PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

Edited by WILFRID SELLARS and HERBERT FEIGL with the advice and

assistance of PAUL 1VIEEHL, JOHN HOSPERS, MAY BRODBECK

VOLUME IV C o n t e n t s O c t o b e r 1953 NUMBER 5

On Mr. Baier's "Good Reasons" by David Sachs INSTITUTE FOR PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH, SAN FRANCISCO

On the Self-Reference of a Meaning-Theory by Robert ]. Richman, rltmVAgD UNIVERSITY

In Defense of Proper Names against Descriptions by Nell L. Wilson, BISHOP'S UNIVERSITY, QUEBEC

A Note on Empiricism by Thomas Storer, IrNIVERSlTY OV NEBmSSI~A

On Mr. Baler's " Good Reasons"

by DAVID SACHS

INSTITUTE FOR PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH, SAN FRANCISCO

IN rlIS piece, "Good Reasons," in Philosophical Studies, January 1953, Mr. Baier purports to show that certain facts are good reasons for, and certain others good reasons against, doing certain things, quite irrespective of the purposes, wishes, plans, desires, and passions of the person con- cerned. I think that Mr. Baier claims to show something much more im- portant than what he does show; and that certain amendments and cor- rections should be made in his piece. Since the latter may serve to clarify both what he does show, and how he has come to make the exaggerated claim he does, I will begin with them. I will then indicate the respects in which his claim seems unwarranted.

On Pain. Mr. Baler quotes Professor Ryle's remark, "It should be men- tioned that 'pain,' in the sense in which I have pains in my stomach, is not

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the opposite of 'pleasure.' In this sense, a pain is a sensation of a special sort, which we ordinarily dislike having." Mr. Baier alleges this v/ew is mistaken: pains are not merely sensations of certain kinds which most people dislike having; they are sensations which all people must dislike having; this is so, he claims, in that "A pain is not a sensation logically neutral to enjoyment and dislike? '1 "A feeling w o u l d n o t be a pain if it did not have these features"~--i.e., that we hope to avoid it, that we hope it will end as soon as possible, and so on. He further carefully observes, "that certain happenings to the body are painful is not a logical necessity. ''~ And he writes, I think convincingly, of how we come to use the word 'pain'; and tries to account for "pleasant pains." The upshot is his assertion: "For to say that something is a pain is to say that it is a s o r t o f t h i n g o n e

does not enjoy. This is part of the meaning of pain. TM

Mr. Baier may have stopped short here. Pains are not sensations logically neutral to enjoyment and dislike--in the beginning, and almost always. We mean by a 'pain' something, as he says, about which it is natural to com- plain, natural to wish that it were to end, that it were never to return, and so on. What Mr. Baier has to say about a few people not finding it painful to have their ears tweaked, however, does not at all help his case. For, noting how similar in fact people are in this respect, and, also, how we have come to use the word 'pain,' can help serve to understand a some- times literally meaningful, comprehensible remark: 'I enjoy pain.' Maso- chists are especially to the point; some masochists enjoy pain, i.e. they enjoy specific sensations which they know most people, as well as they them- selves, find painful, i.e., have qualifies which most people find painful. And which, further, they know most people, as they themselves probably once did, hope to avoid, and hope will never return. They know those sensations are of sorts of which most people are afraid, and toward which most people feel a lively aversion. All this has provided a use for 'pain' and 'painful' which allows 'I enjoy pain' to be literally meaningful and com- prehensible. To say it candidly of oneself is to reveal peculiar or odd predi- lections; Mr. Baier is wrong in thinking it is not.

Professor Ryle's remark might be modified as follows: it should be noted that 'pain,' in at least one possible sense in which I have pains in my stomach, is not the opposite of 'pleasure.' In this particular sense, a pain is a sensation of a special sort, which we ordinarily dislike having.

O n L i k i n g and E n j o y i n g . On three counts, Mr. Baier seems to me to have exaggerated the comparative independence of enjoying and liking. On page 12, Mr. Baier says that "Why do you enjoy that?' is really a dif- ferent sort of question than 'Why do you like it?' For, he says, the former is never a question as to one's reason/or enjoying it; whereas the latter, he suggests, is a question as to one's reason for liking it. The former " . . . is

ON MR. BAIER'S "GOOD REASONS" 67

a request for an explanation, i.e., the pointing to that feature in the whole thing which the person enjoys." But both forms of question may often be suitably answered by singling out the features one likes or enjoys. Which is not to deny that often the latter form of question can be employed to ask something for which the former never can.

Secondly, Mr. Baler claims it is sometimes appropriate to answer 'Why do you enjoy it?' by 'No reason at all. I just do enjoy it.' He suggests this is not the case with 'Why do you like it?' and alleges that it always makes sense to ask 'Why do you like it?' though the person questioned need not be able to answer. He observes that "A man may, of course, say 'I just like this. I have no particular reason for liking it.' ,,5 I wonder if Mr. Baier ap- preciates what is sometimes the force of this reply.

To say 'I like to . . . ' or 'I like it' or 'I just like it' is surely sometimes to say that a request for a reason for liking it is otiose? And if the request is sometimes otiose, then Mr. Baier is wrong in holding that "In the case of liking something, on the other hand, we can always ask 'why?' in the sense of asking for a reason for liking it, and not merely for an explanation of why he likes it. ''~

Thirdly, Mr. Baler says that enjoying doing something is sometimes a reason for liking it. 8 I doubt that it is. If I ask you, 'What is your reason for liking to get up at 3 A.M. to watch birds?' and you reply, 'Because I enjoy it,' whether or not you stress the 'because' and even if you content )ourself with merely saying 'I enjoy it,' what you will be doing is acknowl- edging one of the presuppositions of my query, viz. that you like it, and rebutting another, viz. that you have a reason for liking it. You might, of course, give a different answer.

None of this is to identify enjoying and liking, or to gainsay the other regards in which Mr. Baler distinguishes them.

Mr. Baier's ProoL Given the preceding, what of Mr. Baler's proof? He has his fakir say, "I just like this. I have no particular reason [for liking to walk on burning coals; indeed, I find it repugnant and painful]." It is assumed the fakir is not masochistic, that he does not enjoy what he does, that he finds it, in a literal, and the standard, sense of 'painful,' painful. In consequence, as Mr. Baier says, it would be wrong to put him down as one who goes in for startlingly different enjoyments, to place him in the case-history gallery of people with peculiar "object-choices." He would not fit there. His difficulties are of another type. Most of us have faintly similar ones. Walking on the coals, he is in agony; he by no means looks forward to doing it again; yet he does it again, and without reason.

Now, of such a ease, Mr. Baler claims, it is (barely) understandable to say 'he likes pain for its own sake' or 'in a way he likes doing it. '~ I doubt that in such a ease it is understandable. We might say of such a man, if

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we were to know less than we do know about him--basing our remarks on such facts as his religiously seeing to it that he has a good supply of coal on hand, his seldom permitting the fire to die, and so on--that 'he must like it' or 'he behaves as if he likes it.' But the point which the 'as if' allows, and which would suffice to cause us to retract 'he must like it,' is that we may learn he does not, despite the indications supplied by much of his behavior, tike it. And this we do know in the case Mr. Baler furnishes. The fakir assures us that it causes him pain, that he finds it agonizing; the most we can say is 'you might think he likes it'; we are not entitled to say 'in a way he likes it,' unless we doubt the fakir.

W e can certainly say, " . . . he regularly goes in for doing something of which he knows that it will cause him pain, without having any reason for doing it. ''1° And, as Mr. Baier also says, " . . . such behavior is the prototype of irrationality, of flying in the face of reason. ' 'n But, for it to be appropriate to say this last disproves Mr. Baier's assertion that "We can speak of irrationality only when someone, in the face of a detailed proof of the incompatibility of two claims, maintains the two claims, either be- cause he refuses to admit that the two claims are contradictory although they plainly are, or in spite of the fact that he admits their contradictori- ness (and we have good reason to think that he understands what this means) ,,12 For it is not a matter, in the case in question, of two contradic- tory claims, but of acting without reason, in the face of a weighty, and the sole, consideration.

Mr. Baler says such a man must be called irrational. But what is the necessity? Of course, that such behavior is irrational, I do not doubt. And if such behavior is irrational, it is because the man acts in the face of the weighty (and, again, the sole) consideration that doing what he does causes him pain. Mr. Baler says, " . . . a person who behaves in the way described obviously rejects 'it will cause me pain' as a good reason against doing 'it'. ''13 To the contrary, he in no sense "rejects" it; he does not, perhaps cannot, act in accord with it. On these grounds, Mr. Baier's formulation on page 15 should be altered: "Since rejecting this reason draws upon one the criticism that one is irrational in so doing . . ." might be changed to "Since behaving in this way is irrational, and leaves one open to the charge of behaving irrationally . . ."

Refraining from such behavior, acting in accord with the weighty and sole consideration that to so behave would cause one pain, would be ra- tional, as Mr. Baler implies. In effect, the fakir knows that doing a certain thing is bad, that it causes him pain (in the nonmasochistic, standard sense of 'pain'), and, moreover, that he has no reason for doing it; and he con- tinues doing it. He is behaving like the butcher, to use Mr. Baler's earlier example, who for no reason, after having weighed pieces of meat in order

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to buy the heaviest, takes the lightest. 14 Such behavior is irrational; it is ineonsistent with what one knows and what one wants. The point can easily be extended: to proceed in such a way as to prevent our desires from being satisfied, and without reason; purposelessly to frustrate ourselves; to defeat our aspirations and wishes for no good reason, and to know that we are doing it; to inflict pain upon ourselves without cause--all this is to behave irrationally, and to do badly by ourselves. To deny this would be, I think, incomprehensible; it is, after all, much of what we mean by 'irrational.'

Once Hume said, "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions . . ." I do not, here, want to quarrel with that famous estimate of reason. I want, here, only to observe the bearing of Mr. Baier's proof upon it. It seems to me this: Mr. Baier has reminded Hume that if one does not behave in accord with one's "passions," one will be behaving ir- rationally. He has reminded us that, if we do not behave in accord with our "passions," and for no reason, we will be behaving irrationally. The subjectivist moral philosopher can invoke the sanction of rationality as well as anyone else.

But then, I take it, Mr. Baier has not shown, in a way in which anyone has sought to deny it, "'that certain facts are good reasons for, and certain others good reasons against, doing certain things, quite irrespective of the purposes, wishes, plans, desires, and passions of the person concerned. 'u~

Received February 21, 1953

N(YFES 1 p. 9. "Cf. J. O. Urmson, ASSV, 26:183-84. V'Ibid. ~P. 10. "P. 12. ~Ibid., my italics. "Ibid. ~ Cf. ibid. ~ P. 15, my italics. 'P. 11. ~Cf. p. 14; also p. 13. l'Cf. p. 2. ~P. 13. ~op. 14. l~p. t.

On the Self-Reference of a Meaning-Theory

by R O B E R T J. R I C H M A N

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

A CRITERION in terms of which a division is drawn between meaningful and meaningless statements is, for purposes of the present paper, a meaning- criterion. I shall use the expression 'meaning-theory' as short for 'statement of a meaning-criterion.' Now it would seem, prima facie, that if a meaning-