Words and Objects

Abstract

When we set ourselves to draw up an inventory of the world — a catalogue of all there is, was, and will or could be — we have to face two tasks. First, we have to figure out what sorts of things there are, i.e., we must identify and characterize the categories under which the items in the inventory will fall. For example, we might want to draw a distinction between such things as chairs and tables, on the one hand, and conferences, hurricanes, and stabbings, on the other. And we may wonder what to do when it comes to such things (if such there be) as numbers, jokes, haircuts, smiles, souls, shadows, and so on. The second task is to figure out, for each category, how many different things there are, i.e., how many individual items must be included in that category. Is this chair the same as the chair that was here yesterday? Is it something over and above the mereological fusion of the molecules that constitute it? Am I the same as my body? Is Brutus’s stabbing of Caesar the same event as his killing of Caesar? Is it the same as the assassination of Caesar? Is it the same as the violent assassination of Caesar? And so on.