Abstract
There is widespread disagreement as to what the facts are concerning just when a collection of objects composes some further object; but there is widespread agreement that, whatever those facts are, they are necessary. I am unhappy to simply assume this, and in this paper I ask whether there is reason to think that the facts concerning when composition occurs hold necessarily. I consider various reasons to think so, but find fault with each of them. I examine the theory of composition as identity, but argue that the version of this doctrine that entails universalism is unwarranted. I consider the claim that the a priority of such facts leads to their necessity, but give a defence of substantial contingent a priori truths. I ask whether the contingency of such facts would lead to unwelcome possibilities, but argue that it does not. Next, I argue against the thought that the Lewis–Sider argument against restricted composition might give us reason to accept the necessity of universalism. Lastly, I respond to two objections from the 2006 BSPC. I conclude in favour of the contingency of the facts concerning when some things compose some thing.
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Notes
See (van Inwagen 1990).
See (Rosen and Dorr 2002).
(Markosian 1998), pp. 216–217.
(Sider 2001), pp. 202–203.
(Armstrong 1997), pp. 12–13.
(Sidelle 2002), pp. 136–138.
It is merely possible, for Rosen and Dorr may intend the italicised sentence at the end of this quotation to be a non-vacuously true counterpossible (i.e. a counterfactual with an impossible antecedent) instead. While the orthodoxy is that counterpossibles are vacuously true (see (Lewis 1973)), it is becoming more and more popular to use impossible worlds to give a treatment of them according to which some are true and some false (see (Vander Laan 2004) and (Nolan 1997a). If this is what Rosen and Dorr intend, then they can consistently hold on to the necessity of compositional nihilism if they wish.
(Rosen and Dorr 2002), p. 170.
That would be to answer van Inwagen’s general composition question. I grant that an answer to SCQ that was entailed by an answer to GCQ would be a necessary truth, since GCQ cannot be answered by a contingent truth; but no one has attempted to answer SCQ that route because they have agreed with van Inwagen that an informative answer to GCQ cannot be given.
(Sider 1993).
Of course, one could still argue that it is epistemically possible that our world is gunky, whereas it is not epistemically possible that everything is alive, and try to cause trouble for van Inwagen this way. But this would be a far weaker argument: it is far less of a cost to close off the epistemic possibility of something being the case (every theory does that) than it is to rule out the metaphysical possibility of some intuitively possible situation.
(Sider 2003), p. 203.
If the conditional is uninformative (if, for example, being in C is understood as being in conditions sufficient for composing) then the sentence may well be analytic, but it won’t then entail the necessity of any informative facts about when objects compose.
(Kripke 1980).
The primary defender of composition as identity is Donald Baxter. See his (Baxter 1988) and (1988). See also (Lewis 1991), p. 81, and Sider (2007). (The principle that entails the triviality of universalism is what Sider calls strong composition as identity, in contrast to the weaker claim he in fact endorses.) For arguments against composition as identity see (van Inwagen 1994) and (Yi 1999).
Of course, one who holds that composition is identity will not deny that a composite object is identical to the sum of its parts; the composite object is identical to the sum, both of which are identical to the parts. I mean to point out just that the composition as identity theorist is not merely claiming that things are identical to the sums of their parts; they are claiming something far more radical.
(Baxter 1988), p. 579.
(Merricks 2005), p. 630.
It is an empirical matter, for example, whether a collection of objects is fastened together, whether they contrast to their surroundings etc. And even if it is no part of what it is for a collection of objects to compose that the members of the collection be fastened together etc., such facts might still constitute evidence for the claim that they compose.
(Kripke 1980), p. 38.
(Kripke 1980), pp. 320–333, 56–60.
(Evans 1985).
That account of how we can come to know some contingent proposition a priori grants that in the worlds in which the proposition in question is false, it can still be justified. But that may be doubted as well. A priority does not entail empirical indefeasability, so prima facie it seems that a proposition might be such that we can come to know it on the basis of non-empirical justification but it be such that were it false there would be empirical evidence for its falsity, such that overall the proposition would not be justified. The axioms of Euclidean geometry are perhaps an example. It seems to me not implausible to hold that there is a priori justification for these axioms, but that the axioms are not jointly justified because there is empirical evidence against them. But space could have been Euclidean, and had it been so we could have known a priori the axioms of Euclidean geometry. That would have been a case, then, in which we knew something a priori that was contingent, and which would not have been justified were it false.
This example is used by Nolan (1997b), pp. 332–335, but for a different purpose.
Obviously the necessitarian will think that acceptance of the contingency of compositional facts commits you to acknowledge situations as possible that are not; the question is whether the contingency theorist is committed to the possibility of situations which by her own lights look impossible.
Blackburn’s argument doesn’t seem directed against naturalist realisms, even though he doesn’t say this, because the naturalist will most likely hold the inter-world supervenience claim that Blackburn wants to deny (see below). If moral properties simply are natural properties then, given the necessity of identity, once we have fixed the natural properties of a world we have thereby fixed its moral properties.
Blackburn (1984), pp. 182–184.
Compare the case to the case of laws of nature. There are worlds where massive things attract every other massive thing according to the inverse square law, and there are worlds where massive things attract every other massive thing according to the inverse cube law. This does not immediately, however, commit us to thinking that there are mixed-worlds where some massive things attract other massive things according to the inverse square law and other massive things attract other massive things according to the inverse cube law. What powers things have in virtue of being massive is determined by the contingently obtaining laws of nature, and we needn’t admit the possibility of laws of nature that lead to different massive things (in the same world) having different powers in virtue of being massive.
See in particular (Armstrong 1983).
This is what we should say if we incline to Bigelow’s reading of the supervenience principle: “If something is true, then there must be, that is to say there must exist, something which makes the actual world different from how it would have been if this had not been true.” (Bigelow 1988), p. 126.
This is more in line with the Lewisian position. Lewis’ supervenience principle is: “For any proposition P and any worlds W and V, if P is true in W but not in V, then either something exists in one of the worlds but not in the other, or else some n-tuple of things stands in some fundamental relation in one of the worlds but not in the other” (Lewis 2001).
I thank Cody Gilmore and Karen Bennett for making the cost clear to me. The first point that follows is due to Bennett, the second to Gilmore.
There are things the contingency theorist tempted by the mereological laws response could say. Perhaps the existence of the parthood relation is ontologically dependent on the existence of some (deterministic) mereological law, so that a world without mereological laws is not a world where the mereological facts are random—it is a world where there are no mereological facts. But this seems a bit desperate.
For all that has been said there could be worlds in which there is nothing in which nihilism is true and worlds in which there is nothing in which universalism is true, the difference between them being what counterfactuals hold concerning what complex objects there would be were there something rather than nothing.
I take the decompositional facts about the actual world to be contingent as well, for all the same reasons I give in this paper for the answer to SCQ being contingent. Some possible worlds are gunky, some have point sized simples, some have extended simples: let a million flowers bloom!
I have been persuaded by Elizabeth Barnes that ontic vagueness is far from the incoherent nightmare that many take it to be. See especially her (Barnes 2005) and her ‘What is ontic vagueness?’ (manuscript).
(Sider 2001], p. 124.
Nolan (2006).
It’s worth pointing out that it’s doubtful that the Lewis–Sider argument establishes even this much. Nolan (2006) argues, to my mind convincingly, vague intuitions concerning composition could be served by the positing of a sharp boundary.
This is Lewis’ story: “Restrict quantifiers, not composition.” Lewis (1986), p. 213.
I do not claim this would be a good argument for universalism. I am not sure how to balance the simplicity of universalism against the parsimony of restricted composition.
Nolan (2005), p. 36.
This premise is adapted from Sider’s ‘Inheritance of Intrinsicality’ principle; see Sider (2007).
I’ll present the argument a little differently from Gilmore’s presentation, but the essentials are the same.
Don’t be confused into thinking that Mr Y’s nose is plastic or anything: Mr Y’s nose is not prosthetic in the Michael Jackson sense—only in the sense that it is an artifact: the result of external design. Remember that the sub-plurality of the Ys that make up Mr Y’s nose are intrinsically identical, and have the same internal arrangement, as the sub-plurality of the Xs that are arranged nose-wise. The difference is just that some designer(s) planned that sub-plurality of the Ys to form a nose, whereas there was no such intention for the sub-plurality of the Xs.
See Sider (2003) for something very similar.
And we tell a story about what truth according to a world is that doesn’t involve modality.
Maybe ‘arbitrary’ isn’t the right word. It needn’t be random that the line is drawn where it is; it could be drawn there as a result of our interests. What matters is just that it isn’t drawn there because that division marks some natural distinction between the worlds.
The idea here is that there should be a presumption of possibility. For a defence of this view see Hale (2003).
A final caveat. There is one group who I grant should hold that the facts about composition are necessary: namely, the nihilist who thinks that the mereological discourse is not in good standing. If my reason for holding that composition never occurs is that there is no relation I refer to when I use the term ‘parthood’ then I should not hold that composition occurs in any possible world, since my term ‘parthood’ will not refer to any relation at those worlds either. Such nihilists are not my target here. I am concerned rather with the nihilist who thinks that the discourse is in good standing: that there is a parthood relation, but that it is in fact coextensive with the identity relation. Those nihilists should, I claim, be open to the possibility of a thing’s having proper parts.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Elizabeth Barnes, Bob Hale, Daniel Nolan and Robert Williams for helpful comments. Thanks also to participants at the 2006 BSPC conference at Western Washington University, especially Karen Bennett, Cody Gilmore, Ned Markosian and Ted Sider.
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Cameron, R.P. The contingency of composition. Philos Stud 136, 99–121 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9144-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-007-9144-6