Abstract
This paper examines an often-ignored aspect of the evaluation of metaphysical analyses, namely, their ontological commitments. Such evaluations are part of metaphysical methodology, and reflection on this methodology is itself part of metametaphysics. I will develop a theory for assessing what these commitments are, and then I will apply it to an important historical and an important contemporary metaphysical analysis of the concept of an individual substance (i.e., an object, or thing). I claim that in evaluating metaphysical analyses, we should not only rule out counterexamples, but also compare them with respect to their ontological commitments, and we should hold that if they are comparable in other respects, then an analysis with fewer such commitments is preferable to one with more (There is, of course, a connection between counterexamples and ontological commitments. If the existence or possible existence of something one is committed to the existence or possible existence of is incompatible with an analysis, then one should reject that analysis as inadequate to the data. On the other hand, if one is uncertain about the existence or possible existence of something that is incompatible with an analysis, then while this does not refute the analysis for one, it raises doubts about it. The fewer such doubts are raised by an analysis, the better it is.).
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Notes
So claims Soames (2003, pp. xi–xii).
Van Inwagen (1990). It isn’t clear, I think, whether or not van Inwagen would say that artifacts and other inanimate compounds are impossible, and he offers no analysis of substance in any case.
That such arguments are thought by many to be needed seems to confirm the view that many metaphysical propositions are necessary, but synthetic a posteriori. For a survey and critique of several arguments that purport to show that souls are impossible, see Hoffman and Rosenkrantz (1994, chap. 5).
For a highly ambitious attempt to analyze the property of being an ontological category and to solve this problem, see Rosenkrantz (2006).
For an analysis of the distinction between abstract and concrete, see Hoffman and Rosenkrantz (1994, pp. 182–187).
There are those, of course, who would replace the categories of time and place with a single category of space–time.
However, see Rosenkrantz (2006) for one answer to this question.
I shall ignore here the more complicated situation that arises when no analysis can be formulated that is in this sense adequate to the data, so that we have either to choose among proposed analyses none of which is entirely adequate, or conclude that there is no analysis of the property in question. If we opt for the former, then we must reject some of the data as mistaken.
Aristotle (1984, 1:7).
Aristotle himself cites the example of a belief that is at one time true and at another false as a possible objection to his analysis. Aristotle (1984, 1:7). He replies that “in the case of substances it is by themselves changing that they are able to receive contraries…statements and beliefs, on the other hand, themselves remain completely unchangeable in every way.” Ibid. Aristotle’s reply clearly presupposes the distinction between intrinsic and relational change, and implies that his analysis of substance is to be understood in terms of intrinsic change.
Two authors who come to this conclusion are Geach (1972, pp. 302–318), and Mellor (1981, chaps. 7 and 8). One argument for this conclusion is that if changes can undergo change, then it appears that a vicious regress threatens, with changes “all the way down.” Ockham’s Razor seems to militate against such a regress.
See, for example, Sider (2003).
A number of scholars of ancient philosophy have argued that the ancient atomism of Democritus and Leucippus was formulated partly in response to the arguments of Parmenides against the possibility of change. Ancient atomism concedes the point with respect to the possibility of intrinsic change of atoms, though relational change is permitted in the form of motion.
In the early modern period, Descartes, Leibniz, and Berkeley all rejected the possibility of atoms as well. Leibniz and Berkeley explicitly argued for their impossibility—further evidence of the unreliability of at least some of our intuitions in metaphysics.
Aristotle’s analysis could be improved in the following way: x is a substance = df. x belongs to a Level C category which possibly has an instance that can undergo intrinsic change. This reformulation is compatible with the possibility of atomic particles, since while atoms cannot themselves undergo intrinsic change, they belong to a Level C category (namely, that of being a substance), which possibly has an instance that can undergo intrinsic change, for example, an organism. While this avoids what is perhaps the most serious problem for a change analysis of substance, this reformulation remains incompatible both with the possibility of absences or privations and with the possibility of limits.
Lowe (1998, chap. 6).
Aristotle (1984, 2:1691).
Descartes (1984, 2:159). This particular formulation is obviously circular.
Descartes (1984, 2:210).
Spinoza (1982, p. 31).
Armstrong (1978, 1:115).
Hoffman and Rosenkrantz (1994, pp. 53–57).
Lowe (1998, p. 147). The labels for this and the following definitions and theorems are Lowe’s.
Op. cit., p. 149.
Op. cit., p. 150.
Ibid.
Op. cit., p. 151.
Lowe regards (D2*) and (T7) as equivalent, via (D1**).
Op. cit., p. 148.
Ibid.
Op. cit., p. 146.
Lowe (2009).
Lowe (1998, p. 142).
As Lowe puts it in explaining what it is for something to depend for its identity on another thing, “To say that the identity of x depends on the identity of y—or more briefly, that x depends for its identity upon y—is to say that which thing of its kind y is fixes (or at least helps to fix) which thing of its kind x is.” Op. cit., p. 147.
For an extended defense of haecceities, see Rosenkrantz (1993).
Indeed, the main motivation for postulating haecceities has been to provide identity conditions for concrete things, particularly substances.
It might be thought by some that all propositions are universals, and that they are instantiable by concrete events. For example, it might be thought that the proposition, that red is a color, is instantiable by the red fire engine being colored. If this were correct, then no proposition would satisfy the definiens of (T7). It is implausible, however, that all propositions can be so understood. For instance, the proposition, that the null set exists, is not plausibly instantiable by any such concrete event or state of affairs, and is not, therefore, plausibly understood as a universal.
I am assuming that there are abstract universals, so that redness is a universal, and not as some nominalists would have it, a set. Lowe accepts the existence of (Aristotelian) universals.
It might be thought that Lowe can avoid the difficulties posed by my third and fourth examples by arguing as follows (call this Strategy S). There is a particular upon whose identity the null set depends, and there is a particular upon whose identity the proposition that red is a color depends. In the former case it is the proposition that the null set exists, and in the second case it is the proposition, that the proposition that red is a color exists. The function in question in each case is being the truthmaker for. The null set is the truthmaker for the proposition that the null set exists, and the proposition that red is a color is the truthmaker for the proposition that the proposition that red is a color exists. Thus, neither the null set nor the proposition that red is a color satisfies the analysans of (T7). I have two replies to this strategy. First, it is not plausible that the proposition that the null set exists partly or wholly determines what sort of thing the null set is. Second, even if this were plausible, Strategy S would come at too heavy a cost. For then no substance would satisfy (T7), since it would be the case that for any substance, there is a particular upon which the identity of that substance depends, namely, the proposition that that substance exists, for which that substance is the truthmaker. Thus, either the null set and the proposition that red is a color satisfy (T7), or no substance satisfies (T7).
There are widely divergent views about the possibility of such compounds. Van Inwagen (1990) rejects their actual existence, but the reasons he gives for this conclusion, based on the purported implications of the actual laws of nature, do not seem to imply that such compounds are impossible unless the laws of nature are necessary. For a defense of the actual existence of such mereological compounds, see Hoffman and Rosenkrantz (1997, chap. 3). Chisholm (1973) also defends their actuality. Both science and common sense seem to acknowledge the existence of such compounds. Moreover, it is difficult to see why someone who, like Lowe, seems to acknowledge the reality of artifacts, would question the reality of mereological compounds. It is the latter that figure in the laws of nature that we rely upon when we explain the dispositions of the former. For example, the chemical and physical properties of a chair made of steel are determined by the corresponding properties of the piece(s) of steel that constitutes the chair.
Lowe (1998, p. 151, n. 12).
Of course, since in this example y is a proper part of compounds x and z, then the identities of both of the latter compounds also depend on the identities of their other proper parts as well.
Portions of this paper are based on one delivered to the SUNY Buffalo symposium on The Metaphysics of E. J. Lowe in 2006. I would like to thank Gary Rosenkrantz and E. J. Lowe for their helpful comments.
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Hoffman, J. Metametaphysics and Substance: Two Case Studies. Axiomathes 21, 491–505 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-010-9123-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-010-9123-y