Abstract
In this paper, I articulate and solve a puzzle originally presented by Gideon Rosen. The puzzle challenges us to produce a causal criterion that distinguishes concrete objects from abstract objects, even though it seems like abstract objects are constituents of events that enter into causal relations. My solution is to identify concrete objects with objects that have dispositions to manifest causal powers.
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Notes
For example, see (Craig 2011).
Whether my account works for expansive platonism is a question for another time.
In their book on ontology and metaontology, Berto and Plebani (2015, 124–5) also refer to Rosen’s puzzle, but they do not discuss any solutions to it.
For the purposes of this paper, I will use “events” to mean “event-tokens”. It is arguable that event types are abstracta, whereas event tokens can are more likely to be instances of concreta. For an argument that event tokens are concreta, see (Lowe 1995).
Event causation contrasts with substance causation. Substance causation is the view that substances are the primary relata of causal relations.
In worlds where John is not mistaken about what is on his mind.
N.B. this is contested with respect to time, but that complication is not relevant to my argument. Thanks to Randolph Clarke for mentioning this.
To express a causal power is to manifest a disposition and to behave in a certain way is also to manifest a disposition. Entities can have dispositions to be causes or effects.
I am only committed to entities manifesting their powers in at least one world, so there may be entities without tendencies to manifest their causal powers, but they still have the disposition to do so. Thanks to Randolph Clarke for bringing this complication to my attention.
Some things are able to be affected by others without being able to affect things, which qualifies epiphenomenal mental states as concrete on this view, which is a good thing, since mental states are not abstracta. However, this creates a new worry. If being an effect is sufficient for being causally networked, then Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is concrete because it exists as an effect of Beethoven’s creative efforts (Rosen 2012). My response to this worry is that platonists should consider Symphony No. 9 to be a discovery of Beethoven. Assuming we are platonists about symphonies, then Symphony No. 9 is an abstract entity that Beethoven, through his artistic efforts, discovered. On this view, the symphony is not an effect of any of Beethoven’s creative actions. Considering works of art to be discoveries inevitably raises issues about the nature of creativity that take us beyond the scope of this paper.
See (Cowell 81–82) for an articulation of this objection. However, an essentialist about dispositions or powers could object by arguing that the identity conditions of objects are at least partly constituted by their powers or dispositions. The essentialist will have to adjust her views about the nature of the dispositional modality accordingly.
I do not want to commit to the stronger claim that concreta necessarily undergo non-Cambridge change for the purposes of this paper. It may be possible that there are possible worlds with concreta that always manifest a disposition to behave and therefore never change from a state in which it does not manifest that disposition to a state in which it does. I am not sure whether such a thing is really possible. However, that issue lies outside the scope of this paper.
If we are thinking of John being interrupted in terms of a substance causal ontology, then it is John qua substance that gets interrupted, but if we are thinking in terms of an event causal ontology, then it is the process of John’s thinking that gets interrupted.
I am grateful to Graham Oddie for making me aware of this objection.
See (Danks 2012) for more on causal perception.
For more on metaphysical explanation, see (Thompson 2016).
Whether the making relation should be understood as the grounding relation or some other kind of metaphysical dependence is a question that is beyond the scope of this paper.
For a debate about whether it is the causal powers or the substances possessing them that are causally efficacious, see (Whittle 2016) and (Buckareff 2017). Ann Whittle defends the view that substances are causes, whereas Buckareff defends the view that substances’ causal powers are causes. Whether this debate carries over to non-substance based causal powers ontologies is beyond the scope of this paper. Further, the outcome of this debate does not seem relevant to my argument in this paper, because the criterion of concreteness can be cast in terms of either the constituents or their powers being causes. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting that I explore this debate.
For a dissenting view, see (Bigelow and Pargetter 2006).
A mereological sum is odd when it is an aggregate of seemingly unrelated entities, such as a number and a caesar salad. This is similar to Schaffer’s distinction between integrated wholes and mixed aggregates (Chalmers et al., 2009).
N.B. one could deny the existence of mixed sums by pursuing these lines of argument.
I confess that I find the idea of mixed sums having causal powers to be very strange. I cannot think of a good example of a mixed sum, qua mixed sum, causing anything or contributing to the causal efficacy of an event. Because of my inability to imagine such an example, my discussion of the second solution remains rather abstract.
Thanks to Mike Huemer for pressing me on this objection.
Thanks to Graham Oddie for pressing me on this objection.
While I use the representational theory of mind as a response to this objection, the same kind of response is possible given other theories of mind as well.
This view is in line with the descriptivist tradition stemming from Russell. Descriptivism is a plausible theory of reference when it comes to abstracta. Furthermore, insisting on a causal theory of reference begs the question against my view, because it insists that reference to abstracta involve causal relations to them, which is just to assert the negation of my view as a reason to doubt it.
E.g. the surface grammar of “The property of redness is had by all and only red things” seems to commit us to the existence of a single property had by a plurality of things, but the trope theorist would beg to differ. We cannot let surface grammar alone be our guide in theorizing about contentious metaphysical topics.
I say useful because I do not want to commit to a stronger claim about change being necessary for an object to manifest a disposition. As discussed in fn. 12, there may be objects that always manifest dispositions to behave, in which case they never change in those respects. However, the Pythagorean Theorem does not seem to be a case of constant manifestation of a disposition to cause certain mental states in mathematicians, since they do not always think about it, and surely that is supposed to be what cause it to manifest its disposition to inspire them.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Graham Oddie, Mike Huemer, Randy Clarke, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments.
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Christmann, J.A. The Power of Negativity: a Theory of Abstract Entities. Philosophia 48, 507–517 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00105-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-019-00105-4