[For this assignment, willing an event external to the body will be abbreviated as willingeb.] A logical limit to willingeb means that the statement, “One cannot will an event external to the body” is a necessary truth. An a priori limit is quite different for O’Shaughnessy. As I understand it, an a priori limit is a limit on our own faculties. Prior to any experience, we cannot even understand what it would mean to willeb. Now this could have two different conclusions, and I am not sure which one O’Shaughnessy intends. The first is this argument: If there was a logical limit to willingeb, then we would be able to understand what it meant to will an event external to the body. However, since we cannot understand that (thus, there is an a priori limit on willingeb), there is not a logical limit on willingeb. The second possible conclusion is that since we cannot understand what it would mean to willeb, we cannot know what the logical status of willingeb.
2. (§ 2) In your own words, explain how a natural-kind term comes to be. (This is important for the whole chapter and for much of philosophy. Spend some time getting this right.)
A natural-kind term comes to exist when a speaker stumbles across a thing x that he does not have a term for already. Using some set of markers, he realizes that it is different in some way and invents or comes to use (from social convention) that term for things like x. Note that the vital part of this is the initial tagging, and the term “X”, when the chips are down, does not refer to the epistemological markers that clued him in that x was different, but rather the x itself. O’Shaughnessy writes of a “stable bond” that must form between the term and the designatum (or x).
3. What is the difference between criteria for a term and “markers” (pointers) for its application? (this may not be clear to you until page 58.)
It seems the criteria for a term are the propositions that form the term’s intension. The epistemological markers for application are quite different. They are the properties that clue us in that a term’s designatum fits into the term we have linked to it. Although a term first comes to exist through our apprehension of the markers, the term’s intension rarely matches up exactly to the markers. For example, the markers for “gold” might be that it originates from rocks and is a shiny yellow. Through modern chemistry, we know that the intension of “gold” is having an atomic number of 79.
4. What are “contextual considerations” that play a role in determining the application of a natural-kind term? (O’Shaughnessy introduces this expression on page 40, but it doesn’t become clear for some pages. § 2 sub-section 3 (pp. 41–2) helps; but especially p. 45. You’ll have to tease it out of the text.)
“Contextual considerations” refers to the general categories that things surrounding the x belong to. O’Shaughnessy gives the example of resin (among others): contextual considerations include noting the fact that the x’s that are resin originate from y’s that are trees. The fact that these originate from y’s that are trees serves as an epistemological marker. Thus, to expand the term is certainly to be injudicious (see question 5). Also, it tends to convey that the speaker failed to grasp the markers in the first place.
5. (§ 3) What’s the difference between an injudicious use of a natural-kind term and its misuse? Your answer should explain why “sheer disregard of the epistemological ‘markers’ does not guarantee that one misuses a natural-kind term” (44).
There are two ways to misuse a term. The first is through deceit: using a known and socially accepted word as that word without intending to convey its intension. The other way is through a mistake. One might use a known and socially accepted word but not as that word, thus misusing it. Injudicious use is using a word without regard for its markers. These may or may not line up. However, it is possible for an injudicious use to also be a correct use. For example, one might know the intension of the term and use that to apply the term, rather than the markers. It is entirely impossible for a misuse to be a correct use.
6. O’Shaughnessy gestures at two cases of misuse: “the case in which one mistakenly thinks one knows the meaning of a word and the case in which one uses a word to stand for what one thinks it does not designate … Agreement or not with fact is irrelevant” (43). Give your own examples of these two cases and explain why “agreement or not with fact is irrelevant.”
An example of one misusing a term through mistaken understanding is the following: If one thinks that “gold” refers to silver, then one would be misusing a term to point at something that one believed to be silver and call it “gold”. An example of one understanding the term but misusing it to mislead others would be a miner who pointed at some pyrite (fool’s gold) and called it “gold”, knowing what “gold” signifies. Agreement with fact is irrelevant, and we can see this if we change the examples so that the speaker is accidentally correct. The silver that the speaker pointed at in the original example might be white gold. However, since he used “gold” to refer what he believed was silver, he misused “gold”. In the other example, the liar might actually be a horrible geologist and truly be pointing at gold. However, since he believed that it was not gold, and called it “gold”, he misused the term “gold”.
7. (§ 4) What are the “markers” of physical action? (Again, what is a “marker”?) Which of these “markers” amounts to a “contextual requirement” and why? (Again, what is “contextual setting”?)The markers for physical action seem to be: A) movement B) which is in a suitable region of the body C) of an animal D) which matches a desire for the movement to occur E) and matches an intention for the movement to occur and F) an activish phenomenology. (B), and possibly (C) are contextual considerations which act as markers in this case. These are contextual considerations because it is in the context of animal bodily movement that willing occurs. Interestingly, these are also the markers which are at the heart of the question O’Shaughnessy is asking: “Can extra-bodily movements be willed?” This might be rewritten as “Can a willing exist which lacks markers B and C?”
8. (§ 5) Does “the will can/cannot be extended beyond the body” have a sense? Explain.
It might have a sense, but we don’t know if it does or not. A proposition has a sense if it is possible for it to occur. And since we don’t even know if willingeb is logically possible, clearly we don’t know if it has a sense or not. All that O’Shaughnessy is comfortable asserting at this point is that anyone who claims that if willingeb is logically possible or impossible is misusing “willing”. This would indicate that my second conclusion in question 1 is the one favored by O’Shaughnessy.
9. In your own words, what is “theory of meaning criticized by Putnam” (57)?The theory that Putnam criticizes is a sort of Platonism. In this theory, it would seem that the definition of acquiring term x is to comprehend the intension of x. And once one comprehends the intension of x, one automatically knows the extension of x. According to Putnam, however, one acquires x through various markers from an original instantiation of x which may or may not correspond to the intension of x.
10. (page 58.) Go back to question 3.
Criteria are the propositions which form the intension of a concept. They are the "necesities": an x is not an x if it doesn't meet these criteria, and it is an x in virtue of these criteria. This is the only way to make sense of O'Shaughnessy's statements on pp 58-59.
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