Abstract
Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composite objects—objects with proper parts—do not exist. Nihilists generally paraphrase talk of composite objects F into talk of there being “xs arranged F-wise” (for example, while nihilists deny that there are tables, they concede that there are “xs arranged table-wise”). Recently several philosophers have argued that nihilism is defective insofar as nihilists are either unable to say what they mean by such phrases as “there are xs arranged F-wise,” or that nihilists are unable to employ such phrases without incurring significant costs, perhaps even undermining one of the chief motivations for nihilism. In this paper I defend nihilism against these objections. A key theme of the paper is this: if nihilists need to employ such phrases as “there are xs arranged F-wise,” non-nihilists will need to do so as well. Accordingly, any costs incurred by the nihilist when she employs such phrases will be shared by everyone else. What’s more, such phrases are intelligible when employed by the nihilist, as well as when they are employed by the non-nihilist, insofar as analyses of such phrases will not essentially involve mereological concepts incompatible with nihilism.
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Notes
Proponents of mereological nihilism (henceforth just “nihilism”) include, among others, Dorr (2002), Dorr and Rosen (2002), Cameron (2010), and Sider (2013). Nihilism is sometimes described as the thesis that only mereological simples exist. That’s not quite right, since one might be a mereological nihilist, as well as a proponent of a “stuff” ontology, or some other sort of ontology according to which there aren’t the sort of discrete individuals suggested by the term “simples.” Strictly speaking, mereological nihilism is the thesis that composition never occurs—no composite objects, stuff, etc.
van Inwagen (1990) and Merricks (2003) are actually organicists, who believe that the only composites are living things. van Inwagen and Merricks are frequently lumped together with nihilists, or described as “semi-nihilists,” since they both deny that there are very many composite objects. Much of what follows concerns van Inwagen and Merricks’ work, so for now we might think of them as “honorary nihilists.” Just keep in mind that, as a matter of fact, they’re not actually nihilists.
Or “stuff arranged table-wise,” but I’ll ignore that option for the rest of this paper.
I should mention that it isn’t actually the case that all nihilists deny the existence of moons, tables, cats, etc. Contessa (2014), for example, suggests that nihilists should endorse the sentence “the moon exists,” but should take the referent(s) of “the moon” to be simples arranged moon-wise.
Strictly speaking, as we’ll see, Unger doesn’t actually think that the nihilist is unable to say what it means for there to be “xs arranged F-wide.” Rather, he thinks that the nihilist is unable to give a coherent characterization of such phrases, at least for many sortal terms F.
The SAQ is modeled after van Inwagen’s “Special Composition Question,” which asks “when is it the case that there is a y such that the xs compose y?” (see especially van Inwagen 1990, pp. 30–31). The Nihilist answer to the special composition question is this: “there is a y such that the xs compose y iff there is only one x” (van Inwagen 1990, p. 73).
For the manner in which Sider is conceiving of the relationship between the fundamental and the non-fundamental, Sider refers us to his 2011, Sects. 7.3–7.8.
There are several ways this might go, although I don’t know which of them Sider would endorse. Here are two examples. First, you might think that fundamentally the world contains only one or two physical objects in a high dimensional configuration space, with our manifest image of the world somehow supervening on what goes on in that configuration space (Albert 1996). If this were true, then a correct fundamental description of the world presumably wouldn’t mention many (if any) F-wise arrangement predicates. Or, maybe some variant of monism (existence monism, as in Horgan and Potrč (2008), or priority monism, as in Schaffer 2010) is correct, in which case, while we might have fundamental arrangement predicates, we wouldn’t have fundamental multi-place arrangement predicates.
Actually this is false, according to Elder’s own analysis of there being “xs arranged dog-wise.” Even if some xs are “among a plurality of microparticles that between them are such as to cause the folk to judge that a dog is present,” and even if they “lie within the region occupied by a dog,” it wouldn’t follow that those xs are parts of dog. Perhaps, for example, the xs are colocated with, but fail to overlap, the dog and any of the dog’s parts, yet nevertheless tend to give rise to the folk belief that a dog is present.
By contrast, if the xs were, say, scattered across the galaxy, then they would almost certainly not compose a table, even if they composed some object.
Or perhaps I only need to defend a weaker claim: the two concepts (xs are arranged F-wise, and xs are located in a region occupied by an F) are distinct “in the ontology room.” Perhaps, for example, outside the ontology room the sentence “there are things arranged table-wise” entails or is equivalent to the sentence “there is a table.” Even if this is true, however, it is certainly false that that entailment or equivalence holds for such sentences as uttered in the ontology room—that is, when we’re engaged in careful metaphysical debate, with its attendant linguistic norms. If this is the case, it’s either because, outside the ontology room, the sentence “there is a table” employs a non-joint carving quantifier, or, and this is the view I favor, that sentence does not, despite appearances, always quantify over tables. (For more on the distinction between ontological disputes conducted inside the ontology room vs. ontological disputes conducted outside the ontology room see van Inwagen 2014).
I should emphasize that this is true whether or not it is necessarily true that any such xs compose an F. The point I’m interested in here is whether or not Elder has given an adequate characterization of a particular concept, the concept of there being xs arranged F-wise. I’m arguing here that, as a matter of conceptual analysis, Elder’s characterization of there being objects “arranged F-wise” is incorrect. So, whether or not Elder is correct that, say, it is necessarily the case that any xs which are arranged dog-wise compose a dog, he is not correct that it is somehow true by definition that any such xs compose a dog.
Of course, the claim I’m making in this paragraph isn’t entirely uncontroversial. Thomasson (2007), for example, contends that it is analytic that where we have xs arranged table-wise we have a table. But Thomasson is incorrect: saying there are xs arranged table-wise just doesn’t involve quantification over tables. There isn’t this sort of analytic entailment here, even if there is a true relevant material or strict conditional in the neighborhood, something like “if there are xs arranged table-wise then there is a table” (a conditional which, in any case, the nihilist will reject).
Here’s an objection Tallant (and, for that matter, Elder and Unger) does not give: If nihilism is true, then it is necessarily true. So, if nihilism is true then it’s impossible that any xs compose a table. So, the sorts of counterfactuals cited by Merricks and others are actually counterpossibles, in which case any xs would turn out trivially to be arranged table-wise. Tallant specifically disavows this objection to counterfactual style answers to the SAQ (Tallant 2014, note 3), but should the nihilist be worried anyway? I won’t go into the matter in this paper, but I suppose the nihilist has at least three options, none of which seem particularly implausible to me: (1) Deny that nihilism is necessarily true (compare Cameron 2007). (2) Accept some account of counterfactuals according to which at least some counterpossibles are non-trivially true. (3) Decline to give an answer to the SAQ which makes use of counterfactuals of the sort in question.
As a matter of fact, of course, Merricks (and, for that matter, van Inwagen) does believe in cats. But, as I mentioned earlier, in this paper I’m treating Merricks as an honorary nihilist.
For what it’s worth, Williams (2006) only uses GLOBALIZATION to argue against contingent nihilism, the thesis that mereological nihilism is contingently true (since the proponent of this sort of nihilism will be forced to say something like “the proper parthood relation fails to obtain, but it’s possible that that relation obtain,” although the term “proper parthood relation” will lack an intension).
Actually, in van Inwagen 1990, van Inwagen denies that he is capable of giving a general answer to the SAQ, or, what may amount to the same thing, a general recipe for paraphrasing talk of composites into talk of xs arranged composite-wise (van Inwagen 1990, p. 108). However, he does offer paraphrases of particular sentences which make reference to particular sorts of composite objects (chairs, for example), and, for present purposes, I’ll follow Tallant in supposing that such paraphrases might offer us a general recipe for most or all paraphrasis of sentences which refer to composite objects. (Although, as we’ll see, it will definitely fail to apply to paraphrasis of talk of non-spatially located composites.). More recently, in correspondence, van Inwagen says he would endorse a different analysis of some xs being “arranged F-wise,” one inspired by remarks in van Inwagen (1990, pp. 278–279) (remarks on a somewhat different subject). Unfortunately I don’t have the space here to describe the analysis. It’s important to note two points, however. First, van Inwagen’s new analysis doesn’t make use of the notion of a “chair-receptacle,” to which, as we’ll see below, Tallant directs his objection. But second, nevertheless, the analysis makes use of the notion of some xs composing an F. If Tallant’s objection to van Inwagen’s earlier analysis is cogent, then he’ll be able to give a structurally similar objection to van Inwagen’s new analysis, since the phrase “the xs compose an F” will, given nihilism and GLOBALIZATION, lack an intension. On this latter point see footnotes 16 and 20 of the present paper.
What “other conditions” van Inwagen is referencing here doesn’t need to concern us, since Tallant’s objection focuses on the notion of some xs “occupying a chair-receptacle.”
Wait a second, aren’t regions composites, in which case nihilists should deny that there are such things as regions? That’s true, but I don’t think it’s much of a problem in the present context. Perhaps instead of “regions” we should just refer to those points of spacetime from which some alleged region is made up. Or, following Sider (2013, Sect. 11), we might accept the existence of regions after all, but identify regions with spatially located sets.
Tallant’s argument only seems relevant to natural kind composites. Can we make the argument more general? Sure, just remember my earlier footnote about Williams’ argument: maybe for the nihilist the proper parthood relation fails to have an intension, in which case she can’t specify when a “proper parthood relation” would counterfactually obtain.
I am not suggesting that what it is for some xs to be arranged table-wise is for people to believe that such xs are arranged table-wise. Rather, the suggestion is that what it means for xs to be arranged table-wise is that those xs are arranged in the manner in which those who believe in tables actually suppose the parts of tables are arranged. The belief of those who believe in tables is being used to pick out a certain arrangement. So, I’m not using the belief in question as a component of what it means for some xs to be in that arrangement. This point addresses Elder’s objection to fictionalist accounts of what it means for xs to be arranged F-wise: “That the contents of a given region are dogwise arranged is supposed to explain why the folk suppose that in that region there is a dog, and the explanation is supposed to be causal: in virtue of being dogwise arranged, the contents of such a region are supposed to be such as to cause in folk observers doggish sensory experiences, and to cause in surrounding regions events that will look to the folk like the sorts of effect we expect to see dogs produce. So that the contents of a region are dogwise arranged must be a state of affairs distinct from the fact that the folk would suppose that there exists in that region a dog. The fictionalist position makes dogwise arrangement be just equivalent to the belief that it is supposed causally to explain” (Elder 2011, pp. 119–120).
Actually, Elder considers some modifications of this answer to the SAQ, but a central component of all of these accounts is that the xs arranged F-wise are those particles which tend to cause the belief that there are Fs.
Whether Unger would now endorse the line of thought reconstructed below isn’t a particularly important question.
The manner in which this argument is worded is modeled after an argument in Unger (1979b, p. 120).
Of course, there might be a table even if there aren’t xs arranged table-wise if the table in question is a mereological simple. In that case it would perhaps sound odd to say that the table is arranged in any particular manner (although perhaps this won’t sound quite as odd given that the table in question would presumably have to be spatially extended). In any case, I avoid such counterexamples above by restricting the principle in question (there can’t be an F if there aren’t xs arranged F-wise) to composite objects.
Why is vague existence so much more objectionable than vague predicates? The chief difference stems, I think, from the fact that our linguistic decisions decide which properties we intend to pick out with certain words or phrases, but they do not decide what exists. Insofar as our linguistic practices are imprecise, they’ll be incapable of picking out one precise property in every case. Thus we have vagueness stemming from semantic indecision. Again, by contrast, our linguistic decisions do not determine what exists (other than, perhaps, things like linguistic utterances themselves). So, we don’t have a plausible story regarding the origins of vague existence, or even a plausible account of what vague existence could consist in (whereas vague predicates, by contrast, would consist in our having a hard time picking out just one precise property when we say a man is, say, bald). This is, in any case, the important difference between vague existence and vague predicates—why the former is far less plausible than the latter—given a linguistic or semantic theory of vagueness. Similar point could be made, I think, with respect to other accounts of vagueness. An epistemicist might think, for example, that our linguistic practices as a community serve to pick out a determinate extension for each of our predicative expressions, even if we’ll often be unable to tell what that extension is. Vagueness on such an account is merely epistemic: we don’t know which property, exactly, is picked out by some expression of ours. By contrast, our linguistic practices as a community don’t serve to bring anything into existence (other than, again, perhaps linguistic expressions themselves).
“Entity,” for example, will not be discriminative in this manner, even if it turns out to be a somewhat vague term, insofar as anything whatsoever would be an entity.
Compare some remarks Cameron makes with respect to Lewis’s reduction of modality: “If parsimony is what motivates you to seek a reduction then our question should simply be whether what is in the proposed reductive base are resources that we need anyway. If I want an analysis of \(\varPhi \) in terms of \(\varPsi \) on the grounds of parsimony then \(\varPsi \) had better be something I need to appeal to whether or not I accept the analysis; otherwise I haven’t increased my ideological parsimony, merely swapped one bit of primitive ideology for another. But if we need to take \(\varPsi \) as primitive anyway, then I can claim an advantage over those who in addition take \(\varPhi \) as primitive” (Cameron 2012, p. 18). My response to Bennett and Tallant is that those who believe in composition will, just like the nihilist, need to employ and make sense of such phrases as “the xs are (((arranged atom-wise) arranged molecule-wise) arranged ...).” However, the non-nihilist will also need one or more mereological primitives, primitives which the nihilist can do without. So, nihilism still wins the ideological simplicity contest.
This is all assuming, of course, that the nihilist needs to employ “arranged F-wise predicates.” See my discussion of this issue in Sect. 2 above. Here I’m assuming that the nihilist will need to make use of such predicates. My point here is that, if the nihilist needs to employ such predicates, then so does the non-nihilist.
I’m, of course, using a very simplified example, but that doesn’t affect the points I’m going to make.
Uzquiano calls it “pluplural” quantification. I’ll continue to use the term “perplural” to remain consistent with Bennett’s use of the term above.
Ironically, at least one recent prominent nihilist (Sider 2013) has identified alleged composite objects (chairs, dogs, etc.) with spatially located sets, although not in response to Uzquiano’s arguments.
A residual issue, and one which I won’t discuss at length here, is whether perplural quantification would undermine nihilism. For example, if the nihilist is willing to quantify over, say, multiple pluralities, we might wonder whether the “pluralities” in question would qualify as composite objects. (One way out of the problem, of course, is for the nihilist to forgo perplural quantification in favor of quantification over sets, or monadic second order quantification.) I’m not sure what the nihilist should say here, but a fictionalist construal of perplural quantification of the following sort might resolve the problem: “Perhaps, we can understand the language [of perplural quantification] through a convenient fiction according to which pluralities are real entities over which perplural quantifiers range. The fictional interpretation of the language need not lead to inconsistencies as long as we stipulate that the plural quantifiers of such a language range only over the non-fictional entities of the universe. The plural quantifiers will have their ordinary meaning whereas the perplurals will have a fictional meaning that merely helps us in our counting” (Spencer 2012, p. 73 n.10). (For what it’s worth, Spencer isn’t defending mereological nihilism in this passage.)
How has this point escaped Bennett’s, Tallant’s, and Uzquiano’s notice? I suspect it has to do with the fact that nihilists (as well as almost-nihilists like van Inwagen and Merricks) are just more likely to actually use such phrases as “the xs are arranged table-wise.” While someone who believes in tables will, I’ve been arguing, on reflection endorse the sentence “there are xs arranged table-wise” if the nihilist does, it’s difficult to imagine circumstances in which he would actually need to use that sort of sentence. Nihilists, however, insofar as they bring to our attention the possibility that there aren’t in fact any tables, have just the perfect opportunity to employ such phrases as “the xs are arranged table-wise,” namely in the course of explaining why their view isn’t as crazy as it initially sounds. (Compare: earlier I suggested that nihilists, while denying that the moon exists, nevertheless are not thereby suggesting that widespread delusions to the contrary are the result of a conspiracy theory or something of that nature—they are not suggesting, for example, that a secret Illuminati-esque cabal is promoting the myth that the moon exists. It’s difficult to imagine a situation in which someone who believes the moon exists would have to say something like “I’m not suggesting that there’s a secret Illuminati-esque cabal promoting the myth that the moon exists.” Nevertheless, probably most people who believe in the moon would, on reflection, endorse that latter sentence.)
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Justin Christy, Chad McIntosh, Michael Rea, Amy Seymour, Peter van Inwagen, and two anonymous referees for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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Brenner, A. Mereological nihilism and the special arrangement question. Synthese 192, 1295–1314 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0619-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0619-7