Dr.

Enrique Villanueva
Ridgeview Publishing Company

Self-Knowledge &Semantic Luck

Author(s): Stephen Yablo
Source: Philosophical Issues, Vol. 9, Concepts (1998), pp. 219-229
Published by: Ridgeview Publishing Company
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1522973 .
Accessed: 28/06/2014 17:22

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Dr. Enrique Villanueva and Ridgeview Publishing Company are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve
and extend access to Philosophical Issues.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.138 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:22:10 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 PHILOSOPHICAL
ISSUES,9
230 Concepts,1998

&
Self-KnowledgeSemantic
Luck

Stephen Yablo

1 Paul's Paradox
There is no prize in philosophy for the shortest a priori proof of an
external world; longest would be more like it. If a prize were to be
given, though, it would have to go to the argument just set out:

(1) If I have water-thoughts, then water exists.

(2) I have water-thoughts.

(3) So, water exists.

I mean, of course, that this argument would win the prize if it worked:
if, in particular, its premises were a priori knowable. Paul maintains
that it doesn't work. What we have is rather a paradox in which two
enormously plausible hypotheses -one backed by privileged access,
the other by externalism about content- are found to entail an
incredible result, viz. the a priori knowability of there being such a
thing as water.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.138 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:22:10 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
220 STEPHEN YABLO

2 Saul's Paradox
Before Paul's paradox, there was Saul's. Saul's paradox is in a way
more the urgent of the two, because it casts doubt on the compat-
ibility, not of calling (1) and (2) a priori, but of calling them (or
statements very like them) true. Here is a passage from Naming and
Necessity:
[... ] it is said that though we have all found out that there are no uni-
corns,... [u]ndercertaincircumstancesthere wouldhave been unicorns.
And this is an exampleof somethingI think is not the case... Perhaps
accordingto me the truth shouldnot be put in terms of sayingthat it is
necessarythere shouldbe no unicorns,but just that we can't say under
what circumstancesthere wouldhave been unicorns.1
Notice that two things are "said": first, that there aren't any uni-
corns, and second, that under certain circumstances there would
have been unicorns. It is only the second claim that Kripke dis-
putes. He takes it for granted that unicorns don't exist; this indeed
is why "unicorn"-sentences lack truth conditions, and why unicorn-
thoughts -which presumably need truth conditions to exist- are
ruled out entirely.
Now, suppose it is really true that for there to be X-thoughts,
there have to be Xs.2 Then what is to prevent a philosophically
reflective 18th century thinker -what for that matter is to prevent
you or I- from arguing like so:
(1') If I have caloric-thoughts, then there is caloric.
(2') I have caloric-thoughts.
(3') So, there is caloric.
Since the conclusion is false -there is no caloric- one of the
premises must be false as well. Which one? I call this a paradox
because one has, as Kripke likes to say, a considerable feeling that
both premises properly understood are correct.
Having just asserted that there is no caloric, the second premise
will be hard for me to deny; the thought that there is no caloric is
a caloric-thought if anything is. And I have other caloric-thoughts

1
Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 24.
2A restriction is obviously needed on "X"; I won't attempt to formulate it
here.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.138 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:22:10 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 20. SELF-KNOWLEDGE & SEMANTIC LUCK 221

as well: people used to believe in caloric; if there is caloric, then so

much the worse for the atomic theory of heat.
But the first premise is hard to argue with too. A thought is
something with truth conditions; it can be compared to a possible
world and found to be either true of that world or false of it. And in
the absence of any real caloric to set the standard, there seems to be
just no saying which of the caloric-like substances in other possible
worlds are relevant to the counterfactual truth-values of my caloric-
thoughts.

3 Kripkean vs. Fregean Truth Conditions

The Kripke passage paints a picture of unicorn-thoughts as true
without possessing truth conditions. How is this possible? A thought
is true, it would seem, only if it puts conditions on reality, which
conditions are in fact met. These conditions though could hardly
be other than the thought's truth conditions. And wasn't it truth
conditions that were supposed to be going missing on the Kripkean
picture?
An analogy may help. Suppose I introduce H as a predicate that,
no matter how the world may turn out, is to be true of all and only
the hedgehogs. Now consider the statement, or thought, that there
are Hs. Are you in a position to compute its truth conditions?
Not in the sense at issue in the Kripke passage, for I haven't told
you anything about what it takes for H to be true of a counterfactual
object. (And I'm not going to; the whole meaning of H has now been
explained.) And yet there would seem to be little doubt that the
thought is true. Because whatever there are Hs says or doesn't say
about other worlds, this world it describes as containing hedgehogs.
Here then is a case of a truth that is lacking in truth conditions.
But wait a minute, you say. Of course the thought that there
are Hs has truth conditions; it is true under the condition that
hedgehogs exist.
There is clearly something to this. The thought has truth condi-
tions of a sort: its (actual) truth-value depends on whether such
and such conditions are (actually) met. It remains, though, appar-
ently, that the thought lacks truth conditions of the kind intended
by Kripke: conditions that determine whether a (possibly counter-
factual) world is correctly described by the thought. To have some
language for this unusual state of affairs, let's say that there are Hs
has "Fregean" truth conditions, but little or nothing in the way of
"Kripkean"ones.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.138 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:22:10 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
222 STEPHEN YABLO

4 Consequences for the Paradoxes

What does this tell us about Saul's paradox? If "having a thought
to the effect that there is caloric" means "having a thought with the
Kripkean, or modalized, truth conditions that there is caloric", then
(1') looks true; without actual caloric to set the standard, how can
there be a fact of the matter about caloric's counterfactual career?3
But (2') is false. I am not thinking that there is caloric because
my "thought" leaves it (more or less) wide open which worlds are
caloric-worlds.
If on the other hand we are talking about "having a thought with
the Fregean, or actualized, truth conditions that there is caloric",
then matters are reversed. I am indeed thinking that there is caloric
-so (2') is true- but, (1') to the contrary, my ability to do this is
not hostage to the real existence of the stuff.
Will the same approach work with Paul's paradox? Take first
Kripkean water-thoughts, or water-thoughts individuated by their
Kripkean truth conditions. A priori reflection suggests that these
require actual water, as stipulated in (1). But that I am thinking a
Kripkean water-thought is, it may be argued, not something I can
tell a priori. So (1) is a priori but (2) is not.
If we switch now to the Fregean truth conditions of my thought
-the way its truth-value in the actual world depends on the ac-
tual facts- this does seem to be a priori detectable. Even the full
Fregean meaning of my thought -the way its truth-value across all
worlds4 depends on the actual facts- is a priori knowable. But so
what? Thoughts individuated by their Fregean truth conditions, or
meanings, don't call a priori for actual water. This time then it is
only (2) that's a priori.

5 Let's Be Kripkean
Terrific; except that all this time we have been walking into a neatly
laid incompatibilist trap. Here is what the incompatibilist will say:
I don't care if Fregean thoughts are a priori knowable, because Fregean
thoughts are not externalist in my sense. Your view appears to be that
externalism and privileged access can both be true, but not of the same
thoughts. Why should I disagree?

3I'll take this back in a little while.

4Its Kripkean truth conditions, in other words.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.138 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:22:10 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 20. SELF-KNOWLEDGE & SEMANTIC LUCK 223

This reply forces us to put the Fregean notions aside for a bit, and
look again at Paul's claim that Kripkean truth conditions go missing
on Dry Earth. (Truth conditions are henceforth Kripkean; the one
Fregean notion that will recur is "meaning", and that not until the
last section.)
One thing is clear: if this be Dry Earth, then the great majority
of worlds are not classifiable either as containing water or lacking it.
It's the next step that bothers me. Does it really follow that there
is water is lacking in truth conditions?
That depends. It probably does follow, if truth conditions are seen
as singular propositions made up inter alia of full-blooded proper-
ties; in the absence of water, there can be no full-blooded property
of being water, which is curtains for the proposition.
But the singularist conception is a surprising one in a context
where truth-conditionality is being treated as a condition of thought.
After all, the capacity for water-thought is intuitively quite indepen-
dent of ontological disputes about what sorts of properties there may
be, including disputes about whether properties exist at all. I sup-
pose one could say: let's have a pleonastic conception of properties
on which the needed properties come for free. But they come for free
only when the predicate is suitably meaningful, and the meaningful-
ness of "water" on Dry Earth is just what we are arguing about.
What sort of object should play the role of truth conditions, if not
a full-blooded singular proposition? The answer is that any object
will do that encodes the possibility of interrogating a world on such
matters as whether it contains water; that's what it takes for wa-
ter-thought, hence that's all that can be asked of truth conditions
considered as a requirement of such thought.5 For the sake of defi-
niteness, let me suggest that the encoding role is most directly and
efficiently played by (truth conditions conceived as) rules or recipes
for classifying worlds. Singular propositions can serve in some cases
as handy repositories of classificatory information. But if we're talk-
ing about truth conditions in the sense essential to thought, it's the
rule that matters.

6 Degrees of Taxonomic Power

Now rules, as we know, are apt to have blind spots: sometimes big
ones. It is not much remarked on, but the rules defining "true" leave

5Up to and including singular-proposition-like objects adapted to avoid Paul's

worry about the lack of a property.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.138 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:22:10 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
224 STEPHEN YABLO

us hanging as often as they deliver a verdict; there are fully as many

paradoxes as definite truths and falsehoods. (One can imagine al-
ternative rules that would make the ratio still worse.) That thought
about truth and falsity is somehow nevertheless possible suggests
a conjecture: "there is water" does have truth conditions on Dry
Earth,6 but truth conditions with not much resolving power as be-
tween cases. A few utterly dry worlds are ruled out, but on most
worlds they just fail to pronounce.7
The truth analogy has its limits, because the sniffing out of para-
doxes has a significant a priori component. A better analogy is
with Carnap's semantics for theoretical terms in Testability & Mean-
ing.8 Carnap lays it down that an object immersed in water is soluble
iff it dissolves; and that chemical analogues of solubilia (insolubilia)
are themselves soluble (insoluble); and that's it. As he is quick to
point out, this leaves a great many cases completely undecided -for
all we can tell a priori, it leaves every case undecided.
These empirical uncertainties notwithstanding, Carnap has, it
seems, infused the word "soluble" with substance enough to allow
for solubility-thoughts -and hence with substance enough for truth
conditions, to the extent that solubility-thoughts require them. One
does not feel the truth conditions of this is soluble to be dwindling
away into nothing as the number of actual immersals declines. One
feels rather that they are pronouncing on fewer and fewer cases, and
to that extent falling short of their destiny as truth conditions. But
thoughts with underperforming truth conditions are still thoughts.

7 Paradox Redux
You can guess where this is heading. If we are unlucky enough to
be living on Dry Earth, then as Paul says, there is no (full-blooded)
property of being water. That doesn't in itself make nonsense of
the question "which actual and counterfactual stuffs deserve to be
described as water?" It doesn't rule out that "there is water" puts a
condition on worlds, albeit a condition with less taxonomical power

6E.g., a world contains water if there is a unique watery stuff on Dry Earth
which it sufficiently resembles, and lacks water if it is thoroughly dry. (This is
crude.)
7The similarly pathetic truth conditions of "there is caloric" rule out different
worlds; this is enough to mark the two as distinct. (I assume the physics of heat
on Dry Earth is exactly as here.) They are distinct too in being poised to rule
different worlds in, given more favorable empirical conditions.
8Philosophy of Science (1936/7), Vol. 3, 419-471, and Vol. 4, 1-40.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.138 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:22:10 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 20. SELF-KNOWLEDGE & SEMANTIC LUCK 225

than might ideally be wanted. (And it does have some taxonomical

power, for it rules negatively on Dry Earth.)
The claim then is that the compatibilist can simply deny that
water-thoughts a priori require water. But while this may be enough
to counter the paradox as presented (specifically the first premise),
what about the following variant, where "taxonomical" means "has
a good deal of taxonomical or classificatory power":

(1*) If I have taxonomical water-thoughts, there is water.

(2*) I have taxonomical water-thoughts.

(3) There is water.

I want to say that the revamped paradox just reverses the problem
with the original one. It may be true, and true according to exter-
nalism, that (1*) is a priori.9 But privileged access ought not to be
understood as making (2*) a priori. The hypothesis that I'm think-
ing taxonomical water-thoughts is too close to the hypothesis that
there is water for one to be a priori and the other not.

8 Knowing What
At this point the original question -how am I to tell without empir-
ical research whether I'm thinking?- begins to transmogrify itself
into a more familiar one: how am I to tell without empirical research
what I'm thinking?10 To claim a priori knowledge of my thoughts,
in particular of their truth conditions, I should at a minimum be
able to tell whether these conditions possess any genuine bite.
Such an argument may seem only common sense. But it trades
on a very particular conception of "knowing what" -a conception
that may itself seem only common sense, but that requires scrutiny.
I call it absolutism about knowing what:

9I have doubts about the a priority of (1*) too, because I suspect that "water"
could stand on Dry Earth for a superficial phenomenological kind. "Natural
kind" terms stand for the most natural kind available; they rise to their own
level, in Kripke's phrase. That some of "air", "earth", "fire", and "water" strike
us now as more natural-kindy than the others reflects no preexisting semantic
commitments, but just that they are the ones that got lucky. (I grant that there
could be terms that denote natural kinds or nothing, and so I am not pressing
the point.)
10This is of course the "other" externalist threat to privileged access.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.138 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:22:10 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
226 STEPHEN YABLO

knowing what X is is knowing inherently important facts about

what X is, that is, X's identity or essence or nature.

If the truth conditions of my thought are not terribly taxonomical,

then that would seem to be an important fact about their nature
-the kind of fact that, according to absolutism, someone who knows
what the truth conditions are ought to be cognizant of. Since I
can't attest a priori to their resolving power, it seems that I don't
know a priori what the truth conditions of there is water really
are.
Is absolutism correct? A look at a few of its consequences will
help us decide. Absolutism entails that (i) facts about X's nature
are crucial to knowing what it is; (ii) facts not about X's nature are
irrelevant to knowing what it is; and (iii) the same facts are relevant
to knowing what X is regardless of how it is described.
I hope I'm not the only one who finds all of this highly debatable.
As against (ii), to know what magenta is, you have to know how it
makes things look, even if magenta is an intrinsic property of exter-
nal objects with no essential relation to human experience. Similar
remarks apply to the north pole (it's on top of the world), LSD (it
gets you high), dirt (it's cheap), and the Earth (it's the planet we
live on). To go by (i), only a philosopher can tell you what the
least prime number is; the mathematicians talk a good game, but
they aren't even decided whether two is a set. As for (iii), square-
ness and diamond-shapedness are the same property, but different
recognitional abilities are required to know what they are. Who-
ever doesn't know what salt is must have been living under a rock,
but sodium chloride is a different story. The anhedonic physiologist
knows what p-fiber firings are but not pleasure, even if pleasure and
p-fiber firings are one and the same.
Of course, the application that interests us is to knowledge of truth
conditions. But absolutism seems wrong here too. I know what the
truth conditions of Goldbach's conjecture are and yet I am ignorant
of as basic a fact as this about them: whether they are necessary
or impossible.11 (Think too of theoretical identities in science, ge-
nealogical conjectures, etc.) If I can get by without a priori knowl-
edge of one "basic metaphysical fact" about truth conditions, their
satisfiability, why not another, the fact of how taxonomical they
are?

1 Suppose some mathematician tells me they are impossible. It is far from

clear that this in itself helps me to understand the conjecture any better.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.138 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:22:10 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 20. SELF-KNOWLEDGE & SEMANTIC LUCK 227

9 A Non-Absolutist Alternative?
After all this shirking of epistemic obligations, someone might ask:
what do I have to know to know the truth conditions of my thought?
As an alternative to the "metaphysical" conception just scouted,
suppose we try the following:
(*) I know a priori what the truth conditions of my thought are
iff I know a priori that it has the truth conditions that P -for
P an appropriate (?!?) sentence of my language.12
This leaves the incompatibilist one final opening. To know a priori
that my thought has the truth conditions that P, I need to know a
priori that it doesn't have the (alternative) truth conditions that Q.
And if externalism is correct, then for some values of Q, I don't. E.g.,
for all I can tell a priori, the thought I express with the words "there
is water" might be true under the condition that there is XYZ.13
Here is how I would like to respond; the details are still under
construction. A priori knowledge resembles ordinary knowledge in
an important respect: it requires us to rule out some counterpossi-
bilities but not all the counterpossibilities there are. This is clear
from consideration of simple examples. I know a priori that my
location is here, but I don't know a priori that my location is not
Kinshasa, despite the fact that being here (in Ann Arbor) is strictly
incompatible with being in Kinshasa. I know a priori that Kabila is
Kabila, but I don't know a priori that Kabila isn't Mugabe, despite
the fact that being Kabila is incompatible with being Mugabe.
And now a speculation, offered in the spirit of something that
would be neat if true: the alternatives I have to rule out a priori, to
know a priori that I am thinking the Kripkean thought that there
is water, are ones that I can rule out a priori just by virtue of
my a priori grasp of Fregean meanings (as described at the end of
section IV).
To see why this is not completely insane, suppose we ask why I
don't have to know a priori about not being in Kinshasa to know a
priori about being here.
Answer: for all I can tell a priori, "I am here" and "I am in
Kinshasa" have identical Kripkean truth conditions; whence for all

12This is ignoring expressibility worries, which are legitimate but not to the
present point.
13This could be questioned, since "XYZ" is explicitly introduced as standing
for a substance distinct from the actual watery stuff, viz. water. But let that
pass.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.138 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:22:10 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 228 STEPHEN YABLO

I can tell a priori, "my thought has the truth conditions that I
am here" and "my thought has the truth conditions that I am in
Kinshasa" have compatible Kripkean truth conditions.
Obviously, though, I cannot be required to rule out a priori scenar-
ios that are, for all I can tell a priori, compatiblewith what I think, as
a condition of that thought's constituting a priori knowledge. This
would empty the category of a priori knowledge altogether; even
logical truths like Kabila = Kabila would lose their a priori status,
since I cannot rule out a priori that Kabila = Mugabe. I conclude
that

(**) To know a priori that A, I have to know a priori that not B

-but only in cases where B is a priori incompatible with A.

Applied to knowledge of truth conditions, this means that

(***) To know a priori that my thought has the truth conditions
that P, I have to know a priori that it does not have the truth
conditions that Q- except in cases where it is a priori possible
(i.e., not a priori false) that P and Q have the same truth
conditions.
The connection between (**) and (***) is simply this. The cases
where it is a priori possible that P and Q agree in their truth condi-
tions are all and only the ones where B = "my thought has the truth
conditions that Q" fails to be a priori incompatible with A = "it
has the truth conditions that P".
Now, do I have the a priori knowledge that (***) requires of me?
I see no reason to doubt it. If P and Q are a priori different in
their truth conditions, it will be a priori too that no P-thought
has the truth conditions that Q. To infer a priori that my thought
doesn't have the truth conditions that Q, I will need to know a priori
that my thought is a P-thought. But that is the commonsense view;
it is the incompatibilist's job to undermine it, not mine to shore it
up.
As a matter of fact, though, it can be shored up, if we allow our-
selves an assumption to which incompatibilists are not per se op-
posed. The assumption is that I have a priori knowledge of Fregean
meaning: of how the truth conditions of my thoughts and sentences
depend on the actual-world facts.14 Why should incompatibilists
deny this? Fregean meaning is intrinsic and their problem is about
extrinsic content.

14See the end of section IV.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.138 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:22:10 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 20. SELF-KNOWLEDGE & SEMANTIC LUCK 229

Suppose then that I am granted a complete a priori grasp of the

Fregean meanings of my thoughts, and of relevant sentences of my
language. This tells me, for each Q meeting the proviso of (***),
that however the actual world comes out, my thought never acquires
the truth conditions that Q. From this I conclude a priori that I
am not thinking that Q. Any block raised by (***) to my knowing
a priori that I am thinking that P is thus removed.
So much is to defend against an objection. But it seems possible to
make a positive a priori case that I am thinking that P by the same
method: "noticing" that my thought comes out with the truth con-
ditions that P on every hypothesis about actuality. By (*), nothing
more is required for a priori knowledge of what it is that I am think-
ing. The apparent result is that a "complete" a priori grasp of my
Fregean thoughts15 provides me with "ordinary"a priori knowledge
of my Kripkean ones.

15And the Fregean meanings of relevant sentences.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.138 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:22:10 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions