In his comment on my previous post, Brandon points out that he doesn’t assert the case described there to be a counterexample. Rather, he was wondering why it isn’t a counterexample; he was probing to see my response.
Fair enough. I’ve left the title of the post as is just for continuity with part 1.
The case Brandon described, was an omniscient God, who is both subject and object of knowledge of himself. God as knower is subject of knowledge but not object. But God as object is what is known, and not the subject of knowledge. So, don’t we here have something which is and isn’t intrinsically some way (being self-knowing) at a time? If so, the principle is false.
My response is that there is no reason to think this is a counterexample. At best, it just assumes the principle to be false, but doesn’t give us any reason to agree. “God as knower” just is “God as object” – of course, any self-knower just is that which is known by himself.
In Brandon’s original description of the case, he said, that
itself as object can’t have all intrinsic modes in common with itself as subject, because the intrinsic properties of objecthood and subjecthood themselves are different
I want to say that the concepts being an object of knowledge and being a subject of knowledge are different. Yet, it is obvious that one being may simultaneously satisfy both. Now if one satisfies the latter concept, this is because one presently has a certain mode, a certain mental state. But if one is an object of knowledge, this means that someone or other is knowing you, but it needn’t be the case that this is you. But when it is you, when you know yourself, what makes it true that you satisfy the concept of being an object of knowledge is that same mode that makes it true that you’re a subject of knowledge (of you). One could, I think confusingly, describe this as you-as-knower “intensionally differing from” you-as-known. But this is no difference in you, but only in how we refer to or think about you.
Finally, Brandon makes an interesting point:
x=y -> (Fx < -> Fy),
in other words, is only problematic in the cases you’re trying to work around if in those cases it really does matter (for whether F can apply to something) whether you are plugging something into x or plugging it into y. Since, ex hypothesi, we are plugging the same thing into x and y, that means that x and y must be taking the same value in different ways (i.e., they are intensionally different). The original only needs to be reformulated if intensional descriptions, like temporal or epistemic modalities, already can make a difference; if they don’t, your reformulated principle is unnecessary.
It may be unnecessary to get around “intensional descriptions” cases. For example,
- Bob believes that Meat Loaf rocks.
- But Bob doesn’t believe that Michael Lee Aday rocks.
- Therefore, Meat Loaf isn’t Aday.
I think it is enough to point out that Bob does believe, of Aday, that he rocks. He doesn’t believe that the sentence “Michael Lee Aday rocks” is true. If read all de re (concerning the thing itself) 2 is false. If read read de dicto (concerning the sentence) then 3 doesn’t follow. If you read one premise de re and the other de dicto, 3 doesn’t follow.
I am more worried about intrinsic change. A cruder Leibniz’s Law seems to rule this out.
But the main reason I like my narrower principle is that it is sufficient to make my theological point, and by focusing on modes/intrinsic properties people (or most people!) easily see it to be true.
I think I neglected to answer Brandon’s question in a comment, whether or not I consider all modes to be non-relational. Well, I don’t think that any are relations, which as it were “obtain between” things. But a mode may be directed towards something, itself, or something else, even something unreal. Still, a mode is, as it were, within the boundaries of its owner; but like a vector, it may point in a direction. A mode can be “relational” in that it is part of what makes some statement with a relation-term true. e.g. This basketball is bigger than this golfball. What makes this true is that basketball’s mode of being, e.g. 12 inches in diameter, and the golf ball’s mode of being 1.5 inches in diameter.
Bonus video:
But when it is you, when you know yourself, what makes it true that you satisfy the concept of being an object of knowledge is that same mode that makes it true that you’re a subject of knowledge (of you).
I’m not sure why one would think this is true; it seems one could just as easily say that they are obviously distinct because you can’t possibly treat ‘The perfectly self-knowing agent is a subject of knowledge’ as simply the same thing as ‘The perfectly self-knowing agent is an object of knowledge’; they have distinct logical implications because subjecthood and objecthood are not the same thing and the terms used for them do not mean the same. What makes it true that the self-knower is a subject of self-knowledge is that it is the initial term of an act of knowing; what makes it true that the self-knower is an object of self-knowledge is that it is a final term of an act of knowing; these are not the same things. Indeed, under any notion of ‘modes’ I can think of at present, this line of thought is at least not ruled out. So I’m still in the dark as to what notion of ‘mode’ is being used here.
Since the issue is universal and self-evident necessity, you must be claiming that it is incoherent to say otherwise — this would be what is required for your principle to be universal, necessary, and self-evident, all three, because if the counterexample is not incoherent simply speaking there is a counterexample to the principle for some domains. (This is why it doesn’t matter whether an alleged counterexample assumes the falsehood of the principle, given the strong claims you’ve made for the principle; for the principle to be universal, necessary, and self-evident, there can’t be any coherent way to construct a counterexample that assumes the falsehood of the principle — every such purported counterexample must be, at least in principle, provably inconsistent.) I can sort-of see why one would think the response you give is coherent given certain assumptions: so far, so good. But that, if right, only establishes that, if certain conditions obtain, your modified indiscernibility principle would be true under those conditions; what is really needed here is something that establishes unconditional truth (universality, necessity, self-evidence). And for that there must be no possible counterexample under any conditions; which means that there can’t be any consistent assumptions under which the opposite is possible. I don’t see why you think this is the case with the above claim.
I’m not sure how you’re reading “intensional” but intrinsic change cases are intensional cases, too; all cases involving a modal logic of any sort (temporal, epistemic, doxastic, alethic, etc.) involve intensions as well as extensions. In any case, your response to the Bob example seems to me to assume what would need to be proven: in particular, it assumes that any de re reading is extensional and that any nonextensional reading is de dicto, which is only true if a de re reading can’t ever involve intensional elements (in this case the intensional element would be what is described by the ‘as Bob believes him to be’ in the phrase ‘Aday as Bob believes him to be’ or the ‘as an object of certain of Bob’s beliefs’ in the phrase ‘Aday as an object of certain of Bob’s belief’). Certainly one can get the desired result by sequestering anything that would impede it, and certainly these sequestering assumptions are often pretty plausible in doxastic cases in particular, but nothing substantive follows from this for the principle in general, and we are still left, even in the doxastic case, with getting beyond practical rules-of-thumb about de re and de dicto to the actual underlying account by means of which these could be seen to be self-evident.
If I correctly understand this, then God knows the object who is also the knower. Or God knows the knower, who knows the knower, who knows the knower, ad infinitum. I suppose that I side with Dale on this unless what I said in the last two sentences in inconsistent with Dale’s view. 🙂
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