Category: Identity and Individuation
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Intentionality and Haecceity
Steven Nemes inquires: Do you think that your stand on intentionality not requiring the existence of the intentional object is contradictory with your argument against haecceity properties (as non-qualitative thisnesses)? You say that an individual can have the property of searching after Atlantis, let's say, even if Atlantis doesn't exist. But your argument against haecceities…
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On Our Knowledge of Sameness
How ubiquitous, yet how strange, is sameness! A structure of reality so pervasive and fundamental that a world that did not exhibit it would be inconceivable. How do I know that the tree I now see in my backyard is numerically the same as the one I saw there yesterday? Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper…
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The Bundle Theory and the Identity of Indiscernibles
I have been defending the bundle-of-universals theory of concrete particulars (BT) against various weak objections over a series of posts, here, here, here, and here. Now I consider a very powerful objection, one that many will consider decisive. The objection can be cast in the mold of modus tollendo tollens: If BT is true, then…
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A Closer Look at Material Composition and Modal Discernibility Arguments
(For David Brightly, whom I hope either to convince or argue to a standoff.) Suppose God creates ex nihilo a bunch of TinkerToy pieces at time t suitable for assembly into various (toy) artifacts such as a house and a fort. A unique classical mereological sum — call it 'TTS' — comes into existence 'automatically'…
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Varzi, Sums, and Wholes
Achille C. Varzi, "The Extensionality of Parthood and Composition," The Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2008), p. 109: Suppose we have a house made of Tinkertoy pieces. Then the house qualifies as a sum of those pieces: each piece is part of the house and each part of the house overlaps at least one of the pieces .…
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Four-Dimensionalism to the Rescue?
Let us return to that impressive product of porcine ingenuity, Brick House. Brick House, whose completion by the Wise Pig occurred on Friday, is composed entirely of the 10,000 Tuesday Bricks. I grant that there is a sum, call it 'Brick Sum,' that is the classical mereological sum of the Tuesday Bricks. Brick Sum is…
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Van Inwagen on Arbitrary Undetached Parts
In order to get clear about Dion-Theon and related identity puzzles we need to get clear about the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts (DAUP) and see what bearing it has on the puzzles. Peter van Inwagen provides the following statement of DAUP: For every material object M, if R is the region of space occupied…
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Can a Mereological Sum Change its Parts?
This post is an attempt to understand and evaluate Peter van Inwagen's "Can Mereological Sums Change Their Parts," J. Phil. (December 2006), 614-630. A preprint is available online here. The Wise Pig and the Brick House: My Take On Tuesday the Wise Pig takes delivery of 10,000 bricks. On the following Friday he completes construction…
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Van Inwagen Contra Lewis on Composition as Identity
Modifying an example employed by Donald Baxter and David Lewis, suppose I own a parcel of land A consisting of exactly two adjoining lots B and C. It would be an insane boast were I to claim to own three parcels of land, B, C, and A. That would be 'double-counting': I count A as…
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Mereological Innocence and Composition as Identity
This is the third in a series. Part I, Part II. What follows is a 10th example of eliminativist/reductivist ambiguity. One of the axioms of mereology is Unrestricted Composition. Here is David Lewis' formulation (Parts of Classes, Basil Blackwell 1991, p. 74): Unrestricted Composition: Whenever there are some things, then there exists a fusion of…
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Fist and Hand, Statue and Lump: The Aporetics of Composition
1. Some maintain that a hand, and that same hand made into a fist, are identical. And there are those who would say the same about a piece of bronze and the statue made out of it, namely, that they are identical at every time at which both exist. This is not an unreasonable thing to say.…
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Peter van Inwagen, Artifacts, and Moorean Rebuttals
Two commenters in an earlier van Inwagen thread, the illustrious William the Nominalist and the noble Philoponus of Terravita, have raised Moore-style objections to an implication of PvI's claim that "every physical thing is either a living organism or a simple" (MB 98), namely, the implication that "there are no tables or chairs or any…
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Van Inwagen on the Ship of Theseus
Peter van Inwagen's Material Beings (Cornell UP, 1990) is a very strange book, but he is a brilliant man, so one can expect to learn something from it. A central claim is that artifacts such as tables and chairs and ships do not exist. One can appreciate that if there are no ships then the…
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A Difficulty With Haecceity Properties
By popular demand, here is revised version of a post that first appeared on the old blog in July of 2005. Introduction. I find haecceity properties hard to accept, although I grant they they would do various useful jobs if they existed. ('Haecceity' from the Latin haecceitas, thisness.) In this post I explain one or…