Absences, Privations, Holes – Maverick Philosopher

Holes, Hosts, and Guests

Some of you are confusing holes with 'guests.' You have to be able distinguish them on the notional or intensional plane to be able to identify them on the real or extensional plane should you find reasons to do so.

I gave the example of a piece of Swiss cheese. It has holes in it. I argued that (i) holes are spatiotemporal particulars and that (ii) holes exist. I then asked whether holes are material or immaterial. My motive for posing this strange question was to see if there are any decisive (discussion-ending, philosophically dispositive) counterexamples to the materialist thesis that all and only material items exist. Holes are candidate counterexamples: they exist and they are apparently immaterial. To understand how a hole could be a counterexample to materialism, however, you must not confuse a hole with its 'guest.'

Let H be a hole in a piece of Swiss cheese. The piece of cheese is the host. Without it, that very piece of cheese, H, that very hole, cannot exist. (This is a much stronger claim than the claim that Swiss cheese holes cannot exist without Swiss cheese.) That makes the hole an 'ontological parasite' of the host entity, and thus analogous to an Aristotelian accident inhering in an Aristotelian primary substance. The guest is the contingent occupant or filling of the hole, the air in H for example.

Bro Joe comments,

Holes in Swiss cheese are CO₂ gas bubbles; after you cut the cheese, they are air pockets. So, they qualify as "things." This discussion eventually involves the question of vacuums; but even outer space is not empty, there is a low density of hydrogen and helium out there, and that is even before the consideration of fields; the magnetic field, and the electrical field extend there as well. (There is one of each field in the entire universe as far as we know).

If Joe means 'material things' by 'things,' then he illustrates the confusion I mentioned. The hole in a doughnut has the doughnut as the host and air (or water or coffee, etc.) as the guest.

So the hole is not the same as the 'guest.' The hole is what it is whatever the filling. The holes in a piece of cheese submerged in water are filled with water, not air. Since a hole is what it is whatever the filling or guest, the hole is not identical to its filling. It is at least conceivable that the hole have no filling whatsoever. If that is possible, then the hole is 'no thing,' nothing, a particular 'piece' of nonbeing. (This possibility, please note, does not straightaway follow from the conceivability.)

I suppose one could argue that while it is contingent which type of occupant a hole has, it must as a matter of metaphysical necessity have some occupant or other. Holes are spatiotemporal particulars; such particulars are in spacetime; there are fields in every region of spacetime (electromagnetic, gravitational, and what all else); ergo, every hole is occupied or filled or has a guest, which is to say, every hole is material.

Is the argument I just gave rationally coercive? It is assuming that time can be assimilated to space so as to form the four-dimensional manifold, spacetime. Reasonable objections can be raised against this construct, useful as it is in physics. And what about the premise that there are fields in every region of spacetime? Is that objectively self-evident? Is it not conceivable that there are holes in fields, and thus regions of spacetime without fields?

Now we are in deep, and it's time for a nap. I leave you to ponder Lao Tzu:

Tao Te Ching – Lao Tzu – chapter 11

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

(translation by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English)

Note the tacit identification of holes with ('pieces' of) nonbeing.

Aporetic dyad:

Holes exist.

Holes are 'pieces' of nonbeing.

Are Holes Material Items?

Here is a version of materialism:

1) All and only material things exist.

My question: are there decisive (philosophically dispositive) counterexamples to (1)? I hold that (1) is very reasonably rejected. But what I want to know is whether it can be 'blown clean out of the water,' i.e., refuted beyond the shadow of any intelligent person's doubt. A commenter suggests holes as counterexamples to (1) His idea, I take it, is that holes exist but are not material items. Let's think about this. I will first argue that holes exist and then inquire whether they are material in nature.

Consider a particular hole H in a piece of Swiss cheese. H is not nothing. It has properties. It has, for example, a shape: it is circular. The circular hole has a definite radius, diameter, and circumference. It has a definite area equal to pi times the radius squared: A=πr² If the piece of cheese is 1/16th of an inch thick, then the hole is a disk having a definite volume. H has a definite location relative to the edges of the piece of cheese and relative to the other holes. The hole is subject to locomotion: move the cheese and you move the hole. The hole is also subject to substantial and accidental change. Melt the cheese and the hole ceases to exist; stretch the cheese and the hole undergoes alterational or accidental change.

What's more, H has causal properties: it affects the texture and flexibility of the cheese and its resistance to the tooth. H is perceivable by the senses: you can see it and touch it. If you can't literally see holes, how would you know that the piece of cheese is a piece of Swiss cheese? You touch a hole by putting a finger or other appendage into it and experiencing no resistance.

Now if anything has properties, then it exists. H has properties; so H exists. What holds for H holds for any hole.

But are holes material in nature? The answer to this obviously depends on what exactly it is to be material in nature. We have seen that holes are in space: they have definite locations and are subject to change of spatial location. We have also seen that, because they are subject to both substantial and accidental change, holes are in time. So holes are both in space and in time. But they are neither abstract objects nor spiritual substances. Holes are plausibly taken to be existing spatiotemporal particulars.

But are holes material substances? Presumably not: substances are logically capable of independent existence; holes are not capable of independent existence. Holes are ontological parasites: they depend for their existence on the existence of the things in which they exist. Holes are more like Aristotelian accidents than like Aristotelian substances.

The view that holes are material items cannot be definitively excluded. According to the SEP article on our topic, this line was taken by David Lewis and his wife Stephanie:

One might also hold that holes are ordinary material beings: they are neither more nor less than superficial parts of what, on the naive view, are their material hosts (Lewis & Lewis 1970; Mollica 2022). For every hole there is a hole-lining and for every hole-lining there is a hole; on this conception, the hole is the hole-lining.

I conclude that holes are not decisive counterexamples to (1) above.