Dr. Seth M. Holtzman
                                                            ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
 
 

---

 
 

WHAT A PRESUPPOSITION TELLS US

Some philosophers are subjectivists about presuppositions, maintaining that presuppositions tell us about only our subjective commitments and thus only something non-rational about ourselves.  Peter Schouls, for one, argues that philosophy involves making basic presuppositions not open to rational criticism, since any pro or con reasons themselves rely on a presuppositional framework.  He infers that "logic does not give reasons for adopting or abandoning presuppositions."  Because any philosophical position relies on presuppositions, he concludes that there are a plurality of rationally acceptable philosophies, that full communication between philosophers is impossible, and that rational resolution of philosophical differences is impossible.  We find positions somewhat similar to Schouls' in Bertrand Russell, Ted Peters (from the Continental tradition), Michael Polanyi, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and most famously, R. G. Collingwood.¹
 

Against subjectivists, I argue that we have good grounds to believe that locating our presuppositions tells us more than simply facts about ourselves.  I will argue that our presuppositions tell us about the world; our presuppositions tell us how we must view the world.  Understood this way, presuppositions are under rational constraints such as these: Can one consistently view the world in the way that one is compelled to by one's presuppositions?  Are one's presuppositions self-consistent?  Are there any unavoidably fundamental presuppositions that conflict with one's presuppositions?  My focus in this paper, though, will not be on the rational constraints on presuppositions, but rather will be on securing a conception of what presuppositions tell us that is open to rational constraints.
 

The subjectivists make a powerful argument.  They claim that presuppositions are internal commitments.  By locating presuppositions we are locating only facts about ourselves, facts about what psychological states we have.  Different philosophical positions rely on different presuppositions ultimately.  At least our deepest presuppositions cannot be rationally assessed.  So, philosophy is ultimately a subjective endeavor, grounding out in arational psychological facts about ourselves.
 

Let us grant to the subjectivists the insight that a presupposition is first and foremost an internal commitment.  For example, if Jane believes that Fred has stopped forging checks (this belief is the presupposer), then Jane's belief primarily presupposes that she believes that Fred at one time forged checks, whether or not Fred actually did at one time forge checks.²  The meaningfulness of a presupposer commits Jane to the psychological state or act that is the presupposition, whether the presupposition is objectively successful or not.³ By examining our presupposers to discover their presuppositions, we can discover what further psychological states or acts we must be committed to.  If Jane did not believe that Fred once forged checks, she could not even form the belief that has stopped forging checks.
 

But there are some cases in which one of our commitments presupposes not merely commitment to the presupposition but also the success of its presupposition.  In this way a presuppositional commitment seems to tell us something about what the presupposition is of or about.  In other words, there seem to be cases in which some presuppositions tell us more than simply about our further psychological states and acts; they seem to tell us something about a world independent of those commitments.
 

For example, standard cases of reference point in this direction.  When Bert states that the king of France is bald, it not only commits him to believing that there is a king of France but also implies that there is a king of France.  In order for the content of the presupposer to be meaningful, the world has to contain a king of France.  If Bert's presupposer statement (that the king of France is bald) is even meaningful, then he must acknowledge not merely commitment to its presupposition but also commitment to the truth of that presupposition.  Even if there is no king of France, he could take himself to have stated that the king of France is bald, as long as he believes that there is a king of France.  But his statement is not in fact well-formed; it does not succeed as a statement; it is not meaningful.⁴
 

Presuppositions function in at least two ways, then, both of which are captured by my account of a presupposition as a meaningfulness-condition.  Some presuppositions seem to be a condition of the very possibility of a state or act.  Other presuppositions seem to be a condition of the state or act being fully well-formed and therefore successful as a state or act.  This second class of presuppositions, at least in the case of reference, gives us an objective outreach to the world.  The interesting question we need to address is this: Is there any way that all presuppositions tell us something about a world that is independent of the psychological states and acts that constitute those presuppositions?  And are presuppositions possibility-conditions in a more robust way than we have so far noted?  I will argue, first, that our presuppositions per se tell us something about how we must view the world, and second, that our meaningful presupposers per se tell us what objective possibilities there are.  Let us consider these two points in turn.
 

Point number one: We are committed to the success of our presuppositions.  This follows from a more general claim: we are committed to the success of all of our psychological states and acts that we stand behind.  For example, a belief is successful by being true.  Indeed, when one believes p, one takes p to be true.  One is moved to fit p in with one's other beliefs on the basis of consistency and coherence.  Our concern with the overall consistency of our belief system follows from the more basic requirement that each individual belief be true.  If one discovers that one's belief is false, that belief dissolves as one stops accepting it--it loses a place in one's belief system.  One cannot rest secure when some belief one accepts is called into doubt; if one is not inclined to reject the belief, one is moved to look for a better basis for holding the belief or to reject that which (or the person who) creates the doubt.⁵  So, commitment to a presupposer does not merely imply that one has a certain presupposition.  Having the psychological state or act that is the presupposer commits one to the success of the psychological state or act that is the presupposition.
 

A presupposition is an internal commitment, then, but it includes commitment to the success of the presupposition.  Given some presupposer, one not only has a presupposition, but in having it one is necessarily committed to it being successful.  For example, if one believes that Fred has stopped forging checks, then one is necessarily committed to the truth of the belief-presupposition that Fred once forged checks.  One's presupposition tells one something about how one necessarily takes the world to be, namely, that Fred once forged checks.  Or take Billy Graham's belief about his guardian angel, which presupposes that he is committed to the well-formedness and legitimate applicability of the concept of an angel.  Graham's conceptual presupposition is that the concept of an angel delineates some real non-physical being or kind of being.
 

Commitment to the success of a presupposition does not mean that the presupposition is successful objectively.  One may take a belief to be true and yet unbeknownst to one it is false; one may take a concept to be well-formed and applicable and yet unbeknownst to one it is not.  Nor does commitment to the success of a presupposition mean that one takes it to be successful without restriction.  Say that one accepts some presupposer provisionally.  One's commitment to its presupposition might then be provisional--one takes the presupposition to be successful only provisionally.  And of course one may treat a presupposer belief as if it were meaningful (though one really thinks it to be meaningless) in order to explore its implications.  In this way, one would take a presupposition of that belief to be successful for purposes of critical exploration.  (We do this quite often when we work to understand and interpret philosophers whose positions we don't agree with.)  Lastly, a presupposition is a necessary commitment, but that does not imply that a presupposition formulates a necessary truth.  A presupposition tells one how one must view the world (given one's presupposer commitments) but not necessarily how the world must be.
 

When one discovers a presupposition, one learns that one has some psychological state or act, perhaps previously unrecognized.  In this way, reasoning back to presuppositions can be thought of as a kind of archeology of the mind.  On the other hand, since one is committed to the success of a presupposition, the content of one's presupposition also tells one about one's commitment to the world being a certain way.  A presupposition is an internal commitment in that one's commitment to the presupposer necessarily commits to its presupposition.  But a presupposition is an external commitment in that one's presuppositions tell one something about how one must view the world in light of one's presupposer commitments.⁶
 

Nevertheless, it is important to note that our presuppositions do not necessarily commit us in any simple fashion to taking the world to be a certain way.  Quine was justified in pointing out that, for example, "Pegasus is not real" does not presuppose an entity named by the singular term.  Even if some way of speaking seems to commit us to a presupposition, he notes, we might be able to "paraphrase" the way of speaking in order to reveal more clearly its actual presuppositional commitments.⁷ We need to use considerable care and sophistication when determining presuppositional commitments.
 

Point number two: A presupposition provides a kind of external outreach by what it tells us about its presupposer(s), too.  How does that work?  Well, let's consider what the implications are for presupposers if a presupposition is a condition of the meaningfulness of its presupposer(s).  There is a long tradition in philosophy supporting the claim that if some subject matter is meaningful then it can be thought aboutbut that if it is not meaningful then it cannot be thought about.  Someone may try to think what is meaningless, because he takes it to be meaningful; he may even believe he can think something, unaware of its meaninglessness.  So, the claim that what is meaningless limits what can be thought about says only that one cannot consistently and coherently think through whatever is meaningless.  The limits of the meaningful are the limits of what one can think through.  A presupposition, then, is a condition of being able to think (through) the presupposer.
 

Another insight comes from Wittgenstein, who contends that "what is thinkable is also possible".⁸  That is, the content of what we can think through presents us with what we take to be a possibility in the world.  Here we must be careful, though.  Even if what is thinkable is in some sense possible, what is possible might not be thinkable.  Perhaps somehow there are possibilities that in principle are not open to our epistemic faculties.  Perhaps we also have to acknowledge that some real possibility in our world could turn out to be an impossibility in light of a reality outside of our epistemic capabilities.  All we are claiming, then, is that if something is thinkable then we may take it to be a possibility in any world which we could make sense of and have knowledge of.
 

What about believing a contradiction?  After all, we sometimes believe (falsely) what turns out to be a contradiction.  The content of a contradiction is not a possibility but rather an impossibility, either in the world or in a way of thought.  Is this a case of being able to think something that is impossible?  Surely not, for can we think through a contradiction, grasp its implications, feel a wide range of its logical relationships with our other beliefs, and still hold it?⁹  We cannot really think through a contradiction without in the process discovering that it is one.
 

However, we need yet another qualification on our claim that the content of the thinkable presents a possibility for us.  What sort of possibility is at issue here?  For those of us who claim that our psychological states and acts have a logical structure, we are likely to conclude that what is thinkable is logically possible.  The question is how logical possibilities tell us anything about the world.  I would say that if we take some presupposer to be logically possible, we take the world to include the possibility (qua possibility in the world) presented by the content of the presupposer.  For example, under the presupposition that Fred once forged checks, the presupposer that Fred has stopped forging checks is meaningful.  We can think through the presupposer without running into logical problems.  We take the content of the presupposer to present a real possibility.  Given that we accept that Fred once forged checks, we must accept that it is possible that Fred actually has stopped forging checks.
 

C. I. Lewis explicitly makes this connection between meaningfulness, conceivability, and possibility.  He holds that "what is beyond our powers of conception has no meaning" and "what is understood is in some sense or other conceived as possible of experience", so that "what is...beyond the possibility of experience is likewise beyond all meaning."¹⁰  We can understand a presupposition, then, as not only a condition of the meaningfulness of its presupposer, but also a condition of our being able to think through that presupposer, and ultimately a condition of the presupposer presenting us with a possibility.¹¹  Also, if we reject a presupposition, then its presupposers cannot present us with what we can accept as a possibility.  If we deny that Fred once forged checks, then we must deny the possibility that Fred has stopped forging checks.  Remember, though, that to reject a presupposition undermines all of its presupposers, so we must also deny the possibility that Fred has not stopped forging checks.  Neither presupposer presents a possibility; neither is a meaningful statement in the context of our rejection of the governing presupposition.
 

Let's take stock.  Aside from the external outreach we have in cases of referential presupposition, then, there are two other ways that a presupposition can tell us something about the world.  One, since we are committed to the success of our presuppositions, the content of our presuppositions tells us how we necessarily take the world to be, given our commitment to our presupposers.  If a presupposer is meaningful to us, then we are necessarily committed to its governing presupposition and therefore to the success of that presupposition--to what the presupposition tells us about the world.  Two, our presuppositions govern the meaningfulness of presupposers, which we necessarily take to present possibilities in the world.  If we are committed to a presupposition, ceteris paribus, then we are necessarily committed to any of its presupposers being meaningful, thus being thinkable, thus presenting a possibility, and thus telling us about the world.¹²
 

We may conclude that presuppositions tell us more than merely about ourselves; they tell us something about how we must take the world to be.  How we must take the world to be certainly seems to stand under rational criticism in a variety of ways.  We therefore should not be subjectivists about what presuppositions tell us.  Now, there is a further question waiting just around the corner: are there presuppositions so basic that we all must be committed to them, so that we all must take the world to be the same way and therefore that we all must share a common world view?  I believe so, but this question must wait for another day.
 
 

Prof. Seth Holtzman
Catawba College
 
 

¹Peter A. Schouls, "Communication and Presupposition in Philosophy", Philosophy and Rhetoric 2 (1969). Russell is inclined to the same beliefs:

"'In every writer on philosophy there is a concealed metaphysic, usually unconscious; even if his subject is metaphysics, he is almost certain to have an uncritically believed system which underlies his explicit arguments.  Reading Dr. Dewey makes me aware of my own unconscious
metaphysic as well as of his. Where they differ, I find it hard to imagine any arguments on either side which do not beg the question; on fundamental issues perhaps this is unavoidable.'"

This quote is from Bertrand Russell's "Dewey's New Logic", in The Philosophy of John Dewey, ed. by Paul Schilpp (New York, 1939 and 1951), p. 138; quoted in Schouls, p.189. Ted Peters offers a position similar to Schouls', but curiously within a more Continental approach to philosophy, in "The Nature and Role of Presupposition: An Inquiry into Contemporary Hermeneutics", International Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1974). See also Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962). Ludwig Wittgenstein has difficulty throughout his works understanding how we could get at the fundamental propositions that govern our language-games. See W. D. Hudson, "Language-games and Presuppositions", Philosophy 53 (1978) for his account of how Wittgenstein took fundamental propositions to be presuppositions. Lastly, R. G. Collingwood's influential account of absolute presuppositions treats them as entirely subjective commitments, so much so that he views philosophy simply as a historical investigation into what absolute presuppositions people do (or did) have. See Collingwood's An Essay on Metaphysics (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1940).

²We need a term for that which presupposes.  I believe that "presupposer" will suffice for that purpose.

³I speak of the meaningfulness of a presupposer in the following sense:  the presupposer is fully well-formed and therefore successful as the kind of state or act it is.  In this case, Jane's presupposer belief purports to take something to be the case, and therefore purports to be either true or false.  If its presupposition fails, the presupposer is not fully well-formed as a belief in that context.  Therefore it does not succeed as a belief; it does not succeed at taking something to be the case (though Jane may be unaware of this fact).  Therefore, it is not meaningful as a belief in the context of the failed presupposition.

⁴This is roughly the import of Strawson's rejoinder to Russell. For Russell, the statement "The king of France is bald" is simply false, when its logical form is analyzed correctly. Strawson objected that the statement fails as a statement, fails to have a truth-value, and is a pseudo-statement, because it has a false presupposition that undermines it. If a statement with a referring term succeeds as a statement, its presupposition tells us something about the world.

⁵Take another kind of example. A concept is successful by being well-formed and legitimately applicable. In the case of an act of forming the concept x, and therefore in the case of the concept x, one takes x to be well-formed and legitimately applicable. One is moved to fit x in with the other concepts in one's conceptual system on the basis of conceptual coherence and compatibility. Our concern with the overall coherence and applicability of our conceptual system follows from the more basic requirement that each individual concept be well-formed and legitimately applicable. If one discovers that one's concept is poorly-formed and inapplicable, that conceptualization dissolves as one stops accepting it--either one modifies the concept or it loses its place in one's conceptual system. One cannot rest secure when some concept one accepts is called into doubt; if one is not inclined to reject the concept, one is moved to look for a better basis for conceiving in that way or to reject that which creates the doubt.

⁶Of course, one might try to avoid a given presuppositional commitment, or set of them, by various strategies of philosophical reduction, translation, or interpretation.

⁷Willard Van Orman Quine, "On What There Is", reprinted in From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays, 2nd ed., revised (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p.13.

⁸Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden, with an Introduction by Bertrand Russell (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1922), section 3.02, p.43.

⁹A. C. Grayling, Berkeley: The Central Arguments (La Salle, IL: Open Court Pub. Co., 1986), p.38.

¹⁰Clarence Irving Lewis, Mind and the World Order (NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1929), pp.219-20.

¹¹Trudy Govier agrees that a presupposition is a possibility-condition of its presupposer, and she uses her account of presupposition to interpret both Kant and Strawson. See Govier's "Presuppositions, Conditions, and Consequences", Canadian Journal of Philosophy 1 (June 1972), pp.452-56.

¹²Of course, one or more of its presupposers may have yet another presupposition that turns out to be problematic, leading us to abandon commitment to it or to them. And there are other logical reasons for accepting a presupposition but not thereby being committed to all of its presupposers. One of its presupposers may entail a contradiction, for example.