intentionality and possible facts

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Page 1: Intentionality and Possible Facts

Intentionality and Possible FactsAuthor(s): Richard E. AquilaSource: Noûs, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Nov., 1971), pp. 411-417Published by: WileyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2214387 .

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Page 2: Intentionality and Possible Facts

Intentionality and Possible Facts

RicHARD E. AQUILA DUKE UNIVERSITY

Intentional objects need not be actual. Or so it would seem if the honest man whom Diogenes was seeking or the fact that Caesar was Greek are genuine cases of intentional objects. Thus if an in- tentional proposition asserts a relation between some person, or one of his mental states, and intentional objects, then it at least sometimes asserts a relation to things or facts which are not actual. This account of intentional propositions has been, with regard to facts at least, defended by Gustav Bergmann and others. Consider a mental act which is a thought that a is F. There must be some relation, on Bergmann's view, between that act and the fact which it intends. If there were not, then there would be no way of "keeping minds and their intentions from falling apart," and we are on the road to idealism (Bergmann 1, p. 270).1 Since the thought that a is F could not intend the fact that a is F unless there were really some relation between the two, it follows that, apart from an inten- tional relation, there could be neither knowledge nor belief about the external world. But there could be no relation at all between a thought and the fact which that thought intends, so long as there is no such fact for that thought to be related to in the first place (Bergmann 1, pp. 307-8). Hence every belief is related to a fact which exists: true beliefs to actual facts and false beliefs to merely possible ones (Bergmann 1, p. 308; 2, pp. 214-5). But what is a merely possible fact, and what distinguishes it from an actual one? I shall argue that Bergmann fails to make plausible any theory of facts which both allows for some distinction between actual and

1 Strictly speaking, Bergmann speaks of an intentional "nexus" and not an intentional relation. But nothing which I shall be saying hangs on this dis- Unction.

411

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possible facts and also allows for an account of intentionality in terms of some relation to facts.

A fact for Bergmann is a certain sort of complex entity. The fact that a is F is a complex of which two of the constituents are a and F standing in a certain connection, that is, in the "nexus of exemplification" (Bergmann 2, pp. 26-7). Call this complex a- being-F. On Bergmann's theory, there can be no such fact as a- being-F, whether actual or merely possible, so long as there is no such connection tying a with F. Hence the actual and the merely possible facts that a is F cannot be distinguished by the presence or absence of a connection between a and F. It follows that there are two alternatives for distinguishing them:

(1) The possible fact that a is F is one in which a is con- nected with F by exemplification in the mode of possibil- ity (exemplification,); the actual fact is one in which they are connected by exemplification in the mode of actuality (exemplification,,).

(2) The two different modes of the fact that a is F are a feature of these facts as a whole and not simply a func- tion of two distinct modes of the tie which connects their constituents.

Let us consider alternative (1). We must, then, distinguish the two modes of a-being-F: a-beinga-F and a-being,-F. When a is not in fact F, only the latter of these two complexes exists. But when I believe that a is (actually) F, it is the existence of the former which I intend. Thus if there is any fact at all which is the object of my intention, it is the fact of a's being F, and not the fact of a's being, F. For if it were the latter, then I would not be judging that a is F at all, but only that it is possibly F. It follows that when a is not F my thought that a is F cannot consist in an intentional relation to the fact which is the object of my judgment, and hence alternative (1) does not appear to allow for an account of intending as a relation to facts. The following objection might be raised, however, to this treatment of alternative (1). I have argued that the admission of merely possible facts requires complexes to be tied by a kind of tie which is merely possible exemplification. I then objected that since mistaken judgment often involves, if it involves the intending of any facts at all, the intending of actual facts (i.e., complexes tied by actual exemplification), the admission

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INTENTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE FACTS 413

of possible facts would be irrelevant to it. For they are complexes whose constituents are ordered in a way which is other than the order which we are intending. But it might be objected that this is simply not implied by the admission that the two modes of facts are a function of two distinct modes of the connection which ties things into facts. It does not follow from this admission that exempli- fication, is a different ordering among the constituents of a complex from exemplificationa. All that follows is that their ontological status is different. Thus exemplificatiana and exemplification, are not two different ontological ties at all, but the very same tie in two differ- ent modes of existence. So far as I can see, this objection is intelli- gible only upon the assumption that the ordering or connection among the constituents of a fact is itself an entity in addition to those constituents. For unless the connection between a and F is itself a real entity, it makes no sense at all to distinguish two differ- ent modes of that connection from two distinct modes of the existence of that connection. In Bergmann's world, this condition is fulfilled: the fact that a is F contains three constituents, one of them being the nexus of exemplification itself (Bergmann 2, p. 42).

Let us consider, then, the collection of entities (a, F, n), in which the third entity is assigned the task of connecting the first two. Either the very nature of the entity n will be such that to speak of it is also to speak of the entities a and F., or it will not be such. In the latter case, no problem will have been solved at all by appealing to n. For since n will be as indifferent to a and F as these are to one another, it will be no easier to generate a single entity out of the three of them than it was in the first place to generate a- being-F from the mere collection of a and F. Hence yet another entity n' will be needed, and we have the start of an infinite regress. This, of course, Bergmann sees. He therefore draws a categorical distinction between entities such as a and F and entities such as n. The latter have by their very nature a radical dependence upon other entities, whereas the former are, in the sense in question, independent of one another and of any other entities. The categori- cal difference is what makes it possible to hold of a nexus such as n that it does not require any further tie to tie it to the entities which it ties (Bergmann 2, pp. 43-4). The regress may thus be stopped at n. It could mean, however, only one thing to appeal in this way to a radical and categorical dependence on the part of n: it is in the very nature of n that it be conceived as connected with the entities a and F, and hence that it needs no further entity to connect it

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with a and F. But in that case, I simply fail to see what difference there could be between referring to the entity n and referring to the complex a-being-F itself. For the sort of dependence we are at- tributing to the former seems to be precisely that which we must attribute to the latter of these entities: a-being-F is by its very nature dependent upon the entities which it combines into a whole. It will not, of course, do to point out that n must clearly be some- thing different from a-being-F, on the ground that n is by supposi- tion a constituent of a-being-F. For this is just the point at issue. The question is simply whether to refer to a nexus and to refer to a complex is in fact to refer to two different entities, one a con- stituent of the other, or whether it is not rather to refer in two different ways to one and the same entity-a fact-once merely em- phasizing the "fact" that it is a fact and not a mere collection, and once emphasizing its radical dependence upon the members of a certain collection. Some further argument is needed in order to establish that to speak of a nexus is to speak of a constituent of some fact rather than simply of the fact itself with respect to its dependent status. Indeed, while the sort of dependence in question seems to be just the sort which attaches to complexes themselves, it is not at all clear how that very same dependence upon the constituents of a complex could also infect one of the constituents within that complex. Since it appears to be the notion of dependence alone which legitimizes the introduction of nexus, I conclude that no dis- tinction has in fact been drawn between n and the complex a-being- F. It does not, for example, seem at all helpful to insist that there can be no such thing in the first place as the fact that a and F are connected unless there is also such a thing as the connection be- tween a and F. For that amounts only to the claim that there must be something in the world beside the entities a and F if a is in fact to be F. And that would appear to be a requirement which is met simply by the presence of a-being-F itself.2

2 It might be argued that even if we are concerned only with a, F and a-being-F, a regress still appears in the connection between the first two and the third of these entities. Thus when a is F, there are also such facts as a- being-a-constituent-of-(a-being-F), and these will of course have their own constituents. Though this sort of regress does not seem vicious, it might appear to show the impossibility of avoiding nexus as something contained in facts. But (a) while there may have been some temptation to construe exemplifica- tion as an entity contained in facts, there is hardly the same temptation to construe being-a-constituent-of some fact as also a constituent of that fact. (Cf. Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Bergmann's Constituent Ontology," Nous, IV (May, 1970), pp. 122-3) And (b) even if there is a nexus being-a-constituent-

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INTENTIONALITwY AND POSSIBLE FACTS 415

The point I am making can, I think, be put even more strongly. For let us assume that there is some distinction to be drawn between the connection n among the constituents of a- being-F and the fact itself which. contains the entity n. Then it must still be granted, as it is by Bergmann, that n is the sort of entity which is dependent in a radical way upon the remaining constitu- ents of the fact, a and F. And this, I have pointed out, can mean only one thing: that it is part of the very nature of n that it connect a with F. If it were not,..then n could conceivably fail to connect them and.some further ontological ground n' would be needed in order to insure that it does not. But this is just to say that the entity n is nothing but a connecting of a with F, and from this it follows that there could be no distinction between the modes of being of such an entity as n and the modes of connection between a and F. If it made any sense at all to distinguish the different ways in which a and F are connected from the different ways in which a connection between a and F might exist, then the way in which a and F are connected is something which is in itself indifferent to the connecting of a and F, and the infinite regress has not been avoided. Thus the first of our two alternatives for distinguishing actual from possible facts must be abandoned. On this alternative, the distinction was to lie in a differentiation between two modes of the connection tying entities into a fact, while on the second alterna- tive the distinction was somehow to lie in the fact as a whole and not merely in the nature of the connection among the entities in it. If Bergmann has failed to distinguish between the connection among the entities in a fact and the fact itself which consists in a connection among those entities, then the first alternative simply reduces to the second. But even if he has not failed to make this distinction, he can still not distinguish between two different modes of connection among the constituents of a fact and two different modes of being of one and the same connection, and this is a dis- tinction which is needed if the first alternative is to provide an account of possible facts which is also consistent with an account of intentionality as a relation to facts.

Let us consider alternative (2). On this alternative, the dis-

of, this would not help us solve the problem of the modality of facts. For what sense would it make to speak of a or F as sometimes actually, and at other times only potentially, being a constituent of a-being-F? If the burden of modal distinctions is to be carried by any nexus at all, then it must be the nexus of exemplification and not the nexus being-a-constituent-of.

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tinction between the actuality -and the mere potentiality of facts is not to be accounted for in terms of two different modes of con- nection at all. Thus whether a-being-F is an actual or a merely possible fact, a and F must be connected in it in precisely the same way. But I want now to argue that while this alternative might be possible on the conception of facts which many philosophers have held, it cannot be adopted if facts are entities such as Berg- mann conceives them to be. It is clear that not all philosophers have construed the fact that a is F as a complex which literally contains a and F. For what some philosophers have meant by "fact" seems indistinguishable from what others have meant by "proposition", or at least "true proposition", and the propositions about some particu- lar would hardly be expected literally to contain that particular, though they might of course contain some component which corre- sponds with or refers to that particular.3 This feature which dis- tinguishes a fact as Bergmann conceives it from facts as (true) propositions also brings with it, we have seen, a categorical dis- tinction between any Bergmannian fact and the entities of which it is constituted. The latter are independent, while the former is radically dependent upon the latter. But what does this difference amount to which distinguishes a fact from entities such as a and F? Presumably, it could only be that a fact consists in a connecting of those entities into a complex whole. For there are only two ways to distinguish, as we must, between the mere collection of some entities and the fact that those entities are connected. Either (a) the fact, unlike the collection, does not literally contain those entities at all, but at most corresponds with or refers to their con- nection. Or (b) the fact, while literally containing those entities, also consists in a connection among them. But we cannot distinguish between an entity's consisting in a connection among others and an entity's being that very connection. If the fact that a is F is not a connecting of a with F., then I simply fail to see how it can both contain those entities as constituents and also be more than a mere collection of those entities. The conception of facts as complex wholes distinct from mere collections, in other words, requires a categorical distinction between facts and the entities which they

3 That not all philosophers have been clear about the distinction be- tween two views of facts is evident from Russell's assumption that an object which is referred to in any proposition must actually occur as a part of that proposition. Cf. "On Denoting," in Logic and Knowledge, ed. Robert C. Marsh (New York: Macmillan, 1956), pp. 41, ff.

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INNTIONALITY AND POSSIBLE FACTS 417

contain, such that while the latter are things to be connected, a fact just is a connecting of them in one particular way or another. It follows from this, however, that there is no distinction which at- taches to a fact, as distinct from its constituents, which could not be reduced to a distinction between the ways in which entities are connected into facts. For a fact just is a connecting of entities, and nothing else. But I have already argued that while a satisfactory theory of possible facts might be adopted which rests on a distinc- tion between modes of connection, no such theory could allow for an account of intentionality as the intending of facts. Thus the first of our two alternatives provides for an account of possible facts which is consistent with Bergmann's conception of facts, but inconsistent with Bergmann's conception of intending as a relation to facts. And the second of our two alternatives presents an account of possible facts which does not even appear to be consistent with Bergmann 's theory of facts. I conclude that Bergmann has not provided any theory of facts which both allows for some distinction between actual and possible facts and also for an account of inten- tionality in terms of some relation to facts.

REFERENCES

[1] Bergmann, Gustav. Logic and Reality. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964.

[2] - . Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong. Madison: Uni- versity of Wisconsin Press, 1967.

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