The Contingencies of Ambiguity

ANALYSIS 67.4

OCTOBER 2007

The contingencies of ambiguity Ian Hacking This note uses Joseph LaPorte’s (2004: 94–100) new look at Putnam’s example of jade: (a) To illustrate the sheer contingencies of naming. (b) To urge that the philosopher’s question, ‘What would (or should) we say if?’ is often trumped by, ‘What did we say, when?’ (c) To support Putnam’s opinion that identity criteria for substances are ‘interest-relative’. What follows is disproportionately dense in small facts, compared to most analytic philosophy. The facts do not matter, qua facts. They illustrate down-to-earth possibilities. These include an elegant example of Kripke’s observation that after a ‘baptism’, ‘real reference can shift to another real reference’ (1980: 163) – and not just for proper names but for names for kinds of substances. The examples remind us that reality is richer than a priori possible worlds. They also lead to a valuable distinction that falls within the family of concepts that includes vagueness and ambiguity. Putnam drew attention to a gemstone with two distinct hidden structures. Although the Chinese do not recognize a difference, the term ‘jade’ applies to two minerals: jadeite and nephrite. Chemically, there is a marked difference. Jadeite is a combination of sodium and aluminum. Nephrite is made of calcium, magnesium, and iron. These two quite different microstructures produce the same unique textural qualities! (Putnam 1975: 241) LaPorte (2004) looked into the history of jade. ‘Amazingly, jade met its XYZ’ (2004: 95), referring to Putnam’s water look-alike. He points a ‘moral’ (2004: 100). I shall add thirteen vignettes to his report. Each ends with an Observation, from which readers can draw their own morals. The vignettes powerfully illustrate (a). I conclude with their application to (b) and (c). (1) Prehistory. Jade is found in Neolithic sites around the world, with ample evidence of regional trade. Both nephrite and jadeite are tough and very hard. Only Chinese, Maori and Mesoamerican (especially Maya) civilizations discovered how to work jade into elaborate objects of great cultural significance. Obs 1: Human beings have always loved jade. Analysis 67.4, October 2007, pp. 269–77. © Ian Hacking

270 ian hacking 01 (2) China. Putnam was correct about chemistry but misleading about ‘the Chinese’. Chinese has many names for kinds of jade. The generic term is yu. It covers both nephrite and jadeite. The distinction between the two is not just chemical. They feel different, jadeite being more ‘slippery’ than nephrite; it is also harder and heavier. Classic jadeite is esteemed for its deep green colour, but since impurities colour it, some superb pieces are lavender, honey-yellow, or brownish-red. Chinese nephrite is predominantly creamy in colour (‘mutton-fat’). What is common to both is that they are readily worked by abrasion (not carving) into exquisite shapes. Obs 2: The extension of the name ‘yu’ can be specified as covering two chemically distinct minerals, but it was determined by the workability of the substances, their polished appearance, and a deep cultural tradition. (3) The Americas 1569: baptism. The conquistadores found that Mesoamericans valued jade more highly than gold. They despised the cultural tradition, but did notice that jade was applied for pains in the side and lower back, that Spanish medicine blamed on bad kidneys. So, according to a study of Mesoamerican medicine (Monardes 1569; see OED, and Meyer-Lübke 1905: 408) they named it piedra de ijada (ijada = flank of the lower back). Hence French ‘éjade’, later ‘jade’, Italian ‘giade’, English ‘jade’, and so forth. Dog Latin: lapis nephriticus, stone good for the kidneys. Mesoamerican jade was the mineral now called jadeite. Obs 3: Jadeite was baptized ‘jade’, and the given name implied a theory about the powers of the stone. (4) Sweden 1758: Nephrite. Axel von Cronstedt (the geologist who named nickel) renamed lapis nephriticus ‘Nephrit’ in Swedish. That became the German scientific name when he was translated, 1780. It entered A. G. Werner’s classic system (1791). The mineralogists probably, but not certainly, had nephrite samples before them. ‘Nierenstein’ was used in German much earlier, meaning stone good for the kidneys, alongside its other meaning, kidney stone (calculus). In English ‘nephritic stone’ was common. The OED cites a text of 1794 defining jade as the ‘Nephrit of Werner’. Obs 4: The name ‘nephrite’ is derived from a Latin name given in the first instance to jadeite (Cf. Kripke, ‘real reference can shift to another real reference’), and which retained its medical connotations (contrary, perhaps, to a purely referential theory of names for natural kinds). (5) New Zealand 1777: the persistence of paradigms. The OED citation for ‘green nephritic stone, or jadde’ is from Georg Forster’s account of his father’s journeys as Captain Cook’s reporter on natural history. Maori did marvellous work with nephrite, common on the South Island. Forster describes it with admiration. It happens that the very piece of green nephritic stone, in the citation by the OED, is a ceremonial Maori club, #161 in the collection that Forster left to Oxford, now in the Pitt-Rivers

the contingencies of ambiguity 271 01 Museum. Obs 5: Actual paradigms can be preserved for centuries, not by deliberation, as the standard meter in Paris, but by historical flukes. (6) China before 1784. Jade has been enormously important for Chinese civilizations. The character ‘yu’ is one of the oldest signs in calligraphy; it also connotes purity and beauty. For millennia, almost all Chinese jade was nephrite. It is, however, probable that by the 17th century CE small amounts of jadeite were in circulation, and much esteemed.1 Obs 6: For very many centuries the generic Chinese name for jade applied almost solely to nephrite. (7) Burma 1784: The Qianlong emperor annexes northern Burma. Bonanza! Jadeite was discovered in northern mountainous jungles and exported via Yunnan to Pekin and the imperial court. New names evolved to fit the new stuff.2 ‘Old-mine’ jadeite, geologically older, was wanted for its lustre and translucency. The finest green became imperial jade. Imperial-green old-mine jade is the best of all. The Qianlong emperor adored jade and welcomed the stunning new stones. Although jadeite was different from the familiar nephrite, and acquired its own battery of specific names, it was taken to be the same generic stuff as nephrite, falling within the extension of ‘yu’.3 Obs 7: In China, jadeite, when discovered, was treated as the same generic gemstone as nephrite. (8) France, 1846: Nephrite is analysed. ‘The generic name jade has been given to different minerals’, but only ‘nephritic jade or oriental jade’, ‘has been thought by mineralogists to constitute a distinct species.’ (Damour, 1846: 469.) Minerals were now being identified by their chemistry. Alexis

1

This is controversial, and there is money at work. A jadeite buffalo, auctioned for a fortune over 30 years ago, was judged by experts to be from the Ming dynasty, which ended 1644.

2

The new stuff was hard jade, ying yu; ancient jade accordingly became ruan yu, soft jade. Yunnan jade: jadeite came through Yunnan, as opposed to Xinjiang jade, the region where nephrite is mined. Some superb jadeite is called feicui, which also means ‘kingfisher’. According to Xu Shen’s etymological dictionary, 102 CE, this word was used for jewellery decorated with red (fei) and green (cui) feathers. It may also have been used for the small amounts of jadeite in circulation before 1784, or perhaps only for especially translucent green nephrite. The names go on. Red skin (hong pi) is so called because it is reddish jadeite from the outside of large stones of jadeite.

3

LaPorte disagrees. But in support of the claim that the Chinese had a problem with jadeite, he cites only Chi Yun (2004: 189, n. 5), whose evidence, he agrees, is equivocal. Indeed it may show that more jadeite was circulating before 1784 than LaPorte admits. He cites many Westerners (post-1863) who express surprise that jadeite was so readily accepted, but they write with the Western sensibility that, since there are two distinct chemical substances, there ‘ought’ to have been a problem.

272 ian hacking 01 Damour made the definitive analysis of nephrite. Obs 8: What Putnam called ‘microstructure’ became the criterion for identifying minerals only during the 19th century. (9) France, 1863: Jadeite is baptised ‘jadeite’. In 1860, French and British armies sacked the Summer Palace. Many beautiful jadeite artefacts were brought as loot to Paris and London. It was called ‘green jade’ [jade vert] (Damour 1863: 861). Damour showed it was chemically different from ‘white or oriental jade’. ‘It is appropriate to treat green jade as a separate species, attached to the family of Wernerites. I propose to give it the name jadeite [jadéite], in order to distinguish it from white jade ...’ (1863: 865). On the literary side, Édmond de Goncourt (1881, Vol. 2, 303) makes no distinction in species between the milky white nephrite of China (si laiteusement blanche), and the kingfisher green jadeite (si limpidement vert d’eau de mer). Obs 9: In France, white jade (nephrite) and green jade (jadeite) were seen as kinds of jade. (10) Germany, 1875. A fascinating but obsessive monograph (Fischer 1875), has an exhaustive literature search4 for descriptions of jade and similar substances such as jasper, going back to Moses. (There was once, and may still be, some discussion of whether the circumcision stone used in Exodus 4:25 was not flint but jade.) After the 16th century, Fischer’s citations and quotations are legion, and he lists over 100 names given to those substances, which he generically refers to as nephrite, though he is well aware that Damour has chemically distinguished jadeite. He regards ‘jade’ as a noun in only French and English; this is surely because the German nouns ‘Jade’ and ‘Jadeit’ (or, after the French, ‘Jadëit’), together with Chinese jadeite art, entered Germany about the same time, around 1870. (The stolen stuff went first to Paris and London.) The philologist Meyer-Lübke (1905) regards ‘jade’ as a French word. The 1908 Brockhaus Konverstions-Lexikon entry for Jade is simply, ‘Handelname des Nephrits’, Nephrit being the generic word for both kinds of jade. The current Brockhaus says that ‘Jade’ is a non-scientific word used chiefly in trade. Obs 10: The German language never had the opportunity to be ambiguous with the German noun ‘Jade’. (11) England 1889: Is jadeite jade? LaPorte cites an eminent English mineralogist, whose article in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edn.) said that ‘jade’ should be restricted to nephrite. The author was then 71; he merely revised what he had published in the 1889 (9th) edition. Obs 11: In fin-de-siècle England, the meaning of ‘jade’ was not agreed. 4

Exhaustive? Of course not, but astonishing. Philologists cite the great Meyer-Lübke (1905) as the source for the Mesoamerican etymology of ‘jade’, but there is Monardes 1569 in Fischer (1875: 84–85), and the claim, that I am unable to check, that ‘piedra de ijaada’ appears in an earlier book by Monardes, 1563 or 1565.

the contingencies of ambiguity 273 01 (12) Hong Kong 1902: Britannia rules, but the jade market rules jade. In the late 19th century, jadeite production took off – better transport etc. The Empress Dowager (1835–1908) sets the pace with a sumptuous collection. Britain leases Hong Kong, capital of the world jade market. The main traders are rich Chinese. For them, the generic substance is yu, spanning nephrite and the esteemed jadeite (with a hundred subspecies to boot). Commerce dictates that the English will resolve their semantic scruples and use ‘jade’ to mean yu, and especially jadeite. Obs 12: The present meaning of ‘jade’ in English was determined by business interests, not artistic or mineralogical ones. (13) British Columbia 2007: Nature has the last laugh. It turns out that most nephrite is in northern British Columbia, where it is mined in 20 ton boulders. One Vancouver dealer already has enough downtown to satisfy the world market for 200 years. He proposes selling it for floor tiles. The Burmese jadeite mines and the B.C. nephrite mines are on opposite sides of the globe, and are equally inhospitable to homo sapiens. The Canadian mines can be worked only 60 days a year. Temple monuments recall the prodigious numbers of top brass who died at the Burmese mines. Lord knows how many navvies died from jungle scourges. No human being has ever visited both the Canadian and the Asian sites. Obs 13: Tawmaw in Myanmar, with its jadeite, and Dease Lake, B.C., near nephrite mountains, are the closest analogies on this planet to Putnam’s Earth, with H2O, and Twin-Earth, with XYZ. These summary facts supplement LaPorte in numerous ways, but differ from him chiefly at (7). He holds that in China there was a real question, after 1784, whether the stone from Burma should count as yu. Scholars may discover there was a profound argument, but it does appear that the Qianlong emperor (who ruled until 1796) loved the stuff, and the question of whether it was yu did not arise. Moreover I find no evidence of serious debate about ‘jade’ in France after 1865 – only in Britain. LaPorte describes the British situation as one in which the name ‘jade’ was vague. He states that ‘yu’ was vague in China until its usage vis-àvis jadeite was established. He also holds that there was a ‘hidden vagueness’ in the term before jadeite came on the scene. ‘Hidden vagueness in a word’s application that is later exposed like this with more information is known as open texture’ (2004: 97). I avoid the debate on how to use Waismann 1945, but suggest that what follows is relevant. (On a contrast between actual vagueness and open texture, see Waismann 1968: 97.) Here are descriptions that avoid LaPorte’s word ‘vague’ by defining two more specific terms, ‘indeterminate’ and ‘undetermined’. The former refers to an experienced and exposed ambiguity in the use of a term at a time within a linguistic community. The latter applies if we see that such an

274 ian hacking 01 ambiguity might have been experienced in a historical community, not just as a logical possibility, but as a real historical possibility. Case 1, London. The extension of the English term ‘jade’ was indeterminate between 1870 and say 1914, because there was an actual felt ambiguity in the relevant British community, and people had to determine which way to go. In 1770 the extension was undetermined, in the way that the outcome of a sea battle is undetermined until it has been fought. Nothing up to 1770 could possibly have predicted, let alone determined, how English-speaking mineralogists would react after two chemically different but otherwise similar types of gemstone came on the market. (Obviously, undetermined is far stronger than Quine’s underdetermined.) A clarification is called for. The extension of a term is undetermined at a time, with respect to alternatives, only if then, or at a later time, a real ambiguity arises within one community, or two sub-communities diverge over the application of the term. An extension is not undetermined if it is merely logically possible that an ambiguity should emerge, or two subcommunities should diverge. When David Bloor (1986: 387) wrote that ‘Every classification that we accomplish is precarious, essentially incomplete and under threat’, he clearly thought that splittings were far closer to daily life than I do. This is a constant theme of Bloor 1983. Many scenarios that Bloor would regard as possible, seem to me only logically possible. The full-blown study of the mere logical possibility of subcommunity splits, is of course due to Kripke (1982). When I speak of the extension of a term being undetermined, I do not refer to Kripke-Bloor logical possibilities. Case 2, Paris. Damour described jadeite and nephrite as two species of jade. A casual search has turned up no French chemists or mineralogists or collectors who had the British worries. They may have thought that the perfidious English are at it again – quibbling about words!5 It is improbable that the French noun ‘jade’ was ever indeterminate. In 1770 Paris, as in London, it was of course undetermined whether the noun would come to seem ambiguous when jadeite was brought to Paris and analysed. Case 3, China. In 1770 the extension of the term ‘yu’ was probably undetermined vis-à-vis jadeite. If LaPorte’s version of events after 1784 is correct, then the extension was indeterminate until ‘the Chinese [came] to 5

There is a parallel with measles in almost the same period. After German clinicians had distinguished measles from what we now call rubella, French medicine took existing terminology one way, without ambiguity or equivocation, while English physicians took the same names in a different way, urging that there was a terrible ambiguity. See Hacking (forthcoming b), where the stories of the names of such diseases as gout, multiple sclerosis (Putnam’s longtime example), measles, and Down’s syndrome further illustrate the contingencies of naming.

the contingencies of ambiguity 275 01 accept jadeite as true jade’ (2004: 96). If my version of events is correct, there was never any question, never any perceived ambiguity, and the term was never indeterminate. The facts do not matter to anyone: I could well be wrong about French and Chinese. The distinction that the stories illustrate, between being undetermined and being indeterminate, does matter to the philosophy of language and to epistemology. Having said enough about (a), the contingencies of naming, let us turn to point (b), about the philosopher’s question, ‘What would (or should) we say if?’ LaPorte uses the example of jade to argue against Putnam’s uses of Twin-Earth. When Putnam was considering logically possible worlds, ‘what we would say’ was moot: since possible worlds are stipulations, perhaps you can stipulate what you say about them. Later, however, Putnam (1981: 23) wrote of ordinary possibilities, e.g., what ‘one should say, if such a planet [as Twin-Earth] is ever discovered’. LaPorte uses jade as a quasi-counterexample to Putnam on Twin-Earth. Obs 13 suggests that the example is well-taken: the best source of jadeite on earth is metaphorical light years away from the best source of nephrite. But the entire sequence of observations shows how utterly contingent – and unpredictable – are our practices of naming. Because of the sheer contingency we have no idea what we would say, let alone should say, if a Twin-Earth were ever to be discovered. If philosophers were to pay a little more attention to the real-life historical contingencies of language use, they would be less inclined to construct zealously over-confident arguments about what we would or should say, if. Take a far less ambitious case of would-say-iffery. On the very same page that he gave us jade, Putnam wrote that if H2O and XYZ had both been plentiful on Earth, then we would have had a case similar to the jadeite/nephrite case: it would have been correct to say that there were two kinds of ‘water’. And instead of saying that ‘the stuff on Twin Earth turned out not to really be water’, we would have to say ‘it turned out to be the XYZ kind of water. (Putnam 1975: 241, his italics.) In fact people did not say that the stuff in B.C. turned out to be ‘the nephrite kind of jade’; they said that it turned out to be nephrite. But that is just a matter of colloquial English. More importantly, our history of contingencies makes plain that there was very little that ‘we would have to say’ when B.C. jade was shown to be nephrite. The French, British, and Germans appear to have said different types of thing, in their respective languages, when nephrite and jadeite were chemically distinguished.

276 ian hacking 01 In a quite different respect, jade furnishes powerful support for a far more fundamental thesis of Putnam about natural kinds and the identity of substances, point (c). Interests trump metaphysics. Few natural-kind philosophers today would count jade among the natural kinds, but in the ordinary way of speaking it has a semantics similar to that of common substances. Two liquids bear the same-liquid relation if ‘they agree in important physical properties’ (Putnam 1975: 238). This works for solids too. Putnam continued: ‘Importance is an interest-relative notion. Normally the “important” properties of a liquid or solid, etc., are the ones that are structurally important.’ For jade, other interests dominate: aesthetics, ease of working into exquisite objects, and, as in Obs 12, money. In a parallel context Putnam asks if two other substances are the same substance, and answers: ‘Well, it may depend on our interests. (This is the sort of talk Kripke hates!)’ (1990: 68). Yes indeed. Philosophers who write about the ‘Kripke-Putnam theory’ have too little noticed that Putnam’s theory, about natural kinds and their names, is not the same as Kripke’s (Hacking forthcoming a). Collège de France 11 place Marcelin Berthelot 75213 Paris cedex 05, France [email protected] References Bloor, D. 1983. Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge. London: Macmillan. Bloor, D. 1986. Some determinants of cognitive style in science. In Cognition and Fact: Materials on Ludwik Fleck, ed. R. S. Cohen and T. Schnelle. Dordrecht: Reidel. Damour, A. 1846. Analyse du jade orientale, réunion de cette substance à la Trémolite. Annales de Chimie et de Physique 3rd series, 16: 469–74. Damour, A. 1863. Notice et analyse sur le jade vert. Réunion de cette matière minérale à la famille des Wernerites. Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des Sciences 65: 861–65. Fischer, H. 1875. Nephrit und Jadeit: nach ihren mineralogischen Eigenschaften sowie nach ihrer urgeschichtlichen und ethnographischen Bedeutung. Freiburg: Schweizerbart. Goncourt, É de. 1881. La Maison d’un artiste. 2 vols. Paris: Charpentier. Hacking, I. Forthcoming a. Putnam’s theory of natural kinds and their names is not the same as Kripke’s. Principia: Revista Internacional de Epistemologica (Florianopolis, Brazil), 11. Hacking, I. Forthcoming b. Natural kinds, hidden structures, and pragmatic instincts. In The Philosophy of Hilary Putnam, ed. R. Auxier. Peru, Ill.: Open Court. Kripke, S. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kripke, S. 1982. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Elementary Exposition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

does thought imply ought? 277 11 LaPorte, J. 2004. Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meyer-Lübke, W. 1905. Wortgeschichtliches. Zeitshcrift für Romanische Philologie 29: 402–12. Monardes, N. 1569. Dos libros, el uno que trata de todas de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, que sirven al uso de la medecina y el otro que trata de la piedra bezaar, y de la yerva escuerçonera. Seville: Hernando Diaz. Putnam, H. 1975. Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Putnam, H. 1981. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Putnam, H. 1990. Is water necessarily H2O? In Realism with a Human Face, ed. J. Conant, 54–79. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Waismann, F. 1945. Verifiability. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Suppl. Vol. 19: 119–50. Repr. in Waismann 1968, 39–66. Waismann, F. 1968. How I See Philosophy. London: Macmillan.

Does thought imply ought? Krister Bykvist & Anandi Hattiangadi It is widely held that, for belief, correctness is truth (Boghossian 1989, 2003; Engel 2001; Gibbard 2003, 2005; Shah 2003; Velleman 2000; Wedgwood 2002, 2007a, 2007b). This is often captured by the more precise claim that: (1) For any p: the belief that p is correct if and only if p is true. On the face of it, (1) looks trivial, particularly if we interpret ‘correct’ as synonymous with ‘true’ and take ‘belief’ to refer to the proposition believed. However, as proponents of the thesis take pains to point out, the claim is not trivial: ‘correct’ is interpreted as a normative term, not synonymous with ‘true’, but as concerning what one ought to do (Gibbard 2003, 2005; Boghossian 2003; Wedgwood 2002); and it is applied to the psychological state or act of believing, not the proposition believed (Wedgwood 2002: 267). Moreover, (1) or its close cousins are said to be constitutive of belief. Given the insistence on the interpretation of ‘correct’ as a normative term, (1) can be restated more clearly as follows: (2) For any S, p: S ought to believe that p if and only if p is true. In this paper, we shall argue that the hypothesis that belief is constitutively normative is false. In the next section, we will briefly present the view that