Our everyday experiences present us with a wide array of objects: dogs and cats, tables and chairs, trees and their branches, and so forth. These sorts of ordinary objects may seem fairly unproblematic in comparison to entities like numbers, propositions, tropes, holes, points of space, and moments of time. Yet, on closer inspection, they are at least as puzzling, if not more so. Reflection on Michelangelo’s David and the piece of marble of which it is made threatens to lead to the surprising conclusion that these would have to be two different objects occupying the same location and sharing all of their parts. Reflection on the availability of microphysical explanations for events that we take to be caused by ordinary objects threatens to lead to the conclusion that ordinary objects—if they do exist—never themselves cause anything to happen. Reflection on the possibility of alternative conceptual schemes that “carve up the world” in radically different ways makes our own conception of which objects there are seem intolerably arbitrary. Taken together, the various puzzles that arise in connection with ordinary objects make a powerful case for their elimination. And, in many cases, what seem to be the best responses to these puzzles require the postulation of legions of objects that we fail to notice despite their being right before our eyes.
In §1, I articulate a variety of ways of departing from an ordinary, conservative conception of which objects there are, either by eliminating ordinary objects or by permitting more objects than we would ordinarily take to exist. In §2, I examine the puzzles and arguments that are meant to motivate these departures. In §3, I examine some arguments against eliminative and permissive views. Finally, in §4, I turn from the question of which objects exist to the question of which objects exist fundamentally.2. Against Conservative Ontologies
2.1 Sorites Arguments
2.2 The Argument from Vagueness
2.3 Material Constitution
2.4 Indeterminate Identity
2.5 Arbitrariness Arguments
2.6 Debunking Arguments
2.7 Overdetermination Arguments
2.8 The Problem of the Many
3. Against Revisionary Ontologies
3.1 Arguments from Counterexamples
3.2 Arguments from Charity
3.3 Arguments from Entailment
3.4 Arguments from Coincidence
3.5 Arguments from Gunk and Junk
4. Fundamental Existents
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[size=30]1. The Positions
1.1 Conservatism
We find ourselves naturally inclined to make certain judgments about which objects are before us in various situations. Looking at a pool table just before the break, we are naturally inclined to judge there to be sixteen pool balls on the table, perhaps various parts of the individual balls (their top and bottom halves), and no other macroscopic objects. Looking at my nightstand, I am naturally inclined to judge there to be an alarm clock, a lamp, their various parts (lampshade, buttons, cords), and nothing else.
Conservative views are those according to which these sorts of judgments are by and large correct. Giving a precise characterization of conservatism, or of ordinary objects, is no easy task. Very roughly, ordinary objects are objects belonging to kinds that we are naturally inclined to regard as having instances on the basis of our perceptual experiences:
dog,
tree,
table, and so forth. Extraordinary objects, by contrast, are objects belonging to kinds that we are not ordinarily inclined to regard as having instances, and whose instances—if they do have any—are highly visible. (More on these in
§1.3.) And conservatism is roughly the view that there are just the ordinary objects and none of the extraordinary objects.
[1]Revisionary views about which objects there are are those that depart in one way or another from conservatism. These include both eliminative views, on which there are fewer ordinary objects than are recognized by conservatives, and permissive views, on which there are extraordinary objects that conservatives do not recognize. There is, however, some controversy about whether various departures from conservatism actually deserve to be called ‘revisionary’. As we shall see in
§3.1, many eliminativists and permissivists take their views to be entirely compatible with common sense and ordinary belief.
Our target question—namely, which highly visible objects exist—may be distinguished from related but independent questions concerning the
nature of ordinary objects. Some views about the natures of objects may seem to be at odds with common sense, for instance, the view that ordinary objects can’t survive the loss of any of their parts, or that ordinary objects are all mind-dependent. But these views are entirely compatible with conservatism, as characterized above, because they do not (or at least need not) have any revisionary implications regarding
whichobjects there are at a given place and time. That said, questions about the nature of ordinary objects are intimately connected with questions about which objects exist, insofar as certain views about the nature of these objects (including those just mentioned) provide the resources for addressing some of the puzzles and arguments that motivate revisionary conceptions.
A few terminological preliminaries. I use ‘object’ in its narrow sense, which applies only to individual material objects and not to other sorts of entities like numbers or events. I use ‘part’ in its ordinary sense, on which it is not true—or at least not trivially true—that things are parts of themselves. And when I say that some objects compose something, or that they have a fusion, what I mean is that there is something that has each of them as parts and every part of which overlaps at least one of them.
[2] 1.2. Eliminativism
Eliminative views are those that deny the existence of some wide range of ordinary objects. (Denying merely that ordinary objects are fundamental is not by itself enough to qualify as an eliminativist; see
§4 below.)
Some eliminativists accept nihilism, the thesis that no objects ever compose anything. In other words, every object is mereologically simple (i.e., partless). Together with the plausible assumption that ordinary objects (if they exist) are all composite objects, nihilism entails that there are no ordinary objects. Nihilists typically accept that there are countless microscopic objects: although there are “simples arranged dogwise” and “simples arranged statuewise”, there are no dogs or statues. But nihilism is also compatible with existence monism—the thesis that there is a single, all-encompassing simple (the cosmos, a.k.a. “the blobject”)—as well as the extreme nihilist thesis that there are no objects whatsoever.
[3]Since many of the arguments for eliminativism actually fall short of establishing that composition never occurs, it is also open to eliminativists to reject nihilism and accept certain classes of composites. Many eliminativists make an exception for persons and other organisms. Some, for instance, accept organicism, the thesis that some objects compose something just in case the activities of those objects constitute a life. In other words, organisms are the only composite objects.
[4]The motivations for making an exception for organisms vary. Van Inwagen (1990: Ch. 12) accepts organicism on the grounds that it yields the best answer to the special composition question (“under what conditions do some objects compose something?”), one that allows for one’s own existence and physicality, while at the same time escaping various problems that arise for competing answers. Merricks (2001: Ch. 4) argues that persons and some other composites must be recognized on account of their nonredundant causal powers. Making such exceptions naturally gives rise to concerns about the stability of the resulting positions, either because the reasoning behind allowing the exceptions threatens to generalize to all ordinary objects or because the arguments for eliminating ordinary objects threaten to generalize to the objects one wishes to permit.
[5]It is also open to eliminativists to adopt non-nihilistic views that are fairly liberal about composition, allowing that composition occurs at least as often as we ordinarily suppose (if not more so). Peter Unger is one such non-nihilistic eliminativist:
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- اقتباس :
- There is nothing in these arguments [for eliminativism] to deny the idea, common enough, that there are physical objects with a diameter greater than four feet and less than five. Indeed, the exhibited [arguments] allow us still to maintain that there are physical objects of a variety of shapes and sizes, and with various particular spatial relations and velocities with respect to each other. It is simply that no such objects will be ordinary things; none are stones or planets or pieces of furniture. (1979b: 150)
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He is not a nihilist because he affirms that there is a highly visible composite object occupying the exact location where we take the table to be, but he is an eliminativist insofar as he denies that that object is a table.
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