Abstract
I argue in this paper that the debate over composition is factually empty; in other words, I argue that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any composite objects like tables and rocks and cats. Moreover, at the end of the paper, I explain how my argument is suggestive of a much more general (and much more radical) conclusion, namely, that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any material objects at all. Roughly speaking, the paper proceeds by arguing that (a) if there were a fact of the matter about whether composite objects exist, then it would be either a necessary fact or a contingent fact, and (b) both of these alternatives are implausible.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The word ‘tiny’ is being used here in an intentionally imprecise way; in particular, (S) is neutral on the question of whether the simples in question are unextended point-sized objects or tiny extended objects.
Universalism has been endorsed by, e.g., Lewis (1991), Heller (1990), Hudson (2001), and Van Cleve (2008). This isn’t the only alternative to nihilism. There are also views that lie between the two extremes; e.g., van Inwagen (1990) and Merricks (2001) hold that the only composite objects are animals, so that there are cats but no tables, and common sense seems to say that there are tables and cats but no trout-turkeys (see, e.g., Markosian (1998), Elder (2011), and Korman (2015) for views that are compatible with common sense).
In this paper, when I speak of things being necessary, unless I indicate otherwise, I will be speaking of metaphysical necessity. I will also make free use of the possible-worlds analysis of modal claims; thus, e.g., in my lingo, to say that A is necessary is to say that A is true in all possible worlds. (I don’t think non-actual worlds really exist—I think the possible-worlds apparatus is just a useful fiction—but I can’t defend this stance here.)
The views of Carnap, Putnam, Sidelle, and Rayo are all a bit different from the trivialist view defined in the text. Rayo would want to replace talk of the meanings of sentences with talk of the‘just is’-statements that we should accept; in particular, on Rayo’s view, the crucial ‘just-is’-statement (the one that, together with uncontroversial empirical truths, settles the table question) is this: For there to be a table just is for there to be some things arranged tablewise. Carnap, Putnam, and Sidelle, on the other hand, seem to endorse the view that (a) if the table question had a correct answer, then it would be settled by semantic facts (together with uncontroversial empirical facts), but (b) the table question doesn’t have a correct answer because the facts about ordinary English don’t succeed in settling the matter.
Actually, Rayo’s version of trivialism—and this may be true of the views of some of the other trivialists mentioned in the text as well—isn’t so happily classified as a version of anti-metaphysicalism; for Rayo’s view is compatible with there being a substantive ontological question about whether there are table-like composite objects (it’s just that on his view, the existence of such things isn’t needed for the truth of the ordinary sentence ‘There are tables’). But for this very reason, Rayo’s sort of trivialism isn’t a threat to my argument. For as I pointed out above, I’m using ‘table’ in this paper to mean composite object that’s composed of simples arranged tablewise.
It’s important to note that I haven’t claimed here that platonism and nominalism are possible. I’ve argued elsewhere (1998) for a non-factualist view of the abstract-object debate, i.e., for the claim that there’s no fact of the matter whether abstract objects exist. If this is true, then I think it’s necessarily true, and it follows from this that neither platonism nor nominalism is genuinely possible. But this is perfectly consistent with what I’ve said here; all I’ve said is that platonists have no way of arguing that nominalism isn’t genuinely possible. In contrast, I think that non-factualists do have a way of arguing for this claim.
It’s worth noting that my argument strategy works even in cases where necessary existence is built into the definition of the given kind of object. For instance, if it’s built into the definition of ‘God’ that She exists necessarily, then if we applied my argument strategy to the case of God, then what it would show (if it was cogent) is that God is impossible. Even if there was an omnipotent, omniscient creator of the universe, there wouldn’t be a God because no creator exists necessarily. (Analogy: If a nonkey is a necessarily existing donkey, then nonkeys are not just non-existent but impossible.)
Rosen claims that if P doesn’t lead to contradiction—even when it’s combined with all the truths about the natures of things—then P is possible. I more or less agree with this, but I would replace ‘truths about the natures of things’ with ‘truths about the rigid designators of English’ (and if there can be imprecise propositions, then I would also want to limit this to cases where P isn’t so imprecise that there’s no fact of the matter whether it’s true).
This sort of view is defended by Cameron (2014).
There’s a similar argument in Schaffer (2003), but it’s not an argument for gunk either; it is, rather, an attack on the idea that there’s a good argument for mereological simples.
Why should we think that there’s a single right way to choose our primitives, i.e., that there aren’t multiple equally good ways, as there seem to be in mathematics? And why should we think that if T1 has different primitives from T2, then it says something different about the nature of reality? This seems to assume that reality is layered, or structured, in a way that corresponds to the ways in which we define our terms; but it might not be.
Of course, in order to articulate and argue for non-factualism, we do need to use mereological terms; but that’s true of nihilism as well. I take it that Sider’s point is that when nihilists go to provide a positive description of reality (as opposed to when they go to articulate and argue for nihilism), they don’t need to make ineliminable use of mereological terms; and this is what I’m saying is true of non-factualists as well as nihilists.
Actually, if we assume premise (ii), then non-factualists seem to be better off than nihilists in this regard; for in addition to not needing to make ineliminable use of terms like ‘part’, non-factualists also don’t need to make ineliminable use of terms like ‘object’.
As I pointed out in note 4, I don’t actually believe in Lewisian worlds; I think they’re just useful fictions for thinking about possibility; but I can’t get into this issue here.
You might respond as follows: “Whether there are type-T facts depends on whether there are compositional facts of a certain kind—in particular, on whether some simples compose a table; facts like this are similar in certain ways to causal facts; thus, since we’re not very worried by causal facts being invisible, maybe we shouldn’t be very worried by compositional facts being invisible either.” But this stance is problematic. It suggests a picture in which there are two different kinds of facts—facts about composition and facts about the existence of composite objects—analogous to causation, where there are facts about causal processes and facts about causal effects. But this is the wrong picture of composition. Unlike causation, composition isn’t a process; it’s not something that happens. So there aren’t two different kinds of facts here. If some simples compose a table, then there’s no more to the fact that they compose a table than there is to the fact that there exists a table that’s composed of them. (Also, even if there were two different facts here, it wouldn’t be analogous to causation because both facts would be invisible.)
Strictly speaking, what contingentists are committed to are pairs of worlds such that (a) both contain simples arranged tablewise and (b) one contains tables and the other doesn’t. But this is just an artifact of the way I’ve set things up. If someone objected here on the grounds that contingentists aren’t really committed to pairs of worlds of the kind described in the text, then I could just redo my argument so that it was about tables of a very specific kind—e.g., 4-legged coffee tables that obey the laws of quantum mechanics. I could get so specific about the kind of composite object I focused on that contingentists would be committed to pairs of worlds of the kind described in the text—i.e., pairs of worlds that are identical at the micro-level but different with respect to what composite objects exist.
Contingentists might try to reduce the feeling of weirdness here by saying that facts about the existence of tables supervene on micro-physical facts together with the laws of metaphysics. But I don’t think this view succeeds in making type-T facts seem less weird. To see why, notice that if the appeal to metaphysical laws is going to do anything here, then contingentists will have to endorse a non-Humean view of these laws; in other words, they’ll have to say that there are metaphysical forces, or some such thing. E.g., they might say that in universalist worlds, there’s a metaphysical force that makes composite objects come into being whenever some simples come into being. Given this, contingentists can say that the existence of composite objects supervenes on (and is grounded in) micro-physical facts together with facts about the metaphysical forces. But it’s hard to see what these forces could be. They couldn’t just consist in metaphysical necessitation because that would be inconsistent with contingentism. It seems that these forces would have to be oomphy in some sense but not causally oomphy (because composition isn’t a process). This seems very odd, and so the appeal to metaphysical laws doesn’t seem to alleviate the weirdness of type-T facts. It just seems to replace one mystery with another.
These aren’t the only features of type-T facts that would be weird. For instance, it seems that type-T facts would be brute facts, and given that they would also be macro-level physical facts, this seems very weird. But bruteness is obviously deeply related to Non-supervenience, so I’m not listing it here as a separate source of weirdness.
Another problem with the worry I’m addressing here is that it mistakenly assumes that facts about composition are distinct from facts about the existence of composite objects; for more on this, see note 20.
If this argument is correct, then it works for all extended physical objects; i.e., it can be used to show that for any extended physical object O, there’s no fact of the matter whether O has proper parts and, hence, no fact of the matter whether O is a simple.
There are actually two different versions of smallism—one that takes the fundamental objects to be unextended point-sized simples, and one that takes them to be extended. On the latter view, it’s actually a misnomer to call the fundamental objects “simples”; for if smallists of this kind accept the arguments of this paper, then they’ll say that there’s no fact of the matter whether these objects have proper parts and hence no fact of the matter whether they’re simples. So strictly speaking, I shouldn’t use ‘simples’ when talking about smallists; I should use ‘small fundamental objects’, or something like that; but I won’t bother with this complication here.
References
Armstrong, D. (1978). A theory of universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Arntzenius, F. (2008). Gunk, topology, and measure. In D. Zimmerman (Ed.), Oxford studies in metaphysics (Vol. 4, pp. 225–247). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Audi, P. (2012). Grounding: Toward a theory of the in-virtue-of relation. Journal of Philosophy, 109, 685–711.
Balaguer, M. (1998). Platonism and anti-platonism in mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press.
Baxter, D. (1988). Many-one identity. Philosophical Papers, 17, 193–216.
Cameron, R. (2007). The contingency of composition. Philosophical Studies, 136, 99–121.
Cameron, R. (2009). What’s metaphysical about metaphysical necessity. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 79, 1–16.
Cameron, R. (2014). Parts generate the whole, but they are not identical to it. In A. J. Cotnoir & D. Baxter (Eds.), Composition as identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carnap, R. (1950). Empiricism, semantics, and ontology. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 4, 20–40.
Dancy, J. (2004). Ethics without principles. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dasgupta, S. (2014). On the plurality of grounds. Philosophers’ Imprint, 14, 1–28.
deRosset, L. (2010). Getting priority straight. Philosophical Studies, 149, 73–97.
Elder, C. (2011). Familiar objects and their shadows. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Field, H. (1989). Realism, mathematics, and modality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Fine, K. (2012). Guide to ground. In F. Correia & B. Schneider (Eds.), Metaphysical grounding: Understanding the structure of reality (pp. 37–80). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heller, M. (1990). The ontology of physical objects: Four-dimensional hunks of matter. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hellman, G. (1989). Mathematics without numbers. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hirsch, E. (2002). Quantifier variance and realism. Philosophical Issues, 12, 51–73.
Hofweber, T. (2016). Ontology and the ambitions of metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horgan, T., & Potrč, M. (2000). Blobjectivism and indirect correspondence. Facta Philosophica, 2, 249–270.
Hudson, H. (2001). A materialist metaphysics of the human person. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Kelly, T. (2008). Common sense as evidence: Against revisionary ontology and skepticism. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 32, 53–78.
Kment, B. (2014). Modality and explanatory reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Korman, D. (2015). Objects: Nothing out of the ordinary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leng, M. (2010). Mathematics and reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leuenberger, S. (2013). Grounding and necessity. Inquiry, 57, 151–174.
Lewis, D. (1986). On the plurality of worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lewis, D. (1991). Parts of classes. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Markosian, N. (1998). Brutal composition. Philosophical Studies, 92, 211–249.
McDaniel, K. (2008). Against composition as identity. Analysis, 68, 128–133.
Merricks, T. (2001). Objects and persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Miller, K. (2010). The existential quantifier, composition and contingency. Erkenntnis, 73, 211–235.
Parsons, J. (2013). Conceptual conservatism and contingent composition. Inquiry, 56, 327–339.
Pryor, J. (2000). The skeptic and the dogmatist. Nous, 34, 517–549.
Putnam, H. (1994). Truth and convention: On Davidson’s refutation of conceptual relativism. Dialectica, 41, 69–77.
Rayo, A. (2013). The construction of logical space. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rosen, G. (2006). The limits of contingency. In F. MacBride (Ed.), Identity and modality (pp. 13–39). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rosen, G. (2010). Metaphysical dependence: Grounding and reduction. In R. Hale & A. Hoffman (Eds.), Modality: Metaphysics, logic, and epistemology (pp. 109–136). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rosen, G., & Dorr, C. (2002). Composition as a fiction. In R. M. Gale (Ed.), The Blackwell guide to metaphysics (pp. 151–174). Oxford: Blackwell.
Saenz, N. (2015). A grounding solution to the grounding problem. Philosophical Studies, 172, 2193–2214.
Schaffer, J. (2003). Is there a fundamental level? Nous, 37, 498–517.
Schaffer, J. (2010). Monism: The priority of the whole. Philosophical Studies, 119, 31–76.
Sidelle, A. (2002). Is there a true metaphysics of material objects. Philosophical Issues, 12, 118–145.
Sider, T. (1993). Van Inwagen and the possibility of gunk. Analysis, 53, 285–289.
Sider, T. (2003). Reductive theories of modality. In M. Loux & D. Zimmerman (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of metaphysics (pp. 180–208). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sider, T. (2007). Parthood. Philosophical Review, 116, 51–91.
Sider, T. (2011). Writing the book of the world. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Sider, T. (2013). Against Parthood. In K. Bennett & D. Zimmerman (Eds.), Oxford studies in metaphysics (Vol. 8, pp. 237–293). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Skiles, A. (2015). Against grounding necessitarianism. Erkenntnis, 80, 717–751.
Thomasson, A. (2007). Ordinary objects. New York: Oxford University Press.
Trogdon, K. (2013). Grounding: Necessary or contingent? Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 94, 465–485.
Turner, J. (2013). Existence and many-one identity. Philosophical Quarterly, 63, 313–329.
Unger, P. (1979). There are no ordinary things. Synthese, 41, 117–154.
Van Cleve, J. (2008). The moon and sixpence: A defense of mereological universalism. In T. Sider, J. Hawthorne, & D. Zimmerman (Eds.), Contemporary debates in metaphysics (pp. 321–340). Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing.
van Inwagen, P. (1990). Material beings. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Wallace, M. (2011). Composition as identity: Parts 1 and 2. Philosophy Compass, 6(804–16), 817–827.
Wilsch, T. (2015). The nomological account of ground. Philosophical Studies, 172, 3293–3312.
Yi, B. (1999). Is mereology ontologically innocent. Philosophical Studies, 93, 141–160.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This paper is dedicated to the memory of Josh Parsons, who gave me valuable feedback on an earlier version of this paper and who died tragically the day before the proofs for this paper appeared in my inbox. Thanks are also due to Talia Bettcher, Ross Cameron, Robert Jones, Matt Leonard, Ned Markosian, Michaela McSweeney, David Pitt, Raul Saucedo, Wai-hung Wong, and anonymous referees—and to Sara Bernstein and Daniel Nolan for commenting on a version of this paper at an APA meeting in San Diego. I also presented drafts of this paper at the University of Aberdeen, UC Irvine, the CUNY Graduate Center, the University of British Columbia, Cal State Northridge, and the Central European University. I would like to thank the members of the audiences of those talks.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Balaguer, M. Why the debate about composition is factually empty (or why there’s no fact of the matter whether anything exists). Synthese 195, 3975–4008 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1403-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1403-2