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Deep gunk and deep junk

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Abstract

All parts of mereologically ‘gunky’ entities have proper parts. All parts relevant to mereologically ‘junky’ entities *are* proper parts. This essay explores the application of gunk and junk beyond the standard category of material object. One such application yields what is here dubbed ‘deep’ gunk and junk: a material entity x all of whose intrinsic elements from any fundamental ontological category C either (a) have proper parts from C that also are intrinsic elements of x (deep gunk), or (b) are proper parts of entities from C that also are intrinsic elements of x (deep junk). In addition to being independently interesting, these mereological structures pose a challenge to the bare particular ontology of substance. For bare particulars standardly are assumed to be mereologically simple, yet a deep gunky or junky entity requires any associated bare particulars to be complex. The essay closes by examining the bare particular theorist’s prospects for answering this challenge.

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Notes

  1. I assume throughout that proper parthood is asymmetric. A representative sample of ‘-unk’ literature includes Lewis (1991), Sider (1993, 2013), Zimmerman (1996), Schaffer (2003, 2010), Stuchlik (2003), Arntzenius (2008), Varzi (2016), Hawthorne and Weatherson (2004), Hudson (2006, 2007), McDaniel (2006), Williams (2006), Parsons (2007), Russell (2008), Bøhn (2009a, b, 2012, 2018), Watson (2010), Contessa (2012), Tallant (2013), Cowling (2014), Cotnoir (2014), Giberman (2015b, 2019a, b), Uzquiano (2017), Smith (2019), and Trogdon and Cowling (2019). Parsons (2007) suggests ‘knug’ as a name for junk, though ‘junk’ has won primary usage. Van Cleve (2008) contains an early use of ‘junk’ in a different technical sense.

  2. This is not to deny that the extant literature considers mereological structures outside the category of material object. What it lacks is a sustained discussion of gunk or junk outside that category. For a recent exception, see Trogdon and Cowling (2019).

  3. I wish to sidestep the ongoing debates concerning philosophical structuring notions like fundamental, ground, in-virtue-of, metaphysical explanation, and priority. I will help myself to talk of these notions while intending to remain neutral on these debates, or at least as close to neutral as such talk allows. It also is notoriously difficult to define ‘intrinsic’ (see Marshall and Weatherson 2018). Fortunately, I do not need more than the standard first approximation: determined by how an entity is, in and of itself.

  4. See Allaire (1963), Bergman (1967), Moreland and Pickavance (2003), Sider (2006), Connolly (2015), and Wildman (2015). A helpful overview is Loux (2002: pp. 99–102). Some bare particular theorists favor tropes over universals, but I will focus on universals for ease of exposition. Some treat instantiation as a relation, others consider ‘instantiation’ talk merely ideological, and still others endorse a non-relational mechanism that ties bare particulars to universals.

  5. On sparseness, see Lewis (1983: p. 345), Sider (2006: p. 392).

  6. ‘Thick particular’ is also sometimes used to talk about a thin particular’s instantiation of just one universal, but I will ignore that usage here.

  7. Let me forestall a potential confusion. One might think that when a flower has a petal as a proper part, the flower’s thin particular thereby has the petal’s thin particular as a proper part. But that is not so, despite the fact that the one thick particular (the flower) does indeed have the other (the petal) as a proper part. Moreover, on standard bare particular theory, not even the flower has the petal’s thin particular as a proper part—indeed, not even the petal does. For thin particulars are not proper parts of material objects on standard bare particular theory. For these reasons, familiar material gunk poses no problem for bare particular theory.

  8. Notice that these observations apply equally to the alternative versions of bare particular theory that I have set aside. One interesting issue, which I will not pursue here, is whether deep junk raises a problem for bundle theories that treat compresence mereologically (the worry being that junky entities cannot be bundled by mereological fusion). What matters for present purposes is that there are bundle theories with which deep gunk and junk do accord.

  9. For example, Allaire (1963) states that trope theory “cannot account for the sameness” of two red material objects, while universal bundle theory “cannot account for the difference” (2–3). Allaire clearly is not saying here that something merely contingent prevents these competing views from accounting for the relevant phenomena.

  10. Moreover, even if there were a well-defended bare particular theory that only aimed at contingent truth, it would still matter whether it could be made compatible with deep gunk and deep junk, since being more widely applicable (in this case, by being applicable to worlds containing deep gunk or deep junk) remains an important advantage that one theory may enjoy over another, even if neither is universally applicable.

  11. For a sample, see Sider (1993), Schaffer (2003), Stuchlik (2003), Giberman (2015b, 2019a, b), Bøhn (2009a, b, 2012), Watson (2010), Contessa (2012), and Tallant (2013).

  12. I will not defend as authoritative any of the several competing ways to distinguish particulars from universals. For present purposes, I take the distinction to concern whole multiple locatability/applicability/instantiability.

  13. On point-sized complexity, see Pickup (2016).

  14. See Hawthorne and Cover (1998) and Hawthorne and Sider (2002).

  15. For a contrasting view that allows for wholly multiply located tropes, see Ehring (2011).

  16. One might also wish to consider moderate pervasive deep gunk or junk. I leave their characterizations as an exercise for the interested reader.

  17. It is less clear that neo-Aristotelian theories of substance that invoke substantial kind universals can accommodate deep gunk and junk. While this is a question worth exploring, I lack the space to do so here.

  18. Objection: but ‘cosmos’ is not a fundamental category. Response: please look again at the definition of deep junk, which does not require category K to be fundamental in order for a given K to be deep junky.

  19. Notice that the traditional bare particular theoretic assumption discussed at the end of Sect. 2.1—that the fundamental structure of material objects necessarily involves mereologically simple thin particulars—is the conjunction of (1) bare particular theory, the plausible thought that (2) if thin particulars have parts then those parts are thin particulars, and (3) Claim*.

  20. I will not attempt to define ‘qualitative’. But I mean something sufficiently weak by it that it should be considered uncontroversial that mereological properties count as qualitative.

  21. The general strategy of appealing to the collective exemplification of a property by a plurality is not new here, although the specific application is. For interesting applications of the strategy to other debates, see Bøhn (2012, 2018).

  22. Indeed, an anonymous referee—to whom I am grateful—raises just this concern.

  23. For the sake of argument, I will set aside the (legitimate) concern that being singular is not a relevant qualitative property, but rather an abundant and/or formal property.

  24. Suppose an actual rhododendron—call it ‘Rhoda’—is not deep gunky/junky. Is it possible for Rhoda to have been deep gunky or junky? If so, is it thus possible for an object to have had different thin particulars as constituents than it in fact has? Wisdom recommends neutrality here. As with material gunk and junk, reasonable parties may disagree about this sort of de re modal question (e.g. is it possible for the Eiffel Tower to have been gunky, assuming that it is not actually gunky?). What matters for present purposes is that some possible rhododendrons—whether any is numerically identical to Rhoda or not—are deep gunky/junky, and that deep gunky/junky material objects have their respective roster of constituent thin particulars primitively.

  25. Thank you to participants at the fall 2020 Gothenburg theoretical philosophy research seminar and several anonymous referees for helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

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    Daniel Giberman

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Giberman, D. Deep gunk and deep junk. Synthese 199, 5645–5667 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03040-8

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