Abstract
I take issue with the claim that one can accept de re vague existence without de re vague identity. Whether we should endorse both is not my main concern here. My thesis is that one can’t have vague existence without vague identity. Thus I will show that far more philosophers are implicitly committed by their acceptance of vague existence to vague identity than explicitly so committed. But if vague identity is impossible, philosophers should reject vague existence as well. And a surprising consequence is that if there is no vague identity, then the charge of arbitrariness leveled against epistemicism becomes less weighty. Arguments against vague identity (modulo independently reasonable principles) will entail there aren’t vaguely existing entities or even determinately existing objects that indeterminately possess some parts.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I am not claiming that these theories exhaust the range of options for dealing with vagueness nor that worldly vagueness can’t occur alongside vagueness in language. See Sorensen (2012) for a survey of the options. See Merricks (2001) for a claim that there is not a distinct kind of vagueness due to semantic indecision.
- 2.
- 3.
Akiba (2004), Baker (2007, 121–41), Morreau (2002), Salmon (2010), Hershenov (2001), Smith (2005), and Tye (1990, 556; 2003, 154–63) accept vague existence, but all seven reject vague identity. Although I didn’t assert it, I assumed that accepting vague existence didn’t commit me to vague identity when I was writing my 2001 paper. Obviously, I no longer assume it.
- 4.
See Williams (2008) for a survey of the different senses of vague object.
- 5.
I will explain below why I don’t use the more common example of vague identity of there being various precise chunks of matter that are equally good candidates for being a mountain whose boundaries are vague.
- 6.
This assumes the world is one in which there is more than one composite object. But even in such a world, the only composite object would still have the possibility of being vaguely identical to another object.
- 7.
Hudson says “it is obvious that the world couldn’t be vague but it is overkill to describe it as incoherent” for he understands the ontological indeterminate reading of it is indeterminate whether x and y are identical at T but states “I fail to see how it is possible that the indeterminacy in question could be anything other than epistemic or buried in some vague singular referring expression…” (2005, 11). Katherine Hawley thinks vague identity is wrong but coherent. Or more cautiously, she says “I will argue that there are good reasons to suppose that there is no ontic indeterminacy in identity over time, but I will not argue that the very idea is incoherent” (2001, 118–19). Evans asks about the notion of objects with fuzzy boundaries “is this idea coherent?” and then gives a proof that there can’t be any vaguely identical objects which he takes to answer his question in the negative. But he understands the idea of objects with fuzzy boundaries well enough to show why there can’t be any such thing. Salmon avoids speaking of vague objects for somewhat idiosyncratic reasons, but thinks vague existence is plausible, just not vague identity. The latter he describes as “semantically incoherent” (2010). See the discussion below.
- 8.
I will qualify this claim in the conclusion. It is difficult to make sense of a vaguely existing thinking being. It is hard to imagine oneself sort of existing but in great pain. The obstacle is that thought seems to be all or nothing, not fluctuating as life or existence does with the degree of underlying vital physiological processes. See the below discussion of Chalmers’s notion of reductive explanation.
- 9.
- 10.
The Jell-O Museum in Le Roy New York sells molds shaped so as to produce brains made of Jell-O, arguably an object distinct from the liquid.
- 11.
The vague existence of simples is spooky and I share Morreau’s skepticism.
- 12.
Parfit might have meant something along similar lines with his reductionist account of personhood that involved no further fact in his Reasons and Persons (1984, 240). Perhaps no further fact is to be taken as meaning no separately existing fact, that is, one couldn’t have one fact without the other, even though they are not the same fact.
- 13.
Hawley (2002) maintains that there is a modest vague existence which is coherent and her van Inwagen-inspired conception of that is just like my response to Morreau. The immodest vague existence that she rejects would involve existence as a first-order property of a Meinongian-like object “which somehow straddles two domains, the existent and non-existent” (2002, 135). She denies that there is an object that sort of instantiates a first-order property of existence.
- 14.
Anticipating the objection that something must have been partially there, she compares building something that never gets built to hunting unicorns. They are both intentional activities “subject to the phenomenon of intentional nonexistence” (2007, 131).
- 15.
So “there may be indeterminacy about the number of things that exist at a time, there is no indeterminacy in the number of things that ever exist, or exist simpliciter” (Baker, 135 note 31).
- 16.
Perhaps the fuzzy boundaries that Evans envisioned were those of overlapping entities that raise the problem of distinguishing them and therefore the impossibility of indeterminate identity would mean the impossibility of such fuzzy bounded overlapping objects. Maybe he thought that all vague objects were already overlapping other objects in an Unger-style problem of the many (1980). Or maybe he conceived that it was possible for any fuzzy bounded entity to become an overlapping entity and thus had in mind arguments like those I give below. One can’t tell from his cryptic paper. But a charitable read of a brilliant philosopher is that he wasn’t blind to some rather obvious distinctions, just assumed without argument that one would bring the others.
- 17.
Methuselah is not really a person on Lewis’s treatment. Although there is psychological continuity (an overlap of memories and other mental states) for over nine centuries, there isn’t a single person where Methuselah’s organism is. The reason is that there aren’t any of the same psychological connections (the same memories, desires, intentions, etc.) persisting across the 969 years of Methuselah’s life and they are important to the persistence of the same person. So Lewis stipulates that a person persists for roughly every 137 years so Methuselah contains more than one embedded and overlapping person.
- 18.
Noonan reaches a similar conclusion: “Everyone knows that Evans’s argument against vague identity in-the-world doesn’t show that there aren’t vague objects. Even if the argument succeeds all it proves is that every vague object is determinately distinct from every precise object and every other vague object” (2004, 131).
- 19.
Salmon writes that the main idea underlying their proofs is disarmingly simple: “What would y have to be like in order for there to be no fact of the matter whether it just is x? One thing is clear: it would not be exactly like x in every respect. But in that case it must be something else, so that there is a fact of the matter after all” (2002, 239).
- 20.
This can occur by taking away too much matter of various kinds or if there is an essential part, say an organ like the brain in persons or nucleus in cells.
- 21.
My account would not render Baker-like constitution in cases where one vague object constituted another vague object into an instance of indeterminate identity since any determinately possessed parts by the constituted are likewise determinately possessed by the constituted and the same goes for their indeterminately possessing parts. The difference between constituter and constituted is that some may have parts derivatively that the other has and nonderivatively. See Hershenov (2008) for an explanation of that difference.
- 22.
Perhaps I am wrong to hold or find too significant the claim that there is a greater “ontological distance” between A and B when either completely lacks a part that the other has than there is between C and D when either determinately has a part that the other indeterminately possesses.
- 23.
So in that case P-cats which are precise aggregates and equally good candidates to compose Tibbles would each be indeterminately identical to Tibbles even though Tibbles indeterminately possessed some parts that they didn’t possess in any manner.
- 24.
Some constitution theorists like Lowe would accept that spatially coincident objects don’t have the same parts, that is, the statue has hands and head while its constitution lump does not. Baker, the only one of the above four who has laid out her mereological claims in any detail, would allow that the lump derivatively has the statue’s hands and head as parts.
- 25.
This characterization is due to Ken Akiba.
- 26.
- 27.
So if one believes as Salmon does that there can be a single splinter that is decisive in avoiding indeterminate identity of tables (2005, 343–44), then one shouldn’t be so hostile to the epistemicist claim about the sorites as Salmon is. He states that “it is excessively implausible that removing a single grain from a heap of sand can make for a non-heap…” (2010, 22 nt 1). Or at least one shouldn’t say what Salmon does if heaps are going out of existence rather than a persisting structure undergoing a phase change from heap to non-heap. Given that a final splinter is decisive in avoiding vague identity, it should also be decisive in determining the passage from existence to nonexistence in non-replacement cases. So Salmon should not write that “The vagueness-in-the-world approach offers a simple, straightforward, and I believe obviously correct diagnosis of sorites arguments…the inductive premise [for every n: If F(n), then F(n + 1)] (e.g., ‘the result of removing a single grain from a heap of sand is still a heap’) is not false. Although the vast majority of its instances are true, not all are. Specifically, each of the conditionals whose antecedent or consequent is about a borderline case is neither true nor false. The inductive claim itself is also therefore neither true nor false” (2010, 26 note 28). The existentially significant cases show us that the sorites arguments are unsound for the inductive premise is false rather than neither true nor false. There is a decisive splinter. Perhaps only sorites arguments that involve parts or properties that are never existentially significant will avoid falling prey to my extension of arguments against vague identity to vague existence.
- 28.
See note 29 for further support of this point.
- 29.
I can still maintain my thesis even if one believes that objects which vaguely exist when they lose sufficient material would still determinately exist if that same material had been immaculately replaced. I will just have to make my argument that there isn’t any de re vague existence in a more indirect manner. There will still be a need for an epistemicist cutoff in cases where too much replacement matter means table B has replaced table A. There will be a last appropriately attached splinter for A to survive. Since there must be an epistemicist solution to the parthood relationship to avoid the vague identity of A and B, that precise parthood relationship can also be relied upon to prevent vague existence. De re vague existence doesn’t just occur just when too much matter is taken away but also when too much matter moves from being determinately attached to indeterminately attached. But the requirement of an appropriately attached last splinter to avoid vague identity will render it arbitrary to claim that there is no such precise part relationship preventing vague existence due to indeterminate part attachment.
- 30.
So appealing to a sparse ontology that lacks artifacts won’t evade the problem. And we shall see in the conclusion that there is an additional benefit to use thinking human organisms to illustrate the puzzle for it provides a reason to resolve the puzzle one way rather than the other.
- 31.
See Olson (2007) for reasons why coincidence should be avoided.
- 32.
One might object that this case isn’t analogous to that of the table. The reason would be that organism B hasn’t assimilated the new and old parts since they aren’t caught up in the same life processes but remain briefly “frozen” in an indeterminate status. But think of a new organism just composed ex nihilo or given life and existence by an electrical shock a la Dr. Frankenstein. Does the creature really need time to assimilate those parts? No biological assimilation is needed at its origins. It seems to exist immediately when there are life processes. Each part is beginning to play its role in metabolism or homeostasis which is different from whether something is not yet assimilated and not yet playing a role in the process. Beginning to play a role is determinate in a way that sort of playing a role is not. To see this, contrast your beginning to digest something with some entity only able to sort of digest something because it is missing too much physical structure for bona fide (determinate) digestion to occur. Also, it might help to think that the Biblical Adam with normal biological dispositions would not have had to digest and metabolize before his existence would be determinate.
- 33.
- 34.
Evans can’t respond, but Salmon can. See his “Identity Facts” (2002).
- 35.
For what it is worth, I am very sympathetic to Salmon’s arguments in his 2002 paper.
- 36.
Unger (2004) does the same with overlap in a version of the problem of the thinking many and moves towards dualism as a result.
- 37.
I would like to thank David Braun, Ken Akiba, and especially Joel Potter for their comments on earlier drafts and a number of helpful discussions about these matters.
References
Akiba, K. (2004). Vagueness in the world. Noûs, 38(3), 407–429.
Baker, L. (2007). The metaphysics of everyday life: An essay in practical realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chalmers, D. (1996). A conscious mind: In search of a fundamental theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dummett, M. (1975). Wang’s paradox. Synthese, 30, 301–324.
Evans, G. (1978). Can there be vague objects? Analysis, 38(13), 208.
Hawley, K. (2001). How things persist. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hawley, K. (2002). Vagueness and existence. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 102, 125–140.
Hershenov, D. (2001). The thesis of vague objects and Unger’s problem of the many. Philosophical Papers, 30(1), 47–57.
Hershenov, D. (2008). Lowe’s defense of constitution and the principle of weak extensionality. Ratio, 21(2), 168–181.
Hudson, H. (2005). The metaphysics of hyperspace. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. (1983). Survival and identity. In Philosophical papers (Vol. 1, pp. 55–77). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, D. (1986). Plurality of worlds. Oxford: Blackwell
Lewis, D. (1993). Many, but almost one. In K. Campbell, J. Bacon, & L. Reihardt (Eds.), Ontology, causality and mind: Essays in honor of D.M. Armstrong (pp. 23–38). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Madell, G. (1989). Personal identity and the mind/body problem. In J. R. Smithies & J. Beloff (Eds.), The case for dualism (pp. 25–41). Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Merricks, T. (2001). Varieties of vagueness. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 62(1), 145–157.
Morreau, M. (2002). What vague objects are like. Journal of Philosophy, 99(7), 333–361.
Noonan, H. (2004). Are there vague objects? Analysis, 48, 131–134.
Olson, E. (2007). What are we? An essay in personal ontology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and persons. New York: Oxford University Press.
Parsons, T. (2001). Indeterminate identity: Metaphysics and semantics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Parsons, T., & Woodruff, P. (1997). Worldly indeterminacy of identity. In R. Keefe & P. Smith (Eds.), Vagueness: A reader. Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT Press.
Rosen, G., & Smith, N. J. (2004). Worldly indeterminacy: A rough guide. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 82(1), 185–198.
Russell, B. (1923). Vagueness. Australasian Journal of Philosophy and Psychology, 1, 84–92.
Salmon, N. (1981). Reference and essence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Salmon, N. (2002). Identity facts. Philosophical Topics, 30(1), 237–267.
Salmon, N. (2005). Modal paradox: Parts and counterparts, points and counterpoints, reprinted in the 2005 edition of Reference and essence (pp. 273–344). Amherst: Prometheus Books.
Salmon, N. (2010). Vagaries of vagueness. In R. Dietz & S. Moruzzi (Eds.), Vagueness, its nature and its logic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Smith, N. J. J. (2005). A plea for things that are not quite all there: Or is there a problem about vague composition and vague existence? Journal of Philosophy, 102, 381–421.
Sorensen, R. (2012). Vagueness. In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/
Tye, M. (1990). Vague objects. Mind, 99, 535–557.
Tye, M. (2003). Consciousness and persons: Unity and identity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Unger, P. (1980). The problem of the many. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5(1), 411–468.
Unger, P. (2004). The mental problems of the many. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, 1, 195–222.
van Inwagen, P. (1990). Material beings. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Williams, J. R. (2008). Ontic vagueness and metaphysical indeterminacy. Philosophy Compass, 3, 763–788.
Williamson, T. (2003). Vagueness in reality. In M. Loux & D. Zimmerman (Eds.), Oxford handbook in metaphysics (pp. 690–715). Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hershenov, D.B. (2014). Vague Existence Implies Vague Identity. In: Akiba, K., Abasnezhad, A. (eds) Vague Objects and Vague Identity. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 33. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7978-5_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7978-5_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-7977-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7978-5
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)