Above: Clyde Drexler. Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries.

A Philosophical Observation

Everyone who lives in Portland knows Moda Center. It’s where the Trail Blazers play, and where other big events like concerts and graduation ceremonies take place. Portlanders need only a street name and a hint of description to know when I’m talking about the this place: a large multipurpose building on 1 Center Ct St. can only be Moda Center, simply because there are no other large, multipurpose buildings in this location. My description gives you the essential features of Moda Center: we would literally not be talking about Moda Center if we removed these features (large, multipurpose, building, on 1 Center Ct. St.).

Above: Moda Center in Portland, OR. Image is Public Domain.

I mention this obvious point to draw attention to the fact that the same exercise (identifying something by its features) fails, in an interesting way, when we try to apply it instead to former Trail Blazer Clyde Drexler. No matter what I tell you about him--from his career stats to his number on the Blazers (#22)-- I can never be absolutely sure you’ll be able to determine I’m talking about Clyde “the Glide” Drexler. Even though basketball fans would be utterly sure that when I mention #22 on the Blazers from 1983 to 1995, born June 22, 1962, ten-time Allstar, etc. I am referencing Drexler, we simply must admit it is possible, however remotely (so very remotely), that all these things about him are actually lies.

Bear with me here: all I want to do is make it clear that it’s within the realm of possibility that each one of these supposedly “fundamental” features we think we know about him are actually wrong. However remote the possibility, it is physically possible for him to have worn the wrong jersey for his whole career and not actually be #22, and/or that his birthday is not actually in June, etc. Unlikely, but not impossible.

Image: Nick22aku

I’m writing this post today for one reason: I want to show you that how we reference the man, Drexler, is (in a way) the opposite of how we reference Moda Center, the place. You see, while it’s possible that we’re all wrong about the Moda Center’s location, and that its appearance is and always has been, perhaps, a hologram (and thus no one has ever been to the Moda Center at all), this simply means the Moda Center doesn’t exist. Conversely, Clyde Drexler definitely exists, in the sense that he can be met; that particular man is in the world. Therefore, even if everything mentioned above was indeed a lie, there would still be this man in the world, and he is without a doubt Clyde Drexler--it’s just that things we thought we knew about him are objectively false.

Again, that is literally not true for the Moda Center, because the description we offer of Moda Center can literally and demonstrably tell us everything about Moda Center: the words ‘Moda Center’ extend directly to what they reference with 100% accuracy, or else you’re not talking about the Moda Center at all. Even if everything we think we know about Mr. Drexler is lie, he exists. His existence is not dependent upon any descriptive feature, while the Moda Center exists only as a product of its descriptive features.

Image: Drexler as a Houston Cougar. Public Domain

None of us learned about who Clyde the Glide is in the same way we learned about what Moda Center is, i.e. by learning his essential features. In fact, we learned about Drexler by seeing examples of him in games or during interviews. Thus we never needed anything like objective explanation of what the man himself is. Even if he’s actually an alien, that being is still Clyde Drexler. It doesn’t matter what we know about him. When we reference Moda Center, we gather the features of Moda Center into a mental representation that is true or false to the degree that the Moda Center itself is true or false. When we learn about Drexler, even when we learn false things about him, he is still real.

We all act like we understand what essentially “makes up” Clyde Drexler, but as we’ve seen, identifying his supposedly essential features can never give us complete certainty; we’re never really aware of the objective reality of Clyde Drexler. Indeed, there’s absolutely no need for us to totally understand this when we talk about him with our fellow Blazers fans. Thus, it’s unsurprising that examination of how we reference him reveals that such an understanding is basically impossible in the first place.

Disclaimer: I'm not a basketball fan. Please forgive me if the facts about Drexler on offer here really aren't true, they're pulled from Wikipedia.

This post is an attempt to put the paper “Natural Kind Terms” by Stephen Shwartz (1979) into plain language.