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What’s New About New Realism? Mereology and the Varieties of (New) Realism

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Abstract

The paper set up a small “philosophical lab” for thought experiments using Digital Universes as its main tool. Digital Universes allow us to examine how mereology affects the debate on New Realism of Ferraris (2012) and shed new light on the whole notion of Realism. The semi-formal framework provides a convenient way to model the varieties of realism that are important for the program of New Realism: we then draw the natural consequences of this approach into the ontology of our world (may it be digital or not), arguing that the same considerations that apply to Digital Universe would hold for chess, institutions and social objects as well. Once a particular version of mereology is chosen, there are unavoidable consequences that the very underlying structure of social (and non-social) ontology. We then propose a new New Realism to tackle social objects: social objects turn out to be nothing more than mereological sums, picked up by some (possibly intentional) description.

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Notes

  1. From Ferraris’ point of view this realistic approach is the final upshot of his work on textualism and documentality see (Ferraris 2005, 2010). Among the many goals of these earlier works there is Ferraris’ attempt to elaborate on Derrida’s insights – i.e., “there’s nothing outside the context”.

  2. This article is of particular interest since it is part of a special The Monist issue on New Realism edited by De Caro and Ferraris themselves. In our exposition we will deal with some of these contributions, pointing out differences with our approach.

  3. Such a mereological approach is missing from the spectrum of the options surveyed in the issue of The Monist cited above. While Baker explicitly discusses ontological commitments it makes no attempt to frame the debate within mereology (or digital universes) like we do in this paper.

  4. Our new New Realism turns out to be quite different from those surveyed in The Monist: (Ferraris 2015)’s transcendental realism; (Gabriel 2015)’s neutral realism; (Baker 2015)’s practical realism; (Harman 2015)’s infra realism and (De Caro 2015)’s mixed realist attitude on both common sense and science.

  5. “This dissertation is about two sorts of complex entities: composite particular things, in Part One; and complex attributes, in Part Two. My view about these entities is easy to state: there aren’t any. They exist only according to certain false theories.” (Dorr 2002; 9).

  6. See for example (Ferraris 2012; 46)

  7. See for example (Ferraris 2012; 91) and (Ferraris 2012; 112).

  8. See for example (Ferraris 2012; 64).

  9. See for example (Ferraris 2012; 65).

  10. See for example (Ferraris 2012; 72).

  11. See for example (Ferraris 2012; 29).

  12. This three-folded view goes back to (Ferraris 2005; 157) and is confirmed in (Ferraris 2010; 358), (Ferraris 2012; 71) and (Ferraris 2015).

  13. This is the trademark contribution to social ontology of (Ferraris 2005, 2010) and is confirmed in (Ferraris 2012; 75). (Baker 2015: 151) relies on constitution and primary kind to explain social reality.

  14. At the beginning of (Ferraris 2012) – (Ferraris 2012; IX-X) – the Stanford Encyclopedia Entry on realism is explicitly mentioned, but, strangely enough, many contemporary contributions to the topic (e.g., modal realism) are not addressed in the book.

  15. See for example (Wolfram 2002), (Ilachinski 2001).

  16. See for example (Dennett 1991), (Tagliabue 2013b).

  17. See (Berlekamp et al. 1982) for a detailed introduction.

  18. The read familiar with the subject may safely skip the next few paragraphs. For a philosophically oriented introduction to cellular automata in general, see (Tagliabue 2013b).

  19. Cellular automata are in fact considered paradigmatic examples of complex systems, i.e., systems whose global behavior is generated deterministically by local interactions and yet it is hardly predictable even with perfect knowledge of the fundamental dynamics. In the words of (Epstein 1999; 48): “even perfect knowledge of individual decision rules does not always allow us to predict macroscopic structure. We get macro-surprises despite complete micro-knowledge.”

  20. (Dennett 1991; 37).

  21. The Life Wiki (http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Main_Page) offers a downloadable package of more than 3000 different patterns.

  22. Interestingly enough, gliders can be used to prove that Life is equivalent to a Universal Turing Machine. The reader may wish to consult (Ilachinski 2001), (Berto et al. 2010) and (Mainzer and Chua 2012) to further explore the world of cellular automata.

  23. See for example (Dennett 1991).

  24. See, for example, (Galton 1999), (Casati and Varzi 1999), (Tagliabue 2013a).

  25. Readers familiar with the subject may just quickly skip through the axioms.

  26. For the formal counterparts, we assume a standard first-order language with identity.

  27. See (Varzi 2014), Section 4.2.

  28. (Ferraris 2012; 45), our translation of the original paragraph. See also (Ferraris 2015).

  29. An example of that is (Baker 2015) in her disagreement with van Inwagen. She then moves from the different commitment to advocate a stronger thesis, namely that “A New Realism needs a new conception of ontology” (153).

    We guess we agree in principle, the problem is that we spell out ‘new’ in different ways.

  30. See (Dennett 1991; 34).

  31. For example his lengthy discussion of the “slipper case” seems to imply the very existence of the slipper as a mind-independent, mereologically complex object – see (Ferraris 2012; 39–43). In (Ferraris 2015) the issue is discussed mainly through the argument from unamendability.

  32. See for example (Ferraris 2012; 71).

  33. For a detailed defense of this view, see (Ferraris 2010).

  34. A metaphor often used in ontology that recently became the title of (Sider 2013).

  35. Of course ontological vagueness would be something utterly mysterious in a digital universe, where everything is perfectly non-vague. For a discussion of the Sider-Lewis argument see (Varzi 2005).

  36. Saliency was investigated mainly in cognitive linguistic as strictly connected with the concept of prototype chiefly associated to the name of Eleonore Rosch. For such an approach see (Taylor 1989/1995).

  37. That’s the debate of what is oddly known as “social ontology”. Actually, there’s little ontology involved and the main problem is to explain how some social and collective processes came into being. The main idea is that of Searlean collective intentionality, not the notion of object or that of ontological commitment. In order to explain social facts you can develop an account that follows Searle or something more fine grained on the notions of acceptance and recognition. Tomasello, Tuomela, Hindricks are some authors that elaborate different account to explain this “collective epistemology” problem. For those looking for some ontology in the so-called social ontology, see (Smith 2001).

  38. See (Hindricks 2012) on that. Such a problem of the so-called “social ontology” emerged as follows: if we claim that social objects are related to the “X counts as Y in C” formula some Y-institutional objects lack the corresponding X. The idea is found in (Smith 2001) and his favorite example was that of a corporation. Blind chess and electronic money are other gold standard of “social ontology” puzzles. A classic debate over that is (Smith and Searle 2003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univesità degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Guglielmo Feis

  2. Axon Vibe, Luzern, Switzerland

    Jacopo Tagliabue

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Feis, G., Tagliabue, J. What’s New About New Realism? Mereology and the Varieties of (New) Realism. Philosophia 43, 1035–1046 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9641-3

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