II. BEING

By ontology-full-stop is meant the study of being. Well that’s not very helpful, now is it? So try this. Of the things that are, as distinct from those that aren’t, what exactly are the former busy doing that the latter are not? Well, you might say, they’re busy being. But that’s not very helpful either, because what we’re asking is, what is it to be busy being?

Let’s cut to the chase. Some concepts – not many but some – are unanalysable primitives. And ‘being’ is one of them. That is, if you don’t understand the concept I can’t explain it to you. But then, to be fair, neither can I explain it to myself. So if to understand something is to stand it under something I already understand, then I guess I don’t understand what it is to be any better than you do. 

So if we can’t understand them, what purpose do unanalysable primitives serve? I call them enabling concepts. That is, though we can’t understand the concept itself – because there’s nothing other than itself to stand it under – it’s that by which we understand what we do understand. That horse I see over there is. It is in precisely the way that Pegasus is not. What way is that? you ask. Given what I’ve just said, I can’t very well roll my eyes at you, now can I? But what I can do, because it’s all I can do, is offer a self-deprecatory shrug. 

Being is not the only unanalysable primitive. ‘Sameness’ is another. And G.E. Moore thought ‘right’ (in the moral sense) is yet another. Moore was wrong about that. But his error was understandable. Let’s take a brief detour to see why.

The test for unanalysability is what’s come to be called the Open Question Argument. Suppose, as did John Stuart Mill, one reduces what’s right to whatever maximises utility. Then it would make no sense to ask whether it maximises utility to maximise utility. But “Is it right to maximise utility?” does make sense. So what’s right can’t mean whatever maximises utility. And the same will hold – that it will always remain an open question – for any other reduction of what’s right. Hence, argued Moore, rightness is an unanalysable primitive.

Prima facie this seems right. But elsewhere I’ve argued, contra Moore, that morality is reducible. More particularly that it’s reducible to intramental responses to patterns of otherwise dilemmatic interactivity. But whether I’m right or wrong about this need not delay us here. Here the takeaway is that, ceteris paribus, the open question argument does work for the unanalysability of being. Suppose, for example, you say what it is to be is to be a thought in the mind of God. Ah, but I can still meaningfully ask, what is it for a thought in the mind of God to be? So because this – and any question like it – remains an open question, being is an unanalysable primitive. Quod erat demonstrandum. 

And if there were nothing more for ontology to be than the analysis of the concept of being, our work would be done. But it’s not. In fact it’s just begun. 

Categories: pure philosophy

Tags: being, G.E. Moore, ontology, Open Question Argument, unanalysability