The Contingent A Priori and Implicit Knowledge

International Phenomenological Society

The Contingent A Priori and Implicit KnowledgeAuthor(s): Jonathan SuttonSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Sep., 2001), pp. 251-277Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3071063 .

Accessed: 21/12/2014 15:53

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

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

International Phenomenological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 21 Dec 2014 15:53:22 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ips

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3071063?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXIII, No. 2, September 2001

The Contingent A Priori and Implicit Knowledge

JONATHAN SUTTON

Southern Methodist University

By introducing a name 'one meter' and stipulating that it refers to the length of stick S, the stipulator appears to be in a position to gain immediate (and arguably a priori) knowledge of a mind- and language-independent fact-the fact that the length of stick S is one meter. It appears that other users of the name can gain this knowledge only through empirical enquiry. I argue that this presents a paradox. After clarifying the nature of the paradox, I offer a solution by arguing that, contrary to appearances, other users of 'one meter' implicitly knew that the length of stick S is one meter before

learning the name, as did the stipulator prior to introducing the name. There is some distinct knowledge that other users of the name can only gain empirically, but the stipulator cannot gain this knowledge without empirical enquiry either.

1. A Paradox of the Contingent A Priori

If someone fixes a meter as 'the length of stick S at to', then in some sense he knows a priori that the length of stick S at to is one meter, even though he uses this statement to express a

contingent truth. But, merely by fixing a system of measurement, has he thereby learned some

(contingent) information about the world, some newfact that he did not know before? It seems

plausible that in some sense he did not, even though it is undeniably a contingent fact that S is one meter long. (Kripke, 1980, fn. 26, p. 63)

Kripke was the first to draw our attention to the fact that names introduced via a description rather than ostensively give rise to a priori truths that are nevertheless contingent. He was also the first to express some discomfort with this combination of qualities, to sense an air of paradox surrounding these examples of the contingent a priori. In this paper, I shall attempt to

clarify the paradox of the contingent a priori that Kripke alludes to in the above passage, and, after investigating an unsuccessful solution, try to solve that paradox by suggesting that in no interesting sense does the introducer of 'one meter' learn some new fact that he did not know before the introduction of the term.

Allow me briefly to rehearse Kripke's example of a contingent a priori truth. A speaker introduces the name 'one meter' by stipulating that it refers to the length at to of a certain stick, S. The speaker is then in a position to know that the length of stick S at to is one meter without engaging in empir-

THE CONTINGENT A PRIORI AND IMPLICIT KNOWLEDGE 251



ical enquiry; he knows it a priori. Stick S could have had a different length at

to than it actually does, however; it could have been longer or shorter than one meter. For instance, there are possible worlds in which someone shaved some wood off one end of S at some time prior to to. Hence, the speaker has a priori knowledge of the contingent fact that the length of stick S at to is one meter.2

The introduction of a name by description is to be understood just like the introduction of a name by ostension in the following respect: just as subse-

quent users of an ostensive name do not have to be familiar with the demonstrative act that gave rise to the name, subsequent users of a descriptively introduced name do not have to know the description with which it was introduced, or that it was introduced descriptively rather than ostensively. One can understand the name 'one meter' while being ignorant of its descriptive introduction, just as one can understand the name 'Saul' while being entirely unaware of the circumstances under which it became attached to Kripke.3

Kripke himself does not seem to take the feeling that there is something paradoxical about the contingent a priori to cast any doubt on the genuineness of the examples; some of Kripke's critics have felt differently. Keith Donnel- lan (Donnellan, 1979) takes that feeling of unease to provide a prima facie reason for rejecting Kripke's examples of the contingent a priori. Here is Donnellan's presentation of his qualms (he has previously introduced an

imaginary detective who has named a suspect via a reference-fixing description):

Not only does the detective not create, by stipulation, any state of affairs (other than a linguistic one), but I should like to say nor does he thereby come to know the existence of any state of affairs. Kripke himself says, in connection with his example of the standard meter bar, "But, merely by fixing a system of measurement, has he thereby learned some (contingent) information about the world, some new fact that he did not know before? It seems plausible that in

1 Strictly speaking, the stipulator's a priori knowledge is conditional in form-he knows a priori that if there is a (unique) length of stick S at to, then the length of stick S at to is one meter. This qualification is necessary since 'the length of stick S at to' cannot be known to denote a priori. The conditional is a contingent truth just as its consequent is-it is false in any world in which S is shorter or longer than it actually is, just as its consequent is. I shall adhere to the cruder formulation of the stipulator's knowledge for the remainder of the paper in the interests of brevity.

2 S and to are ordinary names of a stick and a time respectively; the introducing description hence does not contain any ostensive elements, and the introducer does not need to be in the presence of the stick to introduce 'one meter'. For the main part of this paper, I shall be concerned with such "pure" descriptive names, whose introducing descriptions are free of demonstratives and other indexicals. I shall say a little in section 6 about how my solution to the paradox of the contingent a priori explained below generalizes to situations involving descriptive names whose introducing descriptions contain ostensive elements, e.g., a name stipulated to refer to the length of that stick.

3 Hence, although a priori, our speaker's knowledge that the length of stick S at to is one meter is not analytic since knowledge of the meaning of 'one meter' does not in itself make the former knowledge available.

252 JONATHAN SUTTON



some sense he did not, though it is undeniably a contingent fact that S is one meter long." I should like to question, in these cases, whether there is any sense in which by the sort of stipulation we are talking about a person could come to know something of which he was previously ignorant. (p. 53)

The paradox of the Kripkean examples is that by means of a trivial act of

stipulation, one thereby seems to have gained knowledge of substantial

extralinguistic facts that one did not know prior to the stipulation.4 But this is absurd; it is unacceptable to suppose that coining neologisms can in itself lead to knowledge of mind- and language-independent reality. Donnellan denies that the acquisition of such knowledge by stipulation is possible. The solution to the paradox that I shall present in this paper is in agreement with Donnellan on this point although it opposes his view in most other respects, as we shall see.

There is a temptation here to think that the term 'paradox' is a rather melodramatic description of the situation. Surely, one wants to say, the

knowledge that the stipulator has gained is utterly trivial. Without empirical enquiry, there is some sense in which he does not know how long a meter is

despite knowing that one meter is the length of stick S at to. Indeed, this

knowledge has to be trivial; the puzzle concerns exactly what its triviality can consist in. It seems that the stipulator has a priori knowledge of a fact which others who learn the name subsequently will only be in a position to discover a posteriori. It appears that the fact is something that he could not have known of a priori before the stipulation, and yet it is an extralinguistic fact- it does not concern the stipulation he made, or the term he introduced. It would have been a fact regardless of whether he had made the stipulation. How can all this be so and yet the stipulator's knowledge be utterly trivial? To say that the stipulator's knowledge is trivial is a way of stating the problem rather than a reason to ignore it.5

4 Kripke's examples of contingent a priori truths involving descriptive names are not the only victims of the stipulation paradox, since there are other examples of the contingent a priori that involve stipulation. Kaplan (1989b) introduces a descriptive demonstrative, 'DThat', that can be used to generate contingent a priori truths such as "Dthat[the length of stick S at to ] is the length of stick S at to." (The first occurrence of the description plays the role of a demonstration here and is not a semantic constituent of the sentence- see Kaplan (1989a).) By tokening a demonstrative, a fact becomes knowable a priori which was not so knowable before that tokening-the paradox arises here. Bostock (1988) presents a number of other examples involving stipulatively introduced predicates and propositional constants for which the paradox arises. All of these examples deserve a more extended treatment than I can give them here.

5 We should distinguish the paradox arising from stipulation from another alleged paradox that has appeared a number of times in the literature. The second paradox, which I shall call 'the experience paradox', takes the following form. A priori knowledge is knowledge that is acquired without reliance upon experience; an a priori truth is a truth that is knowable a priori. Since a priori knowledge does not rely upon experience, it can be acquired without experience of any contingent fact about the world that the knower happens to inhabit. Hence, the availability of that knowledge is not affected by the




We must be more careful than Donnellan is in setting forth the stipulation paradox. He enthusiastically quotes Kripke's endorsement of the paradox, and

Kripke makes it look as though it is the contingency of the information learned that is objectionable. This is not so. It would surely be equally offen- sive if there were mind- and language-independent necessary truths that a

neologist could come to know through the trivial act of stipulation. Contingency is important, however, in generating the paradox. Let us

consider why the paradox does not arise with respect to examples of stipulation more familiar than descriptive names. Suppose that I stipulate that 'linner' is to mean 'the meal occurring halfway between lunch and dinner'. In virtue of my stipulation, I seem to have acquired the knowledge that linner occurs between lunch and dinner. This is a necessary a priori truth. I have

not, however, learned anything new about extralinguistic affairs. For my knowledge that linner occurs between lunch and dinner is identical to my knowledge that a meal occurring halfway between lunch and dinner occurs between lunch and dinner-in Grice's words, echoed by Evans (1982, p. 50), we do not produce new beliefs by "the stroke of a pen."6 'Linner' is nothing more than an abbreviation for 'the meal occurring halfway between lunch and

dinner', and hence the fact that linner occurs between lunch and dinner is

nothing more than the logical fact that the meal occurring halfway between lunch and dinner occurs between lunch and dinner. What I know is a logical fact, and a logical fact that I already knew. I have learned nothing extralin-

guistic via my stipulation. So the paradox does not arise. If I use a description to fix the reference of a name, this line of thought is

unavailable. For one would have to claim that my knowledge that, e.g., the

length of stick S at to is one meter is identical to my knowledge that the

length of stick S at to is the length of stick S at to. Of course, such a claim could not receive the same justification we gave the analogous claim above; 'one meter' is not an abbreviation of 'the length of stick S at to'. But the

contingencies of the world that the knower inhabits; the knowledge is still available in worlds in which any of the contingent truths of this world are false. Knowledge entails truth, so any proposition known a priori is true in any world in which it can be known, and, by the above argument, that is any world at all. Anything knowable a priori is neces-

sary. This argument is presented with varying degrees of enthusiasm by Kitcher (1980, p. 92), Forbes (1989, p. 152), Bostock (1988, p. 343), and Kripke (1980, p. 38)

This is quite clearly a puzzle about the contingent a priori that is distinct from the

stipulation puzzle which we considered above. The experience paradox has nothing to do with a priori knowledge made available by a simple act of stipulation-it applies to any contingent a priori truth. Many contingent a priori truths do not arise from an act of stipulation-for example, 'I exist', 'I am here now', and 'All red things are actually red' are

contingent a priori truths that do not originate from any such act. The experience paradox applies to them; the stipulation paradox does not. For an extended analysis of the experience paradox, see Kitcher (1980).

6 Below, I discuss the problems that Evans encounters through following Grice's prescrip- tion. The solution to the paradox that I will offer respects Grice's dictum while avoiding those problems.

254 JONATHAN SUTTON



claim is prima facie highly dubious in any case. For my knowledge that the

length of stick S at to is one meter (or, more perspicaciously put, my belief that the length of stick S at to is one meter) is knowledge of a contingent fact, and my knowledge (belief) that the length of stick S at to is the length of stick S at to is knowledge of a necessary fact; the knowledge-constituting beliefs cannot be identical. It would seem that one could make the claim that the two beliefs are identical only by denying that the beliefs have these modal

properties. Indeed, this appears to be a consequence of Gareth Evans's views (Evans,

1979). Evans claims that although the statements 'the length of stick S at to is one meter' and 'the length of stick S at to is the length of stick S at to' embed differently inside the scope of modal operators-that is, the former is false when appended to 'Necessarily', and the latter is true-they have the same content. Moreover, Evans understands 'content' in a psychological manner; he says:

...if two sentences have the same content, then what is believed by one who understands and

accepts the one sentence as true is the same as what is believed by one who understands and

accepts the other sentence as true. (Evans, 1979, p. 176)

Hence, for Evans, my belief (and hence knowledge) that the length of stick S at to is one meter is the very same belief as my belief that the length of stick S at to is the length of stick S at to.

Given this commitment, Evans cannot say that one belief is necessary and the other contingent. I shall argue that he would have to say that beliefs do not have such modal properties-it is only sentences, statements, utterances and similar entities that can be classified modally. This claim is unacceptable; beliefs must have truth-conditions if they are to adequately fulfill their role as

representational states. Having truth-conditions is not simply a matter of hav-

ing a truth-value in the actual world; one must also be able to ask whether a belief would be true were circumstances otherwise in some specified way, e.g., would my belief that the length of stick S at to is one meter have been true if S had been heated just prior to to ? That is, one can ascribe counterfactual truth-values to beliefs, and, concomittantly, ascribe necessity or contin-

gency to them. Beliefs and like propositional attitudes are surely as robustly representational as sentences and statements.

Evans cannot accommodate this fact-there can be no answer to the question "Would my belief that the length of stick S at to is one meter have been true if S had been an inch shorter at to ?" since that belief is identical to my belief that the length of stick S at to is the length of stick S at to. The belief cannot inherit the truth-conditions of both of the sentences which form the content clauses in the two characterizations of the belief, for the belief would then have contradictory truth-conditions, being both true and false at the kind of world our question asks about. Nor can it inherit the truth-conditions of




one of the sentences, for neither characterization of the belief has a privileged status. There do not seem to be any alternative truth-conditions for the belief in the offing, and so one must conclude that the belief has no truth-conditions on Evans's theory-it has an actual truth-value, but lacks counterfactual truth-values. Ipso facto, the belief is neither necessary nor contingent, and so the truth evaluability of beliefs plays second fiddle to that of sentences-a

consequence we cannot accept.7 My knowledge that the length of stick S at to is one meter and my knowl-

edge that the length of stick S at to is the length of stick S at to are distinct

pieces of knowledge, then. The contingency of the former shows this. But we have still not gotten to the heart of the paradox; it is not simply the avail-

ability of a new knowledge-constituting belief after stipulating a reference for 'one meter' that is problematic. To see why, let us consider a situation

brought up by Stephen Schiffer in a completely different context (Schiffer, 1987). Tonya observes a breed of animal which she thinks she has never encountered before. She names it a 'shmog'. In fact, shmogs are just dogs, which Tonya has encountered many times. Schiffer makes a convincing case that Tonya's knowledge that shmogs are furry is distinct from her knowledge that dogs are furry; indeed, the vast majority of Tonya's propositional attitudes about shmogs and dogs will be distinct. Tonya's knowledge is not, of course, a priori. But, at first blush, something like the paradox that Donnel- lan and Kripke present us with will arise with respect to Tonya's alleged knowledge. For she acquires extralinguistic knowledge in virtue of coining a

neologism; even worse, a neologism founded on an error. Someone who

recognized that what Tonya saw were dogs would not be able to gain the

knowledge that Tonya has; even if they were to introduce the term 'shmog', their knowledge that shmogs are furry is surely identical to their knowledge that dogs are furry, since they know that dogs and shmogs are identical.

This is surely no paradox at all, however. Even though in virtue of a stipulation "a person has come to know something of which they were previously ignorant" in a sense, there is a more important sense in which Tonya does not know anything that she did not know before. There is a sense in which Tonya knows two things in the above example; she has two distinct beliefs which both qualify as knowledge. There is a more important sense in which she knows only one thing: the fact that dogs are furry. For even

though her knowledge that dogs are furry differs from her knowledge that

7 Evans has to deny truth-conditions to a very large class of beliefs. Any definite description can be used to introduce a descriptive name whose reference is fixed by the

description. Provided a description has its denotation contingently, the vast majority of sentences involving the description will embed differently under modal operators than their counterparts which contain a descriptive name introduced via the description in

question. Hence, no belief whose content can be specified by such a sentence can be ascribed a modal status.

256 JONATHAN SUTTON



shmogs are furry, the fact that dogs are furry is identical to the fact that

shmogs are furry, since dogs and shmogs are identical.8 The paradox that Kripke's example raises is precisely that there appears to

be some new (extralinguistic) fact that the introducer of 'one meter' gains knowledge of simply by making a stipulation. For the fact that the length of stick S at to is one meter cannot be identical to the fact that the length of stick S at to is the length of stick S at to for precisely the reason that we gave above when we were considering the knowledge that the length of stick S at

to is one meter. The former fact is contingent, and the latter fact is necessary; they cannot be the same. This is so on both a coarse-grained conception of facts (according to which they are individuated no more finely than sets of

possible worlds, and possibly identified with such), and on a more fine-

grained conception (a Russellian view that assigns structure to facts so that a fact incorporates the objects, properties, and relations that are represented in a sentence that expresses it).

Secondly, viewing facts from a fine-grained Russellian standpoint, the fact that the length of stick S at to is one meter appears to be a fact that "contains" a particular length. The fact that the length of stick S at to is the

length of stick S at to appears to "contain" no particular length, since the statement that expresses that fact does not employ any term that refers to a

particular length, but only a definite description-a quantifier phrase-that happens to denote the particular length one meter. This point will be elabo- rated in section 3, since it shows that even the contingent fact that the length of stick S at to is the actual length of stick S at to is distinct from the fact that the length of stick S at to is one meter, which renders inadequate an otherwise appealing solution to the paradox.

We should also note that the paradox remains even if the stipulator's knowledge that the length of stick S at to is one meter is not, strictly speaking, a priori. What is paradoxical is that the stipulator seems to gain knowl-

edge of a mind- and language-independent fact much more easily than others do. Some have suggested that the stipulator's knowledge is a posteriori since it rests upon the stipulator's knowledge of his intentions in introducing the name 'one meter', and knowledge of one's own mental states is always a

posteriori.9 Even if this is so, it is much easier for the stipulator to know his own intentions, and so come to know that the length of stick S at to is one meter, than it appears to be for non-stipulators to know that the length of stick S at to is one meter. According to the solution that I will be arguing for, the stipulator's knowledge does not depend upon knowledge of his intentions (or on any other features of his stipulative act, including its very occur-

8 We might put the point thus: She knows a single Russellian proposition (composed of objects and their properties) under two different guises.

9 See, for example, McGinn (1975).




rence); there is genuine contingent a priori knowledge of the Kripkean vari-

ety. I will hence assume throughout that the stipulator does have a priori knowledge of a contingent fact; this assumption will be vindicated in present- ing and arguing for my own solution to the paradox. However, the reader should bear in mind that the assumption is inessential; all that is needed to

generate the puzzle is that the stipulator seems to gain knowledge of a mind- and language-independent fact much more easily than others do.

2. Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Solutions

There are two kinds of response that the paradox engenders which I shall label

symmetrical and asymmetrical. An asymmetrical response accepts that the

stipulator's epistemic position is superior to that of others and to the position that he himself was in before making the stipulation; by virtue of hav-

ing made the stipulation, he can know a priori language-independent facts that others can know only a posteriori. To solve the paradox, an asymmetrical theory must show how a mere stipulation can grant such epistemic powers- it must assuage the feeling that some kind of epistemic miracle has occurred. A symmetrical theory denies that the stipulator is thus epistemically privileged; contrary to appearances, there is no extralinguistic knowledge that the

stipulator can gain a priori which others cannot gain in that manner. I have examined Evans's symmetrical solution already. In this paper, I will be

proposing my own symmetrical theory, which enhances and revises a

symmetrical solution that arises naturally from a theory of descriptive names

presented by Kitcher (1980). In this section, I wish to provide a motivation for symmetrical theories, to suggest why they are to be preferred to an

asymmetrical response to the paradox. In a sense, it is very easy to explain how the stipulator can know a priori

that the length of stick S at to is one meter. Everyone knows a priori that the

following generalization is true:

(VN)(VF)(N is a descriptive name and 'the' n F is the definite

description that introduced N -> N n 'is the' n F is true)

The stipulator knows a priori that 'one meter' is a descriptive name introduced via the description 'the length of stick S at to', and so can know a priori that 'one meter is the length of stick S at to' is true. Simple disquotation grants the stipulator his a priori knowledge that one meter is the length of stick S at to.0I

0 Perhaps the stipulator's knowledge that 'one meter' is a descriptive name introduced via a certain description is a posteriori, since it rests upon the stipulator's knowledge of his own intentions in introducing the name-see the discussion at the end of section 1. Some

might even suggest that the stipulator's knowledge that 'one meter is the length of stick S at to' is true iff one meter is the length of stick S at to is a posteriori, since the biconditional states a connection between words and the world that can only be learned empiri-

258 JONATHAN SUTTON



To explain how the stipulator can come to know that the length of stick S at to is one meter is not to solve the paradox, however, for it remains a

mystery how a simple stipulation could grant the stipulator epistemic powers possessed by no other. In fact, the explanation seems to increase our embar- rassment. For the rabbit is pulled out of the hat precisely in the disquotational inference from the proposition that 'the length of stick S at to is one meter' is true to the proposition that the length of stick S at to is one meter.

Knowledge of the former is metalinguistic knowledge that we would expect the introducer of the term 'one meter' to possess; knowledge of the latter is a

priori knowledge of an extralinguistic fact that one apparently cannot possess unless one is the stipulator. Yet all that is required for the former knowledge to yield the latter is that the stipulator understand the term he has introduced. The process of gaining the puzzling knowledge is very simple, its constituent

premises and inferences are clear. It is thus hard to see how a better under-

standing of it could eradicate the impression that something objectionable is

going on when it appears to yield such powerful results because it is hard to see what could constitute a better understanding of the process.

At the same time, it looks like gaining a better understanding of the

process is the only path that an asymmetrical theory can take to solving the

paradox. It must explain how, if we get a clear understanding of what the

stipulator knows and how he comes to know it, we see that there is nothing mysterious about the fact that the stipulator alone has a priori access to

knowledge of the fact that the length of stick S at to is one meter. There

appears to be no better understanding to be had than the description of the

simple process given above, however; an asymmetrical theory has no room for maneuver. I hence suggest that only a symmetrical approach can provide a

truly satisfying dissolution of the paradox. One such approach is a sceptical symmetrical theory; one denies that the

stipulator can know a priori that the length of stick S at to is one meter. Donnellan (1979) exemplifies this approach; he denies that the stipulator can make the disquotational inference, since the stipulator cannot understand the

descriptive name that he has introduced without some kind of a posteriori acquaintance with its bearer. Symmetrical scepticism comes at the cost of

resisting the intuitive force of Kripke's examples of the contingent a priori. I

propose instead a constructive symmetrical theory that accepts that the stipulator knows a priori that the length of stick S at to is one meter; the paradox is solved in showing that, contrary to appearances, the stipulator had this

knowledge prior to his stipulation, as do many others. The stipulation does

cally. (I do not subscribe to this view, since to understand the biconditional is to know it- and that is enough to make it an a priori truth.) We can grant these claims for the sake of

argument. The stipulator's epistemic position is still miraculously superior to that of non-

stipulators, for he still has much easier access to the fact that one meter is the length of stick S at to than non-stipulators have, and so the paradox remains.

THE CONTINGENTA PRIORI AND IMPLICIT KNOWLEDGE 259



not give rise to a priori knowledge that was not previously available. If this can be shown, then Donnellan's scepticism, to the extent that it is motivated

by the paradox, is groundless.

3. An Unsuccessful Symmetrical Solution

For familiar reasons, 'one meter' cannot abbreviate 'the length of stick S at to'-the former, since it is a name, designates the same object in all possible worlds, and the latter denotes distinct objects in various possible worlds. As is well-known, there are definite descriptions that denote the same object in all possible worlds; indeed, any definite description can be "rigidified" by the insertion of the term 'actual'. 'The actual length of stick S at to' denotes the

length that 'one meter' denotes in all possible worlds. Kitcher (1980) suggests that 'one meter' simply abbreviates 'the actual length of stick S at

to'. No modal argument along Kripkean lines rules out Kitcher's position since the two terms have the same modal extensions; substituting the one for the other in normal modal contexts will preserve truth-value.11

If Kitcher's position is correct, would it furnish us with the materials

necessary for solving the paradox? I shall argue that it would-although the solution that I will develop for Kitcher is not that advocated by Kitcher himself (at the end of this section, I will discuss Kitcher's own comments on the paradox). Hence, I shall refer to the solution developed immediately below as 'the Kitcher* solution'. In the sections to come, we will be led to a better solution to the paradox-a solution which does not rely on Kitcher's abbreviation theory of descriptive names which is, I shall suggest, false.

The introducer of 'one meter' knows a priori that the length of stick S at

to is one meter. On Kitcher's view, this is equivalent to a priori knowledge that the length of stick S at to is the actual length of stick S at to.12 For reasons previously rehearsed, the fact that the length of stick S at to is the actual length of stick S at to cannot be identical to the fact that the length of stick S at to is the length of stick S at to. The former fact is contingent- there are possible worlds in which the length of the stick diverges from its actual length-and the latter fact is necessary. So the question is whether the

(contingent) fact that the length of stick S at to is the actual length of stick S at to is something that is knowable a priori after the stipulation, and yet was not knowable a priori before it.

The answer is surely that one could know this fact a priori even before

making the stipulation that 'one meter' is to name the length of stick S at to.

Of course, modal contexts which contain hyperintensional constructions such as propositional attitude clauses will lead to failures of substitutivity for familiar reasons.

12 Since the stipulator knows a priori that one meter is the actual length of stick S at to (a necessary truth that is, given Kitcher's abbreviation theory, analytic), substituting the abbreviated description for the abbreviating term 'one meter' within the scope of 'knows that' preserves truth-value.

260 JONATHAN SUTTON



'The F is the actual F' is a logical truth, a theorem of the logic of actuality, for any predicate 'F'.'3 As a logical truth, it is knowable a priori by anyone who grasps the logic of 'actual' and understands the predicate 'F'.14 Indeed,

something stronger is true. Many logical truths are a priori knowable but not

a priori known by those who can nevertheless be credited with a grasp of the

logic that generates the truths in question because they are too complex-

they are not obvious logical truths. Obvious logical truths are not just know-

able but known by the logically competent, at least implicitly. The logically

competent know that if something is a red bicycle, then it is a bicycle, even

if they have never explicitly entertained that proposition.5 That the length of

stick S at to is the actual length of stick S at to is an obvious logical truth. It

is known, at least implicitly, by those (and only those) who grasp the logic of actuality, and who possess the other concepts involved in it.16

If one entertains the proposition that the length of stick S at to is one

meter after one has introduced the descriptive name, then, one knows a priori that the length of stick S at to is the actual length of stick S at to-something that one already knew implicitly. There is no expansion in one's factual

knowledge-at best, the stipulation facilitates a transformation of implicit

knowledge into explicit knowledge. Hence, the stipulation paradox is

resolved, since the stipulator is revealed to have gained knowledge of no new

facts via his stipulation. Indeed, there is more than implicit knowledge and implicit belief involved

here. For notice what we said above: obvious logical truths are known at

least implicitly by all and only those who grasp the concepts involved in

them. The logically competent implicitly know that if something is a red

bicycle, then it is a bicycle, or that the length of stick S at to is the actual

length of stick S at to. However, a given logically competent thinker may never have explicitly thought about red bicycles or the length of stick S at

13 More precisely, the valid schema is 'If there is a unique F, then the F is the actual F'; see footnote 1.

14 Hence, there are logical truths that are nevertheless contingent-or at least false in some

possible worlds. Because of space constraints, I have assumed throughout that falsity in some possible world entails contingency without argument, but for an interesting denial of that entailment, see Bostock (1988).

15 The logically competent must also possess the concepts rred' and rbicycle', of course. This qualification should be understood below.

16 An unfortunate ambiguity has arisen involving the term 'implicit (or tacit) belief' in

philosophy and related fields. It is often used to mean belief that is explicitly represented in the mind but inaccessible to consciousness; this is the sense in which our knowledge of grammar might be called 'implicit' or 'tacit'. This is not the sense of the term that I am

using; I mean a belief that may very well be accessible to consciousness but which is not

explicitly represented in the mind-for example, my belief that London is less than a million miles from New York. The relation between the two senses is an open question. For an interesting development of the claim that the two senses are related, see Crimmins (1992a). For more on implicit belief in my sense of that term, see also Field (1978) and Lycan (1986).




to-he need never have explicitly tokened these concepts. This need not force us to complicate our claim about implicit knowledge of logical truths. Grasp- ing a concept does not entail explicitly tokening it. One may grasp the

concept implicitly; complex concepts formed from simpler concepts that one has explicitly tokened are grasped implicitly. Anyone who possesses the

concepts r'redl and 'bicycle' also possesses the concept rred bicycle' implicitly; this is why he can be said to know that if something is a red bicycle then it is a bicycle, I suggest. Obvious logical truths are known at least

implicitly by all and only those who grasp the concepts involved in them, at least implicitly.

We would have solved the paradox of the contingent a priori at this point if Kitcher's abbreviation theory of descriptive names were correct. Unfortu-

nately, it is not. If 'one meter' abbreviated 'the actual length of stick S at to', then understanding 'one meter' would require knowing that one meter is the

length of stick S at t. This is not so, however. As noted at the outset of this

paper, the description plays a role in introducing a descriptive name similar to that played by a demonstration in the introduction of an orthodox ostensive name. Subsequent users of the name can learn it by being introduced to the

length in question in more familiar ways-just as subsequent users of a regular name need not be familiar with the demonstrative act that established its reference. Kripke's historical example of a descriptive name illustrates this intuitive point. Leverrier introduced the name 'Neptune' to name the planet that caused certain perturbations in the orbits of other planets (Kripke, 1980, p. 79n). Subsequent users of the name understood it perfectly well even if

they learned the name through ostension ("the planet roughly here"), by means of another description ("the planet on the other side of Saturn"), or in the informationally thrifty ways that Kripke brought to our attention ("a planet"). Kitcher gives us no reason to disregard the parallel between descriptive and ostensive names; hence we cannot accept the Kitcher* solution to the

paradox.17 The semantic shortcoming of the Kitcher* solution has an ontological

root. As noted in section 1, knowledge that the length of stick S is the actual

length of stick S is knowledge of a fact that "contains" no particular length; 'the actual length of stick S' is a definite description, a quantifier phrase, that does not contribute its denotation to a fact stated by a sentence that uses that

7 I think that much the same criticism can be leveled at Evans's theory of the semantics of descriptive names. Evans (1979, 1982) accords descriptive names a special kind of clause in a Davidsonian truth theory for a language. "'Julius" refers to the inventor of the zip, if there is a unique inventor of the zip' is his chosen example. Clearly, knowing such a truth theory requires knowing the description associated with the descriptive name- and so understanding the descriptive name requires knowing the description associated with it. Evans gives us no more reason than Kitcher does to doubt Kripke's more intuitive theory of what is required to understand a name introduced by a description.

262 JONATHAN SUTTON



description any more than 'some elephant' contributes any particular elephants to a proposition expressed using it.'8 Knowledge that the length of stick S is one meter is knowledge of a fact that contains the length one meter, and it is knowledge of that fact that Kripke's stipulation seems to

grant us. Hence, the failure of the Kitcher* solution is a consequence of the status of 'one meter' as a referring expression, and the fact that 'the actual

length of stick S' lacks that status, for this guarantees that one's knowledge that the length of stick S is one meter after the stipulation cannot be knowledge of the same fact that one's prior knowledge that the length of stick S is the actual length of stick S is knowledge of. It is not simply the claim that descriptive names abbreviate descriptions that renders the Kitcher* solution unacceptable; the deeper problem is that it assumes a false identity between distinct facts. Consequently, the Kitcher* solution cannot be rescued simply by positing a looser relation than abbreviation between descriptive name and definite description, for the two facts and knowledge of them remain distinct in the face of the envisaged semantic tinkering.

I am, of course, supposing that 'the actual length of stick S' functions like 'the length of stick S' in contributing components corresponding to the terms 'length', 'stick', and so on to any fact expressed using the description. In addition, it contributes a component corresponding to 'actual' (if we understand 'actual' as meaning the same as 'in this world', then part of 'actual"s contribution to any fact stated using the term is the actual world, for example). One might suppose rather that "actualized" descriptions such as 'the actual length of stick S' function in a completely different fashion from their

non-rigid counterparts-one might suggest that they are referring expressions that contribute only the reference of their unactualized counterparts to facts. On this view actualized descriptions function exactly like Kaplan's dthat terms; in tokening the expression 'dthat(the length of stick S )', one fixes the reference of a rigidly designating term via a description that does not contribute any elements except its denotation to the proposition expressed. Consequently, in virtue of a stipulation, it looks like one can come to know a priori that dthat(the length of stick S ) is the length of stick S, which is a contingent fact. The stipulation paradox arises for dthat expressions just as it does for descriptive names.

It seems implausible that actualized descriptions do behave like dthat terms since they certainly look like quantifier phrases, and we have a perfectly comprehensible account of them as quantifier phrases. 'Actual' contributes the actual world to a proposition or fact expressed using 'the actual length of stick S' just as 'current' contributes the current time to a proposition or fact expressed using 'the current length of stick S'; there is no reason to suppose

18 Of course, 'the actual length of stick S' does contribute the individual S to a fact stated by a sentence using it, since 'S' is a referring expression.




that explicit relativization to a possible world turns an expression that denotes but does not refer into a referring expression any more than relativization to a time does. That aside, supposing that actualized descriptions are

referring expressions that can be used to express singular facts or propositions does not help the Kitcher* solution. Under that supposition, it is no longer reasonable to assert that we (implicitly) know that the actual length of stick S is the length of stick S simply in virtue of knowledge of the logic of

actuality; a sceptic of the Donnellan cast will question this form of contin-

gent a priori knowledge of a singular fact just as he did Kripke's original claims. Further argument is required to secure the implicit knowledge premise of the Kitcher* solution. Not that I think one cannot provide further argument; one can. But the further argument needed is very similar to the argument that I shall provide below that we implicitly possess the descriptive name concept 'one meter'; the same kind of argument can be given for the conclusion that we implicitly possess the concept 'dthat(the length of stick S)'. Consequently, if actualized descriptions do behave like dthat terms, and

descriptive names bear some close semantic relation falling short of abbreviation to actualized descriptions, we cannot rest content with the Kitcher* solution but must instead embrace a solution that is pretty much a notational variant of the solution to the stipulation paradox that I will provide below.

In the sections to come, however, we shall make some concessions to Kitcher's view of descriptive names. We shall see that although descriptive names in natural language can be understood without knowledge of the

descriptions that fix their reference, we can distinguish descriptive names from descriptive name concepts whose reference-fixing descriptions must be known by their possessors. Recognizing the distinction between descriptive names and descriptive name concepts will be essential to solving the paradox.

Before providing my solution to the paradox, let us look briefly at how Kitcher differs from Kitcher*. Kitcher has the following to say about the issues that the paradox raises:

By engaging in widespread stipulation, we could vastly increase our a priori knowledge... This

point applies not only to the Kripkean cases but also to the traditional idea of obtaining a priori knowledge of necessary truths by stipulating that a new expression shall abbreviate a description. (Kitcher, 1980, p. 97)

In light of the above, Kitcher seems to mischaracterize the consequences of his position. As emphasized at the outset, traditional a priori truths generated by abbreviating descriptions (such as the 'linner' example) do not even

give the appearance of expressing facts not known prior to the stipulation. Kripkean contingent a priori truths generated by descriptive names give this

appearance, but the appearance is deceptive if Kitcher's theory that they abbreviate actualized descriptions is correct. In neither case do we vastly

264 JONATHAN SUTTON



increase our a priori knowledge-we come to knowledge of no new facts

through stipulation.

4. Implicit Descriptive Name Concepts I wish to argue that the paradox can be resolved by extending the notion of

implicit concept possession and implicit knowledge outlined above. The aim, as with the unsuccessful solution presented in the previous section, is to

support the claim that the contingent a priori truths associated with descriptive names are known implicitly by the stipulator and others prior to the

linguistic introduction of the name. I shall not attempt to give a rigorous theory of implicit propositional attitudes and implicit concept possession here. I think, however, that the notion is a reasonably intuitive one.19 It is

intuitively correct to say, for example, that I have believed (and known) that London is less than a million miles from New York for quite some time, although I never entertained that proposition explicitly until writing the current paper. I will not provide a theory of implicit attitudes and concepts not because I have no suggestions as to what such a theory might look like-I am partial to Crimmins's virtual belief theory of implicit belief

(Crimmins, 1992a)-but because I think that I can make my argument on intuitive grounds alone. Such an argument is stronger than any argument that

depends upon a commitment to a specific theory of implicit attitudes, since the foundational theory might turn out to be false for reasons that have noth-

ing to do with the claims about implicit attitudes and concepts that I am concerned to advance.

It is also intuitively correct to say that, prior to writing this paper, I believed (and knew) that if something is a tabby cat once owned by F. H.

Bradley, then it is a cat, even though I had never explicitly tokened the

concept rtabby cat once owned by F. H. Bradley'. I suggest that if a de dicto belief ascription is true of a person, then that person possesses all the

concepts that correspond to the elements of the content clause of the ascription. Certainly, if one explicitly entertains a thought, then one must grasp the thought's component concepts. A pleasing theoretical unity is achieved if this generalization can be extended to the domain of implicit attitudes. Hence, given that I had the belief concerning cats owned by Bradley, it follows that I had the concept rtabby cat once owned by F. H. Bradley', although I never

explicitly tokened it. So, the notion of implicit concept possession is a

necessary companion to the notions of implicit belief and knowledge if we are to maintain the generalization that holding a propositional attitude

requires possession of its constituent concepts.20' 21

19 For some dissent, see Richard (1990) and Audi (1982). 20 Crimmins (1992a) expresses approval of the simple generalization relating belief

(explicit or implicit) to concept possession, but thinks that certain implicit belief ascriptions suggest that it cannot be maintained. Crimmins's protagonist, Lou, does not "actually




Relying on an intuitive grasp of the notions of implicit knowledge and

implicit concept possession, I shall argue that it is reasonable to extend them

beyond their intuitive bounds. In particular, I shall argue that we implicitly possess many descriptive name concepts prior to and regardless of any introduction of corresponding descriptive names into our spoken language. We also implicitly know the contingent a priori truths which are generated from such names prior to and regardless of any introduction of such names into our

spoken language. At best, the introduction of such a name facilitates making this knowledge explicit; it does not lead to any expansion of our extralinguistic knowledge tout court. Hence, we can give the kind of solution to the paradox that follows naturally from Kitcher's abbreviation theory of descriptive names without actually adopting that (mistaken) theory.

represent" every rational number, and yet it seems appropriate to say that he believes that he is more than 334/332 feet tall, because "he can cobble a description of that number out of things he actually represents" (Crimmins, 1992a, p. 259). Lou has a belief about a rational number without having a concept of it, according to Crimmins. However, Crimmins only runs into trouble with what he calls the "representationalist" view because he fails to consider the possibility that concepts can be grasped implicitly just as attitudes can be implicitly held. The representationalist should respond to the Lou example by saying that Lou implicitly grasps the concept 334/332 (precisely because he can cobble a

description of that number out of things he explicitly represents), and thereby uphold the

representationalist thesis. 21 Despite my lack of pretension to a theory of implicit belief and concept possession,

something should be said to explain the similarities and differences between implicit and

explicit belief and implicit and explicit concept possession. Explicit beliefs have both a causal and an epistemological role. Explicit beliefs have a role in the causal explanation of behavior and other propositional attitudes. They are also the fundamental elements of our representation of the world; the extent to which our representation of the world is true or justified is a matter of what beliefs we hold, how we come by them, and what the world is actually like. These two roles do not coincide. It is not likely that one needs to

posit a belief that London is less than a million miles from New York to causally explain my behavior or thought; explicitly held beliefs of mine with distinct contents relating to the distance between the two cities suffice. One does need to posit that belief to get a full

picture of how I represent the world; that London is less than a million miles from New York is not a fact that is missing from my picture of how the world is. Implicit beliefs, I

suggest, have a much less substantial causal role (if any such role at all) compared to their explicit counterparts, but retain the epistemological role of explicit beliefs. A full account of my representation of the world, including an account of the degree of truth, error, and justification in that representation, would be incomplete without a consideration of my implicit beliefs.

Explicitly possessed concepts also have a causal and an epistemological role. The

concepts that we explicitly possess causally explain our behavior and our thought-for example, an explanation of my ability to keep track of information relating to a single individual over time can be explained by my possessing a name concept that refers to that individual. Implicitly possessed concepts lack this role in general. Concepts also have an

epistemological role-they reveal our representational capacities, which objects and

properties we are able to think about. Just as a full account of my representation of the world would be incomplete without a consideration of my implicit beliefs, so a full account of my representational capacities would be incomplete if it failed to acknowl- edge my implicitly possessed concepts.

266 JONATHAN SUTTON



In order to develop my argument, I define three types of name concept- descriptive name concepts, ostensive name concepts, and mediated name

concepts. Before proceeding with my definitions, I should make a couple of remarks about the character of these definitions. Firstly, the definitions are

purely stipulative. They are not intended to correspond to any intuitive classi- fication scheme for name concepts; the taxonomy is introduced purely for the

purposes of developing my argument, and other taxonomies are no doubt to be preferred for other purposes. I define the types of concept by specifying how their references are determined, together with (in two of the cases) further conditions on what it is to possess a concept of that type. The argumentative burden, then, is not to argue that these types of name concept exist, for I take it as fairly uncontroversial that there are types of possible thought constituent

corresponding to my definitions. Rather, I must argue that the types of

concept are actually possessed by the appropriate thinkers; in particular, I will

argue that certain descriptive name concepts (e.g., rone meter') are possessed by thinkers who have not stipulatively introduced and may not even understand certain public language descriptive names (for example, 'one meter').

I use the term 'descriptive name concept' to pick out a counterpart in

thought of a descriptive name in natural language; the descriptive name

concept rone meterT has its reference fixed by the definite description concept rthe length of stick S at t '. Moreover, I require that the possessor of such a

concept must know the description that fixes the concept's reference. Hence, one can understand the descriptive name 'one meter' without using it to

express thoughts containing the descriptive name concept rone meter', since one can understand the name without knowing its introducing description. If someone learns the public language name 'one meter' by learning that it is

roughly 3 feet 3 inches, and is ignorant of its origins in the Kripkean stipulation, then he will not be expressing a thought involving the descriptive name

concept rone meter' when he utters a sentence such as 'The height of that shrub is one meter'. He does not know that the reference of 'one meter' is fixed by the description 'the length of stick S at to', and one cannot think a

thought involving the descriptive name concept rone meter' unless one knows that its reference is fixed by the descriptive concept rthe length of stick S at to'. The stipulator, on the other hand, is aware that 'one meter' and the descriptive name concept rone meterl co-refer. I shall express this asymmetry between the stipulator and one who understands 'one meter' without

being aware of its origin by saying that the stipulator associates the descriptive name 'one meter' with the descriptive name concept rone meter'1. I shall now proceed to argue that, although those who are not the stipulator do not

typically associate the descriptive name concept 'one meter' with the public language name, they do possess that concept if they possess the concept rthe

length of stick S at to', and, indeed, possessed the descriptive name concept




rone metern prior to the introduction of the corresponding name into natural

language. I shall contrast descriptive name concepts with ostensive name concepts;

these are name concepts whose reference is fixed by ostension. Their possessors must know which act of ostension fixed the reference of the name

concept. The two types of name concept are not exhaustive; those who learn a name from another need not know its ostensive or descriptive origins, and

yet they acquire a name concept. I call the third type of name concept a mediated name concept, since its reference is fixed by its links to the name

concepts of other people and ultimately to a name concept of the name's introducer in the way that Kripke familiarized us with.

We often ascribe implicit beliefs to people if the propositions associated therewith are obvious consequences of some of their explicit beliefs. Indeed, if a proposition is an obvious consequence of a proposition that a person explicitly knows, then we often ascribe implicit knowledge of that consequence.22 If we were to draw the obvious consequences of our explicit beliefs (an impossible task, as there are infinitely many such consequences), then our

implicit beliefs would be the result, at least as a rule. We can characterize this fact in a more general fashion: implicit beliefs would become explicit beliefs

through straightforward operations of our mechanisms of belief-formation. This characterization enables us to see the parallels between implicit belief

and knowledge and implicit concept possession-the more specific characterization in terms of obvious consequences makes no sense here, since concepts do not have consequences. Despite never having explicitly tokened the

concept rtabby cat once owned by F. H. Bradley', we implicitly grasp it because we explicitly grasp its simple conceptual components (rtabbyl, rcat-, etc.). The complex concept is some kind of mental "combination" of the simple concepts, an operation that is trivial for our concept-forming mechanisms.23 Once again, we can say that implicitly grasped concepts are

concepts that would be explicitly grasped (that is, tokened) through straightforward operations of our mechanisms of concept-formation.

All that is required of the descriptive namer is that he possess the concepts involved in the description-anyone who possesses those concepts is able to introduce the descriptive name concept rone metern into his mental reper- toire; unlike an ostensive name concept, the namer does not have to stand in any special epistemic relation to the named (viz., that relation that makes ostension possible). These descriptive resources form the basis for a simple

22 This is a description of our practice; I am not recommending an analysis of implicit belief in terms of the notion of obvious consequence.

23 If it were not trivial, our ability to think about red bicycles given that we can think about bicycles and red things would be hard to explain. Perhaps the capacity to form such combinations with great ease is essential to thinking; this appears to be a corollary of the Generality Constraint proposed by Evans (1982).

268 JONATHAN SUTTON



descriptive dubbing of the name's bearer; hence, the descriptive name concept rone meter' is tokened via a straightforward operation of our mechanisms of

concept-formation, comparable in its simplicity to forming a definite description concept from its elements. I submit, then, that the concept rone meter, which the introducer of the descriptive name into natural language explicitly grasps is implicitly grasped by anyone who possesses the concepts involved in the introducing description.24

5. The Solution to the Paradox

I suggest that anyone who implicitly possesses the descriptive name concept rone meter' implicitly knows that the length of stick S at to is one meter. I have argued that anyone with the appropriate descriptive conceptual resources

possesses the descriptive name concept rone meter: implicitly, since it would be straightforward for such a person to explicitly form the concept. Part of explicitly forming that concept is explicitly knowing that its reference is fixed by the descriptive concept rthe length of stick S at to'-this is

simply part of the stipulative definition of a descriptive name concept. Hence, coming to explicit knowledge of the reference-fixing fact is at least as

straightforward for those with the appropriate conceptual resources as is

explicitly grasping the descriptive name concept. The reference-fixing fact is hence implicitly known by those with sufficient conceptual resources. (I assume that if an explicit belief would qualify as (explicit) knowledge were it

explicitly formed by a method m, then an implicit belief truly ascribed because m is a straightforward operation of our belief-formation mechanisms

qualifies as implicit knowledge ceteris paribus. The conditions under which

something is implicitly known quite apart from being implicitly believed are

obviously deserving of further enquiry.) Now, the explicit knowledge that the length of stick S at to is one meter

can be straightforwardly acquired by the explicit possessor of r'one meter'

given his explicit knowledge that the descriptive name concept has its reference fixed by the descriptive concept 'the length of stick S at to'. The

explicit possessor of the descriptive name concept should hence be credited with implicit knowledge that the length of stick S at to is one meter. I further

suggest that the implicit possessor of rone meter' should also be credited with (implicit) knowledge that the length of stick S at to is one meter, since a

24 As I indicated at the end of our discussion of the Kitcher* solution, a parallel argument can be given to the effect that we implicitly possess the concept rdthat(the length of stick S)'. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the descriptive name concept rone meter' is the concept rdthat(the length of stick S)', although further argument to the effect that dthat concepts are name concepts and not genuine demonstratives is required. This is not to suggest that public language descriptive names abbreviate dthat terms; they do not, for the same reasons that they do not abbreviate actualized descriptions. One can understand a descriptive name without understanding a dthat term formed from its reference-fixing description.




small number of straightforward steps would lead him to explicit knowledge that the length of stick S at to is one meter-those very steps that the explicit knower undertakes.25 The counterfactual production of the explicit belief which is supposed to underwrite the implicit belief attribution has two

stages. Firstly, the descriptive name concept is tokened; then, the obvious

consequence is drawn that the length of stick S at to is one meter. Precisely because the latter operation depends upon the former, one might question whether this is a genuinely straightforward operation of our belief-formation mechanism, and so question the existence of the implicit belief. I do not see

any relevant disanalogy with the Bradley's cat example here, though. We im-

plicitly know that if something is a tabby cat owned by F. H. Bradley, then it is a cat, even though we have never tokened the concept 'tabby cat once owned by F. H. Bradley'. Any cognitive procedure whose outcome was the

explicit belief that if something is a tabby cat owned by F. H. Bradley, then it is a cat would involve two stages-the tokening of the complex concept, and its utilization in instantiating the appropriate logical schema.

The solution to the paradox is now very simple. The introducer of the term 'one meter' is not in a position to know some extralinguistic fact a

priori that he could not have known in that manner prior to his stipulation. He already knew implicitly that the length of stick S at to is one meter, and had known that since he acquired the concepts he used to frame the introduc-

ing description. The best that can be said is that his stipulation might lead him to make explicit what was formerly implicit-to draw the conclusion that the length of stick S at to is one meter. But this is not an expansion of his knowledge; it is a change in its status that presents no epistemological puzzle. Furthermore, he knows nothing epistemologically exciting that those who did not introduce the term do not know; provided that they have the

concepts necessary to understand the introducing description, they too implicitly know that the length of stick S at to is one meter. There is no prospect after all of an epistemological perpetual motion machine, with the capacity to learn an inexhaustible supply of apparently empirical facts without any expenditure of effort. The sense in which what the stipulator knows is trivial is revealed; it is something that we all knew already.

How does my solution compare to the Kitcher* solution presented in section 3? My solution is symmetrical, as is the Kitcher* solution-the only a priori knowledge that the stipulator alone possesses as a result of his stipulation is metalinguistic knowledge concerning what 'one meter', the public language name, refers to. I have avoided a commitment to implausible claims about the semantics of descriptive names, however; they are genuine names rather than abbreviated descriptions, and understanding them does not require

25 Mutatis mutandis, one who implicitly possesses the concept rdthat(the length of stick S)'

implicitly knows that dthat(the length of stick S ) is the length of stick S.

270 JONATHAN SUTTON



one to know their reference-fixing origin. The tie between descriptive name and description present in the Kitcher* solution is relocated to the conceptual level; we have specified a type of concept, the descriptive name concept, which introducers of a descriptive name explicitly grasp at the time of introduction, and which others (and the pre-stipulation stipulator) implicitly grasp. To say that others implicitly grasp such a concept is not to say that they associate the concept with the name; typically, they do not. Nevertheless their implicit grasp of 'one meter' affords them the same a priori knowledge of language-independent facts that the stipulator has access to, which is all that a solution to the paradox requires.

The Kitcher* solution identifies the knowledge apparently gained through stipulation with knowledge previously possessed, as does my solution. How- ever, it is the identity claim that is the cornerstone of the Kitcher* solution, since it is relatively uncontroversial that we possessed the knowledge that the length of stick S at to is the actual length of stick S at to prior to the Krip- kean stipulation. The boldness of the Kitcher* solution lies in claiming that this knowledge just is the knowledge that we appear to gain via the Kripkean stipulation. I have argued that this cannot be so since what you appear to know via the stipulation is a fact that contains a particular length, and the fact that the length of stick S at to is the actual length of stick S at to does not contain a particular length. The boldness of my solution lies in my claim that we already knew that the length of stick S at to is one meter prior to the

stipulation. The Kitcher* solution claims that we know fewer facts after the stipulation than we appear to at first blush; in this respect, the Kitcher* solution is similar to sceptical symmetrical solutions like Donnellan's, although its (false) economy is ontological and not epistemological. According to the Kitcher* solution, we know just what Kripke says that we do, but that knowledge is knowledge of facts already known. According to my solution, we know more facts prior to the stipulation than we appear to at first blush. We know just what Kripke says that we do, and more besides.

6. Impure Descriptive Names

Let us suppose that I introduce the name 'Grav' with the description 'the

specific gravity of that pint of beer' one night in a bar. Just as with descriptive names that involve no ostensive elements, it seems that there is a contingent fact that I can now know simply in virtue of having made the stipulation: the fact that the specific gravity of that pint of beer is Grav. It also appears that everyone else can only come to know this fact through empirical inquiry.

An objector might point out that the stipulation paradox does not arise for impure descriptive names like 'Grav' since one cannot know a priori that the demonstrative 'that pint of beer' refers (one might be hallucinating, or have




mistaken a 12 oz. mug for a pint), and so there are no contingent a priori truths associated with 'Grav'. This is not really to the point, however. Even if the knowledge that the specific gravity of that pint of beer is Grav is not

strictly speaking a priori, it is nevertheless knowledge of a fact that can

apparently be obtained much more easily by the introducer of 'Grav' than by someone else. The introducer merely has to know that the introducing description denotes; someone else has to measure the specific gravity of the beer (or be informed of its value by someone who has measured it). A mere

stipulation once again apparently creates an intolerable epistemic asymmetry. Can the solution to the paradox that I gave above work to solve the puzzle

when an impure descriptive name is involved? Certainly, it seems that we have the same puzzle, and a solution is only adequate to the extent that it can handle both cases. I shall argue that my solution can be extended to cover the case of impure descriptive names.

The implicit knowledge that I ascribed to "consumers" (to use Evans's

term) of 'one meter' was restricted to those consumers who possessed the

descriptive concepts necessary to understand 'one meter"s introducing description. Others cannot come to know that the length of stick S at to is one meter either a priori or a posteriori since they cannot even grasp the state of affairs in question, which precludes their coming to know that it obtains

by any method. There is a quite comprehensible epistemic asymmetry between such impoverished thinkers and the introducer of the name prior to the name's introduction; it is no surprise, then, that the introducer can know

things that they cannot. Mutatis mutandis, the puzzle does not arise for those who lack the concep-

tual resources necessary to introduce an impure descriptive name such as 'Grav'. It only arises for those who can demonstratively think of the pint of beer that I used to introduce the name (and who have the concept rspecific gravity' etc.). In order to apply my solution to these individuals, I must claim that they implicitly possess the concept 'Gravl, and that they hence

implicitly know that the specific gravity of that pint of beer is Grav. The

only interesting twist here that is not present for pure descriptive names is that this implicit knowledge attribution involves ascribing possession of the

concept rthat pint of beer'. Since the ascribees may not have explicitly formed such a demonstrative, it seems that I must allow that grasp of a demonstrative concept can be implicit. Since the puzzle does not arise for those who cannot form the introducing description, I (fortunately) do not have to claim that people on the other side of the world have implicit demonstrative concepts of my pint of beer. I do have to claim that those in the immediate environment of my pint typically have such concepts.

So be it: this claim does not strike me as particularly implausible. Whereas my suggestion that we possess implicit descriptive name concepts was distinctly revisionary with respect to the propositional attitude ascrip-

272 JONATHAN SUTTON



tions to which we intuitively assent, propositional attitude ascriptions involving implicitly grasped demonstrative concepts are utterly ordinary. The barroom philosopher, who can see my pint and hence can demonstratively refer to it, knows that that pint of beer is larger than Frege's left earlobe, to

adapt an example of implicit belief due to Stich (1982), even if he has not explicitly demonstrated that pint in speech or thought. Giving a full picture of how one represents the world will involve characterizing the assumptions and presuppositions that one makes about objects in one's immediate environment, the vast majority of which one does not explicitly think about, and will hence involve ascriptions of implicit knowledge and other attitudes that involve demonstratives.

7. Balancing the Epistemic Checkbook

One might protest that my solution to the paradox explains too much. If we already implicitly knew that the length of stick S at to is one meter, then how could we possibly gain any substantive knowledge by looking at the stick? In setting out the paradox, we noted that those who did not introduce the term and learned it in the normal fashion by which one learns a name would appear to have to engage in empirical enquiry to ascertain that the length of stick S at to is one meter, whereas the introducer of the term would not appear to have to perform any such task. It turns out that such consumers knew that the length of stick S at to is one meter all along; yet they would nevertheless act as though they had learned something on confrontation with the meter stick, and one might very well report their discovery with the words 'They (now) know that the length of stick S at to is one meter'. Are they mistaken in thinking that they have made a discovery? Would we be mistaken in

reporting such an event? Surely the suggestion is absurd. This objection is easily dismissed. There is more than one type of knowl-

edge state that the sentence schema 'P knows that the length of stick S at to is one meter' can be used to report. Many consumers will have an ostensive or mediated name concept which they express with the name 'one meter', and one can use an instance of the schema to report their knowledge that involves this concept. Indeed, the introducer of 'one meter' might have such a concept, unaware that it was co-extensive with his descriptive name concept, and so an instance of this schema could even be used to report a discovery of his.26 The

objection is answered by observing that the knowledge gained upon confrontation with the stick is simply not the same knowledge that one implicitly had all along, although it might be reported with the same sentence under suitable circumstances. Exactly how one fleshes out the details of the kinds of knowledge state that instances of the schema can be used to

26 Of course, the descriptive namer would make a number of other discoveries in this general area-that the length of stick S at to is that long, and so on.




report depends upon the semantics of propositional attitude reports, but I think that the general point will survive elaboration in terms of a number of current theories in that area.27

I will use Richard's theory of propositional attitude semantics to illustrate the point (Richard, 1990). On Richard's theory, the content clause of a

propositional attitude ascription determines a structured entity which he calls a Russellian Annotated Matrix (RAM) consisting of pairs of the terms

(types, not tokens) employed in the content clause together with their semantic values. The ascription states that the RAM determined by the content clause maps onto a RAM in the ascribee's "representational scheme" via a one-one mapping satisfying certain contextually determined constraints that takes public language term types to co-referential mental representation types.28 An ascribee's representational scheme is simply a set of RAM's

corresponding to his beliefs, in which mental representation types are

employed rather than public language terms.29 Consider a consumer P just prior to his measuring the length of S. If a

permissible RAM-RAM mapping takes <'one meter', one meter> to <rO', one meter>, where rO' is his ostensive or mediated name concept of one meter, then 'P knows that the length of stick S at to is one meter' will be false; under the same kind of mapping, it will be true after he makes the measurement. This accounts for our intuition that the consumer has made a

discovery; this is the kind of mapping we use when we say that P (now) knows that the length of stick S at to is one meter. However, the type of RAM-RAM mapping that takes <'one meter', one meter> to <rD-, one meter>, where rD' is P's implicit descriptive name concept of one meter, makes 'P knows that the length of stick S at to is one meter' true in a context that uses that mapping type, even prior to the discovery (if my arguments up to this point succeed).

Of course, it is under that latter mapping type that we can truly ascribe to the introducer of 'one meter' the knowledge the length of stick S at to is one meter. Under the former mapping type, we cannot-even if the introducer has an ostensive or mediated name concept of one meter, he will not know that

27 Of course, if one thinks that a name in an attitude ascription's content clause contributes only its reference to the ascription's truth-conditions, the objection is not so easily dismissed. No wonder, then, that Salmon (1987) endorses Donnellan's scepticism about the genuineness of Kripke's examples of the contingent a priori.

28 For evidence that the theory needs to be supplemented to accommodate ascriptions that are referentially unspecific, such as 'P believes that a doctor is going to the party' used to report a belief about a particular doctor, see Recanati (1993, p. 380). Since we are concerned only with de dicto propositional attitude ascriptions, the supplementation need not concern us.

29 For Richard, an ascribee's representational scheme corresponds only to his explicit beliefs, since Richard does not believe that there are any implicit beliefs. However, the theory is easily modified to encompass implicit beliefs, using a device like Crimmins's "thought maps" (Crimmins, 1992b, ch. 2).

274 JONATHAN SUTTON



the length of stick S at to is one meter under the former type of mapping without empirical enquiry. Hence we have the results that we wanted; there is nothing that the introducer knows that the consumer does not, and the consumer makes a genuine discovery when he measures the stick. Indeed, he comes to know something that the introducer cannot know without himself making a pilgrimage to the stick. The context demands the kind of mapping that has an ostensive or mediated name target when we are talking of the consumer since in the context of describing the consumer's epistemic state before and after the measurement, the mapping type that emphasizes his knowledge gain is appropriate. The situation is reversed for the introducer; in talking of what he knows about the length of stick S at to given only his stipulation, the mapping type with a descriptive name target that emphasizes the amount of knowledge that he has is appropriate. So long as we use the same constraints on mappings when comparing the knowledge of the introducer and the consumer, there is no appearance of epistemological funny business.

The context in which we characterize what the stipulator knows is highly unusual given the rarity of descriptive names in natural language. Typically, the singular terms that we use in the content clauses of attitude ascriptions are not descriptive names, and the constraints on mappings that regular knowledge attribution contexts determine will disallow those singular terms from being mapped onto descriptive name concepts. Hence, the large amount of contingent a priori knowledge that we all implicitly possess is not knowledge of the kind that we are typically concerned with-it is not the type of

knowledge that we typically attribute. Further, given the paucity of knowledge about a name's bearer that possession of a descriptive name concept typically entails (in some important sense, we do not know what length one meter is on the basis of Kripke's stipulation), this body of implicit knowledge is singularly useless. These two points serve, I suggest, to mollify the sceptical surprise that many will feel upon being told that we possess knowl-

edge of a lot more contingent a priori truths than might have been thought prior to considering descriptive names and the stipulation paradox.3"

These considerations also serve to defuse the following objection. Accord- ing to my views, anyone who possesses the concepts rmountain', rAfrical and r'largest' implicitly possesses a descriptive name concept whose reference is fixed by the descriptive concept rthe largest mountain in Africa'; let us call this implicit descriptive name concept 'rKilimanjaro"'. My theory entails that anyone who possesses the concepts 'mountain", rAfrica' and

rlargestl implicitly knows that Kilimanjaro is the largest mountain in

30 Although there is ample precedent for claiming that we implicitly know many contingent a priori truths. Knowledge of the logic of 'actually' gives us implicit a priori knowledge that p iff actually p, for all propositions p that we understand, and instances of this schema are contingent if the truth-value that 'p' has is itself a contingent matter.




Africa. Intuitively, the geography lessons of our youth imparted that knowl-

edge to us for the first time; my theory cannot accommodate this fact. It is indeed a consequence of my views that the geographically uninformed

know that Kilimanjaro is the largest mountain in Africa in a sense, but that sense is not one that we would ordinarily attach to the claim that S knows that Kilimanjaro is the largest mountain in Africa. Orthodox canons of attitude ascription interpretation, under which 'Kilimanjaro' must map onto a

singular concept other than a descriptive name concept, render that claim

straightforwardly false of anyone without a normal grasp of the geographical trivium in question. Our intuition that the attitude ascription only becomes true of us after a geography lesson surely concerns the truth-value of the

ascription as it would normally be interpreted, and my theory is in perfect accord with those intuitions.

What if we focus on the facts known by the introducer and the consumers, a focus that I suggested was important to understanding the paradox at the outset of the paper? There is, surely, only one fact that the length of stick S at to is one meter, however many concepts and propositional attitudes might lurk behind the words used to state it. If this fact was implicitly known all

along, again it might be objected that nothing could be learned by any consumer in the sense that no new fact would have been discovered by exam-

ining the length of the meter stick. Such an objector would be correct in his claims; the consumers have implicitly known the fact that the length of stick S at to is one meter all along. This is no objection, however; there are many ways to apprehend facts, and some are more useful than others. The fact that

Hesperus is Hesperus is identical to the fact that Hesperus is Phosphorus, yet the indicated ways of grasping these facts differ greatly, as is well-known. The way in which we all implicitly grasp the fact that the length of stick S at

to is one meter is "trivial" precisely because we all grasp it that way, just as we all know the fact that Hesperus is Hesperus in a trivial way. The consumers who examine the stick grasp the fact that the length of stick S at

to is one meter in a genuinely informative way, precisely because many (such as the introducer) do not so grasp it-it is a discovery only available through empirical inquiry.31

References

Almog, J., Perry, J., and Wettstein, H. (eds.) (1989), Themes from Kaplan, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Audi, R. (1982), "Believing and Affirming," Mind, 91:115-20. Bostock, D. (1988), "Necessary Truth and A Priori Truth," Mind, 97:343-79.

31 Many thanks to the following who offered helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper: Mike Bishop, Hartry Field, Barry Loewer, Brian McLaughlin, William Lycan, Richard Samuels, Michael Strevens, and, especially, Brian Loar.

276 JONATHAN SUTTON



Crimmins, M. (1992a), "Tacitness and Virtual Beliefs," Mind and Language, 7(3):240-63.

Crimmins, M. (1992b), Talk About Beliefs, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Donnellan, K. S. (1979), "The Contingent A Priori and Rigid Designators,"

in Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language, French, P., Uehling, T., and Wettstein, H., eds., University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Evans, G. (1979), "Reference and Contingency," The Monist, 62:161-89. Evans, G. (1982), The Varieties of Reference, Blackwell, Oxford. Field, H. (1978), "Mental Representation," Erkenntnis, 13:9-61. Forbes, G. (1989), Languages of Possibility, Blackwell, Oxford. Kaplan, D. (1989a), "Afterthoughts," in Almog et al. (1989), pp. 565-614. Kaplan, D. (1989b), "Demonstratives," in Almog et al. (1989), pp. 481-563. Kitcher, P. (1980), "Apriority and Necessity," Australasian Journal of

Philosophy, 58(2):89-101. Kripke, S. A. (1980), Naming and Necessity, Blackwell, Oxford. Lycan, W. G. (1986), "Tacit Belief," in Belief: Form, Content, and Function,

Bogdan, R. J., ed., pp. 61-82, Clarendon Press, Oxford. McGinn, C. (1975), "Review of Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume II:

Studies in the Philosophy of Language," Philosophia, 2:397-405. Recanati, F. (1993), Direct Reference: From Language to Thought, Black-

well, Oxford. Richard, M. (1990), Propositional Attitudes: An Essay on Thoughts and

How We Ascribe Them, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Salmon, N. U. (1987), "How to Measure the Standard Metre," Proceedings of

the Aristotelian Society, 88:193-217. Schiffer, S. (1987), Remnants of Meaning, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Stich, S. P. (1982), "On the Ascription of Content," in Thought and Object:

Essays on Intentionality, Woodfield, A., ed., pp. 153-206, Clarendon Press, Oxford.




The Contingent A Priori and Implicit Knowledge

Documents

Transcript of The Contingent A Priori and Implicit Knowledge