Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Artifacts, Organisms, and Modes of Existence

Hello Dr. Vallicella, greetings from Germany!

I have been revisiting your paper "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, eds. Novotny and Novak, Routledge, 2014, pp. 45-75.  One of the most intriguing arguments you give against the opponent of modes of being/existence is the argument at the end against Peter van Inwagen's semantic claim that 'exist(s)' is univocal in sense and the corresponding ontological claim that there are no modes of being/existence. On p. 67 you present the following aporetic pentad and argue that it is best solved by the rejection of (5).  

1. The house exists.
2. The bricks exist.
3. The house is composed of the bricks, all of them, and of nothing else and is therefore not something distinct from them or  in addition to them.
4. Since the bricks can exist without the house but the house cannot exist without the bricks, the house is distinct from the bricks.
5. “Exist(s)” is univocal in (1) and (2), and there are no modes of existence.

The house doesn't exist apart from the bricks arranged house-wise, and yet if we reject mereological nihilism,  there must be something not identical to the bricks that makes up the house. Did I broadly capture the idea?

BV:  Broadly, yes. The five propositions are individually plausible to a very high degree, and yet they are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true. So we have a problem if we wish to uphold the law of non-contradiction. And we certainly want to hold onto said law if at all possible. One way to solve the problem is by rejecting the least plausible proposition. That, I claim, is (5). Van Inwagen would instead reject (1) and (4).  He and I will accept (2) and (3)  as the most plausible of the five propositions.  Of course, you have to understand that this is a 'toy example,' so to speak. After all, each brick is an artifact so that, if the house does not exist because it is an artifact, as per van Inwagen's teaching, then neither do the bricks. In the spirit of the 'toy example,' think of the bricks as atoms in the etymological sense: as really indivisible or non-partite. 

What (3) says is that the house is not something 'over and above' its parts. It is not an entity in addition to them. So if the house is composed of 50,000 bricks, then there are 50,000 entities in the place where the bricks are, not 50,001.  The house just is the bricks. (Mereology is ontologically innocent.) To appreciate the plausibility of this, suppose that the Wise Pig has just finished building his brick house, and you say to him, "I see all the bricks, Mr. Pig, but where is the house?" He will respond, "You, sir, are committing the fallacy of hypostatization: the house just is the bricks; it is not something 'above and beyond it.'"

As for (4), I think it is obviously true.  While I grant that the house is not something 'over and above' the bricks, it is also not just the bricks, but the house-wise arrangement of the bricks, an arrangement that is not nothing, but something real that makes the house distinct from the bricks. 

And so I reject (5) and say that, while house and bricks both exist, they exist in different ways.  By my lights, this is more intellectually palatable than the strange doctrine that there are no artifacts.  

I want to propose a way to strengthen the argument however. Despite your qualms with it, I see the appeal of mereological nihilism for artifacts, since it's questionable whether the "house" as distinct from the bricks is really needed here, or whether it can be eliminated for the mere arrangement of bricks.

BV:  It seems to me that the house must be distinct from the bricks for the simple reason that the bricks can exist without constituting a house, whereas the house cannot exist without the bricks.  A pile of bricks does not make a house. I would also insist that the house-wise arrangement of the bricks is not nothing. It is not nothing because it makes the difference between bricks that can shelter the pig and bricks that cannot.  The house is of course a dependent entity in that it depends for its existence on the bricks, but it does so without being identical to the bricks. That is why I say that the house exists in a different way than the constituent bricks, contrary to van Inwagen's claim that there are no ways or modes of existence. 

As long as there is no telos the house would have that can't be identified with the mere arrangement of bricks, the question is valid. Obviously if we look at something complex and goal directed like the immune system, the reduction here to the mere arrangement of the most basic particles sounds almost preposterous.

BV: Granted, the bricks taken collectively do not have an in-built telos or a nisus towards actualization; nevertheless, the house cannot be reductively identified with the bricks. The bricks can survive the demolition of the house, and at any time t at which the bricks form a house, the bricks might not have formed a house at t. The house is doubly contingent: it is contingent on the bricks and it is contingent on their proper arrangement. Or so it seems to me.

The question thus doesn't seem to arise when we're concerned with biological entities and their complex actions. Mereological nihilism for animals is not a view worth discussing and van Inwagen explicitly rejects it, instead opting for a kind of non-reductionism while still holding onto a view he identifies as materialism ("A Materialist Ontology of Human Persons" 2007). What I dispute, given your initial argument above, however is the compatibility of this position with his rejection of modes of being. If your aporia is correct and the opponent would have to embrace mereological nihilism for artifacts, doesn't that expand into the biological realm as well? It seems so, at least I don't see why it should be invalid [should not so expand.]

BV: I'm not sure I follow you here.  Van Inwagen is clearly not a nihilist with respect to organisms. (I am not a nihilist with respect to artifacts or organisms.) Are you asking whether his non-reductionism with respect to organisms commits him to the MOB doctrine? (MOB = modes of being.)

So let's reformulate your pentad:

1. The dog exists.
2. The atoms exist (atom designating a fundamental, simple physical and no relevant scientific theory)
3. The dog is composed of its atoms, all of them and of nothing else and is therefore not something distinct from them or in addition to them.
4. Since the atoms can exist without the dog,  but the dog can't exist without the atoms, the dog is distinct from its atoms.
5. “Exist(s)” is univocal in (1) and (2), and there are no modes of existence.

What do you think? If your argument can be reformulated this way we either show that non-reductionism and a rejection of modes of beings are contrarians [logical contraries? or logical contradictories?], so that one must be false. Or the interlocutor is forced to adopt an additional thesis that is at best questionable within a materialist/post-Cartesian ontology, e.g. that the particles are only virtually present in the human, but I doubt van Inwagen has any space in his theory for such positions of Aristotelians like David Oderberg.

Thanks for your time.

BV: I take it you are asking whether van Inwagen's views about living things commit him to the acceptance of modes of being/existence.  To answer that question I would have to pull Material Beings from the shelf and devote hours to re-reading the relevant portions, and for that I do not have time at present. 

Posted

in

by

Bill Vallicella

Tags:

Comments

7 responses to “Artifacts, Organisms, and Modes of Existence”

  1. John Doran Avatar
    John Doran

    My copy of Material Beings is not within reach, but, if I remember rightly, Van Inwagen distinguishes between artifacts and organisms by pointing to something like the “life principle” that unifies the various and sundry ‘parts’ of men, monkeys, and magnolias.
    That is to say, a house is like a (specifically organized) pile of sand, whereas a dog, say, is not solely a conglomeration of atoms/molecules, but also an organizing principle which is responsible for the systematic and orderly repair and replacement of the dog’s constituent atoms/molecules (i.e. this principle determines which bits cease to be a part of the dog (dead skin, shed hair, lost limbs), and which parts not previously part of the dog, become parts of the dog (ingested food, fresh skin, new hair.))
    Van Inwagen doesn’t elaborate on this organic principle (he calls it “life” or some such cognate), but I recall thinking that it sounded a lot like Aristotle/Aquinas.
    So, in terms of the second pentad, I believe Peter would reject it: the dog is not only its atoms and “nothing else”: there is also the “life principle” to consider.

    Reply
  2. David Brightly Avatar
    David Brightly

    Hello Bill,
    1. I’m having trouble understanding how the puzzle here is made into an argument for modes of being. Premise (3) claims that the house and the bricks are not distinct and (4) claims that they are, so (3) and (4) are in contradiction regardless of (5). Are you perhaps suggesting the following? Since (4) contains the verb ‘to exist’, multiple modes of existence would allow us to modify the sense of ‘can exist’ in (4) so that the implicit little argument in (4) no longer delivers the conclusion ‘the house is distinct from the bricks’, and hence (4) would cease to contradict (3).
    2. Here is an argument for rejecting (4). The idea is that it misapplies the term ‘distinct’. Suppose we present the puzzle a little differently:

    1. On some plot there is a house,
    2. On the same plot there are some bricks.

    I tend to imagine this situation as involving two objects, the house and the bricks. Suppose then we are told any one of the following,

    3a. The house consists of the bricks and the bricks comprise the house, without remainder.
    3b. The house and the bricks are identical,
    3c. The house and the bricks are not distinct.

    This has affinities with Frege’s Puzzle. We learn that seeming two things are one. So I say that the inferential equivalence of 3a, 3b, and 3c fixes the sense we should assign here to ‘distinct’. Now (4) says,

    The bricks can exist without the house but the house cannot exist without the bricks; ergo the house is distinct from the bricks.

    Arguably, the house could exist without the bricks by virtue of consisting of different bricks. But the argument that this modal claim leads to the conclusion ‘the house and bricks are distinct’ needs to be made. Clearly we can distinguish the senses of ‘the house’ and ‘the bricks’ in our minds, and conceptually a composite object is dependent on its parts but not conversely, but just as in Frege’s Puzzle, it’s the referents not the senses that are being identified. So (4) and (3) differ in their use of ‘distinct’. You also argue for (4):

    …it is also not just the bricks, but the house-wise arrangement of the bricks, an arrangement that is not nothing, but something real that makes the house distinct from the bricks.

    This too, I think, conflates sense and reference. The sense of ‘collection of bricks’ does not include ‘is house-shaped’ or ‘protects against the elements’ and so is distinct from the sense of ‘house’. But it’s reference that counts here, not sense. The actual bricks in their house-shaped configuration do offer shelter.

    Reply
  3. Dominik Kowalski Avatar
    Dominik Kowalski

    The question I’m asking then is whether that’s consistent. The organizing principle or the form would also be present in the artifact.
    I take 3) not as expressing that the house is the mere aggregate, Bill himself hints at something like that in his answer, therefore there’s something in the concept “house” that makes it different from the mere bricks arranged. This “something else” is, as I take it, what does the work in the argument with point 4 that, due to its asymmetrical dependence, exists in a different way.
    I don’t see how the organizing structure in an organism would differ in that regard

    Reply
  4. Dominik Kowalski Avatar
    Dominik Kowalski

    David,
    while I agree that 3 and 4 could have been formulated better, they don’t contradict each other. Especially for us who are familiar with Bill’s position we should understand what he’s trying to convey. Additionally, he provided further explanation in his reply above.
    We ascribe properties to the house which don’t apply to its mere parts, e.g. the size or it being the sum of multiple different kinds of parts, e.g. besides the bricks there are also doors and windows.
    The point that the house could still be there in virtue of a different set of bricks is irrelevant. For one, the initial argument never specified any particular set of bricks for the simple reason that it doesn’t need it. The dependence is never threatened by that; we could always have a pile of bricks which don’t constitute a house, but you’ll never be able to point to a house without there being bricks in the first place. Bill’s point, as I understand it, is that once the bricks are arranged in such a way that they constitute a house, there is this real thing which we call house (its form?) that has properties not applicable to its parts. Having a particular number of square feet is a property of the house, not the bricks. Insofar, after a little bit of reflection, I understand why Bill thinks that this is the common sense position. This house however is identical to the bricks in the sense that there’s nothing left to call “house” once all the bricks are removed. The house is identical to the bricks arranged in a particular structure and then, and only then, do we have something we can call house.
    So clearly we do have different modes of being, if the argument is successful. The holistic object is dependent upon the parts. This is the crucial here, because even if we can debate about Bill’s example, if the underlying argument is cogent, then we only have to swap out examples for a sound argument.

    Reply
  5. BV Avatar
    BV

    Dominik writes,
    >>Bill’s point, as I understand it, is that once the bricks are arranged in such a way that they constitute a house, there is this real thing which we call house (its form?) that has properties not applicable to its parts. Having a particular number of square feet is a property of the house, not the bricks. Insofar, after a little bit of reflection, I understand why Bill thinks that this is the common sense position. This house however is identical to the bricks in the sense that there’s nothing left to call “house” once all the bricks are removed. The house is identical to the bricks arranged in a particular structure and then, and only then, do we have something we can call house.
    So clearly we do have different modes of being,….<< Right, that is what I am saying. Suppose I have a pile of stones and then make a wall out of them and nothing else. Have I brought something new into existence? Yes or No? I say Yes because the wall has properties the stones (taken collectively, not distributively) lack. Suppose I have a pipe bowl and a pipe stem. Can I smoke the mereological sum of the two? Not very well! But if I insert the stem into the bowl in the right way, then I have a pipe I can smoke. Therefore, the pipe is not identical to the sum of its parts. And yet that very pipe cannot exist without those very parts. It occurs to me now that this is an instance of Kripke's essentiality of origin thesis: this very pipe could not have been assembled from any other pair of parts, just as I could not have originated from any other pair of gametes than the pair whence I did originate.

    Reply
  6. BV Avatar
    BV

    Suppose the pipe stem by itself costs 20 USD and the bowl 100 USD. You want to buy the pipe composed of those two parts. I say,”That’ll be 240 USD: 20 for stem, 100 for the bowl, and 120 for the pipe.”
    That’s fair, right? It’s fair if the parts are one existent and the whole is one existent, and ‘exists’ is univocal, and there are no modes of existence.
    But it is not fair, ergo, etc.

    Reply
  7. David Brightly Avatar
    David Brightly

    Hi Dominik. My difficulty is with the logical structure of the overall argument rather than the sub-arguments inside (3) and (4). I can accept their conclusions. So I’m very surprised you say that (3) and (4) are consistent. How is that?
    There is a further problem. Let’s allow that (3) and (4) are consistent. How is (5) inconsistent with (1) thru (4), none of which mention ‘mode of existence’? Further premises are needed, I would have thought.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *