If it is logically true, wouldnt we be able to establish its truth by deductive reasoning alone, without appeal to empirical evidence?71 Marcus has, in the text of Modalities, the materials for a reply to this argument. However, as we will see below, at the time this paper was presented to the Boston Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science and subsequently published, Marcus arguably did not have a fully worked out reply based on this material. So I present an elaboration of a line of response suggested by, but not present in, the text. Lets start with the following passage:
You may describe Venus as the evening star and I may describe Venus as the morning star, and we may both be surprised that as an empirical fact, the same thing is being described. But it is not an empirical fact that Venus I Venus (18)

Contrast this picture with that which underlies the Quine-Church objection to Smullyan. On that view, if a and b abbreviate distinct co-referential singular terms, then the true identity statement a=b can be, at best, analytically true, but not logically true. Perhaps a version of this argument also moved Russell to hold that [i]f one asserts Scott is Sir Walter, the way one would mean it would be that one was using the names as descriptions Russell (1918, 212). If a and b are genuine names then a=a and a=b make the same assertion, and one would not bother to assert this tautology. And the reason, to put it the terms of Russell (1905), is that one may wonder whether Scott is Sir Walter without wondering whether Scott is Scott. So Russell concludes that, as these expressions figure in ordinary assertions, Scott and Sir Walter are not logically proper names. Given different epistemic attitudes to these two statements, they do not make the same assertion.
71

70

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and if a is another proper name for Venus [that]72 Venus I a. (Marcus 1961, 310) (19)

The crucial contrast here is between empirical fact and non-empirical fact. What Marcus characterizes as empirical is the fact that the same thing is described by two expressions. What the two statements, (18) and (19) describe, however, is a single, non-empirical fact. In line with what I have argued above, what (18) and (19) describe is the fact that Venus is self-identical. This fact holds as a matter of logic, and so is not known on the basis of empirical investigation. What empirical investigation establishes is that distinct expressions describe the same thing. There is no reason not to extend this last point to tags. That is, empirical investigation may be required to establish that distinct tags tag the same thing. Now, we can grant, for instance, that it is a truth of astronomy that Hesperus is the same thing as Phosphorus, while it is not a truth of astronomy that Hesperus is the same thing as Hesperus. But, why should it follow from this that the two statements Hesperus = Phosphorus Hesperus = Hesperus (20) (21)

describe distinct facts? Moreover, why should it follow that what astronomical investigation is required to establish is that the fact depicted by (20) holds? We can hold, instead, that in the case of the true identity statement (20), empirical investigation does not establish that the fact it describesthe selfidentity of an objectholds. Rather, empirical investigation establishes that statement (20) depicts this fact of self-identity, by establishing that the two tags occurring in (20) tag that object. On this view, empirical investigation is not the basis for knowing that what (20) says holds, for what (20) says holds as a matter of logic, and so necessarily. Note that on this view what is said by (both) (20) and (21) is necessary, but not known a posteriori; what is known a posteriori is that what (20) says is the same as what (21) says. This view suggests a picture of naming. The idea is that, merely by naming something, we dont invariably thereby acquire all the information that can be acquired about the name, because we may lack information about its bearer. In Quines example, for instance, merely tagging the planet Venus obviously does not give us complete information about its physical properties, such as its mass or orbit, or the relations in which it stands to other physical objects, such as its distance from the Sun. But, in addition, this tagging does not give us full information about the relations in which Venus stands to other names in our language. This suggests a rough distinction between facts about properties and relation of the bearers of names exclusive of their connection to our language, and facts about their relations to our words. Both sets of facts are empirical. But the latter are also linguistic. This distinction, I take it, might be what Marcus tries to express in the following passage in the published Discussion of her paper:
72

Inserted in the reprinting of Marcus (1961) in Marcus (1993).

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If Evening Star and Morning Star are considered to be two proper names for Venus, then finding out that they name the same thing as Venus names is different from finding out what is Venus mass, or its orbit. It is perhaps admirably flexible, but also very confusing to obliterate the distinction between such linguistic and properly empirical procedures. (Marcus et al. 1962, 142)

But from Discussion it is also not clear that Marcus had the foregoing distinction in mind. For, immediately preceding the passage just quoted, Marcus writes, if a single object had more than one tag, there would be a way of finding out such as having recourse to a dictionary or some analogous inquiry, which would resolve the question as to whether the two tags denote the same thing (ibid.) This remark suggests that facts about the identity of the bearer of names are purely linguistic, and so not also partly empirical. This remark led Kripke to ascribe to Marcus the view that facts about the reference of tags are purely linguistic facts (1971, 75, n. 7, 1980,100). But it should be clear that it stands in some tension with the view suggested by the text of Modalities, which is that such facts are not purely empirical but also partly linguistic. 13. The Passing of Quinean Anti-Essentialism: Kripke Marcuss arguments in Modalities provide a conception of necessity not tied to analyticity, and a view of how objects as such, independent of conditions they satisfy, can possess necessary properties such as self-identity. But, as Quine makes clear in a letter to Carnap in 1943, these are not the properties existential statements about which are problematic: I had argued that the N of necessity could not govern matrices whose variables were quantified in a wider context. Naturally I did not hold that trouble would always arise, regardless of what matrix followed N; for, trivial and harmless cases could readily be got by letting the matrix contain its variable merely in such a manner as x = x (Carnap and Quine 1990, 371). The modal properties to which Quine objects are those whose ascriptions are fixed, not by logic, but by Carnapian relative analyticity. For these, as we just saw, Quine propounds a dilemma: either existential statements purportedly about them have no determinate truth conditions, or there is no principled essentialist account of their ascription to objects. So Quine should have been aware that it is an overstatement to take his argument to rule out all quantification into modal contexts. Moreover, until Quines contribution to the discussion on Marcuss Modalities, he did not make clear what he meant by claiming quantified modal logic is committed to essentialism. In that discussion Quine explicitly disavowed claiming that essentialist claims are theorems of syntactic or semantic characterizations of quantificational reasoning involving modal operators.73 What Quine means, as we saw above, is that some quantifications into modal contexts can be furnished with determinate truth conditions by assuming essential properties.74 Finally, as we saw in the last section, Quines objection to essentialism is not that essential properties
73 74

See Marcus et al. (1962, 140). On this point compare Ballarin (2004).

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lead to contradictions and so are incoherent, but that without something like relative analyticity its a question what principled grounds underlie attributions of essential properties. Quines overstatements and unclarities led to the impression that he holds that all quantification into modal contexts require essentialism, that essentialist claims are theorems of quantified modal logics, and that essential properties, to use Kantian language, generate antinomies. This impression led to illuminating work by Marcus and Terence Parsons making precise and distinguishing clearly notions of essential property, and showing that essentialist claims are not theorems of systems of quantified modal logic as characterized by Kripke semantics.75 This work, together with the contributions in the 1960s mentioned in my introductory remarks, made it increasingly plausible that essentialism is no minefield of antinomies. Of course the intelligibility of essentialism in this sense doesnt answer Quines underlying demand for principled grounds for the ascription of essential properties that do not rely on conditions satisfied by the objects of these ascriptions. But it contributed to a growing sense that its unclear why such Quinean questions have to be answered. As Marcus puts it, a sorting of attributes (or properties) as essential or inessential to an object or objects is not wholly a fabrication of metaphysicians, since the distinction is frequently used by philosophers and nonphilosophers alike without untoward perplexity (1971, 187). The most influential expression of the growing consensus against Quinean doubts about essentialism are in Kripkes Identity and Necessity (1971) and Naming and Necessity (1972). The explication, criticism, and defense of Kripkes views in these works is very much a part of contemporary philosophy, and obviously it is no part of my brief to give an account of these debates. I will focus on a line of argument in defense of essentialism critical for the contemporary post-Quinean view of modality. Kripkes starting point is the intuitive basis of essentialism:
[I]t is very far from being true that this idea [that a property can meaningfully be held to be essential or accidental to an object independently of its description] is a notion which has no intuitive content, which means nothing to the ordinary man. Suppose that someone said, pointing to Nixon, Thats the guy who might have lost. Someone else says Oh no, if you describe him as Nixon, then he might have lost; but, of course, describing him as the winner, then it is not true that he might have lost. Now which one is being the philosopher, here, the unintuitive man? It seems to me obviously to be the second. The second man has a philosophical theory. The first man would say, and with great conviction, Well, of course, the winner of the election might have been someone else. The actual winner, had the course of the campaign been different, might have been the loser, and someone else the winner; or there might have been no election at all. . On the other hand, the term Nixon is just a name of this man. When you ask whether it is necessary or contingent that Nixon won the election, you are asking the intuitive question whether in some counterfactual situation, this man would in fact have lost the election. (1972, 265)

Here Kripke displays ordinary uses of language which seem to show that there exists a pervasive prephilosophical and intuitive agreement on ascriptions of essential and accidental properties to objects, independent of how theyre described. In the presence of systematic non-collusive agreement on
75

Marcus (1961;1967;1971); Parsons (1967;1969).

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essentialist claims, there is no need to specify the principles underlying these claims in order to justify their use.76 We saw above that the intuitive, pre-philosophical basis of essentialism has been noted. Much of the power of Kripkes argument derives from the success of his presentation of samples of what we would ordinarily say in eliciting our intuition of the naturalness of uses of modal vocabulary in apparently essentialist ways. The next stage of Kripkes defense consists of two arguments drawing consequences from essentialism, consequences that seemed problematic in the Quinean philosophical climate of the time. The first argument, as presented in Identity and Necessity, begins explicitly from a now well-known example of what advocates of essentialism have held, namely, being made of wood, and not of ice, might be an essential property of this lectern (Kripke 1971, 89). If being made of wood and not ice is essential to being a table, then the statement that this table, if it exists at all, was not made of ice, is necessary (ibid.) But, Kripke observes, this statement certainly is not something that we know a priori. What we know is that first, lecterns usually are not made of ice, they are usually made of wood. This looks like wood. It does not feel cold and it probably would if it were made of ice. Therefore, I conclude, probably this is not made of ice. Here my entire judgment is a posteriori (ibid.) The upshot is that we msut distinguish between the notions of a posteriori and a priori truth on the one hand, and contingent and necessary truth on the other hand (ibid., 87-8). The second argument is in essentials, the same as Marcuss Russellian defense of the necessity of identity discussed in section 11 above. Here Kripke begins by arguing, again from our supposed intuitive agreement over modal and essentialist claims, for the now received view that proper names are rigid designators. On the basis of the notion of rigid designation Kripke then reasons as follows:
If names are rigid designators, then there can be no question about identities being necessary, because a and b will be rigid designators of a certain man or thing x. Then even in every possible world, a and b will both refer to this same object x, and to no other, and so there will be no situation in which a might not have been b. That would have to be a situation in which the object which we are also now calling x would not have been identical with itself. (Ibid., 89)

Clearly, for Kripke, the identity a=b is necessarily true because the situation that it describes is the self-identity of the referentxof both a and b, and this self-identity holds in all possible worlds. The ground for this last claim is surely that self-identity holds as a matter of logic. So, the basis of Kripkes reasoning here is the same as that which underlies Marcuss defense of the necessity of identity discussed above. The main difference is that Kripke uses the claim that proper names in natural languages are rigid designators, while Marcus introduces tags, artificial expressions stipulated to function in a way that captures some aspects of ordinary names. Rigid designation is explained in modal terms, as sameness of reference in all counterfactual circumstances. Tagging, in contrast, is explained in semantic terms, as the

Kripkes argument is thus of the same form as Grices and Strawsons (1956) reply to Quines attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction.

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absence of descriptive mediation between expression and referent. In both cases some type of nondescriptional singular term have to flank the identity sign in order for the resulting statements to be genuine identity statements, and all genuine identities are necessary if true. The upshot here is that some of these necessary true identities can be established as true only on the basis of empiricial, a posteriori evidence. The connection between the two arguments can made clear by a reformulation of the second. As we have seen, perhaps even Quine, not to mention advocates of essentialism, would accept that selfidentity is an essential property of any object. Now if both a and b in a=b are rigid designators, then this statement, if true, is the ascription of self-identity to the denotation of a and b, and so is necessary. But for many names a and b the statement a=b is certainly not something we know a priori. We have already seen why Quine takes the upshot of Marcuss defense of the necessity of identity to be problematic: all genuine (non-descriptional) identities are necessary because logically true, how could some of them be knowable only on the basis of empirical evidence? The final stage of Kripkes argument begins with a diagnosis of a generalization of Quines worry: how could a necessary truth be justifiable only on the basis of empirical evidence? Kripke suggests that we find this idea hard to accept because we have the intuition that empirical evidence could always have been different from what it in fact was, and so it could always have turned out that a statement, which in fact is established by evidence, would not be so established. Thus, intuitively, we think we can imagine how astronomical investigation might have established that Hesperus is not Phosphorus, or how we could find, after taking the lectern apart, that its made of ice after all. Kripkes response is to reconstrue these intuitions. For example, he argues that our intuition that we can actually imagine circumstances that [we] would call circumstances in which Hesperus would not have been Phosphorus (ibid.) should be reconstrued as an intuition of counterfactual circumstances in which the descriptive conditions actually used to fix the referents of the names Phosphorus and Hesperus are satisfied by distinct entities, so at least one of these entities is distinct from the planet Venus. But these are not circumstances in which the one object actually picked out by these referencefixing conditions is not self-identical. If in these counterfactual circumstances the names Hesperus and Phosphoru had still been introduced by the actual reference-fixing conditions, these names would not have referred to the same thing. But that is not to say that Hesperus, the actual planet Venus, would not have been identical to itself, i.e., to Phosphorus. Rather, as Kripke puts it, in these counterfactual circumstances we would not have called Hesperus Hesperus (ibid.)77 The reconstrual strategy thus removes the principal intuitive obstacles to our acquiescing in our intuitive acceptance of essentialism. With the absorption of this Kripkean argument for meeting Quines challenge to modality, the
See della Rocca (1996) for a detailed account of Kripkes reconstrual strategy, and della Rocca (2002) for doubts about its success.
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rehabilitation of modal concepts in analytic philosophy is complete. Modal concepts, if not essentialism, are now an unquestioned part of analytic philosophical discourse, as is the distinction between metaphysical necessity on the one hand, and analyticity and apriority on the other. Whether the arguments of Marcus and Kripke (and those others I could not discuss here) that underlie this attitude to modality are indeed sufficient as a reply to Quine is matter for another occasion.

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