UPDATE: Apparently Chalmers is making the same point about causal theories of reference in a more illuminating presentation. Though I posted independently I luckily seem to be giving a far out legal example of the type he mentions at the end.

Recently a case in Italy almost went to trial demanding the church prove Christ had existed. Apparently Italy has laws which would apparently make it illegal to teach about Christ’s existence if he was not in fact a historical person. The plaintiff was claiming that Christ was confused with John of Gamala. While I thought the case would have been pretty interesting to see go forward apparently it isn’t going to trial.

While I don’t know whether this trial would have been a good thing the philosophical issues it raises in that one simple question are amazing. If we assume that Italian law would make it illegal to teach that Christ existed if he in fact did not would the plaintiff’s claim even have established this result? After all he is arguing that there is a particular definite person who is the start of a causal chain resulting in our current usage of the word Christ. At least to the extent that Christ is a proper name and we find a simple casual theory of names compelling it would seem that Christ really does exist. Things would get even more interesting (though I’ve seen these cases addressed just don’t remember the solution) if there really was someone named Jesus and some people were acquainted with this name from a casual chain leading back to the guy really called Jesus.

One reason I decided to post this is that it reminds me of the discussion we had in Searle’s seminar today about Santa Claus. The point Searle brought up is that there is a clear casual chain leading back to Saint Nicholas (or however the name was at the time) but he was some guy who lived in a hot climate and had little to do with our jolly bearded present bringer who lives at the north pole. I personally find it pretty absurd to suppose that people are really talking about this real person but I suppose that someone with a casual theory of proper names could make the move to say that Santa Claus is not really a proper name but is more like a description though this would seem to create major cracks in the theory, e.g., is Socrates a name or description. So I’m not really sure what they would say. The best response I can think of at the moment is that Santa Claus is a title as well as a proper name, e.g., it is like saying King George which presumably fails to refer if its casual chain leads back to some non-king George, but whether or not you can be both on these sort of theories is something I don’t really know.

However, in any case if one accepts the intuition that Santa Clause did not once exist merely because Saint Nicholas exists the case in Italy would have gotten even more interesting. For instance suppose there was a historical personage Jesus (perhaps even the start of the casual chain for Jesus Christ) does his existence suffice to say that Jesus Christ exists? Does not the appellation Christ require him to occupy a particular metaphysical position the same way being Santa Claus seems to require some connection to giving presents at Christmas time? Given the fact that these teachings were made in a church context are they truly common words or are they technical terms defined in whatever manner the Catholic Church has chosen to do?

While it surely would never have happened I find the thought of the prosecution and defense calling modern philosophers of language to the stand to debate the nature of reference highly amusing.

One other interesting issue I think this case brings up is the following. It seems that most people have the intuition that not only should people not be held criminally responsible for statements of this kind (the way they might in Italy for claiming Othello was a real person) but in general don’t seem to hold people verbally responsible for this sort of statement. While I used to think this was a philosophically uninteresting question of politeness it seems many people don’t even apply the same notion of logic to religious statements. That is many (certainly not all) people seem to be happy to accept contradicting religious claims as both ‘being true in their way’ or otherwise refusing to draw the standard sort of logical conclusions. I don’t mean to bring up a religious debate or talk about who is right here but I do think it raises an interesting philosophical question.

What sort of statements are religious statements to people who don’t take them as amenable to the same sort of logical reasoning they apply to other statements about the world. It is tempting to say that they merely see them as metaphors or parables but they certainly would deny this if asked. It almost seems as if there is a separate class of statements that doesn’t quite have the force of “The first gulf war happened in 1991″ but isn’t really mere metaphor. In particular I’m wondering if anyone can come up with any other class of statements that seem to have this property because religious statements have all sorts of confusing attachments and issues that make them hard to consider.

Sorry for the long absence of hard philosophical content. I keep meaning to make a post on the content of perception but every time I’m about ready to write it I learn more and have to start thinking again.