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 2 n d ed itio n

Encyclopedia of

Philosophy
APPENDIX: ADDITIONAL ARTICLES
THEMATIC OUTLINE
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
INDEX

10
volume

2 n d e d itio n

Encyclopedia of

Philosophy
DONALD M. BORCHERT
Editor in Chief
 Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Second Edition
Donald M. Borchert, Editor in Chief

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 contents
volume 1
PREFACE TO 2ND EDITION
INTRODUCTION TO 1ST EDITION
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
LIST OF ARTICLES

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

PHILOSOPHY
2nd edition
Abbagnano–Byzantine Philosophy

volume 2
Cabanis–Destutt de Tracy

volume 3
Determinables–Fuzzy Logic

volume 4
Gadamer–Just War Theory

volume 5
Kabbalah–Marxist Philosophy

volume 6
Masaryk–Nussbaum

volume 7
Oakeshott–Presupposition

volume 8
Price–Sextus Empiricus

volume 9
Shaftesbury–Zubiri

volume 10
APPENDIX: ADDITIONAL ARTICLES
THEMATIC OUTLINE
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
INDEX

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
2nd edition
 appendix

albert the great appointed him bishop of Regensburg, but he served less
(before 1200–1280) than two years before submitting his resignation, after
instituting many reforms in his diocese. Although
According to the near-contemporary testimony of retired, he was directed by Pope Urban IV, in 1263, to
Tolomeo of Lucca (Historia Ecclesiastica [1317], 22.19) preach to the Germans a crusade to the Holy Land, and
and confirmed by other, later sources, Albert the Great this he did, until Urban’s death in 1264.
(Albertus Magnus) was more than 80 years old when he It is said that after the death of Thomas Aquinas,
died on November 15, 1280, establishing the turn of the Albert traveled to Paris one last time to defend the views
thirteenth century as the terminus ante quem of his birth. of his former student, but this story, related at the can-
He was born in the town of Lauingen in Schwaben in the onization proceedings for Aquinas in 1319, is not fully
diocese of Augsburg, at the time a part of Bavaria, the son consistent with other known facts about Albert’s final
of a knight in the service of the counts of Bollestadt. He years and, indeed, appears to interpret the events in Paris
was already a student in the studium litterarum at Padua in 1277 in a manner that places far too much importance
when, in 1223, Jordan of Saxony came in search of on the connection, if any, between Aquinas and the doc-
recruits to the Dominican Order among the young men trines that were being formally condemned. The com-
in residence at the new university. Albert received the plete absence of any official correspondence after August
habit from Jordan sometime around Easter of 1223 and 18, 1279, in the face of a full and active participation in
was sent to Cologne for his novitiate. By 1228 he had the life of the Church and his order right up until that
become a lecturer (lector), and he served in that office in date, has suggested to some that Albert’s memory, and
Dominican communities at Heldesheim, Freiberg, perhaps other aspects of his mental life, had begun to fail
Regensburg, and Strassburg. In 1243 or 1244 he was sent him at that time, but there is no good reason to suppose,
to Paris by John of Wildeshausen, where he became a as some have done, that this decline began as early as
master of theology in 1245 and lectured on Peter Lom- 1277. Whether he was already in decline or not, he and
bard’s Sententiarum (Sentences). his Dominican brothers were apparently not unprepared
In the fall of 1245 Thomas Aquinas was sent to Paris, when death finally took him away on November 15,
also at the direction of John of Wildeshausen, and in 1280.
1248 he and probably other Dominicans accompanied
Albert to Cologne, where Albert was to establish the first writings
studium generale (or liberal-arts college) in Germany. He
Albert was committed to the preservation and propaga-
served as Provincial of Teutonia from 1254 to 1257, dur-
tion of the philosophical ideas of antiquity, in particular
ing which time he was summoned before the papal curia
the philosophy of Aristotle, which he saw himself as
to defend the Dominican Order against the attacks of
introducing to the Latin west. Like Aristotle, he produced
William of Saint-Amour. He was well received by the
a body of philosophical work that spanned the discipline
curia, and his lectures and debating were found to be
in both breadth and depth. As in the case of Aristotle,
extraordinary. In January of 1260 Pope Alexander IV
some of the works attributed to Albert in his corpus are
appendix: ALBERT THE GREAT

not actually from his hand, and other works known to Neoplatonism. The complaint is that the two systems are
have been written by him have yet to be found. Little is philosophically and philologically incompatible, and any
known with any certainty about the chronology of the attempt to reconcile them is not only doomed to failure
corpus, but there are good reasons for thinking that the but is also methodologically misguided. It is worth not-
bulk of his philosophical writings, in particular, his Aris- ing, however, that this view is itself grounded in historical
totelian paraphrases, were completed between the years research based upon certain a priori assumptions about
1250 and 1270. the relation between Plato’s philosophical system and
His corpus can be divided into three main categories: Aristotle’s. Albert’s Neoplatonism was essentially the
philosophy (nine treatises in logic, five in metaphysics, Neoplatonism of the Greek commentators on Aristotle,
and three in ethics), theology (thirty treatises), and what which was itself an attempt to syncretize Plato and Aris-
we would call natural science but what throughout the totle, and it is fair to say that in antiquity the disparities
medieval period was known as natural philosophy between the two systems were not viewed as they have
(twenty-two treatises). His method in most of his writ- been by modern commentators. In fact, Albert, in offer-
ings is the paraphrastic style employed by Avicenna (ibn ing a Neoplatonic harmonization of the two systems, is
Sina), as opposed to the line-by-line commentary charac- simply following the example, not only of his Arabic
teristic of the works of Averroes (ibn Rushd), and his log- sources, but of a tradition that extends back to the Hel-
ical works in particular are deeply influenced by the work lenistic period. The view that the systems are beyond har-
not only of Avicenna but also of al-Farabi and Robert Kil- monizing is of rather recent vintage and is subject to
wardby. Although Aristotle’s scientific writings had been modification.
condemned in 1210 by Innocent III and the University of
Paris established a commission to purge the Aristotelian metaphysics
corpus of heretical ideas in 1231, Albert encountered no Albert’s metaphysics focused primarily on a theory of
difficulty in making use of Aristotelian ideas when he causation that can be traced to such sources as Aristotle,
began to work on his Summa de creaturis (Treatise on Avicenna, Pseudo-Dionysius, and the Liber de causis (The
creatures), before 1246, and his commentary on the Sen- Book of Causes). He adapted the Neoplatonic notion of
tentiarum of Peter Lombard, completed in 1249. It was emanation of form, but in his system the causation is by
probably not until the condemnation of 1277 that Aris- attraction rather than by pure emanation from the One.
totelianism as such encountered any serious resistance at He preferred attraction to pure emanation because he
the universities. identified the One with the Good, and the Good, by its
very nature, is diffusive of itself and of being (diffusivum
philosophy sui et esse), that is, it causes other things to be by means of
Part of what was at issue in the condemnation of 1277 a kind of “calling to resemblance.” (Albert here treats the
was the relation between philosophy and theology, which word for good, “bonum,” as cognate with the verb “boare”
the so-called Latin Averroists argued were separate disci- [to call]. This appeal to homespun etymology was also
plines corresponding to entirely distinct objects of common in antiquity, particularly in Plato but also in
knowledge, and hence governing different sorts of truths. Aristotle.) By virtue of this “calling to resemblance,” the
The truths of theology were grounded in divine revela- Good is not merely the first mover, as Aristotle’s
tion and prophecy, while those of philosophy were unmoved mover is, but is also the first producer, that is,
grounded in human reason, and the mendicant orders the Creator—a role for the First Cause that is not found
were concerned to keep the two disciplines separate, on in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (bk. ?), but rather is drawn from
the grounds that philosophy, an inherently skeptical dis- the Liber de causis, which Albert regarded as Aristotelian
cipline, might intrude itself into theology in an unwar- in provenance.
ranted way, calling into question conclusions drawn in a
domain in which it had no authority. In this context, logic
Albert’s insistence on the importance of knowing and Albert’s logical works consist, for the most part, of para-
understanding the philosophy of the ancient Greeks is phrases of the treatises of the Organon (from Gr.
striking and serves to illustrate his intellectual integrity. “organon,” instrument, tool), so-called in the medieval
Albert’s approach to ancient philosophy has been period because logic was viewed not as a part of philoso-
criticized by late-twentieth-century historians of philoso- phy but rather as an implement that is necessary for the
phy as an unrealistic syncretism of Aristotelianism and advancement of philosophy. The Organon consisted of

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
2 • 2nd edition
 appendix: ALBERT THE GREAT

Aristotle’s Categories, De interpretatione (On interpreta- entific “experiment” consisted in the gathering of obser-
tion), Topics (including the De sophisticis elenchis [On vational data only, not the comparative analysis of data
sophistical refutations]), Prior Analytics, and Posterior against hypotheses with controlled variables (The Latin
Analytics. Yet Albert moved beyond Aristotle in a number word “experimentum” is cognate with the Greek word
of areas, most notably in his treatment of universals, “empeiria” [experience], from which we get the English
which was grounded on the notion of form found in word “empiricism.”) As in Aristotle’s treatises on nature,
Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle had objected to the separa- observational data served only to illustrate or confirm a
bility of the Platonic form and argued that forms are priori hypotheses, never as a means of hypothesis forma-
immanent in particulars. Drawing again upon Aristotle’s tion. But Albert is not a strict Aristotelian in this matter.
Greek commentators, Albert argued that the universal For natural philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition,
must be analyzed into three modi essendi, or modes of such as Aquinas, experience must be understood in terms
being. Although a universal is a metaphysical unity, it may of an inductive process leading from sense perception of
be considered under three aspects: as an entity in its own particulars to the formation of general concepts in the
right, really existing separately from a particular, as in the soul, as described in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (A.1) and Pos-
mind of God (ante rem); as an entity that informs a par- terior Analytics (B.19).
ticular, causing it to be the thing it is (in re); or as an In this account, the specific features of particulars are
entity in human thought (post rem). The distinction the proper objects of sense perception, but memory func-
between the universal in re and the universal post rem is tions to gather together the perceptual information from
grounded in the Aristotelian notion of abstraction, which similar particulars into what Aristotle calls an empeiria
is discussed in more detail below under the heading of (experience) of the natural kind involved, and the
“Natural Science.” Although Albert achieves here another rational faculty called nous in Greek (variously translated
notable syncretism, it is worth noting that he does not into English as either intellect or understanding)
treat universals as substantial forms, as Plato and Aristo- abstracts from empeiria an intelligible object, which then
tle both do. resides in nous and is a likeness (homoioma) of the imma-
nent form present in the particulars. Since these intelligi-
natural science ble objects are different in kind from the perceptual
objects that are the proper objects of the perceptual fac-
Albert’s interest in the natural world was driven by his
ulties, Aristotle is properly regarded not as an empiricist
belief that all knowledge is interconnected, and he pur-
but as a rationalist. Nonetheless, experience clearly plays
sued scientific questions with such intensity that critics,
an essential role in the acquisition of knowledge of uni-
such as Henry of Ghent (De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis 2.10)
versals.
suggested that he neglected theology and philosophy. Of
particular interest with regard to his scientific writings is For Albert, although scientific knowledge is of the
his attitude toward the distinction between rationalism universal, the mechanism by which the universal comes
and empiricism, a distinction that had been of great to reside in the soul is by the “calling to resemblance” of
interest in antiquity but that had faded during the early the emanation of the intelligences. Intelligences illumi-
medieval period as a consequence of both the ascendancy nate the human rational faculty in accord with the doc-
of rationalism under the influence of Neoplatonism and trine of causation by attraction, and universal concepts
the decline in scientific investigations during periods of form in the soul not because of the capacity of human
social and political upheaval. Working against the grain of intellect to abstract them but because the First Cause uses
the prevailing rationalism, Albert’s attitude towards work the intellect in its causal process. In Albert’s and Bacon’s
in the natural sciences was decidedly empiricist: experi- reliance on experience, though different in kind from
mentum solum certificat in talibus (“Experience alone later notions of experience, we see the beginnings of the
gives certainty in such matters” (De vegetabilibus et plan- movement that would, by the time of the Renaissance,
tis, VI, 2.1). Although “experimentum” (here translated establish empiricism as the dominant scientific attitude,
“experience”) is reminiscent of our word “experiment,” an attitude that, in time, would drive a wedge between
the modern concept of scientific experiment, in which a natural philosophy and first philosophy and separate the
hypothesis is tested against observational data for confir- natural sciences from philosophy.
mation or falsification, was unknown at this time. See also al-Farabi; Aristotelianism; Aristotle; Avicenna;
For Albert, as for his contemporary Roger Bacon, the Bacon, Roger; Liber de Causis; Neoplatonism; Peter
other great experimentalist of the thirteenth century, sci- Lombard; Pseudo-Dionysius; Thomas Aquinas, St.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
2nd edition • 3
appendix: COUNTERFACTUALS

Bibliography If it had been the case that X, then it would have been the
WORKS BY ALBERT
case that Y (if X had happened, then Y would have hap-
Alberti Magni opera omnia, edited by the Institutum Alberti pened)
Magni Coloniense. Münster, Germany: Monasterium
Westfalorum, 1951–. Subjunctive conditionals of the form “If she be gone, he
Alberti Magni opera omnia. 21 vols., edited by Petri Jammy. is in despair” are not at issue.
Lyon, France: 1651. It is because the antecedents of such subjunctive con-
Alberti Magni opera omnia. 38 vols., edited by Auguste Borgnet
ditionals usually state something that is not in fact the
and E. Borgnet. Paris: L. Vivès, 1890–1899.
case or “contrary-to-fact,” or is at least assumed not to be
WORKS ON ALBERT the case by the thinker or utterer of the conditional, that
Bianchi, Luca. Il vescovo e i filosofi: La condanna pariginia del they have come to be known as counterfactuals.
1277 e l’evoluzione dell’aristotelismo scolastico. Bergamo,
Italy: 1990. It is not clear that there is any interesting difference
Craemer-Ruegenberg, Ingrid. Albertus Magnus. Munich, between present and future tense indicative and subjunc-
Germany: Beck, 1980. tive conditionals. It is not clear, for example, that there is
D’Ancona Costa, Cristina. Recherches sur le “Liber de causis.”
any important semantic difference between one saying “If
Paris: J. Vrin, 1995.
Hoenen, Maarten, and Alain de Libera. Albertus Magnus und it were raining they would not be playing” and “If it’s
der Albertismus: Deutsche philosophische Kultur des raining, then they’re not playing.” Nor is it clear that there
Mittelalters. Leiden, Germany: Brill, 1995. is any important semantic difference between one saying
Kovach, Francis J., and Robert W. Shahan, eds. Albert the Great: “If she goes to the party, he will not go” and “If she were
Commemorative Essays. Norman: University of Oklahoma to go, he would not go,” or between one saying “If salt is
Press, 1980.
mixed with water it dissolves (will dissolve)” and “If salt
Libera, Alain de. Albert le Grand et la Philosophie. Paris: J. Vrin,
1990. were to be mixed with water it would dissolve.” The idea
Pegis, Anton. “St. Albert the Great and the Problem of Soul as that there is an important difference here is perhaps an
Substance.” In his St. Thomas and the Problem of the Soul in artifact of the empiricist outlook dominant in analytic
the Thirteenth Century, chap. 3. Toronto: St. Michael’s philosophy in the last century, which endorsed the “regu-
College, 1934. larity theory of causation” and the associated idea that
Weisheipl, James, ed. Albertus Magnus and the Sciences:
Commemorative Essays, 1980. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
laws of nature could be adequately expressed by the
Mediaeval Studies, 1980. “material conditional” of standard first-order logic.
Zimmermann, Albert. Albert der Große: Seine Zeit, sein Werk, However that may be, the difference between indica-
seine Wirkung. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1981.
tive and subjunctive conditionals seems clearer in the case
Scott Carson (2005) of past-tense conditionals. Consider

If Georges Agniel and his friends did not discover the Las-
caux caves, then someone else did
counterfactuals
and
A conditional is a sentence, statement, proposition, or
If Georges Agniel and his friends had not discovered the
thought of the form
Lascaux caves, then someone else would have
If A then C
The difference of meaning is immediately apparent and is
“A” is called the antecedent of the conditional and “C” the sufficiently shown by the fact that although one takes the
consequent. Philosophers have traditionally divided con- first to be true, one has no reason to believe the second.
ditionals into two main groups, indicative, which can be The commonly used labels (“indicative,” “subjunc-
symbolized as [ArC], and subjunctive ([A~rC]). The tive,” and “counterfactual”) do not, however, perspicu-
so-called counterfactual conditionals that have been the ously mark out the set of conditionals that concern
subject of so much discussion in analytic philosophy are philosophers when they discuss counterfactuals. The
subjunctive conditionals of the form indicative/subjunctive distinction is purely syntactical
If it were to be the case that X then it would be the case and simply fails to pick out the right set of conditionals.
that Y (if X were to happen, then Y would happen) On the one hand, “If the Palestinians declared statehood
now, the Israelis would retaliate” is a counterfactual that
and is not grammatically subjunctive. On the other hand, one

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
4 • 2nd edition
 appendix: COUNTERFACTUALS

can utter a subjunctive conditional of the form “If X had A central issue for any theory of conditionals is
happened, then Y would have happened” without having whether indicatives and counterfactuals should receive a
any intention to assert or imply the falsity of the uniform treatment, that is, one that uses the same theo-
antecedent. Suppose I am a detective who suspects that a retical apparatus across the board. David K. Lewis (1973,
criminal did A although none of my colleagues believe 1976) and Frank Jackson (1977, 1979) both reject this
me. I note that the criminal did something peculiar, that idea, offering nonuniform theories that fix the truth-con-
is, B, and remark truly that if she had done A, she would ditions of indicatives and counterfactuals in different
have had to have done B in support of my case, without ways. Mackie (1973), by contrast, offers a uniform
in any way implying that the state of affairs specified in account of all conditionals in terms of the single basic
the antecedent is not the case (alternatively, I may say this notion of suppositions, and Robert C. Stalnaker (1968),
before dispatching someone to find out whether she did having given an account of all conditionals in terms of
B). Again, I may set you a puzzle, asking you to work out possible worlds, accounts for the intuitive difference
what I have done, and give you clues, pointing out that if between indicatives and counterfactuals by appeal to
I had done X then this would have happened, that if I had pragmatic considerations.
done Y then this other thing would have happened, with-
Central to this debate is the question whether one
out ever asserting or implying that I did not do X or Y.
bases one’s account of indicative conditionals on the
Again, I may truthfully assert both “If I had come to the
material conditional of standard first-order logic, often
party I would have got drunk” and “If I had not come to
symbolized as “A傻C,” which is true just in case its
the party I would have got drunk” without for a moment
antecedent is false or its consequent is true (the truth-
thinking or implying, inconsistently, that both these
value of the whole is determined in a purely truth-
antecedents are false.
functional way by the truth-values of the parts). Lewis
The purely syntactical criterion is no good, then, and and Jackson are among those who think that the mate-
blanket use of the term “counterfactual” to cover all the rial-conditional approach can give an adequate account
subjunctive conditionals that concern philosophers is no of all indicative conditionals (others think that it can only
better. It remains true, nevertheless, that when one asserts provide a necessary and not a sufficient condition), but a
a subjunctive conditional one almost invariably suggests unified material-conditional account of both indicatives
that the state of affairs specified in the antecedent is not and counterfactuals seems a nonstarter. The material-
in fact the case. This entry will therefore use the tradi- conditional account, for example, classifies
tional term “counterfactual” in this discussion, and con-
trast counterfactuals generally with indicatives in spite of If the moon had been made of cheese, I would be
the difficulties just noted. immortal

as just as surely true as

theories of conditionals
If this apple had been made of copper, it would have con-
Any theory of counterfactuals will be part of a general
ducted electricity
theory of conditionals, and the question arises as to what
form a general theory of conditionals should take. Many simply on the ground that the antecedent is false. But one
favor a truth-conditional approach, that is, one that ana- is much more discriminating about the truth-values of
lyzes conditionals by offering an account of the condi- counterfactual conditionals than this account allows.
tions under which statements of the form “If A then C” That is why Lewis and Jackson, having accepted the mate-
are true or false (possible-worlds and metalinguistic rial-conditional theory for indicatives, adopt a nonuni-
accounts of conditionals are examples of truth- form general theory of conditionals, Lewis (1973)
conditional approaches). Others seek to analyze condi- offering a possible-worlds account of counterfactuals and
tionals by reference to the conditions under which they Jackson (1977) a causal account.
can be justifiably asserted or accepted as true (e.g., see
Edgington 1986). An attractive alternative is John L. A further issue concerns whether one can give a uni-
Mackie’s (1973) condensed argument/supposition form account of the logic of indicatives and counterfac-
account, according to which conditionals are condensed tuals. The following inference patterns
arguments or suppositions and so not strictly true or false (I1) If A then C, therefore, if not-C then not-A (con-
at all. traposition)

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
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appendix: COUNTERFACTUALS

(I2) If A then B, if B then C, therefore, if A then C THE METALINGUISTIC APPROACH. According to

(hypothetical syllogism) Goodman’s (1947) metalinguistic approach a counterfac-
tual asserts a certain connection or consequential relation
(I3) If A then B, therefore, if A and C then B
between the antecedent and the consequent. Since in the
(strengthening the antecedent)
case of the counterfactuals that concern this discussion
are valid for the material conditional, but are widely the antecedent does not entail the consequent as a matter
agreed not to hold for counterfactual conditionals (e.g., of logic or a priori necessity, certain other statements,
consider the failure of (I3), in the move from the true including statements of laws and existing particular con-
claim “If he had walked on the ice, it would have broken” ditions, must be combined with the antecedent to entail
to the false claim “If he had walked on the ice and had the consequent. These counterfactuals, then, are true, if
been holding a large bunch of helium balloons, the ice true at all, only if (and if) the antecedent combined with
a set of statements S that meets a certain condition f
would have broken”). While a nonuniform account can
entails the consequent as a matter of law. The theory is
allow that these inference patterns hold for indicatives
metalinguistic because counterfactuals are treated as
but fail for counterfactuals (see Lewis [1973] and Jackson
equivalent to metalinguistic statements of the relevant
[1979], who attempts to explain away apparently invalid
entailments.
indicative cases like “if he has made a mistake, then it is
not a big mistake, therefore, if he has made a big mistake, A notorious difficulty for this theory has been to give
he has not made a mistake” in terms of failure of assert- an adequate specification of condition f. Consider
ibility), a uniform account must hold that if they fail for [A~rC]. Given that the assumption, in the case of a
counterfactuals then they also fail for indicatives (see counterfactual, is that A is false, one may reasonably
Stalnaker 1968). assert ~A. However, if ~A were admissible into S, then
with A one would get the contradiction [A&~A], and
since it is generally accepted that anything can be inferred
theories of counterfactuals
from a contradiction, anything could be inferred from
Turning now to counterfactuals, one finds three main the conjunction of A and S, including C. All counterfac-
approaches. The metalinguistic account initiated by Nel- tuals would therefore turn out to be true (a priori false
son Goodman in 1947 (see also Chisholm 1955, Mackie counterfactuals have been excluded). To prevent this triv-
1973, Tichy 1984) analyses counterfactuals in terms of an ialization, the statements that constitute S must be (logi-
entailment relationship between the antecedent plus an cally) compatible with A. This excludes ~A. A further
additional set of statements or propositions, and the con- requirement noted by Goodman is that the statements
sequent. The causal approach offered by Jackson in 1977 that constitute S must be compatible with ~C; for if they
(see also Kvart 1986) is closely related but deserves a sep- were not, C would follow from S itself, and A and the laws
arate category because it appeals essentially to causal con- would play no role in the inference to C.
cepts in its analysis of counterfactuals, thereby ruling out With this in hand Goodman offers the following
the popular strategy of using counterfactuals in an analy- analysis: “A counterfactual is true if and only if (iff) there
sis of causation (one of the first to do this was Hume is some set S of true sentences such that S is compatible
1748/1975, p. 76; see also Lewis 1986b). Finally, there is with C and with ~C, and such that [A&S] is self-
the possible-worlds approach initiated by William Todd compatible and leads by law to C; while there is no set S'
(1964), Stalnaker (1968), and Lewis (1973), which analy- compatible with C and with ~C and such that [A&S] is
ses counterfactuals in terms of similarity relations self-compatible and leads by law to ~C” (Goodman 1947,
between worlds. This entry will consider them in turn, p. 120; for a discussion of this last condition, see Bennett
after hereby putting aside, as unimportant to the present 2003; Parry 1957). Restricting S with the notion of com-
concerns, all counterfactuals that are true (or false) as a patibility does not seem to be enough, however, for coun-
matter of logic or a priori necessity, such as terfactuals that clearly seem false still threaten to turn out
If Q had been P it would have entailed P (Q) true. Consider
(1) If match m had been struck, it would have flared
If this number had been 2 it would have been even
(odd) and
If this circle had been square it would have had fewer (2) If match m had been struck, it would not have
than (more than) seven sides been dry

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Despite the restrictions on S, one gets the unacceptable terms of it being reasonable to combine a belief that S
result that (1) and (2) both turn out true. To see this, with A.
assume that it is a law that (L) when oxygen is present, This suggestion is closely in line with what are some-
dry matches flare when struck. Start with the situation of times called third-parameter views of counterfactuals
the dry match (D), the presence of oxygen (O), and sup- (see Tichy 1984, who attributes this view to Chisholm
pose that the match has not been struck (~S) and has not 1955; Mill 1868; Ramsey 1931). According to this view,
flared (~F). O, D, and L are compatible both with S and when a speaker asserts a counterfactual, he or she implic-
with ~F, and with S, they imply F. Thus, (1) is true. Now, itly assumes a set of propositions. The counterfactual is
however, suppose ~F: that in fact the match has not true just in case the antecedent of the counterfactual and
flared. ~F, O, and L are compatible both with S and with the assumed propositions entail the consequent and the
D, but with S they imply ~D. Thus, (2) is true. implicitly assumed propositions are true. Since the
To eliminate this unwanted consequence, Goodman implicitly assumed propositions depend on the attitudes
(1947) suggests that the relevant conditions in S must be of the speaker, no analysis of these propositions can be
cotenable with the antecedent. A is cotenable with B if it given and so the cotenability problem does not arise.
is not the case that B would have been false if A were true. One point strongly in favor of such views is their
~F is thus compatible with S but not cotenable with it, ability to deal with ambiguous counterfactuals. Consider
because if the match had been struck (S), it would have
If Caesar had been in command in Korea, he would
flared (F). So (1) is true and (2) is false. However, this
have used the atom bomb
solution results in a circular definition or a regress, for
counterfactuals are defined in terms of cotenability and If Caesar had been in command in Korea, he would
cotenability is defined in terms of counterfactuals. Good- have used catapults
man proposed no solution to this problem (for a short
Although both counterfactuals can plausibly be asserted,
discussion, see Bennett 2003, pp. 310–312).
they make different predictions about what would have
happened. By introducing a third parameter this ambigu-
THE CONDENSED ARGUMENT-SUPPOSITIONAL
ity can be located in the set of implicitly assumed propo-
APPROACH. Closely related to the metalinguistic
sitions. The first counterfactual is asserted by someone
account is Mackie’s (1973) condensed argument or sup-
who is assuming that Caesar was alive during the actual
positional account according to which all conditionals,
Korean War, and the second counterfactual is asserted by
including all counterfactuals, are condensed or abbrevi-
someone who is assuming that Caesar was involved in a
ated arguments that leave certain auxiliary premises
war in Korea during Caesar’s actual lifetime.
unstated. Generally, to assert [A~rC] is to assert C
within the scope of the supposition A (Mackie replaced Jonathon Bennett (2003, pp. 305–308) objects to
the notion of a condensed argument by that of a suppo- Chisholm’s (1955) version of this solution to the coten-
sition in an attempt to cover certain atypical conditionals ability problem, arguing that it implausibly requires that
that do not readily expand into arguments, e.g., “If that’s the asserter of [A~rC] have the assumed propositions in
a Picasso I’m a Martian”). mind, although one can, for example, be sure that the
lights would have gone off if one had turned the oven on
There are two central ways in which Mackie’s (1973,
again without knowing about the faulty electrical wiring
1974) account differs from Goodman’s (1947). First,
in one’s kitchen. He further argues that there are no lim-
Mackie abandons any metalinguistic element. In fact,
its to what a speaker could assume in asserting [A~rC],
according to Mackie, this feature of Goodman’s account
and that this lets in unwanted counterlogical conditionals
is the reason to reject it. Mackie argues that it simply
like “if that piece of cast iron were gold some things
“does not ring true” that when one asserts counterfactu-
would be malleable and not malleable.”
als one is performing a higher-level linguistic act whose
subject is a lower-level linguistic act. If-sentences are THE CAUSAL APPROACH. Another theory closely
about the world, not about what is said about the world. related to the metalinguistic approach is Jackson’s (1977)
Second, Mackie relaxes the cotenability requirement causal theory of counterfactuals, so-called because of the
on A and S. One does not need to provide an exact crite- central role that causality plays in it. To determine the
rion of cotenability. All that one needs is the idea that the truth-value of a counterfactual one takes the causal laws
speaker assumes the cotenability of A and S and a notion at the actual world at a time. These determine the state of
of cotenability that can, he claims, be elucidated simply in the world at later times. One then takes the state of the

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world at the antecedent time, changes it as little as possi- the possible-worlds approach, which proposes to analyze
ble to make the antecedent true, and determines whether counterfactuals by giving a rigorous account of their
the causal laws predict subsequent states that make the truth conditions and logical behavior using possible-
consequent true. worlds semantics. Stalnaker (1968) and Lewis (1973) are
More formally, [A~rC] is true at all the A-worlds the most influential proponents of this view, and the
satisfying the following: basic idea is that the counterfactual [A~rC] is true just
in case the closest possible A-worlds (worlds where A is
(i) Their causal laws are identical with ours at the
true) are C-worlds (worlds where C is true), and the cen-
time of the antecedent and after
tral notions are those of a possible world and the close-
(ii) Their antecedent time-slices are the most similar ness relation. Both Stalnaker and Lewis introduce the idea
to ours in particular facts of a “logical space,” which is, roughly, a space of possible
worlds. They locate the actual world in a “similarity struc-
(iii) They are identical in particular fact to our world
ture” in such a logical space and make use of this similar-
prior to the time of the antecedent
ity structure to determine the truth-values of
Sequential counterfactuals assert that if something counterfactuals.
had happened at one time, something else would have
More formally, for Stalnaker (1968)
happened at a later time, and one difficulty for the theory
is presented by asequential counterfactuals like: [A~rC] is true iff A is impossible or C is true at f (A, w*)
If I had had a coin in my pocket, it would have been
where f is a “selecting” function that takes the antecedent
a Euro.
A and the actual world w* as arguments and delivers a
If Flintoff had not taken the winning wicket, Harmi- unique possible world as a value. The counterfactual is
son would have (where this is understood as mean- true if C is true at the possible world that f delivers as the
ing that sooner or later one of them would have value.
taken the winning wicket) How exactly does the selection function select? The
Jackson (1977) proposes to analyze asequential counter- informal answer is that the selection is based on an order-
factuals in terms of sequential counterfactuals. For exam- ing of possible worlds with respect to their similarity or
ple, one asserts the counterfactual about Flintoff and resemblance to the actual world. More formally, for Lewis
Harmison when one thinks that if Flintoff had failed to (1973)
take the final wicket, events would have ensured Harmi- [A~rC] is true iff either there is no A-world or some
son’s taking it (they were the only bowlers left and Aus- [A&C] world is more similar to the actual world than any
tralia was batting so poorly). [A&~C] world
Jackson’s account appeals to similarities between
worlds. Does that mean that he is really giving a possible- It is convenient to represent Lewis’s truth conditions in
worlds account of counterfactuals? Although he no this way, with direct reference to similarity, although in
longer objects to being classified as a possible-worlds the- his original presentation the ordering relation is expli-
orist, in 1977 he drew a sharp division between his causal cated in terms of a system of spheres of worlds (for any
account and the possible-worlds account. He argued that possible world, all other possible worlds can be placed on
a causal theorist about counterfactuals could avoid onto- spheres centered on that world, the sizes of the spheres
logical commitment to possible worlds because the rele- representing how close those worlds are to that world. All
vant similarities were things like the mass of an object or worlds on a given sphere are equally close to the centered
the magnitude of a force, similarities that could be char- world, and inner spheres are closer to the centered world
acterized by reference to features of the actual world than outer spheres).
without any appeal to possible worlds. Lewis (1973) and Stalnaker (1968) agree that if the
antecedent of a counterfactual is impossible than the
THE POSSIBLE WORLDS APPROACH. In asserting a counterfactual is trivially true. For Lewis, this is because
counterfactual one is of course standardly considering there is no such A-world; for Stalnaker, function f selects
possibilities, how things would or might have been if cer- the impossible world in which every statement is true. (It
tain other things had not been as they were, how things is not however clear that all impossible counterfactuals
would or might be if things were not as they are, and the are alike in respect of truth. There is, intuitively, a differ-
most influential treatment of counterfactuals has been ence between “If Picasso had been a sonnet, he would

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have had fourteen lines” and “If Picasso had been sonnet, According to this system of weights, the Nixon counter-
he would have had compound eyes,” and Daniel Nolan factual turns out true. Consider a world in which Nixon
[1997] and others argue that impossible worlds, like pos- pushes the button and there is no nuclear holocaust;
sible worlds, can be ranked with respect to comparative rather, events proceed in such a way as to match those in
similarity to the actual world.) Lewis and Stalnaker also our world with perfect similarity. The trouble with claim-
agree that inference patterns like contraposition, hypo- ing that this is the most similar world is that Nixon’s
thetical syllogism, and strengthening the antecedent ((I1) pressing the button would have numerous effects
to (I3) earlier) are invalid for counterfactuals. However, (including the button’s warming slightly, the subsequent
they disagree about the conditional excluded middle: state of Nixon’s memory, and so on), and only a large
[[A~rC] ⁄ [A~r~C]] for all A and C. Stalnaker accepts miracle could wipe out all these changes. The worlds clos-
it because according to his account there will always be est to ours are the ones that agree with our actual world
one closest possible world, whereas Lewis accepts ties until Nixon presses the button and then continue on in
among closest possible worlds and so the principle is not accordance with the laws of the actual world. (However,
universally true. for a reformulation of the Nixon objection in the light of
Stalnaker and Lewis also agree in analyzing the this reply, see Tooley 2003).
“closeness” relation in terms of similarity between Many philosophers shy away from the apparent
worlds. However, what makes one world more similar to metaphysical commitments of the possible-worlds
the actual world than another world? Kit Fine (1975) and approach. For what is a possible world? Lewis’s (1986c)
Bennett (1974) object that Lewis’s (1973) theory does not answer that possible worlds are concrete entities, each as
provide the correct truth conditions if closeness of worlds real as the actual world, seems to most hopelessly implau-
is understood in terms of our everyday intuitive notion of sible, but there are many other views. Stalnaker’s (1968)
similarity. Intuitively, the counterfactual and Bennett’s (2003) possible worlds, for example, are
maximally consistent sets of propositions; Saul Kripke’s
If Nixon had pushed the button, there would have been a
are stipulations; and others hold that possible worlds are
nuclear holocaust
combinatorial constructions out of elements of the actual
seems true, and yet it is false by the lights of one com- world.
monsense notion of similarity, according to which a Whatever one’s view, and whether or not one wishes
world in which a nuclear holocaust does not occur to appeal to possible worlds, counterfactual conditionals
although Nixon presses the button is much more similar are the vehicles of two of the most fundamental forms of
to our unholocausted world than a world where a nuclear thought: “What if?” and “If only.” They are central to
holocaust does occur. imagination and invention, essential to curiosity and
Lewis responds to this objection in “Counterfactual regret, essential, along with conditionals in general, to the
Dependence and Time’s Arrow” (1979), claiming that a fundamental capacities for debating, supposing, speculat-
possible-worlds theory of counterfactuals does not need ing, and hypothesizing that constitute the heart of one’s
to appeal to any everyday notion of overall similarity. It is intelligence.
rather up to the theorist to work out a way of weighing
factors relevant to overall similarity that will deliver the See also Bennett, Jonathan; Chisholm, Roderick; Condi-
right truth-values for counterfactuals. Lewis offers the tionals; Goodman, Nelson; Hume, David; Kripke, Saul;
follows systems of weights: Lewis, David; Mackie, John Leslie; Modality, Philoso-
phy and Metaphysics of; Response-Dependence Theo-
[i] It is of the first importance to avoid big, wide-
ries; Semantics.
spread, diverse violations of law
[ii] It is of the second importance to maximize the
spatiotemporal region throughout which perfect Bibliography
match of particular fact prevails Adams, Ernest W. “Subjunctive and Indicative Conditionals.”
Foundations of Language 6 (1) (1970): 89–94.
[iii] It is of the third importance to avoid even small, Bennett, Jonathan. “Counterfactuals and Possible Worlds.”
localized, simple violations of law Canadian Journal of Philosophy 4 (1974): 381–402.
Bennett, Jonathan. A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals. New
[iv] It is of little or no importance to secure approx- York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
imate similarity of particular fact, even in matters Chisholm, Roderick M. “Law Statements and Counterfactual
that concern us greatly (Lewis 1979, p. 473) Inference.” Analysis 15 (1955): 97–105.

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Dudman, Vic H. “Three Twentieth-Century Commonplaces Stalnaker, Robert C. “A Theory of Conditionals.” Studies in
about ‘If.’” History and Philosophy of Logic 22 (2001): Logical Theory, American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1968):
119–127. 98–112.
Edgington, Dorothy. “Do Conditionals Have Truth- Tichy, Pavel. “Subjunctive Conditionals: Two Parameters vs.
Conditions?” Critica 28 (52) (1986): 3–30. Three.” Philosophical Studies 45 (1984): 147–179.
Fine, Kit. “Review of Lewis’s Counterfactuals.” Mind 84 (335) Todd, William. “Counterfactual Conditionals and the
(1975): 451–458. Presuppositions of Induction.” Philosophy of Science 31
Goodman, Nelson. “The Problem of Counterfactual (1964): 101–110.
Conditionals.” Journal of Philosophy 44 (1947): 113–128. Tooley, Michael. “The Stalnaker-Lewis Approach to
Grice, Herbert Paul. “Logic and Conversation.” In Conditionals, Counterfactuals.” Journal of Philosophy 100 (7) (2003):
edited by Frank Jackson, 155–176. New York: Oxford 321–327.
University Press, 1991.
Michelle Montague (2005)
Hume, David. Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and
concerning the Principles of Morals (1748), edited by L. A.
Selby-Bigge. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1975.
Jackson, Frank. “A Causal Theory of Counterfactuals.”
Australasian Journal of Philosophy 55 (1977): 3–21. eudaimonia
Jackson, Frank, ed. Conditionals. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991. Strictly speaking, the term “eudaimonia” is a translitera-
Jackson, Frank. “On Assertion and Indicative Conditionals.” tion of the Greek word for prosperity, good fortune,
Philosophical Review 88 (1979): 565–589. wealth, or happiness. In philosophical contexts the Greek
Kvart, Igal. A Theory of Counterfactuals. Indianapolis, IN: word “eudaimonia” has traditionally been translated sim-
Hackett, 1986. ply as “happiness,” but a number of contemporary schol-
Lewis, David K. “Causation.” In Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. ars and translators have tried to avoid this rendering on
New York: Oxford University Press, 1986a. This was the grounds that it can suggest unhelpful connotations in
originally published in the Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973).
the mind of the uncritical reader. (For example, it does
Lewis, David K. “Counterfactual Dependence and Time’s
Arrow.” In Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. New York: Oxford not refer to an affective state, nor is it coextensive with the
University Press, 1986b. This was originally published in classical utilitarian conception of happiness, though both
Noûs 13 (1979) of these notions may, in some thinkers, count as aspects
Lewis, David K. Counterfactuals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard of eudaimonia.) Since the word is a compound of the pre-
University Press, 1973. fix “eu-” (well) and the noun “daimon” (spirit), phrases
Lewis, David K. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford, U.K.: such as “living well” or “flourishing” have been proposed
Blackwell, 1986c.
as possible alternatives. But the consensus appears to be
Lewis, David. K. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986d. that “happiness” is adequate if the term is properly
Lewis, David K. “Postscripts to ‘Counterfactual Dependence understood within the philosophical context of antiquity.
and Time’s Arrow.’” In Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. New Aristotle wrote that all agree that eudaimonia is the
York: Oxford University Press, 1986e.
chief good for humans, but that there is considerable dif-
Lewis, David. K. “Probabilities of Conditionals and
Conditional Probabilities.” Philosophical Review 85 (1976): ference of opinion as to what eudaimonia consists in
297–315. (Nicomachean Ethics I.2, 1095a15–30). The portrait of
Mackie, John L. The Cement of the Universe. Oxford, U.K.: Socrates presented in Plato’s early, Socratic dialogues has
Clarendon, 1974. Socrates endorsing the view that eudaimonia consists in
Mackie, John L. Truth, Probability, and Paradox. Oxford, U.K.: living a just life, which requires knowledge in the form of
Clarendon, 1973. a kind of foresight (see especially Gorgias). In his later
Mill, John S. System of Logic. London: Longmans, 1868. works (for example, the Republic), Plato continued to
Nolan, Daniel. “Impossible Worlds: A Modest Approach.”
argue that virtue is sufficient for happiness, and that non-
Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 38 (4) (1997): 535–572.
Parry, William T. “Reexamination of the Problem of
moral goods do not add to eudaimonia (the so-called suf-
Counterfactual Conditionals.” Journal of Philosophy 54 ficiency thesis).
(1957): 85–94. As is well known, Aristotle agreed that virtue is a nec-
Pollock, John L. Subjunctive Reasoning. Dordrecht,
essary condition for eudaimonia but held that it is not
Netherlands: D Reidel, 1976.
sufficient (the so-called necessity thesis). On his account,
Ramsey, Frank P. “General Propositions and Causality.” In The
Foundations of Mathematics. New York: Humanities, 1931. “eudaimonia” is most properly applied not to any partic-
Sanford, David. If P, then Q: Conditionals and the Foundations ular moment of a person’s life, but to an entire life that
of Reasoning. New York: Routledge, 1989. has been well lived. While virtue is necessary for such a

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life, Aristotle argued that certain nonmoral goods can ordered not by subjective considerations but by the for-
contribute to eudaimonia or detract from it by their mal constraints of reason itself, human excellence is
absence. There is some controversy among scholars as to objectively determined: To live well is to live a life charac-
how Aristotle finally characterized the happy life, the life terized by the excellent use of one’s rational faculties, and
marked by eudaimonia. Throughout the first nine books this excellence is marked by successfully applying general
of the Nicomachean Ethics, he appears to think that a rules for virtuous living to particular situations calling for
happy life is a life that centrally involves civic activity. The moral deliberation.
virtues that mark the happy person are themselves Aristotle rejected alternative accounts of happiness
defined as states of the soul that arise out of certain inter- as falling short of his ideal in some way (Nicomachean
actions taking place in social relations. But in book X, Ethics I.5, 1095b14–1096a10). The life of political honor,
Aristotle’s argument appears to be that a life of contem- for example, reduces happiness to the degree to which
plating the theoretical (theoria) is the happiest sort of life, one is esteemed by others, thus disconnecting happiness
and that civic involvement can actually detract from this from the operation of one’s own proper function. A more
sort of activity (though the private life of contemplation popularly held view equated happiness with pleasure, a
appears to presuppose the public life, since without the view that Aristotle quickly dismissed as failing to distin-
public life to produce goods and services, the philosopher guish humans as a natural kind from other animals that
is incapable of living in isolation). also feel pleasure and that rely on it as a motivating force
Where Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle agreed was in in their daily quest for survival. For Aristotle, as for Plato
the objective nature of eudaimonia, which set them before him, the hedonistic view overlooks the essential
sharply apart from the popular morality of their day. In a function of human rationality: to order and control
famous passage from the Gorgias (468e–476a), Socrates human appetites and desires, channeling them into activ-
shocks Polus by arguing that a wrongdoer is actually ities that, in the long run, best ensure human flourishing.
worse off than the person whom he wrongs, and that any Indeed, it is this very order and control that distinguishes
wrongdoer is bound to be unhappy until he is punished. human society from all other forms of life, so that there is
The person who has been wronged, by contrast, may be an intimate connection between human excellence and
happy in spite of whatever physical suffering he may the political life. This connection is subject to a certain
undergo at the hands of the wrongdoer. The Gorgias con- tension, however, since both Plato, in the Republic, and
cludes with a myth about the fate of the human soul after Aristotle, in his life of theoretical contemplation, make
death that makes it clear that only the state of the soul, social order a necessary condition for human excellence
not the physical state of the body, determines whether while simultaneously arguing that personal happiness in
one is happy or unhappy. some sense involves disconnecting oneself from the com-
munity at large.
Although Aristotle did not agree that happiness can-
not be diminished at all by physical suffering, it is not The Stoics agreed that happiness is our ultimate end,
because he thought that feelings are decisive for happi- for which all else is done, and they defined this as consis-
ness. On the contrary, he argued for an objective standard tently living in accordance with nature. By this they
of human happiness grounded in his metaphysical real- meant not only human nature but the nature of the entire
ism. In Nicomachean Ethics (I.7), he argued that human universe, of which we are a part, and the rational order
excellence ought to be construed in terms of what ordi- that both exhibit. Practical reason thus requires an under-
narily characterizes human life (the so-called function or standing of the world and our place in it, along with our
ergon argument). This argument is clearly grounded in resolute acceptance of that role. Following nature in this
his doctrine of causation, according to which any mem- way is a life of virtue and results in a “good flow of life,”
ber of a natural kind is characterized by four causes: a for- with peace and tranquility.
mal cause, a material cause, an efficient cause, and a final The Epicureans also took eudaimonia to be the end
cause. The final cause is inextricable from the formal for humans, but they defined “eudaimonia” in terms of
cause: To be a certain kind of thing is just to function in pleasure. Yet many of the things we take pleasure in have
a certain way, and to have a certain sort of function is just unpleasurable consequences, which on balance disrupt
to be a certain kind of thing. The human function (ergon) our lives, and so do not provide us with the freedom from
is to be found in the activity of our rational faculties, par- concerns (ataraxia) and the absence of physical pain
ticularly practical wisdom (phronesis) and learning (aponia) that characterize true happiness. These traits,
(sophia). Since the activity of both of these faculties is they believed, must be secured through the exercise of

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appendix: EXPERIMENTATION AND INSTRUMENTATION

moderation, prudence, and the other virtues, yet they are Xenophon. Memorabilia. Translated by Amy L. Bonnette.
not valued for their own sakes but as instrumental means Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.
to a life of pleasure and happiness. Scott Carson (2005)
This form of hedonistic eudaemonism is to be con-
trasted with the hedonism of the Cyrenaics, the main
exception to Aristotle’s statement that all agree that the
experimentation and
highest good is eudaimonia. Sketchy accounts of the elder
Aristippus suggest that his hedonism involved giving free instrumentation
reign to sensual desires (Xenophon, Memorabilia
Experiment, William Herschel wrote, is a matter of “put-
11.1.1–34), so as always to be capable of enjoying the
ting in action causes and agents over which we have con-
moment, making use of what was available (Diogenes
trol, and purposely varying their combinations, and
Laertius 11.66). Later Cyrenaics refined this position as
noticing what effects take place” (Herschel 1966, p. 76). In
seeking to enjoy sensual pleasure to the full without sac-
this sense, the earliest recorded scientific experiments
rificing autonomy or rationality. Their conception of
appeared in biological and medical contexts. In the sec-
pleasure emphasized bodily pleasures, understood as
ond century CE, the physician Galen performed detailed
either a kind of movement (kinesis) or the supervening
animal experiments to find out about the functions of
state of the soul (pathos). Because they regarded such
various organs. In the sixteenth century, Andreas Vesal-
transient states as the highest good, the Cyrenaics rejected
ius, pioneer in dissection, carried out elaborate experi-
the view that eudaimonia, a comprehensive and long-
ments; and William Harvey, notwithstanding his
term type of fulfillment, is the end that should govern all
Aristotelian orientation, supported his discovery of the
our choices.
circulation of the blood with painstaking experimental
See also Aristotle; Cyrenaics; Epicurus; Phronêsis; Plato; arguments. It is highly plausible that the practice of
Socrates; Sophia; Stoicism. alchemy also served as an early source of experimenta-
tion. From the thirteenth century on, alchemists used lab-
oratory equipment in order to create new agents and were
Bibliography arguing against the overly narrow interpretation of the
Ackrill, J. L. “Aristotle on Eudaimonia.” Proceedings of the art-nature divide in Aristotelian philosophy.
British Academy 60 (1974): 339–359.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Christopher A third area where experimentation took place
Rowe. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2002. before the scientific revolution was supplied by Ptolemy’s
Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. New York: Oxford optics. Ptolemy, active in the second century CE, formu-
University Press, 1993. lated an experimental, quantitative law of the refraction
Broadie, Sarah. Ethics with Aristotle. New York: Oxford of light at the boundary of air and water and performed
University Press, 1991. See especially chapter 1, “Happiness,
the Supreme End,” and chapter 7, “Aristotle’s Values.” experiments to investigate binocular vision. In continu-
Cooper, John M. “Contemplation and Happiness: A ing this tradition in the early eleventh century CE, the
Reconsideration.” In his Reason and Emotion: Essays on Arab Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) wrote an impressive
Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory, 212–236. experimental treatise on optics in which he related in a
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. mathematically demanding way the physics and geome-
Cooper, John M. “Intellectualism in the Nicomachean Ethics.”
try of light to the anatomy of the eye. Al-Haytham’s work
In his Reason and Human Good in Aristotle, 144–182.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975. was translated into Latin in the thirteenth century and
Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Translated by decisively influenced later optical research for a long time.
R. D. Hicks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Because of this and similar developments, Crombie saw
1972. experimental science of the modern world created by
Gosling, J. C. B., and C. C. W. Taylor. “Epicurus.” In their The thirteenth-century philosophers of the West transform-
Greeks on Pleasure, 345–364. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon, 1982.
Irwin, Terence. “Socrates: From Happiness to Virtue.” In his
ing Greek geometrical method and uniting it with the
Plato’s Ethics, 52–64. New York: Oxford University Press, experimental habit of the practical arts.
1995. All these different attempts of probing nature
Plato. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Princeton, NJ: through experimental trials certainly contributed to the
Princeton University Press, 1963.
Vlastos, Gregory. “Happiness and Virtue in Socrates’ Moral
final emergence of experimentation in the seventeenth
Theory.” In his Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher, century as a self-conscious, methodically controlled and
200–232. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. systematically used form of scientific experience. Galileo’s

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new conception of motion, which was based on experi- microscope, the thermometer and the barometer, the air
ment and measurement from about 1604 on, played an pump, electric charge detectors, the Leyden jar, and many
instrumental and decisive role in this (Schmitt 1969). In other contrivances. It is interesting to see that these
the second half of the century, scientific academies instruments were primarily used in a qualitative way and
devoted themselves to the new science and became the that a strictly quantitative application came only very
primary centers of experimental activity. late, mainly at the end of the eighteenth or during the
early nineteenth century when the two traditions, the
From the seventeenth century on, experimentation
classical and the Baconian, started to merge with each
increasingly meant the implementation of new or
other. From about the middle of the seventeenth century
improved scientific instruments. Following a suggestion
on, the Baconian movement had adopted some form of
of Thomas S. Kuhn, we can group these instruments
the atomic or corpuscular philosophy and became the
mainly into two categories according to their origin in the
official “experimental philosophy” of the Royal Society.
classical or the Baconian tradition of physical science
(Kuhn 1976). The classical sciences comprise those math-
ematical disciplines like astronomy, geometrical optics, philosophical assessments of
statics, harmonics, and geometry itself, which were first experimentation and
constituted in classical antiquity and experienced their instrumentation
major developments already then. With the exception of In the second book of his Physics, Aristotle had developed
harmonics, the close connections of these fields with each a contrast between “physis” and “techne,” that is, between
other lasted way up into the nineteenth century. The natural entities that have an innate principle of change—
instruments belonging to this tradition were often called like plants, animals and humans, but also stones and
“mathematical instruments” and are of a restricted vari- clouds—and those that are artificially constructed, like
ety: ruler and compass, balance, clock, and geometrical- bedsteads and clothes. Until the scientific revolution,
astronomical devices. They served as aids to “mixed Aristotelians used this nature-artifact divide as an argu-
mathematics,” which allowed for certain physical attrib- ment against the epistemological relevance of experimen-
utes in addition to the abstract mathematical ones. To tation. In order to understand nature, they claimed, one
experiment with them mostly meant to confirm a belief must not intervene with her order. Intervention would
that was established beforehand by rational considera- either invalidate nature’s innate principles or play her a
tions, or to detail a fully established theory in a special trick with mechanical contrivances, but would not lead to
respect. Many experiments performed in this tradition any genuine knowledge of natural reality. Instead, one
proved to be in reality only thought experiments—men- must let nature pursue her own course and purposes and
tal constructions of possible experimental situations gain knowledge of her principles by closely observing
whose results were thought to be predictable already from them. The fact that techne or art is declared by Aristotle
everyday experience. Even Galileo participated some- to be able to complete nature’s unfinished processes or to
times in this attitude. imitate her does not change this state of affairs. To com-
The second tradition to which we can attribute many plete nature in regard to the behavior of a natural entity
of the new instruments of the period is the Baconian one meant to remove all obstacles that might have come in its
whose disciplines owe their status as sciences mainly to way; and to imitate nature denoted the general maxim to
the experimental movement of the seventeenth century bring form and matter of an entity in an intricate union
and to the practice of “natural histories,” including those as nature does it with her beings.
of the different practical arts that experienced a tremen- It seems that the major author in providing a philo-
dous re-evaluation at the time. The barrier between the sophical bridge over the art-nature divide was Francis
craft and scholarly traditions, which had so far separated Bacon (1561–1626). This justifies Kuhn’s choice of using
the mechanical from the liberal arts, began to break Bacon’s name for a whole new tradition of experimenta-
down. To the Baconian sciences belong the studies of tion. Bacon argued that art was only a special way of
heat, electricity, magnetism, chemistry, metallurgy, glass arranging a state of affairs in which nature herself will
making, and the like. The instruments of these fields were then produce an intended result. He redefined Aristotle’s
used to investigate nature under previously unobserved concept of form and took it as the key to the operational
or non-existent conditions and were often called “philo- features of a natural being, leaving out the teleological
sophical instruments.” During the next decades, the dimension. The discovery of operational rules of an
Baconian movement brought forth the telescope, the entity can now be identified with the true form or real

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essence of relations among its simple natures. Conse- vention is the cause of observed change because I know of
quently, Bacon rejected Aristotle’s three other causes my will’s impulse. If, however, I can only passively observe
besides the formal one and took forms as “nothing more correlations without any help from me, I can never be
than those laws and determinations of absolute actuality sure whether these make up genuine causal relations or
which govern and constitute any simple nature, as heat, only accidental covariation (Helmholtz 1903). Whereas
light, weight, in every kind of matter and subject that is for Bacon it is the coyness of nature that compels humans
susceptible of them” (Nov. Org. ii, XVII). to experiment, for Helmholtz it is the epistemological
As a result, knowledge of our world cannot, accord- limitation of the passive mind that forces them to inter-
ing to Bacon, be read off from its surface, so to say. We can vene in nature’s course.
work our way through to the “viscera naturae,” or nature’s One of the strongest and most influential anti-
intestines, only by methodical and experimental proce- inductive texts ever written is a chapter in Pierre Duhem’s
dures of induction. Perhaps Bacon’s major insight was Aim and Structure of Physical Theory of 1906, titled “Phys-
that simple enumerative induction, as taught by Aristotle, ical Theory and Experiment.” In order to show the gen-
that is, induction without experiment and without the eral inadequacy of inductivism, Duhem picked the
method of exclusion, is not enough to tell essential corre- “Newtonian method” to pieces, as it appeared both in the
lations from accidental ones. hands of Newton himself as well as with Ampère’s elec-
Bacon’s procedure of induction was taken as a valu- trodynamics. He brilliantly showed that there is no ques-
able method of creating new empirical theories and laws tion in Newton’s celestial mechanics of any extraction of
way up into the twentieth century. The Baconian tradi- hypothesis by induction from experimenting, as Newton
tion culminated during the nineteenth century in John himself required in the General Scholium, nor in Ampère’s
Stuart Mill’s elaboration and refinement of Bacon’s and mathematical theory of electrodynamic phenomena of
Herschel’s inductive rules. There is, however, a tendency any deduction “only from experiment,” as stated already
visible in Mill to take experiment not quite with the same in the title of Ampère’s treatise of 1827.
force as Bacon had taken it. For Bacon, experiment is As a logical consequence, Duhem concluded that “in
inevitable if one wants to snatch secrets from nature— the course of its development, a physical theory is free to
they never show up by themselves. Yet for Mill, situations choose any path it pleases provided that it avoids any logi-
are conceivable where observation can serve the same cal contradiction; in particular, it is free not to take account
purpose as experiment: “For the purpose of varying the of experimental facts.” It has to take account of them only
circumstances [in order to find out the real laws] we may “when the theory has reached its complete development”
have recourse … either to observation or to experiment; (Duhem 1974, p. 206; Duhem’s emphasis). In order that
we may either find an instance in nature suited to our experiment can unfold its true function—the testing of
purposes, or, by an artificial arrangement of circum- theories— it must be preceded by theory. Duhem inten-
stances, make one. The value of the instance depends on sified the priority of theory when he demanded that “this
what it is in itself, not on the mode in which it is test by facts should bear exclusively on the conclusions of
obtained: its employment for the purposes of induction a theory, for only the latter are offered as an image of real-
depends on the same principles in the one case and in the ity; the postulates serving as points of departure for the
other, as the uses of money are the same whether it is theory and the intermediary steps by which we go from
inherited or acquired. There is, in short, no difference in the postulates to the conclusions do not have to be sub-
kind, no real logical distinction, between the two ject to this test.”
processes of investigation” (System of Logic, III, vii, 2). Duhem’s criticism was later taken up and continued
The belief that there is no “logical distinction” by Karl Popper. In exactly the same spirit as Duhem, Pop-
between observation and experiment became a matter of per decreed that “the theoretician puts certain definite
course for almost all the schools of philosophy of science questions to the experimenter, and the latter by his exper-
of the entire twentieth century until the 1980s. It is inter- iments tries to elicit a decisive answer to these questions
esting to see how an excellent nineteenth-century experi- and to no others” (Popper 1959, p. 107). For Popper
mentalist, Hermann von Helmholtz, resisted this therefore, it is only the theoretician who shows the exper-
tendency, although he followed Mill in many other and imenter the way, and never the other way around. The
important respects. His reasons, however, were different only function left for experiment is to liberate us from
from Bacon’s: If I can vary the conditions of an event in sterile and false theories. With Popper, experiment has
different respects, he argued, I can be sure that my inter- altogether become the handmaiden of theory.

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Duhem had even gone one step further than Popper and ”context of justification” which had been developed
in questioning the capability of experiment to fulfill this earlier by the philosophers Alois Riehl, Gottlob Frege and
critical task of refuting theories as well. Even if a theory is others under different names (Reichenbach 1951).
mature enough to be tested, experiment cannot mechan- According to this dichotomy, all the actual historical and
ically decide between it and its rival. “An experiment in social circumstances of the creation of a scientific theory,
physics can never condemn an isolated hypothesis but including its experimental generation, if there was one,
only a whole theoretical group” (p. 183). And it is hardly cannot be used as reasons to justify it. Experiment can be
ever possible to decide trenchantly which of the many good as a heuristic guide to hit upon a useful theory, but
assumptions of a theoretical system is doubtful and it is neither necessary nor sufficient for the validity of its
responsible for the experimental contradiction. “The results. As a result of Reichenbach’s division all attention
physicist concerned with remedying a limping theory focused on the epistemology of theory and none on dis-
resembles the doctor and not the watchmaker” (p. 188). A covery and the possibilities of experiment.
watchmaker, Duhem maintained, can take the broken Although Thomas S. Kuhn is routinely regarded as
watch apart and examine each component separately major critique of both logical empiricism with its fore-
until he finds the defective one. The doctor, however, can- runner Duhem and of Popper’s critical rationalism, he
not dissect the patient to find out the problem, but has to was surprisingly enough in large agreement with his
guess its seat by inspecting disorders affecting the whole predecessors as far as the subordinate role of experiment
body. And even if all the assumptions of a theoretical is concerned—at least in his central work The Structure of
group were known to be true except one, the rival group Scientific Revolutions of 1962/1970. Unlike Reichenbach,
would not have been established as superior. This would however, Kuhn wanted to overcome the separation of dis-
be shown only if every possible alternative were conclu- covery and justification, but the admissible discovery part
sively eliminated. But we never know of course what of his logic considered the founding of theories again in
alternatives remain to be discovered. overarching paradigms, but not in experiments. In this he
All these considerations led Duhem to explicitly con- followed his teacher Alexandre Koyré and others, who
demn Bacon’s idea of a “crucial experiment.” Bacon had saw the success of modern science in the superiority of
suggested that there do exist experiments that conclu- mathematically oriented Platonism over Aristotelianism
sively decide between competing theories. They do this in with its “brute, common-sense experience” and over all
the way of instantiae cruces or “fingerposts” that are set up other experimentally and technologically oriented histor-
at crossroads to indicate the several directions. In 1951, ical endeavors. For Koyré as for Kuhn a scientific revolu-
W. V. O. Quine joined Duhem in rejecting crucial experi- tion is foremost an “intellectual mutation” (Koyré 1943,
ments. He generalized Duhem’s argument to all of our p. 400), i.e. a revolution of thought and not of momen-
empirical tenets. An unexpected unsuitable empirical tous experimental innovation. Paradigms have priority
observation does not only contradict a theoretical system, over theories “in their conceptual, observational, and
as Duhem had told us, Quine argued, but all our beliefs instrumental applications” (Kuhn 1970, p. 43). True
and theories: “Our statements about the external world experimental research is only possible, if questions to
face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but nature are posed in a suitable mathematical language.
only as a corporate body. … The unit of empirical signif- According to such a view, a history of experimentation
icance is the whole of science” (Quine 1961, p. 41f.). could not only be a contingent epiphenomenon of the
Quine used this claim for a searching critique of logical development of paradigms and would not have much
empiricism. One consequence of this is that any assump- explanatory value. (The contrary view is defended by
tion apparently refuted by observation can be retained as deSolla Price 1984.) Only when in his later work he began
true, so long as we are willing to make appropriate to appreciate the Baconian sciences as an autonomous
changes elsewhere in the system of our beliefs. This holis- movement did Kuhn start to appreciate the possibility of
tic argument for the underdetermination of theories by a meaningful history of scientific experimentation (Kuhn
experience has become known as the “Duhem-Quine 1976).
thesis.” In retrospect, the discussion of experiment in philos-
The series of philosophical arguments to denigrate ophy of science from the late nineteenth century until the
the role of experiments continued further into the 20th 1980s appears as a series of increasingly negative results:
century. The logical empiricist Hans Reichenbach coined We know more and more what experiments don’t accom-
the influential distinction between ”context of discovery” plish and we understand better and better where earlier

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epistemic pretensions of experimentation find their lim- entific realists and their opponents whether explanatory
its. As a result, we can diagnose an “invisibility of experi- success of a theory is ground for belief in the reality of its
ment.” In the same way as scientific revolutions of a field theoretically postulated entities. Hacking does not think
are, according to Kuhn, normally invisible to the scientific very highly of this “inference to the best explanation,” on
profession of the present, so experiments and their devel- which the ordinary scientific realist bases her belief in the
opment remain largely invisible to philosophy of science reality of the electron. He rather sets high hopes in the
because their exclusive role of testing theories seems fact that if you spray, say, a niobium ball with electrons, it
ingrained in the ideology of its practitioners. makes a difference in the world: it decreases the charge of
the niobium ball. “From that day forth,” Hacking con-
the new experimentalism fesses, “I’ve been a scientific realist.” In a way, Hacking’s
argument is a version, adapted to scientific antirealism, of
Since the early 1980s, however, a change has taken place
Dr. Johnson’s refutation of Bishop Berkeley’s metaphysi-
in the attitude of the study of science toward experiment.
cal antirealism concerning matter by kicking a stone. “It is
One can detect a growing awareness of the rich history of
not thinking about the world but changing it that in the
experimentation and of the vast variety of its (non-
end must make us scientific realists.”
demonstrative) functions. This swing of appreciation is
primarily due to detailed work of historians and sociolo- With the second catchphrase Hacking opposes the
gists of science. It is true that historiography never ceased alleged theory-domination of experimentation: There
to deal with experiment, but it had rarely put it into the actually exists experimental practice, he argues, that is not
center of its interest. Socio-historical analysis has now subordinate to theory and this practice actually proves to
come to concentrate much more on the microstructure of be very important. This claim is backed up with many
experiment than before and has started to consider all intriguing examples. But liberating experiment from per-
kinds of other sources besides official reports, like diaries manent condemnation to the role of theory’s hand-
and laboratory notebooks. Especially rich sources are maiden does not automatically show what other roles it
Faraday’s laboratory notebooks and letters, Ampère’s can take on and what the principles of their variations
“dossier” in the archive of the Académie des Sciences and are. About this, Hacking does not say very much. The
Hans Krebs’ laboratory diaries and interview protocols only other role he addresses in detail is, as he says, the
(Gooding 1990, Steinle 2005, Holmes 1993, Graßhoff experiment’s “chief role”: the “creation of phenomena.”
2000). Historians even went so far as to replicate histori- Some aspects of this role have been brought to light in
cal experiments with rebuilt apparatus and to hereby Steinle’s concept of “exploratory” experiments or in Hei-
bring to light neglected or otherwise hidden dimensions delberger’s notion of “productive” instruments (Steinle
of experimentation (Heering 2000). Sociologists tried to 2005; Heidelberger 1998, 2003).
show that the formulation of experimental results All in all, Hacking seems to be largely content with a
requires special structures of communication in the sci- “Baconian fluster of examples of many different relation-
entific community and that there is a good deal of nego- ships between experiment and theory” (Hacking 1983, p.
tiation involved until an experimental result is considered 66). This has surely proven to have been enough to initi-
as achieved (Shapin and Shaffer 1985, Licoppe 1996; for a ate a “Back-to-Bacon movement, in which we attend
discussion see Holmes 1992). The variety of fields from more seriously to experimental science” (p. 150) as it had
where these case studies come from raise hopes that the been Hacking’s intention. But, if neo-Baconianism is
traditional concentration on physics in relation to exper- sound, it is not enough as an explanation of what hap-
iment will soon be done with once and for all. pens or should happen with other theoretical commit-
It was Ian Hacking’s Representing and Intervening ments of general philosophy of science, like, for example,
that set the ball rolling in philosophy of science. There are the theory-ladenness of observation. This doctrine—dear
two phrases from Hacking’s book that became the slogans to many philosophers of science for other reasons—
of “new experimentalism”: “If you can spray them, then comes, at least prima facie, into conflict with Hacking’s
they are real” and “Experimentation has a life of its own” faith in the priority of experiment.
(Hacking 1983, pp. 23, 150). The first catchphrase stands In the wake of renewed interest in experiment, sev-
for a novel argument in favor of scientific realism. The eral substantial studies and edited volumes have
philosopher’s favorite theoretical entity is the electron— appeared. Many of them are divided over the philosoph-
never given directly to our senses, but central to modern ical issue whether experiment can decide between com-
particle physics. There is an endless debate between sci- peting theories and thus have an objective meaning or

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whether social and political factors are in the end respon- ning of his book in which philosophers finally realized
sible for scientific development. There is, for example, that they “long made a mummy of science”—the same
Pickering’s sociological history of particle physics or spirit which, in the face of history and the reality of the
Collins’s study of gravity wave detection maintaining the laboratory, denies the “Popper/Carnap common ground.”
social construction of scientific evidence whereas To deny theory-ladenness would to some extent feel like a
Franklin and Mayo argue for the existence of strategies return to logical empiricism and thereby of mummifica-
that secure reliable experimental outcomes and thus of tion, even if the autonomy of experiment is the reward.
rational belief. It would be wrong, however, to perpetuate
Before some kind of dénouement of this question is
the polarization between history, sociology, and philoso-
formulated, let us have a closer look at theory-ladenness
phy of science. One of the results of taking experiment
as it appeared in the work of its most important origina-
more seriously is precisely the insight that these
tors. One of the first propagators of this outlook was
dichotomies have to be transcended. An attempt into this
Pierre Duhem who wrote: “An experiment in physics is
direction has been made by Rheinberger who takes
the precise observation of phenomena accompanied by
“experimental systems” as functional research units, espe-
an interpretation of these phenomena; this interpretation
cially of the life sciences (see Hagner and Rheinberger
substitutes for the concrete data really gathered by obser-
1998 for a programmatic overview.) They are made up of
vation abstract and symbolic representations which cor-
research objects, theories, experimental arrangements,
respond to them by virtue of the theories admitted by the
instruments, as well as disciplinary, social, cultural and
observer. … The result of an experiment in physics is an
institutional constellations that for some time crystallize
abstract and symbolic judgment” (Duhem 1974, p. 147).
in a certain stable configuration.
It would not be enough for an experimental report to
state, as a layman would express it, that a piece of iron
experimentation and theory-
carrying a mirror oscillates. Instead it should read that
ladenness the electrical resistance of a coil is measured. This shows
The idea of theory-ladenness of experience enabled a that the physicist draws conclusions from experiment
powerful and effective criticism of logical empiricism. only in abstract and symbolic terms “to which you can
This is the view already encountered with Popper that attach no meaning if you do not know the physical theo-
there are no theory-neutral data and that the meaning of ries admitted by the author.” In sciences less advanced
observational terms fundamentally depends upon the than physics like physiology or certain branches of chem-
theoretical context in which they occur. This view can istry “where mathematical theory has not yet introduced
easily be strengthened to serve as the cornerstone of a its symbolic representations” and where causal explana-
constructivist and anti-empiricist account of science: The tion reigns instead of a causally neutral description, the
categories in terms of which we carve up our experience experimenter can reason “directly on the facts by a
are not read off from the external world but follow from method which is only common sense brought to greater
prior theoretical or other commitments of its observers, attentiveness” (p. 180).
either individually or socially.
This kind of theory-ladenness by theoretical inter-
The implications of theory-ladenness for a view of pretation, as we can call it, is very often confounded with
scientific experimentation are straightforward: If obser- another sort which was provided by Norwood Russell
vations are theory-laden and if experimentation involves Hanson in 1958 and which can be called “theory-laden-
observation of results, then experimentation has to be ness by prior belief or knowledge.” “Seeing an object x,”
theory-laden too. Since experiments, according to this Hanson wrote, “is to see that it may behave in the ways we
view, make sense only in relation to some theoretical know x’s do behave” (Hanson 1958, p. 22). As a result of
background, they cannot play a role that is independent this, Tycho and Kepler watching the sun at dawn would
from theory. literally see different things: Tycho who believes in the
Now, the question arises: If new experimentalism is geocentric theory sees the sun beginning its diurnal cir-
right, do we have to give up the idea of theory-ladenness? cuit, whereas Kepler as defender of heliocentrism sees the
It is difficult to imagine a straightforward “yes” as an earth spinning back into the light of the sun. “Analo-
answer, because the general spirit in which the idea of gously,” Hanson wrote, “the physicist sees an X-ray tube,
theory-ladenness has been formulated is largely the same not by first soaking up reflected light and then clamping
as that of the idea that experimentation has a life of its on interpretations, but just as you see this page before
own. It is the spirit addressed by Hacking at the begin- you.”

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In addition, theory-ladenness in science means digms than the other way around. Lavoisier, we are told,
“causality-ladenness” for Hanson, being loaded with for example, was enabled through his new paradigm “to
causal meaning. He does not exclude theory-neutral talk see in experiments like Priestley’s a gas that Priestley had
after all, but it only happens in the oculist’s office or like been unable to see there himself ” and was “to the end of
circumstances but not in scientific observation or exper- his life” unable to see p. 56).
imentation. This shows that Hanson rejects all of The only case where Kuhn explicitly admits that dis-
Duhem’s points: (1) Seeing an experimental result is not covery has been effected by a genuinely novel causal expe-
interpreting it; (2) both the layman and the physicist have rience appears to be the case of the X-rays. “Its story
prior beliefs and therefore both their seeing is theory- opens on the day that the physicist Roentgen interrupted
laden; and (3) physical theory (as well as common beliefs a normal investigation of cathode rays because he had
about the world) is causal theory and not just causally noticed that a barium platino-cyanide screen at some dis-
neutral description. Whereas for Hanson any injection of tance from his shielded apparatus glowed when the dis-
causality into the mere registering of facts is bound to charge was in process” (p. 57). Although Kuhn seems to
render them theoretical, for Duhem, theory begins with consider this observation theory-laden, I maintain that,
the representation of (causal) relations in an abstract, in Duhem’s sense, it is not. If it were, Roentgen, by defi-
causally neutral structure. nition of theory-ladenness, would have been able to
In Thomas Kuhn’s work we find several different interpret it in light of the theories of physics he had at his
conceptions of theory-ladenness that are not always sep- disposal. But here it is exactly the point that his theories
arated clearly. The most frequently used is similar to Han- deserted him and he could not find a place for this new
son’s, except that it is not prior knowledge that shapes experience in his customary theoretical structure. For this
perception, but paradigm and that it stresses and utilizes reason he interrupted his investigation and asked himself
the psychology of perception even more than in Hanson: why the screen had come to glow. Yet the novel observa-
“Something like a paradigm is prerequisite to perception tion is certainly theory-laden in the sense of Hanson,
itself. What a man sees depends both upon what he looks because Roentgen immediately looked for a causal rela-
at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual tionship between his apparatus and the glowing of the
experience has taught him to see” (Kuhn 1970, p. 113). screen, although this went completely against all his
In order to exhibit his other uses of theory- expectations!
ladenness, let us have a look at Kuhn’s treatment of scien- Kuhn seems to say that Roentgen would never have
tific discovery. Kuhn admits the possibility of “funda- paid attention to the glowing screen if he had not dis-
mental novelties of fact,” that go against a well-established posed of deeply entrenched theories of physics that pro-
paradigm. Without this possibility, as he himself realizes, hibited such a phenomenon. If this is true then we have
science could only develop in a theoretical manner and here a third sense of the notion of theory-ladenness
never by adjustment to facts. “Discovery commences with before us. It frames a psychological hypothesis about the
the awareness of anomaly, i.e., with the recognition that ease with which a phenomenon is detected or paid atten-
nature has somehow violated the paradigm-induced tion to in the light of a contradicting paradigm: An obser-
expectations that govern normal science” (Kuhn 1970, vation is theory-laden in this sense if it were improbable
pp. 52–53). that an observer would have made it (that an observer
Where, according to Kuhn, does a violation of the would have noticed it or would have attributed any
paradigm-induced expectations come from? Does it importance to it) without her holding a theory before-
come from a causal process that violates the received view hand that created expectations to the contrary. It would be
or from a new theoretical interpretation that makes old better to drop the term “theory-ladenness” for this case
facts appear in a new light? It seems that in Kuhn, it is altogether and instead call it “theory-guidance” because
almost always the theoretical interpretation, the assimila- the experimental result made sense to Roentgen as an
tion to theory, that is decisive for discovery and hardly observation in its simple causal structure already without
ever any causal experience. “Assimilating a new sort of the theoretical background of the theory that guided it or
fact demands a more than additive adjustment of theory, any other one. “Theory-guidance” refers to a psychologi-
and until that adjustment is completed—until the scien- cal disposition how well one is prepared to notice a par-
tist has learned to see nature in a different way—the new ticular phenomenon in certain situations.
fact is not quite a new fact at all.” That sounds more as if After Roentgen had noticed the anomaly, he con-
new facts and causal processes were created by new para- ducted various experiments in order to explore the cause

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
18 • 2nd edition
 appendix: EXPERIMENTATION AND INSTRUMENTATION

of the incident: “Further investigations—they required Johnson, Samuel; Kepler, Johannes; Kuhn, Thomas;
seven hectic weeks during which Roentgen rarely left the Lavoisier, Antoine; Logical Positivism; Mill, John Stu-
laboratory—indicated that the cause of the glow came in art; Newton, Isaac; Philosophy of Science, History of;
straight lines from the cathode ray tube, that the radia- Platonism and the Platonic Tradition; Popper, Karl
tion cast shadows, could not be deflected by a magnet, Raimund; Priestley, Joseph; Quine, Willard Van
and much else besides. Before announcing his discovery, Orman; Realism; Reichenbach, Hans; Riehl, Alois; Sci-
Roentgen had convinced himself that his effect was not entific Method; Thought Experiments in Science;
due to cathode rays but to an agent with at least some Underdetermination Thesis, Duhem-Quine Thesis.
similarity to light” (Kuhn 1970, p. 57). This is perhaps the
only place in his book where Kuhn uses the term “cause”
(or an equivalent) in relation to an experimental investi- Bibliography
Bacon, Francis. Novum Organum. London: 1620.
gation. The quotation shows vividly that Roentgen did
Batens, Dederik, and Jean P. van Bendegem, eds. Theory and
not conduct his experiments in order to test a theory but Experiment: Recent Insights and New Perspectives on Their
to expand our knowledge of causal connections in rela- Relation. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1988.
tion to the scientific instruments and devices involved. Buchwald, Jed Z. Scientific Practice: Theories and Stories of
Doing Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
What does our discussion suggest therefore as the
Collins, Harry M. Changing Order: Replication and Induction
most adequate description of Roentgen’s early experi- in Scientific Practice. Beverly Hills, CA, and London: Sage,
ments? They were certainly theory-guided in the sense of 1985.
Kuhn and they were, or immediately became, causality- Crombie, Alistair C. Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of
laden in the sense of Hanson, but not (or not yet) theory- Experimental Science, 1100–1700. Oxford: Clarendon, 1953.
laden in the sense of Duhem (which Kuhn also shares). deSolla Price, Derek J. “Of Sealing Wax and String.” Natural
Kuhn is right when he suggests that only after the phe- History 93 (1) (1984): 48–57.
nomena had received an abstract and symbolic represen- Duhem, Pierre. The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. New
York: Atheneum, 1974. Translated by Philip P. Wiener from
tation can we speak of a “discovery” of X-rays. Yet before the 2nd ed. Paris: Chevalier & Rivière, 1914.
this interpretation has taken place, we can say that an Franklin, Allan. Experiment, Right or Wrong. Cambridge, U.K.:
anomaly has occurred and that it can be replicated in cer- Cambridge University Press, 1990.
tain ways; not more, but also not less. Franklin, Allan. The Neglect of Experiment. Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 1986.
If the case of the X-rays is in this way correctly
Galavotti, Maria Carla, ed. Observation and Experiment in the
understood, then Kuhn can give in to Hacking without Natural and Social Sciences. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003.
loosing anything essential and admit that experimenta- Galison, Peter. How Experiments End. Chicago: University of
tion can be, and very often is, autonomous and free from Chicago Press, 1987.
theory. The lesson to learn is to distinguish between two Gooding, David. Experiment and the Making of Meaning:
kinds of experiments: those that are causal, but not (yet) Human Agency in Scientific Observation. Dordrecht: Kluwer,
embedded in a theoretical structure and those that pre- 1990.
Gooding, David, Trevor Pinch, and Simon Schaffer, eds. The
suppose the knowledge of such a framework. This
Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences.
emphasis of an autonomous “lower level” in experimen- Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
tation is not a relapse into positivist observation state- Graßhoff, Gerd, R. Casties, and Kärin Nickelsen. Zur Theorie
ments and protocol sentences allegedly giving meaning to des Experimentes. Untersuchungen am Beispiel der
theory. The claim rather is that two types of experimen- Entdeckung des Harnstoffzyklus. Bern: Bern Studies, 2000.
tation should conceptually be kept apart: experimenta- Hacking, Ian. Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics
in the Philosophy of Natural Science. Cambridge, U.K.:
tion at the causal level, where the manipulation of
Cambridge University Press, 1983.
instruments and objects under scrutiny takes place, and Hacking, Ian. “The Self-Vindication of the Laboratory
experimentation taking place at the theoretical level, Sciences.” In Science as Practice and Culture, edited by
where the results at the causal level are represented in a Andrew Pickering, 29–64. Chicago: University of Chicago
theoretical superstructure. Press, 1992.
Hagner, Michael, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. “Experimental
See also Ampère, André Marie; Aristotelianism; Aristotle; Systems, Objects of Investigation, and Spaces of
Representation.” In Experimental Essay—Versuche zum
Bacon, Francis; Berkeley, George; Carnap, Rudolf;
Experiment, edited by Michael Heidelberger and Friedrich
Duhem, Pierre Maurice Marie; Faraday, Michael; Frege, Steinle, 355–373. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998.
Gottlob; Galen; Galileo Galilei; Harvey, William; Hanson, Norwood Russell. Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge,
Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig von; Herschel, John; U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1958.

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Heering, P., Falk Rieß, and C. Sichau, eds. Im Labor der Pickering, Andrew. Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History
Physikgeschichte. Zur Untersuchung historischer of Particle Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
Experimentalpraxis. Oldenburg: BIS-Verlag, 2000. 1984.
Heidelberger, Michael. “Die Erweiterung der Wirklichkeit im Pickering, Andrew. The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and
Experiment.” In Experimental Essays—Versuche zum Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Experiment, edited by Michael Heidelberger and Friedrich Pickering, Andrew, ed. Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago:
Steinle, 71–92. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Heidelberger, Michael. “Theory-Ladenness and Scientific Popper, Karl. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London:
Instruments in Experimentation.” In The Philosophy of Hutchinson, 1959.
Scientific Experimentation, edited by Hans Radder, 138–151. Quine, Willard Van Orman. From a Logical Point of View. New
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. York: Harper & Row, 1963.
Heidelberger, Michael, and Friedrich Steinle, eds. Experimental Radder, Hans, ed. The Philosophy of Scientific Experimentation.
Essays—Versuche zum Experiment. Baden-Baden: Nomos, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003.
1998.
Reichenbach, Hans. The Rise of Scientific Philosophy. Berkeley:
Helmholtz, Hermann von. “Die Tatsachen in der
University of California Press, 1951.
Wahrnehmung [1878].” In Vorträge und Reden, 213–247.
Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1903. Schmitt, Charles B. “Experience and Experiment: Comparison
of Zabarella’s View with Galileo’s in De Motu.” Studies in the
Herschel, John F. W. Preliminary Discourse on the Study of
Renaissance 16 (1969): 80–138.
Natural Philosophy (1830). New York: Johnson Reprint
Corporation, 1966. Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-
Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton,
Holmes, Frederic L. “Do We Understand Historically How
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Experimental Knowledge Is Acquired?” History of Science 30
(1992): 119–136. Steinle, Friedrich. Explorative Experimente. Ampère, Faraday
und die Ursprünge der Elektrodynamik. Stuttgart: Franz
Holmes, Frederic L. Hans Krebs: Architect of Intermediary
Steiner, 2005.
Metabolism 1933–1937. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1993. Michael Heidelberger (2005)
Holmes, Frederic L. “The Logic of Discovery in the
Experimental Life Sciences.” In Biology and Epistemology,
edited by Jane Maienschein, 167–190. Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Holmes, Frederic L., Jürgen Renn, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger,
modality and
eds. Reworking the Bench: Research Notebooks in the History language
of Science, New Studies in the History and Philosophy of
Science and Technology. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003. Modality is a category of linguistic meaning having to do
Holmes, Frederic L., and Trevor H. Levere, eds. Instruments with the expression of possibility and necessity. A modal-
and Experimentation in the History of Chemistry.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. ized sentence locates an underlying or prejacent proposi-
Koyré, Alexandre. “Galileo and Plato.” Journal of the History of tion in the space of possibilities (the term prejacent was
Ideas 4 (4) (1943): 400–428. introduced by medieval logicians). Sandy might be home
Kuhn, Thomas S. “Mathematical vs. Experimental Traditions says that there is a possibility that Sandy is home. Sandy
in the Development of Physical Science.” Journal of must be home says that in all possibilities Sandy is home.
Interdisciplinary History 7 (1) (1976): 1–31. Reprinted in The The counterpart of modality in the temporal domain
Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Thought and
Change, 31–65. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. should be called temporality, but it is more common to
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd talk of tense and aspect, the prototypical verbal expres-
ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. sions of temporality. Together, modality and temporality
Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. Laboratory Life: The Social are at the heart of the property of displacement (one of
Construction of Scientific Facts. 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Charles F. Hockett’s design features of human language)
Princeton University Press, 1986.
that enables natural language to talk about affairs beyond
Le Grand, Homer E., ed. Experimental Inquiries: Historical,
Philosophical and Social Studies of Experimentation in
the actual here and now.
Science. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990. There are numerous kinds of expression that have
Licoppe, Christian. La formation de la pratique scientifique: le modal meanings, the following is just a subset of the vari-
discours de l’expérience en France et en Angleterre
ety one finds in English:
(1630–1820). Paris: Editions La Decouverte, 1996.
Mayo, Deborah G. Error and the Growth of Experimental (1) Modal auxiliaries
Knowledge, Science and Its Conceptual Foundations. Chicago: Sandy must/should/might/may/could be home.
University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Mill, John Stuart. A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and (2) Semimodal verbs
Inductive. London: Parker, 1843. Sandy has to/ought to/needs to be home.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
20 • 2nd edition
 appendix: MODALITY AND LANGUAGE

(3) Adverbs flexibility of meaning

Perhaps, Sandy is home. Many modal expressions can be used to express many or
(4) Nouns all these kinds of modal meaning. Witness the English
semimodal have to in the following set of examples:
There is a slight possibility that Sandy is home.
(7) It has to be raining. [after observing people coming
(5) Adjectives
inside with wet umbrellas; epistemic modality]
It is far from necessary that Sandy is home.
(8) You have to go to bed in ten minutes. [stern father;
(6) Conditionals bouletic]
If the light is on, Sandy is home. (9) Visitors have to leave by six p.m. [hospital regula-
It is traditional to use English modal auxiliaries or tions; deontic]
semimodal verbs as the primary source of illustrative (10) I have to sneeze. [given the current state of one’s
examples. This is in spite of the fact that these elements nose; circumstantial]
have a rather curious set of grammatical properties. (11) To get home in time, you have to take a taxi. [teleo-
Indeed, it appears that modal meanings are part of a nat- logical]
ural logical vocabulary and thus elements with modal
Some modal expressions are more specialized in what
meanings easily become part of the inventory of gram-
kind of meanings they can carry. The English auxiliary
matical or functional morphemes, which are typically might is most comfortable expressing epistemic modality.
associated with idiosyncratic, nonproductive grammati-
(12) It might be raining.
cal characteristics (for a cross-linguistic survey of this
process, compare Bybee, Perkins, Pagliuca 1994). Some modals only occur in specialized environments.
The modal need with a bare infinitive complement can
kinds of modal meaning
only occur in negative environments:
(13) a. You need not worry.
One can distinguish different kinds of modal meaning.
Alethic modality (Greek: aletheia, meaning “truth”), b.*You need worry.
sometimes logical or metaphysical modality, concerns (14) Nobody need worry.
what is possible or necessary in the widest sense. It is in Such negative polarity modals occur in other languages as
fact hard to find convincing examples of alethic modality well (compare the Dutch hoeven and the German
in natural language, and its inclusion in this list is prima- brauchen).
rily for reason of historical completeness. The following
categories, however, are of primary importance in the possible worlds semantics
study of natural language. Epistemic modality (Greek: In technical work on natural language semantics, modal-
episteme, meaning “knowledge”) concerns what is possi- ity is analyzed with the machinery of possible worlds
ble or necessary given what is known and what the avail- semantics, developed by logicians for the artificial lan-
able evidence is. Deontic modality (Greek: deon, meaning guage of modal logic. The most influential incarnation of
“duty”) concerns what is possible, necessary, permissible, this idea is found in the work of the semanticist Angelika
or obligatory, given a body of law or a set of moral prin- Kratzer (1981, 1991).
ciples or the like. Bouletic modality, sometimes boulo- The starting tenet is that modal expressions express
maic modality, concerns what is possible or necessary, quantification over possible worlds—regardless of what
given a person’s desires. Circumstantial modality, some- those might be (most practitioners have few ontological
times dynamic modality, concerns what is possible or scruples). Possibility modals correspond to existential
quantification, while necessity modals correspond to uni-
necessary, given a particular set of circumstances. Teleo-
versal quantification. Different kinds of modal meaning
logical modality (Greek: telos, meaning “goal”) concerns
correspond to different choices of sets of possible worlds
what means are possible or necessary for achieving a par- as the domain of quantification. These sets of possible
ticular goal. In the descriptive literature on modality, worlds are assigned to the world in which the complex
there is taxonomic exuberance far beyond these basic dis- sentence is evaluated (the evaluation world) by an acces-
tinctions. sibility relation.

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The accessibility relation underlying epistemic and an ordering source based on a body of law or princi-
modality delivers as the domain of quantification for the ples. Bouletic modality again has a circumstantial modal
modal those worlds that are compatible with what is base and an ordering source based on a relevant person’s
known, with the available evidence in the evaluation desires.
world. Similarly, deontic modality quantifies over worlds
There is much detailed research remaining to be
that satisfy the relevant body of law or principles.
done on the fine distinctions between different modal
Bouletic modality quantifies over worlds that conform to
expressions. Consider, for example, the fact that ought to
what the relevant person desires.
and have to somehow differ in strength in their deontic
Actually, Kratzer (1981, 1991) argues that modal use:
meaning does not just rely on an accessibility relation but
also on an ordering of the accessible worlds. The clearest (16) You ought to call your mother, but of course you
argument for this complication of the semantics comes don’t have to.
from deontic cases. Imagine a city whose traffic bylaws Or, consider the fact (explored by Ninan 2005) that deon-
outlaw the practice of double parking at any time for any tic should and deontic must differ whether one can admit
reason. The bylaws further specify that anyone who is that the right thing will not happen:
found guilty of double parking must pay a considerable
fine. Robin has been found guilty of double parking, so (17) I should go to confession, but I’m not going to.
the following sentence seems to be true: (18) #I must go to confession, but I’m not going to.
(15) Robin must pay a fine. There is also an interesting literature on fine details
of epistemic meaning. Work by Ian Hacking (1967), Paul
Notice, however, that in all the worlds that conform to the
Teller (1972), and Keith DeRose (1991) shows that there
traffic bylaws there never occurs any double parking,
since that is against the law. Therefore, in none of those is much additional complexity and context-dependency
worlds does Robin pay a fine for double parking. Thus, behind the phrases what is known or the available evi-
the simple possible worlds analysis incorrectly predicts dence, which are typically used to characterize epistemic
the sentence to be false. accessibility. In particular, the context may specify whose
knowledge or evidence base is relevant to the claim made
Kratzer’s (1981, 1991) analysis makes modal expres-
with an epistemically modalized sentence.
sions doubly relative: they need to be interpreted relative
to (1) a set of accessible worlds (modal base), and (2) an
context-dependency and
ordering of those worlds. For the case in hand, the acces-
sible worlds would be those where Robin’s actions hith- lexical specialization
erto are what they are (double parking occurs) and that Kratzer (1981, 1991) argues that rather than treating the
from then on develop in many conceivable ways. The multitude of modal meanings as a case of (accidental)
ordering would be that induced by the traffic bylaws, polysemy, it should be seen as the outcome of context-
which would favor among the accessible worlds those dependency. In other words, modal expressions have in of
where Robin pays a fine. The truth-conditions of this themselves a rather skeletal meaning and it is only in
example are then that in all the favored worlds among the combination with the background context that they take
accessible worlds Robin pays a fine. The sentence could be on a particular shade of meaning (such as epistemic or
made false either if Robin did not in fact double park or deontic). She points to ways of making explicit what the
if the traffic bylaws do not in fact require a fine. intended conversational background is:
The surface variety of modal meanings is thus a
(19) According to the hospital regulations, visitors have
product of the interplay of three factors: (1) the quantifi-
to leave by six p.m.
cational strength (possibility, necessity, and shadings in
between, e.g. slight possibility), (2) the modal base, and (20) Considering the evidence before us, it has to be
(3) the ordering source. raining.
Epistemic modality has an epistemic modal base and In the absence of such explicit markers, natural lan-
either no ordering or an ordering based on plausibility or guage users need to rely on contextual clues and reason-
stereotypicality. Deontic modality has a circumstantial ing about each other’s intentions to determine what kind
modal base (because one may have to abstract away from of modal meaning a particular sentence is intended to
one’s knowledge that the right thing will not be done) express in its context of use.

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 appendix: MODALITY AND LANGUAGE

As seen earlier, some modals are not entirely subject (22) Jimmy ought to go in his crib now. [said of a six-
to the whims of context but impose their own preferences month-old baby]
as to what kind of modal meaning they would like to
express. English might likes to be epistemic (with some further and related categories
interesting exceptions, such as the use in You might try to
At the outset, this entry listed a set of expressions that
put the key into this slot, which has the force of a sugges-
have modal meanings. The list was far from complete.
tion). This kind of behavior is not uncommon for expres-
Here, some other types of expressions that may fall under
sions that are context-dependent: pronouns refer to
the general category of modality or at least belong to
contextually furnished individuals but may include
adjacent categories will be added.
restrictions on what the context can furnish, for example,
the gender marking on she requires that the context fur- A closely related category, perhaps subsumable
nish a female individual. under modality, is evidentiality. Various languages regu-
larly add markers, inflectional or otherwise, to sentences
It has been shown that there is a recurring historical
that indicate the nature of the evidence that the speaker
development where a modal expression that initially has
has for the prejacent proposition. A typical evidential sys-
a nonepistemic meaning only (something that for opaque
tem might centrally distinguish between direct and indi-
reasons is often called a root modal) develops over time
rect evidence. The latter concept might be further
into an expression that also has epistemic meanings (e.g., subdivided into indirect reasoning from direct evidence
Nordlinger and Traugott [1997] document this develop- or conclusions based on hearsay or the like. The standard
ment for the case of English ought to). European languages do not have elaborate evidential sys-
tems but find other ways of expressing evidentiality when
the argument structure of needed. The English adverb apparently seems to prefer
modals indirect evidence:
So far, this entry has been presupposing that modality (24) Kim has apparently been offered a new job.
concerns the possibility or necessity of a prejacent propo-
sition. There is, however, an ancient and persistent doc- The German modal sollen has a hearsay interpretation:
trine that another kind of modality concerns the possible (25) Kim soll einen neuen Job angeboten bekommen haben.
or necessary existence of a relation between a subject or Kim soll a new job offered get have
agent and a predicate. For example, one finds the claim “Kim has supposedly been offered a new job.”
that deontic modality can at least sometimes concern
Another important category is mood, an inflectional
what an agent is permitted or obliged to do.
marking on the main verb of a sentence, which expresses
(21) Sandy ought to call his mother. some kind of modal meaning. English has only a rudi-
mentary mood system, if that. However, Romance lan-
The propositional analysis has it that the sentence
guages, for example, productively use mood. In Italian,
expresses the necessity of the prejacent proposition that
the complement clause of a verb like say occurs in the
Sandy calls (will call) his mother, relative to the current
indicative mood, while the complement of believe
circumstances and a body of ethics, for example. The
appears in the subjunctive mood. There are attempts at
predicate-level analysis has it that the sentence expresses
analyzing the mood selection in such cases as depending
that the agent Sandy and the property of calling his on technical properties of the possible worlds semantics
mother stand in a certain modal relation. Some authors of the embedding verb. The research topic remains active
call this the ought to be versus ought to do distinction. Cer- and thriving.
tain sentences are clearly cases of propositional-level
ought to be modality: Propositional attitude constructions are also related
to modality. Consider the near equivalence of the follow-
(22) There ought to be a law against double parking. ing two sentences:
For sentences with an agentive subject, it is an open (26) Robin suspects that the butler is guilty.
question, debated in the technical literature, whether a
predicate-level or propositional-level analysis is correct. (27) Given Robin’s evidence, the butler might be guilty.
Whatever one’s position in this debate is, one has to Jaako Hintikka (1969) proposed to analyze proposi-
admit that some sentences with human subjects still do tional attitudes with the same possible worlds machinery
not express an obligation imposed on that subject: that was originally applied to modals, thus making the

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appendix: MODALITY AND LANGUAGE

relation between the two categories explicit in their toward the prejacent proposition, rather than giving rise
semantics. to a complex proposition with its own distinct content.
Expressions of illocutionary force are also within or The prevalence of this conception can perhaps be traced
close to the field of modality. Consider in particular back to the influence of Immanuel Kant, who wrote in his
attenuating speech act markers, as explored in pioneering Critique of Pure Reason that “the modality of judgments is
work by J. O. Urmson (1952): a very special function thereof, which has the distinguish-
ing feature that it does not contribute to the content of
(28) The butler is, I suspect, guilty.
the judgment” (1781, p. 74). This idea seems to have
The difference between attenuated assertion of a proposi- influenced both practicing linguists and a subset of logi-
tion and categorical assertion of a modalized proposition cians, including Gottlob Frege, who wrote in his Begriffss-
is small, one suspects. chrift that “[b]y saying that a proposition is necessary, I
give a hint about the grounds for my judgment. But, since
One particular kind of expression deserves attention:
the modal particles that are rampant in some languages, this does not affect the conceptual content of the judg-
such as German: ment, the form of the apodictic judgment has no signifi-
cance for us” (1879, p. 5).
(29) Kim hat ja einen neuen Job.
Kim has JA a new job It may be that scholars have typically adopted one of
“Kim has a new job, as you may know already” the two conceptions without much reflection. Within the
descriptive literature, there is rarely any argumentation
The gloss here is only approximate, the meaning of the for the speaker’s comment analysis. And the formal
modal particles is elusive and under active investigation. semantic literature rarely addresses the issue either, basi-
Modality is a pervasive feature of natural language cally ignoring the preponderance of the speaker’s com-
and sometimes it clearly appears in the semantics of an ment analysis in the descriptive literature.
expression without a clear syntactic or morphological One rather straightforward prediction of the
exponent. Such hidden modality can be detected, for speaker’s comment analysis is that modalized sentences
example, in infinitival relatives in English (for extensive should not be easily embeddable. This prediction seems
discussion, see Bhatt 2005): to be false for at least some standard modal expressions:
(30) When you have computer trouble, Sandy is the per- (33) It might be that visitors have to leave by six p.m.
son to talk to. [≈ Sandy is the person one ought to [epistemic modality embedding a deontic modal-
talk to] ity]
Sometimes the source for the modality can be identified Such iterated modality is unexpected from the point of
but its etymology and nature remains opaque: view of the speaker’s comment analysis. Better cases for a
(31) What Arlo is cooking has garlic in it. comment analysis come from speech act markers:
(32) Whatever Arlo is cooking has garlic in it. [epistemic (34) #If yesterday, I suspect, was the worst day of the
modality triggered by -ever: speaker does not know year, the market is in good shape.
what precisely Arlo is cooking]
The suspicion arises that some modal expressions have a
The range of modal expressions is a rich domain for comment-type meaning, while others contribute to the
language-internal and cross-linguistic investigations. propositional content of the complex sentence. There is
here, it seems, the opportunity for empirical and theoret-
modality WITHOUT CONTENT? ical debate on this issue. It should be noted that the ques-
So far, this entry has assumed that modalized sentences tion here is related but not identical to the issue of
express complex propositions with a possible worlds- whether a modal element expresses subjective or objec-
based quantificational meaning built on top of a preja- tive modality (these terms are discussed by Lyons 1977).
cent unmodalized proposition. While this is indeed the Independently of these ideas from descriptive lin-
standard analysis in formal natural language semantics, it guistics, there are proposals that would give modals a
is not the standard assumption in descriptive and typo- meaning that goes beyond truth-conditions. In dynamic
logical linguistics. semantics, epistemic modals are treated as particular
The most common analysis in descriptive work operations on an information state, see, for example, Velt-
treats modality as an expression of the speaker’s attitude man (1996). Finally, at least for deontic modals, it has

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
24 • 2nd edition
 appendix: MODALITY AND LANGUAGE

been suggested that they can be used with performative fiers scope over them (for an exploration, see von Fintel
force, whether or not they also have propositional con- and Iatridou 2003):
tent. Kamp (1973, 1978) and Lewis (1979) explore the (41) Most of our students must be home by now.
idea that deontic ‘may’ is used to grant permission, while
Ninan (2005) explores the idea that deontic ‘must’ is used a. must ô most of our students
to issue commands. b. *most of our students ô must

Again, this kind of fact remains mysterious, it may be an

Compositional interactions idiosyncratic syntactic fact without any grounding in
As the examples of iterated modality in the previous sec- semantics.
tion showed, at least some, if not most, modal expressions The interaction of modality and temporality is intri-
can compositionally interact with other expressions. cate and ill understood. One should first note that the
Interactions with negation, quantifiers, and tense are par- aspectual nature of the prejacent sentence has a strong
ticularly interesting. influence on what kind of meaning a modal sentence can
The combination of modals with negation is a foun- carry. A nonstative prejacent typically gives rise to deon-
tain of idiosyncratic facts. Consider that English may tic readings, while a stative prejacent is compatible with
scopes under negation when read deontically, but scopes both epistemic and deontic readings:
above negation when read epistemically:
(42) He has to be in his office. [epistemic/deontic]
(35) He may not have any cake. [deontic, “not allowed”]
(43) He has to see his doctor this afternoon. [nonepis-
(36) He may not be home. [epistemic, “possible that not”] temic]
Or, consider that English must scopes above negation (in While modal auxiliaries do not inflect for tense (the fact
either reading) while German müssen scopes under nega- that might may be a past-tense inflected form of may has
tion: reasons in the mist of history), other expressions do allow
(37) a. He must not have any cake. [“obligatory that such inflection.
not”] (44) He had to be in his office.
b. He must not be home. [“evident that not”]
(38) Er muss nicht zuhause bleiben. It is not always obvious whether what is happening here is
He must not at-home remain that the modal sentence is located in the past or whether
“He doesn’t have to stay home.” the modal has scope over a past-tense prejacent. The pre-
ceding sentence, when read epistemically, is plausibly
Lastly, note that while can does not easily allow an epis- ambiguous, reporting a past deduction about a simultane-
temic reading, negated cannot does have an epistemic ous state of affairs or a present deduction about a past
reading: state of affairs. Finally, some modals in embedded posi-
(39) a. Sandy can be home. [?] tions seem not to express any modal meaning of their own
b. Sandy cannot be home. [epistemic] but occur in “agreement” or “harmony” with a higher
modal or mood. One relevant case is “I am convinced that
Most of these facts have resisted systematic explanation it must be raining.” See Portner (1997) for discussion.
and remain mysterious.
Sentences containing both modals and quantifica- conditionals
tional noun phrases are often ambiguous:
An interaction of modals with other expressions that is
(40) Most of our students must get outside funding … of paramount importance is their appearance in condi-
a. for the department budget to work out. tional constructions. It has been noticed again and again
b. the others have already been given university that for sentences of the form if p, modal q it is hard to
fellowships. find a compositional interpretation that treats the if-
construction as expressing some kind of conditional
In some of the literature, this ambiguity is assimilated to meaning, while the modal in the consequent expresses its
the distinction between de dicto and de re interpretations, usual modal meaning.
probably inappropriately. In any case, it has been
observed that not all sentences show this ambiguity. For Consider, for example, the following conditional:
example, epistemic modals seem to resist having quanti- (45) If Robin double parked her car, she must pay a fine.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
2nd edition • 25
appendix: MODALITY AND LANGUAGE

A tempting idea is that the conditional construction See also Artificial and Natural Languages; Conditionals;
introduces universal quantification over epistemically Hintikka, Jaakko; Kant, Immanuel; Modality, Philoso-
accessible worlds and says that the consequent is true in phy and Metaphysics of; Philosophy of Language; Pos-
all epistemically accessible worlds where Robin double sibility; Propositional Attitudes: Issues in Semantics;
parked her car. The consequent in turn is true in an eval- Semantics.
uation world if in all worlds circumstantially accessible
from that world and favored by the deontic ordering Bibliography
source Robin pays a fine. However, now assume that one van der Auwera, Johan. “On the Typology of Negative Modals.”
knows that Robin is invariably law abiding. She would In Perspectives on Negation and Polarity Items, edited by Jack
never do anything that contravenes any law. So, among Hoeksema et al., 23–48. Amsterdam, Netherlands:
Benjamins, 2001.
the epistemically accessible worlds there are none where van der Auwera, Johan, and Vladimir A. Plungian. “Modality’s
she double parks against the law, so if she double parked, Semantic Map.” Linguistic Typology 2 (1998): 79–124.
that must be consistent with the law. Hence, the above Bhatt, Rajesh. Covert Modality in Non-finite Contexts. de
sentence would come out false. However, this seems Gruyter, 2005.
wrong. The sentence does not make a claim about what Bybee, Joan L., Revere Perkins, and William Pagliuca. The
Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the
the law must be like if Robin double parked her car. What Languages of the World. Chicago: Chicago University Press,
it claims is that the actual law is such that double parking 1994.
necessitates a fine. Condoravdi, Cleo. “Temporal Interpretation of Modals:
Modals for the Present and for the Past.” In The
The conclusion drawn from this and many parallel Construction of Meaning, edited by David I. Beaver et al.
examples with other modal operators is that it is a mis- Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 2002.
take to analyze such structures as involving two-layered DeRose, Keith. “Epistemic Possibilities.” Philosophical Review
100 (4) (1991): 581–605.
operators: a conditional construction embedding or
Farkas, Donka. “On the Semantics of Subjunctive
embedded in a modal construction. Rather, the idea has Complements.” In Romance Languages and Modern
been to say that in such sentences, the if-clause does not Linguistic Theory, edited by Paul Hirschbühler and Konrad
supply its own operator meaning but serves as a restric- Koerner, 69–104. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Benjamins,
1992.
tion on the modal base of the modal operator. The proper
von Fintel, Kai, and Sabine Iatridou. “Epistemic Containment.”
analysis of the previous sentence is that it says that among Linguistic Inquiry 34 (2) (2003): 173–198.
those circumstantially accessible worlds where Robin Frege, Gottlob. Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen
double parked her car, the ones favored by the law as it is nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens. Halle: L.
Nebert, 1879.
in the actual world are all worlds where Robin pays a fine.
Hacking, Ian. “Possibility.” Philosophical Review 76 (2) (1967):
After surveying a number of such cases, Kratzer sum- 143–168.
marizes the thesis as follows, “[T]he history of the condi- Hintikka, Jaako. “Semantics for Propositional Attitudes.” In
Philosophical Logic, edited by J. W. Davis, D. J. Hockney, and
tional is the story of a syntactic mistake. There is no W. K. Wilson, 21–45. Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel,
two-place if … then connective in the logical forms of 1969.
natural languages. If-clauses are devices for restricting the Hockett, Charles F., and Stuart A. Altmann. “A Note on Design
domains of various operators” (1986). Features.” In Animal Communication: Techniques of Study
and Results of Research, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok, 61–72.
What about bare conditionals such as If Sandy’s light Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968.
is on she is home? Here, there is no modal operator for the Kamp, Hans. “Free Choice Permission.” Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, New Series, 74: 57–74, 1973.
if-clause to restrict. Should one revert to treating if as an
Kamp, Hans. “Semantics versus Pragmatics”. In Formal
operator on its own? Kratzer (1986) proposes that one Semantics and Pragmatics for Natural Languages, edited by
should not and that such cases involve covert modal Franz Guenthner and S. J. Schmidt, pp. 255–288. Dordrecht:
operators—in this case, possibly a covert epistemic Reidel, 1978.
modal. This entry has nothing to say about that here. Kant, Immanuel. Critik der reinen Vernunft. Riga: Johann
Friedrich Hartknoch, 1781.
This entry has shown that the topic of modality is Karagjosova, Elena. Modal Particles and the Common Ground:
characterized by rich empirical detail, considerable cross- Meaning and Functions of German ja, doch, eben/halt, and
auch. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Benjamins, 2003.
linguistic variation, and intriguing theoretical issues. The
Kiefer, Ferenc. “Modality.” In The Encyclopedia of Language and
following bibliography can serve as a start for further Linguistics, edited by Ronald E. Asher, 2515–2520. Oxford,
reading and exploration. U.K.: Pergamon, 1994.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
26 • 2nd edition
 appendix: PHRONÊSIS

Kiefer, Ferenc. “On Defining Modality.” Folia Linguistica 21 (1) gradually does it come to be used in ethical contexts for a
(1987): 67–94. correct grasp of what ought to be done. For Plato and the
Kratzer, Angelika. “Conditionals.” Chicago Linguistics Society 22
other Socratics, phronêsis represents that aspect of our
(2) (1986): 1–15.
Kratzer, Angelika. “Modality.” In Semantics: An International rational faculty that derives genuine knowledge about
Handbook of Contemporary Research, edited by Arnim von values and norms, that is, about the virtues (see especially
Stechow and Dieter Wunderlich, 639–650. Berlin: de Protagoras, Gorgias). The famous debate between the
Gruyter, 1991. Socratics and their critics, such as the orator Isocrates,
Kratzer, Angelika. “The Notional Category of Modality.” In turned on the possibility of demonstrative knowledge in
Words, Worlds, and Contexts: New Approaches in Word
Semantics, edited by H. J. Eikmeyer and H. Rieser, 38–74. the sphere of virtue. Plato had attacked oratory on the
Berlin: de Gruyter, 1981. grounds that its aim is not to discover what is morally
Lewis, David. “A Problem about Permission”. In Essays in right, but merely to persuade, and he offered in its place
Honour of Jaako Hintikka: On the Occasion of His Fiftieth the Socratic method of dialectic, a cooperative search for
Birthday on January 12, 1979, edited by Esa Saarinen, Risto
the truth by means of hypothesis formation, critical
Hilpinen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, and Merril Provence Hintikka,
pp. 163–175. Reidel, 1979. examination and refutation, and hypothesis modifica-
Lyons, John. Semantics. New York: Cambridge University Press tion. Isocrates had characterized Socratic dialectic as
(1977). mere eristic (Against the Sophists 1; Antidosis 261) or
Ninan, Dilip. “Two Puzzles about Deontic Necessity.” In New argument for argument’s sake—probably for this reason,
Work on Modality, edited by Valentine Hacquard et al.
Plato is especially careful to distinguish the Socratic
MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, no. 52. Department
of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, Cambridge, MA, method from mere eristic in his Euthydemus—and
2005. referred to the Socratics as “disputers.” But Plato devotes
Nordlinger, Rachel, and Elizabeth Traugott. “Scope and the much argument to showing how the careful examination
Development of Epistemic Modality: Evidence from ought of various conceptions of the virtues can lead inexorably
to.” English Language and Linguistics 1 (1997): 295–317.
to a recovery of their essential nature, which resides in the
Palmer, Frank Robert. Mood and Modality. 2nd ed. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2001. soul of every person from birth.
Plungian, Vladimir A. “The Place of Evidentiality within the Aristotle’s treatment of phronêsis (Nicomachean
Universal Grammatical Space.” Journal of Pragmatics 33
(2001): 349–357.
Ethics VI.5 1140a24–b30; cf. 1141b8–1143a5) is similar in
Portner, Paul. “The Semantics of Mood, Complementation, many respects to Plato’s, but in his account the knowledge
and Conversational Force.” Natural Language Semantics 5 that we obtain of virtue is not the equivalent of scientific
(2) (1997): 167–212. (demonstrative) knowledge (episteme): unlike episteme,
Stowell, Tim. “Tense and Modals.” In The Syntax of Time, which is concerned with necessary truths, phronêsis is
edited by Jacqueline Guéron and Jacqueline Lecarme,
621–636. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
always concerned with contingent truths. Aristotle
Teller, Paul. “Epistemic Possibility.” Philosophia 2 (1972): defines phronêsis by reference to something more con-
302–320. crete and familiar, namely, the practically wise person, ho
Urmson, J. O. “Parenthetical Verbs.” Mind 61 (1952): 192–212. phronimos, someone who has phronêsis. It is the mark of
Veltman, Frank. “Defaults in Update Semantics”. Journal of the practically wise person, he says, to be able to deliber-
Philosophical Logic 25(3) (1996): 221–261. ate well about what is good and advantageous for himself
Willett, Thomas. “A Cross-linguistic Survey of the
Grammaticalization of Evidentiality.” Studies in Language 12
not merely in one area, such as health or strength, but as
(1) (1988): 51–97. a means to human flourishing in general. The operation
von Wright, Georg Henrik. An Essay in Modal Logic. of phronêsis in Aristotle’s account of the rational faculties
Amsterdam, Netherlands: North-Holland, 1951. appears to hinge on the application of general rules for
Kai von Fintel (2005) right conduct (the orthos logos) to the particular circum-
stances of a given situation so as to result in action that
will generally tend toward human flourishing. The phron-
imos is the person whose life is characterized by such
phronêsis applications of phronêsis and who, as a result, tends to
flourish throughout his life. Such a person is said to be
Often translated as “practical wisdom,” the Greek word
phronêsis derives from the verb phronein, meaning “to eudaimôn or “happy.”
have understanding,” or “to be wise or prudent.” In its In contrast, the Stoics characterize phronêsis as a kind
earliest uses the word is normative only in the sense that of scientific knowledge (episteme), namely, of what
it signifies a correct cognitive grasp of some kind; only should be done or not. Although they differ amongst

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
2nd edition • 27
appendix: QUANTIFIERS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE

themselves about the precise relationship, the Stoics the semantics of determiners
regard the other virtues as this sort of knowledge in more What is the semantics of expressions like every and most?
specific domains: justice concerns what should be done An answer to this question emerged in the early 1980s, in
or not with regard to deserts, courage with regard to what work of Jon Barwise and Robin Cooper (1981), James
should be endured, and moderation with regard to what Higginbotham and Robert May (1981), Edward L.
should be chosen or avoided. But given the Stoics’ con- Keenan and Jonathan Stavi (1986), Johan van Benthem
ception of a good life as one lived in agreement with (1986), Dag Westerståhl (1985), and many others.
nature, knowledge of what should be done will depend
The basic idea of how to interpret quantified expres-
on knowledge of both human nature and nature as a
sions comes from Gottlob Frege (1879). Frege observed
whole, and above all our role within the latter. Phronêsis,
that the familiar quantifiers " (everything) and $ (some-
therefore, has a considerably larger scope for the Stoics
thing) can be thought of, in Frege’s terms, as second-level
than for Aristotle, and is possessed only by the Stoic ideal
concepts. Let us call whatever gives the interpretation of
of the wise person.
an expression its semantic value. Assuming an exten-
For Epicurus, phronêsis has more to do with pruden- sional and set-theoretic framework, we my assign predi-
tial reasoning. It is what enables us to assess the conse- cates sets of individuals as their semantic values. Frege’s
quences of every choice and so calculate its overall value. idea can then be recast as saying that the semantic values
It is thus crucial for leading a happy life—in fact, Epicu- of " and $ are sets of sets. $ xFx (something is F) is true if
rus regards it as even more precious than philosophy the semantic value of F is in the interpretation of $, which
itself. In particular, he believes, it reveals that virtue and happens just in case the semantic value of F is nonempty.
pleasure are inseparable: It is impossible to live pleasantly More generally, quantifiers have as semantic values sets of
without living virtuously or, for that matter, to live virtu- the values of predicates which result in true sentences
ously without living pleasantly. when the quantifiers are applied.
In logic, this idea was later investigated by Andrzej
See also Aristotle; Dialectic; Epicureanism and the Epi-
Mostowski (1957) and then Per Lindström (1966). But it
curean School; Eudaimonia; Gorgias of Leontini; Plato; does not apply to natural language without an important
Protagoras of Abdera; Socrates; Stoics; Virtue and Vice; modification. Consider:
Wisdom.
(1) Most students attended the party.

Bibliography In this, most does not tell us something about a single

Broadie, S. “Practical Wisdom.” In Ethics with Aristotle. New predicate. Rather, it compares the students with the peo-
York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ple attending the party. In particular, it compares the size
Gigon, O. “Phronesis und Sophia in der Nicomach. Ethik des of the set of students with the size of the set of people
Aristoteles.” In Mélanges de C. de Vogel, Assen, 91–104. 1975. attending the party.
Hardie, W. “Practical Wisdom.” In Aristotle’s Ethical Theory.
2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
This binary or relational character of quantification
Hueffmeier, F. “Phronesis in den Schriften des Corpus
in natural language is extremely widespread (as is
Hippocraticum.” Hermes 89 (1961): 51–84. demonstrated by the extensive list of examples in Keenan
Kraut, R. “Function, Virtue, and Mean.” In Aristotle on the and Stavi 1986). It is also no accident. Rather, it reflects a
Human Good. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, fundamental feature of the syntax of natural languages.
1989. Simplifying somewhat, sentences break down into com-
Menn, S. “Physics as a Virtue.” Proceedings of the Boston Area binations of noun phrases (NPs) and verb phrases (VPs).
Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 11 (1995): 1–34. Noun phrases also break down, into combinations of
Scott Carson (2005) determiners (DETs) and common nouns (CNs) (or more
complex construction with adjectival modifiers like small
brown dog). Quantifier expressions occupy the deter-
miner positions in noun phrases, as in:
quantifiers in natural (2) [S [NP [DET most ] [CN students ] ] [VP attended the
language party] ]

Quantifiers in natural language correspond to words such (See any current syntax text for a more thorough presen-
as every, some, most, few, and many others. tation of this material, or the handbook discussions of

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
28 • 2nd edition
 appendix: QUANTIFIERS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE

Bernstein [2001] and Longobardi [2001]. For some inter- ranges over its first input, corresponding to the CN posi-
esting cross-linguistic work, see Matthewson [2001] and tion in an NP. Most boys are happy expresses MostM(boys,
the papers in Bach et al. [1995].) happy). Whether this holds or not depends on the prop-
Quantifier expressions, such as every and most, are erties of the boys, and not anything about the rest of the
determiners. Their semantic values must be relations universe.
between sets of individuals, representing the semantic The mere presence of the CN argument is not
values of CNs and VPs in simple syntactic configurations enough to show that it functions as the domain of quan-
like (2). Using some set theory, we may give examples of tification. But the CN does play an important role, which
the semantic values of determiners explicitly. For is brought out by the following pattern:
instance, for a universe of discourse M and sets of indi- (4) a. i. Every student attended the party.
viduals X, Y 債 M:
ii. Every student is a student who attended the
(3) a. everyM (X,Y) ¨Æ X 債 Y party.
b. mostM(X,Y) ¨Æ |X 艚 Y| > |X \ Y|
b. i. Most students attended the party.
(Here the boldface everyM is the semantic value of the ii. Most students are students who attended
expression every.) This characterization of the semantic the party.
values of determiners as relations between sets is often
called the relational theory of determiner denotations. In each of these, (i) and (ii) are equivalent.
As the semantic values of determiners are relations The pattern we see in (4) is called conservativity:
between sets, the semantic values of noun phrases built (5) (CONS) QM(X,Y) is conservative if and only if for
out of determiners (or most determiners) are interpreted all X,Y 債 M, QM(X,Y) ¨Æ QM(X,X 艚 Y).
as sets of sets, along Fregean lines. For instance, the
semantic value of most boys is mostM boys = {Y 債 M: Conservativity expresses the idea that the interpretation
|boys 艚 Y| > |boys \ Y|}. We may use the term ‘quantifier’ of a sentence with a quantified noun phrase only looks as
for either sort of semantic value. The latter are often far as the CN, so the CN restricts the domain of quantifi-
called unary or simple quantifiers. Quantifiers taking cation.
more than two arguments are well documented in natu- One of the striking facts about natural languages,
ral language, and have been investigated by a number of observed in Barwise and Cooper (1981) and Keenan and
authors, including Filippo Beghelli (1994) and Edward L. Stavi (1986), is that the semantic values of all natural lan-
Keenan and Lawrence S. Moss (1984). Quantifiers taking guage determiners satisfy CONS. This is a proposed lin-
as inputs relations rather than sets, called polyadic quan- guistic universals: a non-trivial empirical restrictions on
tifiers, have also been investigated, by authors including natural languages.
Higginbotham and May (1981), May (1989) and van
Conservativity has proved an extremely important
Benthem (1909), though their place in natural language
property. The space of conservative quantifiers is much
remains controversial. The survey by Keenan and Wester-
more orderly than the full range of relations between sets.
ståhl (1997) is a good place to look for an introduction to
This is brought out most vividly by the conservativity
these issues.
theorem due initially to Keenan and Stavi (1986), further
investigated by van Benthem (1983, 1986) and Keenan
properties of quantifiers (1993). The key insight is that the class of conservative
The relational theory of determiner denotations has been quantifiers can be build up inductively, from a base stock
applied to a number of issues in logic, philosophy of lan- of quantifiers and some closure conditions. Let M be a
guage, and linguistics. Many of these are discussed in the fixed finite universe and let CONSM be the collection of
surveys by Keenan (2002), Keenan and Westerståhl conservative quantifiers on M. We will build up a class of
(1997), and Westerståhl (1989). These applications rely quantifiers D-GENM on M as follows. D-GENM contains
on some important properties of quantifiers, of which everyM and someM. We also assume that each set of mem-
two examples are given here. bers of M is definable by a predicate, and that D-GENM is
closed under Boolean combination and predicate restric-
RESTRICTED QUANTIFIERS. Quantifiers in natural lan- tions. The latter assumes that if QM(X,Y) is in D-GENM, so
guage appear to be restricted quantifiers. Whereas " and is QM(X 艚 C,Y) for C 債 M. This amounts to closure
$ range over the entire universe, a quantifier like mostM under (intersective) adjectival restriction in an NP.

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appendix: QUANTIFIERS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE

The conservativity theorem says that for each M: This simple story does not always work. Transitive
(6) CONSM = D-GENM verbs with quantified NPs in object position provide one
sort of problem. A transitive verb will be interpreted as a
This tells us that the domain of natural language deter- relation between individuals. Now, consider an example
miners is far more orderly than it might have appeared. like:
Some logical properties extending CONS have been stud- (9) a. John offended every student.
ied, by van Benthem (1983, 1986) and Westerståhl (1985,
b. [S [NP John ] [VP [V offended ] [NP every student] ] ]
1989). These appear to strengthen the proposed universal
as well. The value of offended is a relation between individuals,
while the value of every student is a set of sets. We have no
LOGICALITY. Quantified NPs are often described as way to combine these to give us a set of individuals, which
expressions of generality. One way to articulate the rele- the value of the VP must be.
vant notion of generality is that it requires the truth of a The theory of determiner denotations does not help
sentence to be independent of exactly which individuals solve this problem. Instead, some more apparatus is
are involved in interpreting a given quantifier. This can be needed, either in the semantics or in the syntax. One
captured formally by the constraint of permutation approach is to posit underlying logical forms for sen-
invariance. A permutation p of M is a 1-1 onto mapping tences which are in some ways closer to the ones used in
of M to itself, which can be thought of as a rearranging of the standard formalisms of logic.
the elements of M. The constraint of permutation invari-
The goal is to replace the quantified NP every student
ance then says:
with a variable that can occupy the argument position of
(7) (PERM) Let p be a permutation of M. Then a VP, that is, a variable over individuals. This variable is
QM(X,Y) ¨Æ QM(p[X],p[Y]). then bound by the quantifier. We thus want a structure
that looks something like:
(Here p[X] = {p(x): x 僆 X}.) PERM, or some strengthen-
ing of it, is commonly assumed in the mathematical liter- (10) [ [NP every studentx ] [S John offended x ] ]
ature, and is built into the definitions of quantifier in In fact, many theories (following May 1977, 1985) argue
Lindström (1966) and Mostowski (1957). The semantic that a structure like (10) is the underlying logical form of
values of most natural language determiners satisfy a quantified sentence. This is a substantial empirical
PERM. (At least, the values of most syntactically simple claim about natural language, which holds that syntactic
determiners do.) There remain some hard cases, such as structures like (10) provide the input to semantic inter-
possessive constructions (as well as proper names, which pretation. Typically, such theories also hold that a syntac-
can be interpreted as unary quantifiers not satisfying tic process of movement produces a syntactic structure
PERM). As these may not be examples of genuine deter- with initial quantifiers, and variables in the argument
miners, the hypothesis that all natural language quanti- positions those quantifiers originally occupied. (For a
fiers satisfy both CONS and PERM is commonplace. survey of ideas about logical form in syntactic theory, see
Huang 1995.)
semantic composition Providing a structure like (10) does not by itself
The relational theory of determiner denotations does not explain the semantics of binding: It does not explain
explain how quantifiers interact with the rest of syntax semantically how the quantified NP binds the variable in
and semantics. The way the values of determiners com- the VP. The theory of the semantic values of determiners
bine with other semantic values provides an example of does not explain this either. Some separate account is
such interaction. needed.
The semantic operation that corresponds to binding
According to the relational theory, the semantic val-
is one of forming the right set to be the input of the
ues of quantified NPs are sets of sets, while the values of
semantic value of the determiner. Hence, even though we
VPs are sets. How do these combine? When we have a
think of the syntactic structure John offended x as
quantified NP in subject position, the semantics of com-
sentence-like (with the variable functioning like a pro-
position is given by set membership. For a quantified NP
noun), its interpretation needs to wind up being {x: John
value a:
offended x}. Once we have this, we can say the sentence is
(8) [S [NP a ] [VP b ] ] is true if and only if b 僆 a. true if this set is in the semantic value of the quantified

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 appendix: QUANTIFIERS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE

NP every student. Hence, binding is carried out by the Higginbotham, James, and Robert May. “Questions,
appropriate form of set abstraction (as in Barwise and Quantifiers and Crossing.” Linguistics Review 1 (1981):
41–79.
Cooper 1981). Many current presentations are embedded
Huang, C.-T. James. “Logical Form.” In Government and
in the framework of the typed lambda-calculus, which Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program, edited by Gert
treat sets as functions from individuals to truth values. Webelhuth. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
In such a framework (Büring 2005, Heim and Kratzer Jacobson, Pauline. “Towards a Variable-Free Semantics.”
1989), set abstraction is replaced by lambda-abstraction. Linguistics and Philosophy 22 (1999): 117–184.
Other approaches use similar syntactic structures to (10), Keenan, Edward L. “Beyond the Frege Boundary.” Linguistics
and Philosophy 15 (1992): 199–221.
but offer a more Tarskian account of binding (Higgin-
Keenan, Edward L. “Natural Language, Sortal Reducibility and
botham 1985; Larson and Segal 1995). Finally, there are Generalized Quantifiers.” Journal of Symbolic Logic 58
approaches that avoid positing syntactic structures like (1993): 314–325.
we see in (10), including early work of Cooper (1983), Keenan, Edward L. “Some Properties of Natural Language
and type shifting approaches (Hendriks 1993, Jacobson Quantifiers: Generalized Quantifier Theory.” Linguistics and
Philosophy 25 (2002): 627–654.
1999, Steedman 2000, van Benthem 1991). There is also
Keenan, Edward L., and Lawrence S. Moss. “Generalized
an approach that seeks to explain semantic composition Quantifiers and the Expressive Power of Natural Language.”
via a generalized account of the semantic values of deter- In Generalized Quantifiers in Natural Language, edited by
miners (Keenan 1992). Johan van Benthem and Alice ter Meulen. Dordrecht: Foris,
1984.
See also Artificial and Natural Languages; Frege, Gottlob; Keenan, Edward L., and Jonathan Stavi. “A Semantic
Semantics. Characterization of Natural Language Determiners.”
Linguistics and Philosophy 9 (1986): 253–326. Versions of
this paper were circulated in the early 1980s.
Keenan, Edward L., and Dag Westerståhl. “Generalized
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Bach, Emmon, Eloise Jelinek, Angelika Kratzer, and Barbara H. and Language, edited by Johan van Benthem and Alice ter
Partee, eds. Quantification in Natural Languages. Dordrecht: Meulen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.
Kluwer, 1995. Larson, Richard, and Gabriel Segal. Knowledge of Meaning.
Barwise, Jon, and Robin Cooper. “Generalized Quantifiers and Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
Natural Language.” Linguistics and Philosophy 4 (1981): Lindström, Per. “First Order Predicate Logic with Generalized
159–219. Quantifiers.” Theoria 2 (1966): 186–195.
Beghelli, Filippo. “Structured Quantifiers.” In Dynamics, Longobardi, Giuseppe. “The Structure of DPs: Some
Polarity, and Quantification, edited by Makoto Kanazawa Principles, Parameters, and Problems.” In Handbook of
and Christopher J. Piñón. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, Contemporary Syntactic Theory, edited by Mark Baltin and
1994. Chris Collins. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.
Bernstein, Judy B. “The DP Hypothesis: Identifying Clausal Matthewson, Lisa. “Quantification and the Nature of
Properties in the Nominal Domain.” In Handbook of Crosslinguistic Variation.” Natural Language Semantics 9
Contemporary Syntactic Theory, edited by Mark Baltin and (2001): 145–189.
Chris Collins. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. May, Robert. “The Grammar of Quantification.” PhD diss.
Büring, Daniel. Binding Theory. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1977.
University Press, 2005. May, Robert. “Interpreting Logical Form.” Linguistics and
Cooper, Robin. Quantification and Syntactic Theory. Philosophy 12 (1989): 387–435.
Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983. May, Robert. Logical Form: Its Structure and Derivation.
Frege, Gottlob. Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.
nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens. Halle: Mostowski, Andrzej. “On a Generalization of Quantifiers.”
Nebert, 1979. Translated by Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg as Fundamenta Mathematicae 44 (1957): 12–36.
Begriffsschrift, a Formal Language, Modeled Upon That of Steedman, Mark. The Syntactic Process. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Arithmetic, for Pure Thought in From Frege to Gödel: A Press, 2000.
Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931, edited by van Benthem, Johan. “Determiners and Logic.” Linguistics and
Jean van Heijenoort. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Philosophy 6 (1983): 447–478.
Press, 1967. van Benthem, Johan. Essays in Logical Semantics. Dordrecht:
Heim, Irene, and Angelika Kratzer. Semantics in Generative Reidel, 1986. Includes revised versions of van Benthem
Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. (1983, 1984).
Hendriks, Herman. Studied Flexibility. Amsterdam: ILLC van Benthem, Johan. Language in Action. Amsterdam: North-
Publications, 1993. Holland, 1991.
Higginbotham, James. “On Semantics.” Linguistic Inquiry 16 van Benthem, Johan. “Polyadic Quantifiers.” Linguistics and
(1985): 547–593. Philosophy 12 (1989): 437–464.

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appendix: QUESTIONS

van Benthem, Johan. “Questions about Quantifiers.” Journal of against this idea in How to Do Things with Words (1962).
Symbolic Logic 49 (1984): 443–466. Austin’s pioneering work gave birth to the field of speech-
van Heijenoort, Jean, ed. From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in act theory, which found its fullest development in the
Mathematical Logic, 1879–1931. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1967. work of his student John Searle. Speech-act theory is one
Westerståhl, Dag. “Logical Constants in Quantifier Languages.” of the few areas in philosophy that pays due attention to
Linguistics and Philosophy 8 (1985): 387–413. uses of language other than assertion. But even here one
Westerståhl, Dag. “Quantifiers in Formal and Natural finds a residue of the tendency to subordinate the
Languages.” In Handbook of Philosophical Logic. Vol. 4, nonassertive to the assertive. We will return to this issue a
edited by Dov M. Gabbay and Franz Guenthner. Dordrecht:
bit later on.
Kluwer, 1989.
Michael Glanzberg (2005)
Outside of speech-act theory, the idea that interrog-
atives and the other nonindicatives are secondary sur-
vives in a number of forms. The aforementioned
identification of meaning with truth conditions is a pri-
questions mary example. One sometimes hears philosophers
defend this idea by observing that everything that can be
All too often when philosophers talk and write about sen- done with language can be done with just assertions. One
tences, they have in mind only indicative sentences, that can ask what time it is by asserting, “I wish to know what
is, sentences that are true or false and that are normally time it is”; one can command another to lower a weapon
used in the performance of assertions. When interroga- by asserting, “You will lower your weapon”; and so on. In
tive sentences are mentioned at all, it is usually either in the opposite direction, any assertion can be performed by
the form of a gesture toward some extension of the way of a question or an order. For any p, one can assert
account of indicatives or an acknowledgment of the lim- that p by asking “Did you know that p?” or by command-
itations of such an account. For example, in the final two ing “Be aware that p.” Just as questions and orders can be
sentences of his influential paper “Truth and Meaning” performed indirectly by way of assertions, assertions can
(1967), Donald Davidson remarks, “And finally, there are be performed indirectly by way of questions and orders.
all the sentences that seem not to have truth values at all:
the imperatives, optatives, interrogatives, and a host There is also the widespread view that the shared
more. A comprehensive theory of meaning for a natural contents of all sentences and speech acts are propositions,
language must cope successfully with each of these prob- which are nonlinguistic representations that are true or
lems.” Nonindicatives are an embarrassment to David- false and are the objects of belief and assertion. For exam-
son’s program of identifying meaning with truth ple, it is thought that, in addition to its interrogative
conditions. They are equally an embarrassment for the mood, the interrogative sentence “Did Martha shoot
old identification of meanings with verification condi- Henry?” expresses the proposition that Martha shot
tions, as well as the newer identification of meanings with Henry, the same proposition expressed by the indicative
inferential roles. Nonindicatives in general, and interrog- sentence “Martha shot Henry.” Similarly, in asking
atives in particular, have neither truth conditions nor ver- whether Martha shot Henry, a speaker expresses the very
ification conditions, nor do they function naturally or same proposition as when asserting that Martha shot
principally as the premises or conclusions of inferences. Henry. The difference between these speech acts is
Yet they are no less meaningful than indicatives. And they located in what is called their illocutionary forces, not in
are certainly no less important. As Nuel Belnap has their shared propositional content. The study of ques-
observed, following David Harrah, “[We] will not assert tions thus becomes a branch of the theory of force
anything ever, nor profit from the assertions of others, and not part of semantics proper, which is concerned
without at least the traces of such interests as can be with propositions and truth conditions. This provides
expressed by interrogatives” (1990, p. 16). some excuse for the philosophical focus on the truth-
conditional areas of language at the expense of the vast
Why have philosophers felt comfortable in virtually non-truth-conditional areas.
ignoring interrogatives and the other nonindicatives?
Probably because of the persistent yet rather inchoate
frege and wittgenstein on
idea that indicatives and assertion are somehow funda-
mental to language and meaning, and that the other questions
forms of sentences and speech acts are secondary or The distinction between the propositional content of a
derivative, perhaps even unnecessary. J. L. Austin railed sentence or speech act and its mood or force is associated

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with Gottlob Frege, for whom this distinction was a Henry?” is an interrogative content, something akin to a
recurring theme. It is not often noticed, however, that proposition except that it has interrogative-satisfaction
Frege changed his mind about this distinction with conditions, that is, conditions of being properly
regard to interrogatives. In his important paper “On answered, instead of truth conditions. Then one could say
Sense and Reference” (1970), Frege’s view was that inter- that the indicative contains this interrogative content
rogative sentences do not express propositions (Frege’s along with an element of affirmation (“Yes!”). Wittgen-
word for propositions was “thoughts”). Rather, interrog- stein’s point is not that this alternative is preferable to
atives express what Frege called questions, where a ques- Frege’s, but rather that both accounts are arbitrary and
tion is not a proposition but something that “stands on should be rejected. In other words, indicatives and inter-
the same level” as a proposition. In his later paper rogatives have distinct kinds of contents. Of course, this
“Thoughts” (1984), he reversed himself, arguing, “An was the view that Frege held in his earlier work “On Sense
interrogative sentence and an assertoric one contain the and Reference.”
same thought; but the assertoric sentence contains some-
thing else as well, namely assertion. The interrogative sen- questions in speech-act theory
tence contains something more too, namely a request” (p.
355). In other words, the sentences “Martha shot Henry” Despite Wittgenstein’s objections, many philosophers
and “Did Martha shoot Henry?” express the same truth- now accept Frege’s later view that propositions are the
conditional proposition. The difference is that the indica- shared contents of indicatives and interrogatives. This
tive sentence includes the force of assertion in the form of idea is the foundation of Searle’s theory of speech acts.
the indicative mood and the interrogative sentence con- With a few exceptions (e.g., greetings), Searle analyzes
tains the force of request in the form of the interrogative speech acts on the basis of his schema F(p), where “F”
mood. (On imperatives, in contrast, Frege, in “Thoughts,” stands for force and “p” for propositional content. A con-
did not reverse his earlier position. He held throughout sequence of this is that, aside from greetings and a few
that these sentences express commands, that is, contents other speech acts, most speech acts have propositions as
that are like thoughts yet lack truth-values. Also, it must their contents (a circumstance that is a residue of subor-
be noted that in “On Sense and Reference” Frege was dis- dinating the nonassertive to the assertive). The distinctive
cussing embedded questions, e.g., the “whether” clause in feature of questions is their interrogative force, which
“Nancy knows whether Martha shot Henry,” whereas in Searle takes to be a species of request. For Searle, asking a
“Thoughts” he was concerned with stand-alone ques- question is a request for an answer. Questions thus fall
tions, e.g., “Did Martha shoot Henry?” If Frege held that into Searle’s more general category of directives, the par-
the indirect reference of an embedded question should adigms of which are orders and commands. The defining
differ from the sense of its stand-alone counterpart, feature of directives is that they are attempts by speakers
which seems unlikely, then we need not read him as hav- to get hearers to do something. So on Searle’s account, a
ing changed his mind.) question is essentially an attempt by a speaker to get the
hearer to provide an answer.
Ludwig Wittgenstein clearly rejected Frege’s later
account in Philosophical Investigations: Another important feature of directives is that they
have what Searle calls “world-to-words” direction of fit
Frege’s idea that every assertion contains an
(1979, p. 14). This means that for a directive speech act to
assumption, which is the thing that is asserted,
be satisfied, the world must come to match the proposi-
really rests on the possibility found in our lan-
guage of writing every statement in the form: “It tion expressed in the performance of the speech act.
is asserted that such-and-such is the case.” … We When I order Martha to shoot Henry, I express the
might very well also write every statement in the proposition that Martha will shoot Henry with the force
form of a question followed by a “Yes”; for of an order. My order is satisfied just in case Martha acts
instance: “Is it raining? Yes!” Would this show to make this proposition true. This is the sense in which
that every statement contained a question? (Sec. the order is satisfied if the world comes to fit the words
22) used in the order. This position, however, leads to a prob-
lem when applied to questions. When I ask whether
One of the ideas in this passage is a criticism of Frege’s Martha shot Henry, my question is satisfied, that is,
arbitrary identification of the contents of interrogatives answered, just in case the hearer provides an answer. Yet
with propositions. One could hold instead that the shared the propositional content of my question is just that
content of “Martha shot Henry” and “Did Martha shoot Martha shot Henry; it is not that the hearer will provide

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an answer to the question of whether Martha shot Henry. of an interrogative with its answers. This first postulate is
There is no sense in which my question is satisfied when thus fundamental to semantic approaches to interroga-
Martha shoots Henry. Another way to bring out this tives.
problem is to note that speech acts with world-to-words Like the corresponding principle for indicatives, the
direction of fit require that their propositional contents first Hamblin postulate for interrogatives has been chal-
describe future events or states of affairs. There is obvi- lenged. It seems possible to understand an interrogative
ously no such restriction on the propositional contents of without having any idea of what would count as an
questions. The upshot of this is that questions do not fit answer to it. The linguist Jonathan Ginzburg provides the
neatly into Searle’s category of directives. The fact that example “What is the word for ‘relaxation’ in Chukotian?”
natural languages have a separate syntactic category of (1996, p. 400). Working in the semantic framework
interrogative sentences, distinct from that of imperatives, known as situation theory, Ginzburg has developed a
further suggests that questions are not simply a variety of semantic account in which the contents of interrogatives
directives but rather constitute their own distinct cate- are fine-grained structures that determine answers but
gory of speech acts. are not identical with answers. This approach bears
affinities to semantic accounts in which the contents of
the hamblin postulates indicatives are structured propositions. Another range of
The growing interdisciplinary cooperation between counterexamples to Hamblin’s first postulate derives
philosophers of language and linguists provides reason from the work of the philosopher of science Sylvain
for hope that the philosophical neglect of interrogatives is Bromberger, who has argued that the search for answers
coming to an end. Interrogative expressions have always to “why” questions for which we cannot formulate any
occupied a central place in linguistics. For example, the answers is essential to the enterprise of science.
behavior of so-called “wh-” words, for example, “who” The first Hamblin postulate is also implicitly rejected
and “what,” provided an important source of data for by paraphrase theories of interrogatives, which analyze
early work on Chomsky’s theory of transformational interrogatives by paraphrasing them into noninterroga-
grammar, and the phenomenon of “wh-” movement con- tive forms. In the theories of David Lewis and Max Cress-
tinues to be a rich topic for linguists working on the syn- well, interrogatives are paraphrased as performatives. For
tax of natural language. example, “Did Martha shoot Henry?” is paraphrased as “I
Interrogatives have also received a great deal of atten- hereby ask you whether Martha shot Henry.” A basic
tion from linguists working in semantics. Much of this problem for these theories is that the interrogative reap-
work has been guided by a set of postulates about ques- pears in the analysis in embedded form, in the example,
tions and answers first laid down by the philosopher and “whether Martha shot Henry,” which renders the analysis
logician C. L. Hamblin in his paper “Questions” (1958): circular. In the epistemic-imperative approach of Lennart
Åqvist and Jaakko Hintikka, “Did Martha shoot Henry?”
1. To know the meaning of a question is to know is analyzed as the imperative “Bring it about that I know
what counts as an answer to that question. whether Martha shot Henry.” The remaining embedded
2. An answer to a question is a complete sentence or “whether” clause is then eliminated in terms of “that”
proposition. clauses. “I know whether p,” for example, is analyzed as a
conjunction of conditionals: “If p, then I know that p, and
3. The possible answers to a question form an if not p, then I know that not p.” This account has some
exhaustive set of mutually exclusive possibilities. plausibility in this case, but as Lauri Karttunen has
(Hamblin’s ordering and wording of these postulates is pointed out, it falls apart when applied to other uses of
slightly different.) The first postulate is the analog for “whether” clauses. “I wonder whether p” is clearly not
interrogatives of the idea that to know the meaning of an synonymous with the possibly ungrammatical “If p, then
indicative is to know what the world would be like if it I wonder that p, and if not p, then I wonder that not p.”
were true, that is, that to know the meaning of an indica- And it is not clear even how to apply this account to a
tive is to know its truth conditions. This idea is the intu- sentence like “Martha’s mental health depends on
itive ground for the identification of the meaning of an whether she takes her prescriptions.”
indicative with its truth conditions. The first Hamblin The second and third Hamblin postulates concern
postulate plays a similar role for interrogatives. It is the the nature of answers. These two postulates combine to
intuitive motivation for the identification of the meaning form a conception of answers that differs from what can

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 appendix: QUESTIONS

count as an answer in ordinary discourse. For example, that the proposition that Martha and Henry ran is at best
the second postulate is in apparent conflict with the fact a partial answer. The fact that answers can be merely par-
that one can often answer a question with something less tial is what motivates the requirement that answers be
than a complete sentence. For example, the proper name mutually exclusive. Allowing partial answers requires a
“Alexander Hamilton” seems like a perfectly good answer contrasting criterion of completeness, which is provided
to the question “Who was the first U.S. Secretary of the by the notion that answers be mutually exclusive. (Inci-
Treasury?” The point of the second postulate is that, dentally, the above example illustrates how “wh-” words
despite appearances, answers are always complete sen- are context-sensitive, as are quantifier expressions. Intu-
tences or propositions, in this case, the sentence “Alexan- itively, a speaker who asks “Who ran the marathon?” is
der Hamilton was the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury” not asking about everyone who has ever lived but rather
or the proposition expressed by this sentence. This postu- about some contextually determined set of candidate
late is motivated by the idea that a correct answer must be runners. Parallel remarks apply to someone who asserts
true, and being true is a property of sentences or propo- “Everyone ran the marathon.” In each case, a range of val-
sitions. Furthermore, answers always convey information, ues for “who” and “everyone” is determined by features of
and information comes in sentences or propositions. the context of utterance. This is one of many similarities
Despite these considerations, the second Hamblin between “wh-” words and quantifiers.)
postulate has not been universally accepted. So-called cat- If answers are mutually exclusive, then there cannot
egorial theories, such as that of Roland Hausser, take seri- be more than one complete and true answer to a ques-
ously the surface grammatical forms of answers. On these tion. This runs into problems with so-called mention-
approaches, answers can be of various categories, for some questions. Suppose that Martha, who is new in
example, names, common nouns, sentences, set designa- town, asks Henry “Where can I buy an Italian newspa-
tions, and predicates, which denote respectively individu- per?” (This example is due to Jeroen Groenendijk and
als, objects, propositions, sets, and properties. Martin Stokhof.) On the most natural reading, Martha is
The third Hamblin postulate requires first that the only asking Henry to mention some place where she can
set of answers to an interrogative be exhaustive. This is buy an Italian newspaper. If so, Henry has available any
related to the fact that many interrogatives carry presup- number of complete and true answers, for example, “At
positions. To use Hamblin’s example, consider the ques- the train station,” or “At the bookstore downtown.”
tion “In which continent is Honolulu?” (1958, p. 163). Another sort of problem case, raised by Belnap, consists
This question falsely presupposes that Honolulu is in a in choice questions, for example, “What are two cities that
continent. According to one position, for the set of host marathons?” Intuitively, a complete answer men-
answers to this question to be exhaustive, it must include tions two cities that host marathons, and the choice of
an answer that denies the presupposition, that is, “Hon- which two to mention is left up to the hearer. Thus, many
olulu is in no continent.” Alternatively, one might hold complete and true answers are available, such as “Boston
that the presuppositions of a question restrict the range and New York host marathons,” “Chicago and Los Ange-
of possibilities to just those in which the presuppositions les host marathons,” and so on.
hold. A set of answers would then be exhaustive if it
exhausts this restricted range of possibilities. On this three semantic approaches to
alternative, the denial of the presupposition of a question interrogatives
is not an answer but rather a rejection of the question. This section sketches three prominent approaches to the
The third Hamblin postulate also requires that semantics of interrogatives, all of which are set in the
answers are mutually exclusive. This is intended to cap- framework of Montague semantics, also variously known
ture the idea that genuine answers are complete, in the as intensional semantics, model-theoretic semantics, or
following sense. Consider the question “Who ran the possible-worlds semantics. In this framework, expres-
marathon?” where the candidate runners are Martha, sions are assigned both intensions and extensions. Inten-
Henry, George, and Nancy. A complete answer will indi- sions are functions from possible worlds to entities of
cate both who ran and who did not. For example, the various kinds. The extension of an expression at a possi-
proposition that only Martha and Henry ran and no one ble world is the value of its intension with respect to that
else ran is complete, whereas the proposition that Martha world. For example, the intension of a complete indica-
and Henry ran is not complete, since it leaves unspecified tive sentence is a function from possible worlds to truth-
whether George or Nancy ran. A consequence of this is values. The intensions of indicatives essentially divide the

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set of possible worlds into two subsets: those possible identical with the content of its stand-alone counterpart
worlds in which the indicative is true and those in which “Who runs?” Very roughly, Karttunen’s idea is that
it is false. The proposition expressed by an indicative is “Nancy knows who runs” is true in w just in case in w
normally identified either with its intension or, more Nancy knows each of the propositions in the extension of
simply, with the set of worlds in which the intension has “who runs.” The advantage of Karttunen’s approach is
the value true. This identification of propositions with that this extension includes only true propositions, which
sentence intensions or with sets of possible worlds is a accords with the fact that one cannot know something
notoriously problematic feature of the possible-worlds false.
framework. It has the consequence that all necessarily A third prominent approach to interrogatives is due
true sentences express the same proposition. As we will to Jeroen Groenendijk and Martin Stokhof (1997). Unlike
see later on, a related problem arises for interrogatives. Hamblin and Karttunen, Groenendijk and Stokhof
On C. L. Hamblin’s approach in his “Questions in accept the third Hamblin postulate. On their account, the
Montague English” (1973), the intension of an interroga- sets of answers to interrogatives are exhaustive, and each
tive is a function from possible worlds to sets of answers, answer is mutually exclusive. A consequence of this posi-
where answers are propositions. The extension of an tion is that, on their view, the intension of an interroga-
interrogative at a possible world is thus a set of proposi- tive is a function from possible worlds to single
tions. This set is determined compositionally from the propositions, that is, the unique, complete answers in
parts of the interrogative. For Hamblin, the extension of each world. Suppose that in w only Martha and Henry
“who” at a possible world is a set of individuals. For run. Then the extension of “Who runs?” in w is the single
example, suppose that the extension of “who” in a possi- proposition that Martha runs and Henry runs and no one
ble world w is the set {Martha, Henry, George, Nancy}. else runs. Groenendijk and Stokhof ’s approach is some-
The extension of “Who runs?” in w is then the set of times called a partition theory. This is because on their
propositions {·Martha runsÒ, ·Henry runsÒ, ·George view the intension of an interrogative partitions the set of
runsÒ, ·Nancy runsÒ}. (Remember that each of these possible worlds into jointly exhaustive, nonoverlapping
propositions is itself an indicative sentence intension or a subsets, one for each possible complete answer. One
set of possible worlds.) Hamblin is aware that this advantage of this model is that it captures the apparent
approach is a departure from his own third postulate, fact that if Nancy knows who runs, she knows both who
since there is no requirement here that sets of answers be runs and who does not run. For example, if George does
exhaustive nor that answers themselves be mutually not run, and Nancy does not know it, then it seems that
exclusive. The extension of the yes/no interrogative “Is it Nancy does not know who runs, even if she knows that
the case that p?” in a world w is the set consisting of the Martha and Henry run. For Groenendijk and Stokhof,
proposition that p and its negation. For example, the this is captured by the fact that “Nancy knows who runs”
extension of “Does Martha run?” in w is {·Martha runsÒ, is true just in case Nancy knows the complete answer to
·Martha does not runÒ}. the question “Who runs?” For Karttunen, all that is
Perhaps the best-known approach to interrogatives is required for the truth of “Nancy knows who runs” is that
due to Lauri Karttunen. Karttunen’s account is similar to Nancy knows all the true propositions of the form ·X
Hamblin’s except that Karttunen requires that each mem- runsÒ. She need not know any of the true propositions of
ber of the extension of an interrogative be true. In other the form ·X does not runÒ.
words, on Karttunen’s approach, the intension of an A feature shared by all three approaches is that they
interrogative is a function from possible worlds to sets of assign contents to interrogatives that are distinct from
true answers. Suppose that in w only Martha and Henry those for indicatives. The content of an expression is its
run. For Karttunen, the extension of “Who runs?” in w is intension. This means that for Hamblin, Karttunen, and
the set {·Martha runsÒ, ·Henry runsÒ}. Similarly, the Groenendijk and Stokhof, the contents of interrogatives
extension of “Does Martha run?” is the singleton set are not propositions. Rather, they are functions from pos-
{·Martha runsÒ}. Karttunen argues that the advantage of sible worlds to sets of propositions (Hamblin, Karttunen)
his approach over Hamblin’s is that’ his approach pro- or single propositions (Groenendijk and Stokhof). These
vides a simpler account of the semantics of question- functions can be thought of as properties of propositions.
embedding verbs like “knows,” as in sentences such as Thus, for Hamblin, the content of an interrogative is the
“Nancy knows who runs.” It is widely assumed that the property of being an answer to that interrogative (where
content of the embedded interrogative “who runs” is answers can be incomplete), for Karttunen it is the prop-

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36 • 2nd edition
 appendix: REDUCTIONISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

erty of being a true (possibly incomplete) answer, and for Hausser, Roland. “The Syntax and Semantics of English
Groenendijk and Stokhof it is the property of being a Mood.” In Questions and Answers, edited by Ferenc Kiefer,
complete and true answer. 97–158. Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1983.
Hintikka, Jaakko. “The Semantics of Questions and the
As noted earlier, the framework of Montague seman- Questions of Semantics.” Acta Philosophica Fennica 28 (4)
tics faces difficulties arising from its identification of (1976): 1–200.
propositions with sets of possible worlds. Because they Frege, Gottlob. “On Sense and Reference.” In Translations from
are set within this framework, all three of these accounts the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, edited by Peter
of interrogatives face similar problems. For example, the Geach and Max Black, 56–78. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1970.
contents of “Does 5 + 7 = 12?” and “Is first-order logic Frege, Gottlob. “Thoughts.” In his Collected Papers on
Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy, edited by Brian
undecidable?” turn out to be identical on all three
McGuinness, 351–372. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1984.
accounts. Philosophers have responded to the problems
Karttunen, Lauri. “Syntax and Semantics of Questions.”
for possible-worlds accounts of propositions by searching Linguistics and Philosophy 1 (1977): 3–44.
for more fine-grained entities, such as structured propo- Lewis, David. “General Semantics.” Synthese 22 (1970): 18–67.
sitions, to serve as the contents of indicatives. Whether or Searle, John. Speech Acts. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
not similarly fine-grained interrogative contents can be University Press, 1969.
found is a question that is currently being explored. Searle, John. Expression and Meaning. Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 1979.
See also Aristotle; Carnap, Rudolf; Explanation; Mackie, Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. New York:
John Leslie; Non-Truth-Conditional Meaning; Presup- Macmillan, 1953.
position; Prior, Arthur Norman; Propositions; Schlick, Peter W. Hanks (2005)
Moritz; Strawson, Peter Frederick; Why.

Bibliography
Åqvist, Lennart. A New Approach to the Logical Theory of
reductionism in the
Interrogatives. Uppsala, Sweden: Filosofiska Föreningen, philosophy of mind
1965.
Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Reduction can be understood in a loose or in a strict
Harvard University Press, 1962. sense. In the loose sense, entities (or expressions) of a
Belnap, Nuel. “Declaratives Are Not Enough.” Philosophical
given type are reduced if they refer to “nothing over and
Studies 59 (1990): 1–30.
above” other entities (expressions) that we consider well
Belnap, Nuel. “Questions and Answers in Montague
Grammar.” In Processes, Beliefs, and Questions, edited by established. This is consistent with the conclusion that
Stanley Peters and Esa Saarinen, 165–198. Dordrecht, the reduced entities are among the posits of a mistaken
Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1982. world view and thus have no place in our ontology, and it
Bromberger, Sylvain. On What We Know We Don’t Know. is also consistent with the conclusion that the reduced
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
entities are conserved among other accepted, better estab-
Cresswell, Max. Logics and Languages. London: Methuen, 1973.
Davidson, Donald. “Truth and Meaning.” Synthese 17 (1967):
lished or understood entities. In the first case we have
304–323. elimination, and proposing this for entities of a given kind
Ginzburg, Jonathan. “Interrogatives: Questions, Facts, and makes us eliminativists about those entities. In the second
Dialogue.” In The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic case we have reduction in the strict sense, and proposing
Theory, edited by Shalom Lappin, 385–422. Oxford, U.K.: this for a given kind makes us reductionists (sometimes
Blackwell, 1996.
called “conservative” or “retentive” reductionists). Reduc-
Groenendijk, Jeroen, and Martin Stokhof. “Questions.” In
Handbook of Logic and Language, edited by Johan van tionist projects can also be semantic or theoretical. A
Benthem and Alice ter Meulen, 1055–1124. Cambridge, MA: semantic reduction attempts to show that items belong-
MIT Press, 1997. ing to a certain class of expressions are semantically
Hamblin, Charles L. “Questions.” Australasian Journal of equivalent to—that is, definable in terms of—another
Philosophy 36 (1958): 159–168.
class of expressions. A theoretical reduction aims at
Hamblin, Charles L. “Questions in Montague English.”
Foundations of Language 10 (1973): 41–53. showing that a given scientific theory can be fully sub-
Harrah, David. Communication: A Logical Model. Cambridge, sumed under (that is, derivable from) another more basic
MA: MIT Press, 1963. theory.

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appendix: REDUCTIONISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

types of mind-body including mental expressions to be meaningful they have

reductionism to be translatable without loss of content into sentences
In the philosophy of mind, reductionist projects come in including just behavioral and other physical expressions.
all formats. A reductionist effort will typically be directed This implies that mental expressions should be defined in
against the claim that the mental has some real, independ- terms of behavioral and other physical expressions. Fol-
ent status. But this claim has a range of versions that go lowing the model of definitions of dispositional proper-
from the mind being a nonphysical/biological object, ties in the natural sciences, these definitions standardly
to mental properties constituting a level of sui generis prop- include conditional sentences showing dispositions to
erties of organisms that is in some sense autonomous behave under given environmental circumstances includ-
vis-à-vis the physical/biological properties, to mental ing stimuli. So logical behaviorism is a form of semantic
expressions possessing meanings that cannot be accounted reduction of the mental.
for in purely behavioral/physical terminology. Logical behaviorism has been largely abandoned for
The substance dualist assertion influential until the several reasons, one of them being its inability to meet the
twentieth century—that the (human) mind is an imma- positivist standards in its own reductionist strategy. Most
terial object or substance—has faced widespread philo- mental terms cannot be associated with a single behav-
sophical criticism of an eliminativist type: “Immaterial ioral disposition; there is no single behavioral manifesta-
mind” or “soul,” like “élan vital,” “elf,” or “chupacabras,” tion of, say, “believing in God” or “loving one’s country.”
are ghostly expressions that come from mistaken frame- If mental terms denote behavioral dispositions, these dis-
works or conceptions and do not refer to anything. An positions must be “multitracked,” and this would make
influential formulation of this view is Gilbert Ryle’s claim behavioral definitions of mental terms enormously com-
that the immaterial entity posited by substance dualism is plex. This makes the behaviorist project of defining men-
the result of a category mistake in which we reify our tal terms a highly dubious project.
mental activities by placing a ghost in charge of our body. Moreover, it has been convincingly argued that even
Another major reason for the eliminativist consensus in simple cases a purely behavioral definition just is not
about nonmaterial substances is the inability of a non- possible—unless one uses some mentalistic term in the
physical substance to causally interact with the physical definition, which of course undermines the behaviorist
world, because of conservation of energy considerations enterprise. The fall of behaviorism as the accepted reduc-
and because of the difficulty of making sense of bridging tive view led to a different reductionist approach. In the
mechanisms between the two ontologically diverse 1950s U. T. Place, J. C. C. Smart, and Herbert Feigl pro-
realms. Absent causal interaction, the argument goes, posed the mind-body identity theory, a simple and
postulating souls seems pointless if not absurd. appealing view in line with the surge of neural research.
Eliminating mental substances, however, does not According to the view, while there is no meaning equiva-
directly lead to a reductive view of the mental. In the lence between mental and neural terminology (thus no
twentieth century substance materialism or physicalism semantic reduction) mental states are just states of the
has been the orthodoxy in tune with modern science, but brain or the nervous system. The claim is one of numeri-
“the reducibility of mind” has remained as a philosophi- cal identity between types of states or properties and as
cal issue of first importance. It is only that the focus of the such it involves ontological reduction in the strict sense.
debate has now shifted to the ontological or semantic A main line of argument for the identity theory is
autonomy of mental properties or predicates. The first sys- based on ontological simplicity, a standard strategy for
tematic attempt to fully reduce the mental to the physical ontological reduction. Once we have observed a pervasive
comes from logical behaviorism, a position championed set of systematic correlations between mental occur-
by Rudolf Carnap, Carl Hempel, and Gilbert Ryle in the rences and neural events, the argument goes, we should
1930s and 1940s. The view has doctrinal connections to conclude that the mental and the neural are identical. For
methodological behaviorism, the dominant methodology while mind-brain correlations are compatible with a
of psychology in the first half of the twentieth century. range of views about the mind, simplicity dictates that we
Based on the logical positivist’s verification criterion should not multiply entities that are not going to enhance
according to which the content of an expression is just the our explanatory power. The view is also supported by
expressions’ verification conditions and on the assump- considerations of theoretical reduction. The history of
tion that these conditions have to be publicly observable, science offers countless cases of predicates of everyday
logical behaviorism argues that in order for sentences frameworks being reduced to predicates of explanatorily

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
38 • 2nd edition
 appendix: REDUCTIONISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

richer scientific frameworks (a standard example is the the sciences (neuroscience or cognitive science) that have
reduction of temperature [of gases] to molecular kinetic the task of explaining human behavior. This radical view
energy). Given the advances in the neurosciences we have proposes to eliminate mental terminology for the pur-
good reason to think a neural reduction of mentality is poses of scientific theorizing and can go as far as predict-
going to be one more item in a chain of successful theo- ing that a full replacement is possible even for everyday
retical reductions. This theoretical reduction would pro- purposes. The analogy with concepts in the history of sci-
ceed by establishing “bridge laws” between mental and ence that were found to be fully misguided and therefore
neural predicates and then reducing all generalizations replaced plays an important role in the argumentation in
involving the mental to the more encompassing laws of favor of eliminativism. This view has been found by most
neuroscience. philosophers to be unacceptably extreme since it means
that an essential component of our conceptual frame-
Of the many attacks raised against the identity the-
work has to be given up. Also, some have argued that the
ory, two have aimed at the core of its reductive stance.
view is incoherent since the view cannot be expressed
Donald Davidson has argued against type-identification
without the very (mental) concepts it rejects (since in the
by claiming that there cannot be laws connecting the
very act of affirming their view, the eliminativist is
mental and the physical (this is called anomalism of the
expressing a belief, something that, according to their
mental, an essential part of Davidson’s nonreductive view
view, does not exist).
discussed below). Mental states, in particular intentional
states such as beliefs and desires, are governed by princi-
ples of rationality without which attribution of mentality types of mind-body
would be impossible. Laws connecting the physical and anti-reductionisms and the
the mental would constrain the mental by the principles reductivists’ reactions
of physical theory and thereby undermine its own pecu- Starting in the late 1960s, the problems plaguing reduc-
liar rationality constraints. tive views let to the establishment of nonreductive physi-
Another highly influential argument against the calism as a reigning orthodoxy in the philosophy of
identity theory is the “multiple realization” argument ini- mind. Its two most salient versions are anomalous
tially developed by Hilary Putnam. The identity theory monism and functionalism. Functionalism in fact has
requires a single physical property be the reduction base been the predominant view into the twenty-first century.
for each mental state. But surely the same mental state Davidson’s anomalous monism is a physicalist view
can occur in organisms with diverse neurophysiological that eschews reduction. From the principles that every
structures. Nonhuman animals can be in pain and we can singular causal relation needs to be backed by strict laws
conceive of noncarbon based species and perhaps even (nomological character of causation) and that there are
artificial creatures being in pain. Mental states, Putnam no “strict” laws about mental properties (mental anomal-
argues, can be implemented or “realized” in widely ism), together with the assumption that at least some
diverse physical/chemical structures and so there is no mental events causally interact with physical events,
unifying reduction base or structure for them. (This mul- Davidson concludes that mental events must be identical
tiple realization objection is also at the core of the nonre- with physical events. According to Davidson, this pro-
ductive functionalist approach discussed below.) vides causal efficacy to mental events, even though there
An alternative, eliminativist stance was defended in are no strict psychological laws governing them, and it
the 1960s by Richard Rorty and Paul Feyerabend and has also leads to a nonreductive view of the mental because
as more recent versions the views of Patricia Churchland, there are no laws connecting mental properties with
Paul Churchland, and Stephen Stich. Learning from the physical properties.
failure of the identity theory to establish type-type iden- Many critics have argued that Davidson’s view leaves
tities between mental and neuro-chemical properties, the mental with no causal role to play. Davidson is enti-
eliminativism claims that the mental expressions used in tled to affirm that a mental event causes a physical event
our everyday psychological talk have no more reality or (by being identical to a physical—probably neural—
significance than “phlogiston” and “caloric fluids,” terms event). Now, an event instantiates a law—required for
of superseded and discarded scientific theories. It is causation—in virtue of some of its properties, or, in other
highly unlikely that these concepts of vernacular psychol- words, in virtue of falling under some event-type. Since
ogy could be sharpened into concepts that will be useful anomalism entails that there are no laws involving men-
to the sciences and do not correspond to the concepts of tal properties or event-types, it is the physical (neural)

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appendix: REDUCTIONISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

properties of the cause event that are efficacious in the of the physical and accepting a strong sense of depend-
production of the effect. The fact that the cause event falls ence of the mental upon the physical. Thus, every physi-
under a mental type, or the fact that the event has mental cal event, including human behavior, has to have a
properties, is completely irrelevant for the event’s causing complete physical cause. The mental event that is sup-
the effect. Thus, critics conclude, Davidson’s anomalous posed to be the cause of behavior is preempted of its
monism renders the mental epiphenomenal, making it an causal role by the physical state upon which it depends
easy target for elimination. and which is the required physical cause of behavior. The
The functionalist view of the mental defended by upshot is that we cannot attribute a causal role to the
mental unless it is identified with the physical, trans-
Putnam and Jerry Fodor, among others, starts with the
forming nonreducible mental properties into epiphe-
anti-reductivist stance included in the multiple realization
nomena. And epiphenomena, Kim thinks, should be cut
argument. Its positive view includes the claim that mental
from our ontology because they serve no purpose.
properties are functional properties, rather than physi-
cal/neural properties as claimed by the identity theory. On A common theme across several discussions so far
the functionalist view, for something to have a mental has revolved around whether the mental, on one view or
property M is for it to instantiate some physical property another, has autonomous causal powers. It is not obvious
P that has the right causal connections with inputs, behav- whether causal reduction or elimination implies full
ioral outputs and other mental states. Thus, a mental ontological reduction or elimination, that is, whether
property is a second-order property of having a (first- putative entities that are causally inefficacious or epiphe-
order) property that fulfills a certain specified causal spec- nomenal can still be bona fide entities. To achieve full
ification. A first-order property meeting the causal reduction we need the extra assumption that independ-
specification is called a “realizer” or “realizing property” of ent causal powers are necessary for the very reality of an
the second-order functional property. For any given men- entity. This view has been explicitly defended by Kim and
tal property there will likely be indefinitely many realizing Sidney Shoemaker, among others, and is largely the
properties satisfying its causal specification. orthodox view. A negative answer (supported for instance
by Elliott Sober and Marcelo Sabatés) makes room for
The reductionist can challenge the functionalist by
epiphenomenalism as a nonreductive option about the
suggesting that the mental property be identified with the
mind.
disjunction of realizers. Settling this challenge would
require a metaphysical discussion on the nature of dis- In the first decade of the twenty-first century reduc-
junctive properties. A more powerful challenge raised by tionism has gained some momentum. Kim has developed
Kim is the claim that since having the functional mental an influential functionalist view of reduction with ties to
property implies having one of its realizing properties and the version of functionalism defended by David Lewis in
since the casual powers of the instance of a functional the 1970s. Kim’s position, in agreement with his criticism
property must be considered to be inherited from the of traditional functionalism á la Putnam, claims that
causal powers of the realizing property, mental properties “functionalizing” a property provides a form of theoreti-
have no autonomous causal powers and so are epiphe- cal reduction that does not require bridge laws and fully
nomenal. To the reply that it is the mental kind and not explains its reductive relationship on the base property.
the instance that has its own causal powers Kim answers The view implies that on account of its multiple diverse
that the sheer heterogeneity and diversity of the realizers realizability, no mental property has sufficient causal/
of a functionally conceived mental property deprives the nomological homogeneity to count as a genuine, pro-
property of the kind of causal-nomological unity required jectible property useful in science. Instead, it proposes
for nomological and causally efficacious properties. that we eschew talk of mental properties in favor of men-
tal predicates or concepts that at most we get a pragmati-
All versions of nonreductive physicalism (including cally useful mental predicate. In making this move,
anomalous monism and traditional functionalism) are functional reductionism appears to turn itself into a form
targets of the exclusion argument initially put forth by of eliminativism with regard to mental properties.
Norman Malcolm and developed by Jaegwon Kim. Phys-
icalists, even those in the nonreductive camp, accept the See also Alexander, Samuel; Anomalous Monism; Broad,
primacy of the physical not only in terms of substance Charlie Dunbar; Davidson, Donald; Eliminative Mate-
monism but also in terms of physical properties being rialism, Eliminativism; Emergence; Frege, Gottlob;
primary vis-à-vis mental properties. This commitment Knowledge Argument; Logic, History of; Metaphysics,
includes, according to Kim, accepting the causal closure History of; Mind-Body Problem; Moral Realism; Mor-

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
40 • 2nd edition
 appendix: SOPHIA

gan, C. Lloyd; Multiple Realizability; Phenomenalism; sophia

Philosophy of Mind; Philosophy of Science, History of;
Philosophy of Science, Problems of; Physicalism; Prop- The Greek word sophia properly refers to cleverness or
erties; Qualia; Reduction; Russell, Bertrand Arthur skill in handicraft and the productive arts, such as car-
William; Set Theory; Supervenience. pentry, music, singing, poetry, chariot driving, medicine,
and even divination. In short it tends to pick out the sort
of excellence in a particular domain that derives from
Bibliography experience and expertise. In early applications of the term
Block, Ned. “Antireductionism Slaps Back.” Philosophical
to “wise men,” for example the Seven Sages, the term
Perspectives 11 (1997): 107–132.
Carnap, Rudolf. “Psychology in Physical Language” (1931). referred primarily to the sorts of skills that would make
Translated in Logical Positivism, edited by A. J. Ayer. for expertise in matters of common life and so was virtu-
Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959. ally synonymous with practical wisdom or prudence
Churchland, Patricia. Neurophilosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT (phronêsis). By the late fifth century BCE, however, the
Press, 1986. term was coming to have a more specialized meaning
Churchland, Paul. “Eliminative Materialism and the having to do with technical skill and the expertise derived
Propositional Attitudes.” Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981).
from expert training and experience; that is, it encom-
Davidson, Donald. “Mental Events.” In Essays on Actions and
Events. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. passed both a knowledge base and an intimate familiarity
Fodor, Jerry. “Special Sciences, or the Disunity of Science as a with the applications of that knowledge base. The
Working Hypothesis.” Synthese 28 (1974): 97–115. Sophists in particular claimed to have this sort of knowl-
Fodor, Jerry. “Special Sciences: Still Autonomous after All edgeable expertise in many different areas, from medicine
These Years.” Philosophical Perspectives 11 (1997): 149–163. to mathematics, oratory, and political science. Indeed, the
Hempel, Carl G. “The Logical Analysis of Psychology” (1935). name “sophistes” simply means someone who makes a
In Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, vol. 1, edited by Ned
Block, 14–23. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, profession of the practice and teaching of such sorts of
1980. knowledge.
Jackson, F. “Epiphenomenal Qualia.” Philosophical Quarterly 32 In Plato, “sophia” clearly has more philosophical
(1982).
connotations. Already in the early, Socratic dialogues we
Kim, Jaegwon. Mind in a Physical World. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1998. find an attempt to draw a distinction between the kinds
Kim, Jaegwon. Supervenience and Mind. Cambridge, U.K. and of “expertise” that Sophists had and the sort of genuine
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. reflective wisdom modeled by Socrates. For Plato, the for-
Lewis, David. “Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications.” mer is clearly mere logical chicanery used to generate lin-
Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50 (1972): 249–258. guistic puzzles for the purpose of winning debates (see,
Place, U. T. “Is Consciousness a Brain Process?” British Journal for example, Socrates’ line of reasoning in the Gorgias
of Psychology 47 (1956): 44–50.
464b–465e). By the time Plato wrote the Theaetetus, he
Putnam, Hilary. “The Nature of Mental States.” In Mind,
Language and Reality. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge had clearly settled on an antisophistic conception of
University Press, 1978. knowledge and expertise that takes the life and method-
Rorty, Richard. “Mind-Body Identity, Privacy and Categories.” ology of Socrates as its model, though even in that
Review of Metaphysics 19 (1965). arguably late dialogue there is no clear line of demarca-
Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind. New York: Harper and tion drawn between sophia and episteme (knowledge).
Row, 1949.
Since, for Plato, all knowledge, whether of mathematical
Sabatés, Marcelo. “Being without Doing.” Topoi 22 (2003).
objects or normative concepts such as the virtues,
Shoemaker, Sidney. “Causality and Properties.” In Identity,
Cause and Mind, edited by S. Shoemaker. Cambridge, U.K.: involves cognitive grasp of purely formal entities, there is
Cambridge University Press, 1984. less demand in his epistemology for a clear and concise
Smart, J.C.C. “Sensations and Brain Processes.” Philosophical differentiation between the two types of mental states and
Review 68 (1959): 141–156. their proper objects.
Sober, Elliot. “A Plea for Pseudo-Processes.” Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly 66 (1985). Aristotle, by contrast, drew rather sharp distinctions
Sosa, Ernest. “Mind-Body Interaction and Supervenient not only between episteme and sophia, but also among
Causation.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 9 (1984). those rational faculties and phronêsis (practical wisdom),
Stich, Stephen. From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science. techne (art, skill), and nous (intelligence, understanding).
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983. Yet the relation of sophia to the other rational faculties is
Marcelo H. Sabatés (2005) somewhat specialized. In the Nicomachean Ethics (VI.7,

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
2nd edition • 41
Random documents with unrelated
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Postscripts
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
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Title: Postscripts

Author: O. Henry

Author of introduction, etc.: Florence Stratton

Release date:
April 2, 2020 [eBook #61734]
Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Vince Rice

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POSTSCRIPTS

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Postscripts
by
O. Henry
With an Introduction
by
Florence Stratton

Publishers
Harper & Brothers
New York and London
MCMXXIII

Postscripts
Copyright, 1923, by Houston Post
Copyright, 1923, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the U. S. A.
 to

mr. roy g. watson

 Table of Contents
1. Foreword
2. The Sensitive Colonel Jay
3. A Matter of Loyalty
4. Taking No Chances
5. The Other Side of It
6. Journalistically Impossible
7. The Power of Reputation
8. The Distraction of Grief
9. A Sporting Interest
10. Had a Use for It
11. The Old Landmark
12. A Personal Insult
13. Toddlekins
14. Reconciliation
15. Buying a Piano
16. Too Late
17. Nothing to Say
18. “Goin Home Fur Christmas”
19. Just a Little Damp
20. Her Mysterious Charm
21. Convinced
22. His Dilemma
23. Something for Baby
24. Some Day
25. A Green Hand
26. A Righteous Outburst
27. Getting at the Facts
28. Just for a Change
29. Too Wise
30. A Fatal Error
31. Prompt
32. The Rake-Off
33. The Telegram
34. An Opportunity Declined
35. Correcting a Great Injustice
36. A Startling Demonstration
37. Leap Year Advice
38. After Supper
39. His Only Opportunity
40. Getting Acquainted
41. Answers to Inquiries
42. City Perils
43. Hush Money
44. Relieved
45. No Time to Lose
46. A Villainous Trick
47. A Forced March
48. Book Reviews
49. A Conditional Pardon
50. Inconsistency
51. Bill Nye
52. To a Portrait
53. A Guarded Secret
54. A Pastel
55. Jim
56. Board and Ancestors
57. An X-Ray Fable
58. A Universal Favorite
59. Spring
60. The Sporting Editor on Culture
61. A Question of Direction
62. The Old Farm
63. Willing to Compromise
64. Ridiculous
65. Guessed Everything Else
66. The Prisoner of Zembla
 67. Lucky Either Way
68. The “Bad Man”
69. A Slight Mistake
70. Delayed
71. A Good Story Spoiled
72. Revenge
73. No Help for It
74. Rileys Luck
75. “Not So Much a Tam Fool”
76. A Guess-Proof Mystery Story
77. Futility
78. The Wounded Veteran
79. Her Ruse
80. Why Conductors Are Morose
81. “Only to Lie—”
82. The Pewee
83. The Sunday Excursionist
84. Decoration Day
85. Charge of the White Brigade
86. An Inspiration
87. Coming to Him
88. His Pension
89. The Winner
90. Hungry Henry’s Ruse
91. A Proof of Love
92. One Consolation
93. An Unsuccessful Experiment
94. Superlatives
95. By Easy Stages
96. Even Worse
97. The Shock
98. The Cynic
99. Speaking of Big Winds
100. Unknown Title
101. An Original Idea
102. Calculations
103. A Valedictory
104. Solemn Thoughts
105. Explaining It
106. Her Failing
107. A Disagreement
108. An E for a Knee
109. The Unconquerable
110. An Expensive Veracity
111. Grounds for Uneasiness
112. It Covers Errors
113. Recognition
114. His Doubt
115. A Cheering Thought
116. What It Was
117. Vanity
118. Identified
119. The Apple
120. How It Started
121. Red Conlin’s Eloquence
122. Why He Hesitated
123. Turkish Questions
124. Somebody Lied
125. Marvelous
126. The Confession of a Murderer
127. “Get Off the Earth”
128. The Stranger’s Appeal
129. The Good Boy
130. The Colonel’s Romance
131. A Narrow Escape
132. A Years Supply
133. Eugene Field
134. Slightly Mixed
135. Knew What Was Needed
136. Some Ancient News Notes
137. A Sure Method
138. Endnotes
 Foreword
It is probable that with the presentation of these, among the earliest
of the writings of William Sidney Porter (O. Henry), there is nothing
left to be added to the total of his work, and that they will close, as
they in a large measure opened the career of America’s greatest
short story writer.
Aside from the intrinsic merit in the newspaper writings of O.
Henry which are here given, they have the additional fascination of
disclosing to all who have read and know O. Henry from his maturer
work the budding of his genius, the first outcroppings of that style,
that vivid drawing of character, that keen sense of humor, and that
wondrous understanding of human nature which afterward marked
him as one of the world’s geniuses. It is as though one might go
back and watch with eyes that have seen its fullest development and
matured beauty, the forming and unfolding of a rose; as though one
who has listened to the plaudits of centuries might go back four
hundred years and see and study Raphael as he began to wield the
brush which subsequently wrought such wonderful magic.
Having a high appreciation of the genius of O. Henry, the compiler
took occasion while spending a year in Austin, Texas, where O.
Henry had lived, to ask his friends and neighbors about him. Among
them was Mr. Ed McLean, secretary to the railroad commission, a
personal friend of O. Henry’s, who told her about the column O.
Henry had conducted on the Houston Post. He thought O. Henry
must have worked for the Post some time in the latter part of 1896
to the fall of 1897.
A visit to the Houston Post office and a search through the files of
that period were without results. But a call on Mr. A. E. Clarkson,
who was with the Post then and who is now business manager of
the Post, was more successful. Mr. Clarkson looked up the old
records in the business office, showing when O. Henry received pay
checks, which served as a guide to pages of a year earlier, where the
altogether distinctive touch of O. Henry proved that the goal was
reached. Here was found the same discernment, the same insight,
the same humor, the same style which runs through all his work like
a marked thread interwoven into a rare fabric. In many of the brief
paragraphs and short stories were found the idioplasm which in the
rich soil of his fuller experience grew into some of the masterpieces
of his later life.
Thus in the files of the Houston Post of the period between
October 18, 1895, and June 22, 1896, were found the writings which
make up this volume. It was characteristic of O. Henry’s modesty
that these were unsigned. They are published as they originally
appeared in “Tales of the Town,” “Postscripts and Pencillings,” and
“Some Postscripts,” under which titles O. Henry wrote at different
times during his association with the Post.
But the rediscovery of this work was not enough. To identify it as
beyond question of doubt as that of O. Henry was imperative. To
have offered these writings with less of precaution would have
savored of literary vandalism, if not sacrilege. This identification has
been made, and its sources are herewith given the reader as a part
of the introduction of this volume.
Here is an account by Mr. R. M. Johnston, who formerly controlled
the Houston Post, of how he gave O. Henry the job in which he was
first to demonstrate his remarkable story-telling gifts:

Houston, Texas, October 21, 1922.

Miss Florence Stratton,
Beaumont, Texas.
My dear Miss Stratton:
You asked me to write some incidents of O. Henry’s
connection with the Houston Post when I controlled that
newspaper and I am glad to comply with your request.
 The first thing I ever heard of Mr. Porter, whose writing name
was O. Henry, was when some one sent me a copy of the little
publication, “The Rolling Stone,” published in Austin. This was
sent me by Mr. Ed McLean, Secretary of the Railroad
Commission, a mutual friend of Mr. Porter and myself. Mr.
McLean made the suggestion that Porter would be worth
considering for a place as a writer on the Post. After reading
The Rolling Stone I made an appointment through Mr. McLean
with Mr. Porter, who was at that time an employe of one of the
banks at Austin. Subsequently I met him and made a contract
with him to join the Post editorial staff which he did in a short
time. While on the paper his duties were somewhat of a varied
nature. He had, however, a column on the editorial page daily
filled with witticism, quaint little stories, etc. He also did some
special assignment work in a very magnificent way.
One morning while sitting at my desk he came to my office in
his usual quiet, dignified way and laid a piece of cardboard on
my table with the remark, “I don’t suppose you will want this,
but I thought I would let you look at it,” and he walked out.
After he had gone, I picked up the cardboard and found it was
an unusual cartoon. I was so struck with it that I took it to his
room and remarked, “Porter, did you do this?” He looked up
with a faint smile, and said “Yes.” I said to him that I did not
know that he was a cartoonist, and his reply was that he did
that kind of work for his own amusement at odd times.
To make a long story short, we were in the midst of a very
warm political campaign in Texas and during the campaign he
drew some of the most magnificent cartoons that I have ever
seen in print anywhere. They attracted attention, not only in
Texas, but were copied freely throughout the United States.
Mr. Porter was a lovely character and one of the brightest
men that I have ever come in contact with. He was modest,
almost to the fault of self-effacement. His leaving the Houston
Post was an irretrievable loss to the paper, but the means
 possibly of developing the greatest short story writer of this or
any other age.
Very sincerely your friend,
(Signed) R. M. Johnston.

A letter from former Governor Hobby of Texas, who worked with O.

Henry on the Post during the time that he was producing the
column:

Office of
W. P. HOBBY
Houston,
Texas.
502 Carter Building,
Houston, Texas.
October 10, 1922.
Miss Florence Stratton,
Beaumont, Texas.
My dear Miss Stratton:
In the first years of my employment by the Houston Post, O.
Henry, whose name was Sidney Porter, was a member of the
Post staff. As is well known, Mr. Porter began his daily
journalistic work as a special feature writer for the Houston Post
and the human interest and literary attractiveness of his writings
were a source of delight to Texas readers.
I enjoyed my acquaintance and association with Mr. Porter
while a youth in the business office of the Houston Post and not
only the stories that he would write, but those he would tell me,
made a deep impression on my mind.
Mr. Porter’s work was that of publishing a special feature
column, “Some Postscripts and Pencillings” on the editorial page
of the Post during 1895–96, and I think a reproduction of his
daily writings in that column, which then were followed by the
readers of the Texas newspaper readers of the nation.
 Yours very truly,
(Signed) W. P. Hobby.

Mr. A. E. Clarkson, secretary-treasurer of the Houston Post,

authenticates the O. Henry column from his personal knowledge.

Houston, Texas.
October 16, 1922.
Miss Florence Stratton,
2020 Harrison,
Beaumont, Texas.
My dear Miss Stratton:
In reply to your letter of October 15, I find that Mr. Porter,
afterward known as O. Henry, was on the payroll of the Houston
Post from October 1895 to June 1896.
During that time Mr. Porter wrote, and there was published
from time to time in the columns of the Post various articles
headed “Some Postscripts” and “Postscripts and Pencillings.”
The writer was also connected with the Post during this
period, being in the business office. He was personally
acquainted with Mr. Porter and knows of his own knowledge
that the articles headed as stated above were written by him.

Yours truly,
THE HOUSTON POST
(Signed) A. E. Clarkson,
Business Manager.

Neither the compilation, verification, nor publication of these

newspaper writings of O. Henry would have been possible without
the co-operation of Mr. Roy G. Watson, present proprietor and
publisher of the Houston Post, whose consent for their publication
has been generously given; and of Governor William P. Hobby,
Colonel R. M. Johnston, and Mr. A. E. Clarkson, all associated with
the Post during O. Henry’s employment, and to these, whose
attestation of authenticity of this work is herewith given, the
compiler is grateful. The doing of this work has been a labor of love,
and if the result is to add to the luster of O. Henry’s name the writer
shall have been repaid.
No pen is so facile as to add to or detract from the fame of William
Sidney Porter. The flame of his genius has been extinguished, but
what he wrought in a vast understanding of humanity will ever
illuminate American literature.
Florence Stratton.
April, 1923.

O. HENRY ON THE HOUSTON POST

With respect to O. Henry’s services, the Houston Post states as

follows:
Between musty covers of the Post files from October, 1895, to
July, 1896, are cross-sections of life drawn by a master artist;
vignettes as perfect and as beautiful as the finest Amsterdam
diamond. Only they are comparatively unknown because they have
been overshadowed by larger and more brilliant creations of the
same master hand.
Verses beautiful and appealing; description, touched by wonderful
imagery; dialogue, the lines of which sparkle with wit and
understanding of human frailties!
They make up O. Henry’s “Tales of the Town,” his “Postscripts and
Pencillings,” and his “Some Postscripts.” Save for the publication for
a brief space of The Rolling Stone, a rollicking sheet that was issued
irregularly over the period of several months, they represent the sum
total of O. Henry’s newspaper writings.
All too brief to suit lovers of O. Henry’s work, they nevertheless
betray the writer’s knack of getting at the heart and mind of his
fellow beings. They show him as well acquainted with the
newsdealer on the corner as with his favorite hotel clerk; as much at
home in talking with a puncher from the Panhandle as in conversing
with a drummer from St. Louis. Into them the master of the short
story managed to crowd uncanny description, insight into human
nature, and the highly dramatic.
O. Henry came to the Post at the invitation of its editor and his
first column appeared in the Post on October 18th entitled “Tales of
the Town.” The caption soon changed to “Postscripts and Pencillings”
and later still to “Some Postscripts.”
Some days a column of seven-point! Others only half a column.
Still others when “Some Postscripts” failed to appear at all.
But always, whatever the quantity, the quality of O. Henry’s output
remained at high level.
As in the later days in New York, O. Henry was exceedingly
modest and shy. He “took a little getting acquainted with” according
to tradition handed down. A quiet, unassuming chap, with eyes
which seemingly saw little and yet took in everything, the new
member of the staff soon acquired a reputation of being the best
listener in town. In addition, he was a painstakingly accurate
reporter and observer.
O. Henry came to the Post under his real name of Sidney Porter,
but it was as “The Post Man” that he referred to himself in his
writings. The pronoun “I” seldom appeared.
According to friends, O. Henry, or Sidney Porter, possessed the
most valuable trick of the interviewer. When the telling of a story
lagged momentarily, he would insert just the right question in just
the right place. And this show of interest never failed to stimulate
the teller to a fresh spurt.
Favorite haunts in Houston were the lobby of the old Hutchins
House, the Grand Central Depot, and the street corners. He used to
sit for hours in the hotel, his eyes playing over the faces of guests.
Mayhap he was studying types, who knows? Certain, though, it is
that hotel attaches grew to love the author of “Some Postscripts,”
and they frequently went out of their way to send him word of
stories on the old hotel’s ancient register.
 At the Grand Central Depot—Grand Central then as now—“The
Post Man” was loved by all who knew him. From station master to
porter, from superintendent to telegraph operator, the writer of
“Some Postscripts” got help and inspiration for many of his brilliant
anecdotes and human interest stories.
Then, as later in New York, it was the man in the street who
claimed his chief attention. Feted though he was by some who
thought to patronize him, “The Post Man” refused to allow his head
to be turned by admiration. He continued the even tenor of his way,
writing the things which most appealed to him.
Abundant and spontaneous as was O. Henry’s literary output, his
jokes were never barbed. There is no record of anyone ever coming
to the Post editorial room to “lick” the author of “Some Postscripts.”
Rather there came to him many picturesque figures of the
Southwest, eager to make the acquaintance of the rising young
“colyumist.”
At a time when bicycles and bloomers were agitating the news
writers of the country, O. Henry took delight in caricaturing the
customs. His sketches of bloomered, career-seeking women and
timid husbands are at once a delight and a revelation.
O. Henry’s brilliant style, together with his never-flagging wit and
his seemingly inexhaustible fund of anecdote quickly captured his
contemporaries among Texas newspaper men. “The man, woman, or
child,” wrote an exchange in 1896, “who pens ‘Some Postscripts’ in
the Houston Post, is a weird genius, and ought to be captured and
put on exhibition.”
It was soon after this that O. Henry was advised to go to New
York, where his ability would command a higher remuneration. But
after making all preparations to try his wings in the great metropolis,
Fate intervened and O. Henry went instead to South America.
The last columns of O. Henry’s brilliant paragraphs appeared in
the Post of June 22, 1896.
 Postscripts

The Sensitive Colonel Jay

The sun is shining brightly, and the birds are singing merrily in the
trees! All nature wears an aspect of peace and harmony. On the
porch of a little hotel in a neighboring county a stranger is sitting on
a bench waiting for the train, quietly smoking his pipe.
Presently a tall man wearing boots and a slouch hat, steps to the
door of the hotel from the inside with a six-shooter in his hand and
fires. The man on the bench rolls over with a loud yell as the bullet
grazes his ear. He springs to his feet in amazement and wrath and
shouts:
“What are you shooting at me for?”
The tall man advances with his slouch hat in his hand, bows and
says: “Beg pardon, sah. I am Colonel Jay, sah, and I understood you
to insult me, sah, but I see I was mistaken. Am very glad I did not
kill you, sah.”
“I insult you—how?” inquires the stranger. “I never said a word.”
“You tapped on the bench, sah, as much as to say you was a
woodpeckah, sah, and I belong to the other faction. I see now that
you was only knockin’ the ashes from you’ pipe, sah. I ask yo’
pahdon, and that you will come in and have a drink with me, sah, to
show that you do not harbor any ill feeling after a gentleman
apologizes to you, sah.”

A Matter of Loyalty
Two men were talking at the Grand Central depot yesterday, and one
of them was telling about a difficulty he had recently been engaged
in.
“He said I was the biggest liar ever heard in Texas,” said the man,
“and I jumped on him and blacked both his eyes in about a minute.”
“That’s right,” said the other man, “a man ought to resent an
imputation of that sort right away.”
“It wasn’t exactly that,” said the first speaker, “but Tom Achiltree is
a second cousin of mine, and I won’t stand by and hear any man
belittle him.”

Taking No Chances
“Let’s see,” said the genial manager as he looked over the atlas.
“Here’s a town one might strike on our way back. Antananarivo, the
capital of Madagascar, is a city of 100,000 inhabitants.”
“That sounds promising,” said Mark Twain, running his hands
through his busy curls, “read some more about it.”
“The people of Madagascar,” continued the genial manager,
reading from his book, “are not a savage race and few of the tribes
could be classed as barbarian people. There are many native orators
among them, and their language abounds in figures, metaphors, and
parables, and ample evidence is given of the mental ability of the
inhabitants.”
“Sounds like it might be all right,” said the humorist, “read some
more.”
“Madagascar is the home,” read the manager, “of an enormous
bird called the epyornis, that lays an egg 15½ by 9½ in. in size,
weighing from ten to twelve pounds. These eggs—”
“Never mind reading any more,” said Mark Twain. “We will not go
to Madagascar.”
 The Other Side of It
There is an item going the rounds of the press relative to the well-
known curiosity of woman. It states that if a man brings a
newspaper home out of which a piece has been clipped his wife will
never rest until she has procured another paper to see what it was
that had been cut out.
A Houston man was quite impressed with the idea, so he resolved
to make the experiment. One night last week he cut out of the day’s
paper a little two-inch catarrh cure advertisement, and left the
mutilated paper on the table where his wife would be sure to read it.
He picked up a book and pretended to be interested, while he
watched her glance over the paper. When she struck the place
where the piece had been cut, she frowned and seemed to be
thinking very seriously.
However, she did not say anything about it and the man was in
doubt as to whether her curiosity had been aroused or not.
The next day when he came home to dinner she met him at the
door with flashing eyes and an ominous look about her jaw.
“You miserable, deceitful wretch!” she cried. “After living all these
years with you to find that you have been basely deceiving me and
leading a double life, and bringing shame and sorrow upon your
innocent family! I always thought you were a villain and a reprobate,
and now I have positive proof of the fact.”
“Wh—wha—what do you mean, Maria?” he gasped. “I haven’t
been doing anything.”
“Of course you are ready to add lying to your catalogue of vices.
Since you pretend not to understand me—look at this.”
She held up to his gaze a complete paper of the issue of the day
before.
“You thought to hide your actions from me by cutting out part of
the paper, but I was too sharp for you.”
 “Why that was just a little joke, Maria. I didn’t think you would
take it seriously. I—”
“Do you call that a joke, you shameless wretch?” she cried,
spreading the paper before him.
The man looked and read in dismay. In cutting out the catarrh
advertisement he had never thought to see what was on the other
side of it, and this was the item that appeared, to one reading the
other side of the page, to have been clipped:

A gentleman about town, who stands well in business circles,

had a high old time last night in a certain restaurant where he
entertained at supper a couple of chorus ladies belonging to the
comic opera company now in the city. Loud talking and breaking
of dishes attracted some attention, but the matter was
smoothed over, owing to the prominence of the gentleman
referred to.

“You call that a joke, do you, you old reptile,” shrieked the excited
lady. “I’m going home to mamma this evening and I’m going to stay
there. Thought you’d fool me by cutting it out, did you? You
sneaking, dissipated old snake you! I’ve got my trunk nicely packed
and I’m going straight home—don’t you come near me!”
“Maria,” gasped the bewildered man. “I swear I—”
“Don’t add perjury to your crimes, sir!”
The man tried unsuccessfully to speak three or four times, and
then grabbed his hat and ran downtown. Fifteen minutes later he
came back bringing two new silk dress patterns, four pounds of
caramels, and his bookkeeper and three clerks to prove that he was
hard at work in the store on the night in question.
The affair was finally settled satisfactorily, but there is one
Houston man who has no further curiosity about woman’s curiosity.

Journalistically Impossible
“Did you report that suicide as I told you to do last night?” asked the
editor of the new reporter, a graduate of a school of journalism.
“I saw the corpse, sir, but found it impossible to write a
description of the affair.”
“Why?”
“How in the world was I to state that the man’s throat was cut
from ear to ear when he had only one ear?”

The Power of Reputation

One night last week in San Antonio a tall, solemn-looking man,
wearing a silk hat, walked into a hotel bar from the office, and stood
by the stove where a group of men were sitting smoking and talking.
A fat man, who noticed him go in, asked the hotel clerk who it was.
The clerk told his name and the fat man followed the stranger into
the barroom, casting at him glances of admiration and delight.
“Pretty cold night, gentlemen, for a warm country,” said the man
in the silk hat.
“Oh—ha—ha—ha—ha—ha!” yelled the fat man, bursting into a
loud laugh. “That’s pretty good.”
The solemn man looked surprised and went on warming himself at
the stove.
Presently one of the men sitting by the stove said:
“That old Turkey over in Europe doesn’t seem to be making much
noise now.”
“No,” said the solemn man, “it seems like the other nations are
doing all the gobbling.”
The fat man let out a yell and laid down and rolled over and over
on the floor. “Gosh ding it,” he howled, “that’s the best thing I ever
heard. Ah—ha—ha—ha—ha—ha! Come on, gentlemen, and have
something on that.”
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