I'm taking this example from the entry on Vagueness from the SEP, which can be used to illustrate the contextualists response of an “analogy between the sorites paradox and indexical sophistries”:
Base Step: A one day old human being is a child.
Induction Step: If an n day old human being is a child, then that human being is also a child when it is n+1 days old.
Conclusion: Therefore, a 36,500 day old human being is a child.
- If the meaning of 'child' is uniform, then the context-invariant rule for using the term 'child' (its character) is constant.
- If the context-invariant rule for using the term 'child' (its character) is constant, then the linguistic meaning of a term (its character), which is a function from contexts to contents that delivers the term's content at each context, is consistent.
- So, if the meaning of 'child' is uniform, then the linguistic meaning of a term (its character), which is a function from contexts to contents that delivers the term's content at each context, is consistent.
- But, it is false that the meaning of 'child' is uniform.
- Therefore, it is not the case that the linguistic meaning of a term (its character), which is a function from contexts to contents that delivers the term's content at each context, is consistent.
The contextualist wishes to deny (4), that is to assert that the meaning of 'child' is uniform. So, given (3), the linguistic meaning of a term (its character), which is a function from contexts to contents that delivers the term's content at each context, is consistent.
But this makes no darn sense. If the meaning of 'child' is uniform (its character is consistent) then the contextualist would not only have to accept the induction step, but also the conclusion. Bad news bears!
So what to do? According to the Vagueness entry, it is: to treat the term 'child' like an indexical. That is to say that, because the set of things in which the term 'child', applies (its content) shifts with the context, it can still be claimed that the character remains the same but the content has changed because the context has shifted. “According to the contextualists, the rules governing the shifts prohibit us from interpreting any instance of the induction step as having a true antecedent and a false consequent. The very process of trying to refute the induction step changes the context so that the instance will not come out false.”
This response is really confusing to me (surprise of surprises!!). Is the claim here that in order not to interpret the induction step as having a true antecedent and a false consequent, we treat the term 'child' like and indexical, i.e. say that the content of the term 'child' shifts with the context from the antecedent to the consequent? Is that not what needs to happen in order to derive a false conclusion? If there is any shifting going on, that is any indexical treatment of the term 'child' it would need to be because you have to explain having an induction step that has a true antecedent and a false consequent, in order to derive a false conclusion.
Or is the claim here that there is a shift from the induction step to the conclusion? In which case the term 'child' has a shift in context and thereby content from the induction step to the conclusion. If so, then I am very, very confused because a conclusion can change in truth value, regardless of the truth conditions of the premises in which it is derived, by just simply having a content shift with a context. Perhaps, my confusion comes from a bias on my part (unsure at this point...), but is not the role of the conclusion to tell me something about the premises in which it is derived from? Where that something should be the content of what is at issue. But, if the content can shift from premises to conclusion based on a context, then the content in the premises is different than that in the conclusion. Why would you want that to happen?
1 comment:
perhaps this will help. Consider the sorites argument
1) A person of one day is not adult
2) if (1) then a person of two days is not adult
.
.
23359) if (23358) then a person of 23360 days is not adult
23360) a person of 23360 days is not adult
(they'd be 64 there)
According to the contextualist, the examination of each premise is a different context for the word 'adult'. Moreover, their claim is that each of these contexts fixes the content of 'adult' in such a way as to render the premise true.
Consider premise (23359). This states that if a person is 23358 days old is considered not adult, then a person of 23359 days is not considered adult. This is true because the context fixes both the antecedent and the consequent to false. Consider on the other hand, premise (2). This comes out true because the context is fixed in such a way that the antecedent and the consequent come out true.
The upshot is supposed to be that for whatever premise you like, when you examine that premise the context will set the content of the word 'adult' in such a way that the antecedent and the consequent always have the same truth value, thus every premise examined in its context is true. However, this leaves open that the conclusion examined in its context can be false (it's not a conditional after all).
This seems implausible to me (or at least not of much help). It seems that if one actually went through each premise of the argument (thus setting the context in the right way) a premise would still have to be denied. Suppose a parent, before rising every morning, had to punch a card stating whether or not his child was an adult. Unless he's committed to old children, the day will come when he has to start punching in the adult answer, thus denying a premise. Although the contextualist has a ready response. The day that the parent changes the punch card, in that context he'd have to think "I should've done this a while ago". Still seems implausible to me.
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