Philosophy and Politics

It would be naïve to suppose that philosophy in the twentieth century was sealed off from the political turmoil of the period, particularly two World Wars followed by a Cold War. Philosophers, being intellectual people, would naturally look to the causes of war (and oppression generally) in various forms of defective thinking: ideologies, social conformity, propaganda, delusion, irrationality, and sheer nonsense. They would then set themselves to rectifying these deformities of thought, hoping thereby to prevent war and other forms of violence. They would see themselves as thought doctors and intellectual scolds. Thus religion, pseudo science, superstition, political ideologies (fascism, communism, etc.) would be subjected to philosophical scrutiny, followed by condemnation. Positivism is one extreme (and therefore attractive) form of this tendency, declaring much of traditional discourse literally meaningless: the chief cause of war is nonsense, to put it simply. This diagnosis fits religious wars and with some tweaking carries over to wars powered by ideology. Karl Popper, though not a positivist, shared the aim of cordoning off the shabbier precincts of intellectual culture—particularly, Marxism and Freudianism. Other philosophers put their faith in symbolic logic or the down to earth prescriptions of ordinary language. Philosophers felt the need to oppose forms of thinking and talking that fostered dangerous tendencies, so there was a political rationale for their activities. The search for a criterion of meaningfulness (or a demarcation criterion in the case of Popper) was at least in part prompted by political concerns—concerns about war, human welfare, and human enlightenment. It was not a purely intellectual matter. Philosophy was seen as politically useful. The same could be said of phenomenology and existentialism, notably in the shape of Heidegger and Sartre, whose writings have a clear political motivation. We need to focus on lived experience, Dasein, the for-itself and the in-itself, the indisputable facts of Being. These philosophers oppose tendencies of thought that produce social discord, alienation, and sickness unto death. Twentieth century philosophy is thus shaped by political considerations; it is not a pure inquiry cut off from “the real world”. It is, in a word, relevant.^[1]

            Nor were previous centuries all that different. Without rehearsing all this we can report that philosophy was shaped a good deal by religion, that it was concerned to promote the reputation of science, that it addressed itself to issues of political authority in an age of monarchy.  Opposing or supporting the Church was a central concern of philosophy throughout the middle ages, coming to a head in the Renaissance. And, of course, there was plenty of war to fuel interest in its intellectual causes (I am speaking mainly of Europe, but elsewhere in the world much the same situation existed). Philosophy was not disinterested—disengaged from large political and social issues. Only in the time of the ancient Greeks does philosophy appear serenely removed from politics, though here too appearances may be deceptive. True, Plato and Aristotle undertake inquiries whose political relevance is at best obscure (particulars and universals, substance and form), but politics occasionally intrudes in the form of the Sophists, the nature of the ideal state, democracy, and the death of Socrates. Were Socrates’ own motives completely apolitical? He went around exposing lazy thinking, questioning traditional pieties (the Euthyphro argument), and upsetting the authorities: why would he do this unless he thought that the errors he exposed were harmful? If they were just harmless eccentricities, silly personal foibles, he might have devoted his energies to other pursuits; he clearly thought it mattered that people are so intellectually inept. It mattered to the body politic. Still, I think it is true to say that the spirit of pure inquiry was very much alive in this period of intellectual history; one doesn’t sense the philosopher looking over his shoulder at the political ramifications of his studies. Perhaps this is because the time was one of relative peace with little internal conflict and a sense of freedom. The ancient Greeks did not feel themselves to be at odds with dangerous ideologies that philosophers must be conscripted to combat (at least that is my impression). However, this period didn’t last long and philosophy took up the cudgels against foes and phonies. The philosopher conceived himself in oppositional terms—always fighting with someone, always aiming for the Greater Good. The philosopher was ipso facto a political philosopher.

            The same is not true of other disciplines. Mathematicians and physicists are not politicians: they don’t conceive their subject as primarily concerned to combat dangerous intellectual error on the part of others, or to correct shabby thinking, or to root out pernicious nonsense. Teachers of these subjects don’t announce that their purpose is to enable you to think clearly—the assumption being that clear thinking will have practical benefits. Critical thinking courses, however, are intended to foster an ability to resist propaganda and sophism of the kind offered by the unscrupulous politician. Mathematics and physics, by contrast, simply study a certain range of questions in an impartial spirit, without regard for political considerations. Wars are not caused by false physical theories or unproved mathematical conjectures! The same is true of biology, geology, history, and botany. But philosophy has always been thought of as politically relevant: philosophers are expected to have political opinions, to be politically engaged. Even within philosophy there are political battles—battles for power, prestige, funds. Analytical philosophy versus continental philosophy, history of philosophy versus timeless problems, ethics versus metaphysics: philosophers are always engaged on some sort of crusade, busily denouncing and demoting. The philosophy profession is apt to be highly politicized in one way or another. Philosophers, we are told, are concerned with how to live, and politics is about that very question on a larger scale. Nowadays philosophers are much exercised with questions of gender and racial equality, this being a new arena of political engagement for them. That is a continuation of an old tradition: the philosopher as political operative. How could it be otherwise?

            Let’s pursue that question: what would philosophy be like without political input and influence? Suppose the twentieth century had been a century of peace and tranquility: no war, no oppression, no genocide, no imperialism, no class division, no religious controversy, etc. That is, suppose the century had featured nothing of consequence in the political sphere. Do you think there would have been the same obsession with meaningfulness, demarcation principles, the hygiene of formal logic, and the bracing breeze of ordinary language? I doubt it: for none of the usual political enemies would have existed to combat. All these concerns were prompted by perceived errors that required philosophical correction—errors with “real world” consequences. Wouldn’t philosophy have looked a lot more like physics or botany? And what would that be in the case of philosophy? A concentration on philosophical problems as such—that’s what. Philosophers would simply confront the perennial problems of philosophy without regard for any political ramifications–trying to understand them, debating them, and even solving them (well, that may be expecting too much). Not that nothing of that type was occurring during the time of the politically engaged kind of philosophy (for those problems have an irresistible allure), but it was not free to go its own way without any inhibition or restraint. The subject was surrounded and infiltrated by political questions. In fact, I think that the last few decades of the twentieth century were unusually free of political preoccupations and that philosophy benefited hugely thereby. There wasn’t much need for political engagement on the part of philosophers, so they could (to some degree) pursue questions that are politically irrelevant. They rediscovered the joys of pure inquiry: they could, for example, indulge in metaphysics without fearing that they were abetting stultifying religion or war-inciting ideological nonsense. That is, the psychology of philosophers changed during this period—not completely but partially. They felt freer to pursue their vocation.^[2] Imagine what it would be like if politics intruded not at all on philosophy—a type of utopia no doubt but an imaginable one. Philosophers could then focus on the problems of philosophy without having to think about anything extraneous to them. It would be like Popper without the (alleged) pseudo sciences of Marxism and Freudianism to contend with—there would be simply no need to labor over formulating a demarcation criterion. If there is no war, then we need not fret over its intellectual causes: we need not spend our time skewering bellicose ideologies with superior reasoning. We could be exclusively concerned with discovering the truth without regard to its political utility. As I say, I think some of this has been in the ascendant, but it is good to state clearly what philosophy would look like in its unadulterated form—apolitical philosophy. Politics is fine in its place, and philosophers have a role to play in improving the practice of politics, but we should not lose sight of philosophy in its ideal and primal form. It is not in its essence prophylactic or therapeutic or anti-irrational or politically progressive. It is not in the business of war prevention or bullshit detection or oppression removal. It isn’t even to be understood as a good way to think clearly about things in general (that is not its essential point). It is an attempt to come to grips with certain age-old problems—a completely non-political enterprise. And there is always a danger that philosophy aimed at political ends will be dragged down to the level of politics. In my view philosophy is intrinsically apolitical, despite its history. That is indeed a main part of its attraction. We are not trying to improve the world qua philosophers but to formulate and answer the distinctive problems of philosophy. Movements like positivism are an aberration in philosophy, not part of its central mission (and let’s not forget that the avowed aim of positivism was to destroy and suppress metaphysicians, to “cancel” them).^[3] In an ideal world the philosopher would have no interest in politics at all (except as a hobby)—though political philosophy would be perfectly kosher. The ivory tower would be sealed off from the outside world.

            I fear I may be misunderstood. It is not that I am against politics, and it is not that I think philosophy has no relevance to it, and it is not that I think philosophy has been wholly political for its entire history. I am merely suggesting that the exigencies of politics have shaped and distorted philosophy, which in its essence is not a political subject. Its connection with politics is contingent. In its pure form philosophy is an apolitical attempt to come up with the truth about a certain range of (pretty abstract) problems. Anything else is a corruption of its true nature.^[4]

^[1] I am obviously speaking in broad generalities here; the usual caveats apply.

^[2] I want to avoid mentioning names for fear of omissions and wrong inclusions, but just to convey a sense of what I am talking about let me cite the following as (relatively) apolitical philosophically: Kripke, Nagel, Fodor, Strawson, Davidson, Lewis, and others. On the political side I would mention Rorty and Scruton as explicitly political in their approach to philosophy. More ambiguous figures would be Austin, Quine, Wittgenstein, and Rawls.   

^[3] Isn’t it remarkable that the obsession with meaningfulness, once so urgent, has now completely disappeared from the philosophical agenda? I conjecture that this has to do with the change of political climate since the early and middle twentieth century, particularly regarding the dominance of religion. Nor are philosophers so focused these days on the question of freedom and personal authenticity, ever since the political revolution of the 1960s rendered such concerns nugatory (at least to some degree). 

^[4] What is valuable about the philosophical state of mind (the philosophical life) is that it is not a political state of mind—not obsessed with power, advantage, competition, winning and losing, popularity, and influence. It is free from such worldly concerns. Not that it is easy to achieve.

Naming and Knowledge

A long and winding tradition in philosophy has it that naming is the essence of language. You name it it’s a name. Or at least all words are name-like: names are representative of language in general. Names denote and language is in the denotation business. I am going to argue that this position is sorely mistaken, not because most words are not like names but because names are not like words—in fact, they are not words at all. Names are a very special kind of linguistic unit, quite distinct from words in general: they are not even meaningful. But this is not just a truism about the syntactic form of names; it reflects a deep fact about the connection between meaning and knowledge. If this sounds obviously wrong to you, do me the honor of reading on: names, unlike words in general, convey or embed no knowledge; they have a quite different character and function. Names are really incursions from outside language proper; they are alien imports, foreign to what language essentially is.

            The fundamental point to grasp is not unfamiliar: names are labels. That is, they are mere labels—tags, surrogates, pointers, placeholders. They have no conceptual content, no intrinsic meaning, and no information-value. The OED defines “name” as “a word or set of words by which someone or something is known, addressed, or referred to”. This is a very special type of expression: we would not describe other words in such terms. A definite description, say, is not a word or set of words by which someone or something is known or addressed; it is not a mere label for something. Naming is labeling, but describing is not labeling. We confer a name on someone in a baptism or something similar, so that henceforth they will be known by that name, but we don’t confer a description on something in this way. A person (or other entity) earns the descriptions that apply to it in virtue of the properties it instantiates, but names are not earned in this way—they are merely stipulated. They are what we call something not what something is. They are ceremonial, practical, and arbitrary: suitable for nametags, birth certificates, and roll calls. They are not attempts to capture some aspect of reality in words. This is why the description theory of names strikes us as so contrary to the evident nature of names: it makes names into conveyors of information, repositories of knowledge. No, a name is just a label, a mere device of identification, a convenience, an empty sound or mark. It has a bearer, to be sure, but it is not a meaningful element of language: labels on shirts have bearers too (the shirt itself) but they are not thereby meaningful entities. The essence of a name is to be meaningless, to convey no information, to express nothing about its bearer. Thus we pick meaningless sounds or marks to name people not meaningful descriptions (we don’t baptize someone “the future president of the United States”). We need labels for people, so we pick linguistic units that carry no semantic baggage—units quite unlike words in general. It doesn’t matter what the name says only what it sounds like, so we choose sounds that don’t say anything. We choose arbitrary bits of noise or script devoid of meaning. Nor do these bits magically acquire meaning by being so picked; they just function as empty labels. This is why you have to ask someone what he or she is called; it can’t be inferred from descriptive knowledge about the person (“Ah, you must be called ‘he of the flaming red hair’”).^[1]

            I will put this by saying that names contain no knowledge. You can grasp and use them in the absence of any knowledge about their bearer (save that he or she is so named). You only know that this person is labeled “Sam Adams”, for example. The same is not true of any associated definite descriptions: here your grasp includes actual knowledge about the satisfier of the description. Hence a name cannot be equivalent to a description: one is a mere label and the other is a conveyor of information (knowledge, fact)—or purports to be. Probably the very existence of names as a linguistic institution derives from limitations on human knowledge: we just don’t know enough to refer to people and things by way of their properties, so we employ labels to circumvent our ignorance. Keeping track of a person’s changing properties is beyond most speakers, and names supply a nice convenient way of referring to them—precisely because they carry no epistemic commitments. Labels are what we use when identifying descriptions elude us. This is evident in the case of names for natural kinds: you may spot a new type of animal in a remote jungle and possess no uniquely identifying information about its species, so you just stipulate that this type of animal will be named a widger. Then you can talk about widgers without knowing much about them. When you learn more you may replace the name with something more descriptive, or invest the name with this new knowledge, but for now the label enables you to refer to this unknown type of animal. It’s just a label not a piece of zoological knowledge, but it serves your practical purposes. Thus names are devices for remedying ignorance in the furtherance of speech (demonstratives can function similarly^[2]). Accordingly, we can say that the naming parts of speech are knowledge-independent while other parts of speech are knowledge involving. 

            Is this true of words in general? What about adjectives, connectives, and quantifiers? Quick inspection confirms the thesis that all such words are cognitively demanding—they are not mere labels. The word “red”, say, is not a mere label of redness but expresses that property: you can’t understand it without knowing what redness is. The same goes for other adjectives like “square” or “brave” or “tardy”: to grasp these words is to have knowledge of something substantive, namely what the denoted (expressed) properties are, not merely what certain things are called. The same is true for “and”, “or”, “all”, and “some”: these are not mere labels for things whose nature may escape us; they express in their meaning certain substantive facts concerning possible states of affairs. You have to know what a general fact is to grasp the meaning of the word “all”: you can’t claim to understand it and then say, “I don’t know anything about what this word names; I am just using it as a label for the thing it stands for”. Hence we say that these words are meaningful—that they are words. The OED defines “word” as follows: “a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used to form sentences with others”. Here the operative term is “meaningful”—exactly what names as labels are not. This is why I said that names are not really words: words are meaningful while names are meaningless (in a perfectly straightforward sense). Nothing meaningless can be a word. As the tradition puts it, names have no connotation, but words always have connotation. Other elements of discourse can be functional without being strictly words, such as emphasis, gestures, and facial expressions (even vocal sounds like “Boo!”); names belong in this general category—they are word-like but not really words. They can act as placeholders for real words but they are just senseless labels. We could say that they are not part of the language faculty proper, i.e. the system of meaningful elements that combine to form sentences, rather like gestural elements (pointing, head orientation). They are a bit like saying “la-di-da” or “blah-blah-blah”. They have to be learned as add-ons to linguistic mastery proper; they are not part of the initial innate language program. They are not part of an ideal language in which every element is a meaningful word (excuse the pleonasm). Ordinary language is clear on this point: we don’t ask, “What is your word?” but “What is your name?” and we don’t ask, “What is the name of red in Italian?” but “What is the word for red in Italian?” We know the difference between words and names, between meaningful signs and meaningless labels. In no way, then, could language consist of a collection of names—it would contain no words! Nor are names representative of language in general. Spoken language is a complex multi-faceted thing and it divides into the names and the non-names. This division correlates with knowledge and the absence of knowledge. Most of language is knowledge involving, but names are ways to speak without possessing knowledge: they function to label we know not what. Names are inarticulate and content-free, just empty sounds. Naming an object is the opposite of knowing about it. The only knowledge they require is knowledge of language itself (“This person has been dubbed ‘Sam Adams’”) while words in general require that one knows something outside of language, whether by acquaintance or description. You have to know what red is to understand “red” and what conjunction is to understand “and” and what a general fact is to understand “all”. Knowledge of names is always meta-linguistic knowledge, but this is not so for words in general. We need to have knowledge of things in order to understand words for things. Meaning and knowledge are intertwined. 

            We have learned that a single object can have two names and that an identity statement formed from them is a necessary truth; also that two descriptions can apply to the same object and in some cases form a necessary identity statement (when the descriptions are both rigid designators). But these are completely different semantically: the former consists of two labels that happen to be assigned by stipulation to the same object; the latter consists of descriptions that express properties that are necessarily co-instantiated by the object in question (e.g. “the successor of 4 is identical to the predecessor of 6”). We cannot analyze one in terms of the other, since they involve different kinds of fact. Nor should we suppose that their epistemic status derives from the same source: true, they both express synthetic propositions, but one derives from a coincidence of stipulations while the other arises from a non-linguistic fact about numbers. The same point would apply to any a posteriori identities involving descriptions. The sentences may look superficially similar, but the occurrence of names in one and descriptions in the other guarantees a complete difference of analysis. We can have two labels for the same thing and the same thing can instantiate different properties—these are very different states of affairs.

            Given that names are not really words (meaningful units of language), how is it that they can occur in sentences combined with real words? Now that is a good question—one would think that other words would shun their company. How do they manage to sneak into sentences disguised as words? Why don’t the sentences reject them as fake words? Get thee out you senseless labels–you empty vessels! A possible answer, which sounds more radical than it really is, is that names don’t occur as constituents of sentences. To be sure, they occur as parts of sound sequences and written marks, but all sorts of things belong there that are not part of sentences proper. Sentences are far more abstract than that, belonging to the unconscious computational mechanisms of the language faculty—they are composed of elements quite far removed from the sensory phenomena in which they are expressed by the human sensorimotor system. So it is possible that names are tacked on by some extraneous part of the mind and are not strictly sentence components at the deep level. The question, then, is what does occur in deep sentences when spoken sentences appear to contain names. The natural thought is that these elements are reference fixers of some sort: possibly definite descriptions, or (more likely) demonstratives. These lexical elements compose the underlying sentences—being genuine words—and names come into the picture by being tacked on from outside and uttered in outer speech. In any case, there are ways to explain how names can appear to be real words without actually being real words (a not uncommon phenomenon). The point always to remember is that names are empty meaningless labels brought in to serve a particular pragmatic purpose, which is divorced from knowledge of the extra-linguistic world.

            As a coda, let me note that names are bits of spoken language that we can like or dislike, abbreviate and distort, that can be changed at will, are subject to fashions and fads, and are easily forgotten—while the regular words of language are not subject to these whims. No one hates the word for red in their language, or proposes changing it, or feels it is so last year, or simply can’t recall it: these facts all suggest that names and words belong in different parts of our cognitive economy. Names are ancillary to language, orthogonal to it, not its truest representatives. All the more odd, then, it is that philosophers should have decided that they form the very essence of language; they are anything but.^[3] Language would be quite happy to do without names and only tolerates them because of the epistemic deficits of its users (frankly, they are a bit of an embarrassment). What’s in a name? Nothing—and that is exactly their point.             

^[1] If you look up the name “John” in the dictionary you will draw a blank, but the word “John” does appear, defined as “toilet” and “a prostitute’s client”. Dictionaries contain words with meanings not names. To ask for a definition of an ordinary name is bizarre, a kind of linguistic category mistake. 

^[2] But demonstratives and other indexical expressions are not mere labels like names. And sure enough they demand a lot more epistemic engagement than names, typically requiring perceptual acquaintance or something close to it (as with “now”). We don’t baptize something “this”.

^[3] It may seem especially odd that Russell required that a genuine name have a bearer with which we are acquainted—the most immediate and intimate form of knowledge. But the oddity ebbs when we remember that for Russell the prime example of a name is a demonstrative for a sense datum not an ordinary proper name at all. As Wittgenstein remarked, it is strange that philosophers have chosen as paradigms of names expressions that are not names at all (such as “this”). For Russell, in fact, ordinary proper names are dispensable parts of language, scarcely belonging there at all (in this his intuitions were on the right track). There is some irony in the fact that recent philosophy of language has focused on a type of expression that is quite peculiar and hardly belongs to language at all. It is demonstratives and descriptions that are the genuine article, both firmly hooked up to knowledge of reality.

The “Notorious” Nabokovian RBG

I was pleased to read in today’s (September 20, 2020) New York Times these words from Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and I write. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea”. Well said, I thought, especially noting the feminist cloud currently hanging over Nabokov (what with Lolita and all). But this thought was quickly replaced by puzzlement over the word “notorious”: is that really the word we want for this distinguished Supreme Court justice? According to the OED, it means “famous for some bad quality or deed”. Appropriate for a rapper, perhaps, but not for Justice Ginsburg—any more than the word “infamous”. Has someone confused “notorious” with “notable” or “noteworthy” (with a touch of “victorious”)? In any case, the moniker is ill chosen. To my mind RBG proves a maxim I have long espoused, namely that courage and intelligence are inversely correlated with physical size. I find her notable and noteworthy—as well as large in the best sense.

Sameness and Skepticism

The concept of identity is central to philosophy. Philosophers are characteristically concerned with whether A is identical to B. Is the mind identical to the brain, is knowledge true justified belief, is the good maximum utility, are numbers sets, is meaning reference, is the good life the intellectual life? Some philosophers favor identity, keeping things to a minimum, while others insist on difference, multiplying what there is. Naturally, then, they have been interested in identity as such: its logic, its metaphysics, and its epistemology. How is it related to indiscernibility, is it known a priori, is it absolute or relative, is it definable? Multiplicity is surely a basic fact about the world—it is presented to us as consisting of many distinct objects—and identity comes with multiplicity (this thing is not that thing but it is itself). It is natural to wonder how diverse the world really is: what is identical to what, and what is different? The very idea of conceptual analysis presupposes the concept of identity: is the concept of knowledge, say, identical to the concept of true justified belief? Synonymy is just the identity relation applied to words. Then too, there is identity through time, identity across worlds, and personal identity. Philosophers are constantly making judgments of identity and difference; you might suppose that it is their main occupation. Philosophers are identity hounds, sniffing out what is the same and what is different. That, we might say, is what philosophy is identical with.

            It would be nice if such judgments were skepticism-proof. Then philosophy would enjoy an epistemic privilege. It might even elevate philosophy above science, which is not skepticism-proof. But this seems like a forlorn hope: identity judgments are often wrong. As every philosopher knows, people used to think that the Morning Star is not the same as the Evening Star, but actually they are the same planet, as we have now discovered. Now is that judgment infallible? Sadly no, since we could have made an astronomical mistake: maybe there are really two planets after all—it just seems as if there is one. Perhaps there are doppelgangers everywhere, so that we are constantly meeting different people we think are the same. It might turn out that all of our identity beliefs are false: this seems like an epistemic possibility. Nor is this possibility limited to a posteriori identity beliefs: people used to think on analytic grounds that knowledge is identical to true justified belief, but then they discovered counterexamples to that claim. And maybe that judgment will turn out to be wrong—perhaps we misunderstand the concept of justification. Might it turn out that the meaning of “bachelor” is not identical with the meaning of “unmarried man”? These are not easy questions, and it would be wrong to dismiss them as absurd. Skepticism is nothing if not resourceful.

            However, it seems to me that there is one area in which skepticism about identity cannot gain a foothold—an area in which we can be certain that our identity and distinctness judgments are true. I don’t just mean with respect to the mind or numbers or meanings; I mean with respect to the external world, the skeptic’s go-to position. We may not be certain whether external objects exist or what their nature is, but we do infallibly know propositions about their identity and difference. For example, if I now judge that this cup is not identical to that computer, I cannot be wrong about that: it could not turn out that cup and computer are one and the same. Nor can I be wrong about the cup being identical to itself: this is a rock solid identity judgment. It is true that I might be wrong about whether the cup and the computer exist, or about whether I am dreaming, or about whether such objects are ideas in the mind of God; but none of that implies that I could be wrong about their identity and distinctness. Whatever the truth about the cup and computer is, I must be right in judging them non-identical. They might not have the shape and color they appear to have, but it is certain that they are not the same thing. And note that this is not a proposition about their appearance: it isn’t just that I know the appearances are non-identical. I know that whatever lies on the other side of the appearances, even if it is just non-existent intentional objects, these things are not identical.^[1] This is as certain as the proposition that each thing is identical to itself. Maybe both objects came into existence a second ago and are not identical to anything preceding them, despite the appearances, but still they are self-identical and other-distinct. Thus reality—whatever it is—is necessarily composed of distinct objects, a great many of them.^[2] Not metaphysically necessary, but epistemologically necessary: it could not turn out that our impression of multiplicity is incorrect, though there are possible worlds containing a single object. There are no illusions of multiplicity in which this cup is really identical to that computer. Maybe the cup is itself a computer, and the computer a cup, but still they are not identical. In the same way objects in dreams are not identical: it could not turn out that every object you dreamed about last night is really one and the same object. I can see that the cup and the computer are distinct, though I can’t see that they exist. It is not true to say that every question of identity is self-evident, but in some cases it is. So far as I can determine, this is the only fact about external objects that is proof against the skeptic: not existence, not materiality, not shape or color, not even being a cup or a computer. But whatever the real truth may be about these things, I at least know that they are not the same. Here appearance does entail reality. Presumably this is because identity and difference are such minimal conditions—they commit us to so little. Still, they are something: they form a roadblock to the outright victory of the skeptic. They are a counterexample to the claim that everything about our judgments concerning the external world is fallible.

            I think we can generalize this point beyond perceptually presented objects. We know with certainty that red is distinct from blue and triangles are distinct from rectangles. What these properties ultimately are, and whether they are ever instantiated, is as may be; but that they are distinct is indisputable. Nor is there any doubt that red is identical to itself (etc.).^[3] Again, appearance and reality cannot diverge. Likewise, I can be sure that 2 is not 3 and that pain is not belief and that democracy is not monarchy. These identity facts are infallibly known to me—and they are objective facts not facts about the mind. When they are known they are incorrigibly known. They are as certain as the Cogito. Indeed, the Cogito presupposes such facts, since we must accept that thinking is not identical to the self that thinks (or else it is a mere tautology). All our judgments presuppose conceptual distinctness, ruling out the possibility that our concepts are all identical. The skeptic may convince us that meanings don’t exist, or that we don’t know what they are, but he can’t convince us that the meaning of “plus” is the same as the meaning of “minus”. If he could, we could turn round and ask him whether “ignorance” means the same as “knowledge”. Both skeptic and anti-skeptic presuppose that they know that words and concepts are distinct from other words and concepts. Did Quine ever argue that “rabbit” might mean the same as “table”, or Kripke’s Wittgenstein contend that “plus” might mean “pain”? As with external objects, such judgments are invulnerable to skeptical challenge, which puts them in a very special class. And don’t I also know with complete certainty that I am not you? Descartes could have proposed the “distinct-self Cogito”: I think, therefore I am not you. That is, my knowledge of myself rules out the possibility that I am (so to speak) someone else—I cannot suppose that this self might actually not be distinct from another self. It could not turn out that I am you. That is not a real epistemic possibility. Maybe you don’t exist at all, but if you do I know with certainty that I am not identical to you. There may not be any other minds, but I know that my mind is not the same as yours if there are other minds. I know that I am identical to myself and that I am distinct from you: no skeptical scenario could convince me otherwise. I also know with certainty that I am not identical to this cup, so my distinctness from other things is guaranteed. No evil demon can persuade me that I am merely dreaming that I am different from other selves and from the objects around me. This is why I never dream such things: the very idea is preposterous verging on nonsensical.

            Given this, the philosopher’s interest in identities and differences is not vulnerable to the skeptic’s corrosive doubts. Such knowledge is uniquely positioned to avoid these doubts because beliefs about identity and difference are so epistemologically undemanding. It is not like inductive knowledge or inference to the best explanation, which are exercises in epistemological adventure and full of risk. This doesn’t mean it is easy to acquire, but once acquired it is hard to dislodge: we really do know that knowledge is not identical to true justified belief, that use and mention are distinct, that goodness is not the same as pleasure. There are no skeptical scenarios like the brain in a vat that can persuade us that these are spurious distinctions; we couldn’t be just dreaming that use is not mention. The scientist must face the possibility that nature is not uniform, but the philosopher needn’t worry that everything may be one.^[4] We know perfectly well that the world (whatever it is) contains a multitude and that each of its elements is identical to itself. This may not be much, but it is something. It curbs the skeptic’s enthusiasm.

^[1] Non-existent objects can be the same or different: Hamlet is not identical to Macbeth, though he is identical to himself (and to the Prince of Denmark).

^[2] In Berkeley’s system distinct objects are distinct ideas in the mind of God; there is no suggestion that object distinctness might be an illusion—that there might really be just one Big Idea. Nor have I ever heard of a skeptic who contends that multiplicity might be a perceptual illusion, as external existence might be an illusion. Even the brain in a vat is confronted by multiplicity—all those fake tables and chairs. Illusions of existence don’t entail illusions of identity. 

^[3] Let this point not be underestimated: with respect to any object or property X I know with certainty that X is identical to itself. The skeptic can never take this away from me: it is a piece of substantive knowledge concerning any object that comes to my attention. Such identity knowledge is invulnerable to skepticism (and it is not trivially tautological). When Frege said, “Identity is that relation a thing has to itself and to no other thing” he was stating a profound truth—and one that places a limit on the scope of skepticism.

^[4] I am not here talking about philosophical monism in any of its varieties; I am talking about commonsense judgments of distinctness, as that my two cats are distinct or that Tuesday isn’t Wednesday. The world might be composed of one type of thing or stuff, but we can rule out the possibility that all our ordinary objects are really identical (e.g. Mount Everest is identical to London, Queen Elizabeth is identical to Mars, everything is identical to Brad Pitt). Even if the world is one giant particular, it has numerically distinct parts. We can be certain that the world is Many (though not necessarily existent).