Introducing Perspectives

So there's this world. There's some way the world is, just like there is some way your left leg is positioned right now. I'm sitting in a chair right now. That's one of the ways the world is.

There are sentences. Some of those sentences are true. It's plausible and intuitively appealing that the distinction between the sentences that are true and the sentences that are not true has something to do with the way the world is. It's an equally attractive thesis (though not equally plausible) that sentences are true when (and only when) the world is some way that matches the content of the sentence. For instance, my belief that there is a female philosopher is true because the world is built out of things, among them a philosopher that has the property of being female. In fact, you might think that all sentences are true (if they are true) in virtue of some corresponding bit of the world that makes them true. If you subscribe to the last thesis, you might espouse a correspondence theory of truth, according to which the world is full of truthmakers that suffice to make certain sentences true. Sentences, in turn, represent the world as being a certain way, and the true sentences are the ones that represent the world as containing their a truthmakers that the world does, indeed, contain.

There are many reasons to think that this is a bankrupt way of telling the story of the world, of language, and of being. Thus, many say, we should stop talking about the world this way, and start talking about the world differently. Call those people spoil sports (or pragmatists, or anti-representationalists, or quietists, or irrealists, or deflationists). I would like to proceed with a number of philosophical projects and inquiries that often implicitly take for granted that something like this representational picture of language and this correspondence theory of truth is correct. If the if the spoil sports are correct, then my projects and inquiries are at risk of being a waste of time. So I will worry a great deal about representationalism and about correspondence, and the various thinkers that would have us discard such notions. I will worry about whether the cases against representationalism and correspondence are compelling; and I will often reflect on what would be left of my projects and inquiries should the spoil sports be correct. However, for now, please forgive me for taking such a picture of the world for granted. Articulating my interests requires it.

So here's one way the world is: my salt shaker is white. Here's another way the world is: my pepper shaker is black. (I'm sitting at my kitchen table right now) But suppose I tried to tell you that, in addition to the world being those ways, the world is also a third way: my salt shaker is not white (and I only have one salt shaker). This would be unacceptable, for the world cannot be such that p both is and is not the case. If someone says something that sounds like p is and is not the case (for instance: I'm angry, but I'm not angry.) this is usually a rhetorically elaborate way of saying something quite different ("I am experiencing negative feelings toward you and want to get away from you, but I know that you didn't know any better and so what happened wasn't really your fault") which isn't contradictory. But if the world is one way, p, it can't unqualifiedly also be not p.

But suppose you think of the world as a varied place, one upon which one can take many perspectives. What distinguishes these perspectives from one another? Well, you might think that if a sentence is true from one perspective than it's true from all. Thus, if two perspectives disagree on whether a sentence is true, then one of them is wrong. But sometimes we want to say "here's a slice of reality. If we look upon reality from the standpoint of that slice, than p. However, if we look upon reality from a different slice, then not p." Let us reserve the (plural) noun-phrase "different perspectives" for cases like this last case, where the two perspectives disagree on some piece of reality, and they're both correctly describing reality from their perspective. If the case is more like the former case, where any situation where two perspectives disagree about reality, then one of them is wrong, well that's something else. It doesn't matter what we call it; we won't have cause to talk about it. On our understanding then, multiple perspectives must in some way differ on what sentences are true (really are true, not just are taken to be true) according to each perspective. So while p is true from one perspective, it is false from a different perspective. Are these perspectives a real feature of the architecture of the world (of all that is real) or are they unreal, illusory, a byproduct of a deceptive psychology that incorrectly reveals to us the way that the world is? If these perspectives are real things, the real is not univocal or monolithic. There are ways of dividing up the world up into slices, perspectives, and situating p and not p in to different slices, so that reality (in its totally) is now constituted by p and not p.

Sorry, what am I talking about? What are these things into which I'm dividing the world? Well, at a most fundamental level I want to say that anything that has this structure is a perspective. Any way of slicing up the world such that sentences that contradict one another can both be true of the world, so long as they do not occupy the same slice, is a candidate for a perspectival (or aspect-theoretic) analysis. Popular examples are are selves, times, and worlds. For the remainder of this post I will limit my discussion to times, but my interest is not in time per se. My interest is in perspectives.

So take a moment in time, t, and take a moment approximately one minute later, t'. I'm going to help myself to the language of propositions, but I want to remain agnostic on what propositions are. All that they are, for me, are the things that are true directly in virtue of the way the world is. This is distinct from sentences, which are true in virtue of the proposition they express being true. So while I now replace sentence-talk with proposition-talk, I'm only trying to make it explicit that it's the world I'm talking about, not language. Most of the things true at t are true at t'. It's still true that Barack Obama is president, it's still true that I own an Oldsmobile. However, while it is true at t that Raleigh has an itch on his shoulder, it is false that Raleigh has an itch on his shoulder at t' (because Raleigh scratched his shoulder at s, where s is after t but before t'). So from one perspective, that proposition is true, from another it is false.

For the metaphysician interested in perspective, this is the moment of decision. For the metaphysician not interested in perspective, it can be very hard to see how there is even a problem here. I'm going to work very hard, over the course of writing for this blog, to make perfectly clear what is problematic about this situation, what sorts of solutions are available, and how those solutions fare when applied to various types of perspectives. I will conclude this post with a taste of the various theoretical puzzles one might fixate upon, and the most cursory glimpse at their available solution.

When a proposition is perspectival, what is truth simpliciter (That is, truth without qualification. Just plain true.)?

1. A proposition is true when it is fully saturated (indexed to the perspective or set of perspectives at which it is to be evaluated) and is true (true according to that (or those) perspective(s)). (Intuitively appealing for selves, awkward but currently in vogue for times, regarded as a bit wacky for worlds).
2. A proposition is true when it is true at a priveleged perspective. (Intuitively appealing forworlds, intuitive but unpopular for times, regarded as a bit wacky for selves.)

What is the ontological status of the perspectives (That is, how many of them exist, and in what sense do the existent ones exist)?

1. All of them exist on an ontological par with one another, none of them is more real than any other. (Intuitively appealing for selves, awkward but currently in vogue for times, regarded as a bit wacky for worlds.)
2. One of the perspectives (or some finite set of perspectives) are the real perspectives. Other perspectives are fictions, falsehoods, abstracta, or some other ontologically deflated sort of thing. (Intutively appealing for worlds, unclear status with respect to times, regarded as wacky for selves)

It's natural to think that the two (1) answers go together naturally, and that the two (2) answers go together naturally, but this is not an irresistible strategy. There are a variety of ways that one could try to situate truth in a particular perspective (Hare's first-personal presentism, or Bricker's absolute actuality, for instance) that nonetheless preserve the ontic equality of the various perspectives. What most impresses me, however, is the elegance with which these identical conceptual inquiries can be brought to bare upon such intuitively different entities as times, worlds and selves. My primary aim is to exploit the analogy among these canonical perspectives to the fullest. In so doing, I have a few different intellectual pipe dreams:

• Answers that at first seem insane (e.g. Lewisian modal realism) may seem less so when we see the grace with which their structural analogues are applied to other sorts of perspectives.
• The stark differences between different sorts of perspectives can yield yet unexpected insight into the perspectives themselves (what is it about actual world(s) that makes modal solipsism so irresistible, when its such an obscene thesis with respect to selves.)
• The role of perspective in a naturalistic worldview can be clarified by the ways in which certain issues in perspectival realism brush up against the speculations of theoretical and natural science (and how this, again, is different with different perspectives).
• Other seemingly distant philosophical puzzles can be usefully recast in a perspectival (or aspect-theoretic, same thing) setting. Here I have in mind, particularly, Davidsonian coherentism and Plato's tri-partite soul. Don't ask me how these work; they are as of yet very nascent ideas.