Eternal Possibilities : A Neutral Ground for Meaning and Existence [1 ed.] 9780809387069, 9780809307999

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David Weissman is a professor of philosophy at the City College of New York. He is the author of several books, including Dispositional Properties, Styles of Thought, The Cage, Lost Souls, and A Social Ontology.

Eternal Possibilities

Eternal Possibilities: A Neutral Ground for Meaning and Existence builds on David Weissman’s earlier Dispositional Proper­ties and makes a signal contribution to the study of metaphysics. Here, broad­ening and enriching the point of view adopted in his earlier work, Weissman cites and criticizes a large number of theories proposed by authors from Plato to Wittgenstein and others exploring lan­guage theory and metaphysics.  Students of Wittgenstein will be especially interested in Weissman’s critical examination of Wittgenstein’s claim in the Tractatus that possibilities are the facts for logic. Weissman proposes a modal theory of properties: they exist in the first instance as possibilities. He argues that a sentence is meaningful if it signifies a property or complex of properties existing as a possible, and true if that possible is instantiated. The status of possibilities and their relation to actual states of affairs are considered in detail.

A Neutral Ground for Meaning and Existence

Philosophy

Eternal Possibilities A Neutral Ground for Meaning and Existence

David Weissman

Weissman

Printed in the United States of America

Southern Illinois University Press 1915 University Press Drive Mail Code 6806 Carbondale, IL 62901 www.siu.edu/~siupress

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ISBN 0-8093-2870-4 ISBN 978-0-8093-2870-3

Southern Illinois University Press

5/13/08 9:56:56 AM

Eternal Possibilities

ETERNAL POSSIBILITIES A Neutral Ground for Meaning and Existence

David Weissman

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY PRESS Carbondale

Copyright © 1977 by Southern Illinois University Press Paperback edition 2008 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 11 10 09 08

432 J

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Weissman, David Joel. Eternal possibilities. Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Knowledge, Theory o( 2. Metaphysics. 3. LanaguagePhilosophy. I. Title. BDl6 I.W37 121 77-23246 ISBN-13: 978-0-8093-0799-9 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-IO: 0-8093-0799-5 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 13: 978-0-8093-2870-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 10: 0-8093-2870-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) Printed on recycled paper. 0 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-J992. @

To my wife and children

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ix

INTRODUCTION

3

1. Platonism in the Tractatus

17

2. Two Kinds of Possibility: Material and Eternal

57

3. Relations among Eternal Possibilities: The Nexus

109

4. Possibilities Instantiated: The Actual World

141

5. Carnap, Goodman, and Quine on the Relation of Language to the World

189

6. Meaning: The Representation of Possibilities in Language

237

INDEX

291

Acknowledgments

several friends and fellow teachers who have helped to clarify my ideas in the many years that were spent in writing this book. I am particularly thankful to John Blom and Marshall Spector for their detailed criticisms of the manuscript. lowe a special debt to George Kimball Plochmann. It was his support that brought this book to publication. My research has been subsidized in part by grants from the Research Foundation of the City University of New York. Grateful acknowledgment is extended to Idealistic Studies for permission to reprint in revised form as chapter 1 "Platonism in the Tractatus ," which originally appeared in volume 2 (1972) of that journal. Grateful acknowledgment is extended to Hanna Carnap Thost on behalf of the Rudolf Carnap Trust, and to Revue internationale de philosophie for permission to reprint from "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" by Rudolf Carnap, which appeared in volume 4, number II (1950) of that journal. Quotations from Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays by G. W. V. Leibniz, translated by Paul Schrecker and Anne Martin Schrecker (1965), reprinted by permission of The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Quotations from Problems and Projects by Nelson Goodman, copyright [) 1972 by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., reprinted by permission of the publisher, author, and Gerard F. McCauley, the author's agent. Quotations from Word and Object by W. V. O. Quine (1960) reprinted by permission of the M. I. T. Press. Quotations from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by LudTHERE ARE

Acknowledgments

wig Wittgenstein, translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London: